Preface

Table of Contents
What is PostgreSQL?
A Brief History of PostgreSQL
Conventions
Further Information
Bug Reporting Guidelines

This book is the official documentation of PostgreSQL. It has been written by the PostgreSQL developers and other volunteers in parallel to the development of the PostgreSQL software. It describes all the functionality that the current version of PostgreSQL officially supports.

To make the large amount of information about PostgreSQL manageable, this book has been organized in several parts. Each part is targeted at a different class of users, or at users in different stages of their PostgreSQL experience:

  • Part I is an informal introduction for new users.

  • Part II documents the SQL query language environment, including data types and functions, as well as user-level performance tuning. Every PostgreSQL user should read this.

  • Part III describes the installation and administration of the server. Everyone who runs a PostgreSQL server, be it for private use or for others, should read this part.

  • Part IV describes the programming interfaces for PostgreSQL client programs.

  • Part V contains information for advanced users about the extensibility capabilities of the server. Topics include user-defined data types and functions.

  • Part VI contains reference information about SQL commands, client and server programs. This part supports the other parts with structured information sorted by command or program.

  • Part VII contains assorted information that might be of use to PostgreSQL developers.

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What is PostgreSQL?

PostgreSQL is an object-relational database management system (ORDBMS) based on POSTGRES, Version 4.2, developed at the University of California at Berkeley Computer Science Department. POSTGRES pioneered many concepts that only became available in some commercial database systems much later.

PostgreSQL is an open-source descendant of this original Berkeley code. It supports a large part of the SQL standard and offers many modern features:

  • complex queries
  • foreign keys
  • triggers
  • views
  • transactional integrity
  • multiversion concurrency control

Also, PostgreSQL can be extended by the user in many ways, for example by adding new

  • data types
  • functions
  • operators
  • aggregate functions
  • index methods
  • procedural languages

And because of the liberal license, PostgreSQL can be used, modified, and distributed by anyone free of charge for any purpose, be it private, commercial, or academic.

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A Brief History of PostgreSQL

The object-relational database management system now known as PostgreSQL is derived from the POSTGRES package written at the University of California at Berkeley. With over two decades of development behind it, PostgreSQL is now the most advanced open-source database available anywhere.

The Berkeley POSTGRES Project

The POSTGRES project, led by Professor Michael Stonebraker, was sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Army Research Office (ARO), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and ESL, Inc. The implementation of POSTGRES began in 1986. The initial concepts for the system were presented in The design of POSTGRES , and the definition of the initial data model appeared in The POSTGRES data model . The design of the rule system at that time was described in The design of the POSTGRES rules system. The rationale and architecture of the storage manager were detailed in The design of the POSTGRES storage system .

POSTGRES has undergone several major releases since then. The first "demoware" system became operational in 1987 and was shown at the 1988 ACM-SIGMOD Conference. Version 1, described in The implementation of POSTGRES , was released to a few external users in June 1989. In response to a critique of the first rule system ( A commentary on the POSTGRES rules system ), the rule system was redesigned ( On Rules, Procedures, Caching and Views in Database Systems ), and Version 2 was released in June 1990 with the new rule system. Version 3 appeared in 1991 and added support for multiple storage managers, an improved query executor, and a rewritten rule system. For the most part, subsequent releases until Postgres95 (see below) focused on portability and reliability.

POSTGRES has been used to implement many different research and production applications. These include: a financial data analysis system, a jet engine performance monitoring package, an asteroid tracking database, a medical information database, and several geographic information systems. POSTGRES has also been used as an educational tool at several universities. Finally, Illustra Information Technologies (later merged into Informix, which is now owned by IBM) picked up the code and commercialized it. In late 1992, POSTGRES became the primary data manager for the Sequoia 2000 scientific computing project.

The size of the external user community nearly doubled during 1993. It became increasingly obvious that maintenance of the prototype code and support was taking up large amounts of time that should have been devoted to database research. In an effort to reduce this support burden, the Berkeley POSTGRES project officially ended with Version 4.2.

Postgres95

In 1994, Andrew Yu and Jolly Chen added an SQL language interpreter to POSTGRES. Under a new name, Postgres95 was subsequently released to the web to find its own way in the world as an open-source descendant of the original POSTGRES Berkeley code.

Postgres95 code was completely ANSI C and trimmed in size by 25%. Many internal changes improved performance and maintainability. Postgres95 release 1.0.x ran about 30-50% faster on the Wisconsin Benchmark compared to POSTGRES, Version 4.2. Apart from bug fixes, the following were the major enhancements:

  • The query language PostQUEL was replaced with SQL (implemented in the server). Subqueries were not supported until PostgreSQL (see below), but they could be imitated in Postgres95 with user-defined SQL functions. Aggregate functions were re-implemented. Support for the GROUP BY query clause was also added.

  • A new program (psql) was provided for interactive SQL queries, which used GNU Readline. This largely superseded the old monitor program.

  • A new front-end library, libpgtcl, supported Tcl-based clients. A sample shell, pgtclsh, provided new Tcl commands to interface Tcl programs with the Postgres95 server.

  • The large-object interface was overhauled. The inversion large objects were the only mechanism for storing large objects. (The inversion file system was removed.)

  • The instance-level rule system was removed. Rules were still available as rewrite rules.

  • A short tutorial introducing regular SQL features as well as those of Postgres95 was distributed with the source code

  • GNU make (instead of BSD make) was used for the build. Also, Postgres95 could be compiled with an unpatched GCC (data alignment of doubles was fixed).

PostgreSQL

By 1996, it became clear that the name "Postgres95" would not stand the test of time. We chose a new name, PostgreSQL, to reflect the relationship between the original POSTGRES and the more recent versions with SQL capability. At the same time, we set the version numbering to start at 6.0, putting the numbers back into the sequence originally begun by the Berkeley POSTGRES project.

Many people continue to refer to PostgreSQL as "Postgres" (now rarely in all capital letters) because of tradition or because it is easier to pronounce. This usage is widely accepted as a nickname or alias.

The emphasis during development of Postgres95 was on identifying and understanding existing problems in the server code. With PostgreSQL, the emphasis has shifted to augmenting features and capabilities, although work continues in all areas.

Details about what has happened in PostgreSQL since then can be found in Appendix E.

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Conventions

This book uses the following typographical conventions to mark certain portions of text: new terms, foreign phrases, and other important passages are emphasized in italics. Everything that represents input or output of the computer, in particular commands, program code, and screen output, is shown in a monospaced font (example). Within such passages, italics (example) indicate placeholders; you must insert an actual value instead of the placeholder. On occasion, parts of program code are emphasized in bold face (example), if they have been added or changed since the preceding example.

The following conventions are used in the synopsis of a command: brackets ([ and ]) indicate optional parts. (In the synopsis of a Tcl command, question marks (?) are used instead, as is usual in Tcl.) Braces ({ and }) and vertical lines (|) indicate that you must choose one alternative. Dots (...) mean that the preceding element can be repeated.

Where it enhances the clarity, SQL commands are preceded by the prompt =>, and shell commands are preceded by the prompt $. Normally, prompts are not shown, though.

An administrator is generally a person who is in charge of installing and running the server. A user could be anyone who is using, or wants to use, any part of the PostgreSQL system. These terms should not be interpreted too narrowly; this book does not have fixed presumptions about system administration procedures.

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Further Information

Besides the documentation, that is, this book, there are other resources about PostgreSQL:

Wiki

The PostgreSQL wiki contains the project's FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) list, TODO list, and detailed information about many more topics.

Web Site

The PostgreSQL web site carries details on the latest release and other information to make your work or play with PostgreSQL more productive.

Mailing Lists

The mailing lists are a good place to have your questions answered, to share experiences with other users, and to contact the developers. Consult the PostgreSQL web site for details.

Yourself!

PostgreSQL is an open-source project. As such, it depends on the user community for ongoing support. As you begin to use PostgreSQL, you will rely on others for help, either through the documentation or through the mailing lists. Consider contributing your knowledge back. Read the mailing lists and answer questions. If you learn something which is not in the documentation, write it up and contribute it. If you add features to the code, contribute them.

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Bug Reporting Guidelines

When you find a bug in PostgreSQL we want to hear about it. Your bug reports play an important part in making PostgreSQL more reliable because even the utmost care cannot guarantee that every part of PostgreSQL will work on every platform under every circumstance.

The following suggestions are intended to assist you in forming bug reports that can be handled in an effective fashion. No one is required to follow them but doing so tends to be to everyone's advantage.

We cannot promise to fix every bug right away. If the bug is obvious, critical, or affects a lot of users, chances are good that someone will look into it. It could also happen that we tell you to update to a newer version to see if the bug happens there. Or we might decide that the bug cannot be fixed before some major rewrite we might be planning is done. Or perhaps it is simply too hard and there are more important things on the agenda. If you need help immediately, consider obtaining a commercial support contract.

Identifying Bugs

Before you report a bug, please read and re-read the documentation to verify that you can really do whatever it is you are trying. If it is not clear from the documentation whether you can do something or not, please report that too; it is a bug in the documentation. If it turns out that a program does something different from what the documentation says, that is a bug. That might include, but is not limited to, the following circumstances:

  • A program terminates with a fatal signal or an operating system error message that would point to a problem in the program. (A counterexample might be a "disk full" message, since you have to fix that yourself.)

  • A program produces the wrong output for any given input.

  • A program refuses to accept valid input (as defined in the documentation).

  • A program accepts invalid input without a notice or error message. But keep in mind that your idea of invalid input might be our idea of an extension or compatibility with traditional practice.

  • PostgreSQL fails to compile, build, or install according to the instructions on supported platforms.

Here "program" refers to any executable, not only the backend process.

Being slow or resource-hogging is not necessarily a bug. Read the documentation or ask on one of the mailing lists for help in tuning your applications. Failing to comply to the SQL standard is not necessarily a bug either, unless compliance for the specific feature is explicitly claimed.

Before you continue, check on the TODO list and in the FAQ to see if your bug is already known. If you cannot decode the information on the TODO list, report your problem. The least we can do is make the TODO list clearer.

What to Report

The most important thing to remember about bug reporting is to state all the facts and only facts. Do not speculate what you think went wrong, what "it seemed to do", or which part of the program has a fault. If you are not familiar with the implementation you would probably guess wrong and not help us a bit. And even if you are, educated explanations are a great supplement to but no substitute for facts. If we are going to fix the bug we still have to see it happen for ourselves first. Reporting the bare facts is relatively straightforward (you can probably copy and paste them from the screen) but all too often important details are left out because someone thought it does not matter or the report would be understood anyway.

The following items should be contained in every bug report:

  • The exact sequence of steps from program start-up necessary to reproduce the problem. This should be self-contained; it is not enough to send in a bare SELECT statement without the preceding CREATE TABLE and INSERT statements, if the output should depend on the data in the tables. We do not have the time to reverse-engineer your database schema, and if we are supposed to make up our own data we would probably miss the problem.

    The best format for a test case for SQL-related problems is a file that can be run through the psql frontend that shows the problem. (Be sure to not have anything in your ~/.psqlrc start-up file.) An easy way to create this file is to use pg_dump to dump out the table declarations and data needed to set the scene, then add the problem query. You are encouraged to minimize the size of your example, but this is not absolutely necessary. If the bug is reproducible, we will find it either way.

    If your application uses some other client interface, such as PHP, then please try to isolate the offending queries. We will probably not set up a web server to reproduce your problem. In any case remember to provide the exact input files; do not guess that the problem happens for "large files" or "midsize databases", etc. since this information is too inexact to be of use.

  • The output you got. Please do not say that it "didn't work" or "crashed". If there is an error message, show it, even if you do not understand it. If the program terminates with an operating system error, say which. If nothing at all happens, say so. Even if the result of your test case is a program crash or otherwise obvious it might not happen on our platform. The easiest thing is to copy the output from the terminal, if possible.

    Note: If you are reporting an error message, please obtain the most verbose form of the message. In psql, say \set VERBOSITY verbose beforehand. If you are extracting the message from the server log, set the run-time parameter log_error_verbosity to verbose so that all details are logged.

    Note: In case of fatal errors, the error message reported by the client might not contain all the information available. Please also look at the log output of the database server. If you do not keep your server's log output, this would be a good time to start doing so.

  • The output you expected is very important to state. If you just write "This command gives me that output." or "This is not what I expected.", we might run it ourselves, scan the output, and think it looks OK and is exactly what we expected. We should not have to spend the time to decode the exact semantics behind your commands. Especially refrain from merely saying that "This is not what SQL says/Oracle does." Digging out the correct behavior from SQL is not a fun undertaking, nor do we all know how all the other relational databases out there behave. (If your problem is a program crash, you can obviously omit this item.)

  • Any command line options and other start-up options, including any relevant environment variables or configuration files that you changed from the default. Again, please provide exact information. If you are using a prepackaged distribution that starts the database server at boot time, you should try to find out how that is done.

  • Anything you did at all differently from the installation instructions.

  • The PostgreSQL version. You can run the command SELECT version(); to find out the version of the server you are connected to. Most executable programs also support a --version option; at least postgres --version and psql --version should work. If the function or the options do not exist then your version is more than old enough to warrant an upgrade. If you run a prepackaged version, such as RPMs, say so, including any subversion the package might have. If you are talking about a Git snapshot, mention that, including the commit hash.

    If your version is older than 9.1.19 we will almost certainly tell you to upgrade. There are many bug fixes and improvements in each new release, so it is quite possible that a bug you have encountered in an older release of PostgreSQL has already been fixed. We can only provide limited support for sites using older releases of PostgreSQL; if you require more than we can provide, consider acquiring a commercial support contract.

  • Platform information. This includes the kernel name and version, C library, processor, memory information, and so on. In most cases it is sufficient to report the vendor and version, but do not assume everyone knows what exactly "Debian" contains or that everyone runs on i386s. If you have installation problems then information about the toolchain on your machine (compiler, make, and so on) is also necessary.

Do not be afraid if your bug report becomes rather lengthy. That is a fact of life. It is better to report everything the first time than us having to squeeze the facts out of you. On the other hand, if your input files are huge, it is fair to ask first whether somebody is interested in looking into it. Here is an article that outlines some more tips on reporting bugs.

Do not spend all your time to figure out which changes in the input make the problem go away. This will probably not help solving it. If it turns out that the bug cannot be fixed right away, you will still have time to find and share your work-around. Also, once again, do not waste your time guessing why the bug exists. We will find that out soon enough.

When writing a bug report, please avoid confusing terminology. The software package in total is called "PostgreSQL", sometimes "Postgres" for short. If you are specifically talking about the backend process, mention that, do not just say "PostgreSQL crashes". A crash of a single backend process is quite different from crash of the parent "postgres" process; please don't say "the server crashed" when you mean a single backend process went down, nor vice versa. Also, client programs such as the interactive frontend "psql" are completely separate from the backend. Please try to be specific about whether the problem is on the client or server side.

Where to Report Bugs

In general, send bug reports to the bug report mailing list at <pgsql-bugs@postgresql.org>. You are requested to use a descriptive subject for your email message, perhaps parts of the error message.

Another method is to fill in the bug report web-form available at the project's web site. Entering a bug report this way causes it to be mailed to the <pgsql-bugs@postgresql.org> mailing list.

If your bug report has security implications and you'd prefer that it not become immediately visible in public archives, don't send it to pgsql-bugs. Security issues can be reported privately to <security@postgresql.org>.

Do not send bug reports to any of the user mailing lists, such as <pgsql-sql@postgresql.org> or <pgsql-general@postgresql.org>. These mailing lists are for answering user questions, and their subscribers normally do not wish to receive bug reports. More importantly, they are unlikely to fix them.

Also, please do not send reports to the developers' mailing list <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>. This list is for discussing the development of PostgreSQL, and it would be nice if we could keep the bug reports separate. We might choose to take up a discussion about your bug report on pgsql-hackers, if the problem needs more review.

If you have a problem with the documentation, the best place to report it is the documentation mailing list <pgsql-docs@postgresql.org>. Please be specific about what part of the documentation you are unhappy with.

If your bug is a portability problem on a non-supported platform, send mail to <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>, so we (and you) can work on porting PostgreSQL to your platform.

Note: Due to the unfortunate amount of spam going around, all of the above email addresses are closed mailing lists. That is, you need to be subscribed to a list to be allowed to post on it. (You need not be subscribed to use the bug-report web form, however.) If you would like to send mail but do not want to receive list traffic, you can subscribe and set your subscription option to nomail. For more information send mail to <majordomo@postgresql.org> with the single word help in the body of the message.

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Tutorial

PostgreSQL 9.1.19 Documentation
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I. Tutorial

Welcome to the PostgreSQL Tutorial. The following few chapters are intended to give a simple introduction to PostgreSQL, relational database concepts, and the SQL language to those who are new to any one of these aspects. We only assume some general knowledge about how to use computers. No particular Unix or programming experience is required. This part is mainly intended to give you some hands-on experience with important aspects of the PostgreSQL system. It makes no attempt to be a complete or thorough treatment of the topics it covers.

After you have worked through this tutorial you might want to move on to reading Part II to gain a more formal knowledge of the SQL language, or Part IV for information about developing applications for PostgreSQL. Those who set up and manage their own server should also read Part III.

Table of Contents
1. Getting Started
1.1. Installation
1.2. Architectural Fundamentals
1.3. Creating a Database
1.4. Accessing a Database
2. The SQL Language
2.1. Introduction
2.2. Concepts
2.3. Creating a New Table
2.4. Populating a Table With Rows
2.5. Querying a Table
2.6. Joins Between Tables
2.7. Aggregate Functions
2.8. Updates
2.9. Deletions
3. Advanced Features
3.1. Introduction
3.2. Views
3.3. Foreign Keys
3.4. Transactions
3.5. Window Functions
3.6. Inheritance
3.7. Conclusion
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Getting Started

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Chapter 1. Getting Started

Table of Contents
1.1. Installation
1.2. Architectural Fundamentals
1.3. Creating a Database
1.4. Accessing a Database
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Installation

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1.1. Installation

Before you can use PostgreSQL you need to install it, of course. It is possible that PostgreSQL is already installed at your site, either because it was included in your operating system distribution or because the system administrator already installed it. If that is the case, you should obtain information from the operating system documentation or your system administrator about how to access PostgreSQL.

If you are not sure whether PostgreSQL is already available or whether you can use it for your experimentation then you can install it yourself. Doing so is not hard and it can be a good exercise. PostgreSQL can be installed by any unprivileged user; no superuser (root) access is required.

If you are installing PostgreSQL yourself, then refer to Chapter 15 for instructions on installation, and return to this guide when the installation is complete. Be sure to follow closely the section about setting up the appropriate environment variables.

If your site administrator has not set things up in the default way, you might have some more work to do. For example, if the database server machine is a remote machine, you will need to set the PGHOST environment variable to the name of the database server machine. The environment variable PGPORT might also have to be set. The bottom line is this: if you try to start an application program and it complains that it cannot connect to the database, you should consult your site administrator or, if that is you, the documentation to make sure that your environment is properly set up. If you did not understand the preceding paragraph then read the next section.

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Architectural Fundamentals

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1.2. Architectural Fundamentals

Before we proceed, you should understand the basic PostgreSQL system architecture. Understanding how the parts of PostgreSQL interact will make this chapter somewhat clearer.

In database jargon, PostgreSQL uses a client/server model. A PostgreSQL session consists of the following cooperating processes (programs):

  • A server process, which manages the database files, accepts connections to the database from client applications, and performs database actions on behalf of the clients. The database server program is called postgres.

  • The user's client (frontend) application that wants to perform database operations. Client applications can be very diverse in nature: a client could be a text-oriented tool, a graphical application, a web server that accesses the database to display web pages, or a specialized database maintenance tool. Some client applications are supplied with the PostgreSQL distribution; most are developed by users.

As is typical of client/server applications, the client and the server can be on different hosts. In that case they communicate over a TCP/IP network connection. You should keep this in mind, because the files that can be accessed on a client machine might not be accessible (or might only be accessible using a different file name) on the database server machine.

The PostgreSQL server can handle multiple concurrent connections from clients. To achieve this it starts ("forks") a new process for each connection. From that point on, the client and the new server process communicate without intervention by the original postgres process. Thus, the master server process is always running, waiting for client connections, whereas client and associated server processes come and go. (All of this is of course invisible to the user. We only mention it here for completeness.)

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Creating a Database

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1.3. Creating a Database

The first test to see whether you can access the database server is to try to create a database. A running PostgreSQL server can manage many databases. Typically, a separate database is used for each project or for each user.

Possibly, your site administrator has already created a database for your use. He should have told you what the name of your database is. In that case you can omit this step and skip ahead to the next section.

To create a new database, in this example named mydb, you use the following command:

$ createdb mydb

If this produces no response then this step was successful and you can skip over the remainder of this section.

If you see a message similar to:

createdb: command not found

then PostgreSQL was not installed properly. Either it was not installed at all or your shell's search path was not set to include it. Try calling the command with an absolute path instead:

$ /usr/local/pgsql/bin/createdb mydb

The path at your site might be different. Contact your site administrator or check the installation instructions to correct the situation.

Another response could be this:

createdb: could not connect to database postgres: could not connect to server: No such file or directory
        Is the server running locally and accepting
        connections on Unix domain socket "/tmp/.s.PGSQL.5432"?

This means that the server was not started, or it was not started where createdb expected it. Again, check the installation instructions or consult the administrator.

Another response could be this:

createdb: could not connect to database postgres: FATAL:  role "joe" does not exist

where your own login name is mentioned. This will happen if the administrator has not created a PostgreSQL user account for you. (PostgreSQL user accounts are distinct from operating system user accounts.) If you are the administrator, see Chapter 20 for help creating accounts. You will need to become the operating system user under which PostgreSQL was installed (usually postgres) to create the first user account. It could also be that you were assigned a PostgreSQL user name that is different from your operating system user name; in that case you need to use the -U switch or set the PGUSER environment variable to specify your PostgreSQL user name.

If you have a user account but it does not have the privileges required to create a database, you will see the following:

createdb: database creation failed: ERROR:  permission denied to create database

Not every user has authorization to create new databases. If PostgreSQL refuses to create databases for you then the site administrator needs to grant you permission to create databases. Consult your site administrator if this occurs. If you installed PostgreSQL yourself then you should log in for the purposes of this tutorial under the user account that you started the server as. [1]

You can also create databases with other names. PostgreSQL allows you to create any number of databases at a given site. Database names must have an alphabetic first character and are limited to 63 bytes in length. A convenient choice is to create a database with the same name as your current user name. Many tools assume that database name as the default, so it can save you some typing. To create that database, simply type:

$ createdb

If you do not want to use your database anymore you can remove it. For example, if you are the owner (creator) of the database mydb, you can destroy it using the following command:

$ dropdb mydb

(For this command, the database name does not default to the user account name. You always need to specify it.) This action physically removes all files associated with the database and cannot be undone, so this should only be done with a great deal of forethought.

More about createdb and dropdb can be found in createdb and dropdb respectively.

Notes

[1]

As an explanation for why this works: PostgreSQL user names are separate from operating system user accounts. When you connect to a database, you can choose what PostgreSQL user name to connect as; if you don't, it will default to the same name as your current operating system account. As it happens, there will always be a PostgreSQL user account that has the same name as the operating system user that started the server, and it also happens that that user always has permission to create databases. Instead of logging in as that user you can also specify the -U option everywhere to select a PostgreSQL user name to connect as.

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Accessing a Database

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1.4. Accessing a Database

Once you have created a database, you can access it by:

  • Running the PostgreSQL interactive terminal program, called psql, which allows you to interactively enter, edit, and execute SQL commands.

  • Using an existing graphical frontend tool like pgAdmin or an office suite with ODBC or JDBC support to create and manipulate a database. These possibilities are not covered in this tutorial.

  • Writing a custom application, using one of the several available language bindings. These possibilities are discussed further in Part IV.

You probably want to start up psql to try the examples in this tutorial. It can be activated for the mydb database by typing the command:

$ psql mydb

If you do not supply the database name then it will default to your user account name. You already discovered this scheme in the previous section using createdb.

In psql, you will be greeted with the following message:

psql (9.1.19)
Type "help" for help.

mydb=>

The last line could also be:

mydb=#

That would mean you are a database superuser, which is most likely the case if you installed PostgreSQL yourself. Being a superuser means that you are not subject to access controls. For the purposes of this tutorial that is not important.

If you encounter problems starting psql then go back to the previous section. The diagnostics of createdb and psql are similar, and if the former worked the latter should work as well.

The last line printed out by psql is the prompt, and it indicates that psql is listening to you and that you can type SQL queries into a work space maintained by psql. Try out these commands:

mydb=> SELECT version();
                               version
 -----------------------------------------------------------------------
 PostgreSQL 9.1.19 on i586-pc-linux-gnu, compiled by GCC 2.96, 32-bit
(1 row)

mydb=> SELECT current_date;
    date
------------
 2002-08-31
(1 row)

mydb=> SELECT 2 + 2;
 ?column?
----------
        4
(1 row)

The psql program has a number of internal commands that are not SQL commands. They begin with the backslash character, "\". For example, you can get help on the syntax of various PostgreSQL SQL commands by typing:

mydb=> \h

To get out of psql, type:

mydb=> \q

and psql will quit and return you to your command shell. (For more internal commands, type \? at the psql prompt.) The full capabilities of psql are documented in psql. In this tutorial we will not use these features explicitly, but you can use them yourself when it is helpful.

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The SQL Language

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Chapter 2. The SQL Language

Table of Contents
2.1. Introduction
2.2. Concepts
2.3. Creating a New Table
2.4. Populating a Table With Rows
2.5. Querying a Table
2.6. Joins Between Tables
2.7. Aggregate Functions
2.8. Updates
2.9. Deletions
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Introduction

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2.1. Introduction

This chapter provides an overview of how to use SQL to perform simple operations. This tutorial is only intended to give you an introduction and is in no way a complete tutorial on SQL. Numerous books have been written on SQL, including Understanding the New SQL and A Guide to the SQL Standard. You should be aware that some PostgreSQL language features are extensions to the standard.

In the examples that follow, we assume that you have created a database named mydb, as described in the previous chapter, and have been able to start psql.

Examples in this manual can also be found in the PostgreSQL source distribution in the directory src/tutorial/. (Binary distributions of PostgreSQL might not compile these files.) To use those files, first change to that directory and run make:

$ cd ..../src/tutorial
$ make

This creates the scripts and compiles the C files containing user-defined functions and types. Then, to start the tutorial, do the following:

$ cd ..../tutorial
$ psql -s mydb
...

mydb=> \i basics.sql

The \i command reads in commands from the specified file. psql's -s option puts you in single step mode which pauses before sending each statement to the server. The commands used in this section are in the file basics.sql.

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Concepts

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2.2. Concepts

PostgreSQL is a relational database management system (RDBMS). That means it is a system for managing data stored in relations. Relation is essentially a mathematical term for table. The notion of storing data in tables is so commonplace today that it might seem inherently obvious, but there are a number of other ways of organizing databases. Files and directories on Unix-like operating systems form an example of a hierarchical database. A more modern development is the object-oriented database.

Each table is a named collection of rows. Each row of a given table has the same set of named columns, and each column is of a specific data type. Whereas columns have a fixed order in each row, it is important to remember that SQL does not guarantee the order of the rows within the table in any way (although they can be explicitly sorted for display).

Tables are grouped into databases, and a collection of databases managed by a single PostgreSQL server instance constitutes a database cluster.

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Creating a New Table

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2.3. Creating a New Table

You can create a new table by specifying the table name, along with all column names and their types:

CREATE TABLE weather (
    city            varchar(80),
    temp_lo         int,           -- low temperature
    temp_hi         int,           -- high temperature
    prcp            real,          -- precipitation
    date            date
);

You can enter this into psql with the line breaks. psql will recognize that the command is not terminated until the semicolon.

White space (i.e., spaces, tabs, and newlines) can be used freely in SQL commands. That means you can type the command aligned differently than above, or even all on one line. Two dashes ("--") introduce comments. Whatever follows them is ignored up to the end of the line. SQL is case insensitive about key words and identifiers, except when identifiers are double-quoted to preserve the case (not done above).

varchar(80) specifies a data type that can store arbitrary character strings up to 80 characters in length. int is the normal integer type. real is a type for storing single precision floating-point numbers. date should be self-explanatory. (Yes, the column of type date is also named date. This might be convenient or confusing — you choose.)

PostgreSQL supports the standard SQL types int, smallint, real, double precision, char(N), varchar(N), date, time, timestamp, and interval, as well as other types of general utility and a rich set of geometric types. PostgreSQL can be customized with an arbitrary number of user-defined data types. Consequently, type names are not key words in the syntax, except where required to support special cases in the SQL standard.

The second example will store cities and their associated geographical location:

CREATE TABLE cities (
    name            varchar(80),
    location        point
);

The point type is an example of a PostgreSQL-specific data type.

Finally, it should be mentioned that if you don't need a table any longer or want to recreate it differently you can remove it using the following command:

DROP TABLE tablename;

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Populating a Table With Rows

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2.4. Populating a Table With Rows

The INSERT statement is used to populate a table with rows:

INSERT INTO weather VALUES ('San Francisco', 46, 50, 0.25, '1994-11-27');

Note that all data types use rather obvious input formats. Constants that are not simple numeric values usually must be surrounded by single quotes ('), as in the example. The date type is actually quite flexible in what it accepts, but for this tutorial we will stick to the unambiguous format shown here.

The point type requires a coordinate pair as input, as shown here:

INSERT INTO cities VALUES ('San Francisco', '(-194.0, 53.0)');

The syntax used so far requires you to remember the order of the columns. An alternative syntax allows you to list the columns explicitly:

INSERT INTO weather (city, temp_lo, temp_hi, prcp, date)
    VALUES ('San Francisco', 43, 57, 0.0, '1994-11-29');

You can list the columns in a different order if you wish or even omit some columns, e.g., if the precipitation is unknown:

INSERT INTO weather (date, city, temp_hi, temp_lo)
    VALUES ('1994-11-29', 'Hayward', 54, 37);

Many developers consider explicitly listing the columns better style than relying on the order implicitly.

Please enter all the commands shown above so you have some data to work with in the following sections.

You could also have used COPY to load large amounts of data from flat-text files. This is usually faster because the COPY command is optimized for this application while allowing less flexibility than INSERT. An example would be:

COPY weather FROM '/home/user/weather.txt';

where the file name for the source file must be available on the machine running the backend process, not the client, since the backend process reads the file directly. You can read more about the COPY command in COPY.

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Querying a Table

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2.5. Querying a Table

To retrieve data from a table, the table is queried. An SQL SELECT statement is used to do this. The statement is divided into a select list (the part that lists the columns to be returned), a table list (the part that lists the tables from which to retrieve the data), and an optional qualification (the part that specifies any restrictions). For example, to retrieve all the rows of table weather, type:

SELECT * FROM weather;

Here * is a shorthand for "all columns". [1] So the same result would be had with:

SELECT city, temp_lo, temp_hi, prcp, date FROM weather;

The output should be:

     city      | temp_lo | temp_hi | prcp |    date
---------------+---------+---------+------+------------
 San Francisco |      46 |      50 | 0.25 | 1994-11-27
 San Francisco |      43 |      57 |    0 | 1994-11-29
 Hayward       |      37 |      54 |      | 1994-11-29
(3 rows)

You can write expressions, not just simple column references, in the select list. For example, you can do:

SELECT city, (temp_hi+temp_lo)/2 AS temp_avg, date FROM weather;

This should give:

     city      | temp_avg |    date
---------------+----------+------------
 San Francisco |       48 | 1994-11-27
 San Francisco |       50 | 1994-11-29
 Hayward       |       45 | 1994-11-29
(3 rows)

Notice how the AS clause is used to relabel the output column. (The AS clause is optional.)

A query can be "qualified" by adding a WHERE clause that specifies which rows are wanted. The WHERE clause contains a Boolean (truth value) expression, and only rows for which the Boolean expression is true are returned. The usual Boolean operators (AND, OR, and NOT) are allowed in the qualification. For example, the following retrieves the weather of San Francisco on rainy days:

SELECT * FROM weather
    WHERE city = 'San Francisco' AND prcp > 0.0;

Result:

     city      | temp_lo | temp_hi | prcp |    date
---------------+---------+---------+------+------------
 San Francisco |      46 |      50 | 0.25 | 1994-11-27
(1 row)

You can request that the results of a query be returned in sorted order:

SELECT * FROM weather
    ORDER BY city;

     city      | temp_lo | temp_hi | prcp |    date
---------------+---------+---------+------+------------
 Hayward       |      37 |      54 |      | 1994-11-29
 San Francisco |      43 |      57 |    0 | 1994-11-29
 San Francisco |      46 |      50 | 0.25 | 1994-11-27

In this example, the sort order isn't fully specified, and so you might get the San Francisco rows in either order. But you'd always get the results shown above if you do:

SELECT * FROM weather
    ORDER BY city, temp_lo;

You can request that duplicate rows be removed from the result of a query:

SELECT DISTINCT city
    FROM weather;

     city
---------------
 Hayward
 San Francisco
(2 rows)

Here again, the result row ordering might vary. You can ensure consistent results by using DISTINCT and ORDER BY together: [2]

SELECT DISTINCT city
    FROM weather
    ORDER BY city;

Notes

[1] | While SELECT * is useful for off-the-cuff queries, it is widely considered bad style in production code, since adding a column to the table would change the results.
[2] | In some database systems, including older versions of PostgreSQL, the implementation of DISTINCT automatically orders the rows and so ORDER BY is unnecessary. But this is not required by the SQL standard, and current PostgreSQL does not guarantee that DISTINCT causes the rows to be ordered.
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Joins Between Tables

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2.6. Joins Between Tables

Thus far, our queries have only accessed one table at a time. Queries can access multiple tables at once, or access the same table in such a way that multiple rows of the table are being processed at the same time. A query that accesses multiple rows of the same or different tables at one time is called a join query. As an example, say you wish to list all the weather records together with the location of the associated city. To do that, we need to compare the city column of each row of the weather table with the name column of all rows in the cities table, and select the pairs of rows where these values match.

Note: This is only a conceptual model. The join is usually performed in a more efficient manner than actually comparing each possible pair of rows, but this is invisible to the user.

This would be accomplished by the following query:

SELECT *
    FROM weather, cities
    WHERE city = name;

     city      | temp_lo | temp_hi | prcp |    date    |     name      | location
---------------+---------+---------+------+------------+---------------+-----------
 San Francisco |      46 |      50 | 0.25 | 1994-11-27 | San Francisco | (-194,53)
 San Francisco |      43 |      57 |    0 | 1994-11-29 | San Francisco | (-194,53)
(2 rows)

Observe two things about the result set:

  • There is no result row for the city of Hayward. This is because there is no matching entry in the cities table for Hayward, so the join ignores the unmatched rows in the weather table. We will see shortly how this can be fixed.

  • There are two columns containing the city name. This is correct because the lists of columns from the weather and cities tables are concatenated. In practice this is undesirable, though, so you will probably want to list the output columns explicitly rather than using *:

    SELECT city, temp_lo, temp_hi, prcp, date, location
    FROM weather, cities
    WHERE city = name;

Exercise: Attempt to determine the semantics of this query when the WHERE clause is omitted.

Since the columns all had different names, the parser automatically found which table they belong to. If there were duplicate column names in the two tables you'd need to qualify the column names to show which one you meant, as in:

SELECT weather.city, weather.temp_lo, weather.temp_hi,
       weather.prcp, weather.date, cities.location
    FROM weather, cities
    WHERE cities.name = weather.city;

It is widely considered good style to qualify all column names in a join query, so that the query won't fail if a duplicate column name is later added to one of the tables.

Join queries of the kind seen thus far can also be written in this alternative form:

SELECT *
    FROM weather INNER JOIN cities ON (weather.city = cities.name);

This syntax is not as commonly used as the one above, but we show it here to help you understand the following topics.

Now we will figure out how we can get the Hayward records back in. What we want the query to do is to scan the weather table and for each row to find the matching cities row(s). If no matching row is found we want some "empty values" to be substituted for the cities table's columns. This kind of query is called an outer join. (The joins we have seen so far are inner joins.) The command looks like this:

SELECT *
    FROM weather LEFT OUTER JOIN cities ON (weather.city = cities.name);

     city      | temp_lo | temp_hi | prcp |    date    |     name      | location
---------------+---------+---------+------+------------+---------------+-----------
 Hayward       |      37 |      54 |      | 1994-11-29 |               |
 San Francisco |      46 |      50 | 0.25 | 1994-11-27 | San Francisco | (-194,53)
 San Francisco |      43 |      57 |    0 | 1994-11-29 | San Francisco | (-194,53)
(3 rows)

This query is called a left outer join because the table mentioned on the left of the join operator will have each of its rows in the output at least once, whereas the table on the right will only have those rows output that match some row of the left table. When outputting a left-table row for which there is no right-table match, empty (null) values are substituted for the right-table columns.

Exercise: There are also right outer joins and full outer joins. Try to find out what those do.

We can also join a table against itself. This is called a self join. As an example, suppose we wish to find all the weather records that are in the temperature range of other weather records. So we need to compare the temp_lo and temp_hi columns of each weather row to the temp_lo and temp_hi columns of all other weather rows. We can do this with the following query:

SELECT W1.city, W1.temp_lo AS low, W1.temp_hi AS high,
    W2.city, W2.temp_lo AS low, W2.temp_hi AS high
    FROM weather W1, weather W2
    WHERE W1.temp_lo < W2.temp_lo
    AND W1.temp_hi > W2.temp_hi;

     city      | low | high |     city      | low | high
---------------+-----+------+---------------+-----+------
 San Francisco |  43 |   57 | San Francisco |  46 |   50
 Hayward       |  37 |   54 | San Francisco |  46 |   50
(2 rows)

Here we have relabeled the weather table as W1 and W2 to be able to distinguish the left and right side of the join. You can also use these kinds of aliases in other queries to save some typing, e.g.:

SELECT *
    FROM weather w, cities c
    WHERE w.city = c.name;

You will encounter this style of abbreviating quite frequently.

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Aggregate Functions

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2.7. Aggregate Functions

Like most other relational database products, PostgreSQL supports aggregate functions. An aggregate function computes a single result from multiple input rows. For example, there are aggregates to compute the count, sum, avg (average), max (maximum) and min (minimum) over a set of rows.

As an example, we can find the highest low-temperature reading anywhere with:

SELECT max(temp_lo) FROM weather;

 max
-----
  46
(1 row)

If we wanted to know what city (or cities) that reading occurred in, we might try:

SELECT city FROM weather WHERE temp_lo = max(temp_lo);     WRONG

but this will not work since the aggregate max cannot be used in the WHERE clause. (This restriction exists because the WHERE clause determines which rows will be included in the aggregate calculation; so obviously it has to be evaluated before aggregate functions are computed.) However, as is often the case the query can be restated to accomplish the desired result, here by using a subquery:

SELECT city FROM weather
    WHERE temp_lo = (SELECT max(temp_lo) FROM weather);

     city
---------------
 San Francisco
(1 row)

This is OK because the subquery is an independent computation that computes its own aggregate separately from what is happening in the outer query.

Aggregates are also very useful in combination with GROUP BY clauses. For example, we can get the maximum low temperature observed in each city with:

SELECT city, max(temp_lo)
    FROM weather
    GROUP BY city;

     city      | max
---------------+-----
 Hayward       |  37
 San Francisco |  46
(2 rows)

which gives us one output row per city. Each aggregate result is computed over the table rows matching that city. We can filter these grouped rows using HAVING:

SELECT city, max(temp_lo)
    FROM weather
    GROUP BY city
    HAVING max(temp_lo) < 40;

  city   | max
---------+-----
 Hayward |  37
(1 row)

which gives us the same results for only the cities that have all temp_lo values below 40. Finally, if we only care about cities whose names begin with "S", we might do:

SELECT city, max(temp_lo)
    FROM weather
    WHERE city LIKE 'S%'(1)
    GROUP BY city
    HAVING max(temp_lo) < 40;

(1)
The LIKE operator does pattern matching and is explained in Section 9.7.

It is important to understand the interaction between aggregates and SQL's WHERE and HAVING clauses. The fundamental difference between WHERE and HAVING is this: WHERE selects input rows before groups and aggregates are computed (thus, it controls which rows go into the aggregate computation), whereas HAVING selects group rows after groups and aggregates are computed. Thus, the WHERE clause must not contain aggregate functions; it makes no sense to try to use an aggregate to determine which rows will be inputs to the aggregates. On the other hand, the HAVING clause always contains aggregate functions. (Strictly speaking, you are allowed to write a HAVING clause that doesn't use aggregates, but it's seldom useful. The same condition could be used more efficiently at the WHERE stage.)

In the previous example, we can apply the city name restriction in WHERE, since it needs no aggregate. This is more efficient than adding the restriction to HAVING, because we avoid doing the grouping and aggregate calculations for all rows that fail the WHERE check.

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Updates

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2.8. Updates

You can update existing rows using the UPDATE command. Suppose you discover the temperature readings are all off by 2 degrees after November 28. You can correct the data as follows:

UPDATE weather
    SET temp_hi = temp_hi - 2,  temp_lo = temp_lo - 2
    WHERE date > '1994-11-28';

Look at the new state of the data:

SELECT * FROM weather;

     city      | temp_lo | temp_hi | prcp |    date
---------------+---------+---------+------+------------
 San Francisco |      46 |      50 | 0.25 | 1994-11-27
 San Francisco |      41 |      55 |    0 | 1994-11-29
 Hayward       |      35 |      52 |      | 1994-11-29
(3 rows)

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Deletions

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2.9. Deletions

Rows can be removed from a table using the DELETE command. Suppose you are no longer interested in the weather of Hayward. Then you can do the following to delete those rows from the table:

DELETE FROM weather WHERE city = 'Hayward';

All weather records belonging to Hayward are removed.

SELECT * FROM weather;

     city      | temp_lo | temp_hi | prcp |    date
---------------+---------+---------+------+------------
 San Francisco |      46 |      50 | 0.25 | 1994-11-27
 San Francisco |      41 |      55 |    0 | 1994-11-29
(2 rows)

One should be wary of statements of the form

DELETE FROM tablename;

Without a qualification, DELETE will remove all rows from the given table, leaving it empty. The system will not request confirmation before doing this!

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Advanced Features

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Chapter 3. Advanced Features

Table of Contents
3.1. Introduction
3.2. Views
3.3. Foreign Keys
3.4. Transactions
3.5. Window Functions
3.6. Inheritance
3.7. Conclusion
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Introduction

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3.1. Introduction

In the previous chapter we have covered the basics of using SQL to store and access your data in PostgreSQL. We will now discuss some more advanced features of SQL that simplify management and prevent loss or corruption of your data. Finally, we will look at some PostgreSQL extensions.

This chapter will on occasion refer to examples found in Chapter 2 to change or improve them, so it will be useful to have read that chapter. Some examples from this chapter can also be found in advanced.sql in the tutorial directory. This file also contains some sample data to load, which is not repeated here. (Refer to Section 2.1 for how to use the file.)

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Views

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3.2. Views

Refer back to the queries in Section 2.6. Suppose the combined listing of weather records and city location is of particular interest to your application, but you do not want to type the query each time you need it. You can create a view over the query, which gives a name to the query that you can refer to like an ordinary table:

CREATE VIEW myview AS
    SELECT city, temp_lo, temp_hi, prcp, date, location
        FROM weather, cities
        WHERE city = name;

SELECT * FROM myview;

Making liberal use of views is a key aspect of good SQL database design. Views allow you to encapsulate the details of the structure of your tables, which might change as your application evolves, behind consistent interfaces.

Views can be used in almost any place a real table can be used. Building views upon other views is not uncommon.

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Foreign Keys

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3.3. Foreign Keys

Recall the weather and cities tables from Chapter 2. Consider the following problem: You want to make sure that no one can insert rows in the weather table that do not have a matching entry in the cities table. This is called maintaining the referential integrity of your data. In simplistic database systems this would be implemented (if at all) by first looking at the cities table to check if a matching record exists, and then inserting or rejecting the new weather records. This approach has a number of problems and is very inconvenient, so PostgreSQL can do this for you.

The new declaration of the tables would look like this:

CREATE TABLE cities (
        city     varchar(80) primary key,
        location point
);

CREATE TABLE weather (
        city      varchar(80) references cities(city),
        temp_lo   int,
        temp_hi   int,
        prcp      real,
        date      date
);

Now try inserting an invalid record:

INSERT INTO weather VALUES ('Berkeley', 45, 53, 0.0, '1994-11-28');

ERROR:  insert or update on table "weather" violates foreign key constraint "weather_city_fkey"
DETAIL:  Key (city)=(Berkeley) is not present in table "cities".

The behavior of foreign keys can be finely tuned to your application. We will not go beyond this simple example in this tutorial, but just refer you to Chapter 5 for more information. Making correct use of foreign keys will definitely improve the quality of your database applications, so you are strongly encouraged to learn about them.

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Transactions

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3.4. Transactions

Transactions are a fundamental concept of all database systems. The essential point of a transaction is that it bundles multiple steps into a single, all-or-nothing operation. The intermediate states between the steps are not visible to other concurrent transactions, and if some failure occurs that prevents the transaction from completing, then none of the steps affect the database at all.

For example, consider a bank database that contains balances for various customer accounts, as well as total deposit balances for branches. Suppose that we want to record a payment of $100.00 from Alice's account to Bob's account. Simplifying outrageously, the SQL commands for this might look like:

UPDATE accounts SET balance = balance - 100.00
    WHERE name = 'Alice';
UPDATE branches SET balance = balance - 100.00
    WHERE name = (SELECT branch_name FROM accounts WHERE name = 'Alice');
UPDATE accounts SET balance = balance + 100.00
    WHERE name = 'Bob';
UPDATE branches SET balance = balance + 100.00
    WHERE name = (SELECT branch_name FROM accounts WHERE name = 'Bob');

The details of these commands are not important here; the important point is that there are several separate updates involved to accomplish this rather simple operation. Our bank's officers will want to be assured that either all these updates happen, or none of them happen. It would certainly not do for a system failure to result in Bob receiving $100.00 that was not debited from Alice. Nor would Alice long remain a happy customer if she was debited without Bob being credited. We need a guarantee that if something goes wrong partway through the operation, none of the steps executed so far will take effect. Grouping the updates into a transaction gives us this guarantee. A transaction is said to be atomic: from the point of view of other transactions, it either happens completely or not at all.

We also want a guarantee that once a transaction is completed and acknowledged by the database system, it has indeed been permanently recorded and won't be lost even if a crash ensues shortly thereafter. For example, if we are recording a cash withdrawal by Bob, we do not want any chance that the debit to his account will disappear in a crash just after he walks out the bank door. A transactional database guarantees that all the updates made by a transaction are logged in permanent storage (i.e., on disk) before the transaction is reported complete.

Another important property of transactional databases is closely related to the notion of atomic updates: when multiple transactions are running concurrently, each one should not be able to see the incomplete changes made by others. For example, if one transaction is busy totalling all the branch balances, it would not do for it to include the debit from Alice's branch but not the credit to Bob's branch, nor vice versa. So transactions must be all-or-nothing not only in terms of their permanent effect on the database, but also in terms of their visibility as they happen. The updates made so far by an open transaction are invisible to other transactions until the transaction completes, whereupon all the updates become visible simultaneously.

In PostgreSQL, a transaction is set up by surrounding the SQL commands of the transaction with BEGIN and COMMIT commands. So our banking transaction would actually look like:

BEGIN;
UPDATE accounts SET balance = balance - 100.00
    WHERE name = 'Alice';
-- etc etc
COMMIT;

If, partway through the transaction, we decide we do not want to commit (perhaps we just noticed that Alice's balance went negative), we can issue the command ROLLBACK instead of COMMIT, and all our updates so far will be canceled.

PostgreSQL actually treats every SQL statement as being executed within a transaction. If you do not issue a BEGIN command, then each individual statement has an implicit BEGIN and (if successful) COMMIT wrapped around it. A group of statements surrounded by BEGIN and COMMIT is sometimes called a transaction block.

Note: Some client libraries issue BEGIN and COMMIT commands automatically, so that you might get the effect of transaction blocks without asking. Check the documentation for the interface you are using.

It's possible to control the statements in a transaction in a more granular fashion through the use of savepoints. Savepoints allow you to selectively discard parts of the transaction, while committing the rest. After defining a savepoint with SAVEPOINT, you can if needed roll back to the savepoint with ROLLBACK TO. All the transaction's database changes between defining the savepoint and rolling back to it are discarded, but changes earlier than the savepoint are kept.

After rolling back to a savepoint, it continues to be defined, so you can roll back to it several times. Conversely, if you are sure you won't need to roll back to a particular savepoint again, it can be released, so the system can free some resources. Keep in mind that either releasing or rolling back to a savepoint will automatically release all savepoints that were defined after it.

All this is happening within the transaction block, so none of it is visible to other database sessions. When and if you commit the transaction block, the committed actions become visible as a unit to other sessions, while the rolled-back actions never become visible at all.

Remembering the bank database, suppose we debit $100.00 from Alice's account, and credit Bob's account, only to find later that we should have credited Wally's account. We could do it using savepoints like this:

BEGIN;
UPDATE accounts SET balance = balance - 100.00
    WHERE name = 'Alice';
SAVEPOINT my_savepoint;
UPDATE accounts SET balance = balance + 100.00
    WHERE name = 'Bob';
-- oops ... forget that and use Wally's account
ROLLBACK TO my_savepoint;
UPDATE accounts SET balance = balance + 100.00
    WHERE name = 'Wally';
COMMIT;

This example is, of course, oversimplified, but there's a lot of control possible in a transaction block through the use of savepoints. Moreover, ROLLBACK TO is the only way to regain control of a transaction block that was put in aborted state by the system due to an error, short of rolling it back completely and starting again.

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Window Functions

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3.5. Window Functions

A window function performs a calculation across a set of table rows that are somehow related to the current row. This is comparable to the type of calculation that can be done with an aggregate function. But unlike regular aggregate functions, use of a window function does not cause rows to become grouped into a single output row — the rows retain their separate identities. Behind the scenes, the window function is able to access more than just the current row of the query result.

Here is an example that shows how to compare each employee's salary with the average salary in his or her department:

SELECT depname, empno, salary, avg(salary) OVER (PARTITION BY depname) FROM empsalary;

  depname  | empno | salary |          avg
-----------+-------+--------+-----------------------
 develop   |    11 |   5200 | 5020.0000000000000000
 develop   |     7 |   4200 | 5020.0000000000000000
 develop   |     9 |   4500 | 5020.0000000000000000
 develop   |     8 |   6000 | 5020.0000000000000000
 develop   |    10 |   5200 | 5020.0000000000000000
 personnel |     5 |   3500 | 3700.0000000000000000
 personnel |     2 |   3900 | 3700.0000000000000000
 sales     |     3 |   4800 | 4866.6666666666666667
 sales     |     1 |   5000 | 4866.6666666666666667
 sales     |     4 |   4800 | 4866.6666666666666667
(10 rows)

The first three output columns come directly from the table empsalary, and there is one output row for each row in the table. The fourth column represents an average taken across all the table rows that have the same depname value as the current row. (This actually is the same function as the regular avg aggregate function, but the OVER clause causes it to be treated as a window function and computed across an appropriate set of rows.)

A window function call always contains an OVER clause directly following the window function's name and argument(s). This is what syntactically distinguishes it from a regular function or aggregate function. The OVER clause determines exactly how the rows of the query are split up for processing by the window function. The PARTITION BY list within OVER specifies dividing the rows into groups, or partitions, that share the same values of the PARTITION BY expression(s). For each row, the window function is computed across the rows that fall into the same partition as the current row.

You can also control the order in which rows are processed by window functions using ORDER BY within OVER. (The window ORDER BY does not even have to match the order in which the rows are output.) Here is an example:

SELECT depname, empno, salary, rank() OVER (PARTITION BY depname ORDER BY salary DESC) FROM empsalary;

  depname  | empno | salary | rank
-----------+-------+--------+------
 develop   |     8 |   6000 |    1
 develop   |    10 |   5200 |    2
 develop   |    11 |   5200 |    2
 develop   |     9 |   4500 |    4
 develop   |     7 |   4200 |    5
 personnel |     2 |   3900 |    1
 personnel |     5 |   3500 |    2
 sales     |     1 |   5000 |    1
 sales     |     4 |   4800 |    2
 sales     |     3 |   4800 |    2
(10 rows)

As shown here, the rank function produces a numerical rank within the current row's partition for each distinct ORDER BY value, in the order defined by the ORDER BY clause. rank needs no explicit parameter, because its behavior is entirely determined by the OVER clause.

The rows considered by a window function are those of the "virtual table" produced by the query's FROM clause as filtered by its WHERE, GROUP BY, and HAVING clauses if any. For example, a row removed because it does not meet the WHERE condition is not seen by any window function. A query can contain multiple window functions that slice up the data in different ways by means of different OVER clauses, but they all act on the same collection of rows defined by this virtual table.

We already saw that ORDER BY can be omitted if the ordering of rows is not important. It is also possible to omit PARTITION BY, in which case there is just one partition containing all the rows.

There is another important concept associated with window functions: for each row, there is a set of rows within its partition called its window frame. Many (but not all) window functions act only on the rows of the window frame, rather than of the whole partition. By default, if ORDER BY is supplied then the frame consists of all rows from the start of the partition up through the current row, plus any following rows that are equal to the current row according to the ORDER BY clause. When ORDER BY is omitted the default frame consists of all rows in the partition. [1] Here is an example using sum:

SELECT salary, sum(salary) OVER () FROM empsalary;
 salary |  sum
--------+-------
   5200 | 47100
   5000 | 47100
   3500 | 47100
   4800 | 47100
   3900 | 47100
   4200 | 47100
   4500 | 47100
   4800 | 47100
   6000 | 47100
   5200 | 47100
(10 rows)

Above, since there is no ORDER BY in the OVER clause, the window frame is the same as the partition, which for lack of PARTITION BY is the whole table; in other words each sum is taken over the whole table and so we get the same result for each output row. But if we add an ORDER BY clause, we get very different results:

SELECT salary, sum(salary) OVER (ORDER BY salary) FROM empsalary;
 salary |  sum
--------+-------
   3500 |  3500
   3900 |  7400
   4200 | 11600
   4500 | 16100
   4800 | 25700
   4800 | 25700
   5000 | 30700
   5200 | 41100
   5200 | 41100
   6000 | 47100
(10 rows)

Here the sum is taken from the first (lowest) salary up through the current one, including any duplicates of the current one (notice the results for the duplicated salaries).

Window functions are permitted only in the SELECT list and the ORDER BY clause of the query. They are forbidden elsewhere, such as in GROUP BY, HAVING and WHERE clauses. This is because they logically execute after the processing of those clauses. Also, window functions execute after regular aggregate functions. This means it is valid to include an aggregate function call in the arguments of a window function, but not vice versa.

If there is a need to filter or group rows after the window calculations are performed, you can use a sub-select. For example:

SELECT depname, empno, salary, enroll_date
FROM
  (SELECT depname, empno, salary, enroll_date,
          rank() OVER (PARTITION BY depname ORDER BY salary DESC, empno) AS pos
     FROM empsalary
  ) AS ss
WHERE pos < 3;

The above query only shows the rows from the inner query having rank less than 3.

When a query involves multiple window functions, it is possible to write out each one with a separate OVER clause, but this is duplicative and error-prone if the same windowing behavior is wanted for several functions. Instead, each windowing behavior can be named in a WINDOW clause and then referenced in OVER. For example:

SELECT sum(salary) OVER w, avg(salary) OVER w
  FROM empsalary
  WINDOW w AS (PARTITION BY depname ORDER BY salary DESC);

More details about window functions can be found in Section 4.2.8, Section 9.19, Section 7.2.4, and the SELECT reference page.

Notes

[1]

There are options to define the window frame in other ways, but this tutorial does not cover them. See Section 4.2.8 for details.

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Inheritance

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3.6. Inheritance

Inheritance is a concept from object-oriented databases. It opens up interesting new possibilities of database design.

Let's create two tables: A table cities and a table capitals. Naturally, capitals are also cities, so you want some way to show the capitals implicitly when you list all cities. If you're really clever you might invent some scheme like this:

CREATE TABLE capitals (
  name       text,
  population real,
  altitude   int,    -- (in ft)
  state      char(2)
);

CREATE TABLE non_capitals (
  name       text,
  population real,
  altitude   int     -- (in ft)
);

CREATE VIEW cities AS
  SELECT name, population, altitude FROM capitals
    UNION
  SELECT name, population, altitude FROM non_capitals;

This works OK as far as querying goes, but it gets ugly when you need to update several rows, for one thing.

A better solution is this:

CREATE TABLE cities (
  name       text,
  population real,
  altitude   int     -- (in ft)
);

CREATE TABLE capitals (
  state      char(2)
) INHERITS (cities);

In this case, a row of capitals inherits all columns (name, population, and altitude) from its parent, cities. The type of the column name is text, a native PostgreSQL type for variable length character strings. State capitals have an extra column, state, that shows their state. In PostgreSQL, a table can inherit from zero or more other tables.

For example, the following query finds the names of all cities, including state capitals, that are located at an altitude over 500 feet:

SELECT name, altitude
  FROM cities
  WHERE altitude > 500;

which returns:

   name    | altitude
-----------+----------
 Las Vegas |     2174
 Mariposa  |     1953
 Madison   |      845
(3 rows)

On the other hand, the following query finds all the cities that are not state capitals and are situated at an altitude of 500 feet or higher:

SELECT name, altitude
    FROM ONLY cities
    WHERE altitude > 500;

   name    | altitude
-----------+----------
 Las Vegas |     2174
 Mariposa  |     1953
(2 rows)

Here the ONLY before cities indicates that the query should be run over only the cities table, and not tables below cities in the inheritance hierarchy. Many of the commands that we have already discussed — SELECT, UPDATE, and DELETE — support this ONLY notation.

Note: Although inheritance is frequently useful, it has not been integrated with unique constraints or foreign keys, which limits its usefulness. See Section 5.8 for more detail.

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Conclusion

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3.7. Conclusion

PostgreSQL has many features not touched upon in this tutorial introduction, which has been oriented toward newer users of SQL. These features are discussed in more detail in the remainder of this book.

If you feel you need more introductory material, please visit the PostgreSQL web site for links to more resources.

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The SQL Language

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II. The SQL Language

This part describes the use of the SQL language in PostgreSQL. We start with describing the general syntax of SQL, then explain how to create the structures to hold data, how to populate the database, and how to query it. The middle part lists the available data types and functions for use in SQL commands. The rest treats several aspects that are important for tuning a database for optimal performance.

The information in this part is arranged so that a novice user can follow it start to end to gain a full understanding of the topics without having to refer forward too many times. The chapters are intended to be self-contained, so that advanced users can read the chapters individually as they choose. The information in this part is presented in a narrative fashion in topical units. Readers looking for a complete description of a particular command should see Part VI.

Readers of this part should know how to connect to a PostgreSQL database and issue SQL commands. Readers that are unfamiliar with these issues are encouraged to read Part I first. SQL commands are typically entered using the PostgreSQL interactive terminal psql, but other programs that have similar functionality can be used as well.

Table of Contents
4. SQL Syntax
4.1. Lexical Structure
4.2. Value Expressions
4.3. Calling Functions
5. Data Definition
5.1. Table Basics
5.2. Default Values
5.3. Constraints
5.4. System Columns
5.5. Modifying Tables
5.6. Privileges
5.7. Schemas
5.8. Inheritance
5.9. Partitioning
5.10. Foreign Data
5.11. Other Database Objects
5.12. Dependency Tracking
6. Data Manipulation
6.1. Inserting Data
6.2. Updating Data
6.3. Deleting Data
7. Queries
7.1. Overview
7.2. Table Expressions
7.3. Select Lists
7.4. Combining Queries
7.5. Sorting Rows
7.6. LIMIT and OFFSET
7.7. VALUES Lists
7.8. WITH Queries (Common Table Expressions)
8. Data Types
8.1. Numeric Types
8.2. Monetary Types
8.3. Character Types
8.4. Binary Data Types
8.5. Date/Time Types
8.6. Boolean Type
8.7. Enumerated Types
8.8. Geometric Types
8.9. Network Address Types
8.10. Bit String Types
8.11. Text Search Types
8.12. UUID Type
8.13. XML Type
8.14. Arrays
8.15. Composite Types
8.16. Object Identifier Types
8.17. Pseudo-Types
9. Functions and Operators
9.1. Logical Operators
9.2. Comparison Operators
9.3. Mathematical Functions and Operators
9.4. String Functions and Operators
9.5. Binary String Functions and Operators
9.6. Bit String Functions and Operators
9.7. Pattern Matching
9.8. Data Type Formatting Functions
9.9. Date/Time Functions and Operators
9.10. Enum Support Functions
9.11. Geometric Functions and Operators
9.12. Network Address Functions and Operators
9.13. Text Search Functions and Operators
9.14. XML Functions
9.15. Sequence Manipulation Functions
9.16. Conditional Expressions
9.17. Array Functions and Operators
9.18. Aggregate Functions
9.19. Window Functions
9.20. Subquery Expressions
9.21. Row and Array Comparisons
9.22. Set Returning Functions
9.23. System Information Functions
9.24. System Administration Functions
9.25. Trigger Functions
10. Type Conversion
10.1. Overview
10.2. Operators
10.3. Functions
10.4. Value Storage
10.5. UNION, CASE, and Related Constructs
11. Indexes
11.1. Introduction
11.2. Index Types
11.3. Multicolumn Indexes
11.4. Indexes and ORDER BY
11.5. Combining Multiple Indexes
11.6. Unique Indexes
11.7. Indexes on Expressions
11.8. Partial Indexes
11.9. Operator Classes and Operator Families
11.10. Indexes and Collations
11.11. Examining Index Usage
12. Full Text Search
12.1. Introduction
12.2. Tables and Indexes
12.3. Controlling Text Search
12.4. Additional Features
12.5. Parsers
12.6. Dictionaries
12.7. Configuration Example
12.8. Testing and Debugging Text Search
12.9. GiST and GIN Index Types
12.10. psql Support
12.11. Limitations
12.12. Migration from Pre-8.3 Text Search
13. Concurrency Control
13.1. Introduction
13.2. Transaction Isolation
13.3. Explicit Locking
13.4. Data Consistency Checks at the Application Level
13.5. Caveats
13.6. Locking and Indexes
14. Performance Tips
14.1. Using EXPLAIN
14.2. Statistics Used by the Planner
14.3. Controlling the Planner with Explicit JOIN Clauses
14.4. Populating a Database
14.5. Non-Durable Settings
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SQL Syntax

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Chapter 4. SQL Syntax

Table of Contents
4.1. Lexical Structure
4.1.1. Identifiers and Key Words
4.1.2. Constants
4.1.3. Operators
4.1.4. Special Characters
4.1.5. Comments
4.1.6. Operator Precedence
4.2. Value Expressions
4.2.1. Column References
4.2.2. Positional Parameters
4.2.3. Subscripts
4.2.4. Field Selection
4.2.5. Operator Invocations
4.2.6. Function Calls
4.2.7. Aggregate Expressions
4.2.8. Window Function Calls
4.2.9. Type Casts
4.2.10. Collation Expressions
4.2.11. Scalar Subqueries
4.2.12. Array Constructors
4.2.13. Row Constructors
4.2.14. Expression Evaluation Rules
4.3. Calling Functions
4.3.1. Using Positional Notation
4.3.2. Using Named Notation
4.3.3. Using Mixed Notation

This chapter describes the syntax of SQL. It forms the foundation for understanding the following chapters which will go into detail about how SQL commands are applied to define and modify data.

We also advise users who are already familiar with SQL to read this chapter carefully because it contains several rules and concepts that are implemented inconsistently among SQL databases or that are specific to PostgreSQL.

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Lexical Structure

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4.1. Lexical Structure

SQL input consists of a sequence of commands. A command is composed of a sequence of tokens, terminated by a semicolon (";"). The end of the input stream also terminates a command. Which tokens are valid depends on the syntax of the particular command.

A token can be a key word, an identifier, a quoted identifier, a literal (or constant), or a special character symbol. Tokens are normally separated by whitespace (space, tab, newline), but need not be if there is no ambiguity (which is generally only the case if a special character is adjacent to some other token type).

For example, the following is (syntactically) valid SQL input:

SELECT * FROM MY_TABLE;
UPDATE MY_TABLE SET A = 5;
INSERT INTO MY_TABLE VALUES (3, 'hi there');

This is a sequence of three commands, one per line (although this is not required; more than one command can be on a line, and commands can usefully be split across lines).

Additionally, comments can occur in SQL input. They are not tokens, they are effectively equivalent to whitespace.

The SQL syntax is not very consistent regarding what tokens identify commands and which are operands or parameters. The first few tokens are generally the command name, so in the above example we would usually speak of a "SELECT", an "UPDATE", and an "INSERT" command. But for instance the UPDATE command always requires a SET token to appear in a certain position, and this particular variation of INSERT also requires a VALUES in order to be complete. The precise syntax rules for each command are described in Part VI.

4.1.1. Identifiers and Key Words

Tokens such as SELECT, UPDATE, or VALUES in the example above are examples of key words, that is, words that have a fixed meaning in the SQL language. The tokens MY_TABLE and A are examples of identifiers. They identify names of tables, columns, or other database objects, depending on the command they are used in. Therefore they are sometimes simply called "names". Key words and identifiers have the same lexical structure, meaning that one cannot know whether a token is an identifier or a key word without knowing the language. A complete list of key words can be found in Appendix C.

SQL identifiers and key words must begin with a letter (a-z, but also letters with diacritical marks and non-Latin letters) or an underscore (_). Subsequent characters in an identifier or key word can be letters, underscores, digits (0-9), or dollar signs ($). Note that dollar signs are not allowed in identifiers according to the letter of the SQL standard, so their use might render applications less portable. The SQL standard will not define a key word that contains digits or starts or ends with an underscore, so identifiers of this form are safe against possible conflict with future extensions of the standard.

The system uses no more than NAMEDATALEN-1 bytes of an identifier; longer names can be written in commands, but they will be truncated. By default, NAMEDATALEN is 64 so the maximum identifier length is 63 bytes. If this limit is problematic, it can be raised by changing the NAMEDATALEN constant in src/include/pg_config_manual.h.

Key words and unquoted identifiers are case insensitive. Therefore:

UPDATE MY_TABLE SET A = 5;

can equivalently be written as:

uPDaTE my_TabLE SeT a = 5;

A convention often used is to write key words in upper case and names in lower case, e.g.:

UPDATE my_table SET a = 5;

There is a second kind of identifier: the delimited identifier or quoted identifier. It is formed by enclosing an arbitrary sequence of characters in double-quotes ("). A delimited identifier is always an identifier, never a key word. So "select" could be used to refer to a column or table named "select", whereas an unquoted select would be taken as a key word and would therefore provoke a parse error when used where a table or column name is expected. The example can be written with quoted identifiers like this:

UPDATE "my_table" SET "a" = 5;

Quoted identifiers can contain any character, except the character with code zero. (To include a double quote, write two double quotes.) This allows constructing table or column names that would otherwise not be possible, such as ones containing spaces or ampersands. The length limitation still applies.

A variant of quoted identifiers allows including escaped Unicode characters identified by their code points. This variant starts with U& (upper or lower case U followed by ampersand) immediately before the opening double quote, without any spaces in between, for example U&"foo". (Note that this creates an ambiguity with the operator &. Use spaces around the operator to avoid this problem.) Inside the quotes, Unicode characters can be specified in escaped form by writing a backslash followed by the four-digit hexadecimal code point number or alternatively a backslash followed by a plus sign followed by a six-digit hexadecimal code point number. For example, the identifier "data" could be written as

U&"d\0061t\+000061"

The following less trivial example writes the Russian word "slon" (elephant) in Cyrillic letters:

U&"\0441\043B\043E\043D"

If a different escape character than backslash is desired, it can be specified using the UESCAPE clause after the string, for example:

U&"d!0061t!+000061" UESCAPE '!'

The escape character can be any single character other than a hexadecimal digit, the plus sign, a single quote, a double quote, or a whitespace character. Note that the escape character is written in single quotes, not double quotes.

To include the escape character in the identifier literally, write it twice.

The Unicode escape syntax works only when the server encoding is UTF8. When other server encodings are used, only code points in the ASCII range (up to \007F) can be specified. Both the 4-digit and the 6-digit form can be used to specify UTF-16 surrogate pairs to compose characters with code points larger than U+FFFF, although the availability of the 6-digit form technically makes this unnecessary. (Surrogate pairs are not stored directly, but combined into a single code point that is then encoded in UTF-8.)

Quoting an identifier also makes it case-sensitive, whereas unquoted names are always folded to lower case. For example, the identifiers FOO, foo, and "foo" are considered the same by PostgreSQL, but "Foo" and "FOO" are different from these three and each other. (The folding of unquoted names to lower case in PostgreSQL is incompatible with the SQL standard, which says that unquoted names should be folded to upper case. Thus, foo should be equivalent to "FOO" not "foo" according to the standard. If you want to write portable applications you are advised to always quote a particular name or never quote it.)

4.1.2. Constants

There are three kinds of implicitly-typed constants in PostgreSQL: strings, bit strings, and numbers. Constants can also be specified with explicit types, which can enable more accurate representation and more efficient handling by the system. These alternatives are discussed in the following subsections.

4.1.2.1. String Constants

A string constant in SQL is an arbitrary sequence of characters bounded by single quotes ('), for example 'This is a string'. To include a single-quote character within a string constant, write two adjacent single quotes, e.g., 'Dianne''s horse'. Note that this is not the same as a double-quote character (").

Two string constants that are only separated by whitespace with at least one newline are concatenated and effectively treated as if the string had been written as one constant. For example:

SELECT 'foo'
'bar';

is equivalent to:

SELECT 'foobar';

but:

SELECT 'foo'      'bar';

is not valid syntax. (This slightly bizarre behavior is specified by SQL; PostgreSQL is following the standard.)

4.1.2.2. String Constants with C-style Escapes

PostgreSQL also accepts "escape" string constants, which are an extension to the SQL standard. An escape string constant is specified by writing the letter E (upper or lower case) just before the opening single quote, e.g., E'foo'. (When continuing an escape string constant across lines, write E only before the first opening quote.) Within an escape string, a backslash character (\) begins a C-like backslash escape sequence, in which the combination of backslash and following character(s) represent a special byte value, as shown in Table 4-1.

Table 4-1. Backslash Escape Sequences

Backslash Escape Sequence | Interpretation
\b | backspace
\f | form feed
\n | newline
\r | carriage return
\t | tab
\o, \oo, \ooo (o = 0 - 7) | octal byte value
\xh, \xhh (h = 0 - 9, A - F) | hexadecimal byte value
\uxxxx, \Uxxxxxxxx (x = 0 - 9, A - F) | 16 or 32-bit hexadecimal Unicode character value

Any other character following a backslash is taken literally. Thus, to include a backslash character, write two backslashes (\\). Also, a single quote can be included in an escape string by writing \', in addition to the normal way of ''.

It is your responsibility that the byte sequences you create, especially when using the octal or hexadecimal escapes, compose valid characters in the server character set encoding. When the server encoding is UTF-8, then the Unicode escapes or the alternative Unicode escape syntax, explained in Section 4.1.2.3, should be used instead. (The alternative would be doing the UTF-8 encoding by hand and writing out the bytes, which would be very cumbersome.)

The Unicode escape syntax works fully only when the server encoding is UTF8. When other server encodings are used, only code points in the ASCII range (up to \u007F) can be specified. Both the 4-digit and the 8-digit form can be used to specify UTF-16 surrogate pairs to compose characters with code points larger than U+FFFF, although the availability of the 8-digit form technically makes this unnecessary. (When surrogate pairs are used when the server encoding is UTF8, they are first combined into a single code point that is then encoded in UTF-8.)

Caution

If the configuration parameter standard_conforming_strings is off, then PostgreSQL recognizes backslash escapes in both regular and escape string constants. However, as of PostgreSQL 9.1, the default is on, meaning that backslash escapes are recognized only in escape string constants. This behavior is more standards-compliant, but might break applications which rely on the historical behavior, where backslash escapes were always recognized. As a workaround, you can set this parameter to off, but it is better to migrate away from using backslash escapes. If you need to use a backslash escape to represent a special character, write the string constant with an E.

In addition to standard_conforming_strings, the configuration parameters escape_string_warning and backslash_quote govern treatment of backslashes in string constants.

The character with the code zero cannot be in a string constant.

4.1.2.3. String Constants with Unicode Escapes

PostgreSQL also supports another type of escape syntax for strings that allows specifying arbitrary Unicode characters by code point. A Unicode escape string constant starts with U& (upper or lower case letter U followed by ampersand) immediately before the opening quote, without any spaces in between, for example U&'foo'. (Note that this creates an ambiguity with the operator &. Use spaces around the operator to avoid this problem.) Inside the quotes, Unicode characters can be specified in escaped form by writing a backslash followed by the four-digit hexadecimal code point number or alternatively a backslash followed by a plus sign followed by a six-digit hexadecimal code point number. For example, the string 'data' could be written as

U&'d\0061t\+000061'

The following less trivial example writes the Russian word "slon" (elephant) in Cyrillic letters:

U&'\0441\043B\043E\043D'

If a different escape character than backslash is desired, it can be specified using the UESCAPE clause after the string, for example:

U&'d!0061t!+000061' UESCAPE '!'

The escape character can be any single character other than a hexadecimal digit, the plus sign, a single quote, a double quote, or a whitespace character.

The Unicode escape syntax works only when the server encoding is UTF8. When other server encodings are used, only code points in the ASCII range (up to \007F) can be specified. Both the 4-digit and the 6-digit form can be used to specify UTF-16 surrogate pairs to compose characters with code points larger than U+FFFF, although the availability of the 6-digit form technically makes this unnecessary. (When surrogate pairs are used when the server encoding is UTF8, they are first combined into a single code point that is then encoded in UTF-8.)

Also, the Unicode escape syntax for string constants only works when the configuration parameter standard_conforming_strings is turned on. This is because otherwise this syntax could confuse clients that parse the SQL statements to the point that it could lead to SQL injections and similar security issues. If the parameter is set to off, this syntax will be rejected with an error message.

To include the escape character in the string literally, write it twice.

4.1.2.4. Dollar-quoted String Constants

While the standard syntax for specifying string constants is usually convenient, it can be difficult to understand when the desired string contains many single quotes or backslashes, since each of those must be doubled. To allow more readable queries in such situations, PostgreSQL provides another way, called "dollar quoting", to write string constants. A dollar-quoted string constant consists of a dollar sign ($), an optional "tag" of zero or more characters, another dollar sign, an arbitrary sequence of characters that makes up the string content, a dollar sign, the same tag that began this dollar quote, and a dollar sign. For example, here are two different ways to specify the string "Dianne's horse" using dollar quoting:

$$Dianne's horse$$
$SomeTag$Dianne's horse$SomeTag$

Notice that inside the dollar-quoted string, single quotes can be used without needing to be escaped. Indeed, no characters inside a dollar-quoted string are ever escaped: the string content is always written literally. Backslashes are not special, and neither are dollar signs, unless they are part of a sequence matching the opening tag.

It is possible to nest dollar-quoted string constants by choosing different tags at each nesting level. This is most commonly used in writing function definitions. For example:

$function$
BEGIN
    RETURN ($1 ~ $q$[\t\r\n\v\\]$q$);
END;
$function$

Here, the sequence $q$[\t\r\n\v\\]$q$ represents a dollar-quoted literal string [\t\r\n\v\\], which will be recognized when the function body is executed by PostgreSQL. But since the sequence does not match the outer dollar quoting delimiter $function$, it is just some more characters within the constant so far as the outer string is concerned.

The tag, if any, of a dollar-quoted string follows the same rules as an unquoted identifier, except that it cannot contain a dollar sign. Tags are case sensitive, so $tag$String content$tag$ is correct, but $TAG$String content$tag$ is not.

A dollar-quoted string that follows a keyword or identifier must be separated from it by whitespace; otherwise the dollar quoting delimiter would be taken as part of the preceding identifier.

Dollar quoting is not part of the SQL standard, but it is often a more convenient way to write complicated string literals than the standard-compliant single quote syntax. It is particularly useful when representing string constants inside other constants, as is often needed in procedural function definitions. With single-quote syntax, each backslash in the above example would have to be written as four backslashes, which would be reduced to two backslashes in parsing the original string constant, and then to one when the inner string constant is re-parsed during function execution.

4.1.2.5. Bit-string Constants

Bit-string constants look like regular string constants with a B (upper or lower case) immediately before the opening quote (no intervening whitespace), e.g., B'1001'. The only characters allowed within bit-string constants are 0 and 1.

Alternatively, bit-string constants can be specified in hexadecimal notation, using a leading X (upper or lower case), e.g., X'1FF'. This notation is equivalent to a bit-string constant with four binary digits for each hexadecimal digit.

Both forms of bit-string constant can be continued across lines in the same way as regular string constants. Dollar quoting cannot be used in a bit-string constant.

4.1.2.6. Numeric Constants

Numeric constants are accepted in these general forms:

digits
digits.[digits][e[+-]digits]
[digits].digits[e[+-]digits]
digitse[+-]digits

where digits is one or more decimal digits (0 through 9). At least one digit must be before or after the decimal point, if one is used. At least one digit must follow the exponent marker (e), if one is present. There cannot be any spaces or other characters embedded in the constant. Note that any leading plus or minus sign is not actually considered part of the constant; it is an operator applied to the constant.

These are some examples of valid numeric constants:

42
3.5
4.
.001
5e2
1.925e-3

A numeric constant that contains neither a decimal point nor an exponent is initially presumed to be type integer if its value fits in type integer (32 bits); otherwise it is presumed to be type bigint if its value fits in type bigint (64 bits); otherwise it is taken to be type numeric. Constants that contain decimal points and/or exponents are always initially presumed to be type numeric.

The initially assigned data type of a numeric constant is just a starting point for the type resolution algorithms. In most cases the constant will be automatically coerced to the most appropriate type depending on context. When necessary, you can force a numeric value to be interpreted as a specific data type by casting it. For example, you can force a numeric value to be treated as type real (float4) by writing:

REAL '1.23'  -- string style
1.23::REAL   -- PostgreSQL (historical) style

These are actually just special cases of the general casting notations discussed next.

4.1.2.7. Constants of Other Types

A constant of an arbitrary type can be entered using any one of the following notations:

type 'string'
'string'::type
CAST ( 'string' AS type )

The string constant's text is passed to the input conversion routine for the type called type. The result is a constant of the indicated type. The explicit type cast can be omitted if there is no ambiguity as to the type the constant must be (for example, when it is assigned directly to a table column), in which case it is automatically coerced.

The string constant can be written using either regular SQL notation or dollar-quoting.

It is also possible to specify a type coercion using a function-like syntax:

typename ( 'string' )

but not all type names can be used in this way; see Section 4.2.9 for details.

The ::, CAST(), and function-call syntaxes can also be used to specify run-time type conversions of arbitrary expressions, as discussed in Section 4.2.9. To avoid syntactic ambiguity, the type 'string' syntax can only be used to specify the type of a simple literal constant. Another restriction on the type 'string' syntax is that it does not work for array types; use :: or CAST() to specify the type of an array constant.

The CAST() syntax conforms to SQL. The type 'string' syntax is a generalization of the standard: SQL specifies this syntax only for a few data types, but PostgreSQL allows it for all types. The syntax with :: is historical PostgreSQL usage, as is the function-call syntax.

4.1.3. Operators

An operator name is a sequence of up to NAMEDATALEN-1 (63 by default) characters from the following list:

+ - * / < > = ~ ! @ # % ^ & | ` ?

There are a few restrictions on operator names, however:

  • -- and /* cannot appear anywhere in an operator name, since they will be taken as the start of a comment.

  • A multiple-character operator name cannot end in + or -, unless the name also contains at least one of these characters:

    ~ ! @ # % ^ & | ` ?

    For example, @- is an allowed operator name, but *- is not. This restriction allows PostgreSQL to parse SQL-compliant queries without requiring spaces between tokens.

When working with non-SQL-standard operator names, you will usually need to separate adjacent operators with spaces to avoid ambiguity. For example, if you have defined a left unary operator named @, you cannot write X*@Y; you must write X* @Y to ensure that PostgreSQL reads it as two operator names not one.

4.1.4. Special Characters

Some characters that are not alphanumeric have a special meaning that is different from being an operator. Details on the usage can be found at the location where the respective syntax element is described. This section only exists to advise the existence and summarize the purposes of these characters.

  • A dollar sign ($) followed by digits is used to represent a positional parameter in the body of a function definition or a prepared statement. In other contexts the dollar sign can be part of an identifier or a dollar-quoted string constant.

  • Parentheses (()) have their usual meaning to group expressions and enforce precedence. In some cases parentheses are required as part of the fixed syntax of a particular SQL command.

  • Brackets ([]) are used to select the elements of an array. See Section 8.14 for more information on arrays.

  • Commas (,) are used in some syntactical constructs to separate the elements of a list.

  • The semicolon (;) terminates an SQL command. It cannot appear anywhere within a command, except within a string constant or quoted identifier.

  • The colon (:) is used to select "slices" from arrays. (See Section 8.14.) In certain SQL dialects (such as Embedded SQL), the colon is used to prefix variable names.

  • The asterisk (*) is used in some contexts to denote all the fields of a table row or composite value. It also has a special meaning when used as the argument of an aggregate function, namely that the aggregate does not require any explicit parameter.

  • The period (.) is used in numeric constants, and to separate schema, table, and column names.

4.1.5. Comments

A comment is a sequence of characters beginning with double dashes and extending to the end of the line, e.g.:

-- This is a standard SQL comment

Alternatively, C-style block comments can be used:

/* multiline comment
 * with nesting: /* nested block comment */
 */

where the comment begins with /* and extends to the matching occurrence of */. These block comments nest, as specified in the SQL standard but unlike C, so that one can comment out larger blocks of code that might contain existing block comments.

A comment is removed from the input stream before further syntax analysis and is effectively replaced by whitespace.

4.1.6. Operator Precedence

Table 4-2 shows the precedence and associativity of the operators in PostgreSQL. Most operators have the same precedence and are left-associative. The precedence and associativity of the operators is hard-wired into the parser. This can lead to non-intuitive behavior; for example the Boolean operators < and > have a different precedence than the Boolean operators <= and >=. Also, you will sometimes need to add parentheses when using combinations of binary and unary operators. For instance:

SELECT 5 ! - 6;

will be parsed as:

SELECT 5 ! (- 6);

because the parser has no idea — until it is too late — that ! is defined as a postfix operator, not an infix one. To get the desired behavior in this case, you must write:

SELECT (5 !) - 6;

This is the price one pays for extensibility.

Table 4-2. Operator Precedence (decreasing)

Operator/Element | Associativity | Description
. | left | table/column name separator
:: | left | PostgreSQL-style typecast
[ ] | left | array element selection
+ - | right | unary plus, unary minus
^ | left | exponentiation
* / % | left | multiplication, division, modulo
+ - | left | addition, subtraction
IS |  | IS TRUE, IS FALSE, IS NULL, etc
ISNULL |  | test for null
NOTNULL |  | test for not null
(any other) | left | all other native and user-defined operators
IN |  | set membership
BETWEEN |  | range containment
OVERLAPS |  | time interval overlap
LIKE ILIKE SIMILAR |  | string pattern matching
< > |  | less than, greater than
= | right | equality, assignment
NOT | right | logical negation
AND | left | logical conjunction
OR | left | logical disjunction

Note that the operator precedence rules also apply to user-defined operators that have the same names as the built-in operators mentioned above. For example, if you define a "+" operator for some custom data type it will have the same precedence as the built-in "+" operator, no matter what yours does.

When a schema-qualified operator name is used in the OPERATOR syntax, as for example in:

SELECT 3 OPERATOR(pg_catalog.+) 4;

the OPERATOR construct is taken to have the default precedence shown in Table 4-2 for "any other" operator. This is true no matter which specific operator appears inside OPERATOR().

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Value Expressions

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4.2. Value Expressions

Value expressions are used in a variety of contexts, such as in the target list of the SELECT command, as new column values in INSERT or UPDATE, or in search conditions in a number of commands. The result of a value expression is sometimes called a scalar, to distinguish it from the result of a table expression (which is a table). Value expressions are therefore also called scalar expressions (or even simply expressions). The expression syntax allows the calculation of values from primitive parts using arithmetic, logical, set, and other operations.

A value expression is one of the following:

  • A constant or literal value

  • A column reference

  • A positional parameter reference, in the body of a function definition or prepared statement

  • A subscripted expression

  • A field selection expression

  • An operator invocation

  • A function call

  • An aggregate expression

  • A window function call

  • A type cast

  • A collation expression

  • A scalar subquery

  • An array constructor

  • A row constructor

  • Another value expression in parentheses (used to group subexpressions and override precedence)

In addition to this list, there are a number of constructs that can be classified as an expression but do not follow any general syntax rules. These generally have the semantics of a function or operator and are explained in the appropriate location in Chapter 9. An example is the IS NULL clause.

We have already discussed constants in Section 4.1.2. The following sections discuss the remaining options.

4.2.1. Column References

A column can be referenced in the form:

correlation.columnname

correlation is the name of a table (possibly qualified with a schema name), or an alias for a table defined by means of a FROM clause. The correlation name and separating dot can be omitted if the column name is unique across all the tables being used in the current query. (See also Chapter 7.)

4.2.2. Positional Parameters

A positional parameter reference is used to indicate a value that is supplied externally to an SQL statement. Parameters are used in SQL function definitions and in prepared queries. Some client libraries also support specifying data values separately from the SQL command string, in which case parameters are used to refer to the out-of-line data values. The form of a parameter reference is:

$number

For example, consider the definition of a function, dept, as:

CREATE FUNCTION dept(text) RETURNS dept
    AS $$ SELECT * FROM dept WHERE name = $1 $$
    LANGUAGE SQL;

Here the $1 references the value of the first function argument whenever the function is invoked.

4.2.3. Subscripts

If an expression yields a value of an array type, then a specific element of the array value can be extracted by writing

expression[subscript]

or multiple adjacent elements (an "array slice") can be extracted by writing

expression[lower_subscript:upper_subscript]

(Here, the brackets [ ] are meant to appear literally.) Each subscript is itself an expression, which must yield an integer value.

In general the array expression must be parenthesized, but the parentheses can be omitted when the expression to be subscripted is just a column reference or positional parameter. Also, multiple subscripts can be concatenated when the original array is multidimensional. For example:

mytable.arraycolumn[4]
mytable.two_d_column[17][34]
$1[10:42]
(arrayfunction(a,b))[42]

The parentheses in the last example are required. See Section 8.14 for more about arrays.

4.2.4. Field Selection

If an expression yields a value of a composite type (row type), then a specific field of the row can be extracted by writing

expression.fieldname

In general the row expression must be parenthesized, but the parentheses can be omitted when the expression to be selected from is just a table reference or positional parameter. For example:

mytable.mycolumn
$1.somecolumn
(rowfunction(a,b)).col3

(Thus, a qualified column reference is actually just a special case of the field selection syntax.) An important special case is extracting a field from a table column that is of a composite type:

(compositecol).somefield
(mytable.compositecol).somefield

The parentheses are required here to show that compositecol is a column name not a table name, or that mytable is a table name not a schema name in the second case.

In a select list (see Section 7.3), you can ask for all fields of a composite value by writing .*:

(compositecol).*

4.2.5. Operator Invocations

There are three possible syntaxes for an operator invocation:

expression operator expression (binary infix operator)
operator expression (unary prefix operator)
expression operator (unary postfix operator)

where the operator token follows the syntax rules of Section 4.1.3, or is one of the key words AND, OR, and NOT, or is a qualified operator name in the form:

OPERATOR(schema.operatorname)

Which particular operators exist and whether they are unary or binary depends on what operators have been defined by the system or the user. Chapter 9 describes the built-in operators.

4.2.6. Function Calls

The syntax for a function call is the name of a function (possibly qualified with a schema name), followed by its argument list enclosed in parentheses:

function_name ([expression [, expression ... ]] )

For example, the following computes the square root of 2:

sqrt(2)

The list of built-in functions is in Chapter 9. Other functions can be added by the user.

The arguments can optionally have names attached. See Section 4.3 for details.

Note: A function that takes a single argument of composite type can optionally be called using field-selection syntax, and conversely field selection can be written in functional style. That is, the notations col(table) and table.col are interchangeable. This behavior is not SQL-standard but is provided in PostgreSQL because it allows use of functions to emulate "computed fields". For more information see Section 35.4.2.

4.2.7. Aggregate Expressions

An aggregate expression represents the application of an aggregate function across the rows selected by a query. An aggregate function reduces multiple inputs to a single output value, such as the sum or average of the inputs. The syntax of an aggregate expression is one of the following:

aggregate_name (expression [ , ... ] [ order_by_clause ] )
aggregate_name (ALL expression [ , ... ] [ order_by_clause ] )
aggregate_name (DISTINCT expression [ , ... ] [ order_by_clause ] )
aggregate_name ( * )

where aggregate_name is a previously defined aggregate (possibly qualified with a schema name), expression is any value expression that does not itself contain an aggregate expression or a window function call, and order_by_clause is a optional ORDER BY clause as described below.

The first form of aggregate expression invokes the aggregate once for each input row. The second form is the same as the first, since ALL is the default. The third form invokes the aggregate once for each distinct value of the expression (or distinct set of values, for multiple expressions) found in the input rows. The last form invokes the aggregate once for each input row; since no particular input value is specified, it is generally only useful for the count(*) aggregate function.

Most aggregate functions ignore null inputs, so that rows in which one or more of the expression(s) yield null are discarded. This can be assumed to be true, unless otherwise specified, for all built-in aggregates.

For example, count(*) yields the total number of input rows; count(f1) yields the number of input rows in which f1 is non-null, since count ignores nulls; and count(distinct f1) yields the number of distinct non-null values of f1.

Ordinarily, the input rows are fed to the aggregate function in an unspecified order. In many cases this does not matter; for example, min produces the same result no matter what order it receives the inputs in. However, some aggregate functions (such as array_agg and string_agg) produce results that depend on the ordering of the input rows. When using such an aggregate, the optional order_by_clause can be used to specify the desired ordering. The order_by_clause has the same syntax as for a query-level ORDER BY clause, as described in Section 7.5, except that its expressions are always just expressions and cannot be output-column names or numbers. For example:

SELECT array_agg(a ORDER BY b DESC) FROM table;

When dealing with multiple-argument aggregate functions, note that the ORDER BY clause goes after all the aggregate arguments. For example, write this:

SELECT string_agg(a, ',' ORDER BY a) FROM table;

not this:

SELECT string_agg(a ORDER BY a, ',') FROM table;  -- incorrect

The latter is syntactically valid, but it represents a call of a single-argument aggregate function with two ORDER BY keys (the second one being rather useless since it's a constant).

If DISTINCT is specified in addition to an order_by_clause, then all the ORDER BY expressions must match regular arguments of the aggregate; that is, you cannot sort on an expression that is not included in the DISTINCT list.

Note: The ability to specify both DISTINCT and ORDER BY in an aggregate function is a PostgreSQL extension.

The predefined aggregate functions are described in Section 9.18. Other aggregate functions can be added by the user.

An aggregate expression can only appear in the result list or HAVING clause of a SELECT command. It is forbidden in other clauses, such as WHERE, because those clauses are logically evaluated before the results of aggregates are formed.

When an aggregate expression appears in a subquery (see Section 4.2.11 and Section 9.20), the aggregate is normally evaluated over the rows of the subquery. But an exception occurs if the aggregate's arguments contain only outer-level variables: the aggregate then belongs to the nearest such outer level, and is evaluated over the rows of that query. The aggregate expression as a whole is then an outer reference for the subquery it appears in, and acts as a constant over any one evaluation of that subquery. The restriction about appearing only in the result list or HAVING clause applies with respect to the query level that the aggregate belongs to.

4.2.8. Window Function Calls

A window function call represents the application of an aggregate-like function over some portion of the rows selected by a query. Unlike regular aggregate function calls, this is not tied to grouping of the selected rows into a single output row — each row remains separate in the query output. However the window function is able to scan all the rows that would be part of the current row's group according to the grouping specification (PARTITION BY list) of the window function call. The syntax of a window function call is one of the following:

function_name ([expression [, expression ... ]]) OVER window_name
function_name ([expression [, expression ... ]]) OVER ( window_definition )
function_name ( * ) OVER window_name
function_name ( * ) OVER ( window_definition )

where window_definition has the syntax

[ existing_window_name ]
[ PARTITION BY expression [, ...] ]
[ ORDER BY expression [ ASC | DESC | USING operator ] [ NULLS { FIRST | LAST } ] [, ...] ]
[ frame_clause ]

and the optional frame_clause can be one of

{ RANGE | ROWS } frame_start
{ RANGE | ROWS } BETWEEN frame_start AND frame_end

where frame_start and frame_end can be one of

UNBOUNDED PRECEDING
value PRECEDING
CURRENT ROW
value FOLLOWING
UNBOUNDED FOLLOWING

Here, expression represents any value expression that does not itself contain window function calls. The PARTITION BY and ORDER BY lists have essentially the same syntax and semantics as GROUP BY and ORDER BY clauses of the whole query, except that their expressions are always just expressions and cannot be output-column names or numbers. window_name is a reference to a named window specification defined in the query's WINDOW clause. Alternatively, a full window_definition can be given within parentheses, using the same syntax as for defining a named window in the WINDOW clause; see the SELECT reference page for details. It's worth pointing out that OVER wname is not exactly equivalent to OVER (wname); the latter implies copying and modifying the window definition, and will be rejected if the referenced window specification includes a frame clause.

The frame_clause specifies the set of rows constituting the window frame, for those window functions that act on the frame instead of the whole partition. If frame_end is omitted it defaults to CURRENT ROW. Restrictions are that frame_start cannot be UNBOUNDED FOLLOWING, frame_end cannot be UNBOUNDED PRECEDING, and the frame_end choice cannot appear earlier in the above list than the frame_start choice — for example RANGE BETWEEN CURRENT ROW AND value PRECEDING is not allowed. The default framing option is RANGE UNBOUNDED PRECEDING, which is the same as RANGE BETWEEN UNBOUNDED PRECEDING AND CURRENT ROW; it sets the frame to be all rows from the partition start up through the current row's last peer in the ORDER BY ordering (which means all rows if there is no ORDER BY). In general, UNBOUNDED PRECEDING means that the frame starts with the first row of the partition, and similarly UNBOUNDED FOLLOWING means that the frame ends with the last row of the partition (regardless of RANGE or ROWS mode). In ROWS mode, CURRENT ROW means that the frame starts or ends with the current row; but in RANGE mode it means that the frame starts or ends with the current row's first or last peer in the ORDER BY ordering. The value PRECEDING and value FOLLOWING cases are currently only allowed in ROWS mode. They indicate that the frame starts or ends with the row that many rows before or after the current row. value must be an integer expression not containing any variables, aggregate functions, or window functions. The value must not be null or negative; but it can be zero, which selects the current row itself.

The built-in window functions are described in Table 9-45. Other window functions can be added by the user. Also, any built-in or user-defined aggregate function can be used as a window function.

The syntaxes using * are used for calling parameter-less aggregate functions as window functions, for example count(*) OVER (PARTITION BY x ORDER BY y). * is customarily not used for non-aggregate window functions. Aggregate window functions, unlike normal aggregate functions, do not allow DISTINCT or ORDER BY to be used within the function argument list.

Window function calls are permitted only in the SELECT list and the ORDER BY clause of the query.

More information about window functions can be found in Section 3.5, Section 9.19, Section 7.2.4.

4.2.9. Type Casts

A type cast specifies a conversion from one data type to another. PostgreSQL accepts two equivalent syntaxes for type casts:

CAST ( expression AS type )
expression::type

The CAST syntax conforms to SQL; the syntax with :: is historical PostgreSQL usage.

When a cast is applied to a value expression of a known type, it represents a run-time type conversion. The cast will succeed only if a suitable type conversion operation has been defined. Notice that this is subtly different from the use of casts with constants, as shown in Section 4.1.2.7. A cast applied to an unadorned string literal represents the initial assignment of a type to a literal constant value, and so it will succeed for any type (if the contents of the string literal are acceptable input syntax for the data type).

An explicit type cast can usually be omitted if there is no ambiguity as to the type that a value expression must produce (for example, when it is assigned to a table column); the system will automatically apply a type cast in such cases. However, automatic casting is only done for casts that are marked "OK to apply implicitly" in the system catalogs. Other casts must be invoked with explicit casting syntax. This restriction is intended to prevent surprising conversions from being applied silently.

It is also possible to specify a type cast using a function-like syntax:

typename ( expression )

However, this only works for types whose names are also valid as function names. For example, double precision cannot be used this way, but the equivalent float8 can. Also, the names interval, time, and timestamp can only be used in this fashion if they are double-quoted, because of syntactic conflicts. Therefore, the use of the function-like cast syntax leads to inconsistencies and should probably be avoided.

Note: The function-like syntax is in fact just a function call. When one of the two standard cast syntaxes is used to do a run-time conversion, it will internally invoke a registered function to perform the conversion. By convention, these conversion functions have the same name as their output type, and thus the "function-like syntax" is nothing more than a direct invocation of the underlying conversion function. Obviously, this is not something that a portable application should rely on. For further details see CREATE CAST.

4.2.10. Collation Expressions

The COLLATE clause overrides the collation of an expression. It is appended to the expression it applies to:

expr COLLATE collation

where collation is a possibly schema-qualified identifier. The COLLATE clause binds tighter than operators; parentheses can be used when necessary.

If no collation is explicitly specified, the database system either derives a collation from the columns involved in the expression, or it defaults to the default collation of the database if no column is involved in the expression.

The two common uses of the COLLATE clause are overriding the sort order in an ORDER BY clause, for example:

SELECT a, b, c FROM tbl WHERE ... ORDER BY a COLLATE "C";

and overriding the collation of a function or operator call that has locale-sensitive results, for example:

SELECT * FROM tbl WHERE a > 'foo' COLLATE "C";

Note that in the latter case the COLLATE clause is attached to an input argument of the operator we wish to affect. It doesn't matter which argument of the operator or function call the COLLATE clause is attached to, because the collation that is applied by the operator or function is derived by considering all arguments, and an explicit COLLATE clause will override the collations of all other arguments. (Attaching non-matching COLLATE clauses to more than one argument, however, is an error. For more details see Section 22.2.) Thus, this gives the same result as the previous example:

SELECT * FROM tbl WHERE a COLLATE "C" > 'foo';

But this is an error:

SELECT * FROM tbl WHERE (a > 'foo') COLLATE "C";

because it attempts to apply a collation to the result of the > operator, which is of the non-collatable data type boolean.

4.2.11. Scalar Subqueries

A scalar subquery is an ordinary SELECT query in parentheses that returns exactly one row with one column. (See Chapter 7 for information about writing queries.) The SELECT query is executed and the single returned value is used in the surrounding value expression. It is an error to use a query that returns more than one row or more than one column as a scalar subquery. (But if, during a particular execution, the subquery returns no rows, there is no error; the scalar result is taken to be null.) The subquery can refer to variables from the surrounding query, which will act as constants during any one evaluation of the subquery. See also Section 9.20 for other expressions involving subqueries.

For example, the following finds the largest city population in each state:

SELECT name, (SELECT max(pop) FROM cities WHERE cities.state = states.name)
    FROM states;

4.2.12. Array Constructors

An array constructor is an expression that builds an array value using values for its member elements. A simple array constructor consists of the key word ARRAY, a left square bracket [, a list of expressions (separated by commas) for the array element values, and finally a right square bracket ]. For example:

SELECT ARRAY[1,2,3+4];
  array
---------
 {1,2,7}
(1 row)

By default, the array element type is the common type of the member expressions, determined using the same rules as for UNION or CASE constructs (see Section 10.5). You can override this by explicitly casting the array constructor to the desired type, for example:

SELECT ARRAY[1,2,22.7]::integer[];
  array
----------
 {1,2,23}
(1 row)

This has the same effect as casting each expression to the array element type individually. For more on casting, see Section 4.2.9.

Multidimensional array values can be built by nesting array constructors. In the inner constructors, the key word ARRAY can be omitted. For example, these produce the same result:

SELECT ARRAY[ARRAY[1,2], ARRAY[3,4]];
     array
---------------
 {{1,2},{3,4}}
(1 row)

SELECT ARRAY[[1,2],[3,4]];
     array
---------------
 {{1,2},{3,4}}
(1 row)

Since multidimensional arrays must be rectangular, inner constructors at the same level must produce sub-arrays of identical dimensions. Any cast applied to the outer ARRAY constructor propagates automatically to all the inner constructors.

Multidimensional array constructor elements can be anything yielding an array of the proper kind, not only a sub-ARRAY construct. For example:

CREATE TABLE arr(f1 int[], f2 int[]);

INSERT INTO arr VALUES (ARRAY[[1,2],[3,4]], ARRAY[[5,6],[7,8]]);

SELECT ARRAY[f1, f2, '{{9,10},{11,12}}'::int[]] FROM arr;
                     array
------------------------------------------------
 {{{1,2},{3,4}},{{5,6},{7,8}},{{9,10},{11,12}}}
(1 row)

You can construct an empty array, but since it's impossible to have an array with no type, you must explicitly cast your empty array to the desired type. For example:

SELECT ARRAY[]::integer[];
 array
-------
 {}
(1 row)

It is also possible to construct an array from the results of a subquery. In this form, the array constructor is written with the key word ARRAY followed by a parenthesized (not bracketed) subquery. For example:

SELECT ARRAY(SELECT oid FROM pg_proc WHERE proname LIKE 'bytea%');
                          ?column?
-------------------------------------------------------------
 {2011,1954,1948,1952,1951,1244,1950,2005,1949,1953,2006,31}
(1 row)

The subquery must return a single column. The resulting one-dimensional array will have an element for each row in the subquery result, with an element type matching that of the subquery's output column.

The subscripts of an array value built with ARRAY always begin with one. For more information about arrays, see Section 8.14.

4.2.13. Row Constructors

A row constructor is an expression that builds a row value (also called a composite value) using values for its member fields. A row constructor consists of the key word ROW, a left parenthesis, zero or more expressions (separated by commas) for the row field values, and finally a right parenthesis. For example:

SELECT ROW(1,2.5,'this is a test');

The key word ROW is optional when there is more than one expression in the list.

A row constructor can include the syntax rowvalue.*, which will be expanded to a list of the elements of the row value, just as occurs when the .* syntax is used at the top level of a SELECT list. For example, if table t has columns f1 and f2, these are the same:

SELECT ROW(t.*, 42) FROM t;
SELECT ROW(t.f1, t.f2, 42) FROM t;

Note: Before PostgreSQL 8.2, the .* syntax was not expanded, so that writing ROW(t.*, 42) created a two-field row whose first field was another row value. The new behavior is usually more useful. If you need the old behavior of nested row values, write the inner row value without .*, for instance ROW(t, 42).

By default, the value created by a ROW expression is of an anonymous record type. If necessary, it can be cast to a named composite type — either the row type of a table, or a composite type created with CREATE TYPE AS. An explicit cast might be needed to avoid ambiguity. For example:

CREATE TABLE mytable(f1 int, f2 float, f3 text);

CREATE FUNCTION getf1(mytable) RETURNS int AS 'SELECT $1.f1' LANGUAGE SQL;

-- No cast needed since only one getf1() exists
SELECT getf1(ROW(1,2.5,'this is a test'));
 getf1
-------
     1
(1 row)

CREATE TYPE myrowtype AS (f1 int, f2 text, f3 numeric);

CREATE FUNCTION getf1(myrowtype) RETURNS int AS 'SELECT $1.f1' LANGUAGE SQL;

-- Now we need a cast to indicate which function to call:
SELECT getf1(ROW(1,2.5,'this is a test'));
ERROR:  function getf1(record) is not unique

SELECT getf1(ROW(1,2.5,'this is a test')::mytable);
 getf1
-------
     1
(1 row)

SELECT getf1(CAST(ROW(11,'this is a test',2.5) AS myrowtype));
 getf1
-------
    11
(1 row)

Row constructors can be used to build composite values to be stored in a composite-type table column, or to be passed to a function that accepts a composite parameter. Also, it is possible to compare two row values or test a row with IS NULL or IS NOT NULL, for example:

SELECT ROW(1,2.5,'this is a test') = ROW(1, 3, 'not the same');

SELECT ROW(table.*) IS NULL FROM table;  -- detect all-null rows

For more detail see Section 9.21. Row constructors can also be used in connection with subqueries, as discussed in Section 9.20.

4.2.14. Expression Evaluation Rules

The order of evaluation of subexpressions is not defined. In particular, the inputs of an operator or function are not necessarily evaluated left-to-right or in any other fixed order.

Furthermore, if the result of an expression can be determined by evaluating only some parts of it, then other subexpressions might not be evaluated at all. For instance, if one wrote:

SELECT true OR somefunc();

then somefunc() would (probably) not be called at all. The same would be the case if one wrote:

SELECT somefunc() OR true;

Note that this is not the same as the left-to-right "short-circuiting" of Boolean operators that is found in some programming languages.

As a consequence, it is unwise to use functions with side effects as part of complex expressions. It is particularly dangerous to rely on side effects or evaluation order in WHERE and HAVING clauses, since those clauses are extensively reprocessed as part of developing an execution plan. Boolean expressions (AND/OR/NOT combinations) in those clauses can be reorganized in any manner allowed by the laws of Boolean algebra.

When it is essential to force evaluation order, a CASE construct (see Section 9.16) can be used. For example, this is an untrustworthy way of trying to avoid division by zero in a WHERE clause:

SELECT ... WHERE x > 0 AND y/x > 1.5;

But this is safe:

SELECT ... WHERE CASE WHEN x > 0 THEN y/x > 1.5 ELSE false END;

A CASE construct used in this fashion will defeat optimization attempts, so it should only be done when necessary. (In this particular example, it would be better to sidestep the problem by writing y > 1.5*x instead.)

CASE is not a cure-all for such issues, however. One limitation of the technique illustrated above is that it does not prevent early evaluation of constant subexpressions. As described in Section 35.6, functions and operators marked IMMUTABLE can be evaluated when the query is planned rather than when it is executed. Thus for example

SELECT CASE WHEN x > 0 THEN x ELSE 1/0 END FROM tab;

is likely to result in a division-by-zero failure due to the planner trying to simplify the constant subexpression, even if every row in the table has x > 0 so that the ELSE arm would never be entered at run time.

While that particular example might seem silly, related cases that don't obviously involve constants can occur in queries executed within functions, since the values of function arguments and local variables can be inserted into queries as constants for planning purposes. Within PL/pgSQL functions, for example, using an IF-THEN-ELSE statement to protect a risky computation is much safer than just nesting it in a CASE expression.

Another limitation of the same kind is that a CASE cannot prevent evaluation of an aggregate expression contained within it, because aggregate expressions are computed before other expressions in a SELECT list or HAVING clause are considered. For example, the following query can cause a division-by-zero error despite seemingly having protected against it:

SELECT CASE WHEN min(employees) > 0
            THEN avg(expenses / employees)
       END
    FROM departments;

The min() and avg() aggregates are computed concurrently over all the input rows, so if any row has employees equal to zero, the division-by-zero error will occur before there is any opportunity to test the result of min(). Instead, use a WHERE clause to prevent problematic input rows from reaching an aggregate function in the first place.

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Calling Functions

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4.3. Calling Functions

PostgreSQL allows functions that have named parameters to be called using either positional or named notation. Named notation is especially useful for functions that have a large number of parameters, since it makes the associations between parameters and actual arguments more explicit and reliable. In positional notation, a function call is written with its argument values in the same order as they are defined in the function declaration. In named notation, the arguments are matched to the function parameters by name and can be written in any order.

In either notation, parameters that have default values given in the function declaration need not be written in the call at all. But this is particularly useful in named notation, since any combination of parameters can be omitted; while in positional notation parameters can only be omitted from right to left.

PostgreSQL also supports mixed notation, which combines positional and named notation. In this case, positional parameters are written first and named parameters appear after them.

The following examples will illustrate the usage of all three notations, using the following function definition:

CREATE FUNCTION concat_lower_or_upper(a text, b text, uppercase boolean DEFAULT false)
RETURNS text
AS
$$
 SELECT CASE
        WHEN $3 THEN UPPER($1 || ' ' || $2)
        ELSE LOWER($1 || ' ' || $2)
        END;
$$
LANGUAGE SQL IMMUTABLE STRICT;

Function concat_lower_or_upper has two mandatory parameters, a and b. Additionally there is one optional parameter uppercase which defaults to false. The a and b inputs will be concatenated, and forced to either upper or lower case depending on the uppercase parameter. The remaining details of this function definition are not important here (see Chapter 35 for more information).

4.3.1. Using Positional Notation

Positional notation is the traditional mechanism for passing arguments to functions in PostgreSQL. An example is:

SELECT concat_lower_or_upper('Hello', 'World', true);
 concat_lower_or_upper
-----------------------
 HELLO WORLD
(1 row)

All arguments are specified in order. The result is upper case since uppercase is specified as true. Another example is:

SELECT concat_lower_or_upper('Hello', 'World');
 concat_lower_or_upper
-----------------------
 hello world
(1 row)

Here, the uppercase parameter is omitted, so it receives its default value of false, resulting in lower case output. In positional notation, arguments can be omitted from right to left so long as they have defaults.

4.3.2. Using Named Notation

In named notation, each argument's name is specified using := to separate it from the argument expression. For example:

SELECT concat_lower_or_upper(a := 'Hello', b := 'World');
 concat_lower_or_upper
-----------------------
 hello world
(1 row)

Again, the argument uppercase was omitted so it is set to false implicitly. One advantage of using named notation is that the arguments may be specified in any order, for example:

SELECT concat_lower_or_upper(a := 'Hello', b := 'World', uppercase := true);
 concat_lower_or_upper
-----------------------
 HELLO WORLD
(1 row)

SELECT concat_lower_or_upper(a := 'Hello', uppercase := true, b := 'World');
 concat_lower_or_upper
-----------------------
 HELLO WORLD
(1 row)

4.3.3. Using Mixed Notation

The mixed notation combines positional and named notation. However, as already mentioned, named arguments cannot precede positional arguments. For example:

SELECT concat_lower_or_upper('Hello', 'World', uppercase := true);
 concat_lower_or_upper
-----------------------
 HELLO WORLD
(1 row)

In the above query, the arguments a and b are specified positionally, while uppercase is specified by name. In this example, that adds little except documentation. With a more complex function having numerous parameters that have default values, named or mixed notation can save a great deal of writing and reduce chances for error.

Note: Named and mixed call notations can currently be used only with regular functions, not with aggregate functions or window functions.

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Data Definition

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Chapter 5. Data Definition

Table of Contents
5.1. Table Basics
5.2. Default Values
5.3. Constraints
5.3.1. Check Constraints
5.3.2. Not-Null Constraints
5.3.3. Unique Constraints
5.3.4. Primary Keys
5.3.5. Foreign Keys
5.3.6. Exclusion Constraints
5.4. System Columns
5.5. Modifying Tables
5.5.1. Adding a Column
5.5.2. Removing a Column
5.5.3. Adding a Constraint
5.5.4. Removing a Constraint
5.5.5. Changing a Column's Default Value
5.5.6. Changing a Column's Data Type
5.5.7. Renaming a Column
5.5.8. Renaming a Table
5.6. Privileges
5.7. Schemas
5.7.1. Creating a Schema
5.7.2. The Public Schema
5.7.3. The Schema Search Path
5.7.4. Schemas and Privileges
5.7.5. The System Catalog Schema
5.7.6. Usage Patterns
5.7.7. Portability
5.8. Inheritance
5.9. Partitioning
5.9.1. Overview
5.9.2. Implementing Partitioning
5.9.3. Managing Partitions
5.9.4. Partitioning and Constraint Exclusion
5.9.5. Alternative Partitioning Methods
5.9.6. Caveats
5.10. Foreign Data
5.11. Other Database Objects
5.12. Dependency Tracking

This chapter covers how one creates the database structures that will hold one's data. In a relational database, the raw data is stored in tables, so the majority of this chapter is devoted to explaining how tables are created and modified and what features are available to control what data is stored in the tables. Subsequently, we discuss how tables can be organized into schemas, and how privileges can be assigned to tables. Finally, we will briefly look at other features that affect the data storage, such as inheritance, views, functions, and triggers.

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Table Basics

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5.1. Table Basics

A table in a relational database is much like a table on paper: It consists of rows and columns. The number and order of the columns is fixed, and each column has a name. The number of rows is variable — it reflects how much data is stored at a given moment. SQL does not make any guarantees about the order of the rows in a table. When a table is read, the rows will appear in an unspecified order, unless sorting is explicitly requested. This is covered in Chapter 7. Furthermore, SQL does not assign unique identifiers to rows, so it is possible to have several completely identical rows in a table. This is a consequence of the mathematical model that underlies SQL but is usually not desirable. Later in this chapter we will see how to deal with this issue.

Each column has a data type. The data type constrains the set of possible values that can be assigned to a column and assigns semantics to the data stored in the column so that it can be used for computations. For instance, a column declared to be of a numerical type will not accept arbitrary text strings, and the data stored in such a column can be used for mathematical computations. By contrast, a column declared to be of a character string type will accept almost any kind of data but it does not lend itself to mathematical calculations, although other operations such as string concatenation are available.

PostgreSQL includes a sizable set of built-in data types that fit many applications. Users can also define their own data types. Most built-in data types have obvious names and semantics, so we defer a detailed explanation to Chapter 8. Some of the frequently used data types are integer for whole numbers, numeric for possibly fractional numbers, text for character strings, date for dates, time for time-of-day values, and timestamp for values containing both date and time.

To create a table, you use the aptly named CREATE TABLE command. In this command you specify at least a name for the new table, the names of the columns and the data type of each column. For example:

CREATE TABLE my_first_table (
    first_column text,
    second_column integer
);

This creates a table named my_first_table with two columns. The first column is named first_column and has a data type of text; the second column has the name second_column and the type integer. The table and column names follow the identifier syntax explained in Section 4.1.1. The type names are usually also identifiers, but there are some exceptions. Note that the column list is comma-separated and surrounded by parentheses.

Of course, the previous example was heavily contrived. Normally, you would give names to your tables and columns that convey what kind of data they store. So let's look at a more realistic example:

CREATE TABLE products (
    product_no integer,
    name text,
    price numeric
);

(The numeric type can store fractional components, as would be typical of monetary amounts.)

Tip: When you create many interrelated tables it is wise to choose a consistent naming pattern for the tables and columns. For instance, there is a choice of using singular or plural nouns for table names, both of which are favored by some theorist or other.

There is a limit on how many columns a table can contain. Depending on the column types, it is between 250 and 1600. However, defining a table with anywhere near this many columns is highly unusual and often a questionable design.

If you no longer need a table, you can remove it using the DROP TABLE command. For example:

DROP TABLE my_first_table;
DROP TABLE products;

Attempting to drop a table that does not exist is an error. Nevertheless, it is common in SQL script files to unconditionally try to drop each table before creating it, ignoring any error messages, so that the script works whether or not the table exists. (If you like, you can use the DROP TABLE IF EXISTS variant to avoid the error messages, but this is not standard SQL.)

If you need to modify a table that already exists, see Section 5.5 later in this chapter.

With the tools discussed so far you can create fully functional tables. The remainder of this chapter is concerned with adding features to the table definition to ensure data integrity, security, or convenience. If you are eager to fill your tables with data now you can skip ahead to Chapter 6 and read the rest of this chapter later.

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Default Values

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5.2. Default Values

A column can be assigned a default value. When a new row is created and no values are specified for some of the columns, those columns will be filled with their respective default values. A data manipulation command can also request explicitly that a column be set to its default value, without having to know what that value is. (Details about data manipulation commands are in Chapter 6.)

If no default value is declared explicitly, the default value is the null value. This usually makes sense because a null value can be considered to represent unknown data.

In a table definition, default values are listed after the column data type. For example:

CREATE TABLE products (
    product_no integer,
    name text,
    price numeric DEFAULT 9.99
);

The default value can be an expression, which will be evaluated whenever the default value is inserted (not when the table is created). A common example is for a timestamp column to have a default of CURRENT_TIMESTAMP, so that it gets set to the time of row insertion. Another common example is generating a "serial number" for each row. In PostgreSQL this is typically done by something like:

CREATE TABLE products (
    product_no integer DEFAULT nextval('products_product_no_seq'),
    ...
);

where the nextval() function supplies successive values from a sequence object (see Section 9.15). This arrangement is sufficiently common that there's a special shorthand for it:

CREATE TABLE products (
    product_no SERIAL,
    ...
);

The SERIAL shorthand is discussed further in Section 8.1.4.

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Constraints

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5.3. Constraints

Data types are a way to limit the kind of data that can be stored in a table. For many applications, however, the constraint they provide is too coarse. For example, a column containing a product price should probably only accept positive values. But there is no standard data type that accepts only positive numbers. Another issue is that you might want to constrain column data with respect to other columns or rows. For example, in a table containing product information, there should be only one row for each product number.

To that end, SQL allows you to define constraints on columns and tables. Constraints give you as much control over the data in your tables as you wish. If a user attempts to store data in a column that would violate a constraint, an error is raised. This applies even if the value came from the default value definition.

5.3.1. Check Constraints

A check constraint is the most generic constraint type. It allows you to specify that the value in a certain column must satisfy a Boolean (truth-value) expression. For instance, to require positive product prices, you could use:

CREATE TABLE products (
    product_no integer,
    name text,
    price numeric CHECK (price > 0)
);

As you see, the constraint definition comes after the data type, just like default value definitions. Default values and constraints can be listed in any order. A check constraint consists of the key word CHECK followed by an expression in parentheses. The check constraint expression should involve the column thus constrained, otherwise the constraint would not make too much sense.

You can also give the constraint a separate name. This clarifies error messages and allows you to refer to the constraint when you need to change it. The syntax is:

CREATE TABLE products (
    product_no integer,
    name text,
    price numeric CONSTRAINT positive_price CHECK (price > 0)
);

So, to specify a named constraint, use the key word CONSTRAINT followed by an identifier followed by the constraint definition. (If you don't specify a constraint name in this way, the system chooses a name for you.)

A check constraint can also refer to several columns. Say you store a regular price and a discounted price, and you want to ensure that the discounted price is lower than the regular price:

CREATE TABLE products (
    product_no integer,
    name text,
    price numeric CHECK (price > 0),
    discounted_price numeric CHECK (discounted_price > 0),
    CHECK (price > discounted_price)
);

The first two constraints should look familiar. The third one uses a new syntax. It is not attached to a particular column, instead it appears as a separate item in the comma-separated column list. Column definitions and these constraint definitions can be listed in mixed order.

We say that the first two constraints are column constraints, whereas the third one is a table constraint because it is written separately from any one column definition. Column constraints can also be written as table constraints, while the reverse is not necessarily possible, since a column constraint is supposed to refer to only the column it is attached to. (PostgreSQL doesn't enforce that rule, but you should follow it if you want your table definitions to work with other database systems.) The above example could also be written as:

CREATE TABLE products (
    product_no integer,
    name text,
    price numeric,
    CHECK (price > 0),
    discounted_price numeric,
    CHECK (discounted_price > 0),
    CHECK (price > discounted_price)
);

or even:

CREATE TABLE products (
    product_no integer,
    name text,
    price numeric CHECK (price > 0),
    discounted_price numeric,
    CHECK (discounted_price > 0 AND price > discounted_price)
);

It's a matter of taste.

Names can be assigned to table constraints in the same way as column constraints:

CREATE TABLE products (
    product_no integer,
    name text,
    price numeric,
    CHECK (price > 0),
    discounted_price numeric,
    CHECK (discounted_price > 0),
    CONSTRAINT valid_discount CHECK (price > discounted_price)
);

It should be noted that a check constraint is satisfied if the check expression evaluates to true or the null value. Since most expressions will evaluate to the null value if any operand is null, they will not prevent null values in the constrained columns. To ensure that a column does not contain null values, the not-null constraint described in the next section can be used.

5.3.2. Not-Null Constraints

A not-null constraint simply specifies that a column must not assume the null value. A syntax example:

CREATE TABLE products (
    product_no integer NOT NULL,
    name text NOT NULL,
    price numeric
);

A not-null constraint is always written as a column constraint. A not-null constraint is functionally equivalent to creating a check constraint CHECK (column_name IS NOT NULL), but in PostgreSQL creating an explicit not-null constraint is more efficient. The drawback is that you cannot give explicit names to not-null constraints created this way.

Of course, a column can have more than one constraint. Just write the constraints one after another:

CREATE TABLE products (
    product_no integer NOT NULL,
    name text NOT NULL,
    price numeric NOT NULL CHECK (price > 0)
);

The order doesn't matter. It does not necessarily determine in which order the constraints are checked.

The NOT NULL constraint has an inverse: the NULL constraint. This does not mean that the column must be null, which would surely be useless. Instead, this simply selects the default behavior that the column might be null. The NULL constraint is not present in the SQL standard and should not be used in portable applications. (It was only added to PostgreSQL to be compatible with some other database systems.) Some users, however, like it because it makes it easy to toggle the constraint in a script file. For example, you could start with:

CREATE TABLE products (
    product_no integer NULL,
    name text NULL,
    price numeric NULL
);

and then insert the NOT key word where desired.

Tip: In most database designs the majority of columns should be marked not null.

5.3.3. Unique Constraints

Unique constraints ensure that the data contained in a column or a group of columns is unique with respect to all the rows in the table. The syntax is:

CREATE TABLE products (
    product_no integer UNIQUE,
    name text,
    price numeric
);

when written as a column constraint, and:

CREATE TABLE products (
    product_no integer,
    name text,
    price numeric,
    UNIQUE (product_no)
);

when written as a table constraint.

If a unique constraint refers to a group of columns, the columns are listed separated by commas:

CREATE TABLE example (
    a integer,
    b integer,
    c integer,
    UNIQUE (a, c)
);

This specifies that the combination of values in the indicated columns is unique across the whole table, though any one of the columns need not be (and ordinarily isn't) unique.

You can assign your own name for a unique constraint, in the usual way:

CREATE TABLE products (
    product_no integer CONSTRAINT must_be_different UNIQUE,
    name text,
    price numeric
);

Adding a unique constraint will automatically create a unique btree index on the column or group of columns used in the constraint.

In general, a unique constraint is violated when there is more than one row in the table where the values of all of the columns included in the constraint are equal. However, two null values are not considered equal in this comparison. That means even in the presence of a unique constraint it is possible to store duplicate rows that contain a null value in at least one of the constrained columns. This behavior conforms to the SQL standard, but we have heard that other SQL databases might not follow this rule. So be careful when developing applications that are intended to be portable.

5.3.4. Primary Keys

Technically, a primary key constraint is simply a combination of a unique constraint and a not-null constraint. So, the following two table definitions accept the same data:

CREATE TABLE products (
    product_no integer UNIQUE NOT NULL,
    name text,
    price numeric
);

CREATE TABLE products (
    product_no integer PRIMARY KEY,
    name text,
    price numeric
);

Primary keys can also constrain more than one column; the syntax is similar to unique constraints:

CREATE TABLE example (
    a integer,
    b integer,
    c integer,
    PRIMARY KEY (a, c)
);

A primary key indicates that a column or group of columns can be used as a unique identifier for rows in the table. (This is a direct consequence of the definition of a primary key. Note that a unique constraint does not, by itself, provide a unique identifier because it does not exclude null values.) This is useful both for documentation purposes and for client applications. For example, a GUI application that allows modifying row values probably needs to know the primary key of a table to be able to identify rows uniquely.

Adding a primary key will automatically create a unique btree index on the column or group of columns used in the primary key.

A table can have at most one primary key. (There can be any number of unique and not-null constraints, which are functionally the same thing, but only one can be identified as the primary key.) Relational database theory dictates that every table must have a primary key. This rule is not enforced by PostgreSQL, but it is usually best to follow it.

5.3.5. Foreign Keys

A foreign key constraint specifies that the values in a column (or a group of columns) must match the values appearing in some row of another table. We say this maintains the referential integrity between two related tables.

Say you have the product table that we have used several times already:

CREATE TABLE products (
    product_no integer PRIMARY KEY,
    name text,
    price numeric
);

Let's also assume you have a table storing orders of those products. We want to ensure that the orders table only contains orders of products that actually exist. So we define a foreign key constraint in the orders table that references the products table:

CREATE TABLE orders (
    order_id integer PRIMARY KEY,
    product_no integer REFERENCES products (product_no),
    quantity integer
);

Now it is impossible to create orders with product_no entries that do not appear in the products table.

We say that in this situation the orders table is the referencing table and the products table is the referenced table. Similarly, there are referencing and referenced columns.

You can also shorten the above command to:

CREATE TABLE orders (
    order_id integer PRIMARY KEY,
    product_no integer REFERENCES products,
    quantity integer
);

because in absence of a column list the primary key of the referenced table is used as the referenced column(s).

A foreign key can also constrain and reference a group of columns. As usual, it then needs to be written in table constraint form. Here is a contrived syntax example:

CREATE TABLE t1 (
  a integer PRIMARY KEY,
  b integer,
  c integer,
  FOREIGN KEY (b, c) REFERENCES other_table (c1, c2)
);

Of course, the number and type of the constrained columns need to match the number and type of the referenced columns.

You can assign your own name for a foreign key constraint, in the usual way.

A table can contain more than one foreign key constraint. This is used to implement many-to-many relationships between tables. Say you have tables about products and orders, but now you want to allow one order to contain possibly many products (which the structure above did not allow). You could use this table structure:

CREATE TABLE products (
    product_no integer PRIMARY KEY,
    name text,
    price numeric
);

CREATE TABLE orders (
    order_id integer PRIMARY KEY,
    shipping_address text,
    ...
);

CREATE TABLE order_items (
    product_no integer REFERENCES products,
    order_id integer REFERENCES orders,
    quantity integer,
    PRIMARY KEY (product_no, order_id)
);

Notice that the primary key overlaps with the foreign keys in the last table.

We know that the foreign keys disallow creation of orders that do not relate to any products. But what if a product is removed after an order is created that references it? SQL allows you to handle that as well. Intuitively, we have a few options:

  • Disallow deleting a referenced product

  • Delete the orders as well

  • Something else?

To illustrate this, let's implement the following policy on the many-to-many relationship example above: when someone wants to remove a product that is still referenced by an order (via order_items), we disallow it. If someone removes an order, the order items are removed as well:

CREATE TABLE products (
    product_no integer PRIMARY KEY,
    name text,
    price numeric
);

CREATE TABLE orders (
    order_id integer PRIMARY KEY,
    shipping_address text,
    ...
);

CREATE TABLE order_items (
    product_no integer REFERENCES products ON DELETE RESTRICT,
    order_id integer REFERENCES orders ON DELETE CASCADE,
    quantity integer,
    PRIMARY KEY (product_no, order_id)
);

Restricting and cascading deletes are the two most common options. RESTRICT prevents deletion of a referenced row. NO ACTION means that if any referencing rows still exist when the constraint is checked, an error is raised; this is the default behavior if you do not specify anything. (The essential difference between these two choices is that NO ACTION allows the check to be deferred until later in the transaction, whereas RESTRICT does not.) CASCADE specifies that when a referenced row is deleted, row(s) referencing it should be automatically deleted as well. There are two other options: SET NULL and SET DEFAULT. These cause the referencing columns to be set to nulls or default values, respectively, when the referenced row is deleted. Note that these do not excuse you from observing any constraints. For example, if an action specifies SET DEFAULT but the default value would not satisfy the foreign key, the operation will fail.

Analogous to ON DELETE there is also ON UPDATE which is invoked when a referenced column is changed (updated). The possible actions are the same.

Since a DELETE of a row from the referenced table or an UPDATE of a referenced column will require a scan of the referencing table for rows matching the old value, it is often a good idea to index the referencing columns. Because this is not always needed, and there are many choices available on how to index, declaration of a foreign key constraint does not automatically create an index on the referencing columns.

More information about updating and deleting data is in Chapter 6.

Finally, we should mention that a foreign key must reference columns that either are a primary key or form a unique constraint. If the foreign key references a unique constraint, there are some additional possibilities regarding how null values are matched. These are explained in the reference documentation for CREATE TABLE.

5.3.6. Exclusion Constraints

Exclusion constraints ensure that if any two rows are compared on the specified columns or expressions using the specified operators, at least one of these operator comparisons will return false or null. The syntax is:

CREATE TABLE circles (
    c circle,
    EXCLUDE USING gist (c WITH &&)
);

See also CREATE TABLE ... CONSTRAINT ... EXCLUDE for details.

Adding an exclusion constraint will automatically create an index of the type specified in the constraint declaration.

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System Columns

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5.4. System Columns

Every table has several system columns that are implicitly defined by the system. Therefore, these names cannot be used as names of user-defined columns. (Note that these restrictions are separate from whether the name is a key word or not; quoting a name will not allow you to escape these restrictions.) You do not really need to be concerned about these columns; just know they exist.

oid

The object identifier (object ID) of a row. This column is only present if the table was created using WITH OIDS, or if the default_with_oids configuration variable was set at the time. This column is of type oid (same name as the column); see Section 8.16 for more information about the type.

tableoid

The OID of the table containing this row. This column is particularly handy for queries that select from inheritance hierarchies (see Section 5.8), since without it, it's difficult to tell which individual table a row came from. The tableoid can be joined against the oid column of pg_class to obtain the table name.

xmin

The identity (transaction ID) of the inserting transaction for this row version. (A row version is an individual state of a row; each update of a row creates a new row version for the same logical row.)

cmin

The command identifier (starting at zero) within the inserting transaction.

xmax

The identity (transaction ID) of the deleting transaction, or zero for an undeleted row version. It is possible for this column to be nonzero in a visible row version. That usually indicates that the deleting transaction hasn't committed yet, or that an attempted deletion was rolled back.

cmax

The command identifier within the deleting transaction, or zero.

ctid

The physical location of the row version within its table. Note that although the ctid can be used to locate the row version very quickly, a row's ctid will change if it is updated or moved by VACUUM FULL. Therefore ctid is useless as a long-term row identifier. The OID, or even better a user-defined serial number, should be used to identify logical rows.

OIDs are 32-bit quantities and are assigned from a single cluster-wide counter. In a large or long-lived database, it is possible for the counter to wrap around. Hence, it is bad practice to assume that OIDs are unique, unless you take steps to ensure that this is the case. If you need to identify the rows in a table, using a sequence generator is strongly recommended. However, OIDs can be used as well, provided that a few additional precautions are taken:

  • A unique constraint should be created on the OID column of each table for which the OID will be used to identify rows. When such a unique constraint (or unique index) exists, the system takes care not to generate an OID matching an already-existing row. (Of course, this is only possible if the table contains fewer than 232 (4 billion) rows, and in practice the table size had better be much less than that, or performance might suffer.)

  • OIDs should never be assumed to be unique across tables; use the combination of tableoid and row OID if you need a database-wide identifier.

  • Of course, the tables in question must be created WITH OIDS. As of PostgreSQL 8.1, WITHOUT OIDS is the default.

Transaction identifiers are also 32-bit quantities. In a long-lived database it is possible for transaction IDs to wrap around. This is not a fatal problem given appropriate maintenance procedures; see Chapter 23 for details. It is unwise, however, to depend on the uniqueness of transaction IDs over the long term (more than one billion transactions).

Command identifiers are also 32-bit quantities. This creates a hard limit of 232 (4 billion) SQL commands within a single transaction. In practice this limit is not a problem — note that the limit is on the number of SQL commands, not the number of rows processed. Also, as of PostgreSQL 8.3, only commands that actually modify the database contents will consume a command identifier.

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Constraints | Up | Modifying Tables


Modifying Tables

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5.5. Modifying Tables

When you create a table and you realize that you made a mistake, or the requirements of the application change, you can drop the table and create it again. But this is not a convenient option if the table is already filled with data, or if the table is referenced by other database objects (for instance a foreign key constraint). Therefore PostgreSQL provides a family of commands to make modifications to existing tables. Note that this is conceptually distinct from altering the data contained in the table: here we are interested in altering the definition, or structure, of the table.

You can:

  • Add columns

  • Remove columns

  • Add constraints

  • Remove constraints

  • Change default values

  • Change column data types

  • Rename columns

  • Rename tables

All these actions are performed using the ALTER TABLE command, whose reference page contains details beyond those given here.

5.5.1. Adding a Column

To add a column, use a command like:

ALTER TABLE products ADD COLUMN description text;

The new column is initially filled with whatever default value is given (null if you don't specify a DEFAULT clause).

You can also define constraints on the column at the same time, using the usual syntax:

ALTER TABLE products ADD COLUMN description text CHECK (description <> '');

In fact all the options that can be applied to a column description in CREATE TABLE can be used here. Keep in mind however that the default value must satisfy the given constraints, or the ADD will fail. Alternatively, you can add constraints later (see below) after you've filled in the new column correctly.

Tip: Adding a column with a default requires updating each row of the table (to store the new column value). However, if no default is specified, PostgreSQL is able to avoid the physical update. So if you intend to fill the column with mostly nondefault values, it's best to add the column with no default, insert the correct values using UPDATE, and then add any desired default as described below.

5.5.2. Removing a Column

To remove a column, use a command like:

ALTER TABLE products DROP COLUMN description;

Whatever data was in the column disappears. Table constraints involving the column are dropped, too. However, if the column is referenced by a foreign key constraint of another table, PostgreSQL will not silently drop that constraint. You can authorize dropping everything that depends on the column by adding CASCADE:

ALTER TABLE products DROP COLUMN description CASCADE;

See Section 5.12 for a description of the general mechanism behind this.

5.5.3. Adding a Constraint

To add a constraint, the table constraint syntax is used. For example:

ALTER TABLE products ADD CHECK (name <> '');
ALTER TABLE products ADD CONSTRAINT some_name UNIQUE (product_no);
ALTER TABLE products ADD FOREIGN KEY (product_group_id) REFERENCES product_groups;

To add a not-null constraint, which cannot be written as a table constraint, use this syntax:

ALTER TABLE products ALTER COLUMN product_no SET NOT NULL;

The constraint will be checked immediately, so the table data must satisfy the constraint before it can be added.

5.5.4. Removing a Constraint

To remove a constraint you need to know its name. If you gave it a name then that's easy. Otherwise the system assigned a generated name, which you need to find out. The psql command \d tablename can be helpful here; other interfaces might also provide a way to inspect table details. Then the command is:

ALTER TABLE products DROP CONSTRAINT some_name;

(If you are dealing with a generated constraint name like $2, don't forget that you'll need to double-quote it to make it a valid identifier.)

As with dropping a column, you need to add CASCADE if you want to drop a constraint that something else depends on. An example is that a foreign key constraint depends on a unique or primary key constraint on the referenced column(s).

This works the same for all constraint types except not-null constraints. To drop a not null constraint use:

ALTER TABLE products ALTER COLUMN product_no DROP NOT NULL;

(Recall that not-null constraints do not have names.)

5.5.5. Changing a Column's Default Value

To set a new default for a column, use a command like:

ALTER TABLE products ALTER COLUMN price SET DEFAULT 7.77;

Note that this doesn't affect any existing rows in the table, it just changes the default for future INSERT commands.

To remove any default value, use:

ALTER TABLE products ALTER COLUMN price DROP DEFAULT;

This is effectively the same as setting the default to null. As a consequence, it is not an error to drop a default where one hadn't been defined, because the default is implicitly the null value.

5.5.6. Changing a Column's Data Type

To convert a column to a different data type, use a command like:

ALTER TABLE products ALTER COLUMN price TYPE numeric(10,2);

This will succeed only if each existing entry in the column can be converted to the new type by an implicit cast. If a more complex conversion is needed, you can add a USING clause that specifies how to compute the new values from the old.

PostgreSQL will attempt to convert the column's default value (if any) to the new type, as well as any constraints that involve the column. But these conversions might fail, or might produce surprising results. It's often best to drop any constraints on the column before altering its type, and then add back suitably modified constraints afterwards.

5.5.7. Renaming a Column

To rename a column:

ALTER TABLE products RENAME COLUMN product_no TO product_number;

5.5.8. Renaming a Table

To rename a table:

ALTER TABLE products RENAME TO items;

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System Columns | Up | Privileges


Privileges

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5.6. Privileges

When an object is created, it is assigned an owner. The owner is normally the role that executed the creation statement. For most kinds of objects, the initial state is that only the owner (or a superuser) can do anything with the object. To allow other roles to use it, privileges must be granted.

There are different kinds of privileges: SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, TRUNCATE, REFERENCES, TRIGGER, CREATE, CONNECT, TEMPORARY, EXECUTE, and USAGE. The privileges applicable to a particular object vary depending on the object's type (table, function, etc). For complete information on the different types of privileges supported by PostgreSQL, refer to the GRANT reference page. The following sections and chapters will also show you how those privileges are used.

The right to modify or destroy an object is always the privilege of the owner only.

An object can be assigned to a new owner with an ALTER command of the appropriate kind for the object, e.g. ALTER TABLE. Superusers can always do this; ordinary roles can only do it if they are both the current owner of the object (or a member of the owning role) and a member of the new owning role.

To assign privileges, the GRANT command is used. For example, if joe is an existing user, and accounts is an existing table, the privilege to update the table can be granted with:

GRANT UPDATE ON accounts TO joe;

Writing ALL in place of a specific privilege grants all privileges that are relevant for the object type.

The special "user" name PUBLIC can be used to grant a privilege to every user on the system. Also, "group" roles can be set up to help manage privileges when there are many users of a database — for details see Chapter 20.

To revoke a privilege, use the fittingly named REVOKE command:

REVOKE ALL ON accounts FROM PUBLIC;

The special privileges of the object owner (i.e., the right to do DROP, GRANT, REVOKE, etc.) are always implicit in being the owner, and cannot be granted or revoked. But the object owner can choose to revoke his own ordinary privileges, for example to make a table read-only for himself as well as others.

Ordinarily, only the object's owner (or a superuser) can grant or revoke privileges on an object. However, it is possible to grant a privilege "with grant option", which gives the recipient the right to grant it in turn to others. If the grant option is subsequently revoked then all who received the privilege from that recipient (directly or through a chain of grants) will lose the privilege. For details see the GRANT and REVOKE reference pages.

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Schemas

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5.7. Schemas

A PostgreSQL database cluster contains one or more named databases. Users and groups of users are shared across the entire cluster, but no other data is shared across databases. Any given client connection to the server can access only the data in a single database, the one specified in the connection request.

Note: Users of a cluster do not necessarily have the privilege to access every database in the cluster. Sharing of user names means that there cannot be different users named, say, joe in two databases in the same cluster; but the system can be configured to allow joe access to only some of the databases.

A database contains one or more named schemas, which in turn contain tables. Schemas also contain other kinds of named objects, including data types, functions, and operators. The same object name can be used in different schemas without conflict; for example, both schema1 and myschema can contain tables named mytable. Unlike databases, schemas are not rigidly separated: a user can access objects in any of the schemas in the database he is connected to, if he has privileges to do so.

There are several reasons why one might want to use schemas:

  • To allow many users to use one database without interfering with each other.

  • To organize database objects into logical groups to make them more manageable.

  • Third-party applications can be put into separate schemas so they do not collide with the names of other objects.

Schemas are analogous to directories at the operating system level, except that schemas cannot be nested.

5.7.1. Creating a Schema

To create a schema, use the CREATE SCHEMA command. Give the schema a name of your choice. For example:

CREATE SCHEMA myschema;

To create or access objects in a schema, write a qualified name consisting of the schema name and table name separated by a dot:

schema.table

This works anywhere a table name is expected, including the table modification commands and the data access commands discussed in the following chapters. (For brevity we will speak of tables only, but the same ideas apply to other kinds of named objects, such as types and functions.)

Actually, the even more general syntax

database.schema.table

can be used too, but at present this is just for pro forma compliance with the SQL standard. If you write a database name, it must be the same as the database you are connected to.

So to create a table in the new schema, use:

CREATE TABLE myschema.mytable (
 ...
);

To drop a schema if it's empty (all objects in it have been dropped), use:

DROP SCHEMA myschema;

To drop a schema including all contained objects, use:

DROP SCHEMA myschema CASCADE;

See Section 5.12 for a description of the general mechanism behind this.

Often you will want to create a schema owned by someone else (since this is one of the ways to restrict the activities of your users to well-defined namespaces). The syntax for that is:

CREATE SCHEMA schemaname AUTHORIZATION username;

You can even omit the schema name, in which case the schema name will be the same as the user name. See Section 5.7.6 for how this can be useful.

Schema names beginning with pg_ are reserved for system purposes and cannot be created by users.

5.7.2. The Public Schema

In the previous sections we created tables without specifying any schema names. By default such tables (and other objects) are automatically put into a schema named "public". Every new database contains such a schema. Thus, the following are equivalent:

CREATE TABLE products ( ... );

and:

CREATE TABLE public.products ( ... );

5.7.3. The Schema Search Path

Qualified names are tedious to write, and it's often best not to wire a particular schema name into applications anyway. Therefore tables are often referred to by unqualified names, which consist of just the table name. The system determines which table is meant by following a search path, which is a list of schemas to look in. The first matching table in the search path is taken to be the one wanted. If there is no match in the search path, an error is reported, even if matching table names exist in other schemas in the database.

The first schema named in the search path is called the current schema. Aside from being the first schema searched, it is also the schema in which new tables will be created if the CREATE TABLE command does not specify a schema name.

To show the current search path, use the following command:

SHOW search_path;

In the default setup this returns:

 search_path
--------------
 "$user",public

The first element specifies that a schema with the same name as the current user is to be searched. If no such schema exists, the entry is ignored. The second element refers to the public schema that we have seen already.

The first schema in the search path that exists is the default location for creating new objects. That is the reason that by default objects are created in the public schema. When objects are referenced in any other context without schema qualification (table modification, data modification, or query commands) the search path is traversed until a matching object is found. Therefore, in the default configuration, any unqualified access again can only refer to the public schema.

To put our new schema in the path, we use:

SET search_path TO myschema,public;

(We omit the $user here because we have no immediate need for it.) And then we can access the table without schema qualification:

DROP TABLE mytable;

Also, since myschema is the first element in the path, new objects would by default be created in it.

We could also have written:

SET search_path TO myschema;

Then we no longer have access to the public schema without explicit qualification. There is nothing special about the public schema except that it exists by default. It can be dropped, too.

See also Section 9.23 for other ways to manipulate the schema search path.

The search path works in the same way for data type names, function names, and operator names as it does for table names. Data type and function names can be qualified in exactly the same way as table names. If you need to write a qualified operator name in an expression, there is a special provision: you must write

OPERATOR(schema.operator)

This is needed to avoid syntactic ambiguity. An example is:

SELECT 3 OPERATOR(pg_catalog.+) 4;

In practice one usually relies on the search path for operators, so as not to have to write anything so ugly as that.

5.7.4. Schemas and Privileges

By default, users cannot access any objects in schemas they do not own. To allow that, the owner of the schema must grant the USAGE privilege on the schema. To allow users to make use of the objects in the schema, additional privileges might need to be granted, as appropriate for the object.

A user can also be allowed to create objects in someone else's schema. To allow that, the CREATE privilege on the schema needs to be granted. Note that by default, everyone has CREATE and USAGE privileges on the schema public. This allows all users that are able to connect to a given database to create objects in its public schema. If you do not want to allow that, you can revoke that privilege:

REVOKE CREATE ON SCHEMA public FROM PUBLIC;

(The first "public" is the schema, the second "public" means "every user". In the first sense it is an identifier, in the second sense it is a key word, hence the different capitalization; recall the guidelines from Section 4.1.1.)

5.7.5. The System Catalog Schema

In addition to public and user-created schemas, each database contains a pg_catalog schema, which contains the system tables and all the built-in data types, functions, and operators. pg_catalog is always effectively part of the search path. If it is not named explicitly in the path then it is implicitly searched before searching the path's schemas. This ensures that built-in names will always be findable. However, you can explicitly place pg_catalog at the end of your search path if you prefer to have user-defined names override built-in names.

In PostgreSQL versions before 7.3, table names beginning with pg_ were reserved. This is no longer true: you can create such a table name if you wish, in any non-system schema. However, it's best to continue to avoid such names, to ensure that you won't suffer a conflict if some future version defines a system table named the same as your table. (With the default search path, an unqualified reference to your table name would then be resolved as the system table instead.) System tables will continue to follow the convention of having names beginning with pg_, so that they will not conflict with unqualified user-table names so long as users avoid the pg_ prefix.

5.7.6. Usage Patterns

Schemas can be used to organize your data in many ways. There are a few usage patterns that are recommended and are easily supported by the default configuration:

  • If you do not create any schemas then all users access the public schema implicitly. This simulates the situation where schemas are not available at all. This setup is mainly recommended when there is only a single user or a few cooperating users in a database. This setup also allows smooth transition from the non-schema-aware world.

  • You can create a schema for each user with the same name as that user. Recall that the default search path starts with $user, which resolves to the user name. Therefore, if each user has a separate schema, they access their own schemas by default.

    If you use this setup then you might also want to revoke access to the public schema (or drop it altogether), so users are truly constrained to their own schemas.

  • To install shared applications (tables to be used by everyone, additional functions provided by third parties, etc.), put them into separate schemas. Remember to grant appropriate privileges to allow the other users to access them. Users can then refer to these additional objects by qualifying the names with a schema name, or they can put the additional schemas into their search path, as they choose.

5.7.7. Portability

In the SQL standard, the notion of objects in the same schema being owned by different users does not exist. Moreover, some implementations do not allow you to create schemas that have a different name than their owner. In fact, the concepts of schema and user are nearly equivalent in a database system that implements only the basic schema support specified in the standard. Therefore, many users consider qualified names to really consist of username.tablename. This is how PostgreSQL will effectively behave if you create a per-user schema for every user.

Also, there is no concept of a public schema in the SQL standard. For maximum conformance to the standard, you should not use (perhaps even remove) the public schema.

Of course, some SQL database systems might not implement schemas at all, or provide namespace support by allowing (possibly limited) cross-database access. If you need to work with those systems, then maximum portability would be achieved by not using schemas at all.

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Inheritance

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5.8. Inheritance

PostgreSQL implements table inheritance, which can be a useful tool for database designers. (SQL:1999 and later define a type inheritance feature, which differs in many respects from the features described here.)

Let's start with an example: suppose we are trying to build a data model for cities. Each state has many cities, but only one capital. We want to be able to quickly retrieve the capital city for any particular state. This can be done by creating two tables, one for state capitals and one for cities that are not capitals. However, what happens when we want to ask for data about a city, regardless of whether it is a capital or not? The inheritance feature can help to resolve this problem. We define the capitals table so that it inherits from cities:

CREATE TABLE cities (
    name            text,
    population      float,
    altitude        int     -- in feet
);

CREATE TABLE capitals (
    state           char(2)
) INHERITS (cities);

In this case, the capitals table inherits all the columns of its parent table, cities. State capitals also have an extra column, state, that shows their state.

In PostgreSQL, a table can inherit from zero or more other tables, and a query can reference either all rows of a table or all rows of a table plus all of its descendant tables. The latter behavior is the default. For example, the following query finds the names of all cities, including state capitals, that are located at an altitude over 500 feet:

SELECT name, altitude
    FROM cities
    WHERE altitude > 500;

Given the sample data from the PostgreSQL tutorial (see Section 2.1), this returns:

   name    | altitude
-----------+----------
 Las Vegas |     2174
 Mariposa  |     1953
 Madison   |      845

On the other hand, the following query finds all the cities that are not state capitals and are situated at an altitude over 500 feet:

SELECT name, altitude
    FROM ONLY cities
    WHERE altitude > 500;

   name    | altitude
-----------+----------
 Las Vegas |     2174
 Mariposa  |     1953

Here the ONLY keyword indicates that the query should apply only to cities, and not any tables below cities in the inheritance hierarchy. Many of the commands that we have already discussed — SELECT, UPDATE and DELETE — support the ONLY keyword.

You can also write the table name with a trailing * to explicitly specify that descendant tables are included:

SELECT name, altitude
    FROM cities*
    WHERE altitude > 500;

Writing * is not necessary, since this behavior is the default (unless you have changed the setting of the sql_inheritance configuration option). However writing * might be useful to emphasize that additional tables will be searched.

In some cases you might wish to know which table a particular row originated from. There is a system column called tableoid in each table which can tell you the originating table:

SELECT c.tableoid, c.name, c.altitude
FROM cities c
WHERE c.altitude > 500;

which returns:

 tableoid |   name    | altitude
----------+-----------+----------
   139793 | Las Vegas |     2174
   139793 | Mariposa  |     1953
   139798 | Madison   |      845

(If you try to reproduce this example, you will probably get different numeric OIDs.) By doing a join with pg_class you can see the actual table names:

SELECT p.relname, c.name, c.altitude
FROM cities c, pg_class p
WHERE c.altitude > 500 AND c.tableoid = p.oid;

which returns:

 relname  |   name    | altitude
----------+-----------+----------
 cities   | Las Vegas |     2174
 cities   | Mariposa  |     1953
 capitals | Madison   |      845

Inheritance does not automatically propagate data from INSERT or COPY commands to other tables in the inheritance hierarchy. In our example, the following INSERT statement will fail:

INSERT INTO cities (name, population, altitude, state)
VALUES ('New York', NULL, NULL, 'NY');

We might hope that the data would somehow be routed to the capitals table, but this does not happen: INSERT always inserts into exactly the table specified. In some cases it is possible to redirect the insertion using a rule (see Chapter 37). However that does not help for the above case because the cities table does not contain the column state, and so the command will be rejected before the rule can be applied.

All check constraints and not-null constraints on a parent table are automatically inherited by its children. Other types of constraints (unique, primary key, and foreign key constraints) are not inherited.

A table can inherit from more than one parent table, in which case it has the union of the columns defined by the parent tables. Any columns declared in the child table's definition are added to these. If the same column name appears in multiple parent tables, or in both a parent table and the child's definition, then these columns are "merged" so that there is only one such column in the child table. To be merged, columns must have the same data types, else an error is raised. The merged column will have copies of all the check constraints coming from any one of the column definitions it came from, and will be marked not-null if any of them are.

Table inheritance is typically established when the child table is created, using the INHERITS clause of the CREATE TABLE statement. Alternatively, a table which is already defined in a compatible way can have a new parent relationship added, using the INHERIT variant of ALTER TABLE. To do this the new child table must already include columns with the same names and types as the columns of the parent. It must also include check constraints with the same names and check expressions as those of the parent. Similarly an inheritance link can be removed from a child using the NO INHERIT variant of ALTER TABLE. Dynamically adding and removing inheritance links like this can be useful when the inheritance relationship is being used for table partitioning (see Section 5.9).

One convenient way to create a compatible table that will later be made a new child is to use the LIKE clause in CREATE TABLE. This creates a new table with the same columns as the source table. If there are any CHECK constraints defined on the source table, the INCLUDING CONSTRAINTS option to LIKE should be specified, as the new child must have constraints matching the parent to be considered compatible.

A parent table cannot be dropped while any of its children remain. Neither can columns or check constraints of child tables be dropped or altered if they are inherited from any parent tables. If you wish to remove a table and all of its descendants, one easy way is to drop the parent table with the CASCADE option.

ALTER TABLE will propagate any changes in column data definitions and check constraints down the inheritance hierarchy. Again, dropping columns that are depended on by other tables is only possible when using the CASCADE option. ALTER TABLE follows the same rules for duplicate column merging and rejection that apply during CREATE TABLE.

Note how table access permissions are handled. Querying a parent table can automatically access data in child tables without further access privilege checking. This preserves the appearance that the data is (also) in the parent table. Accessing the child tables directly is, however, not automatically allowed and would require further privileges to be granted.

5.8.1. Caveats

Note that not all SQL commands are able to work on inheritance hierarchies. Commands that are used for data querying, data modification, or schema modification (e.g., SELECT, UPDATE, DELETE, most variants of ALTER TABLE, but not INSERT or ALTER TABLE ... RENAME) typically default to including child tables and support the ONLY notation to exclude them. Commands that do database maintenance and tuning (e.g., REINDEX, VACUUM) typically only work on individual, physical tables and do not support recursing over inheritance hierarchies. The respective behavior of each individual command is documented in its reference page (Reference I, SQL Commands).

A serious limitation of the inheritance feature is that indexes (including unique constraints) and foreign key constraints only apply to single tables, not to their inheritance children. This is true on both the referencing and referenced sides of a foreign key constraint. Thus, in the terms of the above example:

  • If we declared cities.name to be UNIQUE or a PRIMARY KEY, this would not stop the capitals table from having rows with names duplicating rows in cities. And those duplicate rows would by default show up in queries from cities. In fact, by default capitals would have no unique constraint at all, and so could contain multiple rows with the same name. You could add a unique constraint to capitals, but this would not prevent duplication compared to cities.

  • Similarly, if we were to specify that cities.name REFERENCES some other table, this constraint would not automatically propagate to capitals. In this case you could work around it by manually adding the same REFERENCES constraint to capitals.

  • Specifying that another table's column REFERENCES cities(name) would allow the other table to contain city names, but not capital names. There is no good workaround for this case.

These deficiencies will probably be fixed in some future release, but in the meantime considerable care is needed in deciding whether inheritance is useful for your application.

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Partitioning

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5.9. Partitioning

PostgreSQL supports basic table partitioning. This section describes why and how to implement partitioning as part of your database design.

5.9.1. Overview

Partitioning refers to splitting what is logically one large table into smaller physical pieces. Partitioning can provide several benefits:

  • Query performance can be improved dramatically in certain situations, particularly when most of the heavily accessed rows of the table are in a single partition or a small number of partitions. The partitioning substitutes for leading columns of indexes, reducing index size and making it more likely that the heavily-used parts of the indexes fit in memory.

  • When queries or updates access a large percentage of a single partition, performance can be improved by taking advantage of sequential scan of that partition instead of using an index and random access reads scattered across the whole table.

  • Bulk loads and deletes can be accomplished by adding or removing partitions, if that requirement is planned into the partitioning design. ALTER TABLE NO INHERIT and DROP TABLE are both far faster than a bulk operation. These commands also entirely avoid the VACUUM overhead caused by a bulk DELETE.

  • Seldom-used data can be migrated to cheaper and slower storage media.

The benefits will normally be worthwhile only when a table would otherwise be very large. The exact point at which a table will benefit from partitioning depends on the application, although a rule of thumb is that the size of the table should exceed the physical memory of the database server.

Currently, PostgreSQL supports partitioning via table inheritance. Each partition must be created as a child table of a single parent table. The parent table itself is normally empty; it exists just to represent the entire data set. You should be familiar with inheritance (see Section 5.8) before attempting to set up partitioning.

The following forms of partitioning can be implemented in PostgreSQL:

Range Partitioning

The table is partitioned into "ranges" defined by a key column or set of columns, with no overlap between the ranges of values assigned to different partitions. For example one might partition by date ranges, or by ranges of identifiers for particular business objects.

List Partitioning

The table is partitioned by explicitly listing which key values appear in each partition.

5.9.2. Implementing Partitioning

To set up a partitioned table, do the following:

  1. Create the "master" table, from which all of the partitions will inherit.

    This table will contain no data. Do not define any check constraints on this table, unless you intend them to be applied equally to all partitions. There is no point in defining any indexes or unique constraints on it, either.

  2. Create several "child" tables that each inherit from the master table. Normally, these tables will not add any columns to the set inherited from the master.

    We will refer to the child tables as partitions, though they are in every way normal PostgreSQL tables.

  3. Add table constraints to the partition tables to define the allowed key values in each partition.

    Typical examples would be:

    CHECK ( x = 1 )
CHECK ( county IN ( 'Oxfordshire', 'Buckinghamshire', 'Warwickshire' ))
CHECK ( outletID >= 100 AND outletID < 200 )

    Ensure that the constraints guarantee that there is no overlap between the key values permitted in different partitions. A common mistake is to set up range constraints like:

    CHECK ( outletID BETWEEN 100 AND 200 )
CHECK ( outletID BETWEEN 200 AND 300 )

    This is wrong since it is not clear which partition the key value 200 belongs in.

    Note that there is no difference in syntax between range and list partitioning; those terms are descriptive only.

  4. For each partition, create an index on the key column(s), as well as any other indexes you might want. (The key index is not strictly necessary, but in most scenarios it is helpful. If you intend the key values to be unique then you should always create a unique or primary-key constraint for each partition.)

  5. Optionally, define a trigger or rule to redirect data inserted into the master table to the appropriate partition.

  6. Ensure that the constraint_exclusion configuration parameter is not disabled in postgresql.conf. If it is, queries will not be optimized as desired.

For example, suppose we are constructing a database for a large ice cream company. The company measures peak temperatures every day as well as ice cream sales in each region. Conceptually, we want a table like:

CREATE TABLE measurement (
    city_id         int not null,
    logdate         date not null,
    peaktemp        int,
    unitsales       int
);

We know that most queries will access just the last week's, month's or quarter's data, since the main use of this table will be to prepare online reports for management. To reduce the amount of old data that needs to be stored, we decide to only keep the most recent 3 years worth of data. At the beginning of each month we will remove the oldest month's data.

In this situation we can use partitioning to help us meet all of our different requirements for the measurements table. Following the steps outlined above, partitioning can be set up as follows:

  1. The master table is the measurement table, declared exactly as above.

  2. Next we create one partition for each active month:

    CREATE TABLE measurement_y2006m02 ( ) INHERITS (measurement);
CREATE TABLE measurement_y2006m03 ( ) INHERITS (measurement);
...
CREATE TABLE measurement_y2007m11 ( ) INHERITS (measurement);
CREATE TABLE measurement_y2007m12 ( ) INHERITS (measurement);
CREATE TABLE measurement_y2008m01 ( ) INHERITS (measurement);

    Each of the partitions are complete tables in their own right, but they inherit their definitions from the measurement table.

    This solves one of our problems: deleting old data. Each month, all we will need to do is perform a DROP TABLE on the oldest child table and create a new child table for the new month's data.

  3. We must provide non-overlapping table constraints. Rather than just creating the partition tables as above, the table creation script should really be:

    CREATE TABLE measurement_y2006m02 (
    CHECK ( logdate >= DATE '2006-02-01' AND logdate < DATE '2006-03-01' )
) INHERITS (measurement);
CREATE TABLE measurement_y2006m03 (
    CHECK ( logdate >= DATE '2006-03-01' AND logdate < DATE '2006-04-01' )
) INHERITS (measurement);
...
CREATE TABLE measurement_y2007m11 (
    CHECK ( logdate >= DATE '2007-11-01' AND logdate < DATE '2007-12-01' )
) INHERITS (measurement);
CREATE TABLE measurement_y2007m12 (
    CHECK ( logdate >= DATE '2007-12-01' AND logdate < DATE '2008-01-01' )
) INHERITS (measurement);
CREATE TABLE measurement_y2008m01 (
    CHECK ( logdate >= DATE '2008-01-01' AND logdate < DATE '2008-02-01' )
) INHERITS (measurement);

  4. We probably need indexes on the key columns too:

    CREATE INDEX measurement_y2006m02_logdate ON measurement_y2006m02 (logdate);
CREATE INDEX measurement_y2006m03_logdate ON measurement_y2006m03 (logdate);
...
CREATE INDEX measurement_y2007m11_logdate ON measurement_y2007m11 (logdate);
CREATE INDEX measurement_y2007m12_logdate ON measurement_y2007m12 (logdate);
CREATE INDEX measurement_y2008m01_logdate ON measurement_y2008m01 (logdate);

    We choose not to add further indexes at this time.

  5. We want our application to be able to say INSERT INTO measurement ... and have the data be redirected into the appropriate partition table. We can arrange that by attaching a suitable trigger function to the master table. If data will be added only to the latest partition, we can use a very simple trigger function:

    CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION measurement_insert_trigger()
RETURNS TRIGGER AS $$
BEGIN
    INSERT INTO measurement_y2008m01 VALUES (NEW.*);
    RETURN NULL;
END;
$$
LANGUAGE plpgsql;

    After creating the function, we create a trigger which calls the trigger function:

    CREATE TRIGGER insert_measurement_trigger
    BEFORE INSERT ON measurement
    FOR EACH ROW EXECUTE PROCEDURE measurement_insert_trigger();

    We must redefine the trigger function each month so that it always points to the current partition. The trigger definition does not need to be updated, however.

    We might want to insert data and have the server automatically locate the partition into which the row should be added. We could do this with a more complex trigger function, for example:

    CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION measurement_insert_trigger()
RETURNS TRIGGER AS $$
BEGIN
    IF ( NEW.logdate >= DATE '2006-02-01' AND
         NEW.logdate < DATE '2006-03-01' ) THEN
        INSERT INTO measurement_y2006m02 VALUES (NEW.*);
    ELSIF ( NEW.logdate >= DATE '2006-03-01' AND
            NEW.logdate < DATE '2006-04-01' ) THEN
        INSERT INTO measurement_y2006m03 VALUES (NEW.*);
    ...
    ELSIF ( NEW.logdate >= DATE '2008-01-01' AND
            NEW.logdate < DATE '2008-02-01' ) THEN
        INSERT INTO measurement_y2008m01 VALUES (NEW.*);
    ELSE
        RAISE EXCEPTION 'Date out of range.  Fix the measurement_insert_trigger() function!';
    END IF;
    RETURN NULL;
END;
$$
LANGUAGE plpgsql;

    The trigger definition is the same as before. Note that each IF test must exactly match the CHECK constraint for its partition.

    While this function is more complex than the single-month case, it doesn't need to be updated as often, since branches can be added in advance of being needed.

    Note: In practice it might be best to check the newest partition first, if most inserts go into that partition. For simplicity we have shown the trigger's tests in the same order as in other parts of this example.

As we can see, a complex partitioning scheme could require a substantial amount of DDL. In the above example we would be creating a new partition each month, so it might be wise to write a script that generates the required DDL automatically.

5.9.3. Managing Partitions

Normally the set of partitions established when initially defining the table are not intended to remain static. It is common to want to remove old partitions of data and periodically add new partitions for new data. One of the most important advantages of partitioning is precisely that it allows this otherwise painful task to be executed nearly instantaneously by manipulating the partition structure, rather than physically moving large amounts of data around.

The simplest option for removing old data is simply to drop the partition that is no longer necessary:

DROP TABLE measurement_y2006m02;

This can very quickly delete millions of records because it doesn't have to individually delete every record.

Another option that is often preferable is to remove the partition from the partitioned table but retain access to it as a table in its own right:

ALTER TABLE measurement_y2006m02 NO INHERIT measurement;

This allows further operations to be performed on the data before it is dropped. For example, this is often a useful time to back up the data using COPY, pg_dump, or similar tools. It might also be a useful time to aggregate data into smaller formats, perform other data manipulations, or run reports.

Similarly we can add a new partition to handle new data. We can create an empty partition in the partitioned table just as the original partitions were created above:

CREATE TABLE measurement_y2008m02 (
    CHECK ( logdate >= DATE '2008-02-01' AND logdate < DATE '2008-03-01' )
) INHERITS (measurement);

As an alternative, it is sometimes more convenient to create the new table outside the partition structure, and make it a proper partition later. This allows the data to be loaded, checked, and transformed prior to it appearing in the partitioned table:

CREATE TABLE measurement_y2008m02
  (LIKE measurement INCLUDING DEFAULTS INCLUDING CONSTRAINTS);
ALTER TABLE measurement_y2008m02 ADD CONSTRAINT y2008m02
   CHECK ( logdate >= DATE '2008-02-01' AND logdate < DATE '2008-03-01' );
\copy measurement_y2008m02 from 'measurement_y2008m02'
-- possibly some other data preparation work
ALTER TABLE measurement_y2008m02 INHERIT measurement;

5.9.4. Partitioning and Constraint Exclusion

Constraint exclusion is a query optimization technique that improves performance for partitioned tables defined in the fashion described above. As an example:

SET constraint_exclusion = on;
SELECT count(*) FROM measurement WHERE logdate >= DATE '2008-01-01';

Without constraint exclusion, the above query would scan each of the partitions of the measurement table. With constraint exclusion enabled, the planner will examine the constraints of each partition and try to prove that the partition need not be scanned because it could not contain any rows meeting the query's WHERE clause. When the planner can prove this, it excludes the partition from the query plan.

You can use the EXPLAIN command to show the difference between a plan with constraint_exclusion on and a plan with it off. A typical unoptimized plan for this type of table setup is:

SET constraint_exclusion = off;
EXPLAIN SELECT count(*) FROM measurement WHERE logdate >= DATE '2008-01-01';

                                          QUERY PLAN
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Aggregate  (cost=158.66..158.68 rows=1 width=0)
   ->  Append  (cost=0.00..151.88 rows=2715 width=0)
         ->  Seq Scan on measurement  (cost=0.00..30.38 rows=543 width=0)
               Filter: (logdate >= '2008-01-01'::date)
         ->  Seq Scan on measurement_y2006m02 measurement  (cost=0.00..30.38 rows=543 width=0)
               Filter: (logdate >= '2008-01-01'::date)
         ->  Seq Scan on measurement_y2006m03 measurement  (cost=0.00..30.38 rows=543 width=0)
               Filter: (logdate >= '2008-01-01'::date)
...
         ->  Seq Scan on measurement_y2007m12 measurement  (cost=0.00..30.38 rows=543 width=0)
               Filter: (logdate >= '2008-01-01'::date)
         ->  Seq Scan on measurement_y2008m01 measurement  (cost=0.00..30.38 rows=543 width=0)
               Filter: (logdate >= '2008-01-01'::date)

Some or all of the partitions might use index scans instead of full-table sequential scans, but the point here is that there is no need to scan the older partitions at all to answer this query. When we enable constraint exclusion, we get a significantly cheaper plan that will deliver the same answer:

SET constraint_exclusion = on;
EXPLAIN SELECT count(*) FROM measurement WHERE logdate >= DATE '2008-01-01';
                                          QUERY PLAN
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Aggregate  (cost=63.47..63.48 rows=1 width=0)
   ->  Append  (cost=0.00..60.75 rows=1086 width=0)
         ->  Seq Scan on measurement  (cost=0.00..30.38 rows=543 width=0)
               Filter: (logdate >= '2008-01-01'::date)
         ->  Seq Scan on measurement_y2008m01 measurement  (cost=0.00..30.38 rows=543 width=0)
               Filter: (logdate >= '2008-01-01'::date)

Note that constraint exclusion is driven only by CHECK constraints, not by the presence of indexes. Therefore it isn't necessary to define indexes on the key columns. Whether an index needs to be created for a given partition depends on whether you expect that queries that scan the partition will generally scan a large part of the partition or just a small part. An index will be helpful in the latter case but not the former.

The default (and recommended) setting of constraint_exclusion is actually neither on nor off, but an intermediate setting called partition, which causes the technique to be applied only to queries that are likely to be working on partitioned tables. The on setting causes the planner to examine CHECK constraints in all queries, even simple ones that are unlikely to benefit.

5.9.5. Alternative Partitioning Methods

A different approach to redirecting inserts into the appropriate partition table is to set up rules, instead of a trigger, on the master table. For example:

CREATE RULE measurement_insert_y2006m02 AS
ON INSERT TO measurement WHERE
    ( logdate >= DATE '2006-02-01' AND logdate < DATE '2006-03-01' )
DO INSTEAD
    INSERT INTO measurement_y2006m02 VALUES (NEW.*);
...
CREATE RULE measurement_insert_y2008m01 AS
ON INSERT TO measurement WHERE
    ( logdate >= DATE '2008-01-01' AND logdate < DATE '2008-02-01' )
DO INSTEAD
    INSERT INTO measurement_y2008m01 VALUES (NEW.*);

A rule has significantly more overhead than a trigger, but the overhead is paid once per query rather than once per row, so this method might be advantageous for bulk-insert situations. In most cases, however, the trigger method will offer better performance.

Be aware that COPY ignores rules. If you want to use COPY to insert data, you'll need to copy into the correct partition table rather than into the master. COPY does fire triggers, so you can use it normally if you use the trigger approach.

Another disadvantage of the rule approach is that there is no simple way to force an error if the set of rules doesn't cover the insertion date; the data will silently go into the master table instead.

Partitioning can also be arranged using a UNION ALL view, instead of table inheritance. For example,

CREATE VIEW measurement AS
          SELECT * FROM measurement_y2006m02
UNION ALL SELECT * FROM measurement_y2006m03
...
UNION ALL SELECT * FROM measurement_y2007m11
UNION ALL SELECT * FROM measurement_y2007m12
UNION ALL SELECT * FROM measurement_y2008m01;

However, the need to recreate the view adds an extra step to adding and dropping individual partitions of the data set. In practice this method has little to recommend it compared to using inheritance.

5.9.6. Caveats

The following caveats apply to partitioned tables:

  • There is no automatic way to verify that all of the CHECK constraints are mutually exclusive. It is safer to create code that generates partitions and creates and/or modifies associated objects than to write each by hand.

  • The schemes shown here assume that the partition key column(s) of a row never change, or at least do not change enough to require it to move to another partition. An UPDATE that attempts to do that will fail because of the CHECK constraints. If you need to handle such cases, you can put suitable update triggers on the partition tables, but it makes management of the structure much more complicated.

  • If you are using manual VACUUM or ANALYZE commands, don't forget that you need to run them on each partition individually. A command like:

    ANALYZE measurement;

    will only process the master table.

The following caveats apply to constraint exclusion:

  • Constraint exclusion only works when the query's WHERE clause contains constants. A parameterized query will not be optimized, since the planner cannot know which partitions the parameter value might select at run time. For the same reason, "stable" functions such as CURRENT_DATE must be avoided.

  • Keep the partitioning constraints simple, else the planner may not be able to prove that partitions don't need to be visited. Use simple equality conditions for list partitioning, or simple range tests for range partitioning, as illustrated in the preceding examples. A good rule of thumb is that partitioning constraints should contain only comparisons of the partitioning column(s) to constants using B-tree-indexable operators.

  • All constraints on all partitions of the master table are examined during constraint exclusion, so large numbers of partitions are likely to increase query planning time considerably. Partitioning using these techniques will work well with up to perhaps a hundred partitions; don't try to use many thousands of partitions.

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Foreign Data

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5.10. Foreign Data

PostgreSQL implements portions of the SQL/MED specification, allowing you to access data that resides outside PostgreSQL using regular SQL queries. Such data is referred to as foreign data. (Note that this usage is not to be confused with foreign keys, which are a type of constraint within the database.)

Foreign data is accessed with help from a foreign data wrapper. A foreign data wrapper is a library that can communicate with an external data source, hiding the details of connecting to the data source and fetching data from it. There is a foreign data wrapper available as a contrib module, which can read plain data files residing on the server. Other kind of foreign data wrappers might be found as third party products. If none of the existing foreign data wrappers suit your needs, you can write your own; see Chapter 50.

To access foreign data, you need to create a foreign server object, which defines how to connect to a particular external data source, according to the set of options used by a particular foreign data wrapper. Then you need to create one or more foreign tables, which define the structure of the remote data. A foreign table can be used in queries just like a normal table, but a foreign table has no storage in the PostgreSQL server. Whenever it is used, PostgreSQL asks the foreign data wrapper to fetch the data from the external source.

Accessing remote data may require authentication at the external data source. This information can be provided by a user mapping, which can provide additional options based on the current PostgreSQL role.

Currently, foreign tables are read-only. This limitation may be fixed in a future release.

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Other Database Objects

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5.11. Other Database Objects

Tables are the central objects in a relational database structure, because they hold your data. But they are not the only objects that exist in a database. Many other kinds of objects can be created to make the use and management of the data more efficient or convenient. They are not discussed in this chapter, but we give you a list here so that you are aware of what is possible:

  • Views

  • Functions and operators

  • Data types and domains

  • Triggers and rewrite rules

Detailed information on these topics appears in Part V.

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Dependency Tracking

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5.12. Dependency Tracking

When you create complex database structures involving many tables with foreign key constraints, views, triggers, functions, etc. you implicitly create a net of dependencies between the objects. For instance, a table with a foreign key constraint depends on the table it references.

To ensure the integrity of the entire database structure, PostgreSQL makes sure that you cannot drop objects that other objects still depend on. For example, attempting to drop the products table we had considered in Section 5.3.5, with the orders table depending on it, would result in an error message such as this:

DROP TABLE products;

NOTICE:  constraint orders_product_no_fkey on table orders depends on table products
ERROR:  cannot drop table products because other objects depend on it
HINT:  Use DROP ... CASCADE to drop the dependent objects too.

The error message contains a useful hint: if you do not want to bother deleting all the dependent objects individually, you can run:

DROP TABLE products CASCADE;

and all the dependent objects will be removed. In this case, it doesn't remove the orders table, it only removes the foreign key constraint. (If you want to check what DROP ... CASCADE will do, run DROP without CASCADE and read the NOTICE messages.)

All drop commands in PostgreSQL support specifying CASCADE. Of course, the nature of the possible dependencies varies with the type of the object. You can also write RESTRICT instead of CASCADE to get the default behavior, which is to prevent the dropping of objects that other objects depend on.

Note: According to the SQL standard, specifying either RESTRICT or CASCADE is required. No database system actually enforces that rule, but whether the default behavior is RESTRICT or CASCADE varies across systems.

Note: Foreign key constraint dependencies and serial column dependencies from PostgreSQL versions prior to 7.3 are not maintained or created during the upgrade process. All other dependency types will be properly created during an upgrade from a pre-7.3 database.

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Data Manipulation

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Chapter 6. Data Manipulation

Table of Contents
6.1. Inserting Data
6.2. Updating Data
6.3. Deleting Data

The previous chapter discussed how to create tables and other structures to hold your data. Now it is time to fill the tables with data. This chapter covers how to insert, update, and delete table data. The chapter after this will finally explain how to extract your long-lost data from the database.

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Inserting Data

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6.1. Inserting Data

When a table is created, it contains no data. The first thing to do before a database can be of much use is to insert data. Data is conceptually inserted one row at a time. Of course you can also insert more than one row, but there is no way to insert less than one row. Even if you know only some column values, a complete row must be created.

To create a new row, use the INSERT command. The command requires the table name and column values. For example, consider the products table from Chapter 5:

CREATE TABLE products (
    product_no integer,
    name text,
    price numeric
);

An example command to insert a row would be:

INSERT INTO products VALUES (1, 'Cheese', 9.99);

The data values are listed in the order in which the columns appear in the table, separated by commas. Usually, the data values will be literals (constants), but scalar expressions are also allowed.

The above syntax has the drawback that you need to know the order of the columns in the table. To avoid this you can also list the columns explicitly. For example, both of the following commands have the same effect as the one above:

INSERT INTO products (product_no, name, price) VALUES (1, 'Cheese', 9.99);
INSERT INTO products (name, price, product_no) VALUES ('Cheese', 9.99, 1);

Many users consider it good practice to always list the column names.

If you don't have values for all the columns, you can omit some of them. In that case, the columns will be filled with their default values. For example:

INSERT INTO products (product_no, name) VALUES (1, 'Cheese');
INSERT INTO products VALUES (1, 'Cheese');

The second form is a PostgreSQL extension. It fills the columns from the left with as many values as are given, and the rest will be defaulted.

For clarity, you can also request default values explicitly, for individual columns or for the entire row:

INSERT INTO products (product_no, name, price) VALUES (1, 'Cheese', DEFAULT);
INSERT INTO products DEFAULT VALUES;

You can insert multiple rows in a single command:

INSERT INTO products (product_no, name, price) VALUES
    (1, 'Cheese', 9.99),
    (2, 'Bread', 1.99),
    (3, 'Milk', 2.99);

Tip: When inserting a lot of data at the same time, considering using the COPY command. It is not as flexible as the INSERT command, but is more efficient. Refer to Section 14.4 for more information on improving bulk loading performance.

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Updating Data

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6.2. Updating Data

The modification of data that is already in the database is referred to as updating. You can update individual rows, all the rows in a table, or a subset of all rows. Each column can be updated separately; the other columns are not affected.

To update existing rows, use the UPDATE command. This requires three pieces of information:

  1. The name of the table and column to update

  2. The new value of the column

  3. Which row(s) to update

Recall from Chapter 5 that SQL does not, in general, provide a unique identifier for rows. Therefore it is not always possible to directly specify which row to update. Instead, you specify which conditions a row must meet in order to be updated. Only if you have a primary key in the table (independent of whether you declared it or not) can you reliably address individual rows by choosing a condition that matches the primary key. Graphical database access tools rely on this fact to allow you to update rows individually.

For example, this command updates all products that have a price of 5 to have a price of 10:

UPDATE products SET price = 10 WHERE price = 5;

This might cause zero, one, or many rows to be updated. It is not an error to attempt an update that does not match any rows.

Let's look at that command in detail. First is the key word UPDATE followed by the table name. As usual, the table name can be schema-qualified, otherwise it is looked up in the path. Next is the key word SET followed by the column name, an equal sign, and the new column value. The new column value can be any scalar expression, not just a constant. For example, if you want to raise the price of all products by 10% you could use:

UPDATE products SET price = price * 1.10;

As you see, the expression for the new value can refer to the existing value(s) in the row. We also left out the WHERE clause. If it is omitted, it means that all rows in the table are updated. If it is present, only those rows that match the WHERE condition are updated. Note that the equals sign in the SET clause is an assignment while the one in the WHERE clause is a comparison, but this does not create any ambiguity. Of course, the WHERE condition does not have to be an equality test. Many other operators are available (see Chapter 9). But the expression needs to evaluate to a Boolean result.

You can update more than one column in an UPDATE command by listing more than one assignment in the SET clause. For example:

UPDATE mytable SET a = 5, b = 3, c = 1 WHERE a > 0;

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Deleting Data

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6.3. Deleting Data

So far we have explained how to add data to tables and how to change data. What remains is to discuss how to remove data that is no longer needed. Just as adding data is only possible in whole rows, you can only remove entire rows from a table. In the previous section we explained that SQL does not provide a way to directly address individual rows. Therefore, removing rows can only be done by specifying conditions that the rows to be removed have to match. If you have a primary key in the table then you can specify the exact row. But you can also remove groups of rows matching a condition, or you can remove all rows in the table at once.

You use the DELETE command to remove rows; the syntax is very similar to the UPDATE command. For instance, to remove all rows from the products table that have a price of 10, use:

DELETE FROM products WHERE price = 10;

If you simply write:

DELETE FROM products;

then all rows in the table will be deleted! Caveat programmer.

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Queries

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Chapter 7. Queries

Table of Contents
7.1. Overview
7.2. Table Expressions
7.2.1. The FROM Clause
7.2.2. The WHERE Clause
7.2.3. The GROUP BY and HAVING Clauses
7.2.4. Window Function Processing
7.3. Select Lists
7.3.1. Select-List Items
7.3.2. Column Labels
7.3.3. DISTINCT
7.4. Combining Queries
7.5. Sorting Rows
7.6. LIMIT and OFFSET
7.7. VALUES Lists
7.8. WITH Queries (Common Table Expressions)
7.8.1. SELECT in WITH
7.8.2. Data-Modifying Statements in WITH

The previous chapters explained how to create tables, how to fill them with data, and how to manipulate that data. Now we finally discuss how to retrieve the data from the database.

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Overview

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7.1. Overview

The process of retrieving or the command to retrieve data from a database is called a query. In SQL the SELECT command is used to specify queries. The general syntax of the SELECT command is

[WITH with_queries] SELECT select_list FROM table_expression [sort_specification]

The following sections describe the details of the select list, the table expression, and the sort specification. WITH queries are treated last since they are an advanced feature.

A simple kind of query has the form:

SELECT * FROM table1;

Assuming that there is a table called table1, this command would retrieve all rows and all columns from table1. (The method of retrieval depends on the client application. For example, the psql program will display an ASCII-art table on the screen, while client libraries will offer functions to extract individual values from the query result.) The select list specification * means all columns that the table expression happens to provide. A select list can also select a subset of the available columns or make calculations using the columns. For example, if table1 has columns named a, b, and c (and perhaps others) you can make the following query:

SELECT a, b + c FROM table1;

(assuming that b and c are of a numerical data type). See Section 7.3 for more details.

FROM table1 is a simple kind of table expression: it reads just one table. In general, table expressions can be complex constructs of base tables, joins, and subqueries. But you can also omit the table expression entirely and use the SELECT command as a calculator:

SELECT 3 * 4;

This is more useful if the expressions in the select list return varying results. For example, you could call a function this way:

SELECT random();

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Table Expressions

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7.2. Table Expressions

A table expression computes a table. The table expression contains a FROM clause that is optionally followed by WHERE, GROUP BY, and HAVING clauses. Trivial table expressions simply refer to a table on disk, a so-called base table, but more complex expressions can be used to modify or combine base tables in various ways.

The optional WHERE, GROUP BY, and HAVING clauses in the table expression specify a pipeline of successive transformations performed on the table derived in the FROM clause. All these transformations produce a virtual table that provides the rows that are passed to the select list to compute the output rows of the query.

7.2.1. The FROM Clause

The FROM Clause derives a table from one or more other tables given in a comma-separated table reference list.

FROM table_reference [, table_reference [, ...]]

A table reference can be a table name (possibly schema-qualified), or a derived table such as a subquery, a JOIN construct, or complex combinations of these. If more than one table reference is listed in the FROM clause, the tables are cross-joined (that is, the Cartesian product of their rows is formed; see below). The result of the FROM list is an intermediate virtual table that can then be subject to transformations by the WHERE, GROUP BY, and HAVING clauses and is finally the result of the overall table expression.

When a table reference names a table that is the parent of a table inheritance hierarchy, the table reference produces rows of not only that table but all of its descendant tables, unless the key word ONLY precedes the table name. However, the reference produces only the columns that appear in the named table — any columns added in subtables are ignored.

Instead of writing ONLY before the table name, you can write * after the table name to explicitly specify that descendant tables are included. Writing * is not necessary since that behavior is the default (unless you have changed the setting of the sql_inheritance configuration option). However writing * might be useful to emphasize that additional tables will be searched.

7.2.1.1. Joined Tables

A joined table is a table derived from two other (real or derived) tables according to the rules of the particular join type. Inner, outer, and cross-joins are available. The general syntax of a joined table is

T1 join_type T2 [ join_condition ]

Joins of all types can be chained together, or nested: either or both T1 and T2 can be joined tables. Parentheses can be used around JOIN clauses to control the join order. In the absence of parentheses, JOIN clauses nest left-to-right.

Join Types

Cross join
T1 CROSS JOIN T2

For every possible combination of rows from T1 and T2 (i.e., a Cartesian product), the joined table will contain a row consisting of all columns in T1 followed by all columns in T2. If the tables have N and M rows respectively, the joined table will have N * M rows.

FROM T1 CROSS JOIN T2 is equivalent to FROM T1 INNER JOIN T2 ON TRUE (see below). It is also equivalent to FROM T1, T2.

Note: This latter equivalence does not hold exactly when more than two tables appear, because JOIN binds more tightly than comma. For example FROM T1 CROSS JOIN T2 INNER JOIN T3 ON condition is not the same as FROM T1, T2 INNER JOIN T3 ON condition because the condition can reference T1 in the first case but not the second.

Qualified joins
T1 { [INNER] | { LEFT | RIGHT | FULL } [OUTER] } JOIN T2 ON boolean_expression
T1 { [INNER] | { LEFT | RIGHT | FULL } [OUTER] } JOIN T2 USING ( join column list )
T1 NATURAL { [INNER] | { LEFT | RIGHT | FULL } [OUTER] } JOIN T2

The words INNER and OUTER are optional in all forms. INNER is the default; LEFT, RIGHT, and FULL imply an outer join.

The join condition is specified in the ON or USING clause, or implicitly by the word NATURAL. The join condition determines which rows from the two source tables are considered to "match", as explained in detail below.

The possible types of qualified join are:

INNER JOIN

For each row R1 of T1, the joined table has a row for each row in T2 that satisfies the join condition with R1.

LEFT OUTER JOIN

First, an inner join is performed. Then, for each row in T1 that does not satisfy the join condition with any row in T2, a joined row is added with null values in columns of T2. Thus, the joined table always has at least one row for each row in T1.

RIGHT OUTER JOIN

First, an inner join is performed. Then, for each row in T2 that does not satisfy the join condition with any row in T1, a joined row is added with null values in columns of T1. This is the converse of a left join: the result table will always have a row for each row in T2.

FULL OUTER JOIN

First, an inner join is performed. Then, for each row in T1 that does not satisfy the join condition with any row in T2, a joined row is added with null values in columns of T2. Also, for each row of T2 that does not satisfy the join condition with any row in T1, a joined row with null values in the columns of T1 is added.

The ON clause is the most general kind of join condition: it takes a Boolean value expression of the same kind as is used in a WHERE clause. A pair of rows from T1 and T2 match if the ON expression evaluates to true.

The USING clause is a shorthand that allows you to take advantage of the specific situation where both sides of the join use the same name for the joining column(s). It takes a comma-separated list of the shared column names and forms a join condition that includes an equality comparison for each one. For example, joining T1 and T2 with USING (a, b) produces the join condition ON T1.a = T2.a AND T1.b = T2.b.

Furthermore, the output of JOIN USING suppresses redundant columns: there is no need to print both of the matched columns, since they must have equal values. While JOIN ON produces all columns from T1 followed by all columns from T2, JOIN USING produces one output column for each of the listed column pairs (in the listed order), followed by any remaining columns from T1, followed by any remaining columns from T2.

Finally, NATURAL is a shorthand form of USING: it forms a USING list consisting of all column names that appear in both input tables. As with USING, these columns appear only once in the output table. If there are no common column names, NATURAL behaves like CROSS JOIN.

Note: USING is reasonably safe from column changes in the joined relations since only the listed columns are combined. NATURAL is considerably more risky since any schema changes to either relation that cause a new matching column name to be present will cause the join to combine that new column as well.

To put this together, assume we have tables t1:

 num | name
-----+------
   1 | a
   2 | b
   3 | c

and t2:

 num | value
-----+-------
   1 | xxx
   3 | yyy
   5 | zzz

then we get the following results for the various joins:

=> SELECT * FROM t1 CROSS JOIN t2;
 num | name | num | value
-----+------+-----+-------
   1 | a    |   1 | xxx
   1 | a    |   3 | yyy
   1 | a    |   5 | zzz
   2 | b    |   1 | xxx
   2 | b    |   3 | yyy
   2 | b    |   5 | zzz
   3 | c    |   1 | xxx
   3 | c    |   3 | yyy
   3 | c    |   5 | zzz
(9 rows)

=> SELECT * FROM t1 INNER JOIN t2 ON t1.num = t2.num;
 num | name | num | value
-----+------+-----+-------
   1 | a    |   1 | xxx
   3 | c    |   3 | yyy
(2 rows)

=> SELECT * FROM t1 INNER JOIN t2 USING (num);
 num | name | value
-----+------+-------
   1 | a    | xxx
   3 | c    | yyy
(2 rows)

=> SELECT * FROM t1 NATURAL INNER JOIN t2;
 num | name | value
-----+------+-------
   1 | a    | xxx
   3 | c    | yyy
(2 rows)

=> SELECT * FROM t1 LEFT JOIN t2 ON t1.num = t2.num;
 num | name | num | value
-----+------+-----+-------
   1 | a    |   1 | xxx
   2 | b    |     |
   3 | c    |   3 | yyy
(3 rows)

=> SELECT * FROM t1 LEFT JOIN t2 USING (num);
 num | name | value
-----+------+-------
   1 | a    | xxx
   2 | b    |
   3 | c    | yyy
(3 rows)

=> SELECT * FROM t1 RIGHT JOIN t2 ON t1.num = t2.num;
 num | name | num | value
-----+------+-----+-------
   1 | a    |   1 | xxx
   3 | c    |   3 | yyy
     |      |   5 | zzz
(3 rows)

=> SELECT * FROM t1 FULL JOIN t2 ON t1.num = t2.num;
 num | name | num | value
-----+------+-----+-------
   1 | a    |   1 | xxx
   2 | b    |     |
   3 | c    |   3 | yyy
     |      |   5 | zzz
(4 rows)

The join condition specified with ON can also contain conditions that do not relate directly to the join. This can prove useful for some queries but needs to be thought out carefully. For example:

=> SELECT * FROM t1 LEFT JOIN t2 ON t1.num = t2.num AND t2.value = 'xxx';
 num | name | num | value
-----+------+-----+-------
   1 | a    |   1 | xxx
   2 | b    |     |
   3 | c    |     |
(3 rows)

Notice that placing the restriction in the WHERE clause produces a different result:

=> SELECT * FROM t1 LEFT JOIN t2 ON t1.num = t2.num WHERE t2.value = 'xxx';
 num | name | num | value
-----+------+-----+-------
   1 | a    |   1 | xxx
(1 row)

This is because a restriction placed in the ON clause is processed before the join, while a restriction placed in the WHERE clause is processed after the join. That does not matter with inner joins, but it matters a lot with outer joins.

7.2.1.2. Table and Column Aliases

A temporary name can be given to tables and complex table references to be used for references to the derived table in the rest of the query. This is called a table alias.

To create a table alias, write

FROM table_reference AS alias

or

FROM table_reference alias

The AS key word is optional noise. alias can be any identifier.

A typical application of table aliases is to assign short identifiers to long table names to keep the join clauses readable. For example:

SELECT * FROM some_very_long_table_name s JOIN another_fairly_long_name a ON s.id = a.num;

The alias becomes the new name of the table reference so far as the current query is concerned — it is not allowed to refer to the table by the original name elsewhere in the query. Thus, this is not valid:

SELECT * FROM my_table AS m WHERE my_table.a > 5;    -- wrong

Table aliases are mainly for notational convenience, but it is necessary to use them when joining a table to itself, e.g.:

SELECT * FROM people AS mother JOIN people AS child ON mother.id = child.mother_id;

Additionally, an alias is required if the table reference is a subquery (see Section 7.2.1.3).

Parentheses are used to resolve ambiguities. In the following example, the first statement assigns the alias b to the second instance of my_table, but the second statement assigns the alias to the result of the join:

SELECT * FROM my_table AS a CROSS JOIN my_table AS b ...
SELECT * FROM (my_table AS a CROSS JOIN my_table) AS b ...

Another form of table aliasing gives temporary names to the columns of the table, as well as the table itself:

FROM table_reference [AS] alias ( column1 [, column2 [, ...]] )

If fewer column aliases are specified than the actual table has columns, the remaining columns are not renamed. This syntax is especially useful for self-joins or subqueries.

When an alias is applied to the output of a JOIN clause, the alias hides the original name(s) within the JOIN. For example:

SELECT a.* FROM my_table AS a JOIN your_table AS b ON ...

is valid SQL, but:

SELECT a.* FROM (my_table AS a JOIN your_table AS b ON ...) AS c

is not valid; the table alias a is not visible outside the alias c.

7.2.1.3. Subqueries

Subqueries specifying a derived table must be enclosed in parentheses and must be assigned a table alias name. (See Section 7.2.1.2.) For example:

FROM (SELECT * FROM table1) AS alias_name

This example is equivalent to FROM table1 AS alias_name. More interesting cases, which cannot be reduced to a plain join, arise when the subquery involves grouping or aggregation.

A subquery can also be a VALUES list:

FROM (VALUES ('anne', 'smith'), ('bob', 'jones'), ('joe', 'blow'))
     AS names(first, last)

Again, a table alias is required. Assigning alias names to the columns of the VALUES list is optional, but is good practice. For more information see Section 7.7.

7.2.1.4. Table Functions

Table functions are functions that produce a set of rows, made up of either base data types (scalar types) or composite data types (table rows). They are used like a table, view, or subquery in the FROM clause of a query. Columns returned by table functions can be included in SELECT, JOIN, or WHERE clauses in the same manner as a table, view, or subquery column.

If a table function returns a base data type, the single result column name matches the function name. If the function returns a composite type, the result columns get the same names as the individual attributes of the type.

A table function can be aliased in the FROM clause, but it also can be left unaliased. If a function is used in the FROM clause with no alias, the function name is used as the resulting table name.

Some examples:

CREATE TABLE foo (fooid int, foosubid int, fooname text);

CREATE FUNCTION getfoo(int) RETURNS SETOF foo AS $$
    SELECT * FROM foo WHERE fooid = $1;
$$ LANGUAGE SQL;

SELECT * FROM getfoo(1) AS t1;

SELECT * FROM foo
    WHERE foosubid IN (
                        SELECT foosubid
                        FROM getfoo(foo.fooid) z
                        WHERE z.fooid = foo.fooid
                      );

CREATE VIEW vw_getfoo AS SELECT * FROM getfoo(1);

SELECT * FROM vw_getfoo;

In some cases it is useful to define table functions that can return different column sets depending on how they are invoked. To support this, the table function can be declared as returning the pseudotype record. When such a function is used in a query, the expected row structure must be specified in the query itself, so that the system can know how to parse and plan the query. Consider this example:

SELECT *
    FROM dblink('dbname=mydb', 'SELECT proname, prosrc FROM pg_proc')
      AS t1(proname name, prosrc text)
    WHERE proname LIKE 'bytea%';

The dblink function (part of the dblink module>) executes a remote query. It is declared to return record since it might be used for any kind of query. The actual column set must be specified in the calling query so that the parser knows, for example, what * should expand to.

7.2.2. The WHERE Clause

The syntax of the WHERE Clause is

WHERE search_condition

where search_condition is any value expression (see Section 4.2) that returns a value of type boolean.

After the processing of the FROM clause is done, each row of the derived virtual table is checked against the search condition. If the result of the condition is true, the row is kept in the output table, otherwise (i.e., if the result is false or null) it is discarded. The search condition typically references at least one column of the table generated in the FROM clause; this is not required, but otherwise the WHERE clause will be fairly useless.

Note: The join condition of an inner join can be written either in the WHERE clause or in the JOIN clause. For example, these table expressions are equivalent:

FROM a, b WHERE a.id = b.id AND b.val > 5

and:

FROM a INNER JOIN b ON (a.id = b.id) WHERE b.val > 5

or perhaps even:

FROM a NATURAL JOIN b WHERE b.val > 5

Which one of these you use is mainly a matter of style. The JOIN syntax in the FROM clause is probably not as portable to other SQL database management systems, even though it is in the SQL standard. For outer joins there is no choice: they must be done in the FROM clause. The ON or USING clause of an outer join is not equivalent to a WHERE condition, because it results in the addition of rows (for unmatched input rows) as well as the removal of rows in the final result.

Here are some examples of WHERE clauses:

SELECT ... FROM fdt WHERE c1 > 5

SELECT ... FROM fdt WHERE c1 IN (1, 2, 3)

SELECT ... FROM fdt WHERE c1 IN (SELECT c1 FROM t2)

SELECT ... FROM fdt WHERE c1 IN (SELECT c3 FROM t2 WHERE c2 = fdt.c1 + 10)

SELECT ... FROM fdt WHERE c1 BETWEEN (SELECT c3 FROM t2 WHERE c2 = fdt.c1 + 10) AND 100

SELECT ... FROM fdt WHERE EXISTS (SELECT c1 FROM t2 WHERE c2 > fdt.c1)

fdt is the table derived in the FROM clause. Rows that do not meet the search condition of the WHERE clause are eliminated from fdt. Notice the use of scalar subqueries as value expressions. Just like any other query, the subqueries can employ complex table expressions. Notice also how fdt is referenced in the subqueries. Qualifying c1 as fdt.c1 is only necessary if c1 is also the name of a column in the derived input table of the subquery. But qualifying the column name adds clarity even when it is not needed. This example shows how the column naming scope of an outer query extends into its inner queries.

7.2.3. The GROUP BY and HAVING Clauses

After passing the WHERE filter, the derived input table might be subject to grouping, using the GROUP BY clause, and elimination of group rows using the HAVING clause.

SELECT select_list
    FROM ...
    [WHERE ...]
    GROUP BY grouping_column_reference [, grouping_column_reference]...

The GROUP BY Clause is used to group together those rows in a table that have the same values in all the columns listed. The order in which the columns are listed does not matter. The effect is to combine each set of rows having common values into one group row that represents all rows in the group. This is done to eliminate redundancy in the output and/or compute aggregates that apply to these groups. For instance:

=> SELECT * FROM test1;
 x | y
---+---
 a | 3
 c | 2
 b | 5
 a | 1
(4 rows)

=> SELECT x FROM test1 GROUP BY x;
 x
---
 a
 b
 c
(3 rows)

In the second query, we could not have written SELECT * FROM test1 GROUP BY x, because there is no single value for the column y that could be associated with each group. The grouped-by columns can be referenced in the select list since they have a single value in each group.

In general, if a table is grouped, columns that are not listed in GROUP BY cannot be referenced except in aggregate expressions. An example with aggregate expressions is:

=> SELECT x, sum(y) FROM test1 GROUP BY x;
 x | sum
---+-----
 a |   4
 b |   5
 c |   2
(3 rows)

Here sum is an aggregate function that computes a single value over the entire group. More information about the available aggregate functions can be found in Section 9.18.

Tip: Grouping without aggregate expressions effectively calculates the set of distinct values in a column. This can also be achieved using the DISTINCT clause (see Section 7.3.3).

Here is another example: it calculates the total sales for each product (rather than the total sales of all products):

SELECT product_id, p.name, (sum(s.units) * p.price) AS sales
    FROM products p LEFT JOIN sales s USING (product_id)
    GROUP BY product_id, p.name, p.price;

In this example, the columns product_id, p.name, and p.price must be in the GROUP BY clause since they are referenced in the query select list (but see below). The column s.units does not have to be in the GROUP BY list since it is only used in an aggregate expression (sum(...)), which represents the sales of a product. For each product, the query returns a summary row about all sales of the product.

If the products table is set up so that, say, product_id is the primary key, then it would be enough to group by product_id in the above example, since name and price would be functionally dependent on the product ID, and so there would be no ambiguity about which name and price value to return for each product ID group.

In strict SQL, GROUP BY can only group by columns of the source table but PostgreSQL extends this to also allow GROUP BY to group by columns in the select list. Grouping by value expressions instead of simple column names is also allowed.

If a table has been grouped using GROUP BY, but only certain groups are of interest, the HAVING clause can be used, much like a WHERE clause, to eliminate groups from the result. The syntax is:

SELECT select_list FROM ... [WHERE ...] GROUP BY ... HAVING boolean_expression

Expressions in the HAVING clause can refer both to grouped expressions and to ungrouped expressions (which necessarily involve an aggregate function).

Example:

=> SELECT x, sum(y) FROM test1 GROUP BY x HAVING sum(y) > 3;
 x | sum
---+-----
 a |   4
 b |   5
(2 rows)

=> SELECT x, sum(y) FROM test1 GROUP BY x HAVING x < 'c';
 x | sum
---+-----
 a |   4
 b |   5
(2 rows)

Again, a more realistic example:

SELECT product_id, p.name, (sum(s.units) * (p.price - p.cost)) AS profit
    FROM products p LEFT JOIN sales s USING (product_id)
    WHERE s.date > CURRENT_DATE - INTERVAL '4 weeks'
    GROUP BY product_id, p.name, p.price, p.cost
    HAVING sum(p.price * s.units) > 5000;

In the example above, the WHERE clause is selecting rows by a column that is not grouped (the expression is only true for sales during the last four weeks), while the HAVING clause restricts the output to groups with total gross sales over 5000. Note that the aggregate expressions do not necessarily need to be the same in all parts of the query.

If a query contains aggregate function calls, but no GROUP BY clause, grouping still occurs: the result is a single group row (or perhaps no rows at all, if the single row is then eliminated by HAVING). The same is true if it contains a HAVING clause, even without any aggregate function calls or GROUP BY clause.

7.2.4. Window Function Processing

If the query contains any window functions (see Section 3.5, Section 9.19 and Section 4.2.8), these functions are evaluated after any grouping, aggregation, and HAVING filtering is performed. That is, if the query uses any aggregates, GROUP BY, or HAVING, then the rows seen by the window functions are the group rows instead of the original table rows from FROM/WHERE.

When multiple window functions are used, all the window functions having syntactically equivalent PARTITION BY and ORDER BY clauses in their window definitions are guaranteed to be evaluated in a single pass over the data. Therefore they will see the same sort ordering, even if the ORDER BY does not uniquely determine an ordering. However, no guarantees are made about the evaluation of functions having different PARTITION BY or ORDER BY specifications. (In such cases a sort step is typically required between the passes of window function evaluations, and the sort is not guaranteed to preserve ordering of rows that its ORDER BY sees as equivalent.)

Currently, window functions always require presorted data, and so the query output will be ordered according to one or another of the window functions' PARTITION BY/ORDER BY clauses. It is not recommendable to rely on this, however. Use an explicit top-level ORDER BY clause if you want to be sure the results are sorted in a particular way.

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Select Lists

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7.3. Select Lists

As shown in the previous section, the table expression in the SELECT command constructs an intermediate virtual table by possibly combining tables, views, eliminating rows, grouping, etc. This table is finally passed on to processing by the select list. The select list determines which columns of the intermediate table are actually output.

7.3.1. Select-List Items

The simplest kind of select list is * which emits all columns that the table expression produces. Otherwise, a select list is a comma-separated list of value expressions (as defined in Section 4.2). For instance, it could be a list of column names:

SELECT a, b, c FROM ...

The columns names a, b, and c are either the actual names of the columns of tables referenced in the FROM clause, or the aliases given to them as explained in Section 7.2.1.2. The name space available in the select list is the same as in the WHERE clause, unless grouping is used, in which case it is the same as in the HAVING clause.

If more than one table has a column of the same name, the table name must also be given, as in:

SELECT tbl1.a, tbl2.a, tbl1.b FROM ...

When working with multiple tables, it can also be useful to ask for all the columns of a particular table:

SELECT tbl1.*, tbl2.a FROM ...

(See also Section 7.2.2.)

If an arbitrary value expression is used in the select list, it conceptually adds a new virtual column to the returned table. The value expression is evaluated once for each result row, with the row's values substituted for any column references. But the expressions in the select list do not have to reference any columns in the table expression of the FROM clause; they can be constant arithmetic expressions, for instance.

7.3.2. Column Labels

The entries in the select list can be assigned names for subsequent processing, such as for use in an ORDER BY clause or for display by the client application. For example:

SELECT a AS value, b + c AS sum FROM ...

If no output column name is specified using AS, the system assigns a default column name. For simple column references, this is the name of the referenced column. For function calls, this is the name of the function. For complex expressions, the system will generate a generic name.

The AS keyword is optional, but only if the new column name does not match any PostgreSQL keyword (see Appendix C). To avoid an accidental match to a keyword, you can double-quote the column name. For example, VALUE is a keyword, so this does not work:

SELECT a value, b + c AS sum FROM ...

but this does:

SELECT a "value", b + c AS sum FROM ...

For protection against possible future keyword additions, it is recommended that you always either write AS or double-quote the output column name.

Note: The naming of output columns here is different from that done in the FROM clause (see Section 7.2.1.2). It is possible to rename the same column twice, but the name assigned in the select list is the one that will be passed on.

7.3.3. DISTINCT

After the select list has been processed, the result table can optionally be subject to the elimination of duplicate rows. The DISTINCT key word is written directly after SELECT to specify this:

SELECT DISTINCT select_list ...

(Instead of DISTINCT the key word ALL can be used to specify the default behavior of retaining all rows.)

Obviously, two rows are considered distinct if they differ in at least one column value. Null values are considered equal in this comparison.

Alternatively, an arbitrary expression can determine what rows are to be considered distinct:

SELECT DISTINCT ON (expression [, expression ...]) select_list ...

Here expression is an arbitrary value expression that is evaluated for all rows. A set of rows for which all the expressions are equal are considered duplicates, and only the first row of the set is kept in the output. Note that the "first row" of a set is unpredictable unless the query is sorted on enough columns to guarantee a unique ordering of the rows arriving at the DISTINCT filter. (DISTINCT ON processing occurs after ORDER BY sorting.)

The DISTINCT ON clause is not part of the SQL standard and is sometimes considered bad style because of the potentially indeterminate nature of its results. With judicious use of GROUP BY and subqueries in FROM, this construct can be avoided, but it is often the most convenient alternative.

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Combining Queries

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7.4. Combining Queries

The results of two queries can be combined using the set operations union, intersection, and difference. The syntax is

query1 UNION [ALL] query2
query1 INTERSECT [ALL] query2
query1 EXCEPT [ALL] query2

query1 and query2 are queries that can use any of the features discussed up to this point. Set operations can also be nested and chained, for example

query1 UNION query2 UNION query3

which is executed as:

(query1 UNION query2) UNION query3

UNION effectively appends the result of query2 to the result of query1 (although there is no guarantee that this is the order in which the rows are actually returned). Furthermore, it eliminates duplicate rows from its result, in the same way as DISTINCT, unless UNION ALL is used.

INTERSECT returns all rows that are both in the result of query1 and in the result of query2. Duplicate rows are eliminated unless INTERSECT ALL is used.

EXCEPT returns all rows that are in the result of query1 but not in the result of query2. (This is sometimes called the difference between two queries.) Again, duplicates are eliminated unless EXCEPT ALL is used.

In order to calculate the union, intersection, or difference of two queries, the two queries must be "union compatible", which means that they return the same number of columns and the corresponding columns have compatible data types, as described in Section 10.5.

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7.5. Sorting Rows

After a query has produced an output table (after the select list has been processed) it can optionally be sorted. If sorting is not chosen, the rows will be returned in an unspecified order. The actual order in that case will depend on the scan and join plan types and the order on disk, but it must not be relied on. A particular output ordering can only be guaranteed if the sort step is explicitly chosen.

The ORDER BY clause specifies the sort order:

SELECT select_list
    FROM table_expression
    ORDER BY sort_expression1 [ASC | DESC] [NULLS { FIRST | LAST }]
             [, sort_expression2 [ASC | DESC] [NULLS { FIRST | LAST }] ...]

The sort expression(s) can be any expression that would be valid in the query's select list. An example is:

SELECT a, b FROM table1 ORDER BY a + b, c;

When more than one expression is specified, the later values are used to sort rows that are equal according to the earlier values. Each expression can be followed by an optional ASC or DESC keyword to set the sort direction to ascending or descending. ASC order is the default. Ascending order puts smaller values first, where "smaller" is defined in terms of the < operator. Similarly, descending order is determined with the > operator. [1]

The NULLS FIRST and NULLS LAST options can be used to determine whether nulls appear before or after non-null values in the sort ordering. By default, null values sort as if larger than any non-null value; that is, NULLS FIRST is the default for DESC order, and NULLS LAST otherwise.

Note that the ordering options are considered independently for each sort column. For example ORDER BY x, y DESC means ORDER BY x ASC, y DESC, which is not the same as ORDER BY x DESC, y DESC.

A sort_expression can also be the column label or number of an output column, as in:

SELECT a + b AS sum, c FROM table1 ORDER BY sum;
SELECT a, max(b) FROM table1 GROUP BY a ORDER BY 1;

both of which sort by the first output column. Note that an output column name has to stand alone, that is, it cannot be used in an expression — for example, this is not correct:

SELECT a + b AS sum, c FROM table1 ORDER BY sum + c;          -- wrong

This restriction is made to reduce ambiguity. There is still ambiguity if an ORDER BY item is a simple name that could match either an output column name or a column from the table expression. The output column is used in such cases. This would only cause confusion if you use AS to rename an output column to match some other table column's name.

ORDER BY can be applied to the result of a UNION, INTERSECT, or EXCEPT combination, but in this case it is only permitted to sort by output column names or numbers, not by expressions.

Notes

[1]

Actually, PostgreSQL uses the default B-tree operator class for the expression's data type to determine the sort ordering for ASC and DESC. Conventionally, data types will be set up so that the < and > operators correspond to this sort ordering, but a user-defined data type's designer could choose to do something different.

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LIMIT and OFFSET

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7.6. LIMIT and OFFSET

LIMIT and OFFSET allow you to retrieve just a portion of the rows that are generated by the rest of the query:

SELECT select_list
    FROM table_expression
    [ ORDER BY ... ]
    [ LIMIT { number | ALL } ] [ OFFSET number ]

If a limit count is given, no more than that many rows will be returned (but possibly less, if the query itself yields less rows). LIMIT ALL is the same as omitting the LIMIT clause.

OFFSET says to skip that many rows before beginning to return rows. OFFSET 0 is the same as omitting the OFFSET clause, and LIMIT NULL is the same as omitting the LIMIT clause. If both OFFSET and LIMIT appear, then OFFSET rows are skipped before starting to count the LIMIT rows that are returned.

When using LIMIT, it is important to use an ORDER BY clause that constrains the result rows into a unique order. Otherwise you will get an unpredictable subset of the query's rows. You might be asking for the tenth through twentieth rows, but tenth through twentieth in what ordering? The ordering is unknown, unless you specified ORDER BY.

The query optimizer takes LIMIT into account when generating query plans, so you are very likely to get different plans (yielding different row orders) depending on what you give for LIMIT and OFFSET. Thus, using different LIMIT/OFFSET values to select different subsets of a query result will give inconsistent results unless you enforce a predictable result ordering with ORDER BY. This is not a bug; it is an inherent consequence of the fact that SQL does not promise to deliver the results of a query in any particular order unless ORDER BY is used to constrain the order.

The rows skipped by an OFFSET clause still have to be computed inside the server; therefore a large OFFSET might be inefficient.

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VALUES Lists

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7.7. VALUES Lists

VALUES provides a way to generate a "constant table" that can be used in a query without having to actually create and populate a table on-disk. The syntax is

VALUES ( expression [, ...] ) [, ...]

Each parenthesized list of expressions generates a row in the table. The lists must all have the same number of elements (i.e., the number of columns in the table), and corresponding entries in each list must have compatible data types. The actual data type assigned to each column of the result is determined using the same rules as for UNION (see Section 10.5).

As an example:

VALUES (1, 'one'), (2, 'two'), (3, 'three');

will return a table of two columns and three rows. It's effectively equivalent to:

SELECT 1 AS column1, 'one' AS column2
UNION ALL
SELECT 2, 'two'
UNION ALL
SELECT 3, 'three';

By default, PostgreSQL assigns the names column1, column2, etc. to the columns of a VALUES table. The column names are not specified by the SQL standard and different database systems do it differently, so it's usually better to override the default names with a table alias list.

Syntactically, VALUES followed by expression lists is treated as equivalent to:

SELECT select_list FROM table_expression

and can appear anywhere a SELECT can. For example, you can use it as part of a UNION, or attach a sort_specification (ORDER BY, LIMIT, and/or OFFSET) to it. VALUES is most commonly used as the data source in an INSERT command, and next most commonly as a subquery.

For more information see VALUES.

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WITH Queries (Common Table Expressions)

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7.8. WITH Queries (Common Table Expressions)

WITH provides a way to write auxiliary statements for use in a larger query. These statements, which are often referred to as Common Table Expressions or CTEs, can be thought of as defining temporary tables that exist just for one query. Each auxiliary statement in a WITH clause can be a SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE; and the WITH clause itself is attached to a primary statement that can also be a SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE.

7.8.1. SELECT in WITH

The basic value of SELECT in WITH is to break down complicated queries into simpler parts. An example is:

WITH regional_sales AS (
        SELECT region, SUM(amount) AS total_sales
        FROM orders
        GROUP BY region
     ), top_regions AS (
        SELECT region
        FROM regional_sales
        WHERE total_sales > (SELECT SUM(total_sales)/10 FROM regional_sales)
     )
SELECT region,
       product,
       SUM(quantity) AS product_units,
       SUM(amount) AS product_sales
FROM orders
WHERE region IN (SELECT region FROM top_regions)
GROUP BY region, product;

which displays per-product sales totals in only the top sales regions. The WITH clause defines two auxiliary statements named regional_sales and top_regions, where the output of regional_sales is used in top_regions and the output of top_regions is used in the primary SELECT query. This example could have been written without WITH, but we'd have needed two levels of nested sub-SELECTs. It's a bit easier to follow this way.

The optional RECURSIVE modifier changes WITH from a mere syntactic convenience into a feature that accomplishes things not otherwise possible in standard SQL. Using RECURSIVE, a WITH query can refer to its own output. A very simple example is this query to sum the integers from 1 through 100:

WITH RECURSIVE t(n) AS (
    VALUES (1)
  UNION ALL
    SELECT n+1 FROM t WHERE n < 100
)
SELECT sum(n) FROM t;

The general form of a recursive WITH query is always a non-recursive term, then UNION (or UNION ALL), then a recursive term, where only the recursive term can contain a reference to the query's own output. Such a query is executed as follows:

Recursive Query Evaluation

  1. Evaluate the non-recursive term. For UNION (but not UNION ALL), discard duplicate rows. Include all remaining rows in the result of the recursive query, and also place them in a temporary working table.

  2. So long as the working table is not empty, repeat these steps:

    1. Evaluate the recursive term, substituting the current contents of the working table for the recursive self-reference. For UNION (but not UNION ALL), discard duplicate rows and rows that duplicate any previous result row. Include all remaining rows in the result of the recursive query, and also place them in a temporary intermediate table.

    2. Replace the contents of the working table with the contents of the intermediate table, then empty the intermediate table.

Note: Strictly speaking, this process is iteration not recursion, but RECURSIVE is the terminology chosen by the SQL standards committee.

In the example above, the working table has just a single row in each step, and it takes on the values from 1 through 100 in successive steps. In the 100th step, there is no output because of the WHERE clause, and so the query terminates.

Recursive queries are typically used to deal with hierarchical or tree-structured data. A useful example is this query to find all the direct and indirect sub-parts of a product, given only a table that shows immediate inclusions:

WITH RECURSIVE included_parts(sub_part, part, quantity) AS (
    SELECT sub_part, part, quantity FROM parts WHERE part = 'our_product'
  UNION ALL
    SELECT p.sub_part, p.part, p.quantity
    FROM included_parts pr, parts p
    WHERE p.part = pr.sub_part
  )
SELECT sub_part, SUM(quantity) as total_quantity
FROM included_parts
GROUP BY sub_part

When working with recursive queries it is important to be sure that the recursive part of the query will eventually return no tuples, or else the query will loop indefinitely. Sometimes, using UNION instead of UNION ALL can accomplish this by discarding rows that duplicate previous output rows. However, often a cycle does not involve output rows that are completely duplicate: it may be necessary to check just one or a few fields to see if the same point has been reached before. The standard method for handling such situations is to compute an array of the already-visited values. For example, consider the following query that searches a table graph using a link field:

WITH RECURSIVE search_graph(id, link, data, depth) AS (
        SELECT g.id, g.link, g.data, 1
        FROM graph g
      UNION ALL
        SELECT g.id, g.link, g.data, sg.depth + 1
        FROM graph g, search_graph sg
        WHERE g.id = sg.link
)
SELECT * FROM search_graph;

This query will loop if the link relationships contain cycles. Because we require a "depth" output, just changing UNION ALL to UNION would not eliminate the looping. Instead we need to recognize whether we have reached the same row again while following a particular path of links. We add two columns path and cycle to the loop-prone query:

WITH RECURSIVE search_graph(id, link, data, depth, path, cycle) AS (
        SELECT g.id, g.link, g.data, 1,
          ARRAY[g.id],
          false
        FROM graph g
      UNION ALL
        SELECT g.id, g.link, g.data, sg.depth + 1,
          path || g.id,
          g.id = ANY(path)
        FROM graph g, search_graph sg
        WHERE g.id = sg.link AND NOT cycle
)
SELECT * FROM search_graph;

Aside from preventing cycles, the array value is often useful in its own right as representing the "path" taken to reach any particular row.

In the general case where more than one field needs to be checked to recognize a cycle, use an array of rows. For example, if we needed to compare fields f1 and f2:

WITH RECURSIVE search_graph(id, link, data, depth, path, cycle) AS (
        SELECT g.id, g.link, g.data, 1,
          ARRAY[ROW(g.f1, g.f2)],
          false
        FROM graph g
      UNION ALL
        SELECT g.id, g.link, g.data, sg.depth + 1,
          path || ROW(g.f1, g.f2),
          ROW(g.f1, g.f2) = ANY(path)
        FROM graph g, search_graph sg
        WHERE g.id = sg.link AND NOT cycle
)
SELECT * FROM search_graph;

Tip: Omit the ROW() syntax in the common case where only one field needs to be checked to recognize a cycle. This allows a simple array rather than a composite-type array to be used, gaining efficiency.

Tip: The recursive query evaluation algorithm produces its output in breadth-first search order. You can display the results in depth-first search order by making the outer query ORDER BY a "path" column constructed in this way.

A helpful trick for testing queries when you are not certain if they might loop is to place a LIMIT in the parent query. For example, this query would loop forever without the LIMIT:

WITH RECURSIVE t(n) AS (
    SELECT 1
  UNION ALL
    SELECT n+1 FROM t
)
SELECT n FROM t LIMIT 100;

This works because PostgreSQL's implementation evaluates only as many rows of a WITH query as are actually fetched by the parent query. Using this trick in production is not recommended, because other systems might work differently. Also, it usually won't work if you make the outer query sort the recursive query's results or join them to some other table, because in such cases the outer query will usually try to fetch all of the WITH query's output anyway.

A useful property of WITH queries is that they are evaluated only once per execution of the parent query, even if they are referred to more than once by the parent query or sibling WITH queries. Thus, expensive calculations that are needed in multiple places can be placed within a WITH query to avoid redundant work. Another possible application is to prevent unwanted multiple evaluations of functions with side-effects. However, the other side of this coin is that the optimizer is less able to push restrictions from the parent query down into a WITH query than an ordinary sub-query. The WITH query will generally be evaluated as written, without suppression of rows that the parent query might discard afterwards. (But, as mentioned above, evaluation might stop early if the reference(s) to the query demand only a limited number of rows.)

The examples above only show WITH being used with SELECT, but it can be attached in the same way to INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE. In each case it effectively provides temporary table(s) that can be referred to in the main command.

7.8.2. Data-Modifying Statements in WITH

You can use data-modifying statements (INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE) in WITH. This allows you to perform several different operations in the same query. An example is:

WITH moved_rows AS (
    DELETE FROM products
    WHERE
        "date" >= '2010-10-01' AND
        "date" < '2010-11-01'
    RETURNING *
)
INSERT INTO products_log
SELECT * FROM moved_rows;

This query effectively moves rows from products to products_log. The DELETE in WITH deletes the specified rows from products, returning their contents by means of its RETURNING clause; and then the primary query reads that output and inserts it into products_log.

A fine point of the above example is that the WITH clause is attached to the INSERT, not the sub-SELECT within the INSERT. This is necessary because data-modifying statements are only allowed in WITH clauses that are attached to the top-level statement. However, normal WITH visibility rules apply, so it is possible to refer to the WITH statement's output from the sub-SELECT.

Data-modifying statements in WITH usually have RETURNING clauses, as seen in the example above. It is the output of the RETURNING clause, not the target table of the data-modifying statement, that forms the temporary table that can be referred to by the rest of the query. If a data-modifying statement in WITH lacks a RETURNING clause, then it forms no temporary table and cannot be referred to in the rest of the query. Such a statement will be executed nonetheless. A not-particularly-useful example is:

WITH t AS (
    DELETE FROM foo
)
DELETE FROM bar;

This example would remove all rows from tables foo and bar. The number of affected rows reported to the client would only include rows removed from bar.

Recursive self-references in data-modifying statements are not allowed. In some cases it is possible to work around this limitation by referring to the output of a recursive WITH, for example:

WITH RECURSIVE included_parts(sub_part, part) AS (
    SELECT sub_part, part FROM parts WHERE part = 'our_product'
  UNION ALL
    SELECT p.sub_part, p.part
    FROM included_parts pr, parts p
    WHERE p.part = pr.sub_part
  )
DELETE FROM parts
  WHERE part IN (SELECT part FROM included_parts);

This query would remove all direct and indirect subparts of a product.

Data-modifying statements in WITH are executed exactly once, and always to completion, independently of whether the primary query reads all (or indeed any) of their output. Notice that this is different from the rule for SELECT in WITH: as stated in the previous section, execution of a SELECT is carried only as far as the primary query demands its output.

The sub-statements in WITH are executed concurrently with each other and with the main query. Therefore, when using data-modifying statements in WITH, the order in which the specified updates actually happen is unpredictable. All the statements are executed with the same snapshot (see Chapter 13), so they cannot "see" one another's effects on the target tables. This alleviates the effects of the unpredictability of the actual order of row updates, and means that RETURNING data is the only way to communicate changes between different WITH sub-statements and the main query. An example of this is that in

WITH t AS (
    UPDATE products SET price = price * 1.05
    RETURNING *
)
SELECT * FROM products;

the outer SELECT would return the original prices before the action of the UPDATE, while in

WITH t AS (
    UPDATE products SET price = price * 1.05
    RETURNING *
)
SELECT * FROM t;

the outer SELECT would return the updated data.

Trying to update the same row twice in a single statement is not supported. Only one of the modifications takes place, but it is not easy (and sometimes not possible) to reliably predict which one. This also applies to deleting a row that was already updated in the same statement: only the update is performed. Therefore you should generally avoid trying to modify a single row twice in a single statement. In particular avoid writing WITH sub-statements that could affect the same rows changed by the main statement or a sibling sub-statement. The effects of such a statement will not be predictable.

At present, any table used as the target of a data-modifying statement in WITH must not have a conditional rule, nor an ALSO rule, nor an INSTEAD rule that expands to multiple statements.

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Data Types

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Chapter 8. Data Types

Table of Contents
8.1. Numeric Types
8.1.1. Integer Types
8.1.2. Arbitrary Precision Numbers
8.1.3. Floating-Point Types
8.1.4. Serial Types
8.2. Monetary Types
8.3. Character Types
8.4. Binary Data Types
8.4.1. bytea Hex Format
8.4.2. bytea Escape Format
8.5. Date/Time Types
8.5.1. Date/Time Input
8.5.2. Date/Time Output
8.5.3. Time Zones
8.5.4. Interval Input
8.5.5. Interval Output
8.5.6. Internals
8.6. Boolean Type
8.7. Enumerated Types
8.7.1. Declaration of Enumerated Types
8.7.2. Ordering
8.7.3. Type Safety
8.7.4. Implementation Details
8.8. Geometric Types
8.8.1. Points
8.8.2. Line Segments
8.8.3. Boxes
8.8.4. Paths
8.8.5. Polygons
8.8.6. Circles
8.9. Network Address Types
8.9.1. inet
8.9.2. cidr
8.9.3. inet vs. cidr
8.9.4. macaddr
8.10. Bit String Types
8.11. Text Search Types
8.11.1. tsvector
8.11.2. tsquery
8.12. UUID Type
8.13. XML Type
8.13.1. Creating XML Values
8.13.2. Encoding Handling
8.13.3. Accessing XML Values
8.14. Arrays
8.14.1. Declaration of Array Types
8.14.2. Array Value Input
8.14.3. Accessing Arrays
8.14.4. Modifying Arrays
8.14.5. Searching in Arrays
8.14.6. Array Input and Output Syntax
8.15. Composite Types
8.15.1. Declaration of Composite Types
8.15.2. Composite Value Input
8.15.3. Accessing Composite Types
8.15.4. Modifying Composite Types
8.15.5. Composite Type Input and Output Syntax
8.16. Object Identifier Types
8.17. Pseudo-Types

PostgreSQL has a rich set of native data types available to users. Users can add new types to PostgreSQL using the CREATE TYPE command.

Table 8-1 shows all the built-in general-purpose data types. Most of the alternative names listed in the "Aliases" column are the names used internally by PostgreSQL for historical reasons. In addition, some internally used or deprecated types are available, but are not listed here.

Table 8-1. Data Types

Name | Aliases | Description
bigint | int8 | signed eight-byte integer
bigserial | serial8 | autoincrementing eight-byte integer
bit [ (n) ] |  | fixed-length bit string
bit varying [ (n) ] | varbit | variable-length bit string
boolean | bool | logical Boolean (true/false)
box |  | rectangular box on a plane
bytea |  | binary data ("byte array")
character varying [ (n) ] | varchar [ (n) ] | variable-length character string
character [ (n) ] | char [ (n) ] | fixed-length character string
cidr |  | IPv4 or IPv6 network address
circle |  | circle on a plane
date |  | calendar date (year, month, day)
double precision | float8 | double precision floating-point number (8 bytes)
inet |  | IPv4 or IPv6 host address
integer | int, int4 | signed four-byte integer
interval [ fields ] [ (p) ] |  | time span
line |  | infinite line on a plane
lseg |  | line segment on a plane
macaddr |  | MAC (Media Access Control) address
money |  | currency amount
numeric [ (p, s) ] | decimal [ (p, s) ] | exact numeric of selectable precision
path |  | geometric path on a plane
point |  | geometric point on a plane
polygon |  | closed geometric path on a plane
real | float4 | single precision floating-point number (4 bytes)
smallint | int2 | signed two-byte integer
serial | serial4 | autoincrementing four-byte integer
text |  | variable-length character string
time [ (p) ] [ without time zone ] |  | time of day (no time zone)
time [ (p) ] with time zone | timetz | time of day, including time zone
timestamp [ (p) ] [ without time zone ] |  | date and time (no time zone)
timestamp [ (p) ] with time zone | timestamptz | date and time, including time zone
tsquery |  | text search query
tsvector |  | text search document
txid_snapshot |  | user-level transaction ID snapshot
uuid |  | universally unique identifier
xml |  | XML data

Compatibility: The following types (or spellings thereof) are specified by SQL: bigint, bit, bit varying, boolean, char, character varying, character, varchar, date, double precision, integer, interval, numeric, decimal, real, smallint, time (with or without time zone), timestamp (with or without time zone), xml.

Each data type has an external representation determined by its input and output functions. Many of the built-in types have obvious external formats. However, several types are either unique to PostgreSQL, such as geometric paths, or have several possible formats, such as the date and time types. Some of the input and output functions are not invertible, i.e., the result of an output function might lose accuracy when compared to the original input.

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Numeric Types

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8.1. Numeric Types

Numeric types consist of two-, four-, and eight-byte integers, four- and eight-byte floating-point numbers, and selectable-precision decimals. Table 8-2 lists the available types.

Table 8-2. Numeric Types

Name | Storage Size | Description | Range
smallint | 2 bytes | small-range integer | -32768 to +32767
integer | 4 bytes | typical choice for integer | -2147483648 to +2147483647
bigint | 8 bytes | large-range integer | -9223372036854775808 to 9223372036854775807
decimal | variable | user-specified precision, exact | up to 131072 digits before the decimal point; up to 16383 digits after the decimal point
numeric | variable | user-specified precision, exact | up to 131072 digits before the decimal point; up to 16383 digits after the decimal point
real | 4 bytes | variable-precision, inexact | 6 decimal digits precision
double precision | 8 bytes | variable-precision, inexact | 15 decimal digits precision
serial | 4 bytes | autoincrementing integer | 1 to 2147483647
bigserial | 8 bytes | large autoincrementing integer | 1 to 9223372036854775807

The syntax of constants for the numeric types is described in Section 4.1.2. The numeric types have a full set of corresponding arithmetic operators and functions. Refer to Chapter 9 for more information. The following sections describe the types in detail.

8.1.1. Integer Types

The types smallint, integer, and bigint store whole numbers, that is, numbers without fractional components, of various ranges. Attempts to store values outside of the allowed range will result in an error.

The type integer is the common choice, as it offers the best balance between range, storage size, and performance. The smallint type is generally only used if disk space is at a premium. The bigint type should only be used if the range of the integer type is insufficient, because the latter is definitely faster.

On very minimal operating systems the bigint type might not function correctly, because it relies on compiler support for eight-byte integers. On such machines, bigint acts the same as integer, but still takes up eight bytes of storage. (We are not aware of any modern platform where this is the case.)

SQL only specifies the integer types integer (or int), smallint, and bigint. The type names int2, int4, and int8 are extensions, which are also used by some other SQL database systems.

8.1.2. Arbitrary Precision Numbers

The type numeric can store numbers with a very large number of digits and perform calculations exactly. It is especially recommended for storing monetary amounts and other quantities where exactness is required. However, arithmetic on numeric values is very slow compared to the integer types, or to the floating-point types described in the next section.

We use the following terms below: The scale of a numeric is the count of decimal digits in the fractional part, to the right of the decimal point. The precision of a numeric is the total count of significant digits in the whole number, that is, the number of digits to both sides of the decimal point. So the number 23.5141 has a precision of 6 and a scale of 4. Integers can be considered to have a scale of zero.

Both the maximum precision and the maximum scale of a numeric column can be configured. To declare a column of type numeric use the syntax:

NUMERIC(precision, scale)

The precision must be positive, the scale zero or positive. Alternatively:

NUMERIC(precision)

selects a scale of 0. Specifying:

NUMERIC

without any precision or scale creates a column in which numeric values of any precision and scale can be stored, up to the implementation limit on precision. A column of this kind will not coerce input values to any particular scale, whereas numeric columns with a declared scale will coerce input values to that scale. (The SQL standard requires a default scale of 0, i.e., coercion to integer precision. We find this a bit useless. If you're concerned about portability, always specify the precision and scale explicitly.)

Note: The maximum allowed precision when explicitly specified in the type declaration is 1000; NUMERIC without a specified precision is subject to the limits described in Table 8-2.

If the scale of a value to be stored is greater than the declared scale of the column, the system will round the value to the specified number of fractional digits. Then, if the number of digits to the left of the decimal point exceeds the declared precision minus the declared scale, an error is raised.

Numeric values are physically stored without any extra leading or trailing zeroes. Thus, the declared precision and scale of a column are maximums, not fixed allocations. (In this sense the numeric type is more akin to varchar(n) than to char(n).) The actual storage requirement is two bytes for each group of four decimal digits, plus three to eight bytes overhead.

In addition to ordinary numeric values, the numeric type allows the special value NaN, meaning "not-a-number". Any operation on NaN yields another NaN. When writing this value as a constant in an SQL command, you must put quotes around it, for example UPDATE table SET x = 'NaN'. On input, the string NaN is recognized in a case-insensitive manner.

Note: In most implementations of the "not-a-number" concept, NaN is not considered equal to any other numeric value (including NaN). In order to allow numeric values to be sorted and used in tree-based indexes, PostgreSQL treats NaN values as equal, and greater than all non-NaN values.

The types decimal and numeric are equivalent. Both types are part of the SQL standard.

8.1.3. Floating-Point Types

The data types real and double precision are inexact, variable-precision numeric types. In practice, these types are usually implementations of IEEE Standard 754 for Binary Floating-Point Arithmetic (single and double precision, respectively), to the extent that the underlying processor, operating system, and compiler support it.

Inexact means that some values cannot be converted exactly to the internal format and are stored as approximations, so that storing and retrieving a value might show slight discrepancies. Managing these errors and how they propagate through calculations is the subject of an entire branch of mathematics and computer science and will not be discussed here, except for the following points:

  • If you require exact storage and calculations (such as for monetary amounts), use the numeric type instead.

  • If you want to do complicated calculations with these types for anything important, especially if you rely on certain behavior in boundary cases (infinity, underflow), you should evaluate the implementation carefully.

  • Comparing two floating-point values for equality might not always work as expected.

On most platforms, the real type has a range of at least 1E-37 to 1E+37 with a precision of at least 6 decimal digits. The double precision type typically has a range of around 1E-307 to 1E+308 with a precision of at least 15 digits. Values that are too large or too small will cause an error. Rounding might take place if the precision of an input number is too high. Numbers too close to zero that are not representable as distinct from zero will cause an underflow error.

Note: The extra_float_digits setting controls the number of extra significant digits included when a floating point value is converted to text for output. With the default value of 0, the output is the same on every platform supported by PostgreSQL. Increasing it will produce output that more accurately represents the stored value, but may be unportable.

In addition to ordinary numeric values, the floating-point types have several special values:

Infinity
-Infinity
NaN

These represent the IEEE 754 special values "infinity", "negative infinity", and "not-a-number", respectively. (On a machine whose floating-point arithmetic does not follow IEEE 754, these values will probably not work as expected.) When writing these values as constants in an SQL command, you must put quotes around them, for example UPDATE table SET x = 'Infinity'. On input, these strings are recognized in a case-insensitive manner.

Note: IEEE754 specifies that NaN should not compare equal to any other floating-point value (including NaN). In order to allow floating-point values to be sorted and used in tree-based indexes, PostgreSQL treats NaN values as equal, and greater than all non-NaN values.

PostgreSQL also supports the SQL-standard notations float and float(p) for specifying inexact numeric types. Here, p specifies the minimum acceptable precision in binary digits. PostgreSQL accepts float(1) to float(24) as selecting the real type, while float(25) to float(53) select double precision. Values of p outside the allowed range draw an error. float with no precision specified is taken to mean double precision.

Note: Prior to PostgreSQL 7.4, the precision in float(p) was taken to mean so many decimal digits. This has been corrected to match the SQL standard, which specifies that the precision is measured in binary digits. The assumption that real and double precision have exactly 24 and 53 bits in the mantissa respectively is correct for IEEE-standard floating point implementations. On non-IEEE platforms it might be off a little, but for simplicity the same ranges of p are used on all platforms.

8.1.4. Serial Types

The data types serial and bigserial are not true types, but merely a notational convenience for creating unique identifier columns (similar to the AUTO_INCREMENT property supported by some other databases). In the current implementation, specifying:

CREATE TABLE tablename (
    colname SERIAL
);

is equivalent to specifying:

CREATE SEQUENCE tablename_colname_seq;
CREATE TABLE tablename (
    colname integer NOT NULL DEFAULT nextval('tablename_colname_seq')
);
ALTER SEQUENCE tablename_colname_seq OWNED BY tablename.colname;

Thus, we have created an integer column and arranged for its default values to be assigned from a sequence generator. A NOT NULL constraint is applied to ensure that a null value cannot be inserted. (In most cases you would also want to attach a UNIQUE or PRIMARY KEY constraint to prevent duplicate values from being inserted by accident, but this is not automatic.) Lastly, the sequence is marked as "owned by" the column, so that it will be dropped if the column or table is dropped.

Note: Because smallserial, serial and bigserial are implemented using sequences, there may be "holes" or gaps in the sequence of values which appears in the column, even if no rows are ever deleted. A value allocated from the sequence is still "used up" even if a row containing that value is never successfully inserted into the table column. This may happen, for example, if the inserting transaction rolls back. See nextval() in Section 9.15 for details.

Note: Prior to PostgreSQL 7.3, serial implied UNIQUE. This is no longer automatic. If you wish a serial column to have a unique constraint or be a primary key, it must now be specified, just like any other data type.

To insert the next value of the sequence into the serial column, specify that the serial column should be assigned its default value. This can be done either by excluding the column from the list of columns in the INSERT statement, or through the use of the DEFAULT key word.

The type names serial and serial4 are equivalent: both create integer columns. The type names bigserial and serial8 work the same way, except that they create a bigint column. bigserial should be used if you anticipate the use of more than 231 identifiers over the lifetime of the table.

The sequence created for a serial column is automatically dropped when the owning column is dropped. You can drop the sequence without dropping the column, but this will force removal of the column default expression.

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Monetary Types

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8.2. Monetary Types

The money type stores a currency amount with a fixed fractional precision; see Table 8-3. The fractional precision is determined by the database's lc_monetary setting. The range shown in the table assumes there are two fractional digits. Input is accepted in a variety of formats, including integer and floating-point literals, as well as typical currency formatting, such as '$1,000.00'. Output is generally in the latter form but depends on the locale.

Table 8-3. Monetary Types

Name | Storage Size | Description | Range
money | 8 bytes | currency amount | -92233720368547758.08 to +92233720368547758.07

Since the output of this data type is locale-sensitive, it might not work to load money data into a database that has a different setting of lc_monetary. To avoid problems, before restoring a dump into a new database make sure lc_monetary has the same or equivalent value as in the database that was dumped.

Values of the numeric, int, and bigint data types can be cast to money. Conversion from the real and double precision data types can be done by casting to numeric first, for example:

SELECT '12.34'::float8::numeric::money;

However, this is not recommended. Floating point numbers should not be used to handle money due to the potential for rounding errors.

A money value can be cast to numeric without loss of precision. Conversion to other types could potentially lose precision, and must also be done in two stages:

SELECT '52093.89'::money::numeric::float8;

When a money value is divided by another money value, the result is double precision (i.e., a pure number, not money); the currency units cancel each other out in the division.

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Character Types

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8.3. Character Types

Table 8-4. Character Types

Name | Description
character varying(n), varchar(n) | variable-length with limit
character(n), char(n) | fixed-length, blank padded
text | variable unlimited length

Table 8-4 shows the general-purpose character types available in PostgreSQL.

SQL defines two primary character types: character varying(n) and character(n), where n is a positive integer. Both of these types can store strings up to n characters (not bytes) in length. An attempt to store a longer string into a column of these types will result in an error, unless the excess characters are all spaces, in which case the string will be truncated to the maximum length. (This somewhat bizarre exception is required by the SQL standard.) If the string to be stored is shorter than the declared length, values of type character will be space-padded; values of type character varying will simply store the shorter string.

If one explicitly casts a value to character varying(n) or character(n), then an over-length value will be truncated to n characters without raising an error. (This too is required by the SQL standard.)

The notations varchar(n) and char(n) are aliases for character varying(n) and character(n), respectively. character without length specifier is equivalent to character(1). If character varying is used without length specifier, the type accepts strings of any size. The latter is a PostgreSQL extension.

In addition, PostgreSQL provides the text type, which stores strings of any length. Although the type text is not in the SQL standard, several other SQL database management systems have it as well.

Values of type character are physically padded with spaces to the specified width n, and are stored and displayed that way. However, the padding spaces are treated as semantically insignificant. Trailing spaces are disregarded when comparing two values of type character, and they will be removed when converting a character value to one of the other string types. Note that trailing spaces are semantically significant in character varying and text values, and when using pattern matching, e.g. LIKE, regular expressions.

The storage requirement for a short string (up to 126 bytes) is 1 byte plus the actual string, which includes the space padding in the case of character. Longer strings have 4 bytes of overhead instead of 1. Long strings are compressed by the system automatically, so the physical requirement on disk might be less. Very long values are also stored in background tables so that they do not interfere with rapid access to shorter column values. In any case, the longest possible character string that can be stored is about 1 GB. (The maximum value that will be allowed for n in the data type declaration is less than that. It wouldn't be useful to change this because with multibyte character encodings the number of characters and bytes can be quite different. If you desire to store long strings with no specific upper limit, use text or character varying without a length specifier, rather than making up an arbitrary length limit.)

Tip: There is no performance difference among these three types, apart from increased storage space when using the blank-padded type, and a few extra CPU cycles to check the length when storing into a length-constrained column. While character(n) has performance advantages in some other database systems, there is no such advantage in PostgreSQL; in fact character(n) is usually the slowest of the three because of its additional storage costs. In most situations text or character varying should be used instead.

Refer to Section 4.1.2.1 for information about the syntax of string literals, and to Chapter 9 for information about available operators and functions. The database character set determines the character set used to store textual values; for more information on character set support, refer to Section 22.3.

Example 8-1. Using the Character Types

CREATE TABLE test1 (a character(4));
INSERT INTO test1 VALUES ('ok');
SELECT a, char_length(a) FROM test1; -- (1)
  a   | char_length
------+-------------
 ok   |           2

CREATE TABLE test2 (b varchar(5));
INSERT INTO test2 VALUES ('ok');
INSERT INTO test2 VALUES ('good      ');
INSERT INTO test2 VALUES ('too long');
ERROR:  value too long for type character varying(5)
INSERT INTO test2 VALUES ('too long'::varchar(5)); -- explicit truncation
SELECT b, char_length(b) FROM test2;
   b   | char_length
-------+-------------
 ok    |           2
 good  |           5
 too l |           5
(1)
The char_length function is discussed in Section 9.4.

There are two other fixed-length character types in PostgreSQL, shown in Table 8-5. The name type exists only for the storage of identifiers in the internal system catalogs and is not intended for use by the general user. Its length is currently defined as 64 bytes (63 usable characters plus terminator) but should be referenced using the constant NAMEDATALEN in C source code. The length is set at compile time (and is therefore adjustable for special uses); the default maximum length might change in a future release. The type "char" (note the quotes) is different from char(1) in that it only uses one byte of storage. It is internally used in the system catalogs as a simplistic enumeration type.

Table 8-5. Special Character Types

Name | Storage Size | Description
"char" | 1 byte | single-byte internal type
name | 64 bytes | internal type for object names
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Binary Data Types

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8.4. Binary Data Types

The bytea data type allows storage of binary strings; see Table 8-6.

Table 8-6. Binary Data Types

Name | Storage Size | Description
bytea | 1 or 4 bytes plus the actual binary string | variable-length binary string

A binary string is a sequence of octets (or bytes). Binary strings are distinguished from character strings in two ways. First, binary strings specifically allow storing octets of value zero and other "non-printable" octets (usually, octets outside the range 32 to 126). Character strings disallow zero octets, and also disallow any other octet values and sequences of octet values that are invalid according to the database's selected character set encoding. Second, operations on binary strings process the actual bytes, whereas the processing of character strings depends on locale settings. In short, binary strings are appropriate for storing data that the programmer thinks of as "raw bytes", whereas character strings are appropriate for storing text.

The bytea type supports two external formats for input and output: PostgreSQL's historical "escape" format, and "hex" format. Both of these are always accepted on input. The output format depends on the configuration parameter bytea_output; the default is hex. (Note that the hex format was introduced in PostgreSQL 9.0; earlier versions and some tools don't understand it.)

The SQL standard defines a different binary string type, called BLOB or BINARY LARGE OBJECT. The input format is different from bytea, but the provided functions and operators are mostly the same.

8.4.1. bytea Hex Format

The "hex" format encodes binary data as 2 hexadecimal digits per byte, most significant nibble first. The entire string is preceded by the sequence \x (to distinguish it from the escape format). In some contexts, the initial backslash may need to be escaped by doubling it, in the same cases in which backslashes have to be doubled in escape format; details appear below. The hexadecimal digits can be either upper or lower case, and whitespace is permitted between digit pairs (but not within a digit pair nor in the starting \x sequence). The hex format is compatible with a wide range of external applications and protocols, and it tends to be faster to convert than the escape format, so its use is preferred.

Example:

SELECT E'\\xDEADBEEF';

8.4.2. bytea Escape Format

The "escape" format is the traditional PostgreSQL format for the bytea type. It takes the approach of representing a binary string as a sequence of ASCII characters, while converting those bytes that cannot be represented as an ASCII character into special escape sequences. If, from the point of view of the application, representing bytes as characters makes sense, then this representation can be convenient. But in practice it is usually confusing because it fuzzes up the distinction between binary strings and character strings, and also the particular escape mechanism that was chosen is somewhat unwieldy. So this format should probably be avoided for most new applications.

When entering bytea values in escape format, octets of certain values must be escaped, while all octet values can be escaped. In general, to escape an octet, convert it into its three-digit octal value and precede it by a backslash (or two backslashes, if writing the value as a literal using escape string syntax). Backslash itself (octet value 92) can alternatively be represented by double backslashes. Table 8-7 shows the characters that must be escaped, and gives the alternative escape sequences where applicable.

Table 8-7. bytea Literal Escaped Octets

Decimal Octet Value | Description | Escaped Input Representation | Example | Output Representation
0 | zero octet | E'\\000' | SELECT E'\\000'::bytea; | \000
39 | single quote | '''' or E'\\047' | SELECT E'\''::bytea; | '
92 | backslash | E'\\\\' or E'\\134' | SELECT E'\\\\'::bytea; | \\
0 to 31 and 127 to 255 | "non-printable" octets | E'\\xxx' (octal value) | SELECT E'\\001'::bytea; | \001

The requirement to escape non-printable octets varies depending on locale settings. In some instances you can get away with leaving them unescaped. Note that the result in each of the examples in Table 8-7 was exactly one octet in length, even though the output representation is sometimes more than one character.

The reason multiple backslashes are required, as shown in Table 8-7, is that an input string written as a string literal must pass through two parse phases in the PostgreSQL server. The first backslash of each pair is interpreted as an escape character by the string-literal parser (assuming escape string syntax is used) and is therefore consumed, leaving the second backslash of the pair. (Dollar-quoted strings can be used to avoid this level of escaping.) The remaining backslash is then recognized by the bytea input function as starting either a three digit octal value or escaping another backslash. For example, a string literal passed to the server as E'\\001' becomes \001 after passing through the escape string parser. The \001 is then sent to the bytea input function, where it is converted to a single octet with a decimal value of 1. Note that the single-quote character is not treated specially by bytea, so it follows the normal rules for string literals. (See also Section 4.1.2.1.)

Bytea octets are sometimes escaped when output. In general, each "non-printable" octet is converted into its equivalent three-digit octal value and preceded by one backslash. Most "printable" octets are represented by their standard representation in the client character set. The octet with decimal value 92 (backslash) is doubled in the output. Details are in Table 8-8.

Table 8-8. bytea Output Escaped Octets

Decimal Octet Value | Description | Escaped Output Representation | Example | Output Result
92 | backslash | \\ | SELECT E'\\134'::bytea; | \\
0 to 31 and 127 to 255 | "non-printable" octets | \xxx (octal value) | SELECT E'\\001'::bytea; | \001
32 to 126 | "printable" octets | client character set representation | SELECT E'\\176'::bytea; | ~

Depending on the front end to PostgreSQL you use, you might have additional work to do in terms of escaping and unescaping bytea strings. For example, you might also have to escape line feeds and carriage returns if your interface automatically translates these.

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Date/Time Types

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8.5. Date/Time Types

PostgreSQL supports the full set of SQL date and time types, shown in Table 8-9. The operations available on these data types are described in Section 9.9.

Table 8-9. Date/Time Types

Name | Storage Size | Description | Low Value | High Value | Resolution
timestamp [ (p) ] [ without time zone ] | 8 bytes | both date and time (no time zone) | 4713 BC | 294276 AD | 1 microsecond / 14 digits
timestamp [ (p) ] with time zone | 8 bytes | both date and time, with time zone | 4713 BC | 294276 AD | 1 microsecond / 14 digits
date | 4 bytes | date (no time of day) | 4713 BC | 5874897 AD | 1 day
time [ (p) ] [ without time zone ] | 8 bytes | time of day (no date) | 00:00:00 | 24:00:00 | 1 microsecond / 14 digits
time [ (p) ] with time zone | 12 bytes | times of day only, with time zone | 00:00:00+1459 | 24:00:00-1459 | 1 microsecond / 14 digits
interval [ fields ] [ (p) ] | 16 bytes | time interval | -178000000 years | 178000000 years | 1 microsecond / 14 digits

Note: The SQL standard requires that writing just timestamp be equivalent to timestamp without time zone, and PostgreSQL honors that behavior. (Releases prior to 7.3 treated it as timestamp with time zone.) timestamptz is accepted as an abbreviation for timestamp with time zone; this is a PostgreSQL extension.

time, timestamp, and interval accept an optional precision value p which specifies the number of fractional digits retained in the seconds field. By default, there is no explicit bound on precision. The allowed range of p is from 0 to 6 for the timestamp and interval types.

Note: When timestamp values are stored as eight-byte integers (currently the default), microsecond precision is available over the full range of values. When timestamp values are stored as double precision floating-point numbers instead (a deprecated compile-time option), the effective limit of precision might be less than 6. timestamp values are stored as seconds before or after midnight 2000-01-01. When timestamp values are implemented using floating-point numbers, microsecond precision is achieved for dates within a few years of 2000-01-01, but the precision degrades for dates further away. Note that using floating-point datetimes allows a larger range of timestamp values to be represented than shown above: from 4713 BC up to 5874897 AD.

The same compile-time option also determines whether time and interval values are stored as floating-point numbers or eight-byte integers. In the floating-point case, large interval values degrade in precision as the size of the interval increases.

For the time types, the allowed range of p is from 0 to 6 when eight-byte integer storage is used, or from 0 to 10 when floating-point storage is used.

The interval type has an additional option, which is to restrict the set of stored fields by writing one of these phrases:

YEAR
MONTH
DAY
HOUR
MINUTE
SECOND
YEAR TO MONTH
DAY TO HOUR
DAY TO MINUTE
DAY TO SECOND
HOUR TO MINUTE
HOUR TO SECOND
MINUTE TO SECOND

Note that if both fields and p are specified, the fields must include SECOND, since the precision applies only to the seconds.

The type time with time zone is defined by the SQL standard, but the definition exhibits properties which lead to questionable usefulness. In most cases, a combination of date, time, timestamp without time zone, and timestamp with time zone should provide a complete range of date/time functionality required by any application.

The types abstime and reltime are lower precision types which are used internally. You are discouraged from using these types in applications; these internal types might disappear in a future release.

8.5.1. Date/Time Input

Date and time input is accepted in almost any reasonable format, including ISO 8601, SQL-compatible, traditional POSTGRES, and others. For some formats, ordering of day, month, and year in date input is ambiguous and there is support for specifying the expected ordering of these fields. Set the DateStyle parameter to MDY to select month-day-year interpretation, DMY to select day-month-year interpretation, or YMD to select year-month-day interpretation.

PostgreSQL is more flexible in handling date/time input than the SQL standard requires. See Appendix B for the exact parsing rules of date/time input and for the recognized text fields including months, days of the week, and time zones.

Remember that any date or time literal input needs to be enclosed in single quotes, like text strings. Refer to Section 4.1.2.7 for more information. SQL requires the following syntax

type [ (p) ] 'value'

where p is an optional precision specification giving the number of fractional digits in the seconds field. Precision can be specified for time, timestamp, and interval types. The allowed values are mentioned above. If no precision is specified in a constant specification, it defaults to the precision of the literal value.

8.5.1.1. Dates

Table 8-10 shows some possible inputs for the date type.

Table 8-10. Date Input

Example | Description
1999-01-08 | ISO 8601; January 8 in any mode (recommended format)
January 8, 1999 | unambiguous in any datestyle input mode
1/8/1999 | January 8 in MDY mode; August 1 in DMY mode
1/18/1999 | January 18 in MDY mode; rejected in other modes
01/02/03 | January 2, 2003 in MDY mode; February 1, 2003 in DMY mode; February 3, 2001 in YMD mode
1999-Jan-08 | January 8 in any mode
Jan-08-1999 | January 8 in any mode
08-Jan-1999 | January 8 in any mode
99-Jan-08 | January 8 in YMD mode, else error
08-Jan-99 | January 8, except error in YMD mode
Jan-08-99 | January 8, except error in YMD mode
19990108 | ISO 8601; January 8, 1999 in any mode
990108 | ISO 8601; January 8, 1999 in any mode
1999.008 | year and day of year
J2451187 | Julian day
January 8, 99 BC | year 99 BC

8.5.1.2. Times

The time-of-day types are time [ (p) ] without time zone and time [ (p) ] with time zone. time alone is equivalent to time without time zone.

Valid input for these types consists of a time of day followed by an optional time zone. (See Table 8-11 and Table 8-12.) If a time zone is specified in the input for time without time zone, it is silently ignored. You can also specify a date but it will be ignored, except when you use a time zone name that involves a daylight-savings rule, such as America/New_York. In this case specifying the date is required in order to determine whether standard or daylight-savings time applies. The appropriate time zone offset is recorded in the time with time zone value.

Table 8-11. Time Input

Example | Description
04:05:06.789 | ISO 8601
04:05:06 | ISO 8601
04:05 | ISO 8601
040506 | ISO 8601
04:05 AM | same as 04:05; AM does not affect value
04:05 PM | same as 16:05; input hour must be <= 12
04:05:06.789-8 | ISO 8601
04:05:06-08:00 | ISO 8601
04:05-08:00 | ISO 8601
040506-08 | ISO 8601
04:05:06 PST | time zone specified by abbreviation
2003-04-12 04:05:06 America/New_York | time zone specified by full name

Table 8-12. Time Zone Input

Example | Description
PST | Abbreviation (for Pacific Standard Time)
America/New_York | Full time zone name
PST8PDT | POSIX-style time zone specification
-8:00 | ISO-8601 offset for PST
-800 | ISO-8601 offset for PST
-8 | ISO-8601 offset for PST
zulu | Military abbreviation for UTC
z | Short form of zulu

Refer to Section 8.5.3 for more information on how to specify time zones.

8.5.1.3. Time Stamps

Valid input for the time stamp types consists of the concatenation of a date and a time, followed by an optional time zone, followed by an optional AD or BC. (Alternatively, AD/BC can appear before the time zone, but this is not the preferred ordering.) Thus:

1999-01-08 04:05:06

and:

1999-01-08 04:05:06 -8:00

are valid values, which follow the ISO 8601 standard. In addition, the common format:

January 8 04:05:06 1999 PST

is supported.

The SQL standard differentiates timestamp without time zone and timestamp with time zone literals by the presence of a "+" or "-" symbol and time zone offset after the time. Hence, according to the standard,

TIMESTAMP '2004-10-19 10:23:54'

is a timestamp without time zone, while

TIMESTAMP '2004-10-19 10:23:54+02'

is a timestamp with time zone. PostgreSQL never examines the content of a literal string before determining its type, and therefore will treat both of the above as timestamp without time zone. To ensure that a literal is treated as timestamp with time zone, give it the correct explicit type:

TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE '2004-10-19 10:23:54+02'

In a literal that has been determined to be timestamp without time zone, PostgreSQL will silently ignore any time zone indication. That is, the resulting value is derived from the date/time fields in the input value, and is not adjusted for time zone.

For timestamp with time zone, the internally stored value is always in UTC (Universal Coordinated Time, traditionally known as Greenwich Mean Time, GMT). An input value that has an explicit time zone specified is converted to UTC using the appropriate offset for that time zone. If no time zone is stated in the input string, then it is assumed to be in the time zone indicated by the system's timezone parameter, and is converted to UTC using the offset for the timezone zone.

When a timestamp with time zone value is output, it is always converted from UTC to the current timezone zone, and displayed as local time in that zone. To see the time in another time zone, either change timezone or use the AT TIME ZONE construct (see Section 9.9.3).

Conversions between timestamp without time zone and timestamp with time zone normally assume that the timestamp without time zone value should be taken or given as timezone local time. A different time zone can be specified for the conversion using AT TIME ZONE.

8.5.1.4. Special Values

PostgreSQL supports several special date/time input values for convenience, as shown in Table 8-13. The values infinity and -infinity are specially represented inside the system and will be displayed unchanged; but the others are simply notational shorthands that will be converted to ordinary date/time values when read. (In particular, now and related strings are converted to a specific time value as soon as they are read.) All of these values need to be enclosed in single quotes when used as constants in SQL commands.

Table 8-13. Special Date/Time Inputs

Input String | Valid Types | Description
epoch | date, timestamp | 1970-01-01 00:00:00+00 (Unix system time zero)
infinity | date, timestamp | later than all other time stamps
-infinity | date, timestamp | earlier than all other time stamps
now | date, time, timestamp | current transaction's start time
today | date, timestamp | midnight today
tomorrow | date, timestamp | midnight tomorrow
yesterday | date, timestamp | midnight yesterday
allballs | time | 00:00:00.00 UTC

The following SQL-compatible functions can also be used to obtain the current time value for the corresponding data type: CURRENT_DATE, CURRENT_TIME, CURRENT_TIMESTAMP, LOCALTIME, LOCALTIMESTAMP. The latter four accept an optional subsecond precision specification. (See Section 9.9.4.) Note that these are SQL functions and are not recognized in data input strings.

8.5.2. Date/Time Output

The output format of the date/time types can be set to one of the four styles ISO 8601, SQL (Ingres), traditional POSTGRES (Unix date format), or German. The default is the ISO format. (The SQL standard requires the use of the ISO 8601 format. The name of the "SQL" output format is a historical accident.) Table 8-14 shows examples of each output style. The output of the date and time types is of course only the date or time part in accordance with the given examples.

Table 8-14. Date/Time Output Styles

Style Specification | Description | Example
ISO | ISO 8601/SQL standard | 1997-12-17 07:37:16-08
SQL | traditional style | 12/17/1997 07:37:16.00 PST
POSTGRES | original style | Wed Dec 17 07:37:16 1997 PST
German | regional style | 17.12.1997 07:37:16.00 PST

In the SQL and POSTGRES styles, day appears before month if DMY field ordering has been specified, otherwise month appears before day. (See Section 8.5.1 for how this setting also affects interpretation of input values.) Table 8-15 shows an example.

Table 8-15. Date Order Conventions

datestyle Setting | Input Ordering | Example Output
SQL, DMY | day/month/year | 17/12/1997 15:37:16.00 CET
SQL, MDY | month/day/year | 12/17/1997 07:37:16.00 PST
Postgres, DMY | day/month/year | Wed 17 Dec 07:37:16 1997 PST

The date/time styles can be selected by the user using the SET datestyle command, the DateStyle parameter in the postgresql.conf configuration file, or the PGDATESTYLE environment variable on the server or client. The formatting function to_char (see Section 9.8) is also available as a more flexible way to format date/time output.

8.5.3. Time Zones

Time zones, and time-zone conventions, are influenced by political decisions, not just earth geometry. Time zones around the world became somewhat standardized during the 1900s, but continue to be prone to arbitrary changes, particularly with respect to daylight-savings rules. PostgreSQL uses the widely-used IANA (Olson) time zone database for information about historical time zone rules. For times in the future, the assumption is that the latest known rules for a given time zone will continue to be observed indefinitely far into the future.

PostgreSQL endeavors to be compatible with the SQL standard definitions for typical usage. However, the SQL standard has an odd mix of date and time types and capabilities. Two obvious problems are:

  • Although the date type cannot have an associated time zone, the time type can. Time zones in the real world have little meaning unless associated with a date as well as a time, since the offset can vary through the year with daylight-saving time boundaries.

  • The default time zone is specified as a constant numeric offset from UTC. It is therefore impossible to adapt to daylight-saving time when doing date/time arithmetic across DST boundaries.

To address these difficulties, we recommend using date/time types that contain both date and time when using time zones. We do not recommend using the type time with time zone (though it is supported by PostgreSQL for legacy applications and for compliance with the SQL standard). PostgreSQL assumes your local time zone for any type containing only date or time.

All timezone-aware dates and times are stored internally in UTC. They are converted to local time in the zone specified by the timezone configuration parameter before being displayed to the client.

PostgreSQL allows you to specify time zones in three different forms:

  • A full time zone name, for example America/New_York. The recognized time zone names are listed in the pg_timezone_names view (see Section 45.67). PostgreSQL uses the widely-used IANA time zone data for this purpose, so the same time zone names are also recognized by much other software.

  • A time zone abbreviation, for example PST. Such a specification merely defines a particular offset from UTC, in contrast to full time zone names which can imply a set of daylight savings transition-date rules as well. The recognized abbreviations are listed in the pg_timezone_abbrevs view (see Section 45.66). You cannot set the configuration parameters timezone or log_timezone to a time zone abbreviation, but you can use abbreviations in date/time input values and with the AT TIME ZONE operator.

  • In addition to the timezone names and abbreviations, PostgreSQL will accept POSIX-style time zone specifications of the form STDoffset or STDoffsetDST, where STD is a zone abbreviation, offset is a numeric offset in hours west from UTC, and DST is an optional daylight-savings zone abbreviation, assumed to stand for one hour ahead of the given offset. For example, if EST5EDT were not already a recognized zone name, it would be accepted and would be functionally equivalent to United States East Coast time. When a daylight-savings zone name is present, it is assumed to be used according to the same daylight-savings transition rules used in the IANA time zone database's posixrules entry. In a standard PostgreSQL installation, posixrules is the same as US/Eastern, so that POSIX-style time zone specifications follow USA daylight-savings rules. If needed, you can adjust this behavior by replacing the posixrules file.

In short, this is the difference between abbreviations and full names: abbreviations represent a specific offset from UTC, whereas many of the full names imply a local daylight-savings time rule, and so have two possible UTC offsets. As an example, 2014-06-04 12:00 America/New_York represents noon local time in New York, which for this particular date was Eastern Daylight Time (UTC-4). So 2014-06-04 12:00 EDT specifies that same time instant. But 2014-06-04 12:00 EST specifies noon Eastern Standard Time (UTC-5), regardless of whether daylight savings was nominally in effect on that date.

To complicate matters, some jurisdictions have used the same timezone abbreviation to mean different UTC offsets at different times; for example, in Moscow MSK has meant UTC+3 in some years and UTC+4 in others. PostgreSQL interprets such abbreviations according to whatever they meant (or had most recently meant) on the specified date; but, as with the EST example above, this is not necessarily the same as local civil time on that date.

One should be wary that the POSIX-style time zone feature can lead to silently accepting bogus input, since there is no check on the reasonableness of the zone abbreviations. For example, SET TIMEZONE TO FOOBAR0 will work, leaving the system effectively using a rather peculiar abbreviation for UTC. Another issue to keep in mind is that in POSIX time zone names, positive offsets are used for locations west of Greenwich. Everywhere else, PostgreSQL follows the ISO-8601 convention that positive timezone offsets are east of Greenwich.

In all cases, timezone names and abbreviations are recognized case-insensitively. (This is a change from PostgreSQL versions prior to 8.2, which were case-sensitive in some contexts but not others.)

Neither timezone names nor abbreviations are hard-wired into the server; they are obtained from configuration files stored under .../share/timezone/ and .../share/timezonesets/ of the installation directory (see Section B.3).

The timezone configuration parameter can be set in the file postgresql.conf, or in any of the other standard ways described in Chapter 18. There are also several special ways to set it:

  • If timezone is not specified in postgresql.conf or as a server command-line option, the server attempts to use the value of the TZ environment variable as the default time zone. If TZ is not defined or is not any of the time zone names known to PostgreSQL, the server attempts to determine the operating system's default time zone by checking the behavior of the C library function localtime(). The default time zone is selected as the closest match among PostgreSQL's known time zones. (These rules are also used to choose the default value of log_timezone, if not specified.)

  • The SQL command SET TIME ZONE sets the time zone for the session. This is an alternative spelling of SET TIMEZONE TO with a more SQL-spec-compatible syntax.

  • The PGTZ environment variable is used by libpq clients to send a SET TIME ZONE command to the server upon connection.

8.5.4. Interval Input

interval values can be written using the following verbose syntax:

[@] quantity unit [quantity unit...] [direction]

where quantity is a number (possibly signed); unit is microsecond, millisecond, second, minute, hour, day, week, month, year, decade, century, millennium, or abbreviations or plurals of these units; direction can be ago or empty. The at sign (@) is optional noise. The amounts of the different units are implicitly added with appropriate sign accounting. ago negates all the fields. This syntax is also used for interval output, if IntervalStyle is set to postgres_verbose.

Quantities of days, hours, minutes, and seconds can be specified without explicit unit markings. For example, '1 12:59:10' is read the same as '1 day 12 hours 59 min 10 sec'. Also, a combination of years and months can be specified with a dash; for example '200-10' is read the same as '200 years 10 months'. (These shorter forms are in fact the only ones allowed by the SQL standard, and are used for output when IntervalStyle is set to sql_standard.)

Interval values can also be written as ISO 8601 time intervals, using either the "format with designators" of the standard's section 4.4.3.2 or the "alternative format" of section 4.4.3.3. The format with designators looks like this:

P quantity unit [ quantity unit ...] [ T [ quantity unit ...]]

The string must start with a P, and may include a T that introduces the time-of-day units. The available unit abbreviations are given in Table 8-16. Units may be omitted, and may be specified in any order, but units smaller than a day must appear after T. In particular, the meaning of M depends on whether it is before or after T.

Table 8-16. ISO 8601 Interval Unit Abbreviations

Abbreviation | Meaning
Y | Years
M | Months (in the date part)
W | Weeks
D | Days
H | Hours
M | Minutes (in the time part)
S | Seconds

In the alternative format:

P [ years-months-days ] [ T hours:minutes:seconds ]

the string must begin with P, and a T separates the date and time parts of the interval. The values are given as numbers similar to ISO 8601 dates.

When writing an interval constant with a fields specification, or when assigning a string to an interval column that was defined with a fields specification, the interpretation of unmarked quantities depends on the fields. For example INTERVAL '1' YEAR is read as 1 year, whereas INTERVAL '1' means 1 second. Also, field values "to the right" of the least significant field allowed by the fields specification are silently discarded. For example, writing INTERVAL '1 day 2:03:04' HOUR TO MINUTE results in dropping the seconds field, but not the day field.

According to the SQL standard all fields of an interval value must have the same sign, so a leading negative sign applies to all fields; for example the negative sign in the interval literal '-1 2:03:04' applies to both the days and hour/minute/second parts. PostgreSQL allows the fields to have different signs, and traditionally treats each field in the textual representation as independently signed, so that the hour/minute/second part is considered positive in this example. If IntervalStyle is set to sql_standard then a leading sign is considered to apply to all fields (but only if no additional signs appear). Otherwise the traditional PostgreSQL interpretation is used. To avoid ambiguity, it's recommended to attach an explicit sign to each field if any field is negative.

Internally interval values are stored as months, days, and seconds. This is done because the number of days in a month varies, and a day can have 23 or 25 hours if a daylight savings time adjustment is involved. The months and days fields are integers while the seconds field can store fractions. Because intervals are usually created from constant strings or timestamp subtraction, this storage method works well in most cases. Functions justify_days and justify_hours are available for adjusting days and hours that overflow their normal ranges.

In the verbose input format, and in some fields of the more compact input formats, field values can have fractional parts; for example '1.5 week' or '01:02:03.45'. Such input is converted to the appropriate number of months, days, and seconds for storage. When this would result in a fractional number of months or days, the fraction is added to the lower-order fields using the conversion factors 1 month = 30 days and 1 day = 24 hours. For example, '1.5 month' becomes 1 month and 15 days. Only seconds will ever be shown as fractional on output.

Table 8-17 shows some examples of valid interval input.

Table 8-17. Interval Input

Example | Description
1-2 | SQL standard format: 1 year 2 months
3 4:05:06 | SQL standard format: 3 days 4 hours 5 minutes 6 seconds
1 year 2 months 3 days 4 hours 5 minutes 6 seconds | Traditional Postgres format: 1 year 2 months 3 days 4 hours 5 minutes 6 seconds
P1Y2M3DT4H5M6S | ISO 8601 "format with designators": same meaning as above
P0001-02-03T04:05:06 | ISO 8601 "alternative format": same meaning as above

8.5.5. Interval Output

The output format of the interval type can be set to one of the four styles sql_standard, postgres, postgres_verbose, or iso_8601, using the command SET intervalstyle. The default is the postgres format. Table 8-18 shows examples of each output style.

The sql_standard style produces output that conforms to the SQL standard's specification for interval literal strings, if the interval value meets the standard's restrictions (either year-month only or day-time only, with no mixing of positive and negative components). Otherwise the output looks like a standard year-month literal string followed by a day-time literal string, with explicit signs added to disambiguate mixed-sign intervals.

The output of the postgres style matches the output of PostgreSQL releases prior to 8.4 when the DateStyle parameter was set to ISO.

The output of the postgres_verbose style matches the output of PostgreSQL releases prior to 8.4 when the DateStyle parameter was set to non-ISO output.

The output of the iso_8601 style matches the "format with designators" described in section 4.4.3.2 of the ISO 8601 standard.

Table 8-18. Interval Output Style Examples

Style Specification | Year-Month Interval | Day-Time Interval | Mixed Interval
sql_standard | 1-2 | 3 4:05:06 | -1-2 +3 -4:05:06
postgres | 1 year 2 mons | 3 days 04:05:06 | -1 year -2 mons +3 days -04:05:06
postgres_verbose | @ 1 year 2 mons | @ 3 days 4 hours 5 mins 6 secs | @ 1 year 2 mons -3 days 4 hours 5 mins 6 secs ago
iso_8601 | P1Y2M | P3DT4H5M6S | P-1Y-2M3DT-4H-5M-6S

8.5.6. Internals

PostgreSQL uses Julian dates for all date/time calculations. This has the useful property of correctly calculating dates from 4713 BC to far into the future, using the assumption that the length of the year is 365.2425 days.

Date conventions before the 19th century make for interesting reading, but are not consistent enough to warrant coding into a date/time handler.

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Boolean Type

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8.6. Boolean Type

PostgreSQL provides the standard SQL type boolean; see Table 8-19. The boolean type can have several states: "true", "false", and a third state, "unknown", which is represented by the SQL null value.

Table 8-19. Boolean Data Type

Name | Storage Size | Description
boolean | 1 byte | state of true or false

Valid literal values for the "true" state are:

TRUE
't'
'true'
'y'
'yes'
'on'
'1'

For the "false" state, the following values can be used:

FALSE
'f'
'false'
'n'
'no'
'off'
'0'

Leading or trailing whitespace is ignored, and case does not matter. The key words TRUE and FALSE are the preferred (SQL-compliant) usage.

Example 8-2 shows that boolean values are output using the letters t and f.

Example 8-2. Using the boolean Type

CREATE TABLE test1 (a boolean, b text);
INSERT INTO test1 VALUES (TRUE, 'sic est');
INSERT INTO test1 VALUES (FALSE, 'non est');
SELECT * FROM test1;
 a |    b
---+---------
 t | sic est
 f | non est

SELECT * FROM test1 WHERE a;
 a |    b
---+---------
 t | sic est
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Date/Time Types | Up | Enumerated Types


Enumerated Types

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8.7. Enumerated Types

Enumerated (enum) types are data types that comprise a static, ordered set of values. They are equivalent to the enum types supported in a number of programming languages. An example of an enum type might be the days of the week, or a set of status values for a piece of data.

8.7.1. Declaration of Enumerated Types

Enum types are created using the CREATE TYPE command, for example:

CREATE TYPE mood AS ENUM ('sad', 'ok', 'happy');

Once created, the enum type can be used in table and function definitions much like any other type:

CREATE TYPE mood AS ENUM ('sad', 'ok', 'happy');
CREATE TABLE person (
    name text,
    current_mood mood
);
INSERT INTO person VALUES ('Moe', 'happy');
SELECT * FROM person WHERE current_mood = 'happy';
 name | current_mood
------+--------------
 Moe  | happy
(1 row)

8.7.2. Ordering

The ordering of the values in an enum type is the order in which the values were listed when the type was created. All standard comparison operators and related aggregate functions are supported for enums. For example:

INSERT INTO person VALUES ('Larry', 'sad');
INSERT INTO person VALUES ('Curly', 'ok');
SELECT * FROM person WHERE current_mood > 'sad';
 name  | current_mood
-------+--------------
 Moe   | happy
 Curly | ok
(2 rows)

SELECT * FROM person WHERE current_mood > 'sad' ORDER BY current_mood;
 name  | current_mood
-------+--------------
 Curly | ok
 Moe   | happy
(2 rows)

SELECT name
FROM person
WHERE current_mood = (SELECT MIN(current_mood) FROM person);
 name
-------
 Larry
(1 row)

8.7.3. Type Safety

Each enumerated data type is separate and cannot be compared with other enumerated types. See this example:

CREATE TYPE happiness AS ENUM ('happy', 'very happy', 'ecstatic');
CREATE TABLE holidays (
    num_weeks integer,
    happiness happiness
);
INSERT INTO holidays(num_weeks,happiness) VALUES (4, 'happy');
INSERT INTO holidays(num_weeks,happiness) VALUES (6, 'very happy');
INSERT INTO holidays(num_weeks,happiness) VALUES (8, 'ecstatic');
INSERT INTO holidays(num_weeks,happiness) VALUES (2, 'sad');
ERROR:  invalid input value for enum happiness: "sad"
SELECT person.name, holidays.num_weeks FROM person, holidays
  WHERE person.current_mood = holidays.happiness;
ERROR:  operator does not exist: mood = happiness

If you really need to do something like that, you can either write a custom operator or add explicit casts to your query:

SELECT person.name, holidays.num_weeks FROM person, holidays
  WHERE person.current_mood::text = holidays.happiness::text;
 name | num_weeks
------+-----------
 Moe  |         4
(1 row)

8.7.4. Implementation Details

An enum value occupies four bytes on disk. The length of an enum value's textual label is limited by the NAMEDATALEN setting compiled into PostgreSQL; in standard builds this means at most 63 bytes.

Enum labels are case sensitive, so 'happy' is not the same as 'HAPPY'. White space in the labels is significant too.

The translations from internal enum values to textual labels are kept in the system catalog pg_enum. Querying this catalog directly can be useful.

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Geometric Types

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8.8. Geometric Types

Geometric data types represent two-dimensional spatial objects. Table 8-20 shows the geometric types available in PostgreSQL. The most fundamental type, the point, forms the basis for all of the other types.

Table 8-20. Geometric Types

Name | Storage Size | Representation | Description
point | 16 bytes | Point on a plane | (x,y)
line | 32 bytes | Infinite line (not fully implemented) | ((x1,y1),(x2,y2))
lseg | 32 bytes | Finite line segment | ((x1,y1),(x2,y2))
box | 32 bytes | Rectangular box | ((x1,y1),(x2,y2))
path | 16+16n bytes | Closed path (similar to polygon) | ((x1,y1),...)
path | 16+16n bytes | Open path | [(x1,y1),...]
polygon | 40+16n bytes | Polygon (similar to closed path) | ((x1,y1),...)
circle | 24 bytes | Circle | <(x,y),r> (center point and radius)

A rich set of functions and operators is available to perform various geometric operations such as scaling, translation, rotation, and determining intersections. They are explained in Section 9.11.

8.8.1. Points

Points are the fundamental two-dimensional building block for geometric types. Values of type point are specified using either of the following syntaxes:

( x , y )
  x , y

where x and y are the respective coordinates, as floating-point numbers.

Points are output using the first syntax.

8.8.2. Line Segments

Line segments (lseg) are represented by pairs of points. Values of type lseg are specified using any of the following syntaxes:

[ ( x1 , y1 ) , ( x2 , y2 ) ]
( ( x1 , y1 ) , ( x2 , y2 ) )
  ( x1 , y1 ) , ( x2 , y2 )
    x1 , y1   ,   x2 , y2

where (x1,y1) and (x2,y2) are the end points of the line segment.

Line segments are output using the first syntax.

8.8.3. Boxes

Boxes are represented by pairs of points that are opposite corners of the box. Values of type box are specified using any of the following syntaxes:

( ( x1 , y1 ) , ( x2 , y2 ) )
  ( x1 , y1 ) , ( x2 , y2 )
    x1 , y1   ,   x2 , y2

where (x1,y1) and (x2,y2) are any two opposite corners of the box.

Boxes are output using the second syntax.

Any two opposite corners can be supplied on input, but the values will be reordered as needed to store the upper right and lower left corners, in that order.

8.8.4. Paths

Paths are represented by lists of connected points. Paths can be open, where the first and last points in the list are considered not connected, or closed, where the first and last points are considered connected.

Values of type path are specified using any of the following syntaxes:

[ ( x1 , y1 ) , ... , ( xn , yn ) ]
( ( x1 , y1 ) , ... , ( xn , yn ) )
  ( x1 , y1 ) , ... , ( xn , yn )
  ( x1 , y1   , ... ,   xn , yn )
    x1 , y1   , ... ,   xn , yn

where the points are the end points of the line segments comprising the path. Square brackets ([]) indicate an open path, while parentheses (()) indicate a closed path. When the outermost parentheses are omitted, as in the third through fifth syntaxes, a closed path is assumed.

Paths are output using the first or second syntax, as appropriate.

8.8.5. Polygons

Polygons are represented by lists of points (the vertexes of the polygon). Polygons are very similar to closed paths, but are stored differently and have their own set of support routines.

Values of type polygon are specified using any of the following syntaxes:

( ( x1 , y1 ) , ... , ( xn , yn ) )
  ( x1 , y1 ) , ... , ( xn , yn )
  ( x1 , y1   , ... ,   xn , yn )
    x1 , y1   , ... ,   xn , yn

where the points are the end points of the line segments comprising the boundary of the polygon.

Polygons are output using the first syntax.

8.8.6. Circles

Circles are represented by a center point and radius. Values of type circle are specified using any of the following syntaxes:

< ( x , y ) , r >
( ( x , y ) , r )
  ( x , y ) , r
    x , y   , r

where (x,y) is the center point and r is the radius of the circle.

Circles are output using the first syntax.

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Network Address Types

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8.9. Network Address Types

PostgreSQL offers data types to store IPv4, IPv6, and MAC addresses, as shown in Table 8-21. It is better to use these types instead of plain text types to store network addresses, because these types offer input error checking and specialized operators and functions (see Section 9.12).

Table 8-21. Network Address Types

Name | Storage Size | Description
cidr | 7 or 19 bytes | IPv4 and IPv6 networks
inet | 7 or 19 bytes | IPv4 and IPv6 hosts and networks
macaddr | 6 bytes | MAC addresses

When sorting inet or cidr data types, IPv4 addresses will always sort before IPv6 addresses, including IPv4 addresses encapsulated or mapped to IPv6 addresses, such as ::10.2.3.4 or ::ffff:10.4.3.2.

8.9.1. inet

The inet type holds an IPv4 or IPv6 host address, and optionally its subnet, all in one field. The subnet is represented by the number of network address bits present in the host address (the "netmask"). If the netmask is 32 and the address is IPv4, then the value does not indicate a subnet, only a single host. In IPv6, the address length is 128 bits, so 128 bits specify a unique host address. Note that if you want to accept only networks, you should use the cidr type rather than inet.

The input format for this type is address/y where address is an IPv4 or IPv6 address and y is the number of bits in the netmask. If the /y portion is missing, the netmask is 32 for IPv4 and 128 for IPv6, so the value represents just a single host. On display, the /y portion is suppressed if the netmask specifies a single host.

8.9.2. cidr

The cidr type holds an IPv4 or IPv6 network specification. Input and output formats follow Classless Internet Domain Routing conventions. The format for specifying networks is address/y where address is the network represented as an IPv4 or IPv6 address, and y is the number of bits in the netmask. If y is omitted, it is calculated using assumptions from the older classful network numbering system, except it will be at least large enough to include all of the octets written in the input. It is an error to specify a network address that has bits set to the right of the specified netmask.

Table 8-22 shows some examples.

Table 8-22. cidr Type Input Examples

cidr Input | cidr Output | abbrev(cidr)
192.168.100.128/25 | 192.168.100.128/25 | 192.168.100.128/25
192.168/24 | 192.168.0.0/24 | 192.168.0/24
192.168/25 | 192.168.0.0/25 | 192.168.0.0/25
192.168.1 | 192.168.1.0/24 | 192.168.1/24
192.168 | 192.168.0.0/24 | 192.168.0/24
128.1 | 128.1.0.0/16 | 128.1/16
128 | 128.0.0.0/16 | 128.0/16
128.1.2 | 128.1.2.0/24 | 128.1.2/24
10.1.2 | 10.1.2.0/24 | 10.1.2/24
10.1 | 10.1.0.0/16 | 10.1/16
10 | 10.0.0.0/8 | 10/8
10.1.2.3/32 | 10.1.2.3/32 | 10.1.2.3/32
2001:4f8:3:ba::/64 | 2001:4f8:3:ba::/64 | 2001:4f8:3:ba::/64
2001:4f8:3:ba:2e0:81ff:fe22:d1f1/128 | 2001:4f8:3:ba:2e0:81ff:fe22:d1f1/128 | 2001:4f8:3:ba:2e0:81ff:fe22:d1f1
::ffff:1.2.3.0/120 | ::ffff:1.2.3.0/120 | ::ffff:1.2.3/120
::ffff:1.2.3.0/128 | ::ffff:1.2.3.0/128 | ::ffff:1.2.3.0/128

8.9.3. inet vs. cidr

The essential difference between inet and cidr data types is that inet accepts values with nonzero bits to the right of the netmask, whereas cidr does not.

Tip: If you do not like the output format for inet or cidr values, try the functions host, text, and abbrev.

8.9.4. macaddr

The macaddr type stores MAC addresses, known for example from Ethernet card hardware addresses (although MAC addresses are used for other purposes as well). Input is accepted in the following formats:

'08:00:2b:01:02:03'
'08-00-2b-01-02-03'
'08002b:010203'
'08002b-010203'
'0800.2b01.0203'
'08002b010203'

These examples would all specify the same address. Upper and lower case is accepted for the digits a through f. Output is always in the first of the forms shown.

IEEE Std 802-2001 specifies the second shown form (with hyphens) as the canonical form for MAC addresses, and specifies the first form (with colons) as the bit-reversed notation, so that 08-00-2b-01-02-03 = 01:00:4D:08:04:0C. This convention is widely ignored nowadays, and it is only relevant for obsolete network protocols (such as Token Ring). PostgreSQL makes no provisions for bit reversal, and all accepted formats use the canonical LSB order.

The remaining four input formats are not part of any standard.

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Bit String Types

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8.10. Bit String Types

Bit strings are strings of 1's and 0's. They can be used to store or visualize bit masks. There are two SQL bit types: bit(n) and bit varying(n), where n is a positive integer.

bit type data must match the length n exactly; it is an error to attempt to store shorter or longer bit strings. bit varying data is of variable length up to the maximum length n; longer strings will be rejected. Writing bit without a length is equivalent to bit(1), while bit varying without a length specification means unlimited length.

Note: If one explicitly casts a bit-string value to bit(n), it will be truncated or zero-padded on the right to be exactly n bits, without raising an error. Similarly, if one explicitly casts a bit-string value to bit varying(n), it will be truncated on the right if it is more than n bits.

Refer to Section 4.1.2.5 for information about the syntax of bit string constants. Bit-logical operators and string manipulation functions are available; see Section 9.6.

Example 8-3. Using the Bit String Types

CREATE TABLE test (a BIT(3), b BIT VARYING(5));
INSERT INTO test VALUES (B'101', B'00');
INSERT INTO test VALUES (B'10', B'101');
ERROR:  bit string length 2 does not match type bit(3)
INSERT INTO test VALUES (B'10'::bit(3), B'101');
SELECT * FROM test;
  a  |  b
-----+-----
 101 | 00
 100 | 101

A bit string value requires 1 byte for each group of 8 bits, plus 5 or 8 bytes overhead depending on the length of the string (but long values may be compressed or moved out-of-line, as explained in Section 8.3 for character strings).

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Text Search Types

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8.11. Text Search Types

PostgreSQL provides two data types that are designed to support full text search, which is the activity of searching through a collection of natural-language documents to locate those that best match a query. The tsvector type represents a document in a form optimized for text search; the tsquery type similarly represents a text query. Chapter 12 provides a detailed explanation of this facility, and Section 9.13 summarizes the related functions and operators.

8.11.1. tsvector

A tsvector value is a sorted list of distinct lexemes, which are words that have been normalized to merge different variants of the same word (see Chapter 12 for details). Sorting and duplicate-elimination are done automatically during input, as shown in this example:

SELECT 'a fat cat sat on a mat and ate a fat rat'::tsvector;
                      tsvector
----------------------------------------------------
 'a' 'and' 'ate' 'cat' 'fat' 'mat' 'on' 'rat' 'sat'

To represent lexemes containing whitespace or punctuation, surround them with quotes:

SELECT $$the lexeme '    ' contains spaces$$::tsvector;
                 tsvector
-------------------------------------------
 '    ' 'contains' 'lexeme' 'spaces' 'the'

(We use dollar-quoted string literals in this example and the next one to avoid the confusion of having to double quote marks within the literals.) Embedded quotes and backslashes must be doubled:

SELECT $$the lexeme 'Joe''s' contains a quote$$::tsvector;
                    tsvector
------------------------------------------------
 'Joe''s' 'a' 'contains' 'lexeme' 'quote' 'the'

Optionally, integer positions can be attached to lexemes:

SELECT 'a:1 fat:2 cat:3 sat:4 on:5 a:6 mat:7 and:8 ate:9 a:10 fat:11 rat:12'::tsvector;
                                  tsvector
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 'a':1,6,10 'and':8 'ate':9 'cat':3 'fat':2,11 'mat':7 'on':5 'rat':12 'sat':4

A position normally indicates the source word's location in the document. Positional information can be used for proximity ranking. Position values can range from 1 to 16383; larger numbers are silently set to 16383. Duplicate positions for the same lexeme are discarded.

Lexemes that have positions can further be labeled with a weight, which can be A, B, C, or D. D is the default and hence is not shown on output:

SELECT 'a:1A fat:2B,4C cat:5D'::tsvector;
          tsvector
----------------------------
 'a':1A 'cat':5 'fat':2B,4C

Weights are typically used to reflect document structure, for example by marking title words differently from body words. Text search ranking functions can assign different priorities to the different weight markers.

It is important to understand that the tsvector type itself does not perform any normalization; it assumes the words it is given are normalized appropriately for the application. For example,

select 'The Fat Rats'::tsvector;
      tsvector
--------------------
 'Fat' 'Rats' 'The'

For most English-text-searching applications the above words would be considered non-normalized, but tsvector doesn't care. Raw document text should usually be passed through to_tsvector to normalize the words appropriately for searching:

SELECT to_tsvector('english', 'The Fat Rats');
   to_tsvector
-----------------
 'fat':2 'rat':3

Again, see Chapter 12 for more detail.

8.11.2. tsquery

A tsquery value stores lexemes that are to be searched for, and combines them honoring the Boolean operators & (AND), | (OR), and ! (NOT). Parentheses can be used to enforce grouping of the operators:

SELECT 'fat & rat'::tsquery;
    tsquery
---------------
 'fat' & 'rat'

SELECT 'fat & (rat | cat)'::tsquery;
          tsquery
---------------------------
 'fat' & ( 'rat' | 'cat' )

SELECT 'fat & rat & ! cat'::tsquery;
        tsquery
------------------------
 'fat' & 'rat' & !'cat'

In the absence of parentheses, ! (NOT) binds most tightly, and & (AND) binds more tightly than | (OR).

Optionally, lexemes in a tsquery can be labeled with one or more weight letters, which restricts them to match only tsvector lexemes with matching weights:

SELECT 'fat:ab & cat'::tsquery;
    tsquery
------------------
 'fat':AB & 'cat'

Also, lexemes in a tsquery can be labeled with * to specify prefix matching:

SELECT 'super:*'::tsquery;
  tsquery
-----------
 'super':*

This query will match any word in a tsvector that begins with "super". Note that prefixes are first processed by text search configurations, which means this comparison returns true:

SELECT to_tsvector( 'postgraduate' ) @@ to_tsquery( 'postgres:*' );
 ?column?
----------
 t
(1 row)

because postgres gets stemmed to postgr:

SELECT to_tsquery('postgres:*');
 to_tsquery
------------
 'postgr':*
(1 row)

which then matches postgraduate.

Quoting rules for lexemes are the same as described previously for lexemes in tsvector; and, as with tsvector, any required normalization of words must be done before converting to the tsquery type. The to_tsquery function is convenient for performing such normalization:

SELECT to_tsquery('Fat:ab & Cats');
    to_tsquery
------------------
 'fat':AB & 'cat'

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UUID Type

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8.12. UUID Type

The data type uuid stores Universally Unique Identifiers (UUID) as defined by RFC 4122, ISO/IEC 9834-8:2005, and related standards. (Some systems refer to this data type as a globally unique identifier, or GUID, instead.) This identifier is a 128-bit quantity that is generated by an algorithm chosen to make it very unlikely that the same identifier will be generated by anyone else in the known universe using the same algorithm. Therefore, for distributed systems, these identifiers provide a better uniqueness guarantee than sequence generators, which are only unique within a single database.

A UUID is written as a sequence of lower-case hexadecimal digits, in several groups separated by hyphens, specifically a group of 8 digits followed by three groups of 4 digits followed by a group of 12 digits, for a total of 32 digits representing the 128 bits. An example of a UUID in this standard form is:

a0eebc99-9c0b-4ef8-bb6d-6bb9bd380a11

PostgreSQL also accepts the following alternative forms for input: use of upper-case digits, the standard format surrounded by braces, omitting some or all hyphens, adding a hyphen after any group of four digits. Examples are:

A0EEBC99-9C0B-4EF8-BB6D-6BB9BD380A11
{a0eebc99-9c0b-4ef8-bb6d-6bb9bd380a11}
a0eebc999c0b4ef8bb6d6bb9bd380a11
a0ee-bc99-9c0b-4ef8-bb6d-6bb9-bd38-0a11
{a0eebc99-9c0b4ef8-bb6d6bb9-bd380a11}

Output is always in the standard form.

PostgreSQL provides storage and comparison functions for UUIDs, but the core database does not include any function for generating UUIDs, because no single algorithm is well suited for every application. The uuid-ossp module provides functions that implement several standard algorithms. Alternatively, UUIDs could be generated by client applications or other libraries invoked through a server-side function.

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XML Type

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8.13. XML Type

The xml data type can be used to store XML data. Its advantage over storing XML data in a text field is that it checks the input values for well-formedness, and there are support functions to perform type-safe operations on it; see Section 9.14. Use of this data type requires the installation to have been built with configure --with-libxml.

The xml type can store well-formed "documents", as defined by the XML standard, as well as "content" fragments, which are defined by the production XMLDecl? content in the XML standard. Roughly, this means that content fragments can have more than one top-level element or character node. The expression xmlvalue IS DOCUMENT can be used to evaluate whether a particular xml value is a full document or only a content fragment.

8.13.1. Creating XML Values

To produce a value of type xml from character data, use the function xmlparse:

XMLPARSE ( { DOCUMENT | CONTENT } value)

Examples:

XMLPARSE (DOCUMENT '<?xml version="1.0"?><book><title>Manual</title><chapter>...</chapter></book>')
XMLPARSE (CONTENT 'abc<foo>bar</foo><bar>foo</bar>')

While this is the only way to convert character strings into XML values according to the SQL standard, the PostgreSQL-specific syntaxes:

xml '<foo>bar</foo>'
'<foo>bar</foo>'::xml

can also be used.

The xml type does not validate input values against a document type declaration (DTD), even when the input value specifies a DTD. There is also currently no built-in support for validating against other XML schema languages such as XML Schema.

The inverse operation, producing a character string value from xml, uses the function xmlserialize:

XMLSERIALIZE ( { DOCUMENT | CONTENT } value AS type )

type can be character, character varying, or text (or an alias for one of those). Again, according to the SQL standard, this is the only way to convert between type xml and character types, but PostgreSQL also allows you to simply cast the value.

When a character string value is cast to or from type xml without going through XMLPARSE or XMLSERIALIZE, respectively, the choice of DOCUMENT versus CONTENT is determined by the "XML option" session configuration parameter, which can be set using the standard command:

SET XML OPTION { DOCUMENT | CONTENT };

or the more PostgreSQL-like syntax

SET xmloption TO { DOCUMENT | CONTENT };

The default is CONTENT, so all forms of XML data are allowed.

Note: With the default XML option setting, you cannot directly cast character strings to type xml if they contain a document type declaration, because the definition of XML content fragment does not accept them. If you need to do that, either use XMLPARSE or change the XML option.

8.13.2. Encoding Handling

Care must be taken when dealing with multiple character encodings on the client, server, and in the XML data passed through them. When using the text mode to pass queries to the server and query results to the client (which is the normal mode), PostgreSQL converts all character data passed between the client and the server and vice versa to the character encoding of the respective end; see Section 22.3. This includes string representations of XML values, such as in the above examples. This would ordinarily mean that encoding declarations contained in XML data can become invalid as the character data is converted to other encodings while travelling between client and server, because the embedded encoding declaration is not changed. To cope with this behavior, encoding declarations contained in character strings presented for input to the xml type are ignored, and content is assumed to be in the current server encoding. Consequently, for correct processing, character strings of XML data must be sent from the client in the current client encoding. It is the responsibility of the client to either convert documents to the current client encoding before sending them to the server, or to adjust the client encoding appropriately. On output, values of type xml will not have an encoding declaration, and clients should assume all data is in the current client encoding.

When using binary mode to pass query parameters to the server and query results back to the client, no character set conversion is performed, so the situation is different. In this case, an encoding declaration in the XML data will be observed, and if it is absent, the data will be assumed to be in UTF-8 (as required by the XML standard; note that PostgreSQL does not support UTF-16). On output, data will have an encoding declaration specifying the client encoding, unless the client encoding is UTF-8, in which case it will be omitted.

Needless to say, processing XML data with PostgreSQL will be less error-prone and more efficient if the XML data encoding, client encoding, and server encoding are the same. Since XML data is internally processed in UTF-8, computations will be most efficient if the server encoding is also UTF-8.

Caution

Some XML-related functions may not work at all on non-ASCII data when the server encoding is not UTF-8. This is known to be an issue for xpath() in particular.

8.13.3. Accessing XML Values

The xml data type is unusual in that it does not provide any comparison operators. This is because there is no well-defined and universally useful comparison algorithm for XML data. One consequence of this is that you cannot retrieve rows by comparing an xml column against a search value. XML values should therefore typically be accompanied by a separate key field such as an ID. An alternative solution for comparing XML values is to convert them to character strings first, but note that character string comparison has little to do with a useful XML comparison method.

Since there are no comparison operators for the xml data type, it is not possible to create an index directly on a column of this type. If speedy searches in XML data are desired, possible workarounds include casting the expression to a character string type and indexing that, or indexing an XPath expression. Of course, the actual query would have to be adjusted to search by the indexed expression.

The text-search functionality in PostgreSQL can also be used to speed up full-document searches of XML data. The necessary preprocessing support is, however, not yet available in the PostgreSQL distribution.

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Arrays

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8.14. Arrays

PostgreSQL allows columns of a table to be defined as variable-length multidimensional arrays. Arrays of any built-in or user-defined base type, enum type, or composite type can be created. Arrays of domains are not yet supported.

8.14.1. Declaration of Array Types

To illustrate the use of array types, we create this table:

CREATE TABLE sal_emp (
    name            text,
    pay_by_quarter  integer[],
    schedule        text[][]
);

As shown, an array data type is named by appending square brackets ([]) to the data type name of the array elements. The above command will create a table named sal_emp with a column of type text (name), a one-dimensional array of type integer (pay_by_quarter), which represents the employee's salary by quarter, and a two-dimensional array of text (schedule), which represents the employee's weekly schedule.

The syntax for CREATE TABLE allows the exact size of arrays to be specified, for example:

CREATE TABLE tictactoe (
    squares   integer[3][3]
);

However, the current implementation ignores any supplied array size limits, i.e., the behavior is the same as for arrays of unspecified length.

The current implementation does not enforce the declared number of dimensions either. Arrays of a particular element type are all considered to be of the same type, regardless of size or number of dimensions. So, declaring the array size or number of dimensions in CREATE TABLE is simply documentation; it does not affect run-time behavior.

An alternative syntax, which conforms to the SQL standard by using the keyword ARRAY, can be used for one-dimensional arrays. pay_by_quarter could have been defined as:

    pay_by_quarter  integer ARRAY[4],

Or, if no array size is to be specified:

    pay_by_quarter  integer ARRAY,

As before, however, PostgreSQL does not enforce the size restriction in any case.

8.14.2. Array Value Input

To write an array value as a literal constant, enclose the element values within curly braces and separate them by commas. (If you know C, this is not unlike the C syntax for initializing structures.) You can put double quotes around any element value, and must do so if it contains commas or curly braces. (More details appear below.) Thus, the general format of an array constant is the following:

'{ val1 delim val2 delim ... }'

where delim is the delimiter character for the type, as recorded in its pg_type entry. Among the standard data types provided in the PostgreSQL distribution, all use a comma (,), except for type box which uses a semicolon (;). Each val is either a constant of the array element type, or a subarray. An example of an array constant is:

'{{1,2,3},{4,5,6},{7,8,9}}'

This constant is a two-dimensional, 3-by-3 array consisting of three subarrays of integers.

To set an element of an array constant to NULL, write NULL for the element value. (Any upper- or lower-case variant of NULL will do.) If you want an actual string value "NULL", you must put double quotes around it.

(These kinds of array constants are actually only a special case of the generic type constants discussed in Section 4.1.2.7. The constant is initially treated as a string and passed to the array input conversion routine. An explicit type specification might be necessary.)

Now we can show some INSERT statements:

INSERT INTO sal_emp
    VALUES ('Bill',
    '{10000, 10000, 10000, 10000}',
    '{{"meeting", "lunch"}, {"training", "presentation"}}');

INSERT INTO sal_emp
    VALUES ('Carol',
    '{20000, 25000, 25000, 25000}',
    '{{"breakfast", "consulting"}, {"meeting", "lunch"}}');

The result of the previous two inserts looks like this:

SELECT * FROM sal_emp;
 name  |      pay_by_quarter       |                 schedule
-------+---------------------------+-------------------------------------------
 Bill  | {10000,10000,10000,10000} | {{meeting,lunch},{training,presentation}}
 Carol | {20000,25000,25000,25000} | {{breakfast,consulting},{meeting,lunch}}
(2 rows)

Multidimensional arrays must have matching extents for each dimension. A mismatch causes an error, for example:

INSERT INTO sal_emp
    VALUES ('Bill',
    '{10000, 10000, 10000, 10000}',
    '{{"meeting", "lunch"}, {"meeting"}}');
ERROR:  multidimensional arrays must have array expressions with matching dimensions

The ARRAY constructor syntax can also be used:

INSERT INTO sal_emp
    VALUES ('Bill',
    ARRAY[10000, 10000, 10000, 10000],
    ARRAY[['meeting', 'lunch'], ['training', 'presentation']]);

INSERT INTO sal_emp
    VALUES ('Carol',
    ARRAY[20000, 25000, 25000, 25000],
    ARRAY[['breakfast', 'consulting'], ['meeting', 'lunch']]);

Notice that the array elements are ordinary SQL constants or expressions; for instance, string literals are single quoted, instead of double quoted as they would be in an array literal. The ARRAY constructor syntax is discussed in more detail in Section 4.2.12.

8.14.3. Accessing Arrays

Now, we can run some queries on the table. First, we show how to access a single element of an array. This query retrieves the names of the employees whose pay changed in the second quarter:

SELECT name FROM sal_emp WHERE pay_by_quarter[1] <> pay_by_quarter[2];

 name
-------
 Carol
(1 row)

The array subscript numbers are written within square brackets. By default PostgreSQL uses a one-based numbering convention for arrays, that is, an array of n elements starts with array[1] and ends with array[n].

This query retrieves the third quarter pay of all employees:

SELECT pay_by_quarter[3] FROM sal_emp;

 pay_by_quarter
----------------
          10000
          25000
(2 rows)

We can also access arbitrary rectangular slices of an array, or subarrays. An array slice is denoted by writing lower-bound:upper-bound for one or more array dimensions. For example, this query retrieves the first item on Bill's schedule for the first two days of the week:

SELECT schedule[1:2][1:1] FROM sal_emp WHERE name = 'Bill';

        schedule
------------------------
 {{meeting},{training}}
(1 row)

If any dimension is written as a slice, i.e., contains a colon, then all dimensions are treated as slices. Any dimension that has only a single number (no colon) is treated as being from 1 to the number specified. For example, [2] is treated as [1:2], as in this example:

SELECT schedule[1:2][2] FROM sal_emp WHERE name = 'Bill';

                 schedule
-------------------------------------------
 {{meeting,lunch},{training,presentation}}
(1 row)

To avoid confusion with the non-slice case, it's best to use slice syntax for all dimensions, e.g., [1:2][1:1], not [2][1:1].

An array subscript expression will return null if either the array itself or any of the subscript expressions are null. Also, null is returned if a subscript is outside the array bounds (this case does not raise an error). For example, if schedule currently has the dimensions [1:3][1:2] then referencing schedule[3][3] yields NULL. Similarly, an array reference with the wrong number of subscripts yields a null rather than an error.

An array slice expression likewise yields null if the array itself or any of the subscript expressions are null. However, in other cases such as selecting an array slice that is completely outside the current array bounds, a slice expression yields an empty (zero-dimensional) array instead of null. (This does not match non-slice behavior and is done for historical reasons.) If the requested slice partially overlaps the array bounds, then it is silently reduced to just the overlapping region instead of returning null.

The current dimensions of any array value can be retrieved with the array_dims function:

SELECT array_dims(schedule) FROM sal_emp WHERE name = 'Carol';

 array_dims
------------
 [1:2][1:2]
(1 row)

array_dims produces a text result, which is convenient for people to read but perhaps inconvenient for programs. Dimensions can also be retrieved with array_upper and array_lower, which return the upper and lower bound of a specified array dimension, respectively:

SELECT array_upper(schedule, 1) FROM sal_emp WHERE name = 'Carol';

 array_upper
-------------
           2
(1 row)

array_length will return the length of a specified array dimension:

SELECT array_length(schedule, 1) FROM sal_emp WHERE name = 'Carol';

 array_length
--------------
            2
(1 row)

8.14.4. Modifying Arrays

An array value can be replaced completely:

UPDATE sal_emp SET pay_by_quarter = '{25000,25000,27000,27000}'
    WHERE name = 'Carol';

or using the ARRAY expression syntax:

UPDATE sal_emp SET pay_by_quarter = ARRAY[25000,25000,27000,27000]
    WHERE name = 'Carol';

An array can also be updated at a single element:

UPDATE sal_emp SET pay_by_quarter[4] = 15000
    WHERE name = 'Bill';

or updated in a slice:

UPDATE sal_emp SET pay_by_quarter[1:2] = '{27000,27000}'
    WHERE name = 'Carol';

A stored array value can be enlarged by assigning to elements not already present. Any positions between those previously present and the newly assigned elements will be filled with nulls. For example, if array myarray currently has 4 elements, it will have six elements after an update that assigns to myarray[6]; myarray[5] will contain null. Currently, enlargement in this fashion is only allowed for one-dimensional arrays, not multidimensional arrays.

Subscripted assignment allows creation of arrays that do not use one-based subscripts. For example one might assign to myarray[-2:7] to create an array with subscript values from -2 to 7.

New array values can also be constructed using the concatenation operator, ||:

SELECT ARRAY[1,2] || ARRAY[3,4];
 ?column?
-----------
 {1,2,3,4}
(1 row)

SELECT ARRAY[5,6] || ARRAY[[1,2],[3,4]];
      ?column?
---------------------
 {{5,6},{1,2},{3,4}}
(1 row)

The concatenation operator allows a single element to be pushed onto the beginning or end of a one-dimensional array. It also accepts two N-dimensional arrays, or an N-dimensional and an N+1-dimensional array.

When a single element is pushed onto either the beginning or end of a one-dimensional array, the result is an array with the same lower bound subscript as the array operand. For example:

SELECT array_dims(1 || '[0:1]={2,3}'::int[]);
 array_dims
------------
 [0:2]
(1 row)

SELECT array_dims(ARRAY[1,2] || 3);
 array_dims
------------
 [1:3]
(1 row)

When two arrays with an equal number of dimensions are concatenated, the result retains the lower bound subscript of the left-hand operand's outer dimension. The result is an array comprising every element of the left-hand operand followed by every element of the right-hand operand. For example:

SELECT array_dims(ARRAY[1,2] || ARRAY[3,4,5]);
 array_dims
------------
 [1:5]
(1 row)

SELECT array_dims(ARRAY[[1,2],[3,4]] || ARRAY[[5,6],[7,8],[9,0]]);
 array_dims
------------
 [1:5][1:2]
(1 row)

When an N-dimensional array is pushed onto the beginning or end of an N+1-dimensional array, the result is analogous to the element-array case above. Each N-dimensional sub-array is essentially an element of the N+1-dimensional array's outer dimension. For example:

SELECT array_dims(ARRAY[1,2] || ARRAY[[3,4],[5,6]]);
 array_dims
------------
 [1:3][1:2]
(1 row)

An array can also be constructed by using the functions array_prepend, array_append, or array_cat. The first two only support one-dimensional arrays, but array_cat supports multidimensional arrays. Note that the concatenation operator discussed above is preferred over direct use of these functions. In fact, these functions primarily exist for use in implementing the concatenation operator. However, they might be directly useful in the creation of user-defined aggregates. Some examples:

SELECT array_prepend(1, ARRAY[2,3]);
 array_prepend
---------------
 {1,2,3}
(1 row)

SELECT array_append(ARRAY[1,2], 3);
 array_append
--------------
 {1,2,3}
(1 row)

SELECT array_cat(ARRAY[1,2], ARRAY[3,4]);
 array_cat
-----------
 {1,2,3,4}
(1 row)

SELECT array_cat(ARRAY[[1,2],[3,4]], ARRAY[5,6]);
      array_cat
---------------------
 {{1,2},{3,4},{5,6}}
(1 row)

SELECT array_cat(ARRAY[5,6], ARRAY[[1,2],[3,4]]);
      array_cat
---------------------
 {{5,6},{1,2},{3,4}}

8.14.5. Searching in Arrays

To search for a value in an array, each value must be checked. This can be done manually, if you know the size of the array. For example:

SELECT * FROM sal_emp WHERE pay_by_quarter[1] = 10000 OR
                            pay_by_quarter[2] = 10000 OR
                            pay_by_quarter[3] = 10000 OR
                            pay_by_quarter[4] = 10000;

However, this quickly becomes tedious for large arrays, and is not helpful if the size of the array is unknown. An alternative method is described in Section 9.21. The above query could be replaced by:

SELECT * FROM sal_emp WHERE 10000 = ANY (pay_by_quarter);

In addition, you can find rows where the array has all values equal to 10000 with:

SELECT * FROM sal_emp WHERE 10000 = ALL (pay_by_quarter);

Alternatively, the generate_subscripts function can be used. For example:

SELECT * FROM
   (SELECT pay_by_quarter,
           generate_subscripts(pay_by_quarter, 1) AS s
      FROM sal_emp) AS foo
 WHERE pay_by_quarter[s] = 10000;

This function is described in Table 9-47.

Tip: Arrays are not sets; searching for specific array elements can be a sign of database misdesign. Consider using a separate table with a row for each item that would be an array element. This will be easier to search, and is likely to scale better for a large number of elements.

8.14.6. Array Input and Output Syntax

The external text representation of an array value consists of items that are interpreted according to the I/O conversion rules for the array's element type, plus decoration that indicates the array structure. The decoration consists of curly braces ({ and }) around the array value plus delimiter characters between adjacent items. The delimiter character is usually a comma (,) but can be something else: it is determined by the typdelim setting for the array's element type. Among the standard data types provided in the PostgreSQL distribution, all use a comma, except for type box, which uses a semicolon (;). In a multidimensional array, each dimension (row, plane, cube, etc.) gets its own level of curly braces, and delimiters must be written between adjacent curly-braced entities of the same level.

The array output routine will put double quotes around element values if they are empty strings, contain curly braces, delimiter characters, double quotes, backslashes, or white space, or match the word NULL. Double quotes and backslashes embedded in element values will be backslash-escaped. For numeric data types it is safe to assume that double quotes will never appear, but for textual data types one should be prepared to cope with either the presence or absence of quotes.

By default, the lower bound index value of an array's dimensions is set to one. To represent arrays with other lower bounds, the array subscript ranges can be specified explicitly before writing the array contents. This decoration consists of square brackets ([]) around each array dimension's lower and upper bounds, with a colon (:) delimiter character in between. The array dimension decoration is followed by an equal sign (=). For example:

SELECT f1[1][-2][3] AS e1, f1[1][-1][5] AS e2
 FROM (SELECT '[1:1][-2:-1][3:5]={{{1,2,3},{4,5,6}}}'::int[] AS f1) AS ss;

 e1 | e2
----+----
  1 |  6
(1 row)

The array output routine will include explicit dimensions in its result only when there are one or more lower bounds different from one.

If the value written for an element is NULL (in any case variant), the element is taken to be NULL. The presence of any quotes or backslashes disables this and allows the literal string value "NULL" to be entered. Also, for backward compatibility with pre-8.2 versions of PostgreSQL, the array_nulls configuration parameter can be turned off to suppress recognition of NULL as a NULL.

As shown previously, when writing an array value you can use double quotes around any individual array element. You must do so if the element value would otherwise confuse the array-value parser. For example, elements containing curly braces, commas (or the data type's delimiter character), double quotes, backslashes, or leading or trailing whitespace must be double-quoted. Empty strings and strings matching the word NULL must be quoted, too. To put a double quote or backslash in a quoted array element value, use escape string syntax and precede it with a backslash. Alternatively, you can avoid quotes and use backslash-escaping to protect all data characters that would otherwise be taken as array syntax.

You can add whitespace before a left brace or after a right brace. You can also add whitespace before or after any individual item string. In all of these cases the whitespace will be ignored. However, whitespace within double-quoted elements, or surrounded on both sides by non-whitespace characters of an element, is not ignored.

Note: Remember that what you write in an SQL command will first be interpreted as a string literal, and then as an array. This doubles the number of backslashes you need. For example, to insert a text array value containing a backslash and a double quote, you'd need to write:

INSERT ... VALUES (E'{"\\\\","\\""}');

The escape string processor removes one level of backslashes, so that what arrives at the array-value parser looks like {"\\","\""}. In turn, the strings fed to the text data type's input routine become \ and " respectively. (If we were working with a data type whose input routine also treated backslashes specially, bytea for example, we might need as many as eight backslashes in the command to get one backslash into the stored array element.) Dollar quoting (see Section 4.1.2.4) can be used to avoid the need to double backslashes.

Tip: The ARRAY constructor syntax (see Section 4.2.12) is often easier to work with than the array-literal syntax when writing array values in SQL commands. In ARRAY, individual element values are written the same way they would be written when not members of an array.

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Composite Types

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8.15. Composite Types

A composite type represents the structure of a row or record; it is essentially just a list of field names and their data types. PostgreSQL allows composite types to be used in many of the same ways that simple types can be used. For example, a column of a table can be declared to be of a composite type.

8.15.1. Declaration of Composite Types

Here are two simple examples of defining composite types:

CREATE TYPE complex AS (
    r       double precision,
    i       double precision
);

CREATE TYPE inventory_item AS (
    name            text,
    supplier_id     integer,
    price           numeric
);

The syntax is comparable to CREATE TABLE, except that only field names and types can be specified; no constraints (such as NOT NULL) can presently be included. Note that the AS keyword is essential; without it, the system will think a different kind of CREATE TYPE command is meant, and you will get odd syntax errors.

Having defined the types, we can use them to create tables:

CREATE TABLE on_hand (
    item      inventory_item,
    count     integer
);

INSERT INTO on_hand VALUES (ROW('fuzzy dice', 42, 1.99), 1000);

or functions:

CREATE FUNCTION price_extension(inventory_item, integer) RETURNS numeric
AS 'SELECT $1.price * $2' LANGUAGE SQL;

SELECT price_extension(item, 10) FROM on_hand;

Whenever you create a table, a composite type is also automatically created, with the same name as the table, to represent the table's row type. For example, had we said:

CREATE TABLE inventory_item (
    name            text,
    supplier_id     integer REFERENCES suppliers,
    price           numeric CHECK (price > 0)
);

then the same inventory_item composite type shown above would come into being as a byproduct, and could be used just as above. Note however an important restriction of the current implementation: since no constraints are associated with a composite type, the constraints shown in the table definition do not apply to values of the composite type outside the table. (A partial workaround is to use domain types as members of composite types.)

8.15.2. Composite Value Input

To write a composite value as a literal constant, enclose the field values within parentheses and separate them by commas. You can put double quotes around any field value, and must do so if it contains commas or parentheses. (More details appear below.) Thus, the general format of a composite constant is the following:

'( val1 , val2 , ... )'

An example is:

'("fuzzy dice",42,1.99)'

which would be a valid value of the inventory_item type defined above. To make a field be NULL, write no characters at all in its position in the list. For example, this constant specifies a NULL third field:

'("fuzzy dice",42,)'

If you want an empty string rather than NULL, write double quotes:

'("",42,)'

Here the first field is a non-NULL empty string, the third is NULL.

(These constants are actually only a special case of the generic type constants discussed in Section 4.1.2.7. The constant is initially treated as a string and passed to the composite-type input conversion routine. An explicit type specification might be necessary.)

The ROW expression syntax can also be used to construct composite values. In most cases this is considerably simpler to use than the string-literal syntax since you don't have to worry about multiple layers of quoting. We already used this method above:

ROW('fuzzy dice', 42, 1.99)
ROW('', 42, NULL)

The ROW keyword is actually optional as long as you have more than one field in the expression, so these can simplify to:

('fuzzy dice', 42, 1.99)
('', 42, NULL)

The ROW expression syntax is discussed in more detail in Section 4.2.13.

8.15.3. Accessing Composite Types

To access a field of a composite column, one writes a dot and the field name, much like selecting a field from a table name. In fact, it's so much like selecting from a table name that you often have to use parentheses to keep from confusing the parser. For example, you might try to select some subfields from our on_hand example table with something like:

SELECT item.name FROM on_hand WHERE item.price > 9.99;

This will not work since the name item is taken to be a table name, not a column name of on_hand, per SQL syntax rules. You must write it like this:

SELECT (item).name FROM on_hand WHERE (item).price > 9.99;

or if you need to use the table name as well (for instance in a multitable query), like this:

SELECT (on_hand.item).name FROM on_hand WHERE (on_hand.item).price > 9.99;

Now the parenthesized object is correctly interpreted as a reference to the item column, and then the subfield can be selected from it.

Similar syntactic issues apply whenever you select a field from a composite value. For instance, to select just one field from the result of a function that returns a composite value, you'd need to write something like:

SELECT (my_func(...)).field FROM ...

Without the extra parentheses, this will generate a syntax error.

8.15.4. Modifying Composite Types

Here are some examples of the proper syntax for inserting and updating composite columns. First, inserting or updating a whole column:

INSERT INTO mytab (complex_col) VALUES((1.1,2.2));

UPDATE mytab SET complex_col = ROW(1.1,2.2) WHERE ...;

The first example omits ROW, the second uses it; we could have done it either way.

We can update an individual subfield of a composite column:

UPDATE mytab SET complex_col.r = (complex_col).r + 1 WHERE ...;

Notice here that we don't need to (and indeed cannot) put parentheses around the column name appearing just after SET, but we do need parentheses when referencing the same column in the expression to the right of the equal sign.

And we can specify subfields as targets for INSERT, too:

INSERT INTO mytab (complex_col.r, complex_col.i) VALUES(1.1, 2.2);

Had we not supplied values for all the subfields of the column, the remaining subfields would have been filled with null values.

8.15.5. Composite Type Input and Output Syntax

The external text representation of a composite value consists of items that are interpreted according to the I/O conversion rules for the individual field types, plus decoration that indicates the composite structure. The decoration consists of parentheses (( and )) around the whole value, plus commas (,) between adjacent items. Whitespace outside the parentheses is ignored, but within the parentheses it is considered part of the field value, and might or might not be significant depending on the input conversion rules for the field data type. For example, in:

'(  42)'

the whitespace will be ignored if the field type is integer, but not if it is text.

As shown previously, when writing a composite value you can write double quotes around any individual field value. You must do so if the field value would otherwise confuse the composite-value parser. In particular, fields containing parentheses, commas, double quotes, or backslashes must be double-quoted. To put a double quote or backslash in a quoted composite field value, precede it with a backslash. (Also, a pair of double quotes within a double-quoted field value is taken to represent a double quote character, analogously to the rules for single quotes in SQL literal strings.) Alternatively, you can avoid quoting and use backslash-escaping to protect all data characters that would otherwise be taken as composite syntax.

A completely empty field value (no characters at all between the commas or parentheses) represents a NULL. To write a value that is an empty string rather than NULL, write "".

The composite output routine will put double quotes around field values if they are empty strings or contain parentheses, commas, double quotes, backslashes, or white space. (Doing so for white space is not essential, but aids legibility.) Double quotes and backslashes embedded in field values will be doubled.

Note: Remember that what you write in an SQL command will first be interpreted as a string literal, and then as a composite. This doubles the number of backslashes you need (assuming escape string syntax is used). For example, to insert a text field containing a double quote and a backslash in a composite value, you'd need to write:

INSERT ... VALUES (E'("\\"\\\\")');

The string-literal processor removes one level of backslashes, so that what arrives at the composite-value parser looks like ("\"\\"). In turn, the string fed to the text data type's input routine becomes "\. (If we were working with a data type whose input routine also treated backslashes specially, bytea for example, we might need as many as eight backslashes in the command to get one backslash into the stored composite field.) Dollar quoting (see Section 4.1.2.4) can be used to avoid the need to double backslashes.

Tip: The ROW constructor syntax is usually easier to work with than the composite-literal syntax when writing composite values in SQL commands. In ROW, individual field values are written the same way they would be written when not members of a composite.

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Object Identifier Types

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8.16. Object Identifier Types

Object identifiers (OIDs) are used internally by PostgreSQL as primary keys for various system tables. OIDs are not added to user-created tables, unless WITH OIDS is specified when the table is created, or the default_with_oids configuration variable is enabled. Type oid represents an object identifier. There are also several alias types for oid: regproc, regprocedure, regoper, regoperator, regclass, regtype, regconfig, and regdictionary. Table 8-23 shows an overview.

The oid type is currently implemented as an unsigned four-byte integer. Therefore, it is not large enough to provide database-wide uniqueness in large databases, or even in large individual tables. So, using a user-created table's OID column as a primary key is discouraged. OIDs are best used only for references to system tables.

The oid type itself has few operations beyond comparison. It can be cast to integer, however, and then manipulated using the standard integer operators. (Beware of possible signed-versus-unsigned confusion if you do this.)

The OID alias types have no operations of their own except for specialized input and output routines. These routines are able to accept and display symbolic names for system objects, rather than the raw numeric value that type oid would use. The alias types allow simplified lookup of OID values for objects. For example, to examine the pg_attribute rows related to a table mytable, one could write:

SELECT * FROM pg_attribute WHERE attrelid = 'mytable'::regclass;

rather than:

SELECT * FROM pg_attribute
  WHERE attrelid = (SELECT oid FROM pg_class WHERE relname = 'mytable');

While that doesn't look all that bad by itself, it's still oversimplified. A far more complicated sub-select would be needed to select the right OID if there are multiple tables named mytable in different schemas. The regclass input converter handles the table lookup according to the schema path setting, and so it does the "right thing" automatically. Similarly, casting a table's OID to regclass is handy for symbolic display of a numeric OID.

Table 8-23. Object Identifier Types

Name | References | Description | Value Example
oid | any | numeric object identifier | 564182
regproc | pg_proc | function name | sum
regprocedure | pg_proc | function with argument types | sum(int4)
regoper | pg_operator | operator name | +
regoperator | pg_operator | operator with argument types | *(integer,integer) or -(NONE,integer)
regclass | pg_class | relation name | pg_type
regtype | pg_type | data type name | integer
regconfig | pg_ts_config | text search configuration | english
regdictionary | pg_ts_dict | text search dictionary | simple

All of the OID alias types accept schema-qualified names, and will display schema-qualified names on output if the object would not be found in the current search path without being qualified. The regproc and regoper alias types will only accept input names that are unique (not overloaded), so they are of limited use; for most uses regprocedure or regoperator are more appropriate. For regoperator, unary operators are identified by writing NONE for the unused operand.

An additional property of the OID alias types is the creation of dependencies. If a constant of one of these types appears in a stored expression (such as a column default expression or view), it creates a dependency on the referenced object. For example, if a column has a default expression nextval('my_seq'::regclass), PostgreSQL understands that the default expression depends on the sequence my_seq; the system will not let the sequence be dropped without first removing the default expression.

Another identifier type used by the system is xid, or transaction (abbreviated xact) identifier. This is the data type of the system columns xmin and xmax. Transaction identifiers are 32-bit quantities.

A third identifier type used by the system is cid, or command identifier. This is the data type of the system columns cmin and cmax. Command identifiers are also 32-bit quantities.

A final identifier type used by the system is tid, or tuple identifier (row identifier). This is the data type of the system column ctid. A tuple ID is a pair (block number, tuple index within block) that identifies the physical location of the row within its table.

(The system columns are further explained in Section 5.4.)

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Pseudo-Types

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8.17. Pseudo-Types

The PostgreSQL type system contains a number of special-purpose entries that are collectively called pseudo-types. A pseudo-type cannot be used as a column data type, but it can be used to declare a function's argument or result type. Each of the available pseudo-types is useful in situations where a function's behavior does not correspond to simply taking or returning a value of a specific SQL data type. Table 8-24 lists the existing pseudo-types.

Table 8-24. Pseudo-Types

Name | Description
any | Indicates that a function accepts any input data type.
anyarray | Indicates that a function accepts any array data type (see Section 35.2.5).
anyelement | Indicates that a function accepts any data type (see Section 35.2.5).
anyenum | Indicates that a function accepts any enum data type (see Section 35.2.5 and Section 8.7).
anynonarray | Indicates that a function accepts any non-array data type (see Section 35.2.5).
cstring | Indicates that a function accepts or returns a null-terminated C string.
internal | Indicates that a function accepts or returns a server-internal data type.
language_handler | A procedural language call handler is declared to return language_handler.
fdw_handler | A foreign-data wrapper handler is declared to return fdw_handler.
record | Identifies a function returning an unspecified row type.
trigger | A trigger function is declared to return trigger.
void | Indicates that a function returns no value.
opaque | An obsolete type name that formerly served all the above purposes.

Functions coded in C (whether built-in or dynamically loaded) can be declared to accept or return any of these pseudo data types. It is up to the function author to ensure that the function will behave safely when a pseudo-type is used as an argument type.

Functions coded in procedural languages can use pseudo-types only as allowed by their implementation languages. At present the procedural languages all forbid use of a pseudo-type as argument type, and allow only void and record as a result type (plus trigger when the function is used as a trigger). Some also support polymorphic functions using the types anyarray, anyelement, anyenum, and anynonarray.

The internal pseudo-type is used to declare functions that are meant only to be called internally by the database system, and not by direct invocation in an SQL query. If a function has at least one internal-type argument then it cannot be called from SQL. To preserve the type safety of this restriction it is important to follow this coding rule: do not create any function that is declared to return internal unless it has at least one internal argument.

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Functions and Operators

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Chapter 9. Functions and Operators

Table of Contents
9.1. Logical Operators
9.2. Comparison Operators
9.3. Mathematical Functions and Operators
9.4. String Functions and Operators
9.5. Binary String Functions and Operators
9.6. Bit String Functions and Operators
9.7. Pattern Matching
9.7.1. LIKE
9.7.2. SIMILAR TO Regular Expressions
9.7.3. POSIX Regular Expressions
9.8. Data Type Formatting Functions
9.9. Date/Time Functions and Operators
9.9.1. EXTRACT, date_part
9.9.2. date_trunc
9.9.3. AT TIME ZONE
9.9.4. Current Date/Time
9.9.5. Delaying Execution
9.10. Enum Support Functions
9.11. Geometric Functions and Operators
9.12. Network Address Functions and Operators
9.13. Text Search Functions and Operators
9.14. XML Functions
9.14.1. Producing XML Content
9.14.2. XML Predicates
9.14.3. Processing XML
9.14.4. Mapping Tables to XML
9.15. Sequence Manipulation Functions
9.16. Conditional Expressions
9.16.1. CASE
9.16.2. COALESCE
9.16.3. NULLIF
9.16.4. GREATEST and LEAST
9.17. Array Functions and Operators
9.18. Aggregate Functions
9.19. Window Functions
9.20. Subquery Expressions
9.20.1. EXISTS
9.20.2. IN
9.20.3. NOT IN
9.20.4. ANY/SOME
9.20.5. ALL
9.20.6. Row-wise Comparison
9.21. Row and Array Comparisons
9.21.1. IN
9.21.2. NOT IN
9.21.3. ANY/SOME (array)
9.21.4. ALL (array)
9.21.5. Row-wise Comparison
9.22. Set Returning Functions
9.23. System Information Functions
9.24. System Administration Functions
9.25. Trigger Functions

PostgreSQL provides a large number of functions and operators for the built-in data types. Users can also define their own functions and operators, as described in Part V. The psql commands \df and \do can be used to list all available functions and operators, respectively.

If you are concerned about portability then note that most of the functions and operators described in this chapter, with the exception of the most trivial arithmetic and comparison operators and some explicitly marked functions, are not specified by the SQL standard. Some of this extended functionality is present in other SQL database management systems, and in many cases this functionality is compatible and consistent between the various implementations. This chapter is also not exhaustive; additional functions appear in relevant sections of the manual.

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Logical Operators

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9.1. Logical Operators

The usual logical operators are available:

AND
OR
NOT

SQL uses a three-valued logic system with true, false, and null, which represents "unknown". Observe the following truth tables:

a | b | a AND b | a OR b
TRUE | TRUE | TRUE | TRUE
TRUE | FALSE | FALSE | TRUE
TRUE | NULL | NULL | TRUE
FALSE | FALSE | FALSE | FALSE
FALSE | NULL | FALSE | NULL
NULL | NULL | NULL | NULL

a | NOT a
TRUE | FALSE
FALSE | TRUE
NULL | NULL

The operators AND and OR are commutative, that is, you can switch the left and right operand without affecting the result. But see Section 4.2.14 for more information about the order of evaluation of subexpressions.

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Comparison Operators

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9.2. Comparison Operators

The usual comparison operators are available, shown in Table 9-1.

Table 9-1. Comparison Operators

Operator | Description
< | less than
> | greater than
<= | less than or equal to
>= | greater than or equal to
= | equal
<> or != | not equal

Note: The != operator is converted to <> in the parser stage. It is not possible to implement != and <> operators that do different things.

Comparison operators are available for all relevant data types. All comparison operators are binary operators that return values of type boolean; expressions like 1 < 2 < 3 are not valid (because there is no < operator to compare a Boolean value with 3).

In addition to the comparison operators, the special BETWEEN construct is available:

a BETWEEN x AND y

is equivalent to

a >= x AND a <= y

Notice that BETWEEN treats the endpoint values as included in the range. NOT BETWEEN does the opposite comparison:

a NOT BETWEEN x AND y

is equivalent to

a < x OR a > y

BETWEEN SYMMETRIC is the same as BETWEEN except there is no requirement that the argument to the left of AND be less than or equal to the argument on the right. If it is not, those two arguments are automatically swapped, so that a nonempty range is always implied.

To check whether a value is or is not null, use the constructs:

expression IS NULL
expression IS NOT NULL

or the equivalent, but nonstandard, constructs:

expression ISNULL
expression NOTNULL

Do not write expression = NULL because NULL is not "equal to" NULL. (The null value represents an unknown value, and it is not known whether two unknown values are equal.) This behavior conforms to the SQL standard.

Tip: Some applications might expect that expression = NULL returns true if expression evaluates to the null value. It is highly recommended that these applications be modified to comply with the SQL standard. However, if that cannot be done the transform_null_equals configuration variable is available. If it is enabled, PostgreSQL will convert x = NULL clauses to x IS NULL.

Note: If the expression is row-valued, then IS NULL is true when the row expression itself is null or when all the row's fields are null, while IS NOT NULL is true when the row expression itself is non-null and all the row's fields are non-null. Because of this behavior, IS NULL and IS NOT NULL do not always return inverse results for row-valued expressions, i.e., a row-valued expression that contains both NULL and non-null values will return false for both tests. This definition conforms to the SQL standard, and is a change from the inconsistent behavior exhibited by PostgreSQL versions prior to 8.2.

Ordinary comparison operators yield null (signifying "unknown"), not true or false, when either input is null. For example, 7 = NULL yields null. When this behavior is not suitable, use the IS [ NOT ] DISTINCT FROM constructs:

expression IS DISTINCT FROM expression
expression IS NOT DISTINCT FROM expression

For non-null inputs, IS DISTINCT FROM is the same as the <> operator. However, if both inputs are null it returns false, and if only one input is null it returns true. Similarly, IS NOT DISTINCT FROM is identical to = for non-null inputs, but it returns true when both inputs are null, and false when only one input is null. Thus, these constructs effectively act as though null were a normal data value, rather than "unknown".

Boolean values can also be tested using the constructs

expression IS TRUE
expression IS NOT TRUE
expression IS FALSE
expression IS NOT FALSE
expression IS UNKNOWN
expression IS NOT UNKNOWN

These will always return true or false, never a null value, even when the operand is null. A null input is treated as the logical value "unknown". Notice that IS UNKNOWN and IS NOT UNKNOWN are effectively the same as IS NULL and IS NOT NULL, respectively, except that the input expression must be of Boolean type.

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Mathematical Functions and Operators

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9.3. Mathematical Functions and Operators

Mathematical operators are provided for many PostgreSQL types. For types without standard mathematical conventions (e.g., date/time types) we describe the actual behavior in subsequent sections.

Table 9-2 shows the available mathematical operators.

Table 9-2. Mathematical Operators

Operator | Description | Example | Result
+ | addition | 2 + 3 | 5
- | subtraction | 2 - 3 | -1
* | multiplication | 2 * 3 | 6
/ | division (integer division truncates the result) | 4 / 2 | 2
% | modulo (remainder) | 5 % 4 | 1
^ | exponentiation | 2.0 ^ 3.0 | 8
|/ | square root | |/ 25.0 | 5
||/ | cube root | ||/ 27.0 | 3
! | factorial | 5 ! | 120
!! | factorial (prefix operator) | !! 5 | 120
@ | absolute value | @ -5.0 | 5
& | bitwise AND | 91 & 15 | 11
| | bitwise OR | 32 | 3 | 35
# | bitwise XOR | 17 # 5 | 20
~ | bitwise NOT | ~1 | -2
<< | bitwise shift left | 1 << 4 | 16
>> | bitwise shift right | 8 >> 2 | 2

The bitwise operators work only on integral data types, whereas the others are available for all numeric data types. The bitwise operators are also available for the bit string types bit and bit varying, as shown in Table 9-11.

Table 9-3 shows the available mathematical functions. In the table, dp indicates double precision. Many of these functions are provided in multiple forms with different argument types. Except where noted, any given form of a function returns the same data type as its argument. The functions working with double precision data are mostly implemented on top of the host system's C library; accuracy and behavior in boundary cases can therefore vary depending on the host system.

Table 9-3. Mathematical Functions

Function | Return Type | Description | Example | Result
abs(x) | (same as input) | absolute value | abs(-17.4) | 17.4
cbrt(dp) | dp | cube root | cbrt(27.0) | 3
ceil(dp or numeric) | (same as input) | smallest integer not less than argument | ceil(-42.8) | -42
ceiling(dp or numeric) | (same as input) | smallest integer not less than argument (alias for ceil) | ceiling(-95.3) | -95
degrees(dp) | dp | radians to degrees | degrees(0.5) | 28.6478897565412
div(y numeric, x numeric) | numeric | integer quotient of y/x | div(9,4) | 2
exp(dp or numeric) | (same as input) | exponential | exp(1.0) | 2.71828182845905
floor(dp or numeric) | (same as input) | largest integer not greater than argument | floor(-42.8) | -43
ln(dp or numeric) | (same as input) | natural logarithm | ln(2.0) | 0.693147180559945
log(dp or numeric) | (same as input) | base 10 logarithm | log(100.0) | 2
log(b numeric, x numeric) | numeric | logarithm to base b | log(2.0, 64.0) | 6.0000000000
mod(y, x) | (same as argument types) | remainder of y/x | mod(9,4) | 1
pi() | dp | "π" constant | pi() | 3.14159265358979
power(a dp, b dp) | dp | a raised to the power of b | power(9.0, 3.0) | 729
power(a numeric, b numeric) | numeric | a raised to the power of b | power(9.0, 3.0) | 729
radians(dp) | dp | degrees to radians | radians(45.0) | 0.785398163397448
round(dp or numeric) | (same as input) | round to nearest integer | round(42.4) | 42
round(v numeric, s int) | numeric | round to s decimal places | round(42.4382, 2) | 42.44
sign(dp or numeric) | (same as input) | sign of the argument (-1, 0, +1) | sign(-8.4) | -1
sqrt(dp or numeric) | (same as input) | square root | sqrt(2.0) | 1.4142135623731
trunc(dp or numeric) | (same as input) | truncate toward zero | trunc(42.8) | 42
trunc(v numeric, s int) | numeric | truncate to s decimal places | trunc(42.4382, 2) | 42.43
width_bucket(op numeric, b1 numeric, b2 numeric, count int) | int | return the bucket to which operand would be assigned in an equidepth histogram with count buckets, in the range b1 to b2 | width_bucket(5.35, 0.024, 10.06, 5) | 3
width_bucket(op dp, b1 dp, b2 dp, count int) | int | return the bucket to which operand would be assigned in an equidepth histogram with count buckets, in the range b1 to b2 | width_bucket(5.35, 0.024, 10.06, 5) | 3

Table 9-4 shows functions for generating random numbers.

Table 9-4. Random Functions

Function | Return Type | Description
random() | dp | random value in the range 0.0 <= x < 1.0
setseed(dp) | void | set seed for subsequent random() calls (value between -1.0 and 1.0, inclusive)

The characteristics of the values returned by random() depend on the system implementation. It is not suitable for cryptographic applications; see pgcrypto module for an alternative.

Finally, Table 9-5 shows the available trigonometric functions. All trigonometric functions take arguments and return values of type double precision. Trigonometric functions arguments are expressed in radians. Inverse functions return values are expressed in radians. See unit transformation functions radians() and degrees() above.

Table 9-5. Trigonometric Functions

Function | Description
acos(x) | inverse cosine
asin(x) | inverse sine
atan(x) | inverse tangent
atan2(y, x) | inverse tangent of y/x
cos(x) | cosine
cot(x) | cotangent
sin(x) | sine
tan(x) | tangent
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String Functions and Operators

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9.4. String Functions and Operators

This section describes functions and operators for examining and manipulating string values. Strings in this context include values of the types character, character varying, and text. Unless otherwise noted, all of the functions listed below work on all of these types, but be wary of potential effects of automatic space-padding when using the character type. Some functions also exist natively for the bit-string types.

SQL defines some string functions that use key words, rather than commas, to separate arguments. Details are in Table 9-6. PostgreSQL also provides versions of these functions that use the regular function invocation syntax (see Table 9-7).

Note: Before PostgreSQL 8.3, these functions would silently accept values of several non-string data types as well, due to the presence of implicit coercions from those data types to text. Those coercions have been removed because they frequently caused surprising behaviors. However, the string concatenation operator (||) still accepts non-string input, so long as at least one input is of a string type, as shown in Table 9-6. For other cases, insert an explicit coercion to text if you need to duplicate the previous behavior.

Table 9-6. SQL String Functions and Operators

Function | Return Type | Description | Example | Result
string || string | text | String concatenation | 'Post' || 'greSQL' | PostgreSQL
string || non-string or non-string || string | text | String concatenation with one non-string input | 'Value: ' || 42 | Value: 42
bit_length(string) | int | Number of bits in string | bit_length('jose') | 32
char_length(string) or character_length(string) | int | Number of characters in string | char_length('jose') | 4
lower(string) | text | Convert string to lower case | lower('TOM') | tom
octet_length(string) | int | Number of bytes in string | octet_length('jose') | 4
overlay(string placing string from int [for int]) | text | Replace substring | overlay('Txxxxas' placing 'hom' from 2 for 4) | Thomas
position(substring in string) | int | Location of specified substring | position('om' in 'Thomas') | 3
substring(string [from int] [for int]) | text | Extract substring | substring('Thomas' from 2 for 3) | hom
substring(string from pattern) | text | Extract substring matching POSIX regular expression. See Section 9.7 for more information on pattern matching. | substring('Thomas' from '...$') | mas
substring(string from pattern for escape) | text | Extract substring matching SQL regular expression. See Section 9.7 for more information on pattern matching. | substring('Thomas' from '%#"o_a#"_' for '#') | oma
trim([leading | trailing | both] [characters] from string) | text | Remove the longest string containing only the characters (a space by default) from the start/end/both ends of the string | trim(both 'x' from 'xTomxx') | Tom
upper(string) | text | Convert string to upper case | upper('tom') | TOM

Additional string manipulation functions are available and are listed in Table 9-7. Some of them are used internally to implement the SQL-standard string functions listed in Table 9-6.

Table 9-7. Other String Functions

Function | Return Type | Description | Example | Result
ascii(string) | int | ASCII code of the first character of the argument. For UTF8 returns the Unicode code point of the character. For other multibyte encodings, the argument must be an ASCII character. | ascii('x') | 120
btrim(string text [, characters text]) | text | Remove the longest string consisting only of characters in characters (a space by default) from the start and end of string | btrim('xyxtrimyyx', 'xy') | trim
chr(int) | text | Character with the given code. For UTF8 the argument is treated as a Unicode code point. For other multibyte encodings the argument must designate an ASCII character. The NULL (0) character is not allowed because text data types cannot store such bytes. | chr(65) | A
concat(str "any" [, str "any" [, ...] ]) | text | Concatenate all arguments. NULL arguments are ignored. | concat('abcde', 2, NULL, 22) | abcde222
concat_ws(sep text, str "any" [, str "any" [, ...] ]) | text | Concatenate all but first arguments with separators. The first parameter is used as a separator. NULL arguments are ignored. | concat_ws(',', 'abcde', 2, NULL, 22) | abcde,2,22
convert(string bytea, src_encoding name, dest_encoding name) | bytea | Convert string to dest_encoding. The original encoding is specified by src_encoding. The string must be valid in this encoding. Conversions can be defined by CREATE CONVERSION. Also there are some predefined conversions. See Table 9-8 for available conversions. | convert('text_in_utf8', 'UTF8', 'LATIN1') | text_in_utf8 represented in Latin-1 encoding (ISO 8859-1)
convert_from(string bytea, src_encoding name) | text | Convert string to the database encoding. The original encoding is specified by src_encoding. The string must be valid in this encoding. | convert_from('text_in_utf8', 'UTF8') | text_in_utf8 represented in the current database encoding
convert_to(string text, dest_encoding name) | bytea | Convert string to dest_encoding. | convert_to('some text', 'UTF8') | some text represented in the UTF8 encoding
decode(string text, format text) | bytea | Decode binary data from textual representation in string. Options for format are same as in encode. | decode('MTIzAAE=', 'base64') | \x3132330001
encode(data bytea, format text) | text | Encode binary data into a textual representation. Supported formats are: base64, hex, escape. escape converts zero bytes and high-bit-set bytes to octal sequences (\nnn) and doubles backslashes. | encode(E'123\\000\\001', 'base64') | MTIzAAE=
format(formatstr text [, str "any" [, ...] ]) | text | Format a string. This function is similar to the C function sprintf; but only the following conversion specifications are recognized: %s interpolates the corresponding argument as a string; %I escapes its argument as an SQL identifier; %L escapes its argument as an SQL literal; %% outputs a literal %. A conversion can reference an explicit parameter position by preceding the conversion specifier with n$, where n is the argument position. See also Example 39-1. | format('Hello %s, %1$s', 'World') | Hello World, World
initcap(string) | text | Convert the first letter of each word to upper case and the rest to lower case. Words are sequences of alphanumeric characters separated by non-alphanumeric characters. | initcap('hi THOMAS') | Hi Thomas
left(str text, n int) | text | Return first n characters in the string. When n is negative, return all but last |n| characters. | left('abcde', 2) | ab
length(string) | int | Number of characters in string | length('jose') | 4
length(string bytea, encoding name ) | int | Number of characters in string in the given encoding. The string must be valid in this encoding. | length('jose', 'UTF8') | 4
lpad(string text, length int [, fill text]) | text | Fill up the string to length length by prepending the characters fill (a space by default). If the string is already longer than length then it is truncated (on the right). | lpad('hi', 5, 'xy') | xyxhi
ltrim(string text [, characters text]) | text | Remove the longest string containing only characters from characters (a space by default) from the start of string | ltrim('zzzytrim', 'xyz') | trim
md5(string) | text | Calculates the MD5 hash of string, returning the result in hexadecimal | md5('abc') | 900150983cd24fb0 d6963f7d28e17f72
pg_client_encoding() | name | Current client encoding name | pg_client_encoding() | SQL_ASCII
quote_ident(string text) | text | Return the given string suitably quoted to be used as an identifier in an SQL statement string. Quotes are added only if necessary (i.e., if the string contains non-identifier characters or would be case-folded). Embedded quotes are properly doubled. See also Example 39-1. | quote_ident('Foo bar') | "Foo bar"
quote_literal(string text) | text | Return the given string suitably quoted to be used as a string literal in an SQL statement string. Embedded single-quotes and backslashes are properly doubled. Note that quote_literal returns null on null input; if the argument might be null, quote_nullable is often more suitable. See also Example 39-1. | quote_literal(E'O\'Reilly') | 'O''Reilly'
quote_literal(value anyelement) | text | Coerce the given value to text and then quote it as a literal. Embedded single-quotes and backslashes are properly doubled. | quote_literal(42.5) | '42.5'
quote_nullable(string text) | text | Return the given string suitably quoted to be used as a string literal in an SQL statement string; or, if the argument is null, return NULL. Embedded single-quotes and backslashes are properly doubled. See also Example 39-1. | quote_nullable(NULL) | NULL
quote_nullable(value anyelement) | text | Coerce the given value to text and then quote it as a literal; or, if the argument is null, return NULL. Embedded single-quotes and backslashes are properly doubled. | quote_nullable(42.5) | '42.5'
regexp_matches(string text, pattern text [, flags text]) | setof text[] | Return all captured substrings resulting from matching a POSIX regular expression against the string. See Section 9.7.3 for more information. | regexp_matches('foobarbequebaz', '(bar)(beque)') | {bar,beque}
regexp_replace(string text, pattern text, replacement text [, flags text]) | text | Replace substring(s) matching a POSIX regular expression. See Section 9.7.3 for more information. | regexp_replace('Thomas', '.[mN]a.', 'M') | ThM
regexp_split_to_array(string text, pattern text [, flags text ]) | text[] | Split string using a POSIX regular expression as the delimiter. See Section 9.7.3 for more information. | regexp_split_to_array('hello world', E'\\s+') | {hello,world}
regexp_split_to_table(string text, pattern text [, flags text]) | setof text | Split string using a POSIX regular expression as the delimiter. See Section 9.7.3 for more information. | regexp_split_to_table('hello world', E'\\s+') | hello world (2 rows)
repeat(string text, number int) | text | Repeat string the specified number of times | repeat('Pg', 4) | PgPgPgPg
replace(string text, from text, to text) | text | Replace all occurrences in string of substring from with substring to | replace('abcdefabcdef', 'cd', 'XX') | abXXefabXXef
reverse(str) | text | Return reversed string. | reverse('abcde') | edcba
right(str text, n int) | text | Return last n characters in the string. When n is negative, return all but first |n| characters. | right('abcde', 2) | de
rpad(string text, length int [, fill text]) | text | Fill up the string to length length by appending the characters fill (a space by default). If the string is already longer than length then it is truncated. | rpad('hi', 5, 'xy') | hixyx
rtrim(string text [, characters text]) | text | Remove the longest string containing only characters from characters (a space by default) from the end of string | rtrim('trimxxxx', 'x') | trim
split_part(string text, delimiter text, field int) | text | Split string on delimiter and return the given field (counting from one) | split_part('abc~@~def~@~ghi', '~@~', 2) | def
strpos(string, substring) | int | Location of specified substring (same as position(substring in string), but note the reversed argument order) | strpos('high', 'ig') | 2
substr(string, from [, count]) | text | Extract substring (same as substring(string from from for count)) | substr('alphabet', 3, 2) | ph
to_ascii(string text [, encoding text]) | text | Convert string to ASCII from another encoding (only supports conversion from LATIN1, LATIN2, LATIN9, and WIN1250 encodings) | to_ascii('Karel') | Karel
to_hex(number int or bigint) | text | Convert number to its equivalent hexadecimal representation | to_hex(2147483647) | 7fffffff
translate(string text, from text, to text) | text | Any character in string that matches a character in the from set is replaced by the corresponding character in the to set. If from is longer than to, occurrences of the extra characters in from are removed. | translate('12345', '143', 'ax') | a2x5

See also the aggregate function string_agg in Section 9.18.

Table 9-8. Built-in Conversions

Conversion Name [a] | Source Encoding | Destination Encoding
ascii_to_mic | SQL_ASCII | MULE_INTERNAL
ascii_to_utf8 | SQL_ASCII | UTF8
big5_to_euc_tw | BIG5 | EUC_TW
big5_to_mic | BIG5 | MULE_INTERNAL
big5_to_utf8 | BIG5 | UTF8
euc_cn_to_mic | EUC_CN | MULE_INTERNAL
euc_cn_to_utf8 | EUC_CN | UTF8
euc_jp_to_mic | EUC_JP | MULE_INTERNAL
euc_jp_to_sjis | EUC_JP | SJIS
euc_jp_to_utf8 | EUC_JP | UTF8
euc_kr_to_mic | EUC_KR | MULE_INTERNAL
euc_kr_to_utf8 | EUC_KR | UTF8
euc_tw_to_big5 | EUC_TW | BIG5
euc_tw_to_mic | EUC_TW | MULE_INTERNAL
euc_tw_to_utf8 | EUC_TW | UTF8
gb18030_to_utf8 | GB18030 | UTF8
gbk_to_utf8 | GBK | UTF8
iso_8859_10_to_utf8 | LATIN6 | UTF8
iso_8859_13_to_utf8 | LATIN7 | UTF8
iso_8859_14_to_utf8 | LATIN8 | UTF8
iso_8859_15_to_utf8 | LATIN9 | UTF8
iso_8859_16_to_utf8 | LATIN10 | UTF8
iso_8859_1_to_mic | LATIN1 | MULE_INTERNAL
iso_8859_1_to_utf8 | LATIN1 | UTF8
iso_8859_2_to_mic | LATIN2 | MULE_INTERNAL
iso_8859_2_to_utf8 | LATIN2 | UTF8
iso_8859_2_to_windows_1250 | LATIN2 | WIN1250
iso_8859_3_to_mic | LATIN3 | MULE_INTERNAL
iso_8859_3_to_utf8 | LATIN3 | UTF8
iso_8859_4_to_mic | LATIN4 | MULE_INTERNAL
iso_8859_4_to_utf8 | LATIN4 | UTF8
iso_8859_5_to_koi8_r | ISO_8859_5 | KOI8R
iso_8859_5_to_mic | ISO_8859_5 | MULE_INTERNAL
iso_8859_5_to_utf8 | ISO_8859_5 | UTF8
iso_8859_5_to_windows_1251 | ISO_8859_5 | WIN1251
iso_8859_5_to_windows_866 | ISO_8859_5 | WIN866
iso_8859_6_to_utf8 | ISO_8859_6 | UTF8
iso_8859_7_to_utf8 | ISO_8859_7 | UTF8
iso_8859_8_to_utf8 | ISO_8859_8 | UTF8
iso_8859_9_to_utf8 | LATIN5 | UTF8
johab_to_utf8 | JOHAB | UTF8
koi8_r_to_iso_8859_5 | KOI8R | ISO_8859_5
koi8_r_to_mic | KOI8R | MULE_INTERNAL
koi8_r_to_utf8 | KOI8R | UTF8
koi8_r_to_windows_1251 | KOI8R | WIN1251
koi8_r_to_windows_866 | KOI8R | WIN866
koi8_u_to_utf8 | KOI8U | UTF8
mic_to_ascii | MULE_INTERNAL | SQL_ASCII
mic_to_big5 | MULE_INTERNAL | BIG5
mic_to_euc_cn | MULE_INTERNAL | EUC_CN
mic_to_euc_jp | MULE_INTERNAL | EUC_JP
mic_to_euc_kr | MULE_INTERNAL | EUC_KR
mic_to_euc_tw | MULE_INTERNAL | EUC_TW
mic_to_iso_8859_1 | MULE_INTERNAL | LATIN1
mic_to_iso_8859_2 | MULE_INTERNAL | LATIN2
mic_to_iso_8859_3 | MULE_INTERNAL | LATIN3
mic_to_iso_8859_4 | MULE_INTERNAL | LATIN4
mic_to_iso_8859_5 | MULE_INTERNAL | ISO_8859_5
mic_to_koi8_r | MULE_INTERNAL | KOI8R
mic_to_sjis | MULE_INTERNAL | SJIS
mic_to_windows_1250 | MULE_INTERNAL | WIN1250
mic_to_windows_1251 | MULE_INTERNAL | WIN1251
mic_to_windows_866 | MULE_INTERNAL | WIN866
sjis_to_euc_jp | SJIS | EUC_JP
sjis_to_mic | SJIS | MULE_INTERNAL
sjis_to_utf8 | SJIS | UTF8
tcvn_to_utf8 | WIN1258 | UTF8
uhc_to_utf8 | UHC | UTF8
utf8_to_ascii | UTF8 | SQL_ASCII
utf8_to_big5 | UTF8 | BIG5
utf8_to_euc_cn | UTF8 | EUC_CN
utf8_to_euc_jp | UTF8 | EUC_JP
utf8_to_euc_kr | UTF8 | EUC_KR
utf8_to_euc_tw | UTF8 | EUC_TW
utf8_to_gb18030 | UTF8 | GB18030
utf8_to_gbk | UTF8 | GBK
utf8_to_iso_8859_1 | UTF8 | LATIN1
utf8_to_iso_8859_10 | UTF8 | LATIN6
utf8_to_iso_8859_13 | UTF8 | LATIN7
utf8_to_iso_8859_14 | UTF8 | LATIN8
utf8_to_iso_8859_15 | UTF8 | LATIN9
utf8_to_iso_8859_16 | UTF8 | LATIN10
utf8_to_iso_8859_2 | UTF8 | LATIN2
utf8_to_iso_8859_3 | UTF8 | LATIN3
utf8_to_iso_8859_4 | UTF8 | LATIN4
utf8_to_iso_8859_5 | UTF8 | ISO_8859_5
utf8_to_iso_8859_6 | UTF8 | ISO_8859_6
utf8_to_iso_8859_7 | UTF8 | ISO_8859_7
utf8_to_iso_8859_8 | UTF8 | ISO_8859_8
utf8_to_iso_8859_9 | UTF8 | LATIN5
utf8_to_johab | UTF8 | JOHAB
utf8_to_koi8_r | UTF8 | KOI8R
utf8_to_koi8_u | UTF8 | KOI8U
utf8_to_sjis | UTF8 | SJIS
utf8_to_tcvn | UTF8 | WIN1258
utf8_to_uhc | UTF8 | UHC
utf8_to_windows_1250 | UTF8 | WIN1250
utf8_to_windows_1251 | UTF8 | WIN1251
utf8_to_windows_1252 | UTF8 | WIN1252
utf8_to_windows_1253 | UTF8 | WIN1253
utf8_to_windows_1254 | UTF8 | WIN1254
utf8_to_windows_1255 | UTF8 | WIN1255
utf8_to_windows_1256 | UTF8 | WIN1256
utf8_to_windows_1257 | UTF8 | WIN1257
utf8_to_windows_866 | UTF8 | WIN866
utf8_to_windows_874 | UTF8 | WIN874
windows_1250_to_iso_8859_2 | WIN1250 | LATIN2
windows_1250_to_mic | WIN1250 | MULE_INTERNAL
windows_1250_to_utf8 | WIN1250 | UTF8
windows_1251_to_iso_8859_5 | WIN1251 | ISO_8859_5
windows_1251_to_koi8_r | WIN1251 | KOI8R
windows_1251_to_mic | WIN1251 | MULE_INTERNAL
windows_1251_to_utf8 | WIN1251 | UTF8
windows_1251_to_windows_866 | WIN1251 | WIN866
windows_1252_to_utf8 | WIN1252 | UTF8
windows_1256_to_utf8 | WIN1256 | UTF8
windows_866_to_iso_8859_5 | WIN866 | ISO_8859_5
windows_866_to_koi8_r | WIN866 | KOI8R
windows_866_to_mic | WIN866 | MULE_INTERNAL
windows_866_to_utf8 | WIN866 | UTF8
windows_866_to_windows_1251 | WIN866 | WIN
windows_874_to_utf8 | WIN874 | UTF8
euc_jis_2004_to_utf8 | EUC_JIS_2004 | UTF8
utf8_to_euc_jis_2004 | UTF8 | EUC_JIS_2004
shift_jis_2004_to_utf8 | SHIFT_JIS_2004 | UTF8
utf8_to_shift_jis_2004 | UTF8 | SHIFT_JIS_2004
euc_jis_2004_to_shift_jis_2004 | EUC_JIS_2004 | SHIFT_JIS_2004
shift_jis_2004_to_euc_jis_2004 | SHIFT_JIS_2004 | EUC_JIS_2004
Notes: a. The conversion names follow a standard naming scheme: The official name of the source encoding with all non-alphanumeric characters replaced by underscores, followed by _to_, followed by the similarly processed destination encoding name. Therefore, the names might deviate from the customary encoding names.
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Binary String Functions and Operators

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9.5. Binary String Functions and Operators

This section describes functions and operators for examining and manipulating values of type bytea.

SQL defines some string functions that use key words, rather than commas, to separate arguments. Details are in Table 9-9. PostgreSQL also provides versions of these functions that use the regular function invocation syntax (see Table 9-10).

Note: The sample results shown on this page assume that the server parameter bytea_output is set to escape (the traditional PostgreSQL format).

Table 9-9. SQL Binary String Functions and Operators

Function | Return Type | Description | Example | Result
string || string | bytea | String concatenation | E'\\\\Post'::bytea || E'\\047gres\\000'::bytea | \\Post'gres\000
octet_length(string) | int | Number of bytes in binary string | octet_length(E'jo\\000se'::bytea) | 5
overlay(string placing string from int [for int]) | bytea | Replace substring | overlay(E'Th\\000omas'::bytea placing E'\\002\\003'::bytea from 2 for 3) | T\\002\\003mas
position(substring in string) | int | Location of specified substring | position(E'\\000om'::bytea in E'Th\\000omas'::bytea) | 3
substring(string [from int] [for int]) | bytea | Extract substring | substring(E'Th\\000omas'::bytea from 2 for 3) | h\000o
trim([both] bytes from string) | bytea | Remove the longest string containing only the bytes in bytes from the start and end of string | trim(E'\\000'::bytea from E'\\000Tom\\000'::bytea) | Tom

Additional binary string manipulation functions are available and are listed in Table 9-10. Some of them are used internally to implement the SQL-standard string functions listed in Table 9-9.

Table 9-10. Other Binary String Functions

Function | Return Type | Description | Example | Result
btrim(string bytea, bytes bytea) | bytea | Remove the longest string consisting only of bytes in bytes from the start and end of string | btrim(E'\\000trim\\000'::bytea, E'\\000'::bytea) | trim
decode(string text, format text) | bytea | Decode binary data from textual representation in string. Options for format are same as in encode. | decode(E'123\\000456', 'escape') | 123\000456
encode(data bytea, format text) | text | Encode binary data into a textual representation. Supported formats are: base64, hex, escape. escape converts zero bytes and high-bit-set bytes to octal sequences (\nnn) and doubles backslashes. | encode(E'123\\000456'::bytea, 'escape') | 123\000456
get_bit(string, offset) | int | Extract bit from string | get_bit(E'Th\\000omas'::bytea, 45) | 1
get_byte(string, offset) | int | Extract byte from string | get_byte(E'Th\\000omas'::bytea, 4) | 109
length(string) | int | Length of binary string | length(E'jo\\000se'::bytea) | 5
md5(string) | text | Calculates the MD5 hash of string, returning the result in hexadecimal | md5(E'Th\\000omas'::bytea) | 8ab2d3c9689aaf18 b4958c334c82d8b1
set_bit(string, offset, newvalue) | bytea | Set bit in string | set_bit(E'Th\\000omas'::bytea, 45, 0) | Th\000omAs
set_byte(string, offset, newvalue) | bytea | Set byte in string | set_byte(E'Th\\000omas'::bytea, 4, 64) | Th\000o@as

get_byte and set_byte number the first byte of a binary string as byte 0. get_bit and set_bit number bits from the right within each byte; for example bit 0 is the least significant bit of the first byte, and bit 15 is the most significant bit of the second byte.

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Bit String Functions and Operators

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9.6. Bit String Functions and Operators

This section describes functions and operators for examining and manipulating bit strings, that is values of the types bit and bit varying. Aside from the usual comparison operators, the operators shown in Table 9-11 can be used. Bit string operands of &, |, and # must be of equal length. When bit shifting, the original length of the string is preserved, as shown in the examples.

Table 9-11. Bit String Operators

Operator | Description | Example | Result
|| | concatenation | B'10001' || B'011' | 10001011
& | bitwise AND | B'10001' & B'01101' | 00001
| | bitwise OR | B'10001' | B'01101' | 11101
# | bitwise XOR | B'10001' # B'01101' | 11100
~ | bitwise NOT | ~ B'10001' | 01110
<< | bitwise shift left | B'10001' << 3 | 01000
>> | bitwise shift right | B'10001' >> 2 | 00100

The following SQL-standard functions work on bit strings as well as character strings: length, bit_length, octet_length, position, substring, overlay.

The following functions work on bit strings as well as binary strings: get_bit, set_bit. When working with a bit string, these functions number the first (leftmost) bit of the string as bit 0.

In addition, it is possible to cast integral values to and from type bit. Some examples:

44::bit(10)                    0000101100
44::bit(3)                     100
cast(-44 as bit(12))           111111010100
'1110'::bit(4)::integer        14

Note that casting to just "bit" means casting to bit(1), and so will deliver only the least significant bit of the integer.

Note: Prior to PostgreSQL 8.0, casting an integer to bit(n) would copy the leftmost n bits of the integer, whereas now it copies the rightmost n bits. Also, casting an integer to a bit string width wider than the integer itself will sign-extend on the left.

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Pattern Matching

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9.7. Pattern Matching

There are three separate approaches to pattern matching provided by PostgreSQL: the traditional SQL LIKE operator, the more recent SIMILAR TO operator (added in SQL:1999), and POSIX-style regular expressions. Aside from the basic "does this string match this pattern?" operators, functions are available to extract or replace matching substrings and to split a string at matching locations.

Tip: If you have pattern matching needs that go beyond this, consider writing a user-defined function in Perl or Tcl.

Caution

While most regular-expression searches can be executed very quickly, regular expressions can be contrived that take arbitrary amounts of time and memory to process. Be wary of accepting regular-expression search patterns from hostile sources. If you must do so, it is advisable to impose a statement timeout.

Searches using SIMILAR TO patterns have the same security hazards, since SIMILAR TO provides many of the same capabilities as POSIX-style regular expressions.

LIKE searches, being much simpler than the other two options, are safer to use with possibly-hostile pattern sources.

9.7.1. LIKE

string LIKE pattern [ESCAPE escape-character]
string NOT LIKE pattern [ESCAPE escape-character]

The LIKE expression returns true if the string matches the supplied pattern. (As expected, the NOT LIKE expression returns false if LIKE returns true, and vice versa. An equivalent expression is NOT (string LIKE pattern).)

If pattern does not contain percent signs or underscores, then the pattern only represents the string itself; in that case LIKE acts like the equals operator. An underscore (_) in pattern stands for (matches) any single character; a percent sign (%) matches any sequence of zero or more characters.

Some examples:

'abc' LIKE 'abc'    true
'abc' LIKE 'a%'     true
'abc' LIKE '_b_'    true
'abc' LIKE 'c'      false

LIKE pattern matching always covers the entire string. Therefore, if it's desired to match a sequence anywhere within a string, the pattern must start and end with a percent sign.

To match a literal underscore or percent sign without matching other characters, the respective character in pattern must be preceded by the escape character. The default escape character is the backslash but a different one can be selected by using the ESCAPE clause. To match the escape character itself, write two escape characters.

Note: If you have standard_conforming_strings turned off, any backslashes you write in literal string constants will need to be doubled. See Section 4.1.2.1 for more information.

It's also possible to select no escape character by writing ESCAPE ''. This effectively disables the escape mechanism, which makes it impossible to turn off the special meaning of underscore and percent signs in the pattern.

The key word ILIKE can be used instead of LIKE to make the match case-insensitive according to the active locale. This is not in the SQL standard but is a PostgreSQL extension.

The operator ~~ is equivalent to LIKE, and ~~* corresponds to ILIKE. There are also !~~ and !~~* operators that represent NOT LIKE and NOT ILIKE, respectively. All of these operators are PostgreSQL-specific.

9.7.2. SIMILAR TO Regular Expressions

string SIMILAR TO pattern [ESCAPE escape-character]
string NOT SIMILAR TO pattern [ESCAPE escape-character]

The SIMILAR TO operator returns true or false depending on whether its pattern matches the given string. It is similar to LIKE, except that it interprets the pattern using the SQL standard's definition of a regular expression. SQL regular expressions are a curious cross between LIKE notation and common regular expression notation.

Like LIKE, the SIMILAR TO operator succeeds only if its pattern matches the entire string; this is unlike common regular expression behavior where the pattern can match any part of the string. Also like LIKE, SIMILAR TO uses _ and % as wildcard characters denoting any single character and any string, respectively (these are comparable to . and .* in POSIX regular expressions).

In addition to these facilities borrowed from LIKE, SIMILAR TO supports these pattern-matching metacharacters borrowed from POSIX regular expressions:

  • | denotes alternation (either of two alternatives).

  • * denotes repetition of the previous item zero or more times.

  • + denotes repetition of the previous item one or more times.

  • ? denotes repetition of the previous item zero or one time.

  • {m} denotes repetition of the previous item exactly m times.

  • {m,} denotes repetition of the previous item m or more times.

  • {m,n} denotes repetition of the previous item at least m and not more than n times.

  • Parentheses () can be used to group items into a single logical item.

  • A bracket expression [...] specifies a character class, just as in POSIX regular expressions.

Notice that the period (.) is not a metacharacter for SIMILAR TO.

As with LIKE, a backslash disables the special meaning of any of these metacharacters; or a different escape character can be specified with ESCAPE.

Some examples:

'abc' SIMILAR TO 'abc'      true
'abc' SIMILAR TO 'a'        false
'abc' SIMILAR TO '%(b|d)%'  true
'abc' SIMILAR TO '(b|c)%'   false

The substring function with three parameters, substring(string from pattern for escape-character), provides extraction of a substring that matches an SQL regular expression pattern. As with SIMILAR TO, the specified pattern must match the entire data string, or else the function fails and returns null. To indicate the part of the pattern that should be returned on success, the pattern must contain two occurrences of the escape character followed by a double quote ("). The text matching the portion of the pattern between these markers is returned.

Some examples, with #" delimiting the return string:

substring('foobar' from '%#"o_b#"%' for '#')   oob
substring('foobar' from '#"o_b#"%' for '#')    NULL

9.7.3. POSIX Regular Expressions

Table 9-12 lists the available operators for pattern matching using POSIX regular expressions.

Table 9-12. Regular Expression Match Operators

Operator | Description | Example
~ | Matches regular expression, case sensitive | 'thomas' ~ '.*thomas.*'
~* | Matches regular expression, case insensitive | 'thomas' ~* '.*Thomas.*'
!~ | Does not match regular expression, case sensitive | 'thomas' !~ '.*Thomas.*'
!~* | Does not match regular expression, case insensitive | 'thomas' !~* '.*vadim.*'

POSIX regular expressions provide a more powerful means for pattern matching than the LIKE and SIMILAR TO operators. Many Unix tools such as egrep, sed, or awk use a pattern matching language that is similar to the one described here.

A regular expression is a character sequence that is an abbreviated definition of a set of strings (a regular set). A string is said to match a regular expression if it is a member of the regular set described by the regular expression. As with LIKE, pattern characters match string characters exactly unless they are special characters in the regular expression language — but regular expressions use different special characters than LIKE does. Unlike LIKE patterns, a regular expression is allowed to match anywhere within a string, unless the regular expression is explicitly anchored to the beginning or end of the string.

Some examples:

'abc' ~ 'abc'    true
'abc' ~ '^a'     true
'abc' ~ '(b|d)'  true
'abc' ~ '^(b|c)' false

The POSIX pattern language is described in much greater detail below.

The substring function with two parameters, substring(string from pattern), provides extraction of a substring that matches a POSIX regular expression pattern. It returns null if there is no match, otherwise the portion of the text that matched the pattern. But if the pattern contains any parentheses, the portion of the text that matched the first parenthesized subexpression (the one whose left parenthesis comes first) is returned. You can put parentheses around the whole expression if you want to use parentheses within it without triggering this exception. If you need parentheses in the pattern before the subexpression you want to extract, see the non-capturing parentheses described below.

Some examples:

substring('foobar' from 'o.b')     oob
substring('foobar' from 'o(.)b')   o

The regexp_replace function provides substitution of new text for substrings that match POSIX regular expression patterns. It has the syntax regexp_replace(source, pattern, replacement [, flags ]). The source string is returned unchanged if there is no match to the pattern. If there is a match, the source string is returned with the replacement string substituted for the matching substring. The replacement string can contain \n, where n is 1 through 9, to indicate that the source substring matching the n'th parenthesized subexpression of the pattern should be inserted, and it can contain \& to indicate that the substring matching the entire pattern should be inserted. Write \\ if you need to put a literal backslash in the replacement text. The flags parameter is an optional text string containing zero or more single-letter flags that change the function's behavior. Flag i specifies case-insensitive matching, while flag g specifies replacement of each matching substring rather than only the first one. Other supported flags are described in Table 9-20.

Some examples:

regexp_replace('foobarbaz', 'b..', 'X')
                                   fooXbaz
regexp_replace('foobarbaz', 'b..', 'X', 'g')
                                   fooXX
regexp_replace('foobarbaz', 'b(..)', E'X\\1Y', 'g')
                                   fooXarYXazY

The regexp_matches function returns a text array of all of the captured substrings resulting from matching a POSIX regular expression pattern. It has the syntax regexp_matches(string, pattern [, flags ]). The function can return no rows, one row, or multiple rows (see the g flag below). If the pattern does not match, the function returns no rows. If the pattern contains no parenthesized subexpressions, then each row returned is a single-element text array containing the substring matching the whole pattern. If the pattern contains parenthesized subexpressions, the function returns a text array whose n'th element is the substring matching the n'th parenthesized subexpression of the pattern (not counting "non-capturing" parentheses; see below for details). The flags parameter is an optional text string containing zero or more single-letter flags that change the function's behavior. Flag g causes the function to find each match in the string, not only the first one, and return a row for each such match. Other supported flags are described in Table 9-20.

Some examples:

SELECT regexp_matches('foobarbequebaz', '(bar)(beque)');
 regexp_matches
----------------
 {bar,beque}
(1 row)

SELECT regexp_matches('foobarbequebazilbarfbonk', '(b[^b]+)(b[^b]+)', 'g');
 regexp_matches
----------------
 {bar,beque}
 {bazil,barf}
(2 rows)

SELECT regexp_matches('foobarbequebaz', 'barbeque');
 regexp_matches
----------------
 {barbeque}
(1 row)

It is possible to force regexp_matches() to always return one row by using a sub-select; this is particularly useful in a SELECT target list when you want all rows returned, even non-matching ones:

SELECT col1, (SELECT regexp_matches(col2, '(bar)(beque)')) FROM tab;

The regexp_split_to_table function splits a string using a POSIX regular expression pattern as a delimiter. It has the syntax regexp_split_to_table(string, pattern [, flags ]). If there is no match to the pattern, the function returns the string. If there is at least one match, for each match it returns the text from the end of the last match (or the beginning of the string) to the beginning of the match. When there are no more matches, it returns the text from the end of the last match to the end of the string. The flags parameter is an optional text string containing zero or more single-letter flags that change the function's behavior. regexp_split_to_table supports the flags described in Table 9-20.

The regexp_split_to_array function behaves the same as regexp_split_to_table, except that regexp_split_to_array returns its result as an array of text. It has the syntax regexp_split_to_array(string, pattern [, flags ]). The parameters are the same as for regexp_split_to_table.

Some examples:

SELECT foo FROM regexp_split_to_table('the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog', E'\\s+') AS foo;
  foo
--------
 the
 quick
 brown
 fox
 jumped
 over
 the
 lazy
 dog
(9 rows)

SELECT regexp_split_to_array('the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog', E'\\s+');
              regexp_split_to_array
------------------------------------------------
 {the,quick,brown,fox,jumped,over,the,lazy,dog}
(1 row)

SELECT foo FROM regexp_split_to_table('the quick brown fox', E'\\s*') AS foo;
 foo
-----
 t
 h
 e
 q
 u
 i
 c
 k
 b
 r
 o
 w
 n
 f
 o
 x
(16 rows)

As the last example demonstrates, the regexp split functions ignore zero-length matches that occur at the start or end of the string or immediately after a previous match. This is contrary to the strict definition of regexp matching that is implemented by regexp_matches, but is usually the most convenient behavior in practice. Other software systems such as Perl use similar definitions.

9.7.3.1. Regular Expression Details

PostgreSQL's regular expressions are implemented using a software package written by Henry Spencer. Much of the description of regular expressions below is copied verbatim from his manual.

Regular expressions (REs), as defined in POSIX 1003.2, come in two forms: extended REs or EREs (roughly those of egrep), and basic REs or BREs (roughly those of ed). PostgreSQL supports both forms, and also implements some extensions that are not in the POSIX standard, but have become widely used due to their availability in programming languages such as Perl and Tcl. REs using these non-POSIX extensions are called advanced REs or AREs in this documentation. AREs are almost an exact superset of EREs, but BREs have several notational incompatibilities (as well as being much more limited). We first describe the ARE and ERE forms, noting features that apply only to AREs, and then describe how BREs differ.

Note: PostgreSQL always initially presumes that a regular expression follows the ARE rules. However, the more limited ERE or BRE rules can be chosen by prepending an embedded option to the RE pattern, as described in Section 9.7.3.4. This can be useful for compatibility with applications that expect exactly the POSIX 1003.2 rules.

A regular expression is defined as one or more branches, separated by |. It matches anything that matches one of the branches.

A branch is zero or more quantified atoms or constraints, concatenated. It matches a match for the first, followed by a match for the second, etc; an empty branch matches the empty string.

A quantified atom is an atom possibly followed by a single quantifier. Without a quantifier, it matches a match for the atom. With a quantifier, it can match some number of matches of the atom. An atom can be any of the possibilities shown in Table 9-13. The possible quantifiers and their meanings are shown in Table 9-14.

A constraint matches an empty string, but matches only when specific conditions are met. A constraint can be used where an atom could be used, except it cannot be followed by a quantifier. The simple constraints are shown in Table 9-15; some more constraints are described later.

Table 9-13. Regular Expression Atoms

Atom | Description
(re) | (where re is any regular expression) matches a match for re, with the match noted for possible reporting
(?:re) | as above, but the match is not noted for reporting (a "non-capturing" set of parentheses) (AREs only)
. | matches any single character
[chars] | a bracket expression, matching any one of the chars (see Section 9.7.3.2 for more detail)
\k | (where k is a non-alphanumeric character) matches that character taken as an ordinary character, e.g., \\ matches a backslash character
\c | where c is alphanumeric (possibly followed by other characters) is an escape, see Section 9.7.3.3 (AREs only; in EREs and BREs, this matches c)
{ | when followed by a character other than a digit, matches the left-brace character {; when followed by a digit, it is the beginning of a bound (see below)
x | where x is a single character with no other significance, matches that character

An RE cannot end with a backslash (\).

Note: If you have standard_conforming_strings turned off, any backslashes you write in literal string constants will need to be doubled. See Section 4.1.2.1 for more information.

Table 9-14. Regular Expression Quantifiers

Quantifier | Matches
* | a sequence of 0 or more matches of the atom
+ | a sequence of 1 or more matches of the atom
? | a sequence of 0 or 1 matches of the atom
{m} | a sequence of exactly m matches of the atom
{m,} | a sequence of m or more matches of the atom
{m,n} | a sequence of m through n (inclusive) matches of the atom; m cannot exceed n
*? | non-greedy version of *
+? | non-greedy version of +
?? | non-greedy version of ?
{m}? | non-greedy version of {m}
{m,}? | non-greedy version of {m,}
{m,n}? | non-greedy version of {m,n}

The forms using {...} are known as bounds. The numbers m and n within a bound are unsigned decimal integers with permissible values from 0 to 255 inclusive.

Non-greedy quantifiers (available in AREs only) match the same possibilities as their corresponding normal (greedy) counterparts, but prefer the smallest number rather than the largest number of matches. See Section 9.7.3.5 for more detail.

Note: A quantifier cannot immediately follow another quantifier, e.g., ** is invalid. A quantifier cannot begin an expression or subexpression or follow ^ or |.

Table 9-15. Regular Expression Constraints

Constraint | Description
^ | matches at the beginning of the string
$ | matches at the end of the string
(?=re) | positive lookahead matches at any point where a substring matching re begins (AREs only)
(?!re) | negative lookahead matches at any point where no substring matching re begins (AREs only)

Lookahead constraints cannot contain back references (see Section 9.7.3.3), and all parentheses within them are considered non-capturing.

9.7.3.2. Bracket Expressions

A bracket expression is a list of characters enclosed in []. It normally matches any single character from the list (but see below). If the list begins with ^, it matches any single character not from the rest of the list. If two characters in the list are separated by -, this is shorthand for the full range of characters between those two (inclusive) in the collating sequence, e.g., [0-9] in ASCII matches any decimal digit. It is illegal for two ranges to share an endpoint, e.g., a-c-e. Ranges are very collating-sequence-dependent, so portable programs should avoid relying on them.

To include a literal ] in the list, make it the first character (after ^, if that is used). To include a literal -, make it the first or last character, or the second endpoint of a range. To use a literal - as the first endpoint of a range, enclose it in [. and .] to make it a collating element (see below). With the exception of these characters, some combinations using [ (see next paragraphs), and escapes (AREs only), all other special characters lose their special significance within a bracket expression. In particular, \ is not special when following ERE or BRE rules, though it is special (as introducing an escape) in AREs.

Within a bracket expression, a collating element (a character, a multiple-character sequence that collates as if it were a single character, or a collating-sequence name for either) enclosed in [. and .] stands for the sequence of characters of that collating element. The sequence is treated as a single element of the bracket expression's list. This allows a bracket expression containing a multiple-character collating element to match more than one character, e.g., if the collating sequence includes a ch collating element, then the RE [[.ch.]]*c matches the first five characters of chchcc.

Note: PostgreSQL currently does not support multi-character collating elements. This information describes possible future behavior.

Within a bracket expression, a collating element enclosed in [= and =] is an equivalence class, standing for the sequences of characters of all collating elements equivalent to that one, including itself. (If there are no other equivalent collating elements, the treatment is as if the enclosing delimiters were [. and .].) For example, if o and ^ are the members of an equivalence class, then [[=o=]], [[=^=]], and [o^] are all synonymous. An equivalence class cannot be an endpoint of a range.

Within a bracket expression, the name of a character class enclosed in [: and :] stands for the list of all characters belonging to that class. Standard character class names are: alnum, alpha, blank, cntrl, digit, graph, lower, print, punct, space, upper, xdigit. These stand for the character classes defined in ctype. A locale can provide others. A character class cannot be used as an endpoint of a range.

There are two special cases of bracket expressions: the bracket expressions [[:<:]] and [[:>:]] are constraints, matching empty strings at the beginning and end of a word respectively. A word is defined as a sequence of word characters that is neither preceded nor followed by word characters. A word character is an alnum character (as defined by ctype) or an underscore. This is an extension, compatible with but not specified by POSIX 1003.2, and should be used with caution in software intended to be portable to other systems. The constraint escapes described below are usually preferable; they are no more standard, but are easier to type.

9.7.3.3. Regular Expression Escapes

Escapes are special sequences beginning with \ followed by an alphanumeric character. Escapes come in several varieties: character entry, class shorthands, constraint escapes, and back references. A \ followed by an alphanumeric character but not constituting a valid escape is illegal in AREs. In EREs, there are no escapes: outside a bracket expression, a \ followed by an alphanumeric character merely stands for that character as an ordinary character, and inside a bracket expression, \ is an ordinary character. (The latter is the one actual incompatibility between EREs and AREs.)

Character-entry escapes exist to make it easier to specify non-printing and other inconvenient characters in REs. They are shown in Table 9-16.

Class-shorthand escapes provide shorthands for certain commonly-used character classes. They are shown in Table 9-17.

A constraint escape is a constraint, matching the empty string if specific conditions are met, written as an escape. They are shown in Table 9-18.

A back reference (\n) matches the same string matched by the previous parenthesized subexpression specified by the number n (see Table 9-19). For example, ([bc])\1 matches bb or cc but not bc or cb. The subexpression must entirely precede the back reference in the RE. Subexpressions are numbered in the order of their leading parentheses. Non-capturing parentheses do not define subexpressions.

Note: Keep in mind that an escape's leading \ will need to be doubled when entering the pattern as an SQL string constant. For example:

'123' ~ E'^\\d{3}' true

Table 9-16. Regular Expression Character-entry Escapes

Escape | Description
\a | alert (bell) character, as in C
\b | backspace, as in C
\B | synonym for backslash (\) to help reduce the need for backslash doubling
\cX | (where X is any character) the character whose low-order 5 bits are the same as those of X, and whose other bits are all zero
\e | the character whose collating-sequence name is ESC, or failing that, the character with octal value 033
\f | form feed, as in C
\n | newline, as in C
\r | carriage return, as in C
\t | horizontal tab, as in C
\uwxyz | (where wxyz is exactly four hexadecimal digits) the character whose hexadecimal value is 0xwxyz
\Ustuvwxyz | (where stuvwxyz is exactly eight hexadecimal digits) the character whose hexadecimal value is 0xstuvwxyz
\v | vertical tab, as in C
\xhhh | (where hhh is any sequence of hexadecimal digits) the character whose hexadecimal value is 0xhhh (a single character no matter how many hexadecimal digits are used)
\0 | the character whose value is 0 (the null byte)
\xy | (where xy is exactly two octal digits, and is not a back reference) the character whose octal value is 0xy
\xyz | (where xyz is exactly three octal digits, and is not a back reference) the character whose octal value is 0xyz

Hexadecimal digits are 0-9, a-f, and A-F. Octal digits are 0-7.

Numeric character-entry escapes specifying values outside the ASCII range (0-127) have meanings dependent on the database encoding. When the encoding is UTF-8, escape values are equivalent to Unicode code points, for example \u1234 means the character U+1234. For other multibyte encodings, character-entry escapes usually just specify the concatenation of the byte values for the character. If the escape value does not correspond to any legal character in the database encoding, no error will be raised, but it will never match any data.

The character-entry escapes are always taken as ordinary characters. For example, \135 is ] in ASCII, but \135 does not terminate a bracket expression.

Table 9-17. Regular Expression Class-shorthand Escapes

Escape | Description
\d | [[:digit:]]
\s | [[:space:]]
\w | [[:alnum:]_] (note underscore is included)
\D | [^[:digit:]]
\S | [^[:space:]]
\W | [^[:alnum:]_] (note underscore is included)

Within bracket expressions, \d, \s, and \w lose their outer brackets, and \D, \S, and \W are illegal. (So, for example, [a-c\d] is equivalent to [a-c[:digit:]]. Also, [a-c\D], which is equivalent to [a-c^[:digit:]], is illegal.)

Table 9-18. Regular Expression Constraint Escapes

Escape | Description
\A | matches only at the beginning of the string (see Section 9.7.3.5 for how this differs from ^)
\m | matches only at the beginning of a word
\M | matches only at the end of a word
\y | matches only at the beginning or end of a word
\Y | matches only at a point that is not the beginning or end of a word
\Z | matches only at the end of the string (see Section 9.7.3.5 for how this differs from $)

A word is defined as in the specification of [[:<:]] and [[:>:]] above. Constraint escapes are illegal within bracket expressions.

Table 9-19. Regular Expression Back References

Escape | Description
\m | (where m is a nonzero digit) a back reference to the m'th subexpression
\mnn | (where m is a nonzero digit, and nn is some more digits, and the decimal value mnn is not greater than the number of closing capturing parentheses seen so far) a back reference to the mnn'th subexpression

Note: There is an inherent ambiguity between octal character-entry escapes and back references, which is resolved by the following heuristics, as hinted at above. A leading zero always indicates an octal escape. A single non-zero digit, not followed by another digit, is always taken as a back reference. A multi-digit sequence not starting with a zero is taken as a back reference if it comes after a suitable subexpression (i.e., the number is in the legal range for a back reference), and otherwise is taken as octal.

9.7.3.4. Regular Expression Metasyntax

In addition to the main syntax described above, there are some special forms and miscellaneous syntactic facilities available.

An RE can begin with one of two special director prefixes. If an RE begins with ***:, the rest of the RE is taken as an ARE. (This normally has no effect in PostgreSQL, since REs are assumed to be AREs; but it does have an effect if ERE or BRE mode had been specified by the flags parameter to a regex function.) If an RE begins with ***=, the rest of the RE is taken to be a literal string, with all characters considered ordinary characters.

An ARE can begin with embedded options: a sequence (?xyz) (where xyz is one or more alphabetic characters) specifies options affecting the rest of the RE. These options override any previously determined options — in particular, they can override the case-sensitivity behavior implied by a regex operator, or the flags parameter to a regex function. The available option letters are shown in Table 9-20. Note that these same option letters are used in the flags parameters of regex functions.

Table 9-20. ARE Embedded-option Letters

Option | Description
b | rest of RE is a BRE
c | case-sensitive matching (overrides operator type)
e | rest of RE is an ERE
i | case-insensitive matching (see Section 9.7.3.5) (overrides operator type)
m | historical synonym for n
n | newline-sensitive matching (see Section 9.7.3.5)
p | partial newline-sensitive matching (see Section 9.7.3.5)
q | rest of RE is a literal ("quoted") string, all ordinary characters
s | non-newline-sensitive matching (default)
t | tight syntax (default; see below)
w | inverse partial newline-sensitive ("weird") matching (see Section 9.7.3.5)
x | expanded syntax (see below)

Embedded options take effect at the ) terminating the sequence. They can appear only at the start of an ARE (after the ***: director if any).

In addition to the usual (tight) RE syntax, in which all characters are significant, there is an expanded syntax, available by specifying the embedded x option. In the expanded syntax, white-space characters in the RE are ignored, as are all characters between a # and the following newline (or the end of the RE). This permits paragraphing and commenting a complex RE. There are three exceptions to that basic rule:

  • a white-space character or # preceded by \ is retained

  • white space or # within a bracket expression is retained

  • white space and comments cannot appear within multi-character symbols, such as (?:

For this purpose, white-space characters are blank, tab, newline, and any character that belongs to the space character class.

Finally, in an ARE, outside bracket expressions, the sequence (?#ttt) (where ttt is any text not containing a )) is a comment, completely ignored. Again, this is not allowed between the characters of multi-character symbols, like (?:. Such comments are more a historical artifact than a useful facility, and their use is deprecated; use the expanded syntax instead.

None of these metasyntax extensions is available if an initial ***= director has specified that the user's input be treated as a literal string rather than as an RE.

9.7.3.5. Regular Expression Matching Rules

In the event that an RE could match more than one substring of a given string, the RE matches the one starting earliest in the string. If the RE could match more than one substring starting at that point, either the longest possible match or the shortest possible match will be taken, depending on whether the RE is greedy or non-greedy.

Whether an RE is greedy or not is determined by the following rules:

  • Most atoms, and all constraints, have no greediness attribute (because they cannot match variable amounts of text anyway).

  • Adding parentheses around an RE does not change its greediness.

  • A quantified atom with a fixed-repetition quantifier ({m} or {m}?) has the same greediness (possibly none) as the atom itself.

  • A quantified atom with other normal quantifiers (including {m,n} with m equal to n) is greedy (prefers longest match).

  • A quantified atom with a non-greedy quantifier (including {m,n}? with m equal to n) is non-greedy (prefers shortest match).

  • A branch — that is, an RE that has no top-level | operator — has the same greediness as the first quantified atom in it that has a greediness attribute.

  • An RE consisting of two or more branches connected by the | operator is always greedy.

The above rules associate greediness attributes not only with individual quantified atoms, but with branches and entire REs that contain quantified atoms. What that means is that the matching is done in such a way that the branch, or whole RE, matches the longest or shortest possible substring as a whole. Once the length of the entire match is determined, the part of it that matches any particular subexpression is determined on the basis of the greediness attribute of that subexpression, with subexpressions starting earlier in the RE taking priority over ones starting later.

An example of what this means:

SELECT SUBSTRING('XY1234Z', 'Y*([0-9]{1,3})');
Result: 123
SELECT SUBSTRING('XY1234Z', 'Y*?([0-9]{1,3})');
Result: 1

In the first case, the RE as a whole is greedy because Y* is greedy. It can match beginning at the Y, and it matches the longest possible string starting there, i.e., Y123. The output is the parenthesized part of that, or 123. In the second case, the RE as a whole is non-greedy because Y*? is non-greedy. It can match beginning at the Y, and it matches the shortest possible string starting there, i.e., Y1. The subexpression [0-9]{1,3} is greedy but it cannot change the decision as to the overall match length; so it is forced to match just 1.

In short, when an RE contains both greedy and non-greedy subexpressions, the total match length is either as long as possible or as short as possible, according to the attribute assigned to the whole RE. The attributes assigned to the subexpressions only affect how much of that match they are allowed to "eat" relative to each other.

The quantifiers {1,1} and {1,1}? can be used to force greediness or non-greediness, respectively, on a subexpression or a whole RE. This is useful when you need the whole RE to have a greediness attribute different from what's deduced from its elements. As an example, suppose that we are trying to separate a string containing some digits into the digits and the parts before and after them. We might try to do that like this:

SELECT regexp_matches('abc01234xyz', '(.*)(\d+)(.*)');
Result: {abc0123,4,xyz}

That didn't work: the first .* is greedy so it "eats" as much as it can, leaving the \d+ to match at the last possible place, the last digit. We might try to fix that by making it non-greedy:

SELECT regexp_matches('abc01234xyz', '(.*?)(\d+)(.*)');
Result: {abc,0,""}

That didn't work either, because now the RE as a whole is non-greedy and so it ends the overall match as soon as possible. We can get what we want by forcing the RE as a whole to be greedy:

SELECT regexp_matches('abc01234xyz', '(?:(.*?)(\d+)(.*)){1,1}');
Result: {abc,01234,xyz}

Controlling the RE's overall greediness separately from its components' greediness allows great flexibility in handling variable-length patterns.

When deciding what is a longer or shorter match, match lengths are measured in characters, not collating elements. An empty string is considered longer than no match at all. For example: bb* matches the three middle characters of abbbc; (week|wee)(night|knights) matches all ten characters of weeknights; when (.*).* is matched against abc the parenthesized subexpression matches all three characters; and when (a*)* is matched against bc both the whole RE and the parenthesized subexpression match an empty string.

If case-independent matching is specified, the effect is much as if all case distinctions had vanished from the alphabet. When an alphabetic that exists in multiple cases appears as an ordinary character outside a bracket expression, it is effectively transformed into a bracket expression containing both cases, e.g., x becomes [xX]. When it appears inside a bracket expression, all case counterparts of it are added to the bracket expression, e.g., [x] becomes [xX] and [^x] becomes [^xX].

If newline-sensitive matching is specified, . and bracket expressions using ^ will never match the newline character (so that matches will never cross newlines unless the RE explicitly arranges it) and ^and $ will match the empty string after and before a newline respectively, in addition to matching at beginning and end of string respectively. But the ARE escapes \A and \Z continue to match beginning or end of string only.

If partial newline-sensitive matching is specified, this affects . and bracket expressions as with newline-sensitive matching, but not ^ and $.

If inverse partial newline-sensitive matching is specified, this affects ^ and $ as with newline-sensitive matching, but not . and bracket expressions. This isn't very useful but is provided for symmetry.

9.7.3.6. Limits and Compatibility

No particular limit is imposed on the length of REs in this implementation. However, programs intended to be highly portable should not employ REs longer than 256 bytes, as a POSIX-compliant implementation can refuse to accept such REs.

The only feature of AREs that is actually incompatible with POSIX EREs is that \ does not lose its special significance inside bracket expressions. All other ARE features use syntax which is illegal or has undefined or unspecified effects in POSIX EREs; the *** syntax of directors likewise is outside the POSIX syntax for both BREs and EREs.

Many of the ARE extensions are borrowed from Perl, but some have been changed to clean them up, and a few Perl extensions are not present. Incompatibilities of note include \b, \B, the lack of special treatment for a trailing newline, the addition of complemented bracket expressions to the things affected by newline-sensitive matching, the restrictions on parentheses and back references in lookahead constraints, and the longest/shortest-match (rather than first-match) matching semantics.

Two significant incompatibilities exist between AREs and the ERE syntax recognized by pre-7.4 releases of PostgreSQL:

  • In AREs, \ followed by an alphanumeric character is either an escape or an error, while in previous releases, it was just another way of writing the alphanumeric. This should not be much of a problem because there was no reason to write such a sequence in earlier releases.

  • In AREs, \ remains a special character within [], so a literal \ within a bracket expression must be written \\.

9.7.3.7. Basic Regular Expressions

BREs differ from EREs in several respects. In BREs, |, +, and ? are ordinary characters and there is no equivalent for their functionality. The delimiters for bounds are \{ and \}, with { and } by themselves ordinary characters. The parentheses for nested subexpressions are \( and \), with ( and ) by themselves ordinary characters. ^ is an ordinary character except at the beginning of the RE or the beginning of a parenthesized subexpression, $ is an ordinary character except at the end of the RE or the end of a parenthesized subexpression, and * is an ordinary character if it appears at the beginning of the RE or the beginning of a parenthesized subexpression (after a possible leading ^). Finally, single-digit back references are available, and \< and \> are synonyms for [[:<:]] and [[:>:]] respectively; no other escapes are available in BREs.

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Data Type Formatting Functions

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9.8. Data Type Formatting Functions

The PostgreSQL formatting functions provide a powerful set of tools for converting various data types (date/time, integer, floating point, numeric) to formatted strings and for converting from formatted strings to specific data types. Table 9-21 lists them. These functions all follow a common calling convention: the first argument is the value to be formatted and the second argument is a template that defines the output or input format.

A single-argument to_timestamp function is also available; it accepts a double precision argument and converts from Unix epoch (seconds since 1970-01-01 00:00:00+00) to timestamp with time zone. (Integer Unix epochs are implicitly cast to double precision.)

Table 9-21. Formatting Functions

Function | Return Type | Description | Example
to_char(timestamp, text) | text | convert time stamp to string | to_char(current_timestamp, 'HH12:MI:SS')
to_char(interval, text) | text | convert interval to string | to_char(interval '15h 2m 12s', 'HH24:MI:SS')
to_char(int, text) | text | convert integer to string | to_char(125, '999')
to_char(double precision, text) | text | convert real/double precision to string | to_char(125.8::real, '999D9')
to_char(numeric, text) | text | convert numeric to string | to_char(-125.8, '999D99S')
to_date(text, text) | date | convert string to date | to_date('05 Dec 2000', 'DD Mon YYYY')
to_number(text, text) | numeric | convert string to numeric | to_number('12,454.8-', '99G999D9S')
to_timestamp(text, text) | timestamp with time zone | convert string to time stamp | to_timestamp('05 Dec 2000', 'DD Mon YYYY')
to_timestamp(double precision) | timestamp with time zone | convert Unix epoch to time stamp | to_timestamp(1284352323)

In a to_char output template string, there are certain patterns that are recognized and replaced with appropriately-formatted data based on the given value. Any text that is not a template pattern is simply copied verbatim. Similarly, in an input template string (for the other functions), template patterns identify the values to be supplied by the input data string.

Table 9-22 shows the template patterns available for formatting date and time values.

Table 9-22. Template Patterns for Date/Time Formatting

Pattern | Description
HH | hour of day (01-12)
HH12 | hour of day (01-12)
HH24 | hour of day (00-23)
MI | minute (00-59)
SS | second (00-59)
MS | millisecond (000-999)
US | microsecond (000000-999999)
SSSS | seconds past midnight (0-86399)
AM, am, PM or pm | meridiem indicator (without periods)
A.M., a.m., P.M. or p.m. | meridiem indicator (with periods)
Y,YYY | year (4 or more digits) with comma
YYYY | year (4 or more digits)
YYY | last 3 digits of year
YY | last 2 digits of year
Y | last digit of year
IYYY | ISO 8601 week-numbering year (4 or more digits)
IYY | last 3 digits of ISO 8601 week-numbering year
IY | last 2 digits of ISO 8601 week-numbering year
I | last digit of ISO 8601 week-numbering year
BC, bc, AD or ad | era indicator (without periods)
B.C., b.c., A.D. or a.d. | era indicator (with periods)
MONTH | full upper case month name (blank-padded to 9 chars)
Month | full capitalized month name (blank-padded to 9 chars)
month | full lower case month name (blank-padded to 9 chars)
MON | abbreviated upper case month name (3 chars in English, localized lengths vary)
Mon | abbreviated capitalized month name (3 chars in English, localized lengths vary)
mon | abbreviated lower case month name (3 chars in English, localized lengths vary)
MM | month number (01-12)
DAY | full upper case day name (blank-padded to 9 chars)
Day | full capitalized day name (blank-padded to 9 chars)
day | full lower case day name (blank-padded to 9 chars)
DY | abbreviated upper case day name (3 chars in English, localized lengths vary)
Dy | abbreviated capitalized day name (3 chars in English, localized lengths vary)
dy | abbreviated lower case day name (3 chars in English, localized lengths vary)
DDD | day of year (001-366)
IDDD | day of ISO 8601 week-numbering year (001-371; day 1 of the year is Monday of the first ISO week)
DD | day of month (01-31)
D | day of the week, Sunday (1) to Saturday (7)
ID | ISO 8601 day of the week, Monday (1) to Sunday (7)
W | week of month (1-5) (the first week starts on the first day of the month)
WW | week number of year (1-53) (the first week starts on the first day of the year)
IW | week number of ISO 8601 week-numbering year (01-53; the first Thursday of the year is in week 1)
CC | century (2 digits) (the twenty-first century starts on 2001-01-01)
J | Julian Day (days since November 24, 4714 BC at midnight)
Q | quarter (ignored by to_date and to_timestamp)
RM | month in upper case Roman numerals (I-XII; I=January)
rm | month in lower case Roman numerals (i-xii; i=January)
TZ | upper case time-zone name
tz | lower case time-zone name

Modifiers can be applied to any template pattern to alter its behavior. For example, FMMonth is the Month pattern with the FM modifier. Table 9-23 shows the modifier patterns for date/time formatting.

Table 9-23. Template Pattern Modifiers for Date/Time Formatting

Modifier | Description | Example
FM prefix | fill mode (suppress leading zeroes and padding blanks) | FMMonth
TH suffix | upper case ordinal number suffix | DDTH, e.g., 12TH
th suffix | lower case ordinal number suffix | DDth, e.g., 12th
FX prefix | fixed format global option (see usage notes) | FX Month DD Day
TM prefix | translation mode (print localized day and month names based on lc_time) | TMMonth
SP suffix | spell mode (not implemented) | DDSP

Usage notes for date/time formatting:

  • FM suppresses leading zeroes and trailing blanks that would otherwise be added to make the output of a pattern be fixed-width. In PostgreSQL, FM modifies only the next specification, while in Oracle FM affects all subsequent specifications, and repeated FM modifiers toggle fill mode on and off.

  • TM does not include trailing blanks.

  • to_timestamp and to_date skip multiple blank spaces in the input string unless the FX option is used. For example, to_timestamp('2000    JUN', 'YYYY MON') works, but to_timestamp('2000    JUN', 'FXYYYY MON') returns an error because to_timestamp expects one space only. FX must be specified as the first item in the template.

  • Ordinary text is allowed in to_char templates and will be output literally. You can put a substring in double quotes to force it to be interpreted as literal text even if it contains pattern key words. For example, in '"Hello Year "YYYY', the YYYY will be replaced by the year data, but the single Y in Year will not be. In to_date, to_number, and to_timestamp, double-quoted strings skip the number of input characters contained in the string, e.g. "XX" skips two input characters.

  • If you want to have a double quote in the output you must precede it with a backslash, for example '\"YYYY Month\"'.

  • The YYYY conversion from string to timestamp or date has a restriction when processing years with more than 4 digits. You must use some non-digit character or template after YYYY, otherwise the year is always interpreted as 4 digits. For example (with the year 20000): to_date('200001131', 'YYYYMMDD') will be interpreted as a 4-digit year; instead use a non-digit separator after the year, like to_date('20000-1131', 'YYYY-MMDD') or to_date('20000Nov31', 'YYYYMonDD').

  • In conversions from string to timestamp or date, the CC (century) field is ignored if there is a YYY, YYYY or Y,YYY field. If CC is used with YY or Y then the year is computed as (CC-1)*100+YY.

  • An ISO 8601 week-numbering date (as distinct from a Gregorian date) can be specified to to_timestamp and to_date in one of two ways:

    • Year, week number, and weekday: for example to_date('2006-42-4', 'IYYY-IW-ID') returns the date 2006-10-19. If you omit the weekday it is assumed to be 1 (Monday).

    • Year and day of year: for example to_date('2006-291', 'IYYY-IDDD') also returns 2006-10-19.

    Attempting to enter a date using a mixture of ISO 8601 week-numbering fields and Gregorian date fields is nonsensical, and will cause an error. In the context of an ISO 8601 week-numbering year, the concept of a "month" or "day of month" has no meaning. In the context of a Gregorian year, the ISO week has no meaning.

    Caution

    While to_date will reject a mixture of Gregorian and ISO week-numbering date fields, to_char will not, since output format specifications like YYYY-MM-DD (IYYY-IDDD) can be useful. But avoid writing something like IYYY-MM-DD; that would yield surprising results near the start of the year. (See Section 9.9.1 for more information.)

  • In a conversion from string to timestamp, millisecond (MS) or microsecond (US) values are used as the seconds digits after the decimal point. For example to_timestamp('12:3', 'SS:MS') is not 3 milliseconds, but 300, because the conversion counts it as 12 + 0.3 seconds. This means for the format SS:MS, the input values 12:3, 12:30, and 12:300 specify the same number of milliseconds. To get three milliseconds, one must use 12:003, which the conversion counts as 12 + 0.003 = 12.003 seconds.

    Here is a more complex example: to_timestamp('15:12:02.020.001230', 'HH:MI:SS.MS.US') is 15 hours, 12 minutes, and 2 seconds + 20 milliseconds + 1230 microseconds = 2.021230 seconds.

  • to_char(..., 'ID')'s day of the week numbering matches the extract(isodow from ...) function, but to_char(..., 'D')'s does not match extract(dow from ...)'s day numbering.

  • to_char(interval) formats HH and HH12 as shown on a 12-hour clock, i.e. zero hours and 36 hours output as 12, while HH24 outputs the full hour value, which can exceed 23 for intervals.

Table 9-24 shows the template patterns available for formatting numeric values.

Table 9-24. Template Patterns for Numeric Formatting

Pattern | Description
9 | value with the specified number of digits
0 | value with leading zeros
. (period) | decimal point
, (comma) | group (thousand) separator
PR | negative value in angle brackets
S | sign anchored to number (uses locale)
L | currency symbol (uses locale)
D | decimal point (uses locale)
G | group separator (uses locale)
MI | minus sign in specified position (if number < 0)
PL | plus sign in specified position (if number > 0)
SG | plus/minus sign in specified position
RN | Roman numeral (input between 1 and 3999)
TH or th | ordinal number suffix
V | shift specified number of digits (see notes)
EEEE | exponent for scientific notation

Usage notes for numeric formatting:

  • A sign formatted using SG, PL, or MI is not anchored to the number; for example, to_char(-12, 'MI9999') produces '-  12' but to_char(-12, 'S9999') produces '  -12'. The Oracle implementation does not allow the use of MI before 9, but rather requires that 9 precede MI.

  • 9 results in a value with the same number of digits as there are 9s. If a digit is not available it outputs a space.

  • TH does not convert values less than zero and does not convert fractional numbers.

  • PL, SG, and TH are PostgreSQL extensions.

  • V effectively multiplies the input values by 10^n, where n is the number of digits following V. to_char does not support the use of V combined with a decimal point (e.g., 99.9V99 is not allowed).

  • EEEE (scientific notation) cannot be used in combination with any of the other formatting patterns or modifiers other than digit and decimal point patterns, and must be at the end of the format string (e.g., 9.99EEEE is a valid pattern).

Certain modifiers can be applied to any template pattern to alter its behavior. For example, FM9999 is the 9999 pattern with the FM modifier. Table 9-25 shows the modifier patterns for numeric formatting.

Table 9-25. Template Pattern Modifiers for Numeric Formatting

Modifier | Description | Example
FM prefix | fill mode (suppress leading zeroes and padding blanks) | FM9999
TH suffix | upper case ordinal number suffix | 999TH
th suffix | lower case ordinal number suffix | 999th

Table 9-26 shows some examples of the use of the to_char function.

Table 9-26. to_char Examples

Expression | Result
to_char(current_timestamp, 'Day, DD HH12:MI:SS') | 'Tuesday , 06 05:39:18'
to_char(current_timestamp, 'FMDay, FMDD HH12:MI:SS') | 'Tuesday, 6 05:39:18'
to_char(-0.1, '99.99') | ' -.10'
to_char(-0.1, 'FM9.99') | '-.1'
to_char(0.1, '0.9') | ' 0.1'
to_char(12, '9990999.9') | ' 0012.0'
to_char(12, 'FM9990999.9') | '0012.'
to_char(485, '999') | ' 485'
to_char(-485, '999') | '-485'
to_char(485, '9 9 9') | ' 4 8 5'
to_char(1485, '9,999') | ' 1,485'
to_char(1485, '9G999') | ' 1 485'
to_char(148.5, '999.999') | ' 148.500'
to_char(148.5, 'FM999.999') | '148.5'
to_char(148.5, 'FM999.990') | '148.500'
to_char(148.5, '999D999') | ' 148,500'
to_char(3148.5, '9G999D999') | ' 3 148,500'
to_char(-485, '999S') | '485-'
to_char(-485, '999MI') | '485-'
to_char(485, '999MI') | '485 '
to_char(485, 'FM999MI') | '485'
to_char(485, 'PL999') | '+485'
to_char(485, 'SG999') | '+485'
to_char(-485, 'SG999') | '-485'
to_char(-485, '9SG99') | '4-85'
to_char(-485, '999PR') | '<485>'
to_char(485, 'L999') | 'DM 485'
to_char(485, 'RN') | ' CDLXXXV'
to_char(485, 'FMRN') | 'CDLXXXV'
to_char(5.2, 'FMRN') | 'V'
to_char(482, '999th') | ' 482nd'
to_char(485, '"Good number:"999') | 'Good number: 485'
to_char(485.8, '"Pre:"999" Post:" .999') | 'Pre: 485 Post: .800'
to_char(12, '99V999') | ' 12000'
to_char(12.4, '99V999') | ' 12400'
to_char(12.45, '99V9') | ' 125'
to_char(0.0004859, '9.99EEEE') | ' 4.86e-04'
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Date/Time Functions and Operators

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9.9. Date/Time Functions and Operators

Table 9-28 shows the available functions for date/time value processing, with details appearing in the following subsections. Table 9-27 illustrates the behaviors of the basic arithmetic operators (+, *, etc.). For formatting functions, refer to Section 9.8. You should be familiar with the background information on date/time data types from Section 8.5.

All the functions and operators described below that take time or timestamp inputs actually come in two variants: one that takes time with time zone or timestamp with time zone, and one that takes time without time zone or timestamp without time zone. For brevity, these variants are not shown separately. Also, the + and * operators come in commutative pairs (for example both date + integer and integer + date); we show only one of each such pair.

Table 9-27. Date/Time Operators

Operator | Example | Result
+ | date '2001-09-28' + integer '7' | date '2001-10-05'
+ | date '2001-09-28' + interval '1 hour' | timestamp '2001-09-28 01:00:00'
+ | date '2001-09-28' + time '03:00' | timestamp '2001-09-28 03:00:00'
+ | interval '1 day' + interval '1 hour' | interval '1 day 01:00:00'
+ | timestamp '2001-09-28 01:00' + interval '23 hours' | timestamp '2001-09-29 00:00:00'
+ | time '01:00' + interval '3 hours' | time '04:00:00'
- | - interval '23 hours' | interval '-23:00:00'
- | date '2001-10-01' - date '2001-09-28' | integer '3' (days)
- | date '2001-10-01' - integer '7' | date '2001-09-24'
- | date '2001-09-28' - interval '1 hour' | timestamp '2001-09-27 23:00:00'
- | time '05:00' - time '03:00' | interval '02:00:00'
- | time '05:00' - interval '2 hours' | time '03:00:00'
- | timestamp '2001-09-28 23:00' - interval '23 hours' | timestamp '2001-09-28 00:00:00'
- | interval '1 day' - interval '1 hour' | interval '1 day -01:00:00'
- | timestamp '2001-09-29 03:00' - timestamp '2001-09-27 12:00' | interval '1 day 15:00:00'
* | 900 * interval '1 second' | interval '00:15:00'
* | 21 * interval '1 day' | interval '21 days'
* | double precision '3.5' * interval '1 hour' | interval '03:30:00'
/ | interval '1 hour' / double precision '1.5' | interval '00:40:00'

Table 9-28. Date/Time Functions

Function | Return Type | Description | Example | Result
age(timestamp, timestamp) | interval | Subtract arguments, producing a "symbolic" result that uses years and months | age(timestamp '2001-04-10', timestamp '1957-06-13') | 43 years 9 mons 27 days
age(timestamp) | interval | Subtract from current_date (at midnight) | age(timestamp '1957-06-13') | 43 years 8 mons 3 days
clock_timestamp() | timestamp with time zone | Current date and time (changes during statement execution); see Section 9.9.4 |  |
current_date | date | Current date; see Section 9.9.4 |  |
current_time | time with time zone | Current time of day; see Section 9.9.4 |  |
current_timestamp | timestamp with time zone | Current date and time (start of current transaction); see Section 9.9.4 |  |
date_part(text, timestamp) | double precision | Get subfield (equivalent to extract); see Section 9.9.1 | date_part('hour', timestamp '2001-02-16 20:38:40') | 20
date_part(text, interval) | double precision | Get subfield (equivalent to extract); see Section 9.9.1 | date_part('month', interval '2 years 3 months') | 3
date_trunc(text, timestamp) | timestamp | Truncate to specified precision; see also Section 9.9.2 | date_trunc('hour', timestamp '2001-02-16 20:38:40') | 2001-02-16 20:00:00
extract(field from timestamp) | double precision | Get subfield; see Section 9.9.1 | extract(hour from timestamp '2001-02-16 20:38:40') | 20
extract(field from interval) | double precision | Get subfield; see Section 9.9.1 | extract(month from interval '2 years 3 months') | 3
isfinite(date) | boolean | Test for finite date (not +/-infinity) | isfinite(date '2001-02-16') | true
isfinite(timestamp) | boolean | Test for finite time stamp (not +/-infinity) | isfinite(timestamp '2001-02-16 21:28:30') | true
isfinite(interval) | boolean | Test for finite interval | isfinite(interval '4 hours') | true
justify_days(interval) | interval | Adjust interval so 30-day time periods are represented as months | justify_days(interval '35 days') | 1 mon 5 days
justify_hours(interval) | interval | Adjust interval so 24-hour time periods are represented as days | justify_hours(interval '27 hours') | 1 day 03:00:00
justify_interval(interval) | interval | Adjust interval using justify_days and justify_hours, with additional sign adjustments | justify_interval(interval '1 mon -1 hour') | 29 days 23:00:00
localtime | time | Current time of day; see Section 9.9.4 |  |
localtimestamp | timestamp | Current date and time (start of current transaction); see Section 9.9.4 |  |
now() | timestamp with time zone | Current date and time (start of current transaction); see Section 9.9.4 |  |
statement_timestamp() | timestamp with time zone | Current date and time (start of current statement); see Section 9.9.4 |  |
timeofday() | text | Current date and time (like clock_timestamp, but as a text string); see Section 9.9.4 |  |
transaction_timestamp() | timestamp with time zone | Current date and time (start of current transaction); see Section 9.9.4 |  |

In addition to these functions, the SQL OVERLAPS operator is supported:

(start1, end1) OVERLAPS (start2, end2)
(start1, length1) OVERLAPS (start2, length2)

This expression yields true when two time periods (defined by their endpoints) overlap, false when they do not overlap. The endpoints can be specified as pairs of dates, times, or time stamps; or as a date, time, or time stamp followed by an interval. When a pair of values is provided, either the start or the end can be written first; OVERLAPS automatically takes the earlier value of the pair as the start. Each time period is considered to represent the half-open interval start <= time < end, unless start and end are equal in which case it represents that single time instant. This means for instance that two time periods with only an endpoint in common do not overlap.

SELECT (DATE '2001-02-16', DATE '2001-12-21') OVERLAPS
       (DATE '2001-10-30', DATE '2002-10-30');
Result: true
SELECT (DATE '2001-02-16', INTERVAL '100 days') OVERLAPS
       (DATE '2001-10-30', DATE '2002-10-30');
Result: false
SELECT (DATE '2001-10-29', DATE '2001-10-30') OVERLAPS
       (DATE '2001-10-30', DATE '2001-10-31');
Result: false
SELECT (DATE '2001-10-30', DATE '2001-10-30') OVERLAPS
       (DATE '2001-10-30', DATE '2001-10-31');
Result: true

When adding an interval value to (or subtracting an interval value from) a timestamp with time zone value, the days component advances (or decrements) the date of the timestamp with time zone by the indicated number of days. Across daylight saving time changes (with the session time zone set to a time zone that recognizes DST), this means interval '1 day' does not necessarily equal interval '24 hours'. For example, with the session time zone set to CST7CDT, timestamp with time zone '2005-04-02 12:00-07' + interval '1 day' will produce timestamp with time zone '2005-04-03 12:00-06', while adding interval '24 hours' to the same initial timestamp with time zone produces timestamp with time zone '2005-04-03 13:00-06', as there is a change in daylight saving time at 2005-04-03 02:00 in time zone CST7CDT.

Note there can be ambiguity in the months returned by age because different months have a different number of days. PostgreSQL's approach uses the month from the earlier of the two dates when calculating partial months. For example, age('2004-06-01', '2004-04-30') uses April to yield 1 mon 1 day, while using May would yield 1 mon 2 days because May has 31 days, while April has only 30.

9.9.1. EXTRACT, date_part

EXTRACT(field FROM source)

The extract function retrieves subfields such as year or hour from date/time values. source must be a value expression of type timestamp, time, or interval. (Expressions of type date are cast to timestamp and can therefore be used as well.) field is an identifier or string that selects what field to extract from the source value. The extract function returns values of type double precision. The following are valid field names:

century

The century

SELECT EXTRACT(CENTURY FROM TIMESTAMP '2000-12-16 12:21:13');
Result: 20
SELECT EXTRACT(CENTURY FROM TIMESTAMP '2001-02-16 20:38:40');
Result: 21

The first century starts at 0001-01-01 00:00:00 AD, although they did not know it at the time. This definition applies to all Gregorian calendar countries. There is no century number 0, you go from -1 century to 1 century. If you disagree with this, please write your complaint to: Pope, Cathedral Saint-Peter of Roma, Vatican.

PostgreSQL releases before 8.0 did not follow the conventional numbering of centuries, but just returned the year field divided by 100.

day

For timestamp values, the day (of the month) field (1 - 31) ; for interval values, the number of days

SELECT EXTRACT(DAY FROM TIMESTAMP '2001-02-16 20:38:40');
Result: 16

SELECT EXTRACT(DAY FROM INTERVAL '40 days 1 minute');
Result: 40
decade

The year field divided by 10

SELECT EXTRACT(DECADE FROM TIMESTAMP '2001-02-16 20:38:40');
Result: 200
dow

The day of the week as Sunday (0) to Saturday (6)

SELECT EXTRACT(DOW FROM TIMESTAMP '2001-02-16 20:38:40');
Result: 5

Note that extract's day of the week numbering differs from that of the to_char(..., 'D') function.

doy

The day of the year (1 - 365/366)

SELECT EXTRACT(DOY FROM TIMESTAMP '2001-02-16 20:38:40');
Result: 47
epoch

For date and timestamp values, the number of seconds since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (can be negative); for interval values, the total number of seconds in the interval

SELECT EXTRACT(EPOCH FROM TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE '2001-02-16 20:38:40.12-08');
Result: 982384720.12

SELECT EXTRACT(EPOCH FROM INTERVAL '5 days 3 hours');
Result: 442800

Here is how you can convert an epoch value back to a time stamp:

SELECT TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE 'epoch' + 982384720.12 * INTERVAL '1 second';

(The to_timestamp function encapsulates the above conversion.)

hour

The hour field (0 - 23)

SELECT EXTRACT(HOUR FROM TIMESTAMP '2001-02-16 20:38:40');
Result: 20
isodow

The day of the week as Monday (1) to Sunday (7)

SELECT EXTRACT(ISODOW FROM TIMESTAMP '2001-02-18 20:38:40');
Result: 7

This is identical to dow except for Sunday. This matches the ISO 8601 day of the week numbering.

isoyear

The ISO 8601 week-numbering year that the date falls in (not applicable to intervals)

SELECT EXTRACT(ISOYEAR FROM DATE '2006-01-01');
Result: 2005
SELECT EXTRACT(ISOYEAR FROM DATE '2006-01-02');
Result: 2006

Each ISO 8601 week-numbering year begins with the Monday of the week containing the 4th of January, so in early January or late December the ISO year may be different from the Gregorian year. See the week field for more information.

This field is not available in PostgreSQL releases prior to 8.3.

microseconds

The seconds field, including fractional parts, multiplied by 1 000 000; note that this includes full seconds

SELECT EXTRACT(MICROSECONDS FROM TIME '17:12:28.5');
Result: 28500000
millennium

The millennium

SELECT EXTRACT(MILLENNIUM FROM TIMESTAMP '2001-02-16 20:38:40');
Result: 3

Years in the 1900s are in the second millennium. The third millennium started January 1, 2001.

PostgreSQL releases before 8.0 did not follow the conventional numbering of millennia, but just returned the year field divided by 1000.

milliseconds

The seconds field, including fractional parts, multiplied by 1000. Note that this includes full seconds.

SELECT EXTRACT(MILLISECONDS FROM TIME '17:12:28.5');
Result: 28500
minute

The minutes field (0 - 59)

SELECT EXTRACT(MINUTE FROM TIMESTAMP '2001-02-16 20:38:40');
Result: 38
month

For timestamp values, the number of the month within the year (1 - 12) ; for interval values, the number of months, modulo 12 (0 - 11)

SELECT EXTRACT(MONTH FROM TIMESTAMP '2001-02-16 20:38:40');
Result: 2

SELECT EXTRACT(MONTH FROM INTERVAL '2 years 3 months');
Result: 3

SELECT EXTRACT(MONTH FROM INTERVAL '2 years 13 months');
Result: 1
quarter

The quarter of the year (1 - 4) that the date is in

SELECT EXTRACT(QUARTER FROM TIMESTAMP '2001-02-16 20:38:40');
Result: 1
second

The seconds field, including fractional parts (0 - 59[1])

SELECT EXTRACT(SECOND FROM TIMESTAMP '2001-02-16 20:38:40');
Result: 40

SELECT EXTRACT(SECOND FROM TIME '17:12:28.5');
Result: 28.5
timezone

The time zone offset from UTC, measured in seconds. Positive values correspond to time zones east of UTC, negative values to zones west of UTC. (Technically, PostgreSQL uses UT1 because leap seconds are not handled.)

timezone_hour

The hour component of the time zone offset

timezone_minute

The minute component of the time zone offset

week

The number of the ISO 8601 week-numbering week of the year. By definition, ISO weeks start on Mondays and the first week of a year contains January 4 of that year. In other words, the first Thursday of a year is in week 1 of that year.

In the ISO week-numbering system, it is possible for early-January dates to be part of the 52nd or 53rd week of the previous year, and for late-December dates to be part of the first week of the next year. For example, 2005-01-01 is part of the 53rd week of year 2004, and 2006-01-01 is part of the 52nd week of year 2005, while 2012-12-31 is part of the first week of 2013. It's recommended to use the isoyear field together with week to get consistent results.

SELECT EXTRACT(WEEK FROM TIMESTAMP '2001-02-16 20:38:40');
Result: 7
year

The year field. Keep in mind there is no 0 AD, so subtracting BC years from AD years should be done with care.

SELECT EXTRACT(YEAR FROM TIMESTAMP '2001-02-16 20:38:40');
Result: 2001

The extract function is primarily intended for computational processing. For formatting date/time values for display, see Section 9.8.

The date_part function is modeled on the traditional Ingres equivalent to the SQL-standard function extract:

date_part('field', source)

Note that here the field parameter needs to be a string value, not a name. The valid field names for date_part are the same as for extract.

SELECT date_part('day', TIMESTAMP '2001-02-16 20:38:40');
Result: 16

SELECT date_part('hour', INTERVAL '4 hours 3 minutes');
Result: 4

9.9.2. date_trunc

The function date_trunc is conceptually similar to the trunc function for numbers.

date_trunc('field', source)

source is a value expression of type timestamp or interval. (Values of type date and time are cast automatically to timestamp or interval, respectively.) field selects to which precision to truncate the input value. The return value is of type timestamp or interval with all fields that are less significant than the selected one set to zero (or one, for day and month).

Valid values for field are:

microseconds
milliseconds
second
minute
hour
day
week
month
quarter
year
decade
century
millennium

Examples:

SELECT date_trunc('hour', TIMESTAMP '2001-02-16 20:38:40');
Result: 2001-02-16 20:00:00

SELECT date_trunc('year', TIMESTAMP '2001-02-16 20:38:40');
Result: 2001-01-01 00:00:00

9.9.3. AT TIME ZONE

The AT TIME ZONE construct allows conversions of time stamps to different time zones. Table 9-29 shows its variants.

Table 9-29. AT TIME ZONE Variants

Expression | Return Type | Description
timestamp without time zone AT TIME ZONE zone | timestamp with time zone | Treat given time stamp without time zone as located in the specified time zone
timestamp with time zone AT TIME ZONE zone | timestamp without time zone | Convert given time stamp with time zone to the new time zone, with no time zone designation
time with time zone AT TIME ZONE zone | time with time zone | Convert given time with time zone to the new time zone

In these expressions, the desired time zone zone can be specified either as a text string (e.g., 'PST') or as an interval (e.g., INTERVAL '-08:00'). In the text case, a time zone name can be specified in any of the ways described in Section 8.5.3.

Examples (assuming the local time zone is PST8PDT):

SELECT TIMESTAMP '2001-02-16 20:38:40' AT TIME ZONE 'MST';
Result: 2001-02-16 19:38:40-08

SELECT TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE '2001-02-16 20:38:40-05' AT TIME ZONE 'MST';
Result: 2001-02-16 18:38:40

The first example takes a time stamp without time zone and interprets it as MST time (UTC-7), which is then converted to PST (UTC-8) for display. The second example takes a time stamp specified in EST (UTC-5) and converts it to local time in MST (UTC-7).

The function timezone(zone, timestamp) is equivalent to the SQL-conforming construct timestamp AT TIME ZONE zone.

9.9.4. Current Date/Time

PostgreSQL provides a number of functions that return values related to the current date and time. These SQL-standard functions all return values based on the start time of the current transaction:

CURRENT_DATE
CURRENT_TIME
CURRENT_TIMESTAMP
CURRENT_TIME(precision)
CURRENT_TIMESTAMP(precision)
LOCALTIME
LOCALTIMESTAMP
LOCALTIME(precision)
LOCALTIMESTAMP(precision)

CURRENT_TIME and CURRENT_TIMESTAMP deliver values with time zone; LOCALTIME and LOCALTIMESTAMP deliver values without time zone.

CURRENT_TIME, CURRENT_TIMESTAMP, LOCALTIME, and LOCALTIMESTAMP can optionally take a precision parameter, which causes the result to be rounded to that many fractional digits in the seconds field. Without a precision parameter, the result is given to the full available precision.

Some examples:

SELECT CURRENT_TIME;
Result: 14:39:53.662522-05

SELECT CURRENT_DATE;
Result: 2001-12-23

SELECT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP;
Result: 2001-12-23 14:39:53.662522-05

SELECT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP(2);
Result: 2001-12-23 14:39:53.66-05

SELECT LOCALTIMESTAMP;
Result: 2001-12-23 14:39:53.662522

Since these functions return the start time of the current transaction, their values do not change during the transaction. This is considered a feature: the intent is to allow a single transaction to have a consistent notion of the "current" time, so that multiple modifications within the same transaction bear the same time stamp.

Note: Other database systems might advance these values more frequently.

PostgreSQL also provides functions that return the start time of the current statement, as well as the actual current time at the instant the function is called. The complete list of non-SQL-standard time functions is:

transaction_timestamp()
statement_timestamp()
clock_timestamp()
timeofday()
now()

transaction_timestamp() is equivalent to CURRENT_TIMESTAMP, but is named to clearly reflect what it returns. statement_timestamp() returns the start time of the current statement (more specifically, the time of receipt of the latest command message from the client). statement_timestamp() and transaction_timestamp() return the same value during the first command of a transaction, but might differ during subsequent commands. clock_timestamp() returns the actual current time, and therefore its value changes even within a single SQL command. timeofday() is a historical PostgreSQL function. Like clock_timestamp(), it returns the actual current time, but as a formatted text string rather than a timestamp with time zone value. now() is a traditional PostgreSQL equivalent to transaction_timestamp().

All the date/time data types also accept the special literal value now to specify the current date and time (again, interpreted as the transaction start time). Thus, the following three all return the same result:

SELECT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP;
SELECT now();
SELECT TIMESTAMP 'now';  -- incorrect for use with DEFAULT

Tip: You do not want to use the third form when specifying a DEFAULT clause while creating a table. The system will convert now to a timestamp as soon as the constant is parsed, so that when the default value is needed, the time of the table creation would be used! The first two forms will not be evaluated until the default value is used, because they are function calls. Thus they will give the desired behavior of defaulting to the time of row insertion.

9.9.5. Delaying Execution

The following function is available to delay execution of the server process:

pg_sleep(seconds)

pg_sleep makes the current session's process sleep until seconds seconds have elapsed. seconds is a value of type double precision, so fractional-second delays can be specified. For example:

SELECT pg_sleep(1.5);

Note: The effective resolution of the sleep interval is platform-specific; 0.01 seconds is a common value. The sleep delay will be at least as long as specified. It might be longer depending on factors such as server load.

Warning

Make sure that your session does not hold more locks than necessary when calling pg_sleep. Otherwise other sessions might have to wait for your sleeping process, slowing down the entire system.

Notes

[1]

60 if leap seconds are implemented by the operating system

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Enum Support Functions

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9.10. Enum Support Functions

For enum types (described in Section 8.7), there are several functions that allow cleaner programming without hard-coding particular values of an enum type. These are listed in Table 9-30. The examples assume an enum type created as:

CREATE TYPE rainbow AS ENUM ('red', 'orange', 'yellow', 'green', 'blue', 'purple');

Table 9-30. Enum Support Functions

Function | Description | Example | Example Result
enum_first(anyenum) | Returns the first value of the input enum type | enum_first(null::rainbow) | red
enum_last(anyenum) | Returns the last value of the input enum type | enum_last(null::rainbow) | purple
enum_range(anyenum) | Returns all values of the input enum type in an ordered array | enum_range(null::rainbow) | {red,orange,yellow,green,blue,purple}
enum_range(anyenum, anyenum) | Returns the range between the two given enum values, as an ordered array. The values must be from the same enum type. If the first parameter is null, the result will start with the first value of the enum type. If the second parameter is null, the result will end with the last value of the enum type. | enum_range('orange'::rainbow, 'green'::rainbow) | {orange,yellow,green}
 |  | enum_range(NULL, 'green'::rainbow) | {red,orange,yellow,green}
 |  | enum_range('orange'::rainbow, NULL) | {orange,yellow,green,blue,purple}

Notice that except for the two-argument form of enum_range, these functions disregard the specific value passed to them; they care only about its declared data type. Either null or a specific value of the type can be passed, with the same result. It is more common to apply these functions to a table column or function argument than to a hardwired type name as suggested by the examples.

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Geometric Functions and Operators

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9.11. Geometric Functions and Operators

The geometric types point, box, lseg, line, path, polygon, and circle have a large set of native support functions and operators, shown in Table 9-31, Table 9-32, and Table 9-33.

Caution

Note that the "same as" operator, ~=, represents the usual notion of equality for the point, box, polygon, and circle types. Some of these types also have an = operator, but = compares for equal areas only. The other scalar comparison operators (<= and so on) likewise compare areas for these types.

Table 9-31. Geometric Operators

Operator | Description | Example
+ | Translation | box '((0,0),(1,1))' + point '(2.0,0)'
- | Translation | box '((0,0),(1,1))' - point '(2.0,0)'
* | Scaling/rotation | box '((0,0),(1,1))' * point '(2.0,0)'
/ | Scaling/rotation | box '((0,0),(2,2))' / point '(2.0,0)'
# | Point or box of intersection | '((1,-1),(-1,1))' # '((1,1),(-1,-1))'
# | Number of points in path or polygon | # '((1,0),(0,1),(-1,0))'
@-@ | Length or circumference | @-@ path '((0,0),(1,0))'
@@ | Center | @@ circle '((0,0),10)'
## | Closest point to first operand on second operand | point '(0,0)' ## lseg '((2,0),(0,2))'
<-> | Distance between | circle '((0,0),1)' <-> circle '((5,0),1)'
&& | Overlaps? (One point in common makes this true.) | box '((0,0),(1,1))' && box '((0,0),(2,2))'
<< | Is strictly left of? | circle '((0,0),1)' << circle '((5,0),1)'
>> | Is strictly right of? | circle '((5,0),1)' >> circle '((0,0),1)'
&< | Does not extend to the right of? | box '((0,0),(1,1))' &< box '((0,0),(2,2))'
&> | Does not extend to the left of? | box '((0,0),(3,3))' &> box '((0,0),(2,2))'
<<| | Is strictly below? | box '((0,0),(3,3))' <<| box '((3,4),(5,5))'
|>> | Is strictly above? | box '((3,4),(5,5))' |>> box '((0,0),(3,3))'
&<| | Does not extend above? | box '((0,0),(1,1))' &<| box '((0,0),(2,2))'
|&> | Does not extend below? | box '((0,0),(3,3))' |&> box '((0,0),(2,2))'
<^ | Is below (allows touching)? | circle '((0,0),1)' <^ circle '((0,5),1)'
>^ | Is above (allows touching)? | circle '((0,5),1)' >^ circle '((0,0),1)'
?# | Intersects? | lseg '((-1,0),(1,0))' ?# box '((-2,-2),(2,2))'
?- | Is horizontal? | ?- lseg '((-1,0),(1,0))'
?- | Are horizontally aligned? | point '(1,0)' ?- point '(0,0)'
?| | Is vertical? | ?| lseg '((-1,0),(1,0))'
?| | Are vertically aligned? | point '(0,1)' ?| point '(0,0)'
?-| | Is perpendicular? | lseg '((0,0),(0,1))' ?-| lseg '((0,0),(1,0))'
?|| | Are parallel? | lseg '((-1,0),(1,0))' ?|| lseg '((-1,2),(1,2))'
@> | Contains? | circle '((0,0),2)' @> point '(1,1)'
<@ | Contained in or on? | point '(1,1)' <@ circle '((0,0),2)'
~= | Same as? | polygon '((0,0),(1,1))' ~= polygon '((1,1),(0,0))'

Note: Before PostgreSQL 8.2, the containment operators @> and <@ were respectively called ~ and @. These names are still available, but are deprecated and will eventually be removed.

Table 9-32. Geometric Functions

Function | Return Type | Description | Example
area(object) | double precision | area | area(box '((0,0),(1,1))')
center(object) | point | center | center(box '((0,0),(1,2))')
diameter(circle) | double precision | diameter of circle | diameter(circle '((0,0),2.0)')
height(box) | double precision | vertical size of box | height(box '((0,0),(1,1))')
isclosed(path) | boolean | a closed path? | isclosed(path '((0,0),(1,1),(2,0))')
isopen(path) | boolean | an open path? | isopen(path '[(0,0),(1,1),(2,0)]')
length(object) | double precision | length | length(path '((-1,0),(1,0))')
npoints(path) | int | number of points | npoints(path '[(0,0),(1,1),(2,0)]')
npoints(polygon) | int | number of points | npoints(polygon '((1,1),(0,0))')
pclose(path) | path | convert path to closed | pclose(path '[(0,0),(1,1),(2,0)]')
popen(path) | path | convert path to open | popen(path '((0,0),(1,1),(2,0))')
radius(circle) | double precision | radius of circle | radius(circle '((0,0),2.0)')
width(box) | double precision | horizontal size of box | width(box '((0,0),(1,1))')

Table 9-33. Geometric Type Conversion Functions

Function | Return Type | Description | Example
box(circle) | box | circle to box | box(circle '((0,0),2.0)')
box(point, point) | box | points to box | box(point '(0,0)', point '(1,1)')
box(polygon) | box | polygon to box | box(polygon '((0,0),(1,1),(2,0))')
circle(box) | circle | box to circle | circle(box '((0,0),(1,1))')
circle(point, double precision) | circle | center and radius to circle | circle(point '(0,0)', 2.0)
circle(polygon) | circle | polygon to circle | circle(polygon '((0,0),(1,1),(2,0))')
lseg(box) | lseg | box diagonal to line segment | lseg(box '((-1,0),(1,0))')
lseg(point, point) | lseg | points to line segment | lseg(point '(-1,0)', point '(1,0)')
path(polygon) | path | polygon to path | path(polygon '((0,0),(1,1),(2,0))')
point(double precision, double precision) | point | construct point | point(23.4, -44.5)
point(box) | point | center of box | point(box '((-1,0),(1,0))')
point(circle) | point | center of circle | point(circle '((0,0),2.0)')
point(lseg) | point | center of line segment | point(lseg '((-1,0),(1,0))')
point(polygon) | point | center of polygon | point(polygon '((0,0),(1,1),(2,0))')
polygon(box) | polygon | box to 4-point polygon | polygon(box '((0,0),(1,1))')
polygon(circle) | polygon | circle to 12-point polygon | polygon(circle '((0,0),2.0)')
polygon(npts, circle) | polygon | circle to npts-point polygon | polygon(12, circle '((0,0),2.0)')
polygon(path) | polygon | path to polygon | polygon(path '((0,0),(1,1),(2,0))')

It is possible to access the two component numbers of a point as though the point were an array with indexes 0 and 1. For example, if t.p is a point column then SELECT p[0] FROM t retrieves the X coordinate and UPDATE t SET p[1] = ... changes the Y coordinate. In the same way, a value of type box or lseg can be treated as an array of two point values.

The area function works for the types box, circle, and path. The area function only works on the path data type if the points in the path are non-intersecting. For example, the path '((0,0),(0,1),(2,1),(2,2),(1,2),(1,0),(0,0))'::PATH will not work; however, the following visually identical path '((0,0),(0,1),(1,1),(1,2),(2,2),(2,1),(1,1),(1,0),(0,0))'::PATH will work. If the concept of an intersecting versus non-intersecting path is confusing, draw both of the above paths side by side on a piece of graph paper.

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Network Address Functions and Operators

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9.12. Network Address Functions and Operators

Table 9-34 shows the operators available for the cidr and inet types. The operators <<, <<=, >>, and >>= test for subnet inclusion. They consider only the network parts of the two addresses (ignoring any host part) and determine whether one network is identical to or a subnet of the other.

Table 9-34. cidr and inet Operators

Operator | Description | Example
< | is less than | inet '192.168.1.5' < inet '192.168.1.6'
<= | is less than or equal | inet '192.168.1.5' <= inet '192.168.1.5'
= | equals | inet '192.168.1.5' = inet '192.168.1.5'
>= | is greater or equal | inet '192.168.1.5' >= inet '192.168.1.5'
> | is greater than | inet '192.168.1.5' > inet '192.168.1.4'
<> | is not equal | inet '192.168.1.5' <> inet '192.168.1.4'
<< | is contained within | inet '192.168.1.5' << inet '192.168.1/24'
<<= | is contained within or equals | inet '192.168.1/24' <<= inet '192.168.1/24'
>> | contains | inet '192.168.1/24' >> inet '192.168.1.5'
>>= | contains or equals | inet '192.168.1/24' >>= inet '192.168.1/24'
~ | bitwise NOT | ~ inet '192.168.1.6'
& | bitwise AND | inet '192.168.1.6' & inet '0.0.0.255'
| | bitwise OR | inet '192.168.1.6' | inet '0.0.0.255'
+ | addition | inet '192.168.1.6' + 25
- | subtraction | inet '192.168.1.43' - 36
- | subtraction | inet '192.168.1.43' - inet '192.168.1.19'

Table 9-35 shows the functions available for use with the cidr and inet types. The abbrev, host, and text functions are primarily intended to offer alternative display formats.

Table 9-35. cidr and inet Functions

Function | Return Type | Description | Example | Result
abbrev(inet) | text | abbreviated display format as text | abbrev(inet '10.1.0.0/16') | 10.1.0.0/16
abbrev(cidr) | text | abbreviated display format as text | abbrev(cidr '10.1.0.0/16') | 10.1/16
broadcast(inet) | inet | broadcast address for network | broadcast('192.168.1.5/24') | 192.168.1.255/24
family(inet) | int | extract family of address; 4 for IPv4, 6 for IPv6 | family('::1') | 6
host(inet) | text | extract IP address as text | host('192.168.1.5/24') | 192.168.1.5
hostmask(inet) | inet | construct host mask for network | hostmask('192.168.23.20/30') | 0.0.0.3
masklen(inet) | int | extract netmask length | masklen('192.168.1.5/24') | 24
netmask(inet) | inet | construct netmask for network | netmask('192.168.1.5/24') | 255.255.255.0
network(inet) | cidr | extract network part of address | network('192.168.1.5/24') | 192.168.1.0/24
set_masklen(inet, int) | inet | set netmask length for inet value | set_masklen('192.168.1.5/24', 16) | 192.168.1.5/16
set_masklen(cidr, int) | cidr | set netmask length for cidr value | set_masklen('192.168.1.0/24'::cidr, 16) | 192.168.0.0/16
text(inet) | text | extract IP address and netmask length as text | text(inet '192.168.1.5') | 192.168.1.5/32

Any cidr value can be cast to inet implicitly or explicitly; therefore, the functions shown above as operating on inet also work on cidr values. (Where there are separate functions for inet and cidr, it is because the behavior should be different for the two cases.) Also, it is permitted to cast an inet value to cidr. When this is done, any bits to the right of the netmask are silently zeroed to create a valid cidr value. In addition, you can cast a text value to inet or cidr using normal casting syntax: for example, inet(expression) or colname::cidr.

Table 9-36 shows the functions available for use with the macaddr type. The function trunc(macaddr) returns a MAC address with the last 3 bytes set to zero. This can be used to associate the remaining prefix with a manufacturer.

Table 9-36. macaddr Functions

Function | Return Type | Description | Example | Result
trunc(macaddr) | macaddr | set last 3 bytes to zero | trunc(macaddr '12:34:56:78:90:ab') | 12:34:56:00:00:00

The macaddr type also supports the standard relational operators (>, <=, etc.) for lexicographical ordering.

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Text Search Functions and Operators

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9.13. Text Search Functions and Operators

Table 9-37, Table 9-38 and Table 9-39 summarize the functions and operators that are provided for full text searching. See Chapter 12 for a detailed explanation of PostgreSQL's text search facility.

Table 9-37. Text Search Operators

Operator | Description | Example | Result
@@ | tsvector matches tsquery ? | to_tsvector('fat cats ate rats') @@ to_tsquery('cat & rat') | t
@@@ | deprecated synonym for @@ | to_tsvector('fat cats ate rats') @@@ to_tsquery('cat & rat') | t
|| | concatenate tsvectors | 'a:1 b:2'::tsvector || 'c:1 d:2 b:3'::tsvector | 'a':1 'b':2,5 'c':3 'd':4
&& | AND tsquerys together | 'fat | rat'::tsquery && 'cat'::tsquery | ( 'fat' | 'rat' ) & 'cat'
|| | OR tsquerys together | 'fat | rat'::tsquery || 'cat'::tsquery | ( 'fat' | 'rat' ) | 'cat'
!! | negate a tsquery | !! 'cat'::tsquery | !'cat'
@> | tsquery contains another ? | 'cat'::tsquery @> 'cat & rat'::tsquery | f
<@ | tsquery is contained in ? | 'cat'::tsquery <@ 'cat & rat'::tsquery | t

Note: The tsquery containment operators consider only the lexemes listed in the two queries, ignoring the combining operators.

In addition to the operators shown in the table, the ordinary B-tree comparison operators (=, <, etc) are defined for types tsvector and tsquery. These are not very useful for text searching but allow, for example, unique indexes to be built on columns of these types.

Table 9-38. Text Search Functions

Function | Return Type | Description | Example | Result
get_current_ts_config() | regconfig | get default text search configuration | get_current_ts_config() | english
length(tsvector) | integer | number of lexemes in tsvector | length('fat:2,4 cat:3 rat:5A'::tsvector) | 3
numnode(tsquery) | integer | number of lexemes plus operators in tsquery | numnode('(fat & rat) | cat'::tsquery) | 5
plainto_tsquery([ config regconfig , ] query text) | tsquery | produce tsquery ignoring punctuation | plainto_tsquery('english', 'The Fat Rats') | 'fat' & 'rat'
querytree(query tsquery) | text | get indexable part of a tsquery | querytree('foo & ! bar'::tsquery) | 'foo'
setweight(tsvector, "char") | tsvector | assign weight to each element of tsvector | setweight('fat:2,4 cat:3 rat:5B'::tsvector, 'A') | 'cat':3A 'fat':2A,4A 'rat':5A
strip(tsvector) | tsvector | remove positions and weights from tsvector | strip('fat:2,4 cat:3 rat:5A'::tsvector) | 'cat' 'fat' 'rat'
to_tsquery([ config regconfig , ] query text) | tsquery | normalize words and convert to tsquery | to_tsquery('english', 'The & Fat & Rats') | 'fat' & 'rat'
to_tsvector([ config regconfig , ] document text) | tsvector | reduce document text to tsvector | to_tsvector('english', 'The Fat Rats') | 'fat':2 'rat':3
ts_headline([ config regconfig, ] document text, query tsquery [, options text ]) | text | display a query match | ts_headline('x y z', 'z'::tsquery) | x y <b>z</b>
ts_rank([ weights float4[], ] vector tsvector, query tsquery [, normalization integer ]) | float4 | rank document for query | ts_rank(textsearch, query) | 0.818
ts_rank_cd([ weights float4[], ] vector tsvector, query tsquery [, normalization integer ]) | float4 | rank document for query using cover density | ts_rank_cd('{0.1, 0.2, 0.4, 1.0}', textsearch, query) | 2.01317
ts_rewrite(query tsquery, target tsquery, substitute tsquery) | tsquery | replace target with substitute within query | ts_rewrite('a & b'::tsquery, 'a'::tsquery, 'foo|bar'::tsquery) | 'b' & ( 'foo' | 'bar' )
ts_rewrite(query tsquery, select text) | tsquery | replace using targets and substitutes from a SELECT command | SELECT ts_rewrite('a & b'::tsquery, 'SELECT t,s FROM aliases') | 'b' & ( 'foo' | 'bar' )
tsvector_update_trigger() | trigger | trigger function for automatic tsvector column update | CREATE TRIGGER ... tsvector_update_trigger(tsvcol, 'pg_catalog.swedish', title, body) |
tsvector_update_trigger_column() | trigger | trigger function for automatic tsvector column update | CREATE TRIGGER ... tsvector_update_trigger_column(tsvcol, configcol, title, body) |

Note: All the text search functions that accept an optional regconfig argument will use the configuration specified by default_text_search_config when that argument is omitted.

The functions in Table 9-39 are listed separately because they are not usually used in everyday text searching operations. They are helpful for development and debugging of new text search configurations.

Table 9-39. Text Search Debugging Functions

Function | Return Type | Description | Example | Result
ts_debug([ config regconfig, ] document text, OUT alias text, OUT description text, OUT token text, OUT dictionaries regdictionary[], OUT dictionary regdictionary, OUT lexemes text[]) | setof record | test a configuration | ts_debug('english', 'The Brightest supernovaes') | (asciiword,"Word, all ASCII",The,{english_stem},english_stem,{}) ...
ts_lexize(dict regdictionary, token text) | text[] | test a dictionary | ts_lexize('english_stem', 'stars') | {star}
ts_parse(parser_name text, document text, OUT tokid integer, OUT token text) | setof record | test a parser | ts_parse('default', 'foo - bar') | (1,foo) ...
ts_parse(parser_oid oid, document text, OUT tokid integer, OUT token text) | setof record | test a parser | ts_parse(3722, 'foo - bar') | (1,foo) ...
ts_token_type(parser_name text, OUT tokid integer, OUT alias text, OUT description text) | setof record | get token types defined by parser | ts_token_type('default') | (1,asciiword,"Word, all ASCII") ...
ts_token_type(parser_oid oid, OUT tokid integer, OUT alias text, OUT description text) | setof record | get token types defined by parser | ts_token_type(3722) | (1,asciiword,"Word, all ASCII") ...
ts_stat(sqlquery text, [ weights text, ] OUT word text, OUT ndoc integer, OUT nentry integer) | setof record | get statistics of a tsvector column | ts_stat('SELECT vector from apod') | (foo,10,15) ...
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XML Functions

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9.14. XML Functions

The functions and function-like expressions described in this section operate on values of type xml. Check Section 8.13 for information about the xml type. The function-like expressions xmlparse and xmlserialize for converting to and from type xml are not repeated here. Use of most of these functions requires the installation to have been built with configure --with-libxml.

9.14.1. Producing XML Content

A set of functions and function-like expressions are available for producing XML content from SQL data. As such, they are particularly suitable for formatting query results into XML documents for processing in client applications.

9.14.1.1. xmlcomment

xmlcomment(text)

The function xmlcomment creates an XML value containing an XML comment with the specified text as content. The text cannot contain "--" or end with a "-" so that the resulting construct is a valid XML comment. If the argument is null, the result is null.

Example:

SELECT xmlcomment('hello');

  xmlcomment
--------------
 <!--hello-->

9.14.1.2. xmlconcat

xmlconcat(xml[, ...])

The function xmlconcat concatenates a list of individual XML values to create a single value containing an XML content fragment. Null values are omitted; the result is only null if there are no nonnull arguments.

Example:

SELECT xmlconcat('<abc/>', '<bar>foo</bar>');

      xmlconcat
----------------------
 <abc/><bar>foo</bar>

XML declarations, if present, are combined as follows. If all argument values have the same XML version declaration, that version is used in the result, else no version is used. If all argument values have the standalone declaration value "yes", then that value is used in the result. If all argument values have a standalone declaration value and at least one is "no", then that is used in the result. Else the result will have no standalone declaration. If the result is determined to require a standalone declaration but no version declaration, a version declaration with version 1.0 will be used because XML requires an XML declaration to contain a version declaration. Encoding declarations are ignored and removed in all cases.

Example:

SELECT xmlconcat('<?xml version="1.1"?><foo/>', '<?xml version="1.1" standalone="no"?><bar/>');

             xmlconcat
-----------------------------------
 <?xml version="1.1"?><foo/><bar/>

9.14.1.3. xmlelement

xmlelement(name name [, xmlattributes(value [AS attname] [, ... ])] [, content, ...])

The xmlelement expression produces an XML element with the given name, attributes, and content.

Examples:

SELECT xmlelement(name foo);

 xmlelement
------------
 <foo/>

SELECT xmlelement(name foo, xmlattributes('xyz' as bar));

    xmlelement
------------------
 <foo bar="xyz"/>

SELECT xmlelement(name foo, xmlattributes(current_date as bar), 'cont', 'ent');

             xmlelement
-------------------------------------
 <foo bar="2007-01-26">content</foo>

Element and attribute names that are not valid XML names are escaped by replacing the offending characters by the sequence _xHHHH_, where HHHH is the character's Unicode codepoint in hexadecimal notation. For example:

SELECT xmlelement(name "foo$bar", xmlattributes('xyz' as "a&b"));

            xmlelement
----------------------------------
 <foo_x0024_bar a_x0026_b="xyz"/>

An explicit attribute name need not be specified if the attribute value is a column reference, in which case the column's name will be used as the attribute name by default. In other cases, the attribute must be given an explicit name. So this example is valid:

CREATE TABLE test (a xml, b xml);
SELECT xmlelement(name test, xmlattributes(a, b)) FROM test;

But these are not:

SELECT xmlelement(name test, xmlattributes('constant'), a, b) FROM test;
SELECT xmlelement(name test, xmlattributes(func(a, b))) FROM test;

Element content, if specified, will be formatted according to its data type. If the content is itself of type xml, complex XML documents can be constructed. For example:

SELECT xmlelement(name foo, xmlattributes('xyz' as bar),
                            xmlelement(name abc),
                            xmlcomment('test'),
                            xmlelement(name xyz));

                  xmlelement
----------------------------------------------
 <foo bar="xyz"><abc/><!--test--><xyz/></foo>

Content of other types will be formatted into valid XML character data. This means in particular that the characters <, >, and & will be converted to entities. Binary data (data type bytea) will be represented in base64 or hex encoding, depending on the setting of the configuration parameter xmlbinary. The particular behavior for individual data types is expected to evolve in order to align the SQL and PostgreSQL data types with the XML Schema specification, at which point a more precise description will appear.

9.14.1.4. xmlforest

xmlforest(content [AS name] [, ...])

The xmlforest expression produces an XML forest (sequence) of elements using the given names and content.

Examples:

SELECT xmlforest('abc' AS foo, 123 AS bar);

          xmlforest
------------------------------
 <foo>abc</foo><bar>123</bar>

SELECT xmlforest(table_name, column_name)
FROM information_schema.columns
WHERE table_schema = 'pg_catalog';

                                         xmlforest
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 <table_name>pg_authid</table_name><column_name>rolname</column_name>
 <table_name>pg_authid</table_name><column_name>rolsuper</column_name>
 ...

As seen in the second example, the element name can be omitted if the content value is a column reference, in which case the column name is used by default. Otherwise, a name must be specified.

Element names that are not valid XML names are escaped as shown for xmlelement above. Similarly, content data is escaped to make valid XML content, unless it is already of type xml.

Note that XML forests are not valid XML documents if they consist of more than one element, so it might be useful to wrap xmlforest expressions in xmlelement.

9.14.1.5. xmlpi

xmlpi(name target [, content])

The xmlpi expression creates an XML processing instruction. The content, if present, must not contain the character sequence ?>.

Example:

SELECT xmlpi(name php, 'echo "hello world";');

            xmlpi
-----------------------------
 <?php echo "hello world";?>

9.14.1.6. xmlroot

xmlroot(xml, version text | no value [, standalone yes|no|no value])

The xmlroot expression alters the properties of the root node of an XML value. If a version is specified, it replaces the value in the root node's version declaration; if a standalone setting is specified, it replaces the value in the root node's standalone declaration.

SELECT xmlroot(xmlparse(document '<?xml version="1.1"?><content>abc</content>'),
               version '1.0', standalone yes);

                xmlroot
----------------------------------------
 <?xml version="1.0" standalone="yes"?>
 <content>abc</content>

9.14.1.7. xmlagg

xmlagg(xml)

The function xmlagg is, unlike the other functions described here, an aggregate function. It concatenates the input values to the aggregate function call, much like xmlconcat does, except that concatenation occurs across rows rather than across expressions in a single row. See Section 9.18 for additional information about aggregate functions.

Example:

CREATE TABLE test (y int, x xml);
INSERT INTO test VALUES (1, '<foo>abc</foo>');
INSERT INTO test VALUES (2, '<bar/>');
SELECT xmlagg(x) FROM test;
        xmlagg
----------------------
 <foo>abc</foo><bar/>

To determine the order of the concatenation, an ORDER BY clause may be added to the aggregate call as described in Section 4.2.7. For example:

SELECT xmlagg(x ORDER BY y DESC) FROM test;
        xmlagg
----------------------
 <bar/><foo>abc</foo>

The following non-standard approach used to be recommended in previous versions, and may still be useful in specific cases:

SELECT xmlagg(x) FROM (SELECT * FROM test ORDER BY y DESC) AS tab;
        xmlagg
----------------------
 <bar/><foo>abc</foo>

9.14.2. XML Predicates

The expressions described in this section check properties of xml values.

9.14.2.1. IS DOCUMENT

xml IS DOCUMENT

The expression IS DOCUMENT returns true if the argument XML value is a proper XML document, false if it is not (that is, it is a content fragment), or null if the argument is null. See Section 8.13 about the difference between documents and content fragments.

9.14.2.2. XMLEXISTS

XMLEXISTS(text PASSING [BY REF] xml [BY REF])

The function xmlexists returns true if the XPath expression in the first argument returns any nodes, and false otherwise. (If either argument is null, the result is null.)

Example:

SELECT xmlexists('//town[text() = ''Toronto'']' PASSING BY REF '<towns><town>Toronto</town><town>Ottawa</town></towns>');

 xmlexists
------------
 t
(1 row)

The BY REF clauses have no effect in PostgreSQL, but are allowed for SQL conformance and compatibility with other implementations. Per SQL standard, the first BY REF is required, the second is optional. Also note that the SQL standard specifies the xmlexists construct to take an XQuery expression as first argument, but PostgreSQL currently only supports XPath, which is a subset of XQuery.

9.14.2.3. xml_is_well_formed

xml_is_well_formed(text)
xml_is_well_formed_document(text)
xml_is_well_formed_content(text)

These functions check whether a text string is well-formed XML, returning a Boolean result. xml_is_well_formed_document checks for a well-formed document, while xml_is_well_formed_content checks for well-formed content. xml_is_well_formed does the former if the xmloption configuration parameter is set to DOCUMENT, or the latter if it is set to CONTENT. This means that xml_is_well_formed is useful for seeing whether a simple cast to type xml will succeed, whereas the other two functions are useful for seeing whether the corresponding variants of XMLPARSE will succeed.

Examples:

SET xmloption TO DOCUMENT;
SELECT xml_is_well_formed('<>');
 xml_is_well_formed
--------------------
 f
(1 row)

SELECT xml_is_well_formed('<abc/>');
 xml_is_well_formed
--------------------
 t
(1 row)

SET xmloption TO CONTENT;
SELECT xml_is_well_formed('abc');
 xml_is_well_formed
--------------------
 t
(1 row)

SELECT xml_is_well_formed_document('<pg:foo xmlns:pg="http://postgresql.org/stuff">bar</pg:foo>');
 xml_is_well_formed_document
-----------------------------
 t
(1 row)

SELECT xml_is_well_formed_document('<pg:foo xmlns:pg="http://postgresql.org/stuff">bar</my:foo>');
 xml_is_well_formed_document
-----------------------------
 f
(1 row)

The last example shows that the checks include whether namespaces are correctly matched.

9.14.3. Processing XML

To process values of data type xml, PostgreSQL offers the functions xpath and xpath_exists, which evaluate XPath 1.0 expressions.

xpath(xpath, xml [, nsarray])

The function xpath evaluates the XPath expression xpath (a text value) against the XML value xml. It returns an array of XML values corresponding to the node set produced by the XPath expression.

The second argument must be a well formed XML document. In particular, it must have a single root node element.

The optional third argument of the function is an array of namespace mappings. This array should be a two-dimensional text array with the length of the second axis being equal to 2 (i.e., it should be an array of arrays, each of which consists of exactly 2 elements). The first element of each array entry is the namespace name (alias), the second the namespace URI. It is not required that aliases provided in this array be the same as those being used in the XML document itself (in other words, both in the XML document and in the xpath function context, aliases are local).

Example:

SELECT xpath('/my:a/text()', '<my:a xmlns:my="http://example.com">test</my:a>',
             ARRAY[ARRAY['my', 'http://example.com']]);

 xpath
--------
 {test}
(1 row)

To deal with default (anonymous) namespaces, do something like this:

SELECT xpath('//mydefns:b/text()', '<a xmlns="http://example.com"><b>test</b></a>',
             ARRAY[ARRAY['mydefns', 'http://example.com']]);

 xpath
--------
 {test}
(1 row)

xpath_exists(xpath, xml [, nsarray])

The function xpath_exists is a specialized form of the xpath function. Instead of returning the individual XML values that satisfy the XPath, this function returns a Boolean indicating whether the query was satisfied or not. This function is equivalent to the standard XMLEXISTS predicate, except that it also offers support for a namespace mapping argument.

Example:

SELECT xpath_exists('/my:a/text()', '<my:a xmlns:my="http://example.com">test</my:a>',
                     ARRAY[ARRAY['my', 'http://example.com']]);

 xpath_exists
--------------
 t
(1 row)

9.14.4. Mapping Tables to XML

The following functions map the contents of relational tables to XML values. They can be thought of as XML export functionality:

table_to_xml(tbl regclass, nulls boolean, tableforest boolean, targetns text)
query_to_xml(query text, nulls boolean, tableforest boolean, targetns text)
cursor_to_xml(cursor refcursor, count int, nulls boolean,
              tableforest boolean, targetns text)

The return type of each function is xml.

table_to_xml maps the content of the named table, passed as parameter tbl. The regclass type accepts strings identifying tables using the usual notation, including optional schema qualifications and double quotes. query_to_xml executes the query whose text is passed as parameter query and maps the result set. cursor_to_xml fetches the indicated number of rows from the cursor specified by the parameter cursor. This variant is recommended if large tables have to be mapped, because the result value is built up in memory by each function.

If tableforest is false, then the resulting XML document looks like this:

<tablename>
  <row>
    <columnname1>data</columnname1>
    <columnname2>data</columnname2>
  </row>

  <row>
    ...
  </row>

  ...
</tablename>

If tableforest is true, the result is an XML content fragment that looks like this:

<tablename>
  <columnname1>data</columnname1>
  <columnname2>data</columnname2>
</tablename>

<tablename>
  ...
</tablename>

...

If no table name is available, that is, when mapping a query or a cursor, the string table is used in the first format, row in the second format.

The choice between these formats is up to the user. The first format is a proper XML document, which will be important in many applications. The second format tends to be more useful in the cursor_to_xml function if the result values are to be reassembled into one document later on. The functions for producing XML content discussed above, in particular xmlelement, can be used to alter the results to taste.

The data values are mapped in the same way as described for the function xmlelement above.

The parameter nulls determines whether null values should be included in the output. If true, null values in columns are represented as:

<columnname xsi:nil="true"/>

where xsi is the XML namespace prefix for XML Schema Instance. An appropriate namespace declaration will be added to the result value. If false, columns containing null values are simply omitted from the output.

The parameter targetns specifies the desired XML namespace of the result. If no particular namespace is wanted, an empty string should be passed.

The following functions return XML Schema documents describing the mappings performed by the corresponding functions above:

table_to_xmlschema(tbl regclass, nulls boolean, tableforest boolean, targetns text)
query_to_xmlschema(query text, nulls boolean, tableforest boolean, targetns text)
cursor_to_xmlschema(cursor refcursor, nulls boolean, tableforest boolean, targetns text)

It is essential that the same parameters are passed in order to obtain matching XML data mappings and XML Schema documents.

The following functions produce XML data mappings and the corresponding XML Schema in one document (or forest), linked together. They can be useful where self-contained and self-describing results are wanted:

table_to_xml_and_xmlschema(tbl regclass, nulls boolean, tableforest boolean, targetns text)
query_to_xml_and_xmlschema(query text, nulls boolean, tableforest boolean, targetns text)

In addition, the following functions are available to produce analogous mappings of entire schemas or the entire current database:

schema_to_xml(schema name, nulls boolean, tableforest boolean, targetns text)
schema_to_xmlschema(schema name, nulls boolean, tableforest boolean, targetns text)
schema_to_xml_and_xmlschema(schema name, nulls boolean, tableforest boolean, targetns text)

database_to_xml(nulls boolean, tableforest boolean, targetns text)
database_to_xmlschema(nulls boolean, tableforest boolean, targetns text)
database_to_xml_and_xmlschema(nulls boolean, tableforest boolean, targetns text)

Note that these potentially produce a lot of data, which needs to be built up in memory. When requesting content mappings of large schemas or databases, it might be worthwhile to consider mapping the tables separately instead, possibly even through a cursor.

The result of a schema content mapping looks like this:

<schemaname>

table1-mapping

table2-mapping

...

</schemaname>

where the format of a table mapping depends on the tableforest parameter as explained above.

The result of a database content mapping looks like this:

<dbname>

<schema1name>
  ...
</schema1name>

<schema2name>
  ...
</schema2name>

...

</dbname>

where the schema mapping is as above.

As an example of using the output produced by these functions, Figure 9-1 shows an XSLT stylesheet that converts the output of table_to_xml_and_xmlschema to an HTML document containing a tabular rendition of the table data. In a similar manner, the results from these functions can be converted into other XML-based formats.

Figure 9-1. XSLT Stylesheet for Converting SQL/XML Output to HTML

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
    xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
    xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
    xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
>

  <xsl:output method="xml"
      doctype-system="http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"
      doctype-public="-//W3C/DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
      indent="yes"/>

  <xsl:template match="/*">
    <xsl:variable name="schema" select="//xsd:schema"/>
    <xsl:variable name="tabletypename"
                  select="$schema/xsd:element[@name=name(current())]/@type"/>
    <xsl:variable name="rowtypename"
                  select="$schema/xsd:complexType[@name=$tabletypename]/xsd:sequence/xsd:element[@name='row']/@type"/>

    <html>
      <head>
        <title><xsl:value-of select="name(current())"/></title>
      </head>
      <body>
        <table>
          <tr>
            <xsl:for-each select="$schema/xsd:complexType[@name=$rowtypename]/xsd:sequence/xsd:element/@name">
              <th><xsl:value-of select="."/></th>
            </xsl:for-each>
          </tr>

          <xsl:for-each select="row">
            <tr>
              <xsl:for-each select="*">
                <td><xsl:value-of select="."/></td>
              </xsl:for-each>
            </tr>
          </xsl:for-each>
        </table>
      </body>
    </html>
  </xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>
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Sequence Manipulation Functions

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9.15. Sequence Manipulation Functions

This section describes functions for operating on sequence objects, also called sequence generators or just sequences. Sequence objects are special single-row tables created with CREATE SEQUENCE. Sequence objects are commonly used to generate unique identifiers for rows of a table. The sequence functions, listed in Table 9-40, provide simple, multiuser-safe methods for obtaining successive sequence values from sequence objects.

Table 9-40. Sequence Functions

Function | Return Type | Description
currval(regclass) | bigint | Return value most recently obtained with nextval for specified sequence
lastval() | bigint | Return value most recently obtained with nextval for any sequence
nextval(regclass) | bigint | Advance sequence and return new value
setval(regclass, bigint) | bigint | Set sequence's current value
setval(regclass, bigint, boolean) | bigint | Set sequence's current value and is_called flag

The sequence to be operated on by a sequence function is specified by a regclass argument, which is simply the OID of the sequence in the pg_class system catalog. You do not have to look up the OID by hand, however, since the regclass data type's input converter will do the work for you. Just write the sequence name enclosed in single quotes so that it looks like a literal constant. For compatibility with the handling of ordinary SQL names, the string will be converted to lower case unless it contains double quotes around the sequence name. Thus:

nextval('foo')      operates on sequence foo
nextval('FOO')      operates on sequence foo
nextval('"Foo"')    operates on sequence Foo

The sequence name can be schema-qualified if necessary:

nextval('myschema.foo')     operates on myschema.foo
nextval('"myschema".foo')   same as above
nextval('foo')              searches search path for foo

See Section 8.16 for more information about regclass.

Note: Before PostgreSQL 8.1, the arguments of the sequence functions were of type text, not regclass, and the above-described conversion from a text string to an OID value would happen at run time during each call. For backward compatibility, this facility still exists, but internally it is now handled as an implicit coercion from text to regclass before the function is invoked.

When you write the argument of a sequence function as an unadorned literal string, it becomes a constant of type regclass. Since this is really just an OID, it will track the originally identified sequence despite later renaming, schema reassignment, etc. This "early binding" behavior is usually desirable for sequence references in column defaults and views. But sometimes you might want "late binding" where the sequence reference is resolved at run time. To get late-binding behavior, force the constant to be stored as a text constant instead of regclass:

nextval('foo'::text)      foo is looked up at runtime

Note that late binding was the only behavior supported in PostgreSQL releases before 8.1, so you might need to do this to preserve the semantics of old applications.

Of course, the argument of a sequence function can be an expression as well as a constant. If it is a text expression then the implicit coercion will result in a run-time lookup.

The available sequence functions are:

nextval

Advance the sequence object to its next value and return that value. This is done atomically: even if multiple sessions execute nextval concurrently, each will safely receive a distinct sequence value.

If a sequence object has been created with default parameters, successive nextval calls will return successive values beginning with 1. Other behaviors can be obtained by using special parameters in the CREATE SEQUENCE command; see its command reference page for more information.

Important: To avoid blocking concurrent transactions that obtain numbers from the same sequence, a nextval operation is never rolled back; that is, once a value has been fetched it is considered used, even if the transaction that did the nextval later aborts. This means that aborted transactions might leave unused "holes" in the sequence of assigned values.

currval

Return the value most recently obtained by nextval for this sequence in the current session. (An error is reported if nextval has never been called for this sequence in this session.) Because this is returning a session-local value, it gives a predictable answer whether or not other sessions have executed nextval since the current session did.

lastval

Return the value most recently returned by nextval in the current session. This function is identical to currval, except that instead of taking the sequence name as an argument it fetches the value of the last sequence used by nextval in the current session. It is an error to call lastval if nextval has not yet been called in the current session.

setval

Reset the sequence object's counter value. The two-parameter form sets the sequence's last_value field to the specified value and sets its is_called field to true, meaning that the next nextval will advance the sequence before returning a value. The value reported by currval is also set to the specified value. In the three-parameter form, is_called can be set to either true or false. true has the same effect as the two-parameter form. If it is set to false, the next nextval will return exactly the specified value, and sequence advancement commences with the following nextval. Furthermore, the value reported by currval is not changed in this case (this is a change from pre-8.3 behavior). For example,

SELECT setval('foo', 42);           Next nextval will return 43
SELECT setval('foo', 42, true);     Same as above
SELECT setval('foo', 42, false);    Next nextval will return 42

The result returned by setval is just the value of its second argument.

Important: Because sequences are non-transactional, changes made by setval are not undone if the transaction rolls back.

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Conditional Expressions

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9.16. Conditional Expressions

This section describes the SQL-compliant conditional expressions available in PostgreSQL.

Tip: If your needs go beyond the capabilities of these conditional expressions, you might want to consider writing a stored procedure in a more expressive programming language.

9.16.1. CASE

The SQL CASE expression is a generic conditional expression, similar to if/else statements in other programming languages:

CASE WHEN condition THEN result
     [WHEN ...]
     [ELSE result]
END

CASE clauses can be used wherever an expression is valid. Each condition is an expression that returns a boolean result. If the condition's result is true, the value of the CASE expression is the result that follows the condition, and the remainder of the CASE expression is not processed. If the condition's result is not true, any subsequent WHEN clauses are examined in the same manner. If no WHEN condition yields true, the value of the CASE expression is the result of the ELSE clause. If the ELSE clause is omitted and no condition is true, the result is null.

An example:

SELECT * FROM test;

 a
---
 1
 2
 3

SELECT a,
       CASE WHEN a=1 THEN 'one'
            WHEN a=2 THEN 'two'
            ELSE 'other'
       END
    FROM test;

 a | case
---+-------
 1 | one
 2 | two
 3 | other

The data types of all the result expressions must be convertible to a single output type. See Section 10.5 for more details.

There is a "simple" form of CASE expression that is a variant of the general form above:

CASE expression
    WHEN value THEN result
    [WHEN ...]
    [ELSE result]
END

The first expression is computed, then compared to each of the value expressions in the WHEN clauses until one is found that is equal to it. If no match is found, the result of the ELSE clause (or a null value) is returned. This is similar to the switch statement in C.

The example above can be written using the simple CASE syntax:

SELECT a,
       CASE a WHEN 1 THEN 'one'
              WHEN 2 THEN 'two'
              ELSE 'other'
       END
    FROM test;

 a | case
---+-------
 1 | one
 2 | two
 3 | other

A CASE expression does not evaluate any subexpressions that are not needed to determine the result. For example, this is a possible way of avoiding a division-by-zero failure:

SELECT ... WHERE CASE WHEN x <> 0 THEN y/x > 1.5 ELSE false END;

Note: As described in Section 4.2.14, there are various situations in which subexpressions of an expression are evaluated at different times, so that the principle that "CASE evaluates only necessary subexpressions" is not ironclad. For example a constant 1/0 subexpression will usually result in a division-by-zero failure at planning time, even if it's within a CASE arm that would never be entered at run time.

9.16.2. COALESCE

COALESCE(value [, ...])

The COALESCE function returns the first of its arguments that is not null. Null is returned only if all arguments are null. It is often used to substitute a default value for null values when data is retrieved for display, for example:

SELECT COALESCE(description, short_description, '(none)') ...

Like a CASE expression, COALESCE only evaluates the arguments that are needed to determine the result; that is, arguments to the right of the first non-null argument are not evaluated. This SQL-standard function provides capabilities similar to NVL and IFNULL, which are used in some other database systems.

9.16.3. NULLIF

NULLIF(value1, value2)

The NULLIF function returns a null value if value1 equals value2; otherwise it returns value1. This can be used to perform the inverse operation of the COALESCE example given above:

SELECT NULLIF(value, '(none)') ...

In this example, if value is (none), null is returned, otherwise the value of value is returned.

9.16.4. GREATEST and LEAST

GREATEST(value [, ...])
LEAST(value [, ...])

The GREATEST and LEAST functions select the largest or smallest value from a list of any number of expressions. The expressions must all be convertible to a common data type, which will be the type of the result (see Section 10.5 for details). NULL values in the list are ignored. The result will be NULL only if all the expressions evaluate to NULL.

Note that GREATEST and LEAST are not in the SQL standard, but are a common extension. Some other databases make them return NULL if any argument is NULL, rather than only when all are NULL.

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Array Functions and Operators

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9.17. Array Functions and Operators

Table 9-41 shows the operators available for array types.

Table 9-41. Array Operators

Operator | Description | Example | Result
= | equal | ARRAY[1.1,2.1,3.1]::int[] = ARRAY[1,2,3] | t
<> | not equal | ARRAY[1,2,3] <> ARRAY[1,2,4] | t
< | less than | ARRAY[1,2,3] < ARRAY[1,2,4] | t
> | greater than | ARRAY[1,4,3] > ARRAY[1,2,4] | t
<= | less than or equal | ARRAY[1,2,3] <= ARRAY[1,2,3] | t
>= | greater than or equal | ARRAY[1,4,3] >= ARRAY[1,4,3] | t
@> | contains | ARRAY[1,4,3] @> ARRAY[3,1] | t
<@ | is contained by | ARRAY[2,7] <@ ARRAY[1,7,4,2,6] | t
&& | overlap (have elements in common) | ARRAY[1,4,3] && ARRAY[2,1] | t
|| | array-to-array concatenation | ARRAY[1,2,3] || ARRAY[4,5,6] | {1,2,3,4,5,6}
|| | array-to-array concatenation | ARRAY[1,2,3] || ARRAY[[4,5,6],[7,8,9]] | {{1,2,3},{4,5,6},{7,8,9}}
|| | element-to-array concatenation | 3 || ARRAY[4,5,6] | {3,4,5,6}
|| | array-to-element concatenation | ARRAY[4,5,6] || 7 | {4,5,6,7}

Array comparisons compare the array contents element-by-element, using the default B-tree comparison function for the element data type. In multidimensional arrays the elements are visited in row-major order (last subscript varies most rapidly). If the contents of two arrays are equal but the dimensionality is different, the first difference in the dimensionality information determines the sort order. (This is a change from versions of PostgreSQL prior to 8.2: older versions would claim that two arrays with the same contents were equal, even if the number of dimensions or subscript ranges were different.)

See Section 8.14 for more details about array operator behavior.

Table 9-42 shows the functions available for use with array types. See Section 8.14 for more information and examples of the use of these functions.

Table 9-42. Array Functions

Function | Return Type | Description | Example | Result
array_append(anyarray, anyelement) | anyarray | append an element to the end of an array | array_append(ARRAY[1,2], 3) | {1,2,3}
array_cat(anyarray, anyarray) | anyarray | concatenate two arrays | array_cat(ARRAY[1,2,3], ARRAY[4,5]) | {1,2,3,4,5}
array_ndims(anyarray) | int | returns the number of dimensions of the array | array_ndims(ARRAY[[1,2,3], [4,5,6]]) | 2
array_dims(anyarray) | text | returns a text representation of array's dimensions | array_dims(ARRAY[[1,2,3], [4,5,6]]) | [1:2][1:3]
array_fill(anyelement, int[], [, int[]]) | anyarray | returns an array initialized with supplied value and dimensions, optionally with lower bounds other than 1 | array_fill(7, ARRAY[3], ARRAY[2]) | [2:4]={7,7,7}
array_length(anyarray, int) | int | returns the length of the requested array dimension | array_length(array[1,2,3], 1) | 3
array_lower(anyarray, int) | int | returns lower bound of the requested array dimension | array_lower('[0:2]={1,2,3}'::int[], 1) | 0
array_prepend(anyelement, anyarray) | anyarray | append an element to the beginning of an array | array_prepend(1, ARRAY[2,3]) | {1,2,3}
array_to_string(anyarray, text [, text]) | text | concatenates array elements using supplied delimiter and optional null string | array_to_string(ARRAY[1, 2, 3, NULL, 5], ',', '*') | 1,2,3,*,5
array_upper(anyarray, int) | int | returns upper bound of the requested array dimension | array_upper(ARRAY[1,8,3,7], 1) | 4
string_to_array(text, text [, text]) | text[] | splits string into array elements using supplied delimiter and optional null string | string_to_array('xx~^~yy~^~zz', '~^~', 'yy') | {xx,NULL,zz}
unnest(anyarray) setof anyelement expand an array to a set of rows unnest(ARRAY[1,2])
1
2
(2 rows)

In string_to_array, if the delimiter parameter is NULL, each character in the input string will become a separate element in the resulting array. If the delimiter is an empty string, then the entire input string is returned as a one-element array. Otherwise the input string is split at each occurrence of the delimiter string.

In string_to_array, if the null-string parameter is omitted or NULL, none of the substrings of the input will be replaced by NULL. In array_to_string, if the null-string parameter is omitted or NULL, any null elements in the array are simply skipped and not represented in the output string.

Note: There are two differences in the behavior of string_to_array from pre-9.1 versions of PostgreSQL. First, it will return an empty (zero-element) array rather than NULL when the input string is of zero length. Second, if the delimiter string is NULL, the function splits the input into individual characters, rather than returning NULL as before.

See also Section 9.18 about the aggregate function array_agg for use with arrays.

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Aggregate Functions

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9.18. Aggregate Functions

Aggregate functions compute a single result from a set of input values. The built-in aggregate functions are listed in Table 9-43 and Table 9-44. The special syntax considerations for aggregate functions are explained in Section 4.2.7. Consult Section 2.7 for additional introductory information.

Table 9-43. General-Purpose Aggregate Functions

Function | Argument Type(s) | Return Type | Description
array_agg(expression) | any | array of the argument type | input values, including nulls, concatenated into an array
avg(expression) | smallint, int, bigint, real, double precision, numeric, or interval | numeric for any integer-type argument, double precision for a floating-point argument, otherwise the same as the argument data type | the average (arithmetic mean) of all input values
bit_and(expression) | smallint, int, bigint, or bit | same as argument data type | the bitwise AND of all non-null input values, or null if none
bit_or(expression) | smallint, int, bigint, or bit | same as argument data type | the bitwise OR of all non-null input values, or null if none
bool_and(expression) | bool | bool | true if all input values are true, otherwise false
bool_or(expression) | bool | bool | true if at least one input value is true, otherwise false
count(*) |  | bigint | number of input rows
count(expression) | any | bigint | number of input rows for which the value of expression is not null
every(expression) | bool | bool | equivalent to bool_and
max(expression) | any array, numeric, string, or date/time type | same as argument type | maximum value of expression across all input values
min(expression) | any array, numeric, string, or date/time type | same as argument type | minimum value of expression across all input values
string_agg(expression, delimiter) | text, text | text | input values concatenated into a string, separated by delimiter
sum(expression) | smallint, int, bigint, real, double precision, numeric, interval, or money | bigint for smallint or int arguments, numeric for bigint arguments, otherwise the same as the argument data type | sum of expression across all input values
xmlagg(expression) | xml | xml | concatenation of XML values (see also Section 9.14.1.7)

It should be noted that except for count, these functions return a null value when no rows are selected. In particular, sum of no rows returns null, not zero as one might expect, and array_agg returns null rather than an empty array when there are no input rows. The coalesce function can be used to substitute zero or an empty array for null when necessary.

Note: Boolean aggregates bool_and and bool_or correspond to standard SQL aggregates every and any or some. As for any and some, it seems that there is an ambiguity built into the standard syntax:

SELECT b1 = ANY((SELECT b2 FROM t2 ...)) FROM t1 ...;

Here ANY can be considered either as introducing a subquery, or as being an aggregate function, if the subquery returns one row with a Boolean value. Thus the standard name cannot be given to these aggregates.

Note: Users accustomed to working with other SQL database management systems might be disappointed by the performance of the count aggregate when it is applied to the entire table. A query like:

SELECT count(*) FROM sometable;

will be executed by PostgreSQL using a sequential scan of the entire table.

The aggregate functions array_agg, string_agg, and xmlagg, as well as similar user-defined aggregate functions, produce meaningfully different result values depending on the order of the input values. This ordering is unspecified by default, but can be controlled by writing an ORDER BY clause within the aggregate call, as shown in Section 4.2.7. Alternatively, supplying the input values from a sorted subquery will usually work. For example:

SELECT xmlagg(x) FROM (SELECT x FROM test ORDER BY y DESC) AS tab;

But this syntax is not allowed in the SQL standard, and is not portable to other database systems.

Table 9-44 shows aggregate functions typically used in statistical analysis. (These are separated out merely to avoid cluttering the listing of more-commonly-used aggregates.) Where the description mentions N, it means the number of input rows for which all the input expressions are non-null. In all cases, null is returned if the computation is meaningless, for example when N is zero.

Table 9-44. Aggregate Functions for Statistics

Function | Argument Type | Return Type | Description
corr(Y, X) | double precision | double precision | correlation coefficient
covar_pop(Y, X) | double precision | double precision | population covariance
covar_samp(Y, X) | double precision | double precision | sample covariance
regr_avgx(Y, X) | double precision | double precision | average of the independent variable (sum(X)/N)
regr_avgy(Y, X) | double precision | double precision | average of the dependent variable (sum(Y)/N)
regr_count(Y, X) | double precision | bigint | number of input rows in which both expressions are nonnull
regr_intercept(Y, X) | double precision | double precision | y-intercept of the least-squares-fit linear equation determined by the (X, Y) pairs
regr_r2(Y, X) | double precision | double precision | square of the correlation coefficient
regr_slope(Y, X) | double precision | double precision | slope of the least-squares-fit linear equation determined by the (X, Y) pairs
regr_sxx(Y, X) | double precision | double precision | sum(X^2) - sum(X)^2/N ("sum of squares" of the independent variable)
regr_sxy(Y, X) | double precision | double precision | sum(X*Y) - sum(X) * sum(Y)/N ("sum of products" of independent times dependent variable)
regr_syy(Y, X) | double precision | double precision | sum(Y^2) - sum(Y)^2/N ("sum of squares" of the dependent variable)
stddev(expression) | smallint, int, bigint, real, double precision, or numeric | double precision for floating-point arguments, otherwise numeric | historical alias for stddev_samp
stddev_pop(expression) | smallint, int, bigint, real, double precision, or numeric | double precision for floating-point arguments, otherwise numeric | population standard deviation of the input values
stddev_samp(expression) | smallint, int, bigint, real, double precision, or numeric | double precision for floating-point arguments, otherwise numeric | sample standard deviation of the input values
variance(expression) | smallint, int, bigint, real, double precision, or numeric | double precision for floating-point arguments, otherwise numeric | historical alias for var_samp
var_pop(expression) | smallint, int, bigint, real, double precision, or numeric | double precision for floating-point arguments, otherwise numeric | population variance of the input values (square of the population standard deviation)
var_samp(expression) | smallint, int, bigint, real, double precision, or numeric | double precision for floating-point arguments, otherwise numeric | sample variance of the input values (square of the sample standard deviation)
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Window Functions

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9.19. Window Functions

Window functions provide the ability to perform calculations across sets of rows that are related to the current query row. See Section 3.5 for an introduction to this feature.

The built-in window functions are listed in Table 9-45. Note that these functions must be invoked using window function syntax; that is an OVER clause is required.

In addition to these functions, any built-in or user-defined aggregate function can be used as a window function (see Section 9.18 for a list of the built-in aggregates). Aggregate functions act as window functions only when an OVER clause follows the call; otherwise they act as regular aggregates.

Table 9-45. General-Purpose Window Functions

Function | Return Type | Description
row_number() | bigint | number of the current row within its partition, counting from 1
rank() | bigint | rank of the current row with gaps; same as row_number of its first peer
dense_rank() | bigint | rank of the current row without gaps; this function counts peer groups
percent_rank() | double precision | relative rank of the current row: (rank - 1) / (total rows - 1)
cume_dist() | double precision | relative rank of the current row: (number of rows preceding or peer with current row) / (total rows)
ntile(num_buckets integer) | integer | integer ranging from 1 to the argument value, dividing the partition as equally as possible
lag(value anyelement [, offset integer [, default anyelement ]]) | same type as value | returns value evaluated at the row that is offset rows before the current row within the partition; if there is no such row, instead return default (which must be of the same type as value). Both offset and default are evaluated with respect to the current row. If omitted, offset defaults to 1 and default to null
lead(value anyelement [, offset integer [, default anyelement ]]) | same type as value | returns value evaluated at the row that is offset rows after the current row within the partition; if there is no such row, instead return default (which must be of the same type as value). Both offset and default are evaluated with respect to the current row. If omitted, offset defaults to 1 and default to null
first_value(value any) | same type as value | returns value evaluated at the row that is the first row of the window frame
last_value(value any) | same type as value | returns value evaluated at the row that is the last row of the window frame
nth_value(value any, nth integer) | same type as value | returns value evaluated at the row that is the nth row of the window frame (counting from 1); null if no such row

All of the functions listed in Table 9-45 depend on the sort ordering specified by the ORDER BY clause of the associated window definition. Rows that are not distinct in the ORDER BY ordering are said to be peers; the four ranking functions are defined so that they give the same answer for any two peer rows.

Note that first_value, last_value, and nth_value consider only the rows within the "window frame", which by default contains the rows from the start of the partition through the last peer of the current row. This is likely to give unhelpful results for last_value and sometimes also nth_value. You can redefine the frame by adding a suitable frame specification (RANGE or ROWS) to the OVER clause. See Section 4.2.8 for more information about frame specifications.

When an aggregate function is used as a window function, it aggregates over the rows within the current row's window frame. An aggregate used with ORDER BY and the default window frame definition produces a "running sum" type of behavior, which may or may not be what's wanted. To obtain aggregation over the whole partition, omit ORDER BY or use ROWS BETWEEN UNBOUNDED PRECEDING AND UNBOUNDED FOLLOWING. Other frame specifications can be used to obtain other effects.

Note: The SQL standard defines a RESPECT NULLS or IGNORE NULLS option for lead, lag, first_value, last_value, and nth_value. This is not implemented in PostgreSQL: the behavior is always the same as the standard's default, namely RESPECT NULLS. Likewise, the standard's FROM FIRST or FROM LAST option for nth_value is not implemented: only the default FROM FIRST behavior is supported. (You can achieve the result of FROM LAST by reversing the ORDER BY ordering.)

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Subquery Expressions

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9.20. Subquery Expressions

This section describes the SQL-compliant subquery expressions available in PostgreSQL. All of the expression forms documented in this section return Boolean (true/false) results.

9.20.1. EXISTS

EXISTS (subquery)

The argument of EXISTS is an arbitrary SELECT statement, or subquery. The subquery is evaluated to determine whether it returns any rows. If it returns at least one row, the result of EXISTS is "true"; if the subquery returns no rows, the result of EXISTS is "false".

The subquery can refer to variables from the surrounding query, which will act as constants during any one evaluation of the subquery.

The subquery will generally only be executed long enough to determine whether at least one row is returned, not all the way to completion. It is unwise to write a subquery that has side effects (such as calling sequence functions); whether the side effects occur might be unpredictable.

Since the result depends only on whether any rows are returned, and not on the contents of those rows, the output list of the subquery is normally unimportant. A common coding convention is to write all EXISTS tests in the form EXISTS(SELECT 1 WHERE ...). There are exceptions to this rule however, such as subqueries that use INTERSECT.

This simple example is like an inner join on col2, but it produces at most one output row for each tab1 row, even if there are several matching tab2 rows:

SELECT col1
FROM tab1
WHERE EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM tab2 WHERE col2 = tab1.col2);

9.20.2. IN

expression IN (subquery)

The right-hand side is a parenthesized subquery, which must return exactly one column. The left-hand expression is evaluated and compared to each row of the subquery result. The result of IN is "true" if any equal subquery row is found. The result is "false" if no equal row is found (including the case where the subquery returns no rows).

Note that if the left-hand expression yields null, or if there are no equal right-hand values and at least one right-hand row yields null, the result of the IN construct will be null, not false. This is in accordance with SQL's normal rules for Boolean combinations of null values.

As with EXISTS, it's unwise to assume that the subquery will be evaluated completely.

row_constructor IN (subquery)

The left-hand side of this form of IN is a row constructor, as described in Section 4.2.13. The right-hand side is a parenthesized subquery, which must return exactly as many columns as there are expressions in the left-hand row. The left-hand expressions are evaluated and compared row-wise to each row of the subquery result. The result of IN is "true" if any equal subquery row is found. The result is "false" if no equal row is found (including the case where the subquery returns no rows).

As usual, null values in the rows are combined per the normal rules of SQL Boolean expressions. Two rows are considered equal if all their corresponding members are non-null and equal; the rows are unequal if any corresponding members are non-null and unequal; otherwise the result of that row comparison is unknown (null). If all the per-row results are either unequal or null, with at least one null, then the result of IN is null.

9.20.3. NOT IN

expression NOT IN (subquery)

The right-hand side is a parenthesized subquery, which must return exactly one column. The left-hand expression is evaluated and compared to each row of the subquery result. The result of NOT IN is "true" if only unequal subquery rows are found (including the case where the subquery returns no rows). The result is "false" if any equal row is found.

Note that if the left-hand expression yields null, or if there are no equal right-hand values and at least one right-hand row yields null, the result of the NOT IN construct will be null, not true. This is in accordance with SQL's normal rules for Boolean combinations of null values.

As with EXISTS, it's unwise to assume that the subquery will be evaluated completely.

row_constructor NOT IN (subquery)

The left-hand side of this form of NOT IN is a row constructor, as described in Section 4.2.13. The right-hand side is a parenthesized subquery, which must return exactly as many columns as there are expressions in the left-hand row. The left-hand expressions are evaluated and compared row-wise to each row of the subquery result. The result of NOT IN is "true" if only unequal subquery rows are found (including the case where the subquery returns no rows). The result is "false" if any equal row is found.

As usual, null values in the rows are combined per the normal rules of SQL Boolean expressions. Two rows are considered equal if all their corresponding members are non-null and equal; the rows are unequal if any corresponding members are non-null and unequal; otherwise the result of that row comparison is unknown (null). If all the per-row results are either unequal or null, with at least one null, then the result of NOT IN is null.

9.20.4. ANY/SOME

expression operator ANY (subquery)
expression operator SOME (subquery)

The right-hand side is a parenthesized subquery, which must return exactly one column. The left-hand expression is evaluated and compared to each row of the subquery result using the given operator, which must yield a Boolean result. The result of ANY is "true" if any true result is obtained. The result is "false" if no true result is found (including the case where the subquery returns no rows).

SOME is a synonym for ANY. IN is equivalent to = ANY.

Note that if there are no successes and at least one right-hand row yields null for the operator's result, the result of the ANY construct will be null, not false. This is in accordance with SQL's normal rules for Boolean combinations of null values.

As with EXISTS, it's unwise to assume that the subquery will be evaluated completely.

row_constructor operator ANY (subquery)
row_constructor operator SOME (subquery)

The left-hand side of this form of ANY is a row constructor, as described in Section 4.2.13. The right-hand side is a parenthesized subquery, which must return exactly as many columns as there are expressions in the left-hand row. The left-hand expressions are evaluated and compared row-wise to each row of the subquery result, using the given operator. The result of ANY is "true" if the comparison returns true for any subquery row. The result is "false" if the comparison returns false for every subquery row (including the case where the subquery returns no rows). The result is NULL if the comparison does not return true for any row, and it returns NULL for at least one row.

See Section 9.21.5 for details about the meaning of a row-wise comparison.

9.20.5. ALL

expression operator ALL (subquery)

The right-hand side is a parenthesized subquery, which must return exactly one column. The left-hand expression is evaluated and compared to each row of the subquery result using the given operator, which must yield a Boolean result. The result of ALL is "true" if all rows yield true (including the case where the subquery returns no rows). The result is "false" if any false result is found. The result is NULL if the comparison does not return false for any row, and it returns NULL for at least one row.

NOT IN is equivalent to <> ALL.

As with EXISTS, it's unwise to assume that the subquery will be evaluated completely.

row_constructor operator ALL (subquery)

The left-hand side of this form of ALL is a row constructor, as described in Section 4.2.13. The right-hand side is a parenthesized subquery, which must return exactly as many columns as there are expressions in the left-hand row. The left-hand expressions are evaluated and compared row-wise to each row of the subquery result, using the given operator. The result of ALL is "true" if the comparison returns true for all subquery rows (including the case where the subquery returns no rows). The result is "false" if the comparison returns false for any subquery row. The result is NULL if the comparison does not return false for any subquery row, and it returns NULL for at least one row.

See Section 9.21.5 for details about the meaning of a row-wise comparison.

9.20.6. Row-wise Comparison

row_constructor operator (subquery)

The left-hand side is a row constructor, as described in Section 4.2.13. The right-hand side is a parenthesized subquery, which must return exactly as many columns as there are expressions in the left-hand row. Furthermore, the subquery cannot return more than one row. (If it returns zero rows, the result is taken to be null.) The left-hand side is evaluated and compared row-wise to the single subquery result row.

See Section 9.21.5 for details about the meaning of a row-wise comparison.

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Row and Array Comparisons

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9.21. Row and Array Comparisons

This section describes several specialized constructs for making multiple comparisons between groups of values. These forms are syntactically related to the subquery forms of the previous section, but do not involve subqueries. The forms involving array subexpressions are PostgreSQL extensions; the rest are SQL-compliant. All of the expression forms documented in this section return Boolean (true/false) results.

9.21.1. IN

expression IN (value [, ...])

The right-hand side is a parenthesized list of scalar expressions. The result is "true" if the left-hand expression's result is equal to any of the right-hand expressions. This is a shorthand notation for

expression = value1
OR
expression = value2
OR
...

Note that if the left-hand expression yields null, or if there are no equal right-hand values and at least one right-hand expression yields null, the result of the IN construct will be null, not false. This is in accordance with SQL's normal rules for Boolean combinations of null values.

9.21.2. NOT IN

expression NOT IN (value [, ...])

The right-hand side is a parenthesized list of scalar expressions. The result is "true" if the left-hand expression's result is unequal to all of the right-hand expressions. This is a shorthand notation for

expression <> value1
AND
expression <> value2
AND
...

Note that if the left-hand expression yields null, or if there are no equal right-hand values and at least one right-hand expression yields null, the result of the NOT IN construct will be null, not true as one might naively expect. This is in accordance with SQL's normal rules for Boolean combinations of null values.

Tip: x NOT IN y is equivalent to NOT (x IN y) in all cases. However, null values are much more likely to trip up the novice when working with NOT IN than when working with IN. It is best to express your condition positively if possible.

9.21.3. ANY/SOME (array)

expression operator ANY (array expression)
expression operator SOME (array expression)

The right-hand side is a parenthesized expression, which must yield an array value. The left-hand expression is evaluated and compared to each element of the array using the given operator, which must yield a Boolean result. The result of ANY is "true" if any true result is obtained. The result is "false" if no true result is found (including the case where the array has zero elements).

If the array expression yields a null array, the result of ANY will be null. If the left-hand expression yields null, the result of ANY is ordinarily null (though a non-strict comparison operator could possibly yield a different result). Also, if the right-hand array contains any null elements and no true comparison result is obtained, the result of ANY will be null, not false (again, assuming a strict comparison operator). This is in accordance with SQL's normal rules for Boolean combinations of null values.

SOME is a synonym for ANY.

9.21.4. ALL (array)

expression operator ALL (array expression)

The right-hand side is a parenthesized expression, which must yield an array value. The left-hand expression is evaluated and compared to each element of the array using the given operator, which must yield a Boolean result. The result of ALL is "true" if all comparisons yield true (including the case where the array has zero elements). The result is "false" if any false result is found.

If the array expression yields a null array, the result of ALL will be null. If the left-hand expression yields null, the result of ALL is ordinarily null (though a non-strict comparison operator could possibly yield a different result). Also, if the right-hand array contains any null elements and no false comparison result is obtained, the result of ALL will be null, not true (again, assuming a strict comparison operator). This is in accordance with SQL's normal rules for Boolean combinations of null values.

9.21.5. Row-wise Comparison

row_constructor operator row_constructor

Each side is a row constructor, as described in Section 4.2.13. The two row values must have the same number of fields. Each side is evaluated and they are compared row-wise. Row comparisons are allowed when the operator is =, <>, <, <=, > or >=, or has semantics similar to one of these. (To be specific, an operator can be a row comparison operator if it is a member of a B-tree operator class, or is the negator of the = member of a B-tree operator class.)

The = and <> cases work slightly differently from the others. Two rows are considered equal if all their corresponding members are non-null and equal; the rows are unequal if any corresponding members are non-null and unequal; otherwise the result of the row comparison is unknown (null).

For the <, <=, > and >= cases, the row elements are compared left-to-right, stopping as soon as an unequal or null pair of elements is found. If either of this pair of elements is null, the result of the row comparison is unknown (null); otherwise comparison of this pair of elements determines the result. For example, ROW(1,2,NULL) < ROW(1,3,0) yields true, not null, because the third pair of elements are not considered.

Note: Prior to PostgreSQL 8.2, the <, <=, > and >= cases were not handled per SQL specification. A comparison like ROW(a,b) < ROW(c,d) was implemented as a < c AND b < d whereas the correct behavior is equivalent to a < c OR (a = c AND b < d).

row_constructor IS DISTINCT FROM row_constructor

This construct is similar to a <> row comparison, but it does not yield null for null inputs. Instead, any null value is considered unequal to (distinct from) any non-null value, and any two nulls are considered equal (not distinct). Thus the result will either be true or false, never null.

row_constructor IS NOT DISTINCT FROM row_constructor

This construct is similar to a = row comparison, but it does not yield null for null inputs. Instead, any null value is considered unequal to (distinct from) any non-null value, and any two nulls are considered equal (not distinct). Thus the result will always be either true or false, never null.

Note: The SQL specification requires row-wise comparison to return NULL if the result depends on comparing two NULL values or a NULL and a non-NULL. PostgreSQL does this only when comparing the results of two row constructors or comparing a row constructor to the output of a subquery (as in Section 9.20). In other contexts where two composite-type values are compared, two NULL field values are considered equal, and a NULL is considered larger than a non-NULL. This is necessary in order to have consistent sorting and indexing behavior for composite types.

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Set Returning Functions

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9.22. Set Returning Functions

This section describes functions that possibly return more than one row. Currently the only functions in this class are series generating functions, as detailed in Table 9-46 and Table 9-47.

Table 9-46. Series Generating Functions

Function | Argument Type | Return Type | Description
generate_series(start, stop) | int or bigint | setof int or setof bigint (same as argument type) | Generate a series of values, from start to stop with a step size of one
generate_series(start, stop, step) | int or bigint | setof int or setof bigint (same as argument type) | Generate a series of values, from start to stop with a step size of step
generate_series(start, stop, step interval) | timestamp or timestamp with time zone | setof timestamp or setof timestamp with time zone (same as argument type) | Generate a series of values, from start to stop with a step size of step

When step is positive, zero rows are returned if start is greater than stop. Conversely, when step is negative, zero rows are returned if start is less than stop. Zero rows are also returned for NULL inputs. It is an error for step to be zero. Some examples follow:

SELECT * FROM generate_series(2,4);
 generate_series
-----------------
               2
               3
               4
(3 rows)

SELECT * FROM generate_series(5,1,-2);
 generate_series
-----------------
               5
               3
               1
(3 rows)

SELECT * FROM generate_series(4,3);
 generate_series
-----------------
(0 rows)

-- this example relies on the date-plus-integer operator
SELECT current_date + s.a AS dates FROM generate_series(0,14,7) AS s(a);
   dates
------------
 2004-02-05
 2004-02-12
 2004-02-19
(3 rows)

SELECT * FROM generate_series('2008-03-01 00:00'::timestamp,
                              '2008-03-04 12:00', '10 hours');
   generate_series
---------------------
 2008-03-01 00:00:00
 2008-03-01 10:00:00
 2008-03-01 20:00:00
 2008-03-02 06:00:00
 2008-03-02 16:00:00
 2008-03-03 02:00:00
 2008-03-03 12:00:00
 2008-03-03 22:00:00
 2008-03-04 08:00:00
(9 rows)

Table 9-47. Subscript Generating Functions

Function | Return Type | Description
generate_subscripts(array anyarray, dim int) | setof int | Generate a series comprising the given array's subscripts.
generate_subscripts(array anyarray, dim int, reverse boolean) | setof int | Generate a series comprising the given array's subscripts. When reverse is true, the series is returned in reverse order.

generate_subscripts is a convenience function that generates the set of valid subscripts for the specified dimension of the given array. Zero rows are returned for arrays that do not have the requested dimension, or for NULL arrays (but valid subscripts are returned for NULL array elements). Some examples follow:

-- basic usage
SELECT generate_subscripts('{NULL,1,NULL,2}'::int[], 1) AS s;
 s
---
 1
 2
 3
 4
(4 rows)

-- presenting an array, the subscript and the subscripted
-- value requires a subquery
SELECT * FROM arrays;
         a
--------------------
 {-1,-2}
 {100,200,300}
(2 rows)

SELECT a AS array, s AS subscript, a[s] AS value
FROM (SELECT generate_subscripts(a, 1) AS s, a FROM arrays) foo;
     array     | subscript | value
---------------+-----------+-------
 {-1,-2}       |         1 |    -1
 {-1,-2}       |         2 |    -2
 {100,200,300} |         1 |   100
 {100,200,300} |         2 |   200
 {100,200,300} |         3 |   300
(5 rows)

-- unnest a 2D array
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION unnest2(anyarray)
RETURNS SETOF anyelement AS $$
select $1[i][j]
   from generate_subscripts($1,1) g1(i),
        generate_subscripts($1,2) g2(j);
$$ LANGUAGE sql IMMUTABLE;
CREATE FUNCTION
postgres=# SELECT * FROM unnest2(ARRAY[[1,2],[3,4]]);
 unnest2
---------
       1
       2
       3
       4
(4 rows)

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System Information Functions

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9.23. System Information Functions

Table 9-48 shows several functions that extract session and system information.

In addition to the functions listed in this section, there are a number of functions related to the statistics system that also provide system information. See Section 27.2.2 for more information.

Table 9-48. Session Information Functions

Name | Return Type | Description
current_catalog | name | name of current database (called "catalog" in the SQL standard)
current_database() | name | name of current database
current_query() | text | text of the currently executing query, as submitted by the client (might contain more than one statement)
current_schema[()] | name | name of current schema
current_schemas(boolean) | name[] | names of schemas in search path, optionally including implicit schemas
current_user | name | user name of current execution context
inet_client_addr() | inet | address of the remote connection
inet_client_port() | int | port of the remote connection
inet_server_addr() | inet | address of the local connection
inet_server_port() | int | port of the local connection
pg_backend_pid() | int | Process ID of the server process attached to the current session
pg_conf_load_time() | timestamp with time zone | configuration load time
pg_is_other_temp_schema(oid) | boolean | is schema another session's temporary schema?
pg_listening_channels() | setof text | channel names that the session is currently listening on
pg_my_temp_schema() | oid | OID of session's temporary schema, or 0 if none
pg_postmaster_start_time() | timestamp with time zone | server start time
session_user | name | session user name
user | name | equivalent to current_user
version() | text | PostgreSQL version information

Note: current_catalog, current_schema, current_user, session_user, and user have special syntactic status in SQL: they must be called without trailing parentheses. (In PostgreSQL, parentheses can optionally be used with current_schema, but not with the others.)

The session_user is normally the user who initiated the current database connection; but superusers can change this setting with SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION. The current_user is the user identifier that is applicable for permission checking. Normally it is equal to the session user, but it can be changed with SET ROLE. It also changes during the execution of functions with the attribute SECURITY DEFINER. In Unix parlance, the session user is the "real user" and the current user is the "effective user".

current_schema returns the name of the schema that is first in the search path (or a null value if the search path is empty). This is the schema that will be used for any tables or other named objects that are created without specifying a target schema. current_schemas(boolean) returns an array of the names of all schemas presently in the search path. The Boolean option determines whether or not implicitly included system schemas such as pg_catalog are included in the returned search path.

Note: The search path can be altered at run time. The command is:

SET search_path TO schema [, schema, ...]

pg_listening_channels returns a set of names of channels that the current session is listening to. See LISTEN for more information.

inet_client_addr returns the IP address of the current client, and inet_client_port returns the port number. inet_server_addr returns the IP address on which the server accepted the current connection, and inet_server_port returns the port number. All these functions return NULL if the current connection is via a Unix-domain socket.

pg_my_temp_schema returns the OID of the current session's temporary schema, or zero if it has none (because it has not created any temporary tables). pg_is_other_temp_schema returns true if the given OID is the OID of another session's temporary schema. (This can be useful, for example, to exclude other sessions' temporary tables from a catalog display.)

pg_postmaster_start_time returns the timestamp with time zone when the server started.

pg_conf_load_time returns the timestamp with time zone when the server configuration files were last loaded. (If the current session was alive at the time, this will be the time when the session itself re-read the configuration files, so the reading will vary a little in different sessions. Otherwise it is the time when the postmaster process re-read the configuration files.)

version returns a string describing the PostgreSQL server's version.

Table 9-49 lists functions that allow the user to query object access privileges programmatically. See Section 5.6 for more information about privileges.

Table 9-49. Access Privilege Inquiry Functions

Name | Return Type | Description
has_any_column_privilege(user, table, privilege) | boolean | does user have privilege for any column of table
has_any_column_privilege(table, privilege) | boolean | does current user have privilege for any column of table
has_column_privilege(user, table, column, privilege) | boolean | does user have privilege for column
has_column_privilege(table, column, privilege) | boolean | does current user have privilege for column
has_database_privilege(user, database, privilege) | boolean | does user have privilege for database
has_database_privilege(database, privilege) | boolean | does current user have privilege for database
has_foreign_data_wrapper_privilege(user, fdw, privilege) | boolean | does user have privilege for foreign-data wrapper
has_foreign_data_wrapper_privilege(fdw, privilege) | boolean | does current user have privilege for foreign-data wrapper
has_function_privilege(user, function, privilege) | boolean | does user have privilege for function
has_function_privilege(function, privilege) | boolean | does current user have privilege for function
has_language_privilege(user, language, privilege) | boolean | does user have privilege for language
has_language_privilege(language, privilege) | boolean | does current user have privilege for language
has_schema_privilege(user, schema, privilege) | boolean | does user have privilege for schema
has_schema_privilege(schema, privilege) | boolean | does current user have privilege for schema
has_sequence_privilege(user, sequence, privilege) | boolean | does user have privilege for sequence
has_sequence_privilege(sequence, privilege) | boolean | does current user have privilege for sequence
has_server_privilege(user, server, privilege) | boolean | does user have privilege for foreign server
has_server_privilege(server, privilege) | boolean | does current user have privilege for foreign server
has_table_privilege(user, table, privilege) | boolean | does user have privilege for table
has_table_privilege(table, privilege) | boolean | does current user have privilege for table
has_tablespace_privilege(user, tablespace, privilege) | boolean | does user have privilege for tablespace
has_tablespace_privilege(tablespace, privilege) | boolean | does current user have privilege for tablespace
pg_has_role(user, role, privilege) | boolean | does user have privilege for role
pg_has_role(role, privilege) | boolean | does current user have privilege for role

has_table_privilege checks whether a user can access a table in a particular way. The user can be specified by name, by OID (pg_authid.oid), public to indicate the PUBLIC pseudo-role, or if the argument is omitted current_user is assumed. The table can be specified by name or by OID. (Thus, there are actually six variants of has_table_privilege, which can be distinguished by the number and types of their arguments.) When specifying by name, the name can be schema-qualified if necessary. The desired access privilege type is specified by a text string, which must evaluate to one of the values SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, TRUNCATE, REFERENCES, or TRIGGER. Optionally, WITH GRANT OPTION can be added to a privilege type to test whether the privilege is held with grant option. Also, multiple privilege types can be listed separated by commas, in which case the result will be true if any of the listed privileges is held. (Case of the privilege string is not significant, and extra whitespace is allowed between but not within privilege names.) Some examples:

SELECT has_table_privilege('myschema.mytable', 'select');
SELECT has_table_privilege('joe', 'mytable', 'INSERT, SELECT WITH GRANT OPTION');

has_sequence_privilege checks whether a user can access a sequence in a particular way. The possibilities for its arguments are analogous to has_table_privilege. The desired access privilege type must evaluate to one of USAGE, SELECT, or UPDATE.

has_any_column_privilege checks whether a user can access any column of a table in a particular way. Its argument possibilities are analogous to has_table_privilege, except that the desired access privilege type must evaluate to some combination of SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, or REFERENCES. Note that having any of these privileges at the table level implicitly grants it for each column of the table, so has_any_column_privilege will always return true if has_table_privilege does for the same arguments. But has_any_column_privilege also succeeds if there is a column-level grant of the privilege for at least one column.

has_column_privilege checks whether a user can access a column in a particular way. Its argument possibilities are analogous to has_table_privilege, with the addition that the column can be specified either by name or attribute number. The desired access privilege type must evaluate to some combination of SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, or REFERENCES. Note that having any of these privileges at the table level implicitly grants it for each column of the table.

has_database_privilege checks whether a user can access a database in a particular way. Its argument possibilities are analogous to has_table_privilege. The desired access privilege type must evaluate to some combination of CREATE, CONNECT, TEMPORARY, or TEMP (which is equivalent to TEMPORARY).

has_function_privilege checks whether a user can access a function in a particular way. Its argument possibilities are analogous to has_table_privilege. When specifying a function by a text string rather than by OID, the allowed input is the same as for the regprocedure data type (see Section 8.16). The desired access privilege type must evaluate to EXECUTE. An example is:

SELECT has_function_privilege('joeuser', 'myfunc(int, text)', 'execute');

has_foreign_data_wrapper_privilege checks whether a user can access a foreign-data wrapper in a particular way. Its argument possibilities are analogous to has_table_privilege. The desired access privilege type must evaluate to USAGE.

has_language_privilege checks whether a user can access a procedural language in a particular way. Its argument possibilities are analogous to has_table_privilege. The desired access privilege type must evaluate to USAGE.

has_schema_privilege checks whether a user can access a schema in a particular way. Its argument possibilities are analogous to has_table_privilege. The desired access privilege type must evaluate to some combination of CREATE or USAGE.

has_server_privilege checks whether a user can access a foreign server in a particular way. Its argument possibilities are analogous to has_table_privilege. The desired access privilege type must evaluate to USAGE.

has_tablespace_privilege checks whether a user can access a tablespace in a particular way. Its argument possibilities are analogous to has_table_privilege. The desired access privilege type must evaluate to CREATE.

pg_has_role checks whether a user can access a role in a particular way. Its argument possibilities are analogous to has_table_privilege, except that public is not allowed as a user name. The desired access privilege type must evaluate to some combination of MEMBER or USAGE. MEMBER denotes direct or indirect membership in the role (that is, the right to do SET ROLE), while USAGE denotes whether the privileges of the role are immediately available without doing SET ROLE.

Table 9-50 shows functions that determine whether a certain object is visible in the current schema search path. For example, a table is said to be visible if its containing schema is in the search path and no table of the same name appears earlier in the search path. This is equivalent to the statement that the table can be referenced by name without explicit schema qualification. To list the names of all visible tables:

SELECT relname FROM pg_class WHERE pg_table_is_visible(oid);

Table 9-50. Schema Visibility Inquiry Functions

Name | Return Type | Description
pg_collation_is_visible(collation_oid) | boolean | is collation visible in search path
pg_conversion_is_visible(conversion_oid) | boolean | is conversion visible in search path
pg_function_is_visible(function_oid) | boolean | is function visible in search path
pg_opclass_is_visible(opclass_oid) | boolean | is operator class visible in search path
pg_operator_is_visible(operator_oid) | boolean | is operator visible in search path
pg_table_is_visible(table_oid) | boolean | is table visible in search path
pg_ts_config_is_visible(config_oid) | boolean | is text search configuration visible in search path
pg_ts_dict_is_visible(dict_oid) | boolean | is text search dictionary visible in search path
pg_ts_parser_is_visible(parser_oid) | boolean | is text search parser visible in search path
pg_ts_template_is_visible(template_oid) | boolean | is text search template visible in search path
pg_type_is_visible(type_oid) | boolean | is type (or domain) visible in search path

Each function performs the visibility check for one type of database object. Note that pg_table_is_visible can also be used with views, indexes and sequences; pg_type_is_visible can also be used with domains. For functions and operators, an object in the search path is visible if there is no object of the same name and argument data type(s) earlier in the path. For operator classes, both name and associated index access method are considered.

All these functions require object OIDs to identify the object to be checked. If you want to test an object by name, it is convenient to use the OID alias types (regclass, regtype, regprocedure, regoperator, regconfig, or regdictionary), for example:

SELECT pg_type_is_visible('myschema.widget'::regtype);

Note that it would not make much sense to test a non-schema-qualified type name in this way — if the name can be recognized at all, it must be visible.

Table 9-51 lists functions that extract information from the system catalogs.

Table 9-51. System Catalog Information Functions

Name | Return Type | Description
format_type(type_oid, typemod) | text | get SQL name of a data type
pg_describe_object(catalog_id, object_id, object_sub_id) | text | get description of a database object
pg_get_constraintdef(constraint_oid) | text | get definition of a constraint
pg_get_constraintdef(constraint_oid, pretty_bool) | text | get definition of a constraint
pg_get_expr(pg_node_tree, relation_oid) | text | decompile internal form of an expression, assuming that any Vars in it refer to the relation indicated by the second parameter
pg_get_expr(pg_node_tree, relation_oid, pretty_bool) | text | decompile internal form of an expression, assuming that any Vars in it refer to the relation indicated by the second parameter
pg_get_functiondef(func_oid) | text | get definition of a function
pg_get_function_arguments(func_oid) | text | get argument list of function's definition (with default values)
pg_get_function_identity_arguments(func_oid) | text | get argument list to identify a function (without default values)
pg_get_function_result(func_oid) | text | get RETURNS clause for function
pg_get_indexdef(index_oid) | text | get CREATE INDEX command for index
pg_get_indexdef(index_oid, column_no, pretty_bool) | text | get CREATE INDEX command for index, or definition of just one index column when column_no is not zero
pg_get_keywords() | setof record | get list of SQL keywords and their categories
pg_get_ruledef(rule_oid) | text | get CREATE RULE command for rule
pg_get_ruledef(rule_oid, pretty_bool) | text | get CREATE RULE command for rule
pg_get_serial_sequence(table_name, column_name) | text | get name of the sequence that a serial or bigserial column uses
pg_get_triggerdef(trigger_oid) | text | get CREATE [ CONSTRAINT ] TRIGGER command for trigger
pg_get_triggerdef(trigger_oid, pretty_bool) | text | get CREATE [ CONSTRAINT ] TRIGGER command for trigger
pg_get_userbyid(role_oid) | name | get role name with given OID
pg_get_viewdef(view_name) | text | get underlying SELECT command for view (deprecated)
pg_get_viewdef(view_name, pretty_bool) | text | get underlying SELECT command for view (deprecated)
pg_get_viewdef(view_oid) | text | get underlying SELECT command for view
pg_get_viewdef(view_oid, pretty_bool) | text | get underlying SELECT command for view
pg_options_to_table(reloptions) | setof record | get the set of storage option name/value pairs
pg_tablespace_databases(tablespace_oid) | setof oid | get the set of database OIDs that have objects in the tablespace
pg_typeof(any) | regtype | get the data type of any value

format_type returns the SQL name of a data type that is identified by its type OID and possibly a type modifier. Pass NULL for the type modifier if no specific modifier is known.

pg_get_keywords returns a set of records describing the SQL keywords recognized by the server. The word column contains the keyword. The catcode column contains a category code: U for unreserved, C for column name, T for type or function name, or R for reserved. The catdesc column contains a possibly-localized string describing the category.

pg_get_constraintdef, pg_get_indexdef, pg_get_ruledef, and pg_get_triggerdef, respectively reconstruct the creating command for a constraint, index, rule, or trigger. (Note that this is a decompiled reconstruction, not the original text of the command.) pg_get_expr decompiles the internal form of an individual expression, such as the default value for a column. It can be useful when examining the contents of system catalogs. If the expression might contain Vars, specify the OID of the relation they refer to as the second parameter; if no Vars are expected, zero is sufficient. pg_get_viewdef reconstructs the SELECT query that defines a view. Most of these functions come in two variants, one of which can optionally "pretty-print" the result. The pretty-printed format is more readable, but the default format is more likely to be interpreted the same way by future versions of PostgreSQL; avoid using pretty-printed output for dump purposes. Passing false for the pretty-print parameter yields the same result as the variant that does not have the parameter at all.

pg_get_functiondef returns a complete CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION statement for a function. pg_get_function_arguments returns the argument list of a function, in the form it would need to appear in within CREATE FUNCTION. pg_get_function_result similarly returns the appropriate RETURNS clause for the function. pg_get_function_identity_arguments returns the argument list necessary to identify a function, in the form it would need to appear in within ALTER FUNCTION, for instance. This form omits default values.

pg_get_serial_sequence returns the name of the sequence associated with a column, or NULL if no sequence is associated with the column. The first input parameter is a table name with optional schema, and the second parameter is a column name. Because the first parameter is potentially a schema and table, it is not treated as a double-quoted identifier, meaning it is lower cased by default, while the second parameter, being just a column name, is treated as double-quoted and has its case preserved. The function returns a value suitably formatted for passing to sequence functions (see Section 9.15). This association can be modified or removed with ALTER SEQUENCE OWNED BY. (The function probably should have been called pg_get_owned_sequence; its current name reflects the fact that it's typically used with serial or bigserial columns.)

pg_get_userbyid extracts a role's name given its OID.

pg_options_to_table returns the set of storage option name/value pairs (option_name/option_value) when passed pg_class.reloptions or pg_attribute.attoptions.

pg_tablespace_databases allows a tablespace to be examined. It returns the set of OIDs of databases that have objects stored in the tablespace. If this function returns any rows, the tablespace is not empty and cannot be dropped. To display the specific objects populating the tablespace, you will need to connect to the databases identified by pg_tablespace_databases and query their pg_class catalogs.

pg_describe_object returns a description of a database object specified by catalog OID, object OID and a (possibly zero) sub-object ID. This is useful to determine the identity of an object as stored in the pg_depend catalog.

pg_typeof returns the OID of the data type of the value that is passed to it. This can be helpful for troubleshooting or dynamically constructing SQL queries. The function is declared as returning regtype, which is an OID alias type (see Section 8.16); this means that it is the same as an OID for comparison purposes but displays as a type name. For example:

SELECT pg_typeof(33);

 pg_typeof
-----------
 integer
(1 row)

SELECT typlen FROM pg_type WHERE oid = pg_typeof(33);
 typlen
--------
      4
(1 row)

The functions shown in Table 9-52 extract comments previously stored with the COMMENT command. A null value is returned if no comment could be found for the specified parameters.

Table 9-52. Comment Information Functions

Name | Return Type | Description
col_description(table_oid, column_number) | text | get comment for a table column
obj_description(object_oid, catalog_name) | text | get comment for a database object
obj_description(object_oid) | text | get comment for a database object (deprecated)
shobj_description(object_oid, catalog_name) | text | get comment for a shared database object

col_description returns the comment for a table column, which is specified by the OID of its table and its column number. (obj_description cannot be used for table columns since columns do not have OIDs of their own.)

The two-parameter form of obj_description returns the comment for a database object specified by its OID and the name of the containing system catalog. For example, obj_description(123456,'pg_class') would retrieve the comment for the table with OID 123456. The one-parameter form of obj_description requires only the object OID. It is deprecated since there is no guarantee that OIDs are unique across different system catalogs; therefore, the wrong comment might be returned.

shobj_description is used just like obj_description except it is used for retrieving comments on shared objects. Some system catalogs are global to all databases within each cluster, and the descriptions for objects in them are stored globally as well.

The functions shown in Table 9-53 provide server transaction information in an exportable form. The main use of these functions is to determine which transactions were committed between two snapshots.

Table 9-53. Transaction IDs and Snapshots

Name | Return Type | Description
txid_current() | bigint | get current transaction ID
txid_current_snapshot() | txid_snapshot | get current snapshot
txid_snapshot_xip(txid_snapshot) | setof bigint | get in-progress transaction IDs in snapshot
txid_snapshot_xmax(txid_snapshot) | bigint | get xmax of snapshot
txid_snapshot_xmin(txid_snapshot) | bigint | get xmin of snapshot
txid_visible_in_snapshot(bigint, txid_snapshot) | boolean | is transaction ID visible in snapshot? (do not use with subtransaction ids)

The internal transaction ID type (xid) is 32 bits wide and wraps around every 4 billion transactions. However, these functions export a 64-bit format that is extended with an "epoch" counter so it will not wrap around during the life of an installation. The data type used by these functions, txid_snapshot, stores information about transaction ID visibility at a particular moment in time. Its components are described in Table 9-54.

Table 9-54. Snapshot Components

Name | Description
xmin | Earliest transaction ID (txid) that is still active. All earlier transactions will either be committed and visible, or rolled back and dead.
xmax | First as-yet-unassigned txid. All txids greater than or equal to this are not yet started as of the time of the snapshot, and thus invisible.
xip_list | Active txids at the time of the snapshot. The list includes only those active txids between xmin and xmax; there might be active txids higher than xmax. A txid that is xmin <= txid < xmax and not in this list was already completed at the time of the snapshot, and thus either visible or dead according to its commit status. The list does not include txids of subtransactions.

txid_snapshot's textual representation is xmin:xmax:xip_list. For example 10:20:10,14,15 means xmin=10, xmax=20, xip_list=10, 14, 15.

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System Administration Functions

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9.24. System Administration Functions

Table 9-55 shows the functions available to query and alter run-time configuration parameters.

Table 9-55. Configuration Settings Functions

Name | Return Type | Description
current_setting(setting_name) | text | get current value of setting
set_config(setting_name, new_value, is_local) | text | set parameter and return new value

The function current_setting yields the current value of the setting setting_name. It corresponds to the SQL command SHOW. An example:

SELECT current_setting('datestyle');

 current_setting
-----------------
 ISO, MDY
(1 row)

set_config sets the parameter setting_name to new_value. If is_local is true, the new value will only apply to the current transaction. If you want the new value to apply for the current session, use false instead. The function corresponds to the SQL command SET. An example:

SELECT set_config('log_statement_stats', 'off', false);

 set_config
------------
 off
(1 row)

The functions shown in Table 9-56 send control signals to other server processes. Use of these functions is restricted to superusers.

Table 9-56. Server Signalling Functions

Name | Return Type | Description
pg_cancel_backend(pid int) | boolean | Cancel a backend's current query
pg_reload_conf() | boolean | Cause server processes to reload their configuration files
pg_rotate_logfile() | boolean | Rotate server's log file
pg_terminate_backend(pid int) | boolean | Terminate a backend

Each of these functions returns true if successful and false otherwise.

pg_cancel_backend and pg_terminate_backend send signals (SIGINT or SIGTERM respectively) to backend processes identified by process ID. The process ID of an active backend can be found from the procpid column of the pg_stat_activity view, or by listing the postgres processes on the server (using ps on Unix or the Task Manager on Windows).

pg_reload_conf sends a SIGHUP signal to the server, causing configuration files to be reloaded by all server processes.

pg_rotate_logfile signals the log-file manager to switch to a new output file immediately. This works only when the built-in log collector is running, since otherwise there is no log-file manager subprocess.

The functions shown in Table 9-57 assist in making on-line backups. These functions cannot be executed during recovery.

Table 9-57. Backup Control Functions

Name | Return Type | Description
pg_create_restore_point(name text) | text | Create a named point for performing restore (restricted to superusers)
pg_current_xlog_insert_location() | text | Get current transaction log insert location
pg_current_xlog_location() | text | Get current transaction log write location
pg_start_backup(label text [, fast boolean ]) | text | Prepare for performing on-line backup (restricted to superusers or replication roles)
pg_stop_backup() | text | Finish performing on-line backup (restricted to superusers or replication roles)
pg_switch_xlog() | text | Force switch to a new transaction log file (restricted to superusers)
pg_xlogfile_name(location text) | text | Convert transaction log location string to file name
pg_xlogfile_name_offset(location text) | text, integer | Convert transaction log location string to file name and decimal byte offset within file

pg_start_backup accepts an arbitrary user-defined label for the backup. (Typically this would be the name under which the backup dump file will be stored.) The function writes a backup label file (backup_label) into the database cluster's data directory, performs a checkpoint, and then returns the backup's starting transaction log location as text. The user can ignore this result value, but it is provided in case it is useful.

postgres=# select pg_start_backup('label_goes_here');
 pg_start_backup
-----------------
 0/D4445B8
(1 row)

There is an optional second parameter of type boolean. If true, it specifies executing pg_start_backup as quickly as possible. This forces an immediate checkpoint which will cause a spike in I/O operations, slowing any concurrently executing queries.

pg_stop_backup removes the label file created by pg_start_backup, and creates a backup history file in the transaction log archive area. The history file includes the label given to pg_start_backup, the starting and ending transaction log locations for the backup, and the starting and ending times of the backup. The return value is the backup's ending transaction log location (which again can be ignored). After recording the ending location, the current transaction log insertion point is automatically advanced to the next transaction log file, so that the ending transaction log file can be archived immediately to complete the backup.

pg_switch_xlog moves to the next transaction log file, allowing the current file to be archived (assuming you are using continuous archiving). The return value is the ending transaction log location + 1 within the just-completed transaction log file. If there has been no transaction log activity since the last transaction log switch, pg_switch_xlog does nothing and returns the start location of the transaction log file currently in use.

pg_create_restore_point creates a named transaction log record that can be used as recovery target, and returns the corresponding transaction log location. The given name can then be used with recovery_target_name to specify the point up to which recovery will proceed. Avoid creating multiple restore points with the same name, since recovery will stop at the first one whose name matches the recovery target.

pg_current_xlog_location displays the current transaction log write location in the same format used by the above functions. Similarly, pg_current_xlog_insert_location displays the current transaction log insertion point. The insertion point is the "logical" end of the transaction log at any instant, while the write location is the end of what has actually been written out from the server's internal buffers. The write location is the end of what can be examined from outside the server, and is usually what you want if you are interested in archiving partially-complete transaction log files. The insertion point is made available primarily for server debugging purposes. These are both read-only operations and do not require superuser permissions.

You can use pg_xlogfile_name_offset to extract the corresponding transaction log file name and byte offset from the results of any of the above functions. For example:

postgres=# SELECT * FROM pg_xlogfile_name_offset(pg_stop_backup());
        file_name         | file_offset
--------------------------+-------------
 00000001000000000000000D |     4039624
(1 row)

Similarly, pg_xlogfile_name extracts just the transaction log file name. When the given transaction log location is exactly at a transaction log file boundary, both these functions return the name of the preceding transaction log file. This is usually the desired behavior for managing transaction log archiving behavior, since the preceding file is the last one that currently needs to be archived.

For details about proper usage of these functions, see Section 24.3.

The functions shown in Table 9-58 provide information about the current status of the standby. These functions may be executed during both recovery and in normal running.

Table 9-58. Recovery Information Functions

Name | Return Type | Description
pg_is_in_recovery() | bool | True if recovery is still in progress.
pg_last_xlog_receive_location() | text | Get last transaction log location received and synced to disk by streaming replication. While streaming replication is in progress this will increase monotonically. If recovery has completed this will remain static at the value of the last WAL record received and synced to disk during recovery. If streaming replication is disabled, or if it has not yet started, the function returns NULL.
pg_last_xlog_replay_location() | text | Get last transaction log location replayed during recovery. If recovery is still in progress this will increase monotonically. If recovery has completed then this value will remain static at the value of the last WAL record applied during that recovery. When the server has been started normally without recovery the function returns NULL.
pg_last_xact_replay_timestamp() | timestamp with time zone | Get time stamp of last transaction replayed during recovery. This is the time at which the commit or abort WAL record for that transaction was generated on the primary. If no transactions have been replayed during recovery, this function returns NULL. Otherwise, if recovery is still in progress this will increase monotonically. If recovery has completed then this value will remain static at the value of the last transaction applied during that recovery. When the server has been started normally without recovery the function returns NULL.

The functions shown in Table 9-59 control the progress of recovery. These functions may be executed only during recovery.

Table 9-59. Recovery Control Functions

Name | Return Type | Description
pg_is_xlog_replay_paused() | bool | True if recovery is paused.
pg_xlog_replay_pause() | void | Pauses recovery immediately.
pg_xlog_replay_resume() | void | Restarts recovery if it was paused.

While recovery is paused no further database changes are applied. If in hot standby, all new queries will see the same consistent snapshot of the database, and no further query conflicts will be generated until recovery is resumed.

If streaming replication is disabled, the paused state may continue indefinitely without problem. While streaming replication is in progress WAL records will continue to be received, which will eventually fill available disk space, depending upon the duration of the pause, the rate of WAL generation and available disk space.

The functions shown in Table 9-60 calculate the disk space usage of database objects.

Table 9-60. Database Object Size Functions

Name | Return Type | Description
pg_column_size(any) | int | Number of bytes used to store a particular value (possibly compressed)
pg_database_size(oid) | bigint | Disk space used by the database with the specified OID
pg_database_size(name) | bigint | Disk space used by the database with the specified name
pg_indexes_size(regclass) | bigint | Total disk space used by indexes attached to the specified table
pg_relation_size(relation regclass, fork text) | bigint | Disk space used by the specified fork ('main', 'fsm', 'vm', or 'init') of the specified table or index
pg_relation_size(relation regclass) | bigint | Shorthand for pg_relation_size(..., 'main')
pg_size_pretty(bigint) | text | Converts a size in bytes into a human-readable format with size units
pg_table_size(regclass) | bigint | Disk space used by the specified table, excluding indexes (but including TOAST, free space map, and visibility map)
pg_tablespace_size(oid) | bigint | Disk space used by the tablespace with the specified OID
pg_tablespace_size(name) | bigint | Disk space used by the tablespace with the specified name
pg_total_relation_size(regclass) | bigint | Total disk space used by the specified table, including all indexes and TOAST data

pg_column_size shows the space used to store any individual data value.

pg_total_relation_size accepts the OID or name of a table or toast table, and returns the total on-disk space used for that table, including all associated indexes. This function is equivalent to pg_table_size + pg_indexes_size.

pg_table_size accepts the OID or name of a table and returns the disk space needed for that table, exclusive of indexes. (TOAST space, free space map, and visibility map are included.)

pg_indexes_size accepts the OID or name of a table and returns the total disk space used by all the indexes attached to that table.

pg_database_size and pg_tablespace_size accept the OID or name of a database or tablespace, and return the total disk space used therein. To use pg_database_size, you must have CONNECT permission on the specified database (which is granted by default). To use pg_tablespace_size, you must have CREATE permission on the specified tablespace, unless it is the default tablespace for the current database.

pg_relation_size accepts the OID or name of a table, index or toast table, and returns the on-disk size in bytes of one fork of that relation. (Note that for most purposes it is more convenient to use the higher-level functions pg_total_relation_size or pg_table_size, which sum the sizes of all forks.) With one argument, it returns the size of the main data fork of the relation. The second argument can be provided to specify which fork to examine:

  • 'main' returns the size of the main data fork of the relation.

  • 'fsm' returns the size of the Free Space Map (see Section 55.3) associated with the relation.

  • 'vm' returns the size of the Visibility Map (see Section 55.4) associated with the relation.

  • 'init' returns the size of the initialization fork, if any, (see Section 55.5) associated with the relation.

pg_size_pretty can be used to format the result of one of the other functions in a human-readable way, using kB, MB, GB or TB as appropriate.

The functions above that operate on tables or indexes accept a regclass argument, which is simply the OID of the table or index in the pg_class system catalog. You do not have to look up the OID by hand, however, since the regclass data type's input converter will do the work for you. Just write the table name enclosed in single quotes so that it looks like a literal constant. For compatibility with the handling of ordinary SQL names, the string will be converted to lower case unless it contains double quotes around the table name.

The functions shown in Table 9-61 assist in identifying the specific disk files associated with database objects.

Table 9-61. Database Object Location Functions

Name | Return Type | Description
pg_relation_filenode(relation regclass) | oid | Filenode number of the specified relation
pg_relation_filepath(relation regclass) | text | File path name of the specified relation

pg_relation_filenode accepts the OID or name of a table, index, sequence, or toast table, and returns the "filenode" number currently assigned to it. The filenode is the base component of the file name(s) used for the relation (see Section 55.1 for more information). For most tables the result is the same as pg_class.relfilenode, but for certain system catalogs relfilenode is zero and this function must be used to get the correct value. The function returns NULL if passed a relation that does not have storage, such as a view.

pg_relation_filepath is similar to pg_relation_filenode, but it returns the entire file path name (relative to the database cluster's data directory PGDATA) of the relation.

The functions shown in Table 9-62 provide native access to files on the machine hosting the server. Only files within the database cluster directory and the log_directory can be accessed. Use a relative path for files in the cluster directory, and a path matching the log_directory configuration setting for log files. Use of these functions is restricted to superusers.

Table 9-62. Generic File Access Functions

Name | Return Type | Description
pg_ls_dir(dirname text) | setof text | List the contents of a directory
pg_read_file(filename text [, offset bigint, length bigint]) | text | Return the contents of a text file
pg_read_binary_file(filename text [, offset bigint, length bigint]) | bytea | Return the contents of a file
pg_stat_file(filename text) | record | Return information about a file

pg_ls_dir returns all the names in the specified directory, except the special entries "." and "..".

pg_read_file returns part of a text file, starting at the given offset, returning at most length bytes (less if the end of file is reached first). If offset is negative, it is relative to the end of the file. If offset and length are omitted, the entire file is returned. The bytes read from the file are interpreted as a string in the server encoding; an error is thrown if they are not valid in that encoding.

pg_read_binary_file is similar to pg_read_file, except that the result is a bytea value; accordingly, no encoding checks are performed. In combination with the convert_from function, this function can be used to read a file in a specified encoding:

SELECT convert_from(pg_read_binary_file('file_in_utf8.txt'), 'UTF8');

pg_stat_file returns a record containing the file size, last accessed time stamp, last modified time stamp, last file status change time stamp (Unix platforms only), file creation time stamp (Windows only), and a boolean indicating if it is a directory. Typical usages include:

SELECT * FROM pg_stat_file('filename');
SELECT (pg_stat_file('filename')).modification;

The functions shown in Table 9-63 manage advisory locks. For details about proper use of these functions, see Section 13.3.4.

Table 9-63. Advisory Lock Functions

Name | Return Type | Description
pg_advisory_lock(key bigint) | void | Obtain exclusive session level advisory lock
pg_advisory_lock(key1 int, key2 int) | void | Obtain exclusive session level advisory lock
pg_advisory_lock_shared(key bigint) | void | Obtain shared session level advisory lock
pg_advisory_lock_shared(key1 int, key2 int) | void | Obtain shared session level advisory lock
pg_advisory_unlock(key bigint) | boolean | Release an exclusive session level advisory lock
pg_advisory_unlock(key1 int, key2 int) | boolean | Release an exclusive session level advisory lock
pg_advisory_unlock_all() | void | Release all session level advisory locks held by the current session
pg_advisory_unlock_shared(key bigint) | boolean | Release a shared session level advisory lock
pg_advisory_unlock_shared(key1 int, key2 int) | boolean | Release a shared session level advisory lock
pg_advisory_xact_lock(key bigint) | void | Obtain exclusive transaction level advisory lock
pg_advisory_xact_lock(key1 int, key2 int) | void | Obtain exclusive transaction level advisory lock
pg_advisory_xact_lock_shared(key bigint) | void | Obtain shared transaction level advisory lock
pg_advisory_xact_lock_shared(key1 int, key2 int) | void | Obtain shared transaction level advisory lock
pg_try_advisory_lock(key bigint) | boolean | Obtain exclusive session level advisory lock if available
pg_try_advisory_lock(key1 int, key2 int) | boolean | Obtain exclusive session level advisory lock if available
pg_try_advisory_lock_shared(key bigint) | boolean | Obtain shared session level advisory lock if available
pg_try_advisory_lock_shared(key1 int, key2 int) | boolean | Obtain shared session level advisory lock if available
pg_try_advisory_xact_lock(key bigint) | boolean | Obtain exclusive transaction level advisory lock if available
pg_try_advisory_xact_lock(key1 int, key2 int) | boolean | Obtain exclusive transaction level advisory lock if available
pg_try_advisory_xact_lock_shared(key bigint) | boolean | Obtain shared transaction level advisory lock if available
pg_try_advisory_xact_lock_shared(key1 int, key2 int) | boolean | Obtain shared transaction level advisory lock if available

pg_advisory_lock locks an application-defined resource, which can be identified either by a single 64-bit key value or two 32-bit key values (note that these two key spaces do not overlap). If another session already holds a lock on the same resource identifier, this function will wait until the resource becomes available. The lock is exclusive. Multiple lock requests stack, so that if the same resource is locked three times it must then be unlocked three times to be released for other sessions' use.

pg_advisory_lock_shared works the same as pg_advisory_lock, except the lock can be shared with other sessions requesting shared locks. Only would-be exclusive lockers are locked out.

pg_try_advisory_lock is similar to pg_advisory_lock, except the function will not wait for the lock to become available. It will either obtain the lock immediately and return true, or return false if the lock cannot be acquired immediately.

pg_try_advisory_lock_shared works the same as pg_try_advisory_lock, except it attempts to acquire a shared rather than an exclusive lock.

pg_advisory_unlock will release a previously-acquired exclusive session level advisory lock. It returns true if the lock is successfully released. If the lock was not held, it will return false, and in addition, an SQL warning will be reported by the server.

pg_advisory_unlock_shared works the same as pg_advisory_unlock, except it releases a shared session level advisory lock.

pg_advisory_unlock_all will release all session level advisory locks held by the current session. (This function is implicitly invoked at session end, even if the client disconnects ungracefully.)

pg_advisory_xact_lock works the same as pg_advisory_lock, except the lock is automatically released at the end of the current transaction and cannot be released explicitly.

pg_advisory_xact_lock_shared works the same as pg_advisory_lock_shared, except the lock is automatically released at the end of the current transaction and cannot be released explicitly.

pg_try_advisory_xact_lock works the same as pg_try_advisory_lock, except the lock, if acquired, is automatically released at the end of the current transaction and cannot be released explicitly.

pg_try_advisory_xact_lock_shared works the same as pg_try_advisory_lock_shared, except the lock, if acquired, is automatically released at the end of the current transaction and cannot be released explicitly.

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9.25. Trigger Functions

Currently PostgreSQL provides one built in trigger function, suppress_redundant_updates_trigger, which will prevent any update that does not actually change the data in the row from taking place, in contrast to the normal behavior which always performs the update regardless of whether or not the data has changed. (This normal behavior makes updates run faster, since no checking is required, and is also useful in certain cases.)

Ideally, you should normally avoid running updates that don't actually change the data in the record. Redundant updates can cost considerable unnecessary time, especially if there are lots of indexes to alter, and space in dead rows that will eventually have to be vacuumed. However, detecting such situations in client code is not always easy, or even possible, and writing expressions to detect them can be error-prone. An alternative is to use suppress_redundant_updates_trigger, which will skip updates that don't change the data. You should use this with care, however. The trigger takes a small but non-trivial time for each record, so if most of the records affected by an update are actually changed, use of this trigger will actually make the update run slower.

The suppress_redundant_updates_trigger function can be added to a table like this:

CREATE TRIGGER z_min_update
BEFORE UPDATE ON tablename
FOR EACH ROW EXECUTE PROCEDURE suppress_redundant_updates_trigger();

In most cases, you would want to fire this trigger last for each row. Bearing in mind that triggers fire in name order, you would then choose a trigger name that comes after the name of any other trigger you might have on the table.

For more information about creating triggers, see CREATE TRIGGER.

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Type Conversion

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Chapter 10. Type Conversion

Table of Contents
10.1. Overview
10.2. Operators
10.3. Functions
10.4. Value Storage
10.5. UNION, CASE, and Related Constructs

SQL statements can, intentionally or not, require the mixing of different data types in the same expression. PostgreSQL has extensive facilities for evaluating mixed-type expressions.

In many cases a user does not need to understand the details of the type conversion mechanism. However, implicit conversions done by PostgreSQL can affect the results of a query. When necessary, these results can be tailored by using explicit type conversion.

This chapter introduces the PostgreSQL type conversion mechanisms and conventions. Refer to the relevant sections in Chapter 8 and Chapter 9 for more information on specific data types and allowed functions and operators.

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Overview

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10.1. Overview

SQL is a strongly typed language. That is, every data item has an associated data type which determines its behavior and allowed usage. PostgreSQL has an extensible type system that is more general and flexible than other SQL implementations. Hence, most type conversion behavior in PostgreSQL is governed by general rules rather than by ad hoc heuristics. This allows the use of mixed-type expressions even with user-defined types.

The PostgreSQL scanner/parser divides lexical elements into five fundamental categories: integers, non-integer numbers, strings, identifiers, and key words. Constants of most non-numeric types are first classified as strings. The SQL language definition allows specifying type names with strings, and this mechanism can be used in PostgreSQL to start the parser down the correct path. For example, the query:

SELECT text 'Origin' AS "label", point '(0,0)' AS "value";

 label  | value
--------+-------
 Origin | (0,0)
(1 row)

has two literal constants, of type text and point. If a type is not specified for a string literal, then the placeholder type unknown is assigned initially, to be resolved in later stages as described below.

There are four fundamental SQL constructs requiring distinct type conversion rules in the PostgreSQL parser:

Function calls

Much of the PostgreSQL type system is built around a rich set of functions. Functions can have one or more arguments. Since PostgreSQL permits function overloading, the function name alone does not uniquely identify the function to be called; the parser must select the right function based on the data types of the supplied arguments.

Operators

PostgreSQL allows expressions with prefix and postfix unary (one-argument) operators, as well as binary (two-argument) operators. Like functions, operators can be overloaded, so the same problem of selecting the right operator exists.

Value Storage

SQL INSERT and UPDATE statements place the results of expressions into a table. The expressions in the statement must be matched up with, and perhaps converted to, the types of the target columns.

UNION, CASE, and related constructs

Since all query results from a unionized SELECT statement must appear in a single set of columns, the types of the results of each SELECT clause must be matched up and converted to a uniform set. Similarly, the result expressions of a CASE construct must be converted to a common type so that the CASE expression as a whole has a known output type. The same holds for ARRAY constructs, and for the GREATEST and LEAST functions.

The system catalogs store information about which conversions, or casts, exist between which data types, and how to perform those conversions. Additional casts can be added by the user with the CREATE CAST command. (This is usually done in conjunction with defining new data types. The set of casts between built-in types has been carefully crafted and is best not altered.)

An additional heuristic provided by the parser allows improved determination of the proper casting behavior among groups of types that have implicit casts. Data types are divided into several basic type categories, including boolean, numeric, string, bitstring, datetime, timespan, geometric, network, and user-defined. (For a list see Table 45-49; but note it is also possible to create custom type categories.) Within each category there can be one or more preferred types, which are preferred when there is a choice of possible types. With careful selection of preferred types and available implicit casts, it is possible to ensure that ambiguous expressions (those with multiple candidate parsing solutions) can be resolved in a useful way.

All type conversion rules are designed with several principles in mind:

  • Implicit conversions should never have surprising or unpredictable outcomes.

  • There should be no extra overhead in the parser or executor if a query does not need implicit type conversion. That is, if a query is well-formed and the types already match, then the query should execute without spending extra time in the parser and without introducing unnecessary implicit conversion calls in the query.

  • Additionally, if a query usually requires an implicit conversion for a function, and if then the user defines a new function with the correct argument types, the parser should use this new function and no longer do implicit conversion to use the old function.

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Operators

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10.2. Operators

The specific operator that is referenced by an operator expression is determined using the following procedure. Note that this procedure is indirectly affected by the precedence of the operators involved, since that will determine which sub-expressions are taken to be the inputs of which operators. See Section 4.1.6 for more information.

Operator Type Resolution

  1. Select the operators to be considered from the pg_operator system catalog. If a non-schema-qualified operator name was used (the usual case), the operators considered are those with the matching name and argument count that are visible in the current search path (see Section 5.7.3). If a qualified operator name was given, only operators in the specified schema are considered.

    1. If the search path finds multiple operators with identical argument types, only the one appearing earliest in the path is considered. Operators with different argument types are considered on an equal footing regardless of search path position.

  2. Check for an operator accepting exactly the input argument types. If one exists (there can be only one exact match in the set of operators considered), use it.

    1. If one argument of a binary operator invocation is of the unknown type, then assume it is the same type as the other argument for this check. Invocations involving two unknown inputs, or a unary operator with an unknown input, will never find a match at this step.

    2. If one argument of a binary operator invocation is of the unknown type and the other is of a domain type, next check to see if there is an operator accepting exactly the domain's base type on both sides; if so, use it.

  3. Look for the best match.

    1. Discard candidate operators for which the input types do not match and cannot be converted (using an implicit conversion) to match. unknown literals are assumed to be convertible to anything for this purpose. If only one candidate remains, use it; else continue to the next step.

    2. If any input argument is of a domain type, treat it as being of the domain's base type for all subsequent steps. This ensures that domains act like their base types for purposes of ambiguous-operator resolution.

    3. Run through all candidates and keep those with the most exact matches on input types. Keep all candidates if none have exact matches. If only one candidate remains, use it; else continue to the next step.

    4. Run through all candidates and keep those that accept preferred types (of the input data type's type category) at the most positions where type conversion will be required. Keep all candidates if none accept preferred types. If only one candidate remains, use it; else continue to the next step.

    5. If any input arguments are unknown, check the type categories accepted at those argument positions by the remaining candidates. At each position, select the string category if any candidate accepts that category. (This bias towards string is appropriate since an unknown-type literal looks like a string.) Otherwise, if all the remaining candidates accept the same type category, select that category; otherwise fail because the correct choice cannot be deduced without more clues. Now discard candidates that do not accept the selected type category. Furthermore, if any candidate accepts a preferred type in that category, discard candidates that accept non-preferred types for that argument.

    6. If only one candidate remains, use it. If no candidate or more than one candidate remains, then fail.

Some examples follow.

Example 10-1. Factorial Operator Type Resolution

There is only one factorial operator (postfix !) defined in the standard catalog, and it takes an argument of type bigint. The scanner assigns an initial type of integer to the argument in this query expression:

SELECT 40 ! AS "40 factorial";

                   40 factorial
--------------------------------------------------
 815915283247897734345611269596115894272000000000
(1 row)

So the parser does a type conversion on the operand and the query is equivalent to:

SELECT CAST(40 AS bigint) ! AS "40 factorial";

Example 10-2. String Concatenation Operator Type Resolution

A string-like syntax is used for working with string types and for working with complex extension types. Strings with unspecified type are matched with likely operator candidates.

An example with one unspecified argument:

SELECT text 'abc' || 'def' AS "text and unknown";

 text and unknown
------------------
 abcdef
(1 row)

In this case the parser looks to see if there is an operator taking text for both arguments. Since there is, it assumes that the second argument should be interpreted as type text.

Here is a concatenation of two values of unspecified types:

SELECT 'abc' || 'def' AS "unspecified";

 unspecified
-------------
 abcdef
(1 row)

In this case there is no initial hint for which type to use, since no types are specified in the query. So, the parser looks for all candidate operators and finds that there are candidates accepting both string-category and bit-string-category inputs. Since string category is preferred when available, that category is selected, and then the preferred type for strings, text, is used as the specific type to resolve the unknown-type literals as.

Example 10-3. Absolute-Value and Negation Operator Type Resolution

The PostgreSQL operator catalog has several entries for the prefix operator @, all of which implement absolute-value operations for various numeric data types. One of these entries is for type float8, which is the preferred type in the numeric category. Therefore, PostgreSQL will use that entry when faced with an unknown input:

SELECT @ '-4.5' AS "abs";
 abs
-----
 4.5
(1 row)

Here the system has implicitly resolved the unknown-type literal as type float8 before applying the chosen operator. We can verify that float8 and not some other type was used:

SELECT @ '-4.5e500' AS "abs";

ERROR:  "-4.5e500" is out of range for type double precision

On the other hand, the prefix operator ~ (bitwise negation) is defined only for integer data types, not for float8. So, if we try a similar case with ~, we get:

SELECT ~ '20' AS "negation";

ERROR:  operator is not unique: ~ "unknown"
HINT:  Could not choose a best candidate operator. You might need to add
explicit type casts.

This happens because the system cannot decide which of the several possible ~ operators should be preferred. We can help it out with an explicit cast:

SELECT ~ CAST('20' AS int8) AS "negation";

 negation
----------
      -21
(1 row)

Example 10-4. Custom Operator on a Domain Type

Users sometimes try to declare operators applying just to a domain type. This is possible but is not nearly as useful as it might seem, because the operator resolution rules are designed to select operators applying to the domain's base type. As an example consider

CREATE DOMAIN mytext AS text CHECK(...);
CREATE FUNCTION mytext_eq_text (mytext, text) RETURNS boolean AS ...;
CREATE OPERATOR = (procedure=mytext_eq_text, leftarg=mytext, rightarg=text);
CREATE TABLE mytable (val mytext);

SELECT * FROM mytable WHERE val = 'foo';

This query will not use the custom operator. The parser will first see if there is a mytext = mytext operator (step 2.a), which there is not; then it will consider the domain's base type text, and see if there is a text = text operator (step 2.b), which there is; so it resolves the unknown-type literal as text and uses the text = text operator. The only way to get the custom operator to be used is to explicitly cast the literal:

SELECT * FROM mytable WHERE val = text 'foo';

so that the mytext = text operator is found immediately according to the exact-match rule. If the best-match rules are reached, they actively discriminate against operators on domain types. If they did not, such an operator would create too many ambiguous-operator failures, because the casting rules always consider a domain as castable to or from its base type, and so the domain operator would be considered usable in all the same cases as a similarly-named operator on the base type.

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Functions

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10.3. Functions

The specific function that is referenced by a function call is determined using the following procedure.

Function Type Resolution

  1. Select the functions to be considered from the pg_proc system catalog. If a non-schema-qualified function name was used, the functions considered are those with the matching name and argument count that are visible in the current search path (see Section 5.7.3). If a qualified function name was given, only functions in the specified schema are considered.

    1. If the search path finds multiple functions of identical argument types, only the one appearing earliest in the path is considered. Functions of different argument types are considered on an equal footing regardless of search path position.

    2. If a function is declared with a VARIADIC array parameter, and the call does not use the VARIADIC keyword, then the function is treated as if the array parameter were replaced by one or more occurrences of its element type, as needed to match the call. After such expansion the function might have effective argument types identical to some non-variadic function. In that case the function appearing earlier in the search path is used, or if the two functions are in the same schema, the non-variadic one is preferred.

    3. Functions that have default values for parameters are considered to match any call that omits zero or more of the defaultable parameter positions. If more than one such function matches a call, the one appearing earliest in the search path is used. If there are two or more such functions in the same schema with identical parameter types in the non-defaulted positions (which is possible if they have different sets of defaultable parameters), the system will not be able to determine which to prefer, and so an "ambiguous function call" error will result if no better match to the call can be found.

  2. Check for a function accepting exactly the input argument types. If one exists (there can be only one exact match in the set of functions considered), use it. (Cases involving unknown will never find a match at this step.)

  3. If no exact match is found, see if the function call appears to be a special type conversion request. This happens if the function call has just one argument and the function name is the same as the (internal) name of some data type. Furthermore, the function argument must be either an unknown-type literal, or a type that is binary-coercible to the named data type, or a type that could be converted to the named data type by applying that type's I/O functions (that is, the conversion is either to or from one of the standard string types). When these conditions are met, the function call is treated as a form of CAST specification. [1]

  4. Look for the best match.

    1. Discard candidate functions for which the input types do not match and cannot be converted (using an implicit conversion) to match. unknown literals are assumed to be convertible to anything for this purpose. If only one candidate remains, use it; else continue to the next step.

    2. If any input argument is of a domain type, treat it as being of the domain's base type for all subsequent steps. This ensures that domains act like their base types for purposes of ambiguous-function resolution.

    3. Run through all candidates and keep those with the most exact matches on input types. Keep all candidates if none have exact matches. If only one candidate remains, use it; else continue to the next step.

    4. Run through all candidates and keep those that accept preferred types (of the input data type's type category) at the most positions where type conversion will be required. Keep all candidates if none accept preferred types. If only one candidate remains, use it; else continue to the next step.

    5. If any input arguments are unknown, check the type categories accepted at those argument positions by the remaining candidates. At each position, select the string category if any candidate accepts that category. (This bias towards string is appropriate since an unknown-type literal looks like a string.) Otherwise, if all the remaining candidates accept the same type category, select that category; otherwise fail because the correct choice cannot be deduced without more clues. Now discard candidates that do not accept the selected type category. Furthermore, if any candidate accepts a preferred type in that category, discard candidates that accept non-preferred types for that argument.

    6. If only one candidate remains, use it. If no candidate or more than one candidate remains, then fail.

Note that the "best match" rules are identical for operator and function type resolution. Some examples follow.

Example 10-5. Rounding Function Argument Type Resolution

There is only one round function that takes two arguments; it takes a first argument of type numeric and a second argument of type integer. So the following query automatically converts the first argument of type integer to numeric:

SELECT round(4, 4);

 round
--------
 4.0000
(1 row)

That query is actually transformed by the parser to:

SELECT round(CAST (4 AS numeric), 4);

Since numeric constants with decimal points are initially assigned the type numeric, the following query will require no type conversion and therefore might be slightly more efficient:

SELECT round(4.0, 4);

Example 10-6. Substring Function Type Resolution

There are several substr functions, one of which takes types text and integer. If called with a string constant of unspecified type, the system chooses the candidate function that accepts an argument of the preferred category string (namely of type text).

SELECT substr('1234', 3);

 substr
--------
     34
(1 row)

If the string is declared to be of type varchar, as might be the case if it comes from a table, then the parser will try to convert it to become text:

SELECT substr(varchar '1234', 3);

 substr
--------
     34
(1 row)

This is transformed by the parser to effectively become:

SELECT substr(CAST (varchar '1234' AS text), 3);

Note: The parser learns from the pg_cast catalog that text and varchar are binary-compatible, meaning that one can be passed to a function that accepts the other without doing any physical conversion. Therefore, no type conversion call is really inserted in this case.

And, if the function is called with an argument of type integer, the parser will try to convert that to text:

SELECT substr(1234, 3);
ERROR:  function substr(integer, integer) does not exist
HINT:  No function matches the given name and argument types. You might need
to add explicit type casts.

This does not work because integer does not have an implicit cast to text. An explicit cast will work, however:

SELECT substr(CAST (1234 AS text), 3);

 substr
--------
     34
(1 row)

Notes

[1]

The reason for this step is to support function-style cast specifications in cases where there is not an actual cast function. If there is a cast function, it is conventionally named after its output type, and so there is no need to have a special case. See CREATE CAST for additional commentary.

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Value Storage

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10.4. Value Storage

Values to be inserted into a table are converted to the destination column's data type according to the following steps.

Value Storage Type Conversion

  1. Check for an exact match with the target.

  2. Otherwise, try to convert the expression to the target type. This will succeed if there is a registered cast between the two types. If the expression is an unknown-type literal, the contents of the literal string will be fed to the input conversion routine for the target type.

  3. Check to see if there is a sizing cast for the target type. A sizing cast is a cast from that type to itself. If one is found in the pg_cast catalog, apply it to the expression before storing into the destination column. The implementation function for such a cast always takes an extra parameter of type integer, which receives the destination column's atttypmod value (typically its declared length, although the interpretation of atttypmod varies for different data types), and it may take a third boolean parameter that says whether the cast is explicit or implicit. The cast function is responsible for applying any length-dependent semantics such as size checking or truncation.

Example 10-7. character Storage Type Conversion

For a target column declared as character(20) the following statement shows that the stored value is sized correctly:

CREATE TABLE vv (v character(20));
INSERT INTO vv SELECT 'abc' || 'def';
SELECT v, octet_length(v) FROM vv;

          v           | octet_length
----------------------+--------------
 abcdef               |           20
(1 row)

What has really happened here is that the two unknown literals are resolved to text by default, allowing the || operator to be resolved as text concatenation. Then the text result of the operator is converted to bpchar ("blank-padded char", the internal name of the character data type) to match the target column type. (Since the conversion from text to bpchar is binary-coercible, this conversion does not insert any real function call.) Finally, the sizing function bpchar(bpchar, integer, boolean) is found in the system catalog and applied to the operator's result and the stored column length. This type-specific function performs the required length check and addition of padding spaces.

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UNION, CASE, and Related Constructs

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10.5. UNION, CASE, and Related Constructs

SQL UNION constructs must match up possibly dissimilar types to become a single result set. The resolution algorithm is applied separately to each output column of a union query. The INTERSECT and EXCEPT constructs resolve dissimilar types in the same way as UNION. The CASE, ARRAY, VALUES, GREATEST and LEAST constructs use the identical algorithm to match up their component expressions and select a result data type.

Type Resolution for UNION, CASE, and Related Constructs

  1. If all inputs are of the same type, and it is not unknown, resolve as that type.

  2. If any input is of a domain type, treat it as being of the domain's base type for all subsequent steps. [1]

  3. If all inputs are of type unknown, resolve as type text (the preferred type of the string category). Otherwise, unknown inputs are ignored.

  4. If the non-unknown inputs are not all of the same type category, fail.

  5. Choose the first non-unknown input type which is a preferred type in that category, if there is one.

  6. Otherwise, choose the last non-unknown input type that allows all the preceding non-unknown inputs to be implicitly converted to it. (There always is such a type, since at least the first type in the list must satisfy this condition.)

  7. Convert all inputs to the selected type. Fail if there is not a conversion from a given input to the selected type.

Some examples follow.

Example 10-8. Type Resolution with Underspecified Types in a Union

SELECT text 'a' AS "text" UNION SELECT 'b';

 text
------
 a
 b
(2 rows)

Here, the unknown-type literal 'b' will be resolved to type text.

Example 10-9. Type Resolution in a Simple Union

SELECT 1.2 AS "numeric" UNION SELECT 1;

 numeric
---------
       1
     1.2
(2 rows)

The literal 1.2 is of type numeric, and the integer value 1 can be cast implicitly to numeric, so that type is used.

Example 10-10. Type Resolution in a Transposed Union

SELECT 1 AS "real" UNION SELECT CAST('2.2' AS REAL);

 real
------
    1
  2.2
(2 rows)

Here, since type real cannot be implicitly cast to integer, but integer can be implicitly cast to real, the union result type is resolved as real.

Notes

[1]

Somewhat like the treatment of domain inputs for operators and functions, this behavior allows a domain type to be preserved through a UNION or similar construct, so long as the user is careful to ensure that all inputs are implicitly or explicitly of that exact type. Otherwise the domain's base type will be preferred.

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Indexes

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Chapter 11. Indexes

Table of Contents
11.1. Introduction
11.2. Index Types
11.3. Multicolumn Indexes
11.4. Indexes and ORDER BY
11.5. Combining Multiple Indexes
11.6. Unique Indexes
11.7. Indexes on Expressions
11.8. Partial Indexes
11.9. Operator Classes and Operator Families
11.10. Indexes and Collations
11.11. Examining Index Usage

Indexes are a common way to enhance database performance. An index allows the database server to find and retrieve specific rows much faster than it could do without an index. But indexes also add overhead to the database system as a whole, so they should be used sensibly.

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Introduction

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11.1. Introduction

Suppose we have a table similar to this:

CREATE TABLE test1 (
    id integer,
    content varchar
);

and the application issues many queries of the form:

SELECT content FROM test1 WHERE id = constant;

With no advance preparation, the system would have to scan the entire test1 table, row by row, to find all matching entries. If there are many rows in test1 and only a few rows (perhaps zero or one) that would be returned by such a query, this is clearly an inefficient method. But if the system has been instructed to maintain an index on the id column, it can use a more efficient method for locating matching rows. For instance, it might only have to walk a few levels deep into a search tree.

A similar approach is used in most non-fiction books: terms and concepts that are frequently looked up by readers are collected in an alphabetic index at the end of the book. The interested reader can scan the index relatively quickly and flip to the appropriate page(s), rather than having to read the entire book to find the material of interest. Just as it is the task of the author to anticipate the items that readers are likely to look up, it is the task of the database programmer to foresee which indexes will be useful.

The following command can be used to create an index on the id column, as discussed:

CREATE INDEX test1_id_index ON test1 (id);

The name test1_id_index can be chosen freely, but you should pick something that enables you to remember later what the index was for.

To remove an index, use the DROP INDEX command. Indexes can be added to and removed from tables at any time.

Once an index is created, no further intervention is required: the system will update the index when the table is modified, and it will use the index in queries when it thinks doing so would be more efficient than a sequential table scan. But you might have to run the ANALYZE command regularly to update statistics to allow the query planner to make educated decisions. See Chapter 14 for information about how to find out whether an index is used and when and why the planner might choose not to use an index.

Indexes can also benefit UPDATE and DELETE commands with search conditions. Indexes can moreover be used in join searches. Thus, an index defined on a column that is part of a join condition can also significantly speed up queries with joins.

Creating an index on a large table can take a long time. By default, PostgreSQL allows reads (SELECT statements) to occur on the table in parallel with index creation, but writes (INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE) are blocked until the index build is finished. In production environments this is often unacceptable. It is possible to allow writes to occur in parallel with index creation, but there are several caveats to be aware of — for more information see Building Indexes Concurrently.

After an index is created, the system has to keep it synchronized with the table. This adds overhead to data manipulation operations. Therefore indexes that are seldom or never used in queries should be removed.

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Index Types

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11.2. Index Types

PostgreSQL provides several index types: B-tree, Hash, GiST and GIN. Each index type uses a different algorithm that is best suited to different types of queries. By default, the CREATE INDEX command creates B-tree indexes, which fit the most common situations.

B-trees can handle equality and range queries on data that can be sorted into some ordering. In particular, the PostgreSQL query planner will consider using a B-tree index whenever an indexed column is involved in a comparison using one of these operators:

<
<=
=
>=
>

Constructs equivalent to combinations of these operators, such as BETWEEN and IN, can also be implemented with a B-tree index search. Also, an IS NULL or IS NOT NULL condition on an index column can be used with a B-tree index.

The optimizer can also use a B-tree index for queries involving the pattern matching operators LIKE and ~ if the pattern is a constant and is anchored to the beginning of the string — for example, col LIKE 'foo%' or col ~ '^foo', but not col LIKE '%bar'. However, if your database does not use the C locale you will need to create the index with a special operator class to support indexing of pattern-matching queries; see Section 11.9 below. It is also possible to use B-tree indexes for ILIKE and ~*, but only if the pattern starts with non-alphabetic characters, i.e., characters that are not affected by upper/lower case conversion.

B-tree indexes can also be used to retrieve data in sorted order. This is not always faster than a simple scan and sort, but it is often helpful.

Hash indexes can only handle simple equality comparisons. The query planner will consider using a hash index whenever an indexed column is involved in a comparison using the = operator. The following command is used to create a hash index:

CREATE INDEX name ON table USING hash (column);

Caution

Hash index operations are not presently WAL-logged, so hash indexes might need to be rebuilt with REINDEX after a database crash if there were unwritten changes. Also, changes to hash indexes are not replicated over streaming or file-based replication after the initial base backup, so they give wrong answers to queries that subsequently use them. For these reasons, hash index use is presently discouraged.

GiST indexes are not a single kind of index, but rather an infrastructure within which many different indexing strategies can be implemented. Accordingly, the particular operators with which a GiST index can be used vary depending on the indexing strategy (the operator class). As an example, the standard distribution of PostgreSQL includes GiST operator classes for several two-dimensional geometric data types, which support indexed queries using these operators:

<<
&<
&>
>>
<<|
&<|
|&>
|>>
@>
<@
~=
&&

(See Section 9.11 for the meaning of these operators.) Many other GiST operator classes are available in the contrib collection or as separate projects. For more information see Chapter 53.

GiST indexes are also capable of optimizing "nearest-neighbor" searches, such as

SELECT * FROM places ORDER BY location <-> point '(101,456)' LIMIT 10;

which finds the ten places closest to a given target point. The ability to do this is again dependent on the particular operator class being used.

GIN indexes are inverted indexes which can handle values that contain more than one key, arrays for example. Like GiST, GIN can support many different user-defined indexing strategies and the particular operators with which a GIN index can be used vary depending on the indexing strategy. As an example, the standard distribution of PostgreSQL includes GIN operator classes for one-dimensional arrays, which support indexed queries using these operators:

<@
@>
=
&&

(See Section 9.17 for the meaning of these operators.) Many other GIN operator classes are available in the contrib collection or as separate projects. For more information see Chapter 54.

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Multicolumn Indexes

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11.3. Multicolumn Indexes

An index can be defined on more than one column of a table. For example, if you have a table of this form:

CREATE TABLE test2 (
  major int,
  minor int,
  name varchar
);

(say, you keep your /dev directory in a database...) and you frequently issue queries like:

SELECT name FROM test2 WHERE major = constant AND minor = constant;

then it might be appropriate to define an index on the columns major and minor together, e.g.:

CREATE INDEX test2_mm_idx ON test2 (major, minor);

Currently, only the B-tree, GiST and GIN index types support multicolumn indexes. Up to 32 columns can be specified. (This limit can be altered when building PostgreSQL; see the file pg_config_manual.h.)

A multicolumn B-tree index can be used with query conditions that involve any subset of the index's columns, but the index is most efficient when there are constraints on the leading (leftmost) columns. The exact rule is that equality constraints on leading columns, plus any inequality constraints on the first column that does not have an equality constraint, will be used to limit the portion of the index that is scanned. Constraints on columns to the right of these columns are checked in the index, so they save visits to the table proper, but they do not reduce the portion of the index that has to be scanned. For example, given an index on (a, b, c) and a query condition WHERE a = 5 AND b >= 42 AND c < 77, the index would have to be scanned from the first entry with a = 5 and b = 42 up through the last entry with a = 5. Index entries with c >= 77 would be skipped, but they'd still have to be scanned through. This index could in principle be used for queries that have constraints on b and/or c with no constraint on a — but the entire index would have to be scanned, so in most cases the planner would prefer a sequential table scan over using the index.

A multicolumn GiST index can be used with query conditions that involve any subset of the index's columns. Conditions on additional columns restrict the entries returned by the index, but the condition on the first column is the most important one for determining how much of the index needs to be scanned. A GiST index will be relatively ineffective if its first column has only a few distinct values, even if there are many distinct values in additional columns.

A multicolumn GIN index can be used with query conditions that involve any subset of the index's columns. Unlike B-tree or GiST, index search effectiveness is the same regardless of which index column(s) the query conditions use.

Of course, each column must be used with operators appropriate to the index type; clauses that involve other operators will not be considered.

Multicolumn indexes should be used sparingly. In most situations, an index on a single column is sufficient and saves space and time. Indexes with more than three columns are unlikely to be helpful unless the usage of the table is extremely stylized. See also Section 11.5 for some discussion of the merits of different index configurations.

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Indexes and ORDER BY

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11.4. Indexes and ORDER BY

In addition to simply finding the rows to be returned by a query, an index may be able to deliver them in a specific sorted order. This allows a query's ORDER BY specification to be honored without a separate sorting step. Of the index types currently supported by PostgreSQL, only B-tree can produce sorted output — the other index types return matching rows in an unspecified, implementation-dependent order.

The planner will consider satisfying an ORDER BY specification either by scanning an available index that matches the specification, or by scanning the table in physical order and doing an explicit sort. For a query that requires scanning a large fraction of the table, an explicit sort is likely to be faster than using an index because it requires less disk I/O due to following a sequential access pattern. Indexes are more useful when only a few rows need be fetched. An important special case is ORDER BY in combination with LIMIT n: an explicit sort will have to process all the data to identify the first n rows, but if there is an index matching the ORDER BY, the first n rows can be retrieved directly, without scanning the remainder at all.

By default, B-tree indexes store their entries in ascending order with nulls last. This means that a forward scan of an index on column x produces output satisfying ORDER BY x (or more verbosely, ORDER BY x ASC NULLS LAST). The index can also be scanned backward, producing output satisfying ORDER BY x DESC (or more verbosely, ORDER BY x DESC NULLS FIRST, since NULLS FIRST is the default for ORDER BY DESC).

You can adjust the ordering of a B-tree index by including the options ASC, DESC, NULLS FIRST, and/or NULLS LAST when creating the index; for example:

CREATE INDEX test2_info_nulls_low ON test2 (info NULLS FIRST);
CREATE INDEX test3_desc_index ON test3 (id DESC NULLS LAST);

An index stored in ascending order with nulls first can satisfy either ORDER BY x ASC NULLS FIRST or ORDER BY x DESC NULLS LAST depending on which direction it is scanned in.

You might wonder why bother providing all four options, when two options together with the possibility of backward scan would cover all the variants of ORDER BY. In single-column indexes the options are indeed redundant, but in multicolumn indexes they can be useful. Consider a two-column index on (x, y): this can satisfy ORDER BY x, y if we scan forward, or ORDER BY x DESC, y DESC if we scan backward. But it might be that the application frequently needs to use ORDER BY x ASC, y DESC. There is no way to get that ordering from a plain index, but it is possible if the index is defined as (x ASC, y DESC) or (x DESC, y ASC).

Obviously, indexes with non-default sort orderings are a fairly specialized feature, but sometimes they can produce tremendous speedups for certain queries. Whether it's worth maintaining such an index depends on how often you use queries that require a special sort ordering.

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Combining Multiple Indexes

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11.5. Combining Multiple Indexes

A single index scan can only use query clauses that use the index's columns with operators of its operator class and are joined with AND. For example, given an index on (a, b) a query condition like WHERE a = 5 AND b = 6 could use the index, but a query like WHERE a = 5 OR b = 6 could not directly use the index.

Fortunately, PostgreSQL has the ability to combine multiple indexes (including multiple uses of the same index) to handle cases that cannot be implemented by single index scans. The system can form AND and OR conditions across several index scans. For example, a query like WHERE x = 42 OR x = 47 OR x = 53 OR x = 99 could be broken down into four separate scans of an index on x, each scan using one of the query clauses. The results of these scans are then ORed together to produce the result. Another example is that if we have separate indexes on x and y, one possible implementation of a query like WHERE x = 5 AND y = 6 is to use each index with the appropriate query clause and then AND together the index results to identify the result rows.

To combine multiple indexes, the system scans each needed index and prepares a bitmap in memory giving the locations of table rows that are reported as matching that index's conditions. The bitmaps are then ANDed and ORed together as needed by the query. Finally, the actual table rows are visited and returned. The table rows are visited in physical order, because that is how the bitmap is laid out; this means that any ordering of the original indexes is lost, and so a separate sort step will be needed if the query has an ORDER BY clause. For this reason, and because each additional index scan adds extra time, the planner will sometimes choose to use a simple index scan even though additional indexes are available that could have been used as well.

In all but the simplest applications, there are various combinations of indexes that might be useful, and the database developer must make trade-offs to decide which indexes to provide. Sometimes multicolumn indexes are best, but sometimes it's better to create separate indexes and rely on the index-combination feature. For example, if your workload includes a mix of queries that sometimes involve only column x, sometimes only column y, and sometimes both columns, you might choose to create two separate indexes on x and y, relying on index combination to process the queries that use both columns. You could also create a multicolumn index on (x, y). This index would typically be more efficient than index combination for queries involving both columns, but as discussed in Section 11.3, it would be almost useless for queries involving only y, so it should not be the only index. A combination of the multicolumn index and a separate index on y would serve reasonably well. For queries involving only x, the multicolumn index could be used, though it would be larger and hence slower than an index on x alone. The last alternative is to create all three indexes, but this is probably only reasonable if the table is searched much more often than it is updated and all three types of query are common. If one of the types of query is much less common than the others, you'd probably settle for creating just the two indexes that best match the common types.

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Unique Indexes

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11.6. Unique Indexes

Indexes can also be used to enforce uniqueness of a column's value, or the uniqueness of the combined values of more than one column.

CREATE UNIQUE INDEX name ON table (column [, ...]);

Currently, only B-tree indexes can be declared unique.

When an index is declared unique, multiple table rows with equal indexed values are not allowed. Null values are not considered equal. A multicolumn unique index will only reject cases where all indexed columns are equal in multiple rows.

PostgreSQL automatically creates a unique index when a unique constraint or primary key is defined for a table. The index covers the columns that make up the primary key or unique constraint (a multicolumn index, if appropriate), and is the mechanism that enforces the constraint.

Note: The preferred way to add a unique constraint to a table is ALTER TABLE ... ADD CONSTRAINT. The use of indexes to enforce unique constraints could be considered an implementation detail that should not be accessed directly. One should, however, be aware that there's no need to manually create indexes on unique columns; doing so would just duplicate the automatically-created index.

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Indexes on Expressions

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11.7. Indexes on Expressions

An index column need not be just a column of the underlying table, but can be a function or scalar expression computed from one or more columns of the table. This feature is useful to obtain fast access to tables based on the results of computations.

For example, a common way to do case-insensitive comparisons is to use the lower function:

SELECT * FROM test1 WHERE lower(col1) = 'value';

This query can use an index if one has been defined on the result of the lower(col1) function:

CREATE INDEX test1_lower_col1_idx ON test1 (lower(col1));

If we were to declare this index UNIQUE, it would prevent creation of rows whose col1 values differ only in case, as well as rows whose col1 values are actually identical. Thus, indexes on expressions can be used to enforce constraints that are not definable as simple unique constraints.

As another example, if one often does queries like:

SELECT * FROM people WHERE (first_name || ' ' || last_name) = 'John Smith';

then it might be worth creating an index like this:

CREATE INDEX people_names ON people ((first_name || ' ' || last_name));

The syntax of the CREATE INDEX command normally requires writing parentheses around index expressions, as shown in the second example. The parentheses can be omitted when the expression is just a function call, as in the first example.

Index expressions are relatively expensive to maintain, because the derived expression(s) must be computed for each row upon insertion and whenever it is updated. However, the index expressions are not recomputed during an indexed search, since they are already stored in the index. In both examples above, the system sees the query as just WHERE indexedcolumn = 'constant' and so the speed of the search is equivalent to any other simple index query. Thus, indexes on expressions are useful when retrieval speed is more important than insertion and update speed.

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Partial Indexes

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11.8. Partial Indexes

A partial index is an index built over a subset of a table; the subset is defined by a conditional expression (called the predicate of the partial index). The index contains entries only for those table rows that satisfy the predicate. Partial indexes are a specialized feature, but there are several situations in which they are useful.

One major reason for using a partial index is to avoid indexing common values. Since a query searching for a common value (one that accounts for more than a few percent of all the table rows) will not use the index anyway, there is no point in keeping those rows in the index at all. This reduces the size of the index, which will speed up those queries that do use the index. It will also speed up many table update operations because the index does not need to be updated in all cases. Example 11-1 shows a possible application of this idea.

Example 11-1. Setting up a Partial Index to Exclude Common Values

Suppose you are storing web server access logs in a database. Most accesses originate from the IP address range of your organization but some are from elsewhere (say, employees on dial-up connections). If your searches by IP are primarily for outside accesses, you probably do not need to index the IP range that corresponds to your organization's subnet.

Assume a table like this:

CREATE TABLE access_log (
    url varchar,
    client_ip inet,
    ...
);

To create a partial index that suits our example, use a command such as this:

CREATE INDEX access_log_client_ip_ix ON access_log (client_ip)
WHERE NOT (client_ip > inet '192.168.100.0' AND
           client_ip < inet '192.168.100.255');

A typical query that can use this index would be:

SELECT *
FROM access_log
WHERE url = '/index.html' AND client_ip = inet '212.78.10.32';

A query that cannot use this index is:

SELECT *
FROM access_log
WHERE client_ip = inet '192.168.100.23';

Observe that this kind of partial index requires that the common values be predetermined, so such partial indexes are best used for data distributions that do not change. The indexes can be recreated occasionally to adjust for new data distributions, but this adds maintenance effort.

Another possible use for a partial index is to exclude values from the index that the typical query workload is not interested in; this is shown in Example 11-2. This results in the same advantages as listed above, but it prevents the "uninteresting" values from being accessed via that index, even if an index scan might be profitable in that case. Obviously, setting up partial indexes for this kind of scenario will require a lot of care and experimentation.

Example 11-2. Setting up a Partial Index to Exclude Uninteresting Values

If you have a table that contains both billed and unbilled orders, where the unbilled orders take up a small fraction of the total table and yet those are the most-accessed rows, you can improve performance by creating an index on just the unbilled rows. The command to create the index would look like this:

CREATE INDEX orders_unbilled_index ON orders (order_nr)
    WHERE billed is not true;

A possible query to use this index would be:

SELECT * FROM orders WHERE billed is not true AND order_nr < 10000;

However, the index can also be used in queries that do not involve order_nr at all, e.g.:

SELECT * FROM orders WHERE billed is not true AND amount > 5000.00;

This is not as efficient as a partial index on the amount column would be, since the system has to scan the entire index. Yet, if there are relatively few unbilled orders, using this partial index just to find the unbilled orders could be a win.

Note that this query cannot use this index:

SELECT * FROM orders WHERE order_nr = 3501;

The order 3501 might be among the billed or unbilled orders.

Example 11-2 also illustrates that the indexed column and the column used in the predicate do not need to match. PostgreSQL supports partial indexes with arbitrary predicates, so long as only columns of the table being indexed are involved. However, keep in mind that the predicate must match the conditions used in the queries that are supposed to benefit from the index. To be precise, a partial index can be used in a query only if the system can recognize that the WHERE condition of the query mathematically implies the predicate of the index. PostgreSQL does not have a sophisticated theorem prover that can recognize mathematically equivalent expressions that are written in different forms. (Not only is such a general theorem prover extremely difficult to create, it would probably be too slow to be of any real use.) The system can recognize simple inequality implications, for example "x < 1" implies "x < 2"; otherwise the predicate condition must exactly match part of the query's WHERE condition or the index will not be recognized as usable. Matching takes place at query planning time, not at run time. As a result, parameterized query clauses do not work with a partial index. For example a prepared query with a parameter might specify "x < ?" which will never imply "x < 2" for all possible values of the parameter.

A third possible use for partial indexes does not require the index to be used in queries at all. The idea here is to create a unique index over a subset of a table, as in Example 11-3. This enforces uniqueness among the rows that satisfy the index predicate, without constraining those that do not.

Example 11-3. Setting up a Partial Unique Index

Suppose that we have a table describing test outcomes. We wish to ensure that there is only one "successful" entry for a given subject and target combination, but there might be any number of "unsuccessful" entries. Here is one way to do it:

CREATE TABLE tests (
    subject text,
    target text,
    success boolean,
    ...
);

CREATE UNIQUE INDEX tests_success_constraint ON tests (subject, target)
    WHERE success;

This is a particularly efficient approach when there are few successful tests and many unsuccessful ones.

Finally, a partial index can also be used to override the system's query plan choices. Also, data sets with peculiar distributions might cause the system to use an index when it really should not. In that case the index can be set up so that it is not available for the offending query. Normally, PostgreSQL makes reasonable choices about index usage (e.g., it avoids them when retrieving common values, so the earlier example really only saves index size, it is not required to avoid index usage), and grossly incorrect plan choices are cause for a bug report.

Keep in mind that setting up a partial index indicates that you know at least as much as the query planner knows, in particular you know when an index might be profitable. Forming this knowledge requires experience and understanding of how indexes in PostgreSQL work. In most cases, the advantage of a partial index over a regular index will be minimal.

More information about partial indexes can be found in The case for partial indexes , Partial indexing in POSTGRES: research project, and Generalized Partial Indexes (cached version) .

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Operator Classes and Operator Families

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11.9. Operator Classes and Operator Families

An index definition can specify an operator class for each column of an index.

CREATE INDEX name ON table (column opclass [sort options] [, ...]);

The operator class identifies the operators to be used by the index for that column. For example, a B-tree index on the type int4 would use the int4_ops class; this operator class includes comparison functions for values of type int4. In practice the default operator class for the column's data type is usually sufficient. The main reason for having operator classes is that for some data types, there could be more than one meaningful index behavior. For example, we might want to sort a complex-number data type either by absolute value or by real part. We could do this by defining two operator classes for the data type and then selecting the proper class when making an index. The operator class determines the basic sort ordering (which can then be modified by adding sort options COLLATE, ASC/DESC and/or NULLS FIRST/NULLS LAST).

There are also some built-in operator classes besides the default ones:

  • The operator classes text_pattern_ops, varchar_pattern_ops, and bpchar_pattern_ops support B-tree indexes on the types text, varchar, and char respectively. The difference from the default operator classes is that the values are compared strictly character by character rather than according to the locale-specific collation rules. This makes these operator classes suitable for use by queries involving pattern matching expressions (LIKE or POSIX regular expressions) when the database does not use the standard "C" locale. As an example, you might index a varchar column like this:

    CREATE INDEX test_index ON test_table (col varchar_pattern_ops);

    Note that you should also create an index with the default operator class if you want queries involving ordinary <, <=, >, or >= comparisons to use an index. Such queries cannot use the xxx_pattern_ops operator classes. (Ordinary equality comparisons can use these operator classes, however.) It is possible to create multiple indexes on the same column with different operator classes. If you do use the C locale, you do not need the xxx_pattern_ops operator classes, because an index with the default operator class is usable for pattern-matching queries in the C locale.

The following query shows all defined operator classes:

SELECT am.amname AS index_method,
       opc.opcname AS opclass_name
    FROM pg_am am, pg_opclass opc
    WHERE opc.opcmethod = am.oid
    ORDER BY index_method, opclass_name;

An operator class is actually just a subset of a larger structure called an operator family. In cases where several data types have similar behaviors, it is frequently useful to define cross-data-type operators and allow these to work with indexes. To do this, the operator classes for each of the types must be grouped into the same operator family. The cross-type operators are members of the family, but are not associated with any single class within the family.

This query shows all defined operator families and all the operators included in each family:

SELECT am.amname AS index_method,
       opf.opfname AS opfamily_name,
       amop.amopopr::regoperator AS opfamily_operator
    FROM pg_am am, pg_opfamily opf, pg_amop amop
    WHERE opf.opfmethod = am.oid AND
          amop.amopfamily = opf.oid
    ORDER BY index_method, opfamily_name, opfamily_operator;

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Indexes and Collations

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11.10. Indexes and Collations

An index can support only one collation per index column. If multiple collations are of interest, multiple indexes may be needed.

Consider these statements:

CREATE TABLE test1c (
    id integer,
    content varchar COLLATE "x"
);

CREATE INDEX test1c_content_index ON test1c (content);

The index automatically uses the collation of the underlying column. So a query of the form

SELECT * FROM test1c WHERE content > constant;

could use the index, because the comparison will by default use the collation of the column. However, this index cannot accelerate queries that involve some other collation. So if queries of the form, say,

SELECT * FROM test1c WHERE content > constant COLLATE "y";

are also of interest, an additional index could be created that supports the "y" collation, like this:

CREATE INDEX test1c_content_y_index ON test1c (content COLLATE "y");

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Examining Index Usage

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11.11. Examining Index Usage

Although indexes in PostgreSQL do not need maintenance or tuning, it is still important to check which indexes are actually used by the real-life query workload. Examining index usage for an individual query is done with the EXPLAIN command; its application for this purpose is illustrated in Section 14.1. It is also possible to gather overall statistics about index usage in a running server, as described in Section 27.2.

It is difficult to formulate a general procedure for determining which indexes to create. There are a number of typical cases that have been shown in the examples throughout the previous sections. A good deal of experimentation is often necessary. The rest of this section gives some tips for that:

  • Always run ANALYZE first. This command collects statistics about the distribution of the values in the table. This information is required to estimate the number of rows returned by a query, which is needed by the planner to assign realistic costs to each possible query plan. In absence of any real statistics, some default values are assumed, which are almost certain to be inaccurate. Examining an application's index usage without having run ANALYZE is therefore a lost cause. See Section 23.1.3 and Section 23.1.5 for more information.

  • Use real data for experimentation. Using test data for setting up indexes will tell you what indexes you need for the test data, but that is all.

    It is especially fatal to use very small test data sets. While selecting 1000 out of 100000 rows could be a candidate for an index, selecting 1 out of 100 rows will hardly be, because the 100 rows probably fit within a single disk page, and there is no plan that can beat sequentially fetching 1 disk page.

    Also be careful when making up test data, which is often unavoidable when the application is not yet in production. Values that are very similar, completely random, or inserted in sorted order will skew the statistics away from the distribution that real data would have.

  • When indexes are not used, it can be useful for testing to force their use. There are run-time parameters that can turn off various plan types (see Section 18.7.1). For instance, turning off sequential scans (enable_seqscan) and nested-loop joins (enable_nestloop), which are the most basic plans, will force the system to use a different plan. If the system still chooses a sequential scan or nested-loop join then there is probably a more fundamental reason why the index is not being used; for example, the query condition does not match the index. (What kind of query can use what kind of index is explained in the previous sections.)

  • If forcing index usage does use the index, then there are two possibilities: Either the system is right and using the index is indeed not appropriate, or the cost estimates of the query plans are not reflecting reality. So you should time your query with and without indexes. The EXPLAIN ANALYZE command can be useful here.

  • If it turns out that the cost estimates are wrong, there are, again, two possibilities. The total cost is computed from the per-row costs of each plan node times the selectivity estimate of the plan node. The costs estimated for the plan nodes can be adjusted via run-time parameters (described in Section 18.7.2). An inaccurate selectivity estimate is due to insufficient statistics. It might be possible to improve this by tuning the statistics-gathering parameters (see ALTER TABLE).

    If you do not succeed in adjusting the costs to be more appropriate, then you might have to resort to forcing index usage explicitly. You might also want to contact the PostgreSQL developers to examine the issue.

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Full Text Search

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Chapter 12. Full Text Search

Table of Contents
12.1. Introduction
12.1.1. What Is a Document?
12.1.2. Basic Text Matching
12.1.3. Configurations
12.2. Tables and Indexes
12.2.1. Searching a Table
12.2.2. Creating Indexes
12.3. Controlling Text Search
12.3.1. Parsing Documents
12.3.2. Parsing Queries
12.3.3. Ranking Search Results
12.3.4. Highlighting Results
12.4. Additional Features
12.4.1. Manipulating Documents
12.4.2. Manipulating Queries
12.4.3. Triggers for Automatic Updates
12.4.4. Gathering Document Statistics
12.5. Parsers
12.6. Dictionaries
12.6.1. Stop Words
12.6.2. Simple Dictionary
12.6.3. Synonym Dictionary
12.6.4. Thesaurus Dictionary
12.6.5. Ispell Dictionary
12.6.6. Snowball Dictionary
12.7. Configuration Example
12.8. Testing and Debugging Text Search
12.8.1. Configuration Testing
12.8.2. Parser Testing
12.8.3. Dictionary Testing
12.9. GiST and GIN Index Types
12.10. psql Support
12.11. Limitations
12.12. Migration from Pre-8.3 Text Search
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Introduction

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12.1. Introduction

Full Text Searching (or just text search) provides the capability to identify natural-language documents that satisfy a query, and optionally to sort them by relevance to the query. The most common type of search is to find all documents containing given query terms and return them in order of their similarity to the query. Notions of query and similarity are very flexible and depend on the specific application. The simplest search considers query as a set of words and similarity as the frequency of query words in the document.

Textual search operators have existed in databases for years. PostgreSQL has ~, ~*, LIKE, and ILIKE operators for textual data types, but they lack many essential properties required by modern information systems:

  • There is no linguistic support, even for English. Regular expressions are not sufficient because they cannot easily handle derived words, e.g., satisfies and satisfy. You might miss documents that contain satisfies, although you probably would like to find them when searching for satisfy. It is possible to use OR to search for multiple derived forms, but this is tedious and error-prone (some words can have several thousand derivatives).

  • They provide no ordering (ranking) of search results, which makes them ineffective when thousands of matching documents are found.

  • They tend to be slow because there is no index support, so they must process all documents for every search.

Full text indexing allows documents to be preprocessed and an index saved for later rapid searching. Preprocessing includes:

  • Parsing documents into tokens. It is useful to identify various classes of tokens, e.g., numbers, words, complex words, email addresses, so that they can be processed differently. In principle token classes depend on the specific application, but for most purposes it is adequate to use a predefined set of classes. PostgreSQL uses a parser to perform this step. A standard parser is provided, and custom parsers can be created for specific needs.

  • Converting tokens into lexemes. A lexeme is a string, just like a token, but it has been normalized so that different forms of the same word are made alike. For example, normalization almost always includes folding upper-case letters to lower-case, and often involves removal of suffixes (such as s or es in English). This allows searches to find variant forms of the same word, without tediously entering all the possible variants. Also, this step typically eliminates stop words, which are words that are so common that they are useless for searching. (In short, then, tokens are raw fragments of the document text, while lexemes are words that are believed useful for indexing and searching.) PostgreSQL uses dictionaries to perform this step. Various standard dictionaries are provided, and custom ones can be created for specific needs.

  • Storing preprocessed documents optimized for searching. For example, each document can be represented as a sorted array of normalized lexemes. Along with the lexemes it is often desirable to store positional information to use for proximity ranking, so that a document that contains a more "dense" region of query words is assigned a higher rank than one with scattered query words.

Dictionaries allow fine-grained control over how tokens are normalized. With appropriate dictionaries, you can:

  • Define stop words that should not be indexed.

  • Map synonyms to a single word using Ispell.

  • Map phrases to a single word using a thesaurus.

  • Map different variations of a word to a canonical form using an Ispell dictionary.

  • Map different variations of a word to a canonical form using Snowball stemmer rules.

A data type tsvector is provided for storing preprocessed documents, along with a type tsquery for representing processed queries (Section 8.11). There are many functions and operators available for these data types (Section 9.13), the most important of which is the match operator @@, which we introduce in Section 12.1.2. Full text searches can be accelerated using indexes (Section 12.9).

12.1.1. What Is a Document?

A document is the unit of searching in a full text search system; for example, a magazine article or email message. The text search engine must be able to parse documents and store associations of lexemes (key words) with their parent document. Later, these associations are used to search for documents that contain query words.

For searches within PostgreSQL, a document is normally a textual field within a row of a database table, or possibly a combination (concatenation) of such fields, perhaps stored in several tables or obtained dynamically. In other words, a document can be constructed from different parts for indexing and it might not be stored anywhere as a whole. For example:

SELECT title || ' ' ||  author || ' ' ||  abstract || ' ' || body AS document
FROM messages
WHERE mid = 12;

SELECT m.title || ' ' || m.author || ' ' || m.abstract || ' ' || d.body AS document
FROM messages m, docs d
WHERE mid = did AND mid = 12;

Note: Actually, in these example queries, coalesce should be used to prevent a single NULL attribute from causing a NULL result for the whole document.

Another possibility is to store the documents as simple text files in the file system. In this case, the database can be used to store the full text index and to execute searches, and some unique identifier can be used to retrieve the document from the file system. However, retrieving files from outside the database requires superuser permissions or special function support, so this is usually less convenient than keeping all the data inside PostgreSQL. Also, keeping everything inside the database allows easy access to document metadata to assist in indexing and display.

For text search purposes, each document must be reduced to the preprocessed tsvector format. Searching and ranking are performed entirely on the tsvector representation of a document — the original text need only be retrieved when the document has been selected for display to a user. We therefore often speak of the tsvector as being the document, but of course it is only a compact representation of the full document.

12.1.2. Basic Text Matching

Full text searching in PostgreSQL is based on the match operator @@, which returns true if a tsvector (document) matches a tsquery (query). It doesn't matter which data type is written first:

SELECT 'a fat cat sat on a mat and ate a fat rat'::tsvector @@ 'cat & rat'::tsquery;
 ?column?
----------
 t

SELECT 'fat & cow'::tsquery @@ 'a fat cat sat on a mat and ate a fat rat'::tsvector;
 ?column?
----------
 f

As the above example suggests, a tsquery is not just raw text, any more than a tsvector is. A tsquery contains search terms, which must be already-normalized lexemes, and may combine multiple terms using AND, OR, and NOT operators. (For details see Section 8.11.) There are functions to_tsquery and plainto_tsquery that are helpful in converting user-written text into a proper tsquery, for example by normalizing words appearing in the text. Similarly, to_tsvector is used to parse and normalize a document string. So in practice a text search match would look more like this:

SELECT to_tsvector('fat cats ate fat rats') @@ to_tsquery('fat & rat');
 ?column?
----------
 t

Observe that this match would not succeed if written as

SELECT 'fat cats ate fat rats'::tsvector @@ to_tsquery('fat & rat');
 ?column?
----------
 f

since here no normalization of the word rats will occur. The elements of a tsvector are lexemes, which are assumed already normalized, so rats does not match rat.

The @@ operator also supports text input, allowing explicit conversion of a text string to tsvector or tsquery to be skipped in simple cases. The variants available are:

tsvector @@ tsquery
tsquery  @@ tsvector
text @@ tsquery
text @@ text

The first two of these we saw already. The form text @@ tsquery is equivalent to to_tsvector(x) @@ y. The form text @@ text is equivalent to to_tsvector(x) @@ plainto_tsquery(y).

12.1.3. Configurations

The above are all simple text search examples. As mentioned before, full text search functionality includes the ability to do many more things: skip indexing certain words (stop words), process synonyms, and use sophisticated parsing, e.g., parse based on more than just white space. This functionality is controlled by text search configurations. PostgreSQL comes with predefined configurations for many languages, and you can easily create your own configurations. (psql's \dF command shows all available configurations.)

During installation an appropriate configuration is selected and default_text_search_config is set accordingly in postgresql.conf. If you are using the same text search configuration for the entire cluster you can use the value in postgresql.conf. To use different configurations throughout the cluster but the same configuration within any one database, use ALTER DATABASE ... SET. Otherwise, you can set default_text_search_config in each session.

Each text search function that depends on a configuration has an optional regconfig argument, so that the configuration to use can be specified explicitly. default_text_search_config is used only when this argument is omitted.

To make it easier to build custom text search configurations, a configuration is built up from simpler database objects. PostgreSQL's text search facility provides four types of configuration-related database objects:

  • Text search parsers break documents into tokens and classify each token (for example, as words or numbers).

  • Text search dictionaries convert tokens to normalized form and reject stop words.

  • Text search templates provide the functions underlying dictionaries. (A dictionary simply specifies a template and a set of parameters for the template.)

  • Text search configurations select a parser and a set of dictionaries to use to normalize the tokens produced by the parser.

Text search parsers and templates are built from low-level C functions; therefore it requires C programming ability to develop new ones, and superuser privileges to install one into a database. (There are examples of add-on parsers and templates in the contrib/ area of the PostgreSQL distribution.) Since dictionaries and configurations just parameterize and connect together some underlying parsers and templates, no special privilege is needed to create a new dictionary or configuration. Examples of creating custom dictionaries and configurations appear later in this chapter.

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Tables and Indexes

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12.2. Tables and Indexes

The examples in the previous section illustrated full text matching using simple constant strings. This section shows how to search table data, optionally using indexes.

12.2.1. Searching a Table

It is possible to do a full text search without an index. A simple query to print the title of each row that contains the word friend in its body field is:

SELECT title
FROM pgweb
WHERE to_tsvector('english', body) @@ to_tsquery('english', 'friend');

This will also find related words such as friends and friendly, since all these are reduced to the same normalized lexeme.

The query above specifies that the english configuration is to be used to parse and normalize the strings. Alternatively we could omit the configuration parameters:

SELECT title
FROM pgweb
WHERE to_tsvector(body) @@ to_tsquery('friend');

This query will use the configuration set by default_text_search_config.

A more complex example is to select the ten most recent documents that contain create and table in the title or body:

SELECT title
FROM pgweb
WHERE to_tsvector(title || ' ' || body) @@ to_tsquery('create & table')
ORDER BY last_mod_date DESC
LIMIT 10;

For clarity we omitted the coalesce function calls which would be needed to find rows that contain NULL in one of the two fields.

Although these queries will work without an index, most applications will find this approach too slow, except perhaps for occasional ad-hoc searches. Practical use of text searching usually requires creating an index.

12.2.2. Creating Indexes

We can create a GIN index (Section 12.9) to speed up text searches:

CREATE INDEX pgweb_idx ON pgweb USING gin(to_tsvector('english', body));

Notice that the 2-argument version of to_tsvector is used. Only text search functions that specify a configuration name can be used in expression indexes (Section 11.7). This is because the index contents must be unaffected by default_text_search_config. If they were affected, the index contents might be inconsistent because different entries could contain tsvectors that were created with different text search configurations, and there would be no way to guess which was which. It would be impossible to dump and restore such an index correctly.

Because the two-argument version of to_tsvector was used in the index above, only a query reference that uses the 2-argument version of to_tsvector with the same configuration name will use that index. That is, WHERE to_tsvector('english', body) @@ 'a & b' can use the index, but WHERE to_tsvector(body) @@ 'a & b' cannot. This ensures that an index will be used only with the same configuration used to create the index entries.

It is possible to set up more complex expression indexes wherein the configuration name is specified by another column, e.g.:

CREATE INDEX pgweb_idx ON pgweb USING gin(to_tsvector(config_name, body));

where config_name is a column in the pgweb table. This allows mixed configurations in the same index while recording which configuration was used for each index entry. This would be useful, for example, if the document collection contained documents in different languages. Again, queries that are meant to use the index must be phrased to match, e.g., WHERE to_tsvector(config_name, body) @@ 'a & b'.

Indexes can even concatenate columns:

CREATE INDEX pgweb_idx ON pgweb USING gin(to_tsvector('english', title || ' ' || body));

Another approach is to create a separate tsvector column to hold the output of to_tsvector. This example is a concatenation of title and body, using coalesce to ensure that one field will still be indexed when the other is NULL:

ALTER TABLE pgweb ADD COLUMN textsearchable_index_col tsvector;
UPDATE pgweb SET textsearchable_index_col =
     to_tsvector('english', coalesce(title,'') || ' ' || coalesce(body,''));

Then we create a GIN index to speed up the search:

CREATE INDEX textsearch_idx ON pgweb USING gin(textsearchable_index_col);

Now we are ready to perform a fast full text search:

SELECT title
FROM pgweb
WHERE textsearchable_index_col @@ to_tsquery('create & table')
ORDER BY last_mod_date DESC
LIMIT 10;

When using a separate column to store the tsvector representation, it is necessary to create a trigger to keep the tsvector column current anytime title or body changes. Section 12.4.3 explains how to do that.

One advantage of the separate-column approach over an expression index is that it is not necessary to explicitly specify the text search configuration in queries in order to make use of the index. As shown in the example above, the query can depend on default_text_search_config. Another advantage is that searches will be faster, since it will not be necessary to redo the to_tsvector calls to verify index matches. (This is more important when using a GiST index than a GIN index; see Section 12.9.) The expression-index approach is simpler to set up, however, and it requires less disk space since the tsvector representation is not stored explicitly.

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Controlling Text Search

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12.3. Controlling Text Search

To implement full text searching there must be a function to create a tsvector from a document and a tsquery from a user query. Also, we need to return results in a useful order, so we need a function that compares documents with respect to their relevance to the query. It's also important to be able to display the results nicely. PostgreSQL provides support for all of these functions.

12.3.1. Parsing Documents

PostgreSQL provides the function to_tsvector for converting a document to the tsvector data type.

to_tsvector([ config regconfig, ] document text) returns tsvector

to_tsvector parses a textual document into tokens, reduces the tokens to lexemes, and returns a tsvector which lists the lexemes together with their positions in the document. The document is processed according to the specified or default text search configuration. Here is a simple example:

SELECT to_tsvector('english', 'a fat  cat sat on a mat - it ate a fat rats');
                  to_tsvector
-----------------------------------------------------
 'ate':9 'cat':3 'fat':2,11 'mat':7 'rat':12 'sat':4

In the example above we see that the resulting tsvector does not contain the words a, on, or it, the word rats became rat, and the punctuation sign - was ignored.

The to_tsvector function internally calls a parser which breaks the document text into tokens and assigns a type to each token. For each token, a list of dictionaries (Section 12.6) is consulted, where the list can vary depending on the token type. The first dictionary that recognizes the token emits one or more normalized lexemes to represent the token. For example, rats became rat because one of the dictionaries recognized that the word rats is a plural form of rat. Some words are recognized as stop words (Section 12.6.1), which causes them to be ignored since they occur too frequently to be useful in searching. In our example these are a, on, and it. If no dictionary in the list recognizes the token then it is also ignored. In this example that happened to the punctuation sign - because there are in fact no dictionaries assigned for its token type (Space symbols), meaning space tokens will never be indexed. The choices of parser, dictionaries and which types of tokens to index are determined by the selected text search configuration (Section 12.7). It is possible to have many different configurations in the same database, and predefined configurations are available for various languages. In our example we used the default configuration english for the English language.

The function setweight can be used to label the entries of a tsvector with a given weight, where a weight is one of the letters A, B, C, or D. This is typically used to mark entries coming from different parts of a document, such as title versus body. Later, this information can be used for ranking of search results.

Because to_tsvector(NULL) will return NULL, it is recommended to use coalesce whenever a field might be null. Here is the recommended method for creating a tsvector from a structured document:

UPDATE tt SET ti =
    setweight(to_tsvector(coalesce(title,'')), 'A')    ||
    setweight(to_tsvector(coalesce(keyword,'')), 'B')  ||
    setweight(to_tsvector(coalesce(abstract,'')), 'C') ||
    setweight(to_tsvector(coalesce(body,'')), 'D');

Here we have used setweight to label the source of each lexeme in the finished tsvector, and then merged the labeled tsvector values using the tsvector concatenation operator ||. (Section 12.4.1 gives details about these operations.)

12.3.2. Parsing Queries

PostgreSQL provides the functions to_tsquery and plainto_tsquery for converting a query to the tsquery data type. to_tsquery offers access to more features than plainto_tsquery, but is less forgiving about its input.

to_tsquery([ config regconfig, ] querytext text) returns tsquery

to_tsquery creates a tsquery value from querytext, which must consist of single tokens separated by the Boolean operators & (AND), | (OR) and ! (NOT). These operators can be grouped using parentheses. In other words, the input to to_tsquery must already follow the general rules for tsquery input, as described in Section 8.11. The difference is that while basic tsquery input takes the tokens at face value, to_tsquery normalizes each token to a lexeme using the specified or default configuration, and discards any tokens that are stop words according to the configuration. For example:

SELECT to_tsquery('english', 'The & Fat & Rats');
  to_tsquery
---------------
 'fat' & 'rat'

As in basic tsquery input, weight(s) can be attached to each lexeme to restrict it to match only tsvector lexemes of those weight(s). For example:

SELECT to_tsquery('english', 'Fat | Rats:AB');
    to_tsquery
------------------
 'fat' | 'rat':AB

Also, * can be attached to a lexeme to specify prefix matching:

SELECT to_tsquery('supern:*A & star:A*B');
        to_tsquery
--------------------------
 'supern':*A & 'star':*AB

Such a lexeme will match any word in a tsvector that begins with the given string.

to_tsquery can also accept single-quoted phrases. This is primarily useful when the configuration includes a thesaurus dictionary that may trigger on such phrases. In the example below, a thesaurus contains the rule supernovae stars : sn:

SELECT to_tsquery('''supernovae stars'' & !crab');
  to_tsquery
---------------
 'sn' & !'crab'

Without quotes, to_tsquery will generate a syntax error for tokens that are not separated by an AND or OR operator.

plainto_tsquery([ config regconfig, ] querytext text) returns tsquery

plainto_tsquery transforms unformatted text querytext to tsquery. The text is parsed and normalized much as for to_tsvector, then the & (AND) Boolean operator is inserted between surviving words.

Example:

SELECT plainto_tsquery('english', 'The Fat Rats');
 plainto_tsquery
-----------------
 'fat' & 'rat'

Note that plainto_tsquery cannot recognize Boolean operators, weight labels, or prefix-match labels in its input:

SELECT plainto_tsquery('english', 'The Fat & Rats:C');
   plainto_tsquery
---------------------
 'fat' & 'rat' & 'c'

Here, all the input punctuation was discarded as being space symbols.

12.3.3. Ranking Search Results

Ranking attempts to measure how relevant documents are to a particular query, so that when there are many matches the most relevant ones can be shown first. PostgreSQL provides two predefined ranking functions, which take into account lexical, proximity, and structural information; that is, they consider how often the query terms appear in the document, how close together the terms are in the document, and how important is the part of the document where they occur. However, the concept of relevancy is vague and very application-specific. Different applications might require additional information for ranking, e.g., document modification time. The built-in ranking functions are only examples. You can write your own ranking functions and/or combine their results with additional factors to fit your specific needs.

The two ranking functions currently available are:

ts_rank([ weights float4[], ] vector tsvector,
        query tsquery [, normalization integer ]) returns float4

Ranks vectors based on the frequency of their matching lexemes.

ts_rank_cd([ weights float4[], ] vector tsvector,
           query tsquery [, normalization integer ]) returns float4

This function computes the cover density ranking for the given document vector and query, as described in Clarke, Cormack, and Tudhope's "Relevance Ranking for One to Three Term Queries" in the journal "Information Processing and Management", 1999.

This function requires positional information in its input. Therefore it will not work on "stripped" tsvector values — it will always return zero.

For both these functions, the optional weights argument offers the ability to weigh word instances more or less heavily depending on how they are labeled. The weight arrays specify how heavily to weigh each category of word, in the order:

{D-weight, C-weight, B-weight, A-weight}

If no weights are provided, then these defaults are used:

{0.1, 0.2, 0.4, 1.0}

Typically weights are used to mark words from special areas of the document, like the title or an initial abstract, so they can be treated with more or less importance than words in the document body.

Since a longer document has a greater chance of containing a query term it is reasonable to take into account document size, e.g., a hundred-word document with five instances of a search word is probably more relevant than a thousand-word document with five instances. Both ranking functions take an integer normalization option that specifies whether and how a document's length should impact its rank. The integer option controls several behaviors, so it is a bit mask: you can specify one or more behaviors using | (for example, 2|4).

  • 0 (the default) ignores the document length

  • 1 divides the rank by 1 + the logarithm of the document length

  • 2 divides the rank by the document length

  • 4 divides the rank by the mean harmonic distance between extents (this is implemented only by ts_rank_cd)

  • 8 divides the rank by the number of unique words in document

  • 16 divides the rank by 1 + the logarithm of the number of unique words in document

  • 32 divides the rank by itself + 1

If more than one flag bit is specified, the transformations are applied in the order listed.

It is important to note that the ranking functions do not use any global information, so it is impossible to produce a fair normalization to 1% or 100% as sometimes desired. Normalization option 32 (rank/(rank+1)) can be applied to scale all ranks into the range zero to one, but of course this is just a cosmetic change; it will not affect the ordering of the search results.

Here is an example that selects only the ten highest-ranked matches:

SELECT title, ts_rank_cd(textsearch, query) AS rank
FROM apod, to_tsquery('neutrino|(dark & matter)') query
WHERE query @@ textsearch
ORDER BY rank DESC
LIMIT 10;
                     title                     |   rank
-----------------------------------------------+----------
 Neutrinos in the Sun                          |      3.1
 The Sudbury Neutrino Detector                 |      2.4
 A MACHO View of Galactic Dark Matter          |  2.01317
 Hot Gas and Dark Matter                       |  1.91171
 The Virgo Cluster: Hot Plasma and Dark Matter |  1.90953
 Rafting for Solar Neutrinos                   |      1.9
 NGC 4650A: Strange Galaxy and Dark Matter     |  1.85774
 Hot Gas and Dark Matter                       |   1.6123
 Ice Fishing for Cosmic Neutrinos              |      1.6
 Weak Lensing Distorts the Universe            | 0.818218

This is the same example using normalized ranking:

SELECT title, ts_rank_cd(textsearch, query, 32 /* rank/(rank+1) */ ) AS rank
FROM apod, to_tsquery('neutrino|(dark & matter)') query
WHERE  query @@ textsearch
ORDER BY rank DESC
LIMIT 10;
                     title                     |        rank
-----------------------------------------------+-------------------
 Neutrinos in the Sun                          | 0.756097569485493
 The Sudbury Neutrino Detector                 | 0.705882361190954
 A MACHO View of Galactic Dark Matter          | 0.668123210574724
 Hot Gas and Dark Matter                       |  0.65655958650282
 The Virgo Cluster: Hot Plasma and Dark Matter | 0.656301290640973
 Rafting for Solar Neutrinos                   | 0.655172410958162
 NGC 4650A: Strange Galaxy and Dark Matter     | 0.650072921219637
 Hot Gas and Dark Matter                       | 0.617195790024749
 Ice Fishing for Cosmic Neutrinos              | 0.615384618911517
 Weak Lensing Distorts the Universe            | 0.450010798361481

Ranking can be expensive since it requires consulting the tsvector of each matching document, which can be I/O bound and therefore slow. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to avoid since practical queries often result in large numbers of matches.

12.3.4. Highlighting Results

To present search results it is ideal to show a part of each document and how it is related to the query. Usually, search engines show fragments of the document with marked search terms. PostgreSQL provides a function ts_headline that implements this functionality.

ts_headline([ config regconfig, ] document text, query tsquery [, options text ]) returns text

ts_headline accepts a document along with a query, and returns an excerpt from the document in which terms from the query are highlighted. The configuration to be used to parse the document can be specified by config; if config is omitted, the default_text_search_config configuration is used.

If an options string is specified it must consist of a comma-separated list of one or more option=value pairs. The available options are:

  • StartSel, StopSel: the strings with which to delimit query words appearing in the document, to distinguish them from other excerpted words. You must double-quote these strings if they contain spaces or commas.

  • MaxWords, MinWords: these numbers determine the longest and shortest headlines to output.

  • ShortWord: words of this length or less will be dropped at the start and end of a headline. The default value of three eliminates common English articles.

  • HighlightAll: Boolean flag; if true the whole document will be used as the headline, ignoring the preceding three parameters.

  • MaxFragments: maximum number of text excerpts or fragments to display. The default value of zero selects a non-fragment-oriented headline generation method. A value greater than zero selects fragment-based headline generation. This method finds text fragments with as many query words as possible and stretches those fragments around the query words. As a result query words are close to the middle of each fragment and have words on each side. Each fragment will be of at most MaxWords and words of length ShortWord or less are dropped at the start and end of each fragment. If not all query words are found in the document, then a single fragment of the first MinWords in the document will be displayed.

  • FragmentDelimiter: When more than one fragment is displayed, the fragments will be separated by this string.

Any unspecified options receive these defaults:

StartSel=<b>, StopSel=</b>,
MaxWords=35, MinWords=15, ShortWord=3, HighlightAll=FALSE,
MaxFragments=0, FragmentDelimiter=" ... "

For example:

SELECT ts_headline('english',
  'The most common type of search
is to find all documents containing given query terms
and return them in order of their similarity to the
query.',
  to_tsquery('query & similarity'));
                        ts_headline
------------------------------------------------------------
 containing given <b>query</b> terms
 and return them in order of their <b>similarity</b> to the
 <b>query</b>.

SELECT ts_headline('english',
  'The most common type of search
is to find all documents containing given query terms
and return them in order of their similarity to the
query.',
  to_tsquery('query & similarity'),
  'StartSel = <, StopSel = >');
                      ts_headline
-------------------------------------------------------
 containing given <query> terms
 and return them in order of their <similarity> to the
 <query>.

ts_headline uses the original document, not a tsvector summary, so it can be slow and should be used with care. A typical mistake is to call ts_headline for every matching document when only ten documents are to be shown. SQL subqueries can help; here is an example:

SELECT id, ts_headline(body, q), rank
FROM (SELECT id, body, q, ts_rank_cd(ti, q) AS rank
      FROM apod, to_tsquery('stars') q
      WHERE ti @@ q
      ORDER BY rank DESC
      LIMIT 10) AS foo;

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Tables and Indexes | Up | Additional Features


Additional Features

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12.4. Additional Features

This section describes additional functions and operators that are useful in connection with text search.

12.4.1. Manipulating Documents

Section 12.3.1 showed how raw textual documents can be converted into tsvector values. PostgreSQL also provides functions and operators that can be used to manipulate documents that are already in tsvector form.

tsvector || tsvector

The tsvector concatenation operator returns a vector which combines the lexemes and positional information of the two vectors given as arguments. Positions and weight labels are retained during the concatenation. Positions appearing in the right-hand vector are offset by the largest position mentioned in the left-hand vector, so that the result is nearly equivalent to the result of performing to_tsvector on the concatenation of the two original document strings. (The equivalence is not exact, because any stop-words removed from the end of the left-hand argument will not affect the result, whereas they would have affected the positions of the lexemes in the right-hand argument if textual concatenation were used.)

One advantage of using concatenation in the vector form, rather than concatenating text before applying to_tsvector, is that you can use different configurations to parse different sections of the document. Also, because the setweight function marks all lexemes of the given vector the same way, it is necessary to parse the text and do setweight before concatenating if you want to label different parts of the document with different weights.

setweight(vector tsvector, weight "char") returns tsvector

setweight returns a copy of the input vector in which every position has been labeled with the given weight, either A, B, C, or D. (D is the default for new vectors and as such is not displayed on output.) These labels are retained when vectors are concatenated, allowing words from different parts of a document to be weighted differently by ranking functions.

Note that weight labels apply to positions, not lexemes. If the input vector has been stripped of positions then setweight does nothing.

length(vector tsvector) returns integer

Returns the number of lexemes stored in the vector.

strip(vector tsvector) returns tsvector

Returns a vector which lists the same lexemes as the given vector, but which lacks any position or weight information. While the returned vector is much less useful than an unstripped vector for relevance ranking, it will usually be much smaller.

12.4.2. Manipulating Queries

Section 12.3.2 showed how raw textual queries can be converted into tsquery values. PostgreSQL also provides functions and operators that can be used to manipulate queries that are already in tsquery form.

tsquery && tsquery

Returns the AND-combination of the two given queries.

tsquery || tsquery

Returns the OR-combination of the two given queries.

!! tsquery

Returns the negation (NOT) of the given query.

numnode(query tsquery) returns integer

Returns the number of nodes (lexemes plus operators) in a tsquery. This function is useful to determine if the query is meaningful (returns > 0), or contains only stop words (returns 0). Examples:

SELECT numnode(plainto_tsquery('the any'));
NOTICE:  query contains only stopword(s) or doesn't contain lexeme(s), ignored
 numnode
---------
       0

SELECT numnode('foo & bar'::tsquery);
 numnode
---------
       3

querytree(query tsquery) returns text

Returns the portion of a tsquery that can be used for searching an index. This function is useful for detecting unindexable queries, for example those containing only stop words or only negated terms. For example:

SELECT querytree(to_tsquery('!defined'));
 querytree
-----------

12.4.2.1. Query Rewriting

The ts_rewrite family of functions search a given tsquery for occurrences of a target subquery, and replace each occurrence with a substitute subquery. In essence this operation is a tsquery-specific version of substring replacement. A target and substitute combination can be thought of as a query rewrite rule. A collection of such rewrite rules can be a powerful search aid. For example, you can expand the search using synonyms (e.g., new york, big apple, nyc, gotham) or narrow the search to direct the user to some hot topic. There is some overlap in functionality between this feature and thesaurus dictionaries (Section 12.6.4). However, you can modify a set of rewrite rules on-the-fly without reindexing, whereas updating a thesaurus requires reindexing to be effective.

ts_rewrite (query tsquery, target tsquery, substitute tsquery) returns tsquery

This form of ts_rewrite simply applies a single rewrite rule: target is replaced by substitute wherever it appears in query. For example:

SELECT ts_rewrite('a & b'::tsquery, 'a'::tsquery, 'c'::tsquery);
 ts_rewrite
------------
 'b' & 'c'

ts_rewrite (query tsquery, select text) returns tsquery

This form of ts_rewrite accepts a starting query and a SQL select command, which is given as a text string. The select must yield two columns of tsquery type. For each row of the select result, occurrences of the first column value (the target) are replaced by the second column value (the substitute) within the current query value. For example:

CREATE TABLE aliases (t tsquery PRIMARY KEY, s tsquery);
INSERT INTO aliases VALUES('a', 'c');

SELECT ts_rewrite('a & b'::tsquery, 'SELECT t,s FROM aliases');
 ts_rewrite
------------
 'b' & 'c'

Note that when multiple rewrite rules are applied in this way, the order of application can be important; so in practice you will want the source query to ORDER BY some ordering key.

Let's consider a real-life astronomical example. We'll expand query supernovae using table-driven rewriting rules:

CREATE TABLE aliases (t tsquery primary key, s tsquery);
INSERT INTO aliases VALUES(to_tsquery('supernovae'), to_tsquery('supernovae|sn'));

SELECT ts_rewrite(to_tsquery('supernovae & crab'), 'SELECT * FROM aliases');
           ts_rewrite
---------------------------------
 'crab' & ( 'supernova' | 'sn' )

We can change the rewriting rules just by updating the table:

UPDATE aliases
SET s = to_tsquery('supernovae|sn & !nebulae')
WHERE t = to_tsquery('supernovae');

SELECT ts_rewrite(to_tsquery('supernovae & crab'), 'SELECT * FROM aliases');
                 ts_rewrite
---------------------------------------------
 'crab' & ( 'supernova' | 'sn' & !'nebula' )

Rewriting can be slow when there are many rewriting rules, since it checks every rule for a possible match. To filter out obvious non-candidate rules we can use the containment operators for the tsquery type. In the example below, we select only those rules which might match the original query:

SELECT ts_rewrite('a & b'::tsquery,
                  'SELECT t,s FROM aliases WHERE ''a & b''::tsquery @> t');
 ts_rewrite
------------
 'b' & 'c'

12.4.3. Triggers for Automatic Updates

When using a separate column to store the tsvector representation of your documents, it is necessary to create a trigger to update the tsvector column when the document content columns change. Two built-in trigger functions are available for this, or you can write your own.

tsvector_update_trigger(tsvector_column_name, config_name, text_column_name [, ... ])
tsvector_update_trigger_column(tsvector_column_name, config_column_name, text_column_name [, ... ])

These trigger functions automatically compute a tsvector column from one or more textual columns, under the control of parameters specified in the CREATE TRIGGER command. An example of their use is:

CREATE TABLE messages (
    title       text,
    body        text,
    tsv         tsvector
);

CREATE TRIGGER tsvectorupdate BEFORE INSERT OR UPDATE
ON messages FOR EACH ROW EXECUTE PROCEDURE
tsvector_update_trigger(tsv, 'pg_catalog.english', title, body);

INSERT INTO messages VALUES('title here', 'the body text is here');

SELECT * FROM messages;
   title    |         body          |            tsv
------------+-----------------------+----------------------------
 title here | the body text is here | 'bodi':4 'text':5 'titl':1

SELECT title, body FROM messages WHERE tsv @@ to_tsquery('title & body');
   title    |         body
------------+-----------------------
 title here | the body text is here

Having created this trigger, any change in title or body will automatically be reflected into tsv, without the application having to worry about it.

The first trigger argument must be the name of the tsvector column to be updated. The second argument specifies the text search configuration to be used to perform the conversion. For tsvector_update_trigger, the configuration name is simply given as the second trigger argument. It must be schema-qualified as shown above, so that the trigger behavior will not change with changes in search_path. For tsvector_update_trigger_column, the second trigger argument is the name of another table column, which must be of type regconfig. This allows a per-row selection of configuration to be made. The remaining argument(s) are the names of textual columns (of type text, varchar, or char). These will be included in the document in the order given. NULL values will be skipped (but the other columns will still be indexed).

A limitation of these built-in triggers is that they treat all the input columns alike. To process columns differently — for example, to weight title differently from body — it is necessary to write a custom trigger. Here is an example using PL/pgSQL as the trigger language:

CREATE FUNCTION messages_trigger() RETURNS trigger AS $$
begin
  new.tsv :=
     setweight(to_tsvector('pg_catalog.english', coalesce(new.title,'')), 'A') ||
     setweight(to_tsvector('pg_catalog.english', coalesce(new.body,'')), 'D');
  return new;
end
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

CREATE TRIGGER tsvectorupdate BEFORE INSERT OR UPDATE
    ON messages FOR EACH ROW EXECUTE PROCEDURE messages_trigger();

Keep in mind that it is important to specify the configuration name explicitly when creating tsvector values inside triggers, so that the column's contents will not be affected by changes to default_text_search_config. Failure to do this is likely to lead to problems such as search results changing after a dump and reload.

12.4.4. Gathering Document Statistics

The function ts_stat is useful for checking your configuration and for finding stop-word candidates.

ts_stat(sqlquery text, [ weights text, ]
        OUT word text, OUT ndoc integer,
        OUT nentry integer) returns setof record

sqlquery is a text value containing an SQL query which must return a single tsvector column. ts_stat executes the query and returns statistics about each distinct lexeme (word) contained in the tsvector data. The columns returned are

  • word text — the value of a lexeme

  • ndoc integer — number of documents (tsvectors) the word occurred in

  • nentry integer — total number of occurrences of the word

If weights is supplied, only occurrences having one of those weights are counted.

For example, to find the ten most frequent words in a document collection:

SELECT * FROM ts_stat('SELECT vector FROM apod')
ORDER BY nentry DESC, ndoc DESC, word
LIMIT 10;

The same, but counting only word occurrences with weight A or B:

SELECT * FROM ts_stat('SELECT vector FROM apod', 'ab')
ORDER BY nentry DESC, ndoc DESC, word
LIMIT 10;

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Controlling Text Search | Up | Parsers


Parsers

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12.5. Parsers

Text search parsers are responsible for splitting raw document text into tokens and identifying each token's type, where the set of possible types is defined by the parser itself. Note that a parser does not modify the text at all — it simply identifies plausible word boundaries. Because of this limited scope, there is less need for application-specific custom parsers than there is for custom dictionaries. At present PostgreSQL provides just one built-in parser, which has been found to be useful for a wide range of applications.

The built-in parser is named pg_catalog.default. It recognizes 23 token types, shown in Table 12-1.

Table 12-1. Default Parser's Token Types

Alias | Description | Example
asciiword | Word, all ASCII letters | elephant
word | Word, all letters | mañana
numword | Word, letters and digits | beta1
asciihword | Hyphenated word, all ASCII | up-to-date
hword | Hyphenated word, all letters | lógico-matemática
numhword | Hyphenated word, letters and digits | postgresql-beta1
hword_asciipart | Hyphenated word part, all ASCII | postgresql in the context postgresql-beta1
hword_part | Hyphenated word part, all letters | lógico or matemática in the context lógico-matemática
hword_numpart | Hyphenated word part, letters and digits | beta1 in the context postgresql-beta1
email | Email address | foo@example.com
protocol | Protocol head | http://
url | URL | example.com/stuff/index.html
host | Host | example.com
url_path | URL path | /stuff/index.html, in the context of a URL
file | File or path name | /usr/local/foo.txt, if not within a URL
sfloat | Scientific notation | -1.234e56
float | Decimal notation | -1.234
int | Signed integer | -1234
uint | Unsigned integer | 1234
version | Version number | 8.3.0
tag | XML tag | <a href="dictionaries.html">
entity | XML entity | &amp;
blank | Space symbols | (any whitespace or punctuation not otherwise recognized)

Note: The parser's notion of a "letter" is determined by the database's locale setting, specifically lc_ctype. Words containing only the basic ASCII letters are reported as a separate token type, since it is sometimes useful to distinguish them. In most European languages, token types word and asciiword should be treated alike.

email does not support all valid email characters as defined by RFC 5322. Specifically, the only non-alphanumeric characters supported for email user names are period, dash, and underscore.

It is possible for the parser to produce overlapping tokens from the same piece of text. As an example, a hyphenated word will be reported both as the entire word and as each component:

SELECT alias, description, token FROM ts_debug('foo-bar-beta1');
      alias      |               description                |     token
-----------------+------------------------------------------+---------------
 numhword        | Hyphenated word, letters and digits      | foo-bar-beta1
 hword_asciipart | Hyphenated word part, all ASCII          | foo
 blank           | Space symbols                            | -
 hword_asciipart | Hyphenated word part, all ASCII          | bar
 blank           | Space symbols                            | -
 hword_numpart   | Hyphenated word part, letters and digits | beta1

This behavior is desirable since it allows searches to work for both the whole compound word and for components. Here is another instructive example:

SELECT alias, description, token FROM ts_debug('http://example.com/stuff/index.html');
  alias   |  description  |            token
----------+---------------+------------------------------
 protocol | Protocol head | http://
 url      | URL           | example.com/stuff/index.html
 host     | Host          | example.com
 url_path | URL path      | /stuff/index.html

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Additional Features | Up | Dictionaries


Dictionaries

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12.6. Dictionaries

Dictionaries are used to eliminate words that should not be considered in a search (stop words), and to normalize words so that different derived forms of the same word will match. A successfully normalized word is called a lexeme. Aside from improving search quality, normalization and removal of stop words reduce the size of the tsvector representation of a document, thereby improving performance. Normalization does not always have linguistic meaning and usually depends on application semantics.

Some examples of normalization:

  • Linguistic - Ispell dictionaries try to reduce input words to a normalized form; stemmer dictionaries remove word endings

  • URL locations can be canonicalized to make equivalent URLs match:

    • http://www.pgsql.ru/db/mw/index.html

    • http://www.pgsql.ru/db/mw/

    • http://www.pgsql.ru/db/../db/mw/index.html

  • Color names can be replaced by their hexadecimal values, e.g., red, green, blue, magenta -> FF0000, 00FF00, 0000FF, FF00FF

  • If indexing numbers, we can remove some fractional digits to reduce the range of possible numbers, so for example 3.14159265359, 3.1415926, 3.14 will be the same after normalization if only two digits are kept after the decimal point.

A dictionary is a program that accepts a token as input and returns:

  • an array of lexemes if the input token is known to the dictionary (notice that one token can produce more than one lexeme)

  • a single lexeme with the TSL_FILTER flag set, to replace the original token with a new token to be passed to subsequent dictionaries (a dictionary that does this is called a filtering dictionary)

  • an empty array if the dictionary knows the token, but it is a stop word

  • NULL if the dictionary does not recognize the input token

PostgreSQL provides predefined dictionaries for many languages. There are also several predefined templates that can be used to create new dictionaries with custom parameters. Each predefined dictionary template is described below. If no existing template is suitable, it is possible to create new ones; see the contrib/ area of the PostgreSQL distribution for examples.

A text search configuration binds a parser together with a set of dictionaries to process the parser's output tokens. For each token type that the parser can return, a separate list of dictionaries is specified by the configuration. When a token of that type is found by the parser, each dictionary in the list is consulted in turn, until some dictionary recognizes it as a known word. If it is identified as a stop word, or if no dictionary recognizes the token, it will be discarded and not indexed or searched for. Normally, the first dictionary that returns a non-NULL output determines the result, and any remaining dictionaries are not consulted; but a filtering dictionary can replace the given word with a modified word, which is then passed to subsequent dictionaries.

The general rule for configuring a list of dictionaries is to place first the most narrow, most specific dictionary, then the more general dictionaries, finishing with a very general dictionary, like a Snowball stemmer or simple, which recognizes everything. For example, for an astronomy-specific search (astro_en configuration) one could bind token type asciiword (ASCII word) to a synonym dictionary of astronomical terms, a general English dictionary and a Snowball English stemmer:

ALTER TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION astro_en
    ADD MAPPING FOR asciiword WITH astrosyn, english_ispell, english_stem;

A filtering dictionary can be placed anywhere in the list, except at the end where it'd be useless. Filtering dictionaries are useful to partially normalize words to simplify the task of later dictionaries. For example, a filtering dictionary could be used to remove accents from accented letters, as is done by the unaccent module.

12.6.1. Stop Words

Stop words are words that are very common, appear in almost every document, and have no discrimination value. Therefore, they can be ignored in the context of full text searching. For example, every English text contains words like a and the, so it is useless to store them in an index. However, stop words do affect the positions in tsvector, which in turn affect ranking:

SELECT to_tsvector('english','in the list of stop words');
        to_tsvector
----------------------------
 'list':3 'stop':5 'word':6

The missing positions 1,2,4 are because of stop words. Ranks calculated for documents with and without stop words are quite different:

SELECT ts_rank_cd (to_tsvector('english','in the list of stop words'), to_tsquery('list & stop'));
 ts_rank_cd
------------
       0.05

SELECT ts_rank_cd (to_tsvector('english','list stop words'), to_tsquery('list & stop'));
 ts_rank_cd
------------
        0.1

It is up to the specific dictionary how it treats stop words. For example, ispell dictionaries first normalize words and then look at the list of stop words, while Snowball stemmers first check the list of stop words. The reason for the different behavior is an attempt to decrease noise.

12.6.2. Simple Dictionary

The simple dictionary template operates by converting the input token to lower case and checking it against a file of stop words. If it is found in the file then an empty array is returned, causing the token to be discarded. If not, the lower-cased form of the word is returned as the normalized lexeme. Alternatively, the dictionary can be configured to report non-stop-words as unrecognized, allowing them to be passed on to the next dictionary in the list.

Here is an example of a dictionary definition using the simple template:

CREATE TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY public.simple_dict (
    TEMPLATE = pg_catalog.simple,
    STOPWORDS = english
);

Here, english is the base name of a file of stop words. The file's full name will be $SHAREDIR/tsearch_data/english.stop, where $SHAREDIR means the PostgreSQL installation's shared-data directory, often /usr/local/share/postgresql (use pg_config --sharedir to determine it if you're not sure). The file format is simply a list of words, one per line. Blank lines and trailing spaces are ignored, and upper case is folded to lower case, but no other processing is done on the file contents.

Now we can test our dictionary:

SELECT ts_lexize('public.simple_dict','YeS');
 ts_lexize
-----------
 {yes}

SELECT ts_lexize('public.simple_dict','The');
 ts_lexize
-----------
 {}

We can also choose to return NULL, instead of the lower-cased word, if it is not found in the stop words file. This behavior is selected by setting the dictionary's Accept parameter to false. Continuing the example:

ALTER TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY public.simple_dict ( Accept = false );

SELECT ts_lexize('public.simple_dict','YeS');
 ts_lexize
-----------

SELECT ts_lexize('public.simple_dict','The');
 ts_lexize
-----------
 {}

With the default setting of Accept = true, it is only useful to place a simple dictionary at the end of a list of dictionaries, since it will never pass on any token to a following dictionary. Conversely, Accept = false is only useful when there is at least one following dictionary.

Caution

Most types of dictionaries rely on configuration files, such as files of stop words. These files must be stored in UTF-8 encoding. They will be translated to the actual database encoding, if that is different, when they are read into the server.

Caution

Normally, a database session will read a dictionary configuration file only once, when it is first used within the session. If you modify a configuration file and want to force existing sessions to pick up the new contents, issue an ALTER TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY command on the dictionary. This can be a "dummy" update that doesn't actually change any parameter values.

12.6.3. Synonym Dictionary

This dictionary template is used to create dictionaries that replace a word with a synonym. Phrases are not supported (use the thesaurus template (Section 12.6.4) for that). A synonym dictionary can be used to overcome linguistic problems, for example, to prevent an English stemmer dictionary from reducing the word 'Paris' to 'pari'. It is enough to have a Paris paris line in the synonym dictionary and put it before the english_stem dictionary. For example:

SELECT * FROM ts_debug('english', 'Paris');
   alias   |   description   | token |  dictionaries  |  dictionary  | lexemes
-----------+-----------------+-------+----------------+--------------+---------
 asciiword | Word, all ASCII | Paris | {english_stem} | english_stem | {pari}

CREATE TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY my_synonym (
    TEMPLATE = synonym,
    SYNONYMS = my_synonyms
);

ALTER TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION english
    ALTER MAPPING FOR asciiword
    WITH my_synonym, english_stem;

SELECT * FROM ts_debug('english', 'Paris');
   alias   |   description   | token |       dictionaries        | dictionary | lexemes
-----------+-----------------+-------+---------------------------+------------+---------
 asciiword | Word, all ASCII | Paris | {my_synonym,english_stem} | my_synonym | {paris}

The only parameter required by the synonym template is SYNONYMS, which is the base name of its configuration file — my_synonyms in the above example. The file's full name will be $SHAREDIR/tsearch_data/my_synonyms.syn (where $SHAREDIR means the PostgreSQL installation's shared-data directory). The file format is just one line per word to be substituted, with the word followed by its synonym, separated by white space. Blank lines and trailing spaces are ignored.

The synonym template also has an optional parameter CaseSensitive, which defaults to false. When CaseSensitive is false, words in the synonym file are folded to lower case, as are input tokens. When it is true, words and tokens are not folded to lower case, but are compared as-is.

An asterisk (*) can be placed at the end of a synonym in the configuration file. This indicates that the synonym is a prefix. The asterisk is ignored when the entry is used in to_tsvector(), but when it is used in to_tsquery(), the result will be a query item with the prefix match marker (see Section 12.3.2). For example, suppose we have these entries in $SHAREDIR/tsearch_data/synonym_sample.syn:

postgres        pgsql
postgresql      pgsql
postgre pgsql
gogle   googl
indices index*

Then we will get these results:

mydb=# CREATE TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY syn (template=synonym, synonyms='synonym_sample');
mydb=# SELECT ts_lexize('syn','indices');
 ts_lexize
-----------
 {index}
(1 row)

mydb=# CREATE TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION tst (copy=simple);
mydb=# ALTER TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION tst ALTER MAPPING FOR asciiword WITH syn;
mydb=# SELECT to_tsvector('tst','indices');
 to_tsvector
-------------
 'index':1
(1 row)

mydb=# SELECT to_tsquery('tst','indices');
 to_tsquery
------------
 'index':*
(1 row)

mydb=# SELECT 'indexes are very useful'::tsvector;
            tsvector
---------------------------------
 'are' 'indexes' 'useful' 'very'
(1 row)

mydb=# SELECT 'indexes are very useful'::tsvector @@ to_tsquery('tst','indices');
 ?column?
----------
 t
(1 row)

12.6.4. Thesaurus Dictionary

A thesaurus dictionary (sometimes abbreviated as TZ) is a collection of words that includes information about the relationships of words and phrases, i.e., broader terms (BT), narrower terms (NT), preferred terms, non-preferred terms, related terms, etc.

Basically a thesaurus dictionary replaces all non-preferred terms by one preferred term and, optionally, preserves the original terms for indexing as well. PostgreSQL's current implementation of the thesaurus dictionary is an extension of the synonym dictionary with added phrase support. A thesaurus dictionary requires a configuration file of the following format:

# this is a comment
sample word(s) : indexed word(s)
more sample word(s) : more indexed word(s)
...

where the colon (:) symbol acts as a delimiter between a phrase and its replacement.

A thesaurus dictionary uses a subdictionary (which is specified in the dictionary's configuration) to normalize the input text before checking for phrase matches. It is only possible to select one subdictionary. An error is reported if the subdictionary fails to recognize a word. In that case, you should remove the use of the word or teach the subdictionary about it. You can place an asterisk (*) at the beginning of an indexed word to skip applying the subdictionary to it, but all sample words must be known to the subdictionary.

The thesaurus dictionary chooses the longest match if there are multiple phrases matching the input, and ties are broken by using the last definition.

Specific stop words recognized by the subdictionary cannot be specified; instead use ? to mark the location where any stop word can appear. For example, assuming that a and the are stop words according to the subdictionary:

? one ? two : swsw

matches a one the two and the one a two; both would be replaced by swsw.

Since a thesaurus dictionary has the capability to recognize phrases it must remember its state and interact with the parser. A thesaurus dictionary uses these assignments to check if it should handle the next word or stop accumulation. The thesaurus dictionary must be configured carefully. For example, if the thesaurus dictionary is assigned to handle only the asciiword token, then a thesaurus dictionary definition like one 7 will not work since token type uint is not assigned to the thesaurus dictionary.

Caution

Thesauruses are used during indexing so any change in the thesaurus dictionary's parameters requires reindexing. For most other dictionary types, small changes such as adding or removing stopwords does not force reindexing.

12.6.4.1. Thesaurus Configuration

To define a new thesaurus dictionary, use the thesaurus template. For example:

CREATE TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY thesaurus_simple (
    TEMPLATE = thesaurus,
    DictFile = mythesaurus,
    Dictionary = pg_catalog.english_stem
);

Here:

  • thesaurus_simple is the new dictionary's name

  • mythesaurus is the base name of the thesaurus configuration file. (Its full name will be $SHAREDIR/tsearch_data/mythesaurus.ths, where $SHAREDIR means the installation shared-data directory.)

  • pg_catalog.english_stem is the subdictionary (here, a Snowball English stemmer) to use for thesaurus normalization. Notice that the subdictionary will have its own configuration (for example, stop words), which is not shown here.

Now it is possible to bind the thesaurus dictionary thesaurus_simple to the desired token types in a configuration, for example:

ALTER TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION russian
    ALTER MAPPING FOR asciiword, asciihword, hword_asciipart
    WITH thesaurus_simple;

12.6.4.2. Thesaurus Example

Consider a simple astronomical thesaurus thesaurus_astro, which contains some astronomical word combinations:

supernovae stars : sn
crab nebulae : crab

Below we create a dictionary and bind some token types to an astronomical thesaurus and English stemmer:

CREATE TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY thesaurus_astro (
    TEMPLATE = thesaurus,
    DictFile = thesaurus_astro,
    Dictionary = english_stem
);

ALTER TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION russian
    ALTER MAPPING FOR asciiword, asciihword, hword_asciipart
    WITH thesaurus_astro, english_stem;

Now we can see how it works. ts_lexize is not very useful for testing a thesaurus, because it treats its input as a single token. Instead we can use plainto_tsquery and to_tsvector which will break their input strings into multiple tokens:

SELECT plainto_tsquery('supernova star');
 plainto_tsquery
-----------------
 'sn'

SELECT to_tsvector('supernova star');
 to_tsvector
-------------
 'sn':1

In principle, one can use to_tsquery if you quote the argument:

SELECT to_tsquery('''supernova star''');
 to_tsquery
------------
 'sn'

Notice that supernova star matches supernovae stars in thesaurus_astro because we specified the english_stem stemmer in the thesaurus definition. The stemmer removed the e and s.

To index the original phrase as well as the substitute, just include it in the right-hand part of the definition:

supernovae stars : sn supernovae stars

SELECT plainto_tsquery('supernova star');
       plainto_tsquery
-----------------------------
 'sn' & 'supernova' & 'star'

12.6.5. Ispell Dictionary

The Ispell dictionary template supports morphological dictionaries, which can normalize many different linguistic forms of a word into the same lexeme. For example, an English Ispell dictionary can match all declensions and conjugations of the search term bank, e.g., banking, banked, banks, banks', and bank's.

The standard PostgreSQL distribution does not include any Ispell configuration files. Dictionaries for a large number of languages are available from Ispell. Also, some more modern dictionary file formats are supported — MySpell (OO < 2.0.1) and Hunspell (OO >= 2.0.2). A large list of dictionaries is available on the OpenOffice Wiki.

To create an Ispell dictionary, use the built-in ispell template and specify several parameters:

CREATE TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY english_ispell (
    TEMPLATE = ispell,
    DictFile = english,
    AffFile = english,
    StopWords = english
);

Here, DictFile, AffFile, and StopWords specify the base names of the dictionary, affixes, and stop-words files. The stop-words file has the same format explained above for the simple dictionary type. The format of the other files is not specified here but is available from the above-mentioned web sites.

Ispell dictionaries usually recognize a limited set of words, so they should be followed by another broader dictionary; for example, a Snowball dictionary, which recognizes everything.

Ispell dictionaries support splitting compound words; a useful feature. Notice that the affix file should specify a special flag using the compoundwords controlled statement that marks dictionary words that can participate in compound formation:

compoundwords  controlled z

Here are some examples for the Norwegian language:

SELECT ts_lexize('norwegian_ispell', 'overbuljongterningpakkmesterassistent');
   {over,buljong,terning,pakk,mester,assistent}
SELECT ts_lexize('norwegian_ispell', 'sjokoladefabrikk');
   {sjokoladefabrikk,sjokolade,fabrikk}

Note: MySpell does not support compound words. Hunspell has sophisticated support for compound words. At present, PostgreSQL implements only the basic compound word operations of Hunspell.

12.6.6. Snowball Dictionary

The Snowball dictionary template is based on a project by Martin Porter, inventor of the popular Porter's stemming algorithm for the English language. Snowball now provides stemming algorithms for many languages (see the Snowball site for more information). Each algorithm understands how to reduce common variant forms of words to a base, or stem, spelling within its language. A Snowball dictionary requires a language parameter to identify which stemmer to use, and optionally can specify a stopword file name that gives a list of words to eliminate. (PostgreSQL's standard stopword lists are also provided by the Snowball project.) For example, there is a built-in definition equivalent to

CREATE TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY english_stem (
    TEMPLATE = snowball,
    Language = english,
    StopWords = english
);

The stopword file format is the same as already explained.

A Snowball dictionary recognizes everything, whether or not it is able to simplify the word, so it should be placed at the end of the dictionary list. It is useless to have it before any other dictionary because a token will never pass through it to the next dictionary.

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Parsers | Up | Configuration Example


Configuration Example

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12.7. Configuration Example

A text search configuration specifies all options necessary to transform a document into a tsvector: the parser to use to break text into tokens, and the dictionaries to use to transform each token into a lexeme. Every call of to_tsvector or to_tsquery needs a text search configuration to perform its processing. The configuration parameter default_text_search_config specifies the name of the default configuration, which is the one used by text search functions if an explicit configuration parameter is omitted. It can be set in postgresql.conf, or set for an individual session using the SET command.

Several predefined text search configurations are available, and you can create custom configurations easily. To facilitate management of text search objects, a set of SQL commands is available, and there are several psql commands that display information about text search objects (Section 12.10).

As an example we will create a configuration pg, starting by duplicating the built-in english configuration:

CREATE TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION public.pg ( COPY = pg_catalog.english );

We will use a PostgreSQL-specific synonym list and store it in $SHAREDIR/tsearch_data/pg_dict.syn. The file contents look like:

postgres    pg
pgsql       pg
postgresql  pg

We define the synonym dictionary like this:

CREATE TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY pg_dict (
    TEMPLATE = synonym,
    SYNONYMS = pg_dict
);

Next we register the Ispell dictionary english_ispell, which has its own configuration files:

CREATE TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY english_ispell (
    TEMPLATE = ispell,
    DictFile = english,
    AffFile = english,
    StopWords = english
);

Now we can set up the mappings for words in configuration pg:

ALTER TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION pg
    ALTER MAPPING FOR asciiword, asciihword, hword_asciipart,
                      word, hword, hword_part
    WITH pg_dict, english_ispell, english_stem;

We choose not to index or search some token types that the built-in configuration does handle:

ALTER TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION pg
    DROP MAPPING FOR email, url, url_path, sfloat, float;

Now we can test our configuration:

SELECT * FROM ts_debug('public.pg', '
PostgreSQL, the highly scalable, SQL compliant, open source object-relational
database management system, is now undergoing beta testing of the next
version of our software.
');

The next step is to set the session to use the new configuration, which was created in the public schema:

=> \dF
   List of text search configurations
 Schema  | Name | Description
---------+------+-------------
 public  | pg   |

SET default_text_search_config = 'public.pg';
SET

SHOW default_text_search_config;
 default_text_search_config
----------------------------
 public.pg

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Dictionaries | Up | Testing and Debugging Text Search


Testing and Debugging Text Search

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12.8. Testing and Debugging Text Search

The behavior of a custom text search configuration can easily become confusing. The functions described in this section are useful for testing text search objects. You can test a complete configuration, or test parsers and dictionaries separately.

12.8.1. Configuration Testing

The function ts_debug allows easy testing of a text search configuration.

ts_debug([ config regconfig, ] document text,
         OUT alias text,
         OUT description text,
         OUT token text,
         OUT dictionaries regdictionary[],
         OUT dictionary regdictionary,
         OUT lexemes text[])
         returns setof record

ts_debug displays information about every token of document as produced by the parser and processed by the configured dictionaries. It uses the configuration specified by config, or default_text_search_config if that argument is omitted.

ts_debug returns one row for each token identified in the text by the parser. The columns returned are

  • alias text — short name of the token type

  • description text — description of the token type

  • token text — text of the token

  • dictionaries regdictionary[] — the dictionaries selected by the configuration for this token type

  • dictionary regdictionary — the dictionary that recognized the token, or NULL if none did

  • lexemes text[] — the lexeme(s) produced by the dictionary that recognized the token, or NULL if none did; an empty array ({}) means it was recognized as a stop word

Here is a simple example:

SELECT * FROM ts_debug('english','a fat  cat sat on a mat - it ate a fat rats');
   alias   |   description   | token |  dictionaries  |  dictionary  | lexemes
-----------+-----------------+-------+----------------+--------------+---------
 asciiword | Word, all ASCII | a     | {english_stem} | english_stem | {}
 blank     | Space symbols   |       | {}             |              |
 asciiword | Word, all ASCII | fat   | {english_stem} | english_stem | {fat}
 blank     | Space symbols   |       | {}             |              |
 asciiword | Word, all ASCII | cat   | {english_stem} | english_stem | {cat}
 blank     | Space symbols   |       | {}             |              |
 asciiword | Word, all ASCII | sat   | {english_stem} | english_stem | {sat}
 blank     | Space symbols   |       | {}             |              |
 asciiword | Word, all ASCII | on    | {english_stem} | english_stem | {}
 blank     | Space symbols   |       | {}             |              |
 asciiword | Word, all ASCII | a     | {english_stem} | english_stem | {}
 blank     | Space symbols   |       | {}             |              |
 asciiword | Word, all ASCII | mat   | {english_stem} | english_stem | {mat}
 blank     | Space symbols   |       | {}             |              |
 blank     | Space symbols   | -     | {}             |              |
 asciiword | Word, all ASCII | it    | {english_stem} | english_stem | {}
 blank     | Space symbols   |       | {}             |              |
 asciiword | Word, all ASCII | ate   | {english_stem} | english_stem | {ate}
 blank     | Space symbols   |       | {}             |              |
 asciiword | Word, all ASCII | a     | {english_stem} | english_stem | {}
 blank     | Space symbols   |       | {}             |              |
 asciiword | Word, all ASCII | fat   | {english_stem} | english_stem | {fat}
 blank     | Space symbols   |       | {}             |              |
 asciiword | Word, all ASCII | rats  | {english_stem} | english_stem | {rat}

For a more extensive demonstration, we first create a public.english configuration and Ispell dictionary for the English language:

CREATE TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION public.english ( COPY = pg_catalog.english );

CREATE TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY english_ispell (
    TEMPLATE = ispell,
    DictFile = english,
    AffFile = english,
    StopWords = english
);

ALTER TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION public.english
   ALTER MAPPING FOR asciiword WITH english_ispell, english_stem;
SELECT * FROM ts_debug('public.english','The Brightest supernovaes');
   alias   |   description   |    token    |         dictionaries          |   dictionary   |   lexemes
-----------+-----------------+-------------+-------------------------------+----------------+-------------
 asciiword | Word, all ASCII | The         | {english_ispell,english_stem} | english_ispell | {}
 blank     | Space symbols   |             | {}                            |                |
 asciiword | Word, all ASCII | Brightest   | {english_ispell,english_stem} | english_ispell | {bright}
 blank     | Space symbols   |             | {}                            |                |
 asciiword | Word, all ASCII | supernovaes | {english_ispell,english_stem} | english_stem   | {supernova}

In this example, the word Brightest was recognized by the parser as an ASCII word (alias asciiword). For this token type the dictionary list is english_ispell and english_stem. The word was recognized by english_ispell, which reduced it to the noun bright. The word supernovaes is unknown to the english_ispell dictionary so it was passed to the next dictionary, and, fortunately, was recognized (in fact, english_stem is a Snowball dictionary which recognizes everything; that is why it was placed at the end of the dictionary list).

The word The was recognized by the english_ispell dictionary as a stop word (Section 12.6.1) and will not be indexed. The spaces are discarded too, since the configuration provides no dictionaries at all for them.

You can reduce the width of the output by explicitly specifying which columns you want to see:

SELECT alias, token, dictionary, lexemes
FROM ts_debug('public.english','The Brightest supernovaes');
   alias   |    token    |   dictionary   |   lexemes
-----------+-------------+----------------+-------------
 asciiword | The         | english_ispell | {}
 blank     |             |                |
 asciiword | Brightest   | english_ispell | {bright}
 blank     |             |                |
 asciiword | supernovaes | english_stem   | {supernova}

12.8.2. Parser Testing

The following functions allow direct testing of a text search parser.

ts_parse(parser_name text, document text,
         OUT tokid integer, OUT token text) returns setof record
ts_parse(parser_oid oid, document text,
         OUT tokid integer, OUT token text) returns setof record

ts_parse parses the given document and returns a series of records, one for each token produced by parsing. Each record includes a tokid showing the assigned token type and a token which is the text of the token. For example:

SELECT * FROM ts_parse('default', '123 - a number');
 tokid | token
-------+--------
    22 | 123
    12 |
    12 | -
     1 | a
    12 |
     1 | number

ts_token_type(parser_name text, OUT tokid integer,
              OUT alias text, OUT description text) returns setof record
ts_token_type(parser_oid oid, OUT tokid integer,
              OUT alias text, OUT description text) returns setof record

ts_token_type returns a table which describes each type of token the specified parser can recognize. For each token type, the table gives the integer tokid that the parser uses to label a token of that type, the alias that names the token type in configuration commands, and a short description. For example:

SELECT * FROM ts_token_type('default');
 tokid |      alias      |               description
-------+-----------------+------------------------------------------
     1 | asciiword       | Word, all ASCII
     2 | word            | Word, all letters
     3 | numword         | Word, letters and digits
     4 | email           | Email address
     5 | url             | URL
     6 | host            | Host
     7 | sfloat          | Scientific notation
     8 | version         | Version number
     9 | hword_numpart   | Hyphenated word part, letters and digits
    10 | hword_part      | Hyphenated word part, all letters
    11 | hword_asciipart | Hyphenated word part, all ASCII
    12 | blank           | Space symbols
    13 | tag             | XML tag
    14 | protocol        | Protocol head
    15 | numhword        | Hyphenated word, letters and digits
    16 | asciihword      | Hyphenated word, all ASCII
    17 | hword           | Hyphenated word, all letters
    18 | url_path        | URL path
    19 | file            | File or path name
    20 | float           | Decimal notation
    21 | int             | Signed integer
    22 | uint            | Unsigned integer
    23 | entity          | XML entity

12.8.3. Dictionary Testing

The ts_lexize function facilitates dictionary testing.

ts_lexize(dict regdictionary, token text) returns text[]

ts_lexize returns an array of lexemes if the input token is known to the dictionary, or an empty array if the token is known to the dictionary but it is a stop word, or NULL if it is an unknown word.

Examples:

SELECT ts_lexize('english_stem', 'stars');
 ts_lexize
-----------
 {star}

SELECT ts_lexize('english_stem', 'a');
 ts_lexize
-----------
 {}

Note: The ts_lexize function expects a single token, not text. Here is a case where this can be confusing:

SELECT ts_lexize('thesaurus_astro','supernovae stars') is null;
 ?column?
----------
 t

The thesaurus dictionary thesaurus_astro does know the phrase supernovae stars, but ts_lexize fails since it does not parse the input text but treats it as a single token. Use plainto_tsquery or to_tsvector to test thesaurus dictionaries, for example:

SELECT plainto_tsquery('supernovae stars');
 plainto_tsquery
-----------------
 'sn'

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Configuration Example | Up | GiST and GIN Index Types


GiST and GIN Index Types

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12.9. GiST and GIN Index Types

There are two kinds of indexes that can be used to speed up full text searches. Note that indexes are not mandatory for full text searching, but in cases where a column is searched on a regular basis, an index is usually desirable.

CREATE INDEX name ON table USING gist(column);

Creates a GiST (Generalized Search Tree)-based index. The column can be of tsvector or tsquery type.

CREATE INDEX name ON table USING gin(column);

Creates a GIN (Generalized Inverted Index)-based index. The column must be of tsvector type.

There are substantial performance differences between the two index types, so it is important to understand their characteristics.

A GiST index is lossy, meaning that the index may produce false matches, and it is necessary to check the actual table row to eliminate such false matches. (PostgreSQL does this automatically when needed.) GiST indexes are lossy because each document is represented in the index by a fixed-length signature. The signature is generated by hashing each word into a single bit in an n-bit string, with all these bits OR-ed together to produce an n-bit document signature. When two words hash to the same bit position there will be a false match. If all words in the query have matches (real or false) then the table row must be retrieved to see if the match is correct.

Lossiness causes performance degradation due to unnecessary fetches of table records that turn out to be false matches. Since random access to table records is slow, this limits the usefulness of GiST indexes. The likelihood of false matches depends on several factors, in particular the number of unique words, so using dictionaries to reduce this number is recommended.

GIN indexes are not lossy for standard queries, but their performance depends logarithmically on the number of unique words. (However, GIN indexes store only the words (lexemes) of tsvector values, and not their weight labels. Thus a table row recheck is needed when using a query that involves weights.)

In choosing which index type to use, GiST or GIN, consider these performance differences:

  • GIN index lookups are about three times faster than GiST

  • GIN indexes take about three times longer to build than GiST

  • GIN indexes are moderately slower to update than GiST indexes, but about 10 times slower if fast-update support was disabled (see Section 54.3.1 for details)

  • GIN indexes are two-to-three times larger than GiST indexes

As a rule of thumb, GIN indexes are best for static data because lookups are faster. For dynamic data, GiST indexes are faster to update. Specifically, GiST indexes are very good for dynamic data and fast if the number of unique words (lexemes) is under 100,000, while GIN indexes will handle 100,000+ lexemes better but are slower to update.

Note that GIN index build time can often be improved by increasing maintenance_work_mem, while GiST index build time is not sensitive to that parameter.

Partitioning of big collections and the proper use of GiST and GIN indexes allows the implementation of very fast searches with online update. Partitioning can be done at the database level using table inheritance, or by distributing documents over servers and collecting search results using the dblink module. The latter is possible because ranking functions use only local information.

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psql Support

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12.10. psql Support

Information about text search configuration objects can be obtained in psql using a set of commands:

\dF{d,p,t}[+] [PATTERN]

An optional + produces more details.

The optional parameter PATTERN can be the name of a text search object, optionally schema-qualified. If PATTERN is omitted then information about all visible objects will be displayed. PATTERN can be a regular expression and can provide separate patterns for the schema and object names. The following examples illustrate this:

=> \dF *fulltext*
       List of text search configurations
 Schema |  Name        | Description
--------+--------------+-------------
 public | fulltext_cfg |

=> \dF *.fulltext*
       List of text search configurations
 Schema   |  Name        | Description
----------+----------------------------
 fulltext | fulltext_cfg |
 public   | fulltext_cfg |

The available commands are:

\dF[+] [PATTERN]

List text search configurations (add + for more detail).

=> \dF russian
            List of text search configurations
   Schema   |  Name   |            Description
------------+---------+------------------------------------
 pg_catalog | russian | configuration for russian language

=> \dF+ russian
Text search configuration "pg_catalog.russian"
Parser: "pg_catalog.default"
      Token      | Dictionaries
-----------------+--------------
 asciihword      | english_stem
 asciiword       | english_stem
 email           | simple
 file            | simple
 float           | simple
 host            | simple
 hword           | russian_stem
 hword_asciipart | english_stem
 hword_numpart   | simple
 hword_part      | russian_stem
 int             | simple
 numhword        | simple
 numword         | simple
 sfloat          | simple
 uint            | simple
 url             | simple
 url_path        | simple
 version         | simple
 word            | russian_stem

\dFd[+] [PATTERN]

List text search dictionaries (add + for more detail).

=> \dFd
                            List of text search dictionaries
   Schema   |      Name       |                        Description
------------+-----------------+-----------------------------------------------------------
 pg_catalog | danish_stem     | snowball stemmer for danish language
 pg_catalog | dutch_stem      | snowball stemmer for dutch language
 pg_catalog | english_stem    | snowball stemmer for english language
 pg_catalog | finnish_stem    | snowball stemmer for finnish language
 pg_catalog | french_stem     | snowball stemmer for french language
 pg_catalog | german_stem     | snowball stemmer for german language
 pg_catalog | hungarian_stem  | snowball stemmer for hungarian language
 pg_catalog | italian_stem    | snowball stemmer for italian language
 pg_catalog | norwegian_stem  | snowball stemmer for norwegian language
 pg_catalog | portuguese_stem | snowball stemmer for portuguese language
 pg_catalog | romanian_stem   | snowball stemmer for romanian language
 pg_catalog | russian_stem    | snowball stemmer for russian language
 pg_catalog | simple          | simple dictionary: just lower case and check for stopword
 pg_catalog | spanish_stem    | snowball stemmer for spanish language
 pg_catalog | swedish_stem    | snowball stemmer for swedish language
 pg_catalog | turkish_stem    | snowball stemmer for turkish language

\dFp[+] [PATTERN]

List text search parsers (add + for more detail).

=> \dFp
        List of text search parsers
   Schema   |  Name   |     Description
------------+---------+---------------------
 pg_catalog | default | default word parser
=> \dFp+
    Text search parser "pg_catalog.default"
     Method      |    Function    | Description
-----------------+----------------+-------------
 Start parse     | prsd_start     |
 Get next token  | prsd_nexttoken |
 End parse       | prsd_end       |
 Get headline    | prsd_headline  |
 Get token types | prsd_lextype   |

        Token types for parser "pg_catalog.default"
   Token name    |               Description
-----------------+------------------------------------------
 asciihword      | Hyphenated word, all ASCII
 asciiword       | Word, all ASCII
 blank           | Space symbols
 email           | Email address
 entity          | XML entity
 file            | File or path name
 float           | Decimal notation
 host            | Host
 hword           | Hyphenated word, all letters
 hword_asciipart | Hyphenated word part, all ASCII
 hword_numpart   | Hyphenated word part, letters and digits
 hword_part      | Hyphenated word part, all letters
 int             | Signed integer
 numhword        | Hyphenated word, letters and digits
 numword         | Word, letters and digits
 protocol        | Protocol head
 sfloat          | Scientific notation
 tag             | XML tag
 uint            | Unsigned integer
 url             | URL
 url_path        | URL path
 version         | Version number
 word            | Word, all letters
(23 rows)

\dFt[+] [PATTERN]

List text search templates (add + for more detail).

=> \dFt
                           List of text search templates
   Schema   |   Name    |                        Description
------------+-----------+-----------------------------------------------------------
 pg_catalog | ispell    | ispell dictionary
 pg_catalog | simple    | simple dictionary: just lower case and check for stopword
 pg_catalog | snowball  | snowball stemmer
 pg_catalog | synonym   | synonym dictionary: replace word by its synonym
 pg_catalog | thesaurus | thesaurus dictionary: phrase by phrase substitution

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GiST and GIN Index Types | Up | Limitations


Limitations

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12.11. Limitations

The current limitations of PostgreSQL's text search features are:

  • The length of each lexeme must be less than 2K bytes

  • The length of a tsvector (lexemes + positions) must be less than 1 megabyte

  • The number of lexemes must be less than 264

  • Position values in tsvector must be greater than 0 and no more than 16,383

  • No more than 256 positions per lexeme

  • The number of nodes (lexemes + operators) in a tsquery must be less than 32,768

For comparison, the PostgreSQL 8.1 documentation contained 10,441 unique words, a total of 335,420 words, and the most frequent word "postgresql" was mentioned 6,127 times in 655 documents.

Another example — the PostgreSQL mailing list archives contained 910,989 unique words with 57,491,343 lexemes in 461,020 messages.

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psql Support | Up | Migration from Pre-8.3 Text Search


Migration from Pre-8.3 Text Search

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12.12. Migration from Pre-8.3 Text Search

Applications that use the tsearch2 module for text searching will need some adjustments to work with the built-in features:

  • Some functions have been renamed or had small adjustments in their argument lists, and all of them are now in the pg_catalog schema, whereas in a previous installation they would have been in public or another non-system schema. There is a new version of tsearch2 that provides a compatibility layer to solve most problems in this area.

  • The old tsearch2 functions and other objects must be suppressed when loading pg_dump output from a pre-8.3 database. While many of them won't load anyway, a few will and then cause problems. One simple way to deal with this is to load the new tsearch2 module before restoring the dump; then it will block the old objects from being loaded.

  • Text search configuration setup is completely different now. Instead of manually inserting rows into configuration tables, search is configured through the specialized SQL commands shown earlier in this chapter. There is no automated support for converting an existing custom configuration for 8.3; you're on your own here.

  • Most types of dictionaries rely on some outside-the-database configuration files. These are largely compatible with pre-8.3 usage, but note the following differences:

    • Configuration files now must be placed in a single specified directory ($SHAREDIR/tsearch_data), and must have a specific extension depending on the type of file, as noted previously in the descriptions of the various dictionary types. This restriction was added to forestall security problems.

    • Configuration files must be encoded in UTF-8 encoding, regardless of what database encoding is used.

    • In thesaurus configuration files, stop words must be marked with ?.

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Concurrency Control

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Chapter 13. Concurrency Control

Table of Contents
13.1. Introduction
13.2. Transaction Isolation
13.2.1. Read Committed Isolation Level
13.2.2. Repeatable Read Isolation Level
13.2.3. Serializable Isolation Level
13.3. Explicit Locking
13.3.1. Table-level Locks
13.3.2. Row-level Locks
13.3.3. Deadlocks
13.3.4. Advisory Locks
13.4. Data Consistency Checks at the Application Level
13.4.1. Enforcing Consistency With Serializable Transactions
13.4.2. Enforcing Consistency With Explicit Blocking Locks
13.5. Caveats
13.6. Locking and Indexes

This chapter describes the behavior of the PostgreSQL database system when two or more sessions try to access the same data at the same time. The goals in that situation are to allow efficient access for all sessions while maintaining strict data integrity. Every developer of database applications should be familiar with the topics covered in this chapter.

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Introduction

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13.1. Introduction

PostgreSQL provides a rich set of tools for developers to manage concurrent access to data. Internally, data consistency is maintained by using a multiversion model (Multiversion Concurrency Control, MVCC). This means that while querying a database each transaction sees a snapshot of data (a database version) as it was some time ago, regardless of the current state of the underlying data. This protects the transaction from viewing inconsistent data that could be caused by (other) concurrent transaction updates on the same data rows, providing transaction isolation for each database session. MVCC, by eschewing the locking methodologies of traditional database systems, minimizes lock contention in order to allow for reasonable performance in multiuser environments.

The main advantage of using the MVCC model of concurrency control rather than locking is that in MVCC locks acquired for querying (reading) data do not conflict with locks acquired for writing data, and so reading never blocks writing and writing never blocks reading. PostgreSQL maintains this guarantee even when providing the strictest level of transaction isolation through the use of an innovative Serializable Snapshot Isolation (SSI) level.

Table- and row-level locking facilities are also available in PostgreSQL for applications which don't generally need full transaction isolation and prefer to explicitly manage particular points of conflict. However, proper use of MVCC will generally provide better performance than locks. In addition, application-defined advisory locks provide a mechanism for acquiring locks that are not tied to a single transaction.

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Transaction Isolation

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13.2. Transaction Isolation

The SQL standard defines four levels of transaction isolation. The most strict is Serializable, which is defined by the standard in a paragraph which says that any concurrent execution of a set of Serializable transactions is guaranteed to produce the same effect as running them one at a time in some order. The other three levels are defined in terms of phenomena, resulting from interaction between concurrent transactions, which must not occur at each level. The standard notes that due to the definition of Serializable, none of these phenomena are possible at that level. (This is hardly surprising -- if the effect of the transactions must be consistent with having been run one at a time, how could you see any phenomena caused by interactions?)

The phenomena which are prohibited at various levels are:

dirty read

A transaction reads data written by a concurrent uncommitted transaction.

nonrepeatable read

A transaction re-reads data it has previously read and finds that data has been modified by another transaction (that committed since the initial read).

phantom read

A transaction re-executes a query returning a set of rows that satisfy a search condition and finds that the set of rows satisfying the condition has changed due to another recently-committed transaction.

The four transaction isolation levels and the corresponding behaviors are described in Table 13-1.

Table 13-1. Standard SQL Transaction Isolation Levels

Isolation Level | Dirty Read | Nonrepeatable Read | Phantom Read
Read uncommitted | Possible | Possible | Possible
Read committed | Not possible | Possible | Possible
Repeatable read | Not possible | Not possible | Possible
Serializable | Not possible | Not possible | Not possible

In PostgreSQL, you can request any of the four standard transaction isolation levels. But internally, there are only three distinct isolation levels, which correspond to the levels Read Committed, Repeatable Read, and Serializable. When you select the level Read Uncommitted you really get Read Committed, and phantom reads are not possible in the PostgreSQL implementation of Repeatable Read, so the actual isolation level might be stricter than what you select. This is permitted by the SQL standard: the four isolation levels only define which phenomena must not happen, they do not define which phenomena must happen. The reason that PostgreSQL only provides three isolation levels is that this is the only sensible way to map the standard isolation levels to the multiversion concurrency control architecture. The behavior of the available isolation levels is detailed in the following subsections.

To set the transaction isolation level of a transaction, use the command SET TRANSACTION.

13.2.1. Read Committed Isolation Level

Read Committed is the default isolation level in PostgreSQL. When a transaction uses this isolation level, a SELECT query (without a FOR UPDATE/SHARE clause) sees only data committed before the query began; it never sees either uncommitted data or changes committed during query execution by concurrent transactions. In effect, a SELECT query sees a snapshot of the database as of the instant the query begins to run. However, SELECT does see the effects of previous updates executed within its own transaction, even though they are not yet committed. Also note that two successive SELECT commands can see different data, even though they are within a single transaction, if other transactions commit changes during execution of the first SELECT.

UPDATE, DELETE, SELECT FOR UPDATE, and SELECT FOR SHARE commands behave the same as SELECT in terms of searching for target rows: they will only find target rows that were committed as of the command start time. However, such a target row might have already been updated (or deleted or locked) by another concurrent transaction by the time it is found. In this case, the would-be updater will wait for the first updating transaction to commit or roll back (if it is still in progress). If the first updater rolls back, then its effects are negated and the second updater can proceed with updating the originally found row. If the first updater commits, the second updater will ignore the row if the first updater deleted it, otherwise it will attempt to apply its operation to the updated version of the row. The search condition of the command (the WHERE clause) is re-evaluated to see if the updated version of the row still matches the search condition. If so, the second updater proceeds with its operation using the updated version of the row. In the case of SELECT FOR UPDATE and SELECT FOR SHARE, this means it is the updated version of the row that is locked and returned to the client.

Because of the above rule, it is possible for an updating command to see an inconsistent snapshot: it can see the effects of concurrent updating commands on the same rows it is trying to update, but it does not see effects of those commands on other rows in the database. This behavior makes Read Committed mode unsuitable for commands that involve complex search conditions; however, it is just right for simpler cases. For example, consider updating bank balances with transactions like:

BEGIN;
UPDATE accounts SET balance = balance + 100.00 WHERE acctnum = 12345;
UPDATE accounts SET balance = balance - 100.00 WHERE acctnum = 7534;
COMMIT;

If two such transactions concurrently try to change the balance of account 12345, we clearly want the second transaction to start with the updated version of the account's row. Because each command is affecting only a predetermined row, letting it see the updated version of the row does not create any troublesome inconsistency.

More complex usage can produce undesirable results in Read Committed mode. For example, consider a DELETE command operating on data that is being both added and removed from its restriction criteria by another command, e.g., assume website is a two-row table with website.hits equaling 9 and 10:

BEGIN;
UPDATE website SET hits = hits + 1;
-- run from another session:  DELETE FROM website WHERE hits = 10;
COMMIT;

The DELETE will have no effect even though there is a website.hits = 10 row before and after the UPDATE. This occurs because the pre-update row value 9 is skipped, and when the UPDATE completes and DELETE obtains a lock, the new row value is no longer 10 but 11, which no longer matches the criteria.

Because Read Committed mode starts each command with a new snapshot that includes all transactions committed up to that instant, subsequent commands in the same transaction will see the effects of the committed concurrent transaction in any case. The point at issue above is whether or not a single command sees an absolutely consistent view of the database.

The partial transaction isolation provided by Read Committed mode is adequate for many applications, and this mode is fast and simple to use; however, it is not sufficient for all cases. Applications that do complex queries and updates might require a more rigorously consistent view of the database than Read Committed mode provides.

13.2.2. Repeatable Read Isolation Level

The Repeatable Read isolation level only sees data committed before the transaction began; it never sees either uncommitted data or changes committed during transaction execution by concurrent transactions. (However, the query does see the effects of previous updates executed within its own transaction, even though they are not yet committed.) This is a stronger guarantee than is required by the SQL standard for this isolation level, and prevents all of the phenomena described in Table 13-1. As mentioned above, this is specifically allowed by the standard, which only describes the minimum protections each isolation level must provide.

This level is different from Read Committed in that a query in a repeatable read transaction sees a snapshot as of the start of the transaction, not as of the start of the current query within the transaction. Thus, successive SELECT commands within a single transaction see the same data, i.e., they do not see changes made by other transactions that committed after their own transaction started.

Applications using this level must be prepared to retry transactions due to serialization failures.

UPDATE, DELETE, SELECT FOR UPDATE, and SELECT FOR SHARE commands behave the same as SELECT in terms of searching for target rows: they will only find target rows that were committed as of the transaction start time. However, such a target row might have already been updated (or deleted or locked) by another concurrent transaction by the time it is found. In this case, the repeatable read transaction will wait for the first updating transaction to commit or roll back (if it is still in progress). If the first updater rolls back, then its effects are negated and the repeatable read transaction can proceed with updating the originally found row. But if the first updater commits (and actually updated or deleted the row, not just locked it) then the repeatable read transaction will be rolled back with the message

ERROR:  could not serialize access due to concurrent update

because a repeatable read transaction cannot modify or lock rows changed by other transactions after the repeatable read transaction began.

When an application receives this error message, it should abort the current transaction and retry the whole transaction from the beginning. The second time through, the transaction will see the previously-committed change as part of its initial view of the database, so there is no logical conflict in using the new version of the row as the starting point for the new transaction's update.

Note that only updating transactions might need to be retried; read-only transactions will never have serialization conflicts.

The Repeatable Read mode provides a rigorous guarantee that each transaction sees a completely stable view of the database. However, this view will not necessarily always be consistent with some serial (one at a time) execution of concurrent transactions of the same level. For example, even a read only transaction at this level may see a control record updated to show that a batch has been completed but not see one of the detail records which is logically part of the batch because it read an earlier revision of the control record. Attempts to enforce business rules by transactions running at this isolation level are not likely to work correctly without careful use of explicit locks to block conflicting transactions.

Note: Prior to PostgreSQL version 9.1, a request for the Serializable transaction isolation level provided exactly the same behavior described here. To retain the legacy Serializable behavior, Repeatable Read should now be requested.

13.2.3. Serializable Isolation Level

The Serializable isolation level provides the strictest transaction isolation. This level emulates serial transaction execution, as if transactions had been executed one after another, serially, rather than concurrently. However, like the Repeatable Read level, applications using this level must be prepared to retry transactions due to serialization failures. In fact, this isolation level works exactly the same as Repeatable Read except that it monitors for conditions which could make execution of a concurrent set of serializable transactions behave in a manner inconsistent with all possible serial (one at a time) executions of those transactions. This monitoring does not introduce any blocking beyond that present in repeatable read, but there is some overhead to the monitoring, and detection of the conditions which could cause a serialization anomaly will trigger a serialization failure.

As an example, consider a table mytab, initially containing:

 class | value
-------+-------
     1 |    10
     1 |    20
     2 |   100
     2 |   200

Suppose that serializable transaction A computes:

SELECT SUM(value) FROM mytab WHERE class = 1;

and then inserts the result (30) as the value in a new row with class = 2. Concurrently, serializable transaction B computes:

SELECT SUM(value) FROM mytab WHERE class = 2;

and obtains the result 300, which it inserts in a new row with class = 1. Then both transactions try to commit. If either transaction were running at the Repeatable Read isolation level, both would be allowed to commit; but since there is no serial order of execution consistent with the result, using Serializable transactions will allow one transaction to commit and will roll the other back with this message:

ERROR:  could not serialize access due to read/write dependencies among transactions

This is because if A had executed before B, B would have computed the sum 330, not 300, and similarly the other order would have resulted in a different sum computed by A.

To guarantee true serializability PostgreSQL uses predicate locking, which means that it keeps locks which allow it to determine when a write would have had an impact on the result of a previous read from a concurrent transaction, had it run first. In PostgreSQL these locks do not cause any blocking and therefore can not play any part in causing a deadlock. They are used to identify and flag dependencies among concurrent serializable transactions which in certain combinations can lead to serialization anomalies. In contrast, a Read Committed or Repeatable Read transaction which wants to ensure data consistency may need to take out a lock on an entire table, which could block other users attempting to use that table, or it may use SELECT FOR UPDATE or SELECT FOR SHARE which not only can block other transactions but cause disk access.

Predicate locks in PostgreSQL, like in most other database systems, are based on data actually accessed by a transaction. These will show up in the pg_locks system view with a mode of SIReadLock. The particular locks acquired during execution of a query will depend on the plan used by the query, and multiple finer-grained locks (e.g., tuple locks) may be combined into fewer coarser-grained locks (e.g., page locks) during the course of the transaction to prevent exhaustion of the memory used to track the locks. A READ ONLY transaction may be able to release its SIRead locks before completion, if it detects that no conflicts can still occur which could lead to a serialization anomaly. In fact, READ ONLY transactions will often be able to establish that fact at startup and avoid taking any predicate locks. If you explicitly request a SERIALIZABLE READ ONLY DEFERRABLE transaction, it will block until it can establish this fact. (This is the only case where Serializable transactions block but Repeatable Read transactions don't.) On the other hand, SIRead locks often need to be kept past transaction commit, until overlapping read write transactions complete.

Consistent use of Serializable transactions can simplify development. The guarantee that any set of concurrent serializable transactions will have the same effect as if they were run one at a time means that if you can demonstrate that a single transaction, as written, will do the right thing when run by itself, you can have confidence that it will do the right thing in any mix of serializable transactions, even without any information about what those other transactions might do. It is important that an environment which uses this technique have a generalized way of handling serialization failures (which always return with a SQLSTATE value of '40001'), because it will be very hard to predict exactly which transactions might contribute to the read/write dependencies and need to be rolled back to prevent serialization anomalies. The monitoring of read/write dependencies has a cost, as does the restart of transactions which are terminated with a serialization failure, but balanced against the cost and blocking involved in use of explicit locks and SELECT FOR UPDATE or SELECT FOR SHARE, Serializable transactions are the best performance choice for some environments.

For optimal performance when relying on Serializable transactions for concurrency control, these issues should be considered:

  • Declare transactions as READ ONLY when possible.

  • Control the number of active connections, using a connection pool if needed. This is always an important performance consideration, but it can be particularly important in a busy system using Serializable transactions.

  • Don't put more into a single transaction than needed for integrity purposes.

  • Don't leave connections dangling "idle in transaction" longer than necessary.

  • Eliminate explicit locks, SELECT FOR UPDATE, and SELECT FOR SHARE where no longer needed due to the protections automatically provided by Serializable transactions.

  • When the system is forced to combine multiple page-level predicate locks into a single relation-level predicate lock because the predicate lock table is short of memory, an increase in the rate of serialization failures may occur. You can avoid this by increasing max_pred_locks_per_transaction.

  • A sequential scan will always necessitate a relation-level predicate lock. This can result in an increased rate of serialization failures. It may be helpful to encourage the use of index scans by reducing random_page_cost and/or increasing cpu_tuple_cost. Be sure to weigh any decrease in transaction rollbacks and restarts against any overall change in query execution time.

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Explicit Locking

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13.3. Explicit Locking

PostgreSQL provides various lock modes to control concurrent access to data in tables. These modes can be used for application-controlled locking in situations where MVCC does not give the desired behavior. Also, most PostgreSQL commands automatically acquire locks of appropriate modes to ensure that referenced tables are not dropped or modified in incompatible ways while the command executes. (For example, TRUNCATE cannot safely be executed concurrently with other operations on the same table, so it obtains an exclusive lock on the table to enforce that.)

To examine a list of the currently outstanding locks in a database server, use the pg_locks system view. For more information on monitoring the status of the lock manager subsystem, refer to Chapter 27.

13.3.1. Table-level Locks

The list below shows the available lock modes and the contexts in which they are used automatically by PostgreSQL. You can also acquire any of these locks explicitly with the command LOCK. Remember that all of these lock modes are table-level locks, even if the name contains the word "row"; the names of the lock modes are historical. To some extent the names reflect the typical usage of each lock mode — but the semantics are all the same. The only real difference between one lock mode and another is the set of lock modes with which each conflicts (see Table 13-2). Two transactions cannot hold locks of conflicting modes on the same table at the same time. (However, a transaction never conflicts with itself. For example, it might acquire ACCESS EXCLUSIVE lock and later acquire ACCESS SHARE lock on the same table.) Non-conflicting lock modes can be held concurrently by many transactions. Notice in particular that some lock modes are self-conflicting (for example, an ACCESS EXCLUSIVE lock cannot be held by more than one transaction at a time) while others are not self-conflicting (for example, an ACCESS SHARE lock can be held by multiple transactions).

Table-level Lock Modes

ACCESS SHARE

Conflicts with the ACCESS EXCLUSIVE lock mode only.

The SELECT command acquires a lock of this mode on referenced tables. In general, any query that only reads a table and does not modify it will acquire this lock mode.

ROW SHARE

Conflicts with the EXCLUSIVE and ACCESS EXCLUSIVE lock modes.

The SELECT FOR UPDATE and SELECT FOR SHARE commands acquire a lock of this mode on the target table(s) (in addition to ACCESS SHARE locks on any other tables that are referenced but not selected FOR UPDATE/FOR SHARE).

ROW EXCLUSIVE

Conflicts with the SHARE, SHARE ROW EXCLUSIVE, EXCLUSIVE, and ACCESS EXCLUSIVE lock modes.

The commands UPDATE, DELETE, and INSERT acquire this lock mode on the target table (in addition to ACCESS SHARE locks on any other referenced tables). In general, this lock mode will be acquired by any command that modifies data in a table.

SHARE UPDATE EXCLUSIVE

Conflicts with the SHARE UPDATE EXCLUSIVE, SHARE, SHARE ROW EXCLUSIVE, EXCLUSIVE, and ACCESS EXCLUSIVE lock modes. This mode protects a table against concurrent schema changes and VACUUM runs.

Acquired by VACUUM (without FULL), ANALYZE, CREATE INDEX CONCURRENTLY, and some forms of ALTER TABLE.

SHARE

Conflicts with the ROW EXCLUSIVE, SHARE UPDATE EXCLUSIVE, SHARE ROW EXCLUSIVE, EXCLUSIVE, and ACCESS EXCLUSIVE lock modes. This mode protects a table against concurrent data changes.

Acquired by CREATE INDEX (without CONCURRENTLY).

SHARE ROW EXCLUSIVE

Conflicts with the ROW EXCLUSIVE, SHARE UPDATE EXCLUSIVE, SHARE, SHARE ROW EXCLUSIVE, EXCLUSIVE, and ACCESS EXCLUSIVE lock modes. This mode protects a table against concurrent data changes, and is self-exclusive so that only one session can hold it at a time.

This lock mode is not automatically acquired by any PostgreSQL command.

EXCLUSIVE

Conflicts with the ROW SHARE, ROW EXCLUSIVE, SHARE UPDATE EXCLUSIVE, SHARE, SHARE ROW EXCLUSIVE, EXCLUSIVE, and ACCESS EXCLUSIVE lock modes. This mode allows only concurrent ACCESS SHARE locks, i.e., only reads from the table can proceed in parallel with a transaction holding this lock mode.

This lock mode is not automatically acquired on tables by any PostgreSQL command.

ACCESS EXCLUSIVE

Conflicts with locks of all modes (ACCESS SHARE, ROW SHARE, ROW EXCLUSIVE, SHARE UPDATE EXCLUSIVE, SHARE, SHARE ROW EXCLUSIVE, EXCLUSIVE, and ACCESS EXCLUSIVE). This mode guarantees that the holder is the only transaction accessing the table in any way.

Acquired by the ALTER TABLE, DROP TABLE, TRUNCATE, REINDEX, CLUSTER, and VACUUM FULL commands. This is also the default lock mode for LOCK TABLE statements that do not specify a mode explicitly.

Tip: Only an ACCESS EXCLUSIVE lock blocks a SELECT (without FOR UPDATE/SHARE) statement.

Once acquired, a lock is normally held till end of transaction. But if a lock is acquired after establishing a savepoint, the lock is released immediately if the savepoint is rolled back to. This is consistent with the principle that ROLLBACK cancels all effects of the commands since the savepoint. The same holds for locks acquired within a PL/pgSQL exception block: an error escape from the block releases locks acquired within it.

Table 13-2. Conflicting Lock Modes

Requested Lock Mode | Current Lock Mode
 | ACCESS SHARE | ROW SHARE | ROW EXCLUSIVE | SHARE UPDATE EXCLUSIVE | SHARE | SHARE ROW EXCLUSIVE | EXCLUSIVE | ACCESS EXCLUSIVE
ACCESS SHARE |  |  |  |  |  |  |  | X
ROW SHARE |  |  |  |  |  |  | X | X
ROW EXCLUSIVE |  |  |  |  | X | X | X | X
SHARE UPDATE EXCLUSIVE |  |  |  | X | X | X | X | X
SHARE |  |  | X | X |  | X | X | X
SHARE ROW EXCLUSIVE |  |  | X | X | X | X | X | X
EXCLUSIVE |  | X | X | X | X | X | X | X
ACCESS EXCLUSIVE | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X

13.3.2. Row-level Locks

In addition to table-level locks, there are row-level locks, which can be exclusive or shared locks. An exclusive row-level lock on a specific row is automatically acquired when the row is updated or deleted. The lock is held until the transaction commits or rolls back, just like table-level locks. Row-level locks do not affect data querying; they block only writers to the same row.

To acquire an exclusive row-level lock on a row without actually modifying the row, select the row with SELECT FOR UPDATE. Note that once the row-level lock is acquired, the transaction can update the row multiple times without fear of conflicts.

To acquire a shared row-level lock on a row, select the row with SELECT FOR SHARE. A shared lock does not prevent other transactions from acquiring the same shared lock. However, no transaction is allowed to update, delete, or exclusively lock a row on which any other transaction holds a shared lock. Any attempt to do so will block until the shared lock(s) have been released.

PostgreSQL doesn't remember any information about modified rows in memory, so there is no limit on the number of rows locked at one time. However, locking a row might cause a disk write, e.g., SELECT FOR UPDATE modifies selected rows to mark them locked, and so will result in disk writes.

In addition to table and row locks, page-level share/exclusive locks are used to control read/write access to table pages in the shared buffer pool. These locks are released immediately after a row is fetched or updated. Application developers normally need not be concerned with page-level locks, but they are mentioned here for completeness.

13.3.3. Deadlocks

The use of explicit locking can increase the likelihood of deadlocks, wherein two (or more) transactions each hold locks that the other wants. For example, if transaction 1 acquires an exclusive lock on table A and then tries to acquire an exclusive lock on table B, while transaction 2 has already exclusive-locked table B and now wants an exclusive lock on table A, then neither one can proceed. PostgreSQL automatically detects deadlock situations and resolves them by aborting one of the transactions involved, allowing the other(s) to complete. (Exactly which transaction will be aborted is difficult to predict and should not be relied upon.)

Note that deadlocks can also occur as the result of row-level locks (and thus, they can occur even if explicit locking is not used). Consider the case in which two concurrent transactions modify a table. The first transaction executes:

UPDATE accounts SET balance = balance + 100.00 WHERE acctnum = 11111;

This acquires a row-level lock on the row with the specified account number. Then, the second transaction executes:

UPDATE accounts SET balance = balance + 100.00 WHERE acctnum = 22222;
UPDATE accounts SET balance = balance - 100.00 WHERE acctnum = 11111;

The first UPDATE statement successfully acquires a row-level lock on the specified row, so it succeeds in updating that row. However, the second UPDATE statement finds that the row it is attempting to update has already been locked, so it waits for the transaction that acquired the lock to complete. Transaction two is now waiting on transaction one to complete before it continues execution. Now, transaction one executes:

UPDATE accounts SET balance = balance - 100.00 WHERE acctnum = 22222;

Transaction one attempts to acquire a row-level lock on the specified row, but it cannot: transaction two already holds such a lock. So it waits for transaction two to complete. Thus, transaction one is blocked on transaction two, and transaction two is blocked on transaction one: a deadlock condition. PostgreSQL will detect this situation and abort one of the transactions.

The best defense against deadlocks is generally to avoid them by being certain that all applications using a database acquire locks on multiple objects in a consistent order. In the example above, if both transactions had updated the rows in the same order, no deadlock would have occurred. One should also ensure that the first lock acquired on an object in a transaction is the most restrictive mode that will be needed for that object. If it is not feasible to verify this in advance, then deadlocks can be handled on-the-fly by retrying transactions that abort due to deadlocks.

So long as no deadlock situation is detected, a transaction seeking either a table-level or row-level lock will wait indefinitely for conflicting locks to be released. This means it is a bad idea for applications to hold transactions open for long periods of time (e.g., while waiting for user input).

13.3.4. Advisory Locks

PostgreSQL provides a means for creating locks that have application-defined meanings. These are called advisory locks, because the system does not enforce their use — it is up to the application to use them correctly. Advisory locks can be useful for locking strategies that are an awkward fit for the MVCC model. For example, a common use of advisory locks is to emulate pessimistic locking strategies typical of so-called "flat file" data management systems. While a flag stored in a table could be used for the same purpose, advisory locks are faster, avoid table bloat, and are automatically cleaned up by the server at the end of the session.

There are two ways to acquire an advisory lock in PostgreSQL: at session level or at transaction level. Once acquired at session level, an advisory lock is held until explicitly released or the session ends. Unlike standard lock requests, session-level advisory lock requests do not honor transaction semantics: a lock acquired during a transaction that is later rolled back will still be held following the rollback, and likewise an unlock is effective even if the calling transaction fails later. A lock can be acquired multiple times by its owning process; for each completed lock request there must be a corresponding unlock request before the lock is actually released. Transaction-level lock requests, on the other hand, behave more like regular lock requests: they are automatically released at the end of the transaction, and there is no explicit unlock operation. This behavior is often more convenient than the session-level behavior for short-term usage of an advisory lock. Session-level and transaction-level lock requests for the same advisory lock identifier will block each other in the expected way. If a session already holds a given advisory lock, additional requests by it will always succeed, even if other sessions are awaiting the lock; this statement is true regardless of whether the existing lock hold and new request are at session level or transaction level.

Like all locks in PostgreSQL, a complete list of advisory locks currently held by any session can be found in the pg_locks system view.

Both advisory locks and regular locks are stored in a shared memory pool whose size is defined by the configuration variables max_locks_per_transaction and max_connections. Care must be taken not to exhaust this memory or the server will be unable to grant any locks at all. This imposes an upper limit on the number of advisory locks grantable by the server, typically in the tens to hundreds of thousands depending on how the server is configured.

In certain cases using advisory locking methods, especially in queries involving explicit ordering and LIMIT clauses, care must be taken to control the locks acquired because of the order in which SQL expressions are evaluated. For example:

SELECT pg_advisory_lock(id) FROM foo WHERE id = 12345; -- ok
SELECT pg_advisory_lock(id) FROM foo WHERE id > 12345 LIMIT 100; -- danger!
SELECT pg_advisory_lock(q.id) FROM
(
  SELECT id FROM foo WHERE id > 12345 LIMIT 100
) q; -- ok

In the above queries, the second form is dangerous because the LIMIT is not guaranteed to be applied before the locking function is executed. This might cause some locks to be acquired that the application was not expecting, and hence would fail to release (until it ends the session). From the point of view of the application, such locks would be dangling, although still viewable in pg_locks.

The functions provided to manipulate advisory locks are described in Table 9-63.

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Data Consistency Checks at the Application Level

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13.4. Data Consistency Checks at the Application Level

It is very difficult to enforce business rules regarding data integrity using Read Committed transactions because the view of the data is shifting with each statement, and even a single statement may not restrict itself to the statement's snapshot if a write conflict occurs.

While a Repeatable Read transaction has a stable view of the data throughout its execution, there is a subtle issue with using MVCC snapshots for data consistency checks, involving something known as read/write conflicts. If one transaction writes data and a concurrent transaction attempts to read the same data (whether before or after the write), it cannot see the work of the other transaction. The reader then appears to have executed first regardless of which started first or which committed first. If that is as far as it goes, there is no problem, but if the reader also writes data which is read by a concurrent transaction there is now a transaction which appears to have run before either of the previously mentioned transactions. If the transaction which appears to have executed last actually commits first, it is very easy for a cycle to appear in a graph of the order of execution of the transactions. When such a cycle appears, integrity checks will not work correctly without some help.

As mentioned in Section 13.2.3, Serializable transactions are just Repeatable Read transactions which add non-blocking monitoring for dangerous patterns of read/write conflicts. When a pattern is detected which could cause a cycle in the apparent order of execution, one of the transactions involved is rolled back to break the cycle.

13.4.1. Enforcing Consistency With Serializable Transactions

If the Serializable transaction isolation level is used for all writes and for all reads which need a consistent view of the data, no other effort is required to ensure consistency. Software from other environments which is written to use serializable transactions to ensure consistency should "just work" in this regard in PostgreSQL.

When using this technique, it will avoid creating an unnecessary burden for application programmers if the application software goes through a framework which automatically retries transactions which are rolled back with a serialization failure. It may be a good idea to set default_transaction_isolation to serializable. It would also be wise to take some action to ensure that no other transaction isolation level is used, either inadvertently or to subvert integrity checks, through checks of the transaction isolation level in triggers.

See Section 13.2.3 for performance suggestions.

Warning

This level of integrity protection using Serializable transactions does not yet extend to hot standby mode (Section 25.5). Because of that, those using hot standby may want to use Repeatable Read and explicit locking on the master.

13.4.2. Enforcing Consistency With Explicit Blocking Locks

When non-serializable writes are possible, to ensure the current validity of a row and protect it against concurrent updates one must use SELECT FOR UPDATE, SELECT FOR SHARE, or an appropriate LOCK TABLE statement. (SELECT FOR UPDATE and SELECT FOR SHARE lock just the returned rows against concurrent updates, while LOCK TABLE locks the whole table.) This should be taken into account when porting applications to PostgreSQL from other environments.

Also of note to those converting from other environments is the fact that SELECT FOR UPDATE does not ensure that a concurrent transaction will not update or delete a selected row. To do that in PostgreSQL you must actually update the row, even if no values need to be changed. SELECT FOR UPDATE temporarily blocks other transactions from acquiring the same lock or executing an UPDATE or DELETE which would affect the locked row, but once the transaction holding this lock commits or rolls back, a blocked transaction will proceed with the conflicting operation unless an actual UPDATE of the row was performed while the lock was held.

Global validity checks require extra thought under non-serializable MVCC. For example, a banking application might wish to check that the sum of all credits in one table equals the sum of debits in another table, when both tables are being actively updated. Comparing the results of two successive SELECT sum(...) commands will not work reliably in Read Committed mode, since the second query will likely include the results of transactions not counted by the first. Doing the two sums in a single repeatable read transaction will give an accurate picture of only the effects of transactions that committed before the repeatable read transaction started — but one might legitimately wonder whether the answer is still relevant by the time it is delivered. If the repeatable read transaction itself applied some changes before trying to make the consistency check, the usefulness of the check becomes even more debatable, since now it includes some but not all post-transaction-start changes. In such cases a careful person might wish to lock all tables needed for the check, in order to get an indisputable picture of current reality. A SHARE mode (or higher) lock guarantees that there are no uncommitted changes in the locked table, other than those of the current transaction.

Note also that if one is relying on explicit locking to prevent concurrent changes, one should either use Read Committed mode, or in Repeatable Read mode be careful to obtain locks before performing queries. A lock obtained by a repeatable read transaction guarantees that no other transactions modifying the table are still running, but if the snapshot seen by the transaction predates obtaining the lock, it might predate some now-committed changes in the table. A repeatable read transaction's snapshot is actually frozen at the start of its first query or data-modification command (SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE), so it is possible to obtain locks explicitly before the snapshot is frozen.

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Caveats

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13.5. Caveats

Some DDL commands, currently only TRUNCATE and the table-rewriting forms of ALTER TABLE, are not MVCC-safe. This means that after the truncation or rewrite commits, the table will appear empty to concurrent transactions, if they are using a snapshot taken before the DDL command committed. This will only be an issue for a transaction that did not access the table in question before the DDL command started — any transaction that has done so would hold at least an ACCESS SHARE table lock, which would block the DDL command until that transaction completes. So these commands will not cause any apparent inconsistency in the table contents for successive queries on the target table, but they could cause visible inconsistency between the contents of the target table and other tables in the database.

Support for the Serializable transaction isolation level has not yet been added to Hot Standby replication targets (described in Section 25.5). The strictest isolation level currently supported in hot standby mode is Repeatable Read. While performing all permanent database writes within Serializable transactions on the master will ensure that all standbys will eventually reach a consistent state, a Repeatable Read transaction run on the standby can sometimes see a transient state that is inconsistent with any serial execution of the transactions on the master.

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Locking and Indexes

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13.6. Locking and Indexes

Though PostgreSQL provides nonblocking read/write access to table data, nonblocking read/write access is not currently offered for every index access method implemented in PostgreSQL. The various index types are handled as follows:

B-tree and GiST indexes

Short-term share/exclusive page-level locks are used for read/write access. Locks are released immediately after each index row is fetched or inserted. These index types provide the highest concurrency without deadlock conditions.

Hash indexes

Share/exclusive hash-bucket-level locks are used for read/write access. Locks are released after the whole bucket is processed. Bucket-level locks provide better concurrency than index-level ones, but deadlock is possible since the locks are held longer than one index operation.

GIN indexes

Short-term share/exclusive page-level locks are used for read/write access. Locks are released immediately after each index row is fetched or inserted. But note that insertion of a GIN-indexed value usually produces several index key insertions per row, so GIN might do substantial work for a single value's insertion.

Currently, B-tree indexes offer the best performance for concurrent applications; since they also have more features than hash indexes, they are the recommended index type for concurrent applications that need to index scalar data. When dealing with non-scalar data, B-trees are not useful, and GiST or GIN indexes should be used instead.

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Performance Tips

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Chapter 14. Performance Tips

Table of Contents
14.1. Using EXPLAIN
14.2. Statistics Used by the Planner
14.3. Controlling the Planner with Explicit JOIN Clauses
14.4. Populating a Database
14.4.1. Disable Autocommit
14.4.2. Use COPY
14.4.3. Remove Indexes
14.4.4. Remove Foreign Key Constraints
14.4.5. Increase maintenance_work_mem
14.4.6. Increase checkpoint_segments
14.4.7. Disable WAL Archival and Streaming Replication
14.4.8. Run ANALYZE Afterwards
14.4.9. Some Notes About pg_dump
14.5. Non-Durable Settings

Query performance can be affected by many things. Some of these can be controlled by the user, while others are fundamental to the underlying design of the system. This chapter provides some hints about understanding and tuning PostgreSQL performance.

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Using EXPLAIN

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14.1. Using EXPLAIN

PostgreSQL devises a query plan for each query it receives. Choosing the right plan to match the query structure and the properties of the data is absolutely critical for good performance, so the system includes a complex planner that tries to choose good plans. You can use the EXPLAIN command to see what query plan the planner creates for any query. Plan-reading is an art that deserves an extensive tutorial, which this is not; but here is some basic information.

The structure of a query plan is a tree of plan nodes. Nodes at the bottom level of the tree are table scan nodes: they return raw rows from a table. There are different types of scan nodes for different table access methods: sequential scans, index scans, and bitmap index scans. If the query requires joining, aggregation, sorting, or other operations on the raw rows, then there will be additional nodes above the scan nodes to perform these operations. Again, there is usually more than one possible way to do these operations, so different node types can appear here too. The output of EXPLAIN has one line for each node in the plan tree, showing the basic node type plus the cost estimates that the planner made for the execution of that plan node. The first line (topmost node) has the estimated total execution cost for the plan; it is this number that the planner seeks to minimize.

Here is a trivial example, just to show what the output looks like: [1]

EXPLAIN SELECT * FROM tenk1;

                         QUERY PLAN
-------------------------------------------------------------
 Seq Scan on tenk1  (cost=0.00..458.00 rows=10000 width=244)

The numbers that are quoted by EXPLAIN are (left to right):

  • Estimated start-up cost (time expended before the output scan can start, e.g., time to do the sorting in a sort node)

  • Estimated total cost (if all rows are retrieved, though they might not be; e.g., a query with a LIMIT clause will stop short of paying the total cost of the Limit plan node's input node)

  • Estimated number of rows output by this plan node (again, only if executed to completion)

  • Estimated average width (in bytes) of rows output by this plan node

The costs are measured in arbitrary units determined by the planner's cost parameters (see Section 18.7.2). Traditional practice is to measure the costs in units of disk page fetches; that is, seq_page_cost is conventionally set to 1.0 and the other cost parameters are set relative to that. (The examples in this section are run with the default cost parameters.)

It's important to note that the cost of an upper-level node includes the cost of all its child nodes. It's also important to realize that the cost only reflects things that the planner cares about. In particular, the cost does not consider the time spent transmitting result rows to the client, which could be an important factor in the real elapsed time; but the planner ignores it because it cannot change it by altering the plan. (Every correct plan will output the same row set, we trust.)

The rows value is a little tricky because it is not the number of rows processed or scanned by the plan node. It is usually less, reflecting the estimated selectivity of any WHERE-clause conditions that are being applied at the node. Ideally the top-level rows estimate will approximate the number of rows actually returned, updated, or deleted by the query.

Returning to our example:

EXPLAIN SELECT * FROM tenk1;

                         QUERY PLAN
-------------------------------------------------------------
 Seq Scan on tenk1  (cost=0.00..458.00 rows=10000 width=244)

This is about as straightforward as it gets. If you do:

SELECT relpages, reltuples FROM pg_class WHERE relname = 'tenk1';

you will find that tenk1 has 358 disk pages and 10000 rows. The estimated cost is computed as (disk pages read * seq_page_cost) + (rows scanned * cpu_tuple_cost). By default, seq_page_cost is 1.0 and cpu_tuple_cost is 0.01, so the estimated cost is (358 * 1.0) + (10000 * 0.01) = 458.

Now let's modify the original query to add a WHERE condition:

EXPLAIN SELECT * FROM tenk1 WHERE unique1 < 7000;

                         QUERY PLAN
------------------------------------------------------------
 Seq Scan on tenk1  (cost=0.00..483.00 rows=7033 width=244)
   Filter: (unique1 < 7000)

Notice that the EXPLAIN output shows the WHERE clause being applied as a "filter" condition; this means that the plan node checks the condition for each row it scans, and outputs only the ones that pass the condition. The estimate of output rows has been reduced because of the WHERE clause. However, the scan will still have to visit all 10000 rows, so the cost hasn't decreased; in fact it has gone up a bit (by 10000 * cpu_operator_cost, to be exact) to reflect the extra CPU time spent checking the WHERE condition.

The actual number of rows this query would select is 7000, but the rows estimate is only approximate. If you try to duplicate this experiment, you will probably get a slightly different estimate; moreover, it will change after each ANALYZE command, because the statistics produced by ANALYZE are taken from a randomized sample of the table.

Now, let's make the condition more restrictive:

EXPLAIN SELECT * FROM tenk1 WHERE unique1 < 100;

                                  QUERY PLAN
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Bitmap Heap Scan on tenk1  (cost=2.37..232.35 rows=106 width=244)
   Recheck Cond: (unique1 < 100)
   ->  Bitmap Index Scan on tenk1_unique1  (cost=0.00..2.37 rows=106 width=0)
         Index Cond: (unique1 < 100)

Here the planner has decided to use a two-step plan: the bottom plan node visits an index to find the locations of rows matching the index condition, and then the upper plan node actually fetches those rows from the table itself. Fetching the rows separately is much more expensive than sequentially reading them, but because not all the pages of the table have to be visited, this is still cheaper than a sequential scan. (The reason for using two plan levels is that the upper plan node sorts the row locations identified by the index into physical order before reading them, to minimize the cost of separate fetches. The "bitmap" mentioned in the node names is the mechanism that does the sorting.)

If the WHERE condition is selective enough, the planner might switch to a "simple" index scan plan:

EXPLAIN SELECT * FROM tenk1 WHERE unique1 < 3;

                                  QUERY PLAN
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Index Scan using tenk1_unique1 on tenk1  (cost=0.00..10.00 rows=2 width=244)
   Index Cond: (unique1 < 3)

In this case the table rows are fetched in index order, which makes them even more expensive to read, but there are so few that the extra cost of sorting the row locations is not worth it. You'll most often see this plan type for queries that fetch just a single row, and for queries that have an ORDER BY condition that matches the index order.

Add another condition to the WHERE clause:

EXPLAIN SELECT * FROM tenk1 WHERE unique1 < 3 AND stringu1 = 'xxx';

                                  QUERY PLAN
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Index Scan using tenk1_unique1 on tenk1  (cost=0.00..10.01 rows=1 width=244)
   Index Cond: (unique1 < 3)
   Filter: (stringu1 = 'xxx'::name)

The added condition stringu1 = 'xxx' reduces the output-rows estimate, but not the cost because we still have to visit the same set of rows. Notice that the stringu1 clause cannot be applied as an index condition (since this index is only on the unique1 column). Instead it is applied as a filter on the rows retrieved by the index. Thus the cost has actually gone up slightly to reflect this extra checking.

If there are indexes on several columns referenced in WHERE, the planner might choose to use an AND or OR combination of the indexes:

EXPLAIN SELECT * FROM tenk1 WHERE unique1 < 100 AND unique2 > 9000;

                                     QUERY PLAN
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Bitmap Heap Scan on tenk1  (cost=11.27..49.11 rows=11 width=244)
   Recheck Cond: ((unique1 < 100) AND (unique2 > 9000))
   ->  BitmapAnd  (cost=11.27..11.27 rows=11 width=0)
         ->  Bitmap Index Scan on tenk1_unique1  (cost=0.00..2.37 rows=106 width=0)
               Index Cond: (unique1 < 100)
         ->  Bitmap Index Scan on tenk1_unique2  (cost=0.00..8.65 rows=1042 width=0)
               Index Cond: (unique2 > 9000)

But this requires visiting both indexes, so it's not necessarily a win compared to using just one index and treating the other condition as a filter. If you vary the ranges involved you'll see the plan change accordingly.

Let's try joining two tables, using the columns we have been discussing:

EXPLAIN SELECT *
FROM tenk1 t1, tenk2 t2
WHERE t1.unique1 < 100 AND t1.unique2 = t2.unique2;

                                      QUERY PLAN
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Nested Loop  (cost=2.37..553.11 rows=106 width=488)
   ->  Bitmap Heap Scan on tenk1 t1  (cost=2.37..232.35 rows=106 width=244)
         Recheck Cond: (unique1 < 100)
         ->  Bitmap Index Scan on tenk1_unique1  (cost=0.00..2.37 rows=106 width=0)
               Index Cond: (unique1 < 100)
   ->  Index Scan using tenk2_unique2 on tenk2 t2  (cost=0.00..3.01 rows=1 width=244)
         Index Cond: (unique2 = t1.unique2)

In this nested-loop join, the outer (upper) scan is the same bitmap index scan we saw earlier, and so its cost and row count are the same because we are applying the WHERE clause unique1 < 100 at that node. The t1.unique2 = t2.unique2 clause is not relevant yet, so it doesn't affect the row count of the outer scan. For the inner (lower) scan, the unique2 value of the current outer-scan row is plugged into the inner index scan to produce an index condition like unique2 = constant. So we get the same inner-scan plan and costs that we'd get from, say, EXPLAIN SELECT * FROM tenk2 WHERE unique2 = 42. The costs of the loop node are then set on the basis of the cost of the outer scan, plus one repetition of the inner scan for each outer row (106 * 3.01, here), plus a little CPU time for join processing.

In this example the join's output row count is the same as the product of the two scans' row counts, but that's not true in all cases because you can have WHERE clauses that mention both tables and so can only be applied at the join point, not to either input scan. For example, if we added WHERE ... AND t1.hundred < t2.hundred, that would decrease the output row count of the join node, but not change either input scan.

One way to look at variant plans is to force the planner to disregard whatever strategy it thought was the cheapest, using the enable/disable flags described in Section 18.7.1. (This is a crude tool, but useful. See also Section 14.3.)

SET enable_nestloop = off;
EXPLAIN SELECT *
FROM tenk1 t1, tenk2 t2
WHERE t1.unique1 < 100 AND t1.unique2 = t2.unique2;

                                        QUERY PLAN
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Hash Join  (cost=232.61..741.67 rows=106 width=488)
   Hash Cond: (t2.unique2 = t1.unique2)
   ->  Seq Scan on tenk2 t2  (cost=0.00..458.00 rows=10000 width=244)
   ->  Hash  (cost=232.35..232.35 rows=106 width=244)
         ->  Bitmap Heap Scan on tenk1 t1  (cost=2.37..232.35 rows=106 width=244)
               Recheck Cond: (unique1 < 100)
               ->  Bitmap Index Scan on tenk1_unique1  (cost=0.00..2.37 rows=106 width=0)
                     Index Cond: (unique1 < 100)

This plan proposes to extract the 100 interesting rows of tenk1 using that same old index scan, stash them into an in-memory hash table, and then do a sequential scan of tenk2, probing into the hash table for possible matches of t1.unique2 = t2.unique2 for each tenk2 row. The cost to read tenk1 and set up the hash table is a start-up cost for the hash join, since there will be no output until we can start reading tenk2. The total time estimate for the join also includes a hefty charge for the CPU time to probe the hash table 10000 times. Note, however, that we are not charging 10000 times 232.35; the hash table setup is only done once in this plan type.

It is possible to check the accuracy of the planner's estimated costs by using EXPLAIN ANALYZE. This command actually executes the query, and then displays the true run time accumulated within each plan node along with the same estimated costs that a plain EXPLAIN shows. For example, we might get a result like this:

EXPLAIN ANALYZE SELECT *
FROM tenk1 t1, tenk2 t2
WHERE t1.unique1 < 100 AND t1.unique2 = t2.unique2;

                                                            QUERY PLAN
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Nested Loop  (cost=2.37..553.11 rows=106 width=488) (actual time=1.392..12.700 rows=100 loops=1)
   ->  Bitmap Heap Scan on tenk1 t1  (cost=2.37..232.35 rows=106 width=244) (actual time=0.878..2.367 rows=100 loops=1)
         Recheck Cond: (unique1 < 100)
         ->  Bitmap Index Scan on tenk1_unique1  (cost=0.00..2.37 rows=106 width=0) (actual time=0.546..0.546 rows=100 loops=1)
               Index Cond: (unique1 < 100)
   ->  Index Scan using tenk2_unique2 on tenk2 t2  (cost=0.00..3.01 rows=1 width=244) (actual time=0.067..0.078 rows=1 loops=100)
         Index Cond: (unique2 = t1.unique2)
 Total runtime: 14.452 ms

Note that the "actual time" values are in milliseconds of real time, whereas the cost estimates are expressed in arbitrary units; so they are unlikely to match up. The thing to pay attention to is whether the ratios of actual time and estimated costs are consistent.

In some query plans, it is possible for a subplan node to be executed more than once. For example, the inner index scan is executed once per outer row in the above nested-loop plan. In such cases, the loops value reports the total number of executions of the node, and the actual time and rows values shown are averages per-execution. This is done to make the numbers comparable with the way that the cost estimates are shown. Multiply by the loops value to get the total time actually spent in the node.

The Total runtime shown by EXPLAIN ANALYZE includes executor start-up and shut-down time, but not parsing, rewriting, or planning time. For INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE commands, the time spent applying the table changes is charged to a top-level Insert, Update, or Delete plan node. (The plan nodes underneath this node represent the work of locating the old rows and/or computing the new ones.) Time spent executing BEFORE triggers, if any, is charged to the related Insert, Update, or Delete node, although time spent executing AFTER triggers is not. The time spent in each trigger (either BEFORE or AFTER) is also shown separately and is included in total run time. Note, however, that deferred constraint triggers will not be executed until end of transaction and are thus not shown by EXPLAIN ANALYZE.

There are two significant ways in which run times measured by EXPLAIN ANALYZE can deviate from normal execution of the same query. First, since no output rows are delivered to the client, network transmission costs and I/O formatting costs are not included. Second, the overhead added by EXPLAIN ANALYZE can be significant, especially on machines with slow gettimeofday() kernel calls.

It is worth noting that EXPLAIN results should not be extrapolated to situations other than the one you are actually testing; for example, results on a toy-sized table cannot be assumed to apply to large tables. The planner's cost estimates are not linear and so it might choose a different plan for a larger or smaller table. An extreme example is that on a table that only occupies one disk page, you'll nearly always get a sequential scan plan whether indexes are available or not. The planner realizes that it's going to take one disk page read to process the table in any case, so there's no value in expending additional page reads to look at an index.

Notes

[1]

Examples in this section are drawn from the regression test database after doing a VACUUM ANALYZE, using 8.2 development sources. You should be able to get similar results if you try the examples yourself, but your estimated costs and row counts might vary slightly because ANALYZE's statistics are random samples rather than exact.

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Statistics Used by the Planner

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14.2. Statistics Used by the Planner

As we saw in the previous section, the query planner needs to estimate the number of rows retrieved by a query in order to make good choices of query plans. This section provides a quick look at the statistics that the system uses for these estimates.

One component of the statistics is the total number of entries in each table and index, as well as the number of disk blocks occupied by each table and index. This information is kept in the table pg_class, in the columns reltuples and relpages. We can look at it with queries similar to this one:

SELECT relname, relkind, reltuples, relpages
FROM pg_class
WHERE relname LIKE 'tenk1%';

       relname        | relkind | reltuples | relpages
----------------------+---------+-----------+----------
 tenk1                | r       |     10000 |      358
 tenk1_hundred        | i       |     10000 |       30
 tenk1_thous_tenthous | i       |     10000 |       30
 tenk1_unique1        | i       |     10000 |       30
 tenk1_unique2        | i       |     10000 |       30
(5 rows)

Here we can see that tenk1 contains 10000 rows, as do its indexes, but the indexes are (unsurprisingly) much smaller than the table.

For efficiency reasons, reltuples and relpages are not updated on-the-fly, and so they usually contain somewhat out-of-date values. They are updated by VACUUM, ANALYZE, and a few DDL commands such as CREATE INDEX. A stand-alone ANALYZE, that is one not part of VACUUM, generates an approximate reltuples value since it does not read every row of the table. The planner will scale the values it finds in pg_class to match the current physical table size, thus obtaining a closer approximation.

Most queries retrieve only a fraction of the rows in a table, due to WHERE clauses that restrict the rows to be examined. The planner thus needs to make an estimate of the selectivity of WHERE clauses, that is, the fraction of rows that match each condition in the WHERE clause. The information used for this task is stored in the pg_statistic system catalog. Entries in pg_statistic are updated by the ANALYZE and VACUUM ANALYZE commands, and are always approximate even when freshly updated.

Rather than look at pg_statistic directly, it's better to look at its view pg_stats when examining the statistics manually. pg_stats is designed to be more easily readable. Furthermore, pg_stats is readable by all, whereas pg_statistic is only readable by a superuser. (This prevents unprivileged users from learning something about the contents of other people's tables from the statistics. The pg_stats view is restricted to show only rows about tables that the current user can read.) For example, we might do:

SELECT attname, inherited, n_distinct,
       array_to_string(most_common_vals, E'\n') as most_common_vals
FROM pg_stats
WHERE tablename = 'road';

 attname | inherited | n_distinct |          most_common_vals
---------+-----------+------------+------------------------------------
 name    | f         |  -0.363388 | I- 580                        Ramp+
         |           |            | I- 880                        Ramp+
         |           |            | Sp Railroad                       +
         |           |            | I- 580                            +
         |           |            | I- 680                        Ramp
 name    | t         |  -0.284859 | I- 880                        Ramp+
         |           |            | I- 580                        Ramp+
         |           |            | I- 680                        Ramp+
         |           |            | I- 580                            +
         |           |            | State Hwy 13                  Ramp
(2 rows)

Note that two rows are displayed for the same column, one corresponding to the complete inheritance hierarchy starting at the road table (inherited=t), and another one including only the road table itself (inherited=f).

The amount of information stored in pg_statistic by ANALYZE, in particular the maximum number of entries in the most_common_vals and histogram_bounds arrays for each column, can be set on a column-by-column basis using the ALTER TABLE SET STATISTICS command, or globally by setting the default_statistics_target configuration variable. The default limit is presently 100 entries. Raising the limit might allow more accurate planner estimates to be made, particularly for columns with irregular data distributions, at the price of consuming more space in pg_statistic and slightly more time to compute the estimates. Conversely, a lower limit might be sufficient for columns with simple data distributions.

Further details about the planner's use of statistics can be found in Chapter 57.

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Controlling the Planner with Explicit JOIN Clauses

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14.3. Controlling the Planner with Explicit JOIN Clauses

It is possible to control the query planner to some extent by using the explicit JOIN syntax. To see why this matters, we first need some background.

In a simple join query, such as:

SELECT * FROM a, b, c WHERE a.id = b.id AND b.ref = c.id;

the planner is free to join the given tables in any order. For example, it could generate a query plan that joins A to B, using the WHERE condition a.id = b.id, and then joins C to this joined table, using the other WHERE condition. Or it could join B to C and then join A to that result. Or it could join A to C and then join them with B — but that would be inefficient, since the full Cartesian product of A and C would have to be formed, there being no applicable condition in the WHERE clause to allow optimization of the join. (All joins in the PostgreSQL executor happen between two input tables, so it's necessary to build up the result in one or another of these fashions.) The important point is that these different join possibilities give semantically equivalent results but might have hugely different execution costs. Therefore, the planner will explore all of them to try to find the most efficient query plan.

When a query only involves two or three tables, there aren't many join orders to worry about. But the number of possible join orders grows exponentially as the number of tables expands. Beyond ten or so input tables it's no longer practical to do an exhaustive search of all the possibilities, and even for six or seven tables planning might take an annoyingly long time. When there are too many input tables, the PostgreSQL planner will switch from exhaustive search to a genetic probabilistic search through a limited number of possibilities. (The switch-over threshold is set by the geqo_threshold run-time parameter.) The genetic search takes less time, but it won't necessarily find the best possible plan.

When the query involves outer joins, the planner has less freedom than it does for plain (inner) joins. For example, consider:

SELECT * FROM a LEFT JOIN (b JOIN c ON (b.ref = c.id)) ON (a.id = b.id);

Although this query's restrictions are superficially similar to the previous example, the semantics are different because a row must be emitted for each row of A that has no matching row in the join of B and C. Therefore the planner has no choice of join order here: it must join B to C and then join A to that result. Accordingly, this query takes less time to plan than the previous query. In other cases, the planner might be able to determine that more than one join order is safe. For example, given:

SELECT * FROM a LEFT JOIN b ON (a.bid = b.id) LEFT JOIN c ON (a.cid = c.id);

it is valid to join A to either B or C first. Currently, only FULL JOIN completely constrains the join order. Most practical cases involving LEFT JOIN or RIGHT JOIN can be rearranged to some extent.

Explicit inner join syntax (INNER JOIN, CROSS JOIN, or unadorned JOIN) is semantically the same as listing the input relations in FROM, so it does not constrain the join order.

Even though most kinds of JOIN don't completely constrain the join order, it is possible to instruct the PostgreSQL query planner to treat all JOIN clauses as constraining the join order anyway. For example, these three queries are logically equivalent:

SELECT * FROM a, b, c WHERE a.id = b.id AND b.ref = c.id;
SELECT * FROM a CROSS JOIN b CROSS JOIN c WHERE a.id = b.id AND b.ref = c.id;
SELECT * FROM a JOIN (b JOIN c ON (b.ref = c.id)) ON (a.id = b.id);

But if we tell the planner to honor the JOIN order, the second and third take less time to plan than the first. This effect is not worth worrying about for only three tables, but it can be a lifesaver with many tables.

To force the planner to follow the join order laid out by explicit JOINs, set the join_collapse_limit run-time parameter to 1. (Other possible values are discussed below.)

You do not need to constrain the join order completely in order to cut search time, because it's OK to use JOIN operators within items of a plain FROM list. For example, consider:

SELECT * FROM a CROSS JOIN b, c, d, e WHERE ...;

With join_collapse_limit = 1, this forces the planner to join A to B before joining them to other tables, but doesn't constrain its choices otherwise. In this example, the number of possible join orders is reduced by a factor of 5.

Constraining the planner's search in this way is a useful technique both for reducing planning time and for directing the planner to a good query plan. If the planner chooses a bad join order by default, you can force it to choose a better order via JOIN syntax — assuming that you know of a better order, that is. Experimentation is recommended.

A closely related issue that affects planning time is collapsing of subqueries into their parent query. For example, consider:

SELECT *
FROM x, y,
    (SELECT * FROM a, b, c WHERE something) AS ss
WHERE somethingelse;

This situation might arise from use of a view that contains a join; the view's SELECT rule will be inserted in place of the view reference, yielding a query much like the above. Normally, the planner will try to collapse the subquery into the parent, yielding:

SELECT * FROM x, y, a, b, c WHERE something AND somethingelse;

This usually results in a better plan than planning the subquery separately. (For example, the outer WHERE conditions might be such that joining X to A first eliminates many rows of A, thus avoiding the need to form the full logical output of the subquery.) But at the same time, we have increased the planning time; here, we have a five-way join problem replacing two separate three-way join problems. Because of the exponential growth of the number of possibilities, this makes a big difference. The planner tries to avoid getting stuck in huge join search problems by not collapsing a subquery if more than from_collapse_limit FROM items would result in the parent query. You can trade off planning time against quality of plan by adjusting this run-time parameter up or down.

from_collapse_limit and join_collapse_limit are similarly named because they do almost the same thing: one controls when the planner will "flatten out" subqueries, and the other controls when it will flatten out explicit joins. Typically you would either set join_collapse_limit equal to from_collapse_limit (so that explicit joins and subqueries act similarly) or set join_collapse_limit to 1 (if you want to control join order with explicit joins). But you might set them differently if you are trying to fine-tune the trade-off between planning time and run time.

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Statistics Used by the Planner | Up | Populating a Database


Populating a Database

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14.4. Populating a Database

One might need to insert a large amount of data when first populating a database. This section contains some suggestions on how to make this process as efficient as possible.

14.4.1. Disable Autocommit

When using multiple INSERTs, turn off autocommit and just do one commit at the end. (In plain SQL, this means issuing BEGIN at the start and COMMIT at the end. Some client libraries might do this behind your back, in which case you need to make sure the library does it when you want it done.) If you allow each insertion to be committed separately, PostgreSQL is doing a lot of work for each row that is added. An additional benefit of doing all insertions in one transaction is that if the insertion of one row were to fail then the insertion of all rows inserted up to that point would be rolled back, so you won't be stuck with partially loaded data.

14.4.2. Use COPY

Use COPY to load all the rows in one command, instead of using a series of INSERT commands. The COPY command is optimized for loading large numbers of rows; it is less flexible than INSERT, but incurs significantly less overhead for large data loads. Since COPY is a single command, there is no need to disable autocommit if you use this method to populate a table.

If you cannot use COPY, it might help to use PREPARE to create a prepared INSERT statement, and then use EXECUTE as many times as required. This avoids some of the overhead of repeatedly parsing and planning INSERT. Different interfaces provide this facility in different ways; look for "prepared statements" in the interface documentation.

Note that loading a large number of rows using COPY is almost always faster than using INSERT, even if PREPARE is used and multiple insertions are batched into a single transaction.

COPY is fastest when used within the same transaction as an earlier CREATE TABLE or TRUNCATE command. In such cases no WAL needs to be written, because in case of an error, the files containing the newly loaded data will be removed anyway. However, this consideration only applies when wal_level is minimal as all commands must write WAL otherwise.

14.4.3. Remove Indexes

If you are loading a freshly created table, the fastest method is to create the table, bulk load the table's data using COPY, then create any indexes needed for the table. Creating an index on pre-existing data is quicker than updating it incrementally as each row is loaded.

If you are adding large amounts of data to an existing table, it might be a win to drop the indexes, load the table, and then recreate the indexes. Of course, the database performance for other users might suffer during the time the indexes are missing. One should also think twice before dropping a unique index, since the error checking afforded by the unique constraint will be lost while the index is missing.

14.4.4. Remove Foreign Key Constraints

Just as with indexes, a foreign key constraint can be checked "in bulk" more efficiently than row-by-row. So it might be useful to drop foreign key constraints, load data, and re-create the constraints. Again, there is a trade-off between data load speed and loss of error checking while the constraint is missing.

What's more, when you load data into a table with existing foreign key constraints, each new row requires an entry in the server's list of pending trigger events (since it is the firing of a trigger that checks the row's foreign key constraint). Loading many millions of rows can cause the trigger event queue to overflow available memory, leading to intolerable swapping or even outright failure of the command. Therefore it may be necessary, not just desirable, to drop and re-apply foreign keys when loading large amounts of data. If temporarily removing the constraint isn't acceptable, the only other recourse may be to split up the load operation into smaller transactions.

14.4.5. Increase maintenance_work_mem

Temporarily increasing the maintenance_work_mem configuration variable when loading large amounts of data can lead to improved performance. This will help to speed up CREATE INDEX commands and ALTER TABLE ADD FOREIGN KEY commands. It won't do much for COPY itself, so this advice is only useful when you are using one or both of the above techniques.

14.4.6. Increase checkpoint_segments

Temporarily increasing the checkpoint_segments configuration variable can also make large data loads faster. This is because loading a large amount of data into PostgreSQL will cause checkpoints to occur more often than the normal checkpoint frequency (specified by the checkpoint_timeout configuration variable). Whenever a checkpoint occurs, all dirty pages must be flushed to disk. By increasing checkpoint_segments temporarily during bulk data loads, the number of checkpoints that are required can be reduced.

14.4.7. Disable WAL Archival and Streaming Replication

When loading large amounts of data into an installation that uses WAL archiving or streaming replication, it might be faster to take a new base backup after the load has completed than to process a large amount of incremental WAL data. To prevent incremental WAL logging while loading, disable archiving and streaming replication, by setting wal_level to minimal, archive_mode to off, and max_wal_senders to zero. But note that changing these settings requires a server restart.

Aside from avoiding the time for the archiver or WAL sender to process the WAL data, doing this will actually make certain commands faster, because they are designed not to write WAL at all if wal_level is minimal. (They can guarantee crash safety more cheaply by doing an fsync at the end than by writing WAL.) This applies to the following commands:

  • CREATE TABLE AS SELECT

  • CREATE INDEX (and variants such as ALTER TABLE ADD PRIMARY KEY)

  • ALTER TABLE SET TABLESPACE

  • CLUSTER

  • COPY FROM, when the target table has been created or truncated earlier in the same transaction

14.4.8. Run ANALYZE Afterwards

Whenever you have significantly altered the distribution of data within a table, running ANALYZE is strongly recommended. This includes bulk loading large amounts of data into the table. Running ANALYZE (or VACUUM ANALYZE) ensures that the planner has up-to-date statistics about the table. With no statistics or obsolete statistics, the planner might make poor decisions during query planning, leading to poor performance on any tables with inaccurate or nonexistent statistics. Note that if the autovacuum daemon is enabled, it might run ANALYZE automatically; see Section 23.1.3 and Section 23.1.5 for more information.

14.4.9. Some Notes About pg_dump

Dump scripts generated by pg_dump automatically apply several, but not all, of the above guidelines. To reload a pg_dump dump as quickly as possible, you need to do a few extra things manually. (Note that these points apply while restoring a dump, not while creating it. The same points apply whether loading a text dump with psql or using pg_restore to load from a pg_dump archive file.)

By default, pg_dump uses COPY, and when it is generating a complete schema-and-data dump, it is careful to load data before creating indexes and foreign keys. So in this case several guidelines are handled automatically. What is left for you to do is to:

  • Set appropriate (i.e., larger than normal) values for maintenance_work_mem and checkpoint_segments.

  • If using WAL archiving or streaming replication, consider disabling them during the restore. To do that, set archive_mode to off, wal_level to minimal, and max_wal_senders to zero before loading the dump. Afterwards, set them back to the right values and take a fresh base backup.

  • Consider whether the whole dump should be restored as a single transaction. To do that, pass the -1 or --single-transaction command-line option to psql or pg_restore. When using this mode, even the smallest of errors will rollback the entire restore, possibly discarding many hours of processing. Depending on how interrelated the data is, that might seem preferable to manual cleanup, or not. COPY commands will run fastest if you use a single transaction and have WAL archiving turned off.

  • If multiple CPUs are available in the database server, consider using pg_restore's --jobs option. This allows concurrent data loading and index creation.

  • Run ANALYZE afterwards.

A data-only dump will still use COPY, but it does not drop or recreate indexes, and it does not normally touch foreign keys. [1] So when loading a data-only dump, it is up to you to drop and recreate indexes and foreign keys if you wish to use those techniques. It's still useful to increase checkpoint_segments while loading the data, but don't bother increasing maintenance_work_mem; rather, you'd do that while manually recreating indexes and foreign keys afterwards. And don't forget to ANALYZE when you're done; see Section 23.1.3 and Section 23.1.5 for more information.

Notes

[1]

You can get the effect of disabling foreign keys by using the --disable-triggers option — but realize that that eliminates, rather than just postpones, foreign key validation, and so it is possible to insert bad data if you use it.

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Non-Durable Settings

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14.5. Non-Durable Settings

Durability is a database feature that guarantees the recording of committed transactions even if the server crashes or loses power. However, durability adds significant database overhead, so if your site does not require such a guarantee, PostgreSQL can be configured to run much faster. The following are configuration changes you can make to improve performance in such cases. Except as noted below, durability is still guaranteed in case of a crash of the database software; only abrupt operating system stoppage creates a risk of data loss or corruption when these settings are used.

  • Place the database cluster's data directory in a memory-backed file system (i.e. RAM disk). This eliminates all database disk I/O, but limits data storage to the amount of available memory (and perhaps swap).

  • Turn off fsync; there is no need to flush data to disk.

  • Turn off full_page_writes; there is no need to guard against partial page writes.

  • Increase checkpoint_segments and checkpoint_timeout ; this reduces the frequency of checkpoints, but increases the storage requirements of /pg_xlog.

  • Turn off synchronous_commit; there might be no need to write the WAL to disk on every commit. This setting does risk transaction loss (though not data corruption) in case of a crash of the database alone.

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Server Administration

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III. Server Administration

This part covers topics that are of interest to a PostgreSQL database administrator. This includes installation of the software, set up and configuration of the server, management of users and databases, and maintenance tasks. Anyone who runs a PostgreSQL server, even for personal use, but especially in production, should be familiar with the topics covered in this part.

The information in this part is arranged approximately in the order in which a new user should read it. But the chapters are self-contained and can be read individually as desired. The information in this part is presented in a narrative fashion in topical units. Readers looking for a complete description of a particular command should see Part VI.

The first few chapters are written so they can be understood without prerequisite knowledge, so new users who need to set up their own server can begin their exploration with this part. The rest of this part is about tuning and management; that material assumes that the reader is familiar with the general use of the PostgreSQL database system. Readers are encouraged to look at Part I and Part II for additional information.

Table of Contents
15. Installation from Source Code
15.1. Short Version
15.2. Requirements
15.3. Getting The Source
15.4. Installation Procedure
15.5. Post-Installation Setup
15.6. Supported Platforms
15.7. Platform-specific Notes
16. Installation from Source Code on Windows
16.1. Building with Visual C++ or the Platform SDK
16.2. Building libpq with Visual C++ or Borland C++
17. Server Setup and Operation
17.1. The PostgreSQL User Account
17.2. Creating a Database Cluster
17.3. Starting the Database Server
17.4. Managing Kernel Resources
17.5. Shutting Down the Server
17.6. Upgrading a PostgreSQL Cluster
17.7. Preventing Server Spoofing
17.8. Encryption Options
17.9. Secure TCP/IP Connections with SSL
17.10. Secure TCP/IP Connections with SSH Tunnels
18. Server Configuration
18.1. Setting Parameters
18.2. File Locations
18.3. Connections and Authentication
18.4. Resource Consumption
18.5. Write Ahead Log
18.6. Replication
18.7. Query Planning
18.8. Error Reporting and Logging
18.9. Run-time Statistics
18.10. Automatic Vacuuming
18.11. Client Connection Defaults
18.12. Lock Management
18.13. Version and Platform Compatibility
18.14. Error Handling
18.15. Preset Options
18.16. Customized Options
18.17. Developer Options
18.18. Short Options
19. Client Authentication
19.1. The pg_hba.conf File
19.2. User Name Maps
19.3. Authentication Methods
19.4. Authentication Problems
20. Database Roles
20.1. Database Roles
20.2. Role Attributes
20.3. Role Membership
20.4. Function and Trigger Security
21. Managing Databases
21.1. Overview
21.2. Creating a Database
21.3. Template Databases
21.4. Database Configuration
21.5. Destroying a Database
21.6. Tablespaces
22. Localization
22.1. Locale Support
22.2. Collation Support
22.3. Character Set Support
23. Routine Database Maintenance Tasks
23.1. Routine Vacuuming
23.2. Routine Reindexing
23.3. Log File Maintenance
24. Backup and Restore
24.1. SQL Dump
24.2. File System Level Backup
24.3. Continuous Archiving and Point-in-Time Recovery (PITR)
25. High Availability, Load Balancing, and Replication
25.1. Comparison of Different Solutions
25.2. Log-Shipping Standby Servers
25.3. Failover
25.4. Alternative Method for Log Shipping
25.5. Hot Standby
26. Recovery Configuration
26.1. Archive Recovery Settings
26.2. Recovery Target Settings
26.3. Standby Server Settings
27. Monitoring Database Activity
27.1. Standard Unix Tools
27.2. The Statistics Collector
27.3. Viewing Locks
27.4. Dynamic Tracing
28. Monitoring Disk Usage
28.1. Determining Disk Usage
28.2. Disk Full Failure
29. Reliability and the Write-Ahead Log
29.1. Reliability
29.2. Write-Ahead Logging (WAL)
29.3. Asynchronous Commit
29.4. WAL Configuration
29.5. WAL Internals
30. Regression Tests
30.1. Running the Tests
30.2. Test Evaluation
30.3. Variant Comparison Files
30.4. Test Coverage Examination
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Installation from Source Code

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Chapter 15. Installation from Source Code

Table of Contents
15.1. Short Version
15.2. Requirements
15.3. Getting The Source
15.4. Installation Procedure
15.5. Post-Installation Setup
15.5.1. Shared Libraries
15.5.2. Environment Variables
15.6. Supported Platforms
15.7. Platform-specific Notes
15.7.1. AIX
15.7.2. Cygwin
15.7.3. HP-UX
15.7.4. IRIX
15.7.5. MinGW/Native Windows
15.7.6. SCO OpenServer and SCO UnixWare
15.7.7. Solaris

This chapter describes the installation of PostgreSQL using the source code distribution. (If you are installing a pre-packaged distribution, such as an RPM or Debian package, ignore this chapter and read the packager's instructions instead.)

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Short Version

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15.1. Short Version

./configure
gmake
su
gmake install
adduser postgres
mkdir /usr/local/pgsql/data
chown postgres /usr/local/pgsql/data
su - postgres
/usr/local/pgsql/bin/initdb -D /usr/local/pgsql/data
/usr/local/pgsql/bin/postgres -D /usr/local/pgsql/data >logfile 2>&1 &
/usr/local/pgsql/bin/createdb test
/usr/local/pgsql/bin/psql test

The long version is the rest of this chapter.

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Requirements

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15.2. Requirements

In general, a modern Unix-compatible platform should be able to run PostgreSQL. The platforms that had received specific testing at the time of release are listed in Section 15.6 below. In the doc subdirectory of the distribution there are several platform-specific FAQ documents you might wish to consult if you are having trouble.

The following software packages are required for building PostgreSQL:

  • GNU make version 3.80 or newer is required; other make programs or older GNU make versions will not work. GNU make is often installed under the name gmake; this document will always refer to it by that name. (On some systems GNU make is the default tool with the name make.) To test for GNU make enter:

    gmake --version

  • You need an ISO/ANSI C compiler (at least C89-compliant). Recent versions of GCC are recommendable, but PostgreSQL is known to build using a wide variety of compilers from different vendors.

  • tar is required to unpack the source distribution, in addition to either gzip or bzip2.

  • The GNU Readline library is used by default. It allows psql (the PostgreSQL command line SQL interpreter) to remember each command you type, and allows you to use arrow keys to recall and edit previous commands. This is very helpful and is strongly recommended. If you don't want to use it then you must specify the --without-readline option to configure. As an alternative, you can often use the BSD-licensed libedit library, originally developed on NetBSD. The libedit library is GNU Readline-compatible and is used if libreadline is not found, or if --with-libedit-preferred is used as an option to configure. If you are using a package-based Linux distribution, be aware that you need both the readline and readline-devel packages, if those are separate in your distribution.

  • The zlib compression library is used by default. If you don't want to use it then you must specify the --without-zlib option to configure. Using this option disables support for compressed archives in pg_dump and pg_restore.

The following packages are optional. They are not required in the default configuration, but they are needed when certain build options are enabled, as explained below:

  • To build the server programming language PL/Perl you need a full Perl installation, including the libperl library and the header files. Since PL/Perl will be a shared library, the libperl library must be a shared library also on most platforms. This appears to be the default in recent Perl versions, but it was not in earlier versions, and in any case it is the choice of whomever installed Perl at your site. If you intend to make more than incidental use of PL/Perl, you should ensure that the Perl installation was built with the usemultiplicity option enabled (perl -V will show whether this is the case).

    If you don't have the shared library but you need one, a message like this will appear during the PostgreSQL build to point out this fact:

    *** Cannot build PL/Perl because libperl is not a shared library.
*** You might have to rebuild your Perl installation.  Refer to
*** the documentation for details.

    (If you don't follow the on-screen output you will merely notice that the PL/Perl library object, plperl.so or similar, will not be installed.) If you see this, you will have to rebuild and install Perl manually to be able to build PL/Perl. During the configuration process for Perl, request a shared library.

  • To build the PL/Python server programming language, you need a Python installation with the header files and the distutils module. The minimum required version is Python 2.2. Python 3 is supported if it's version 3.1 or later; but see Section 42.1 when using Python 3.

    Since PL/Python will be a shared library, the libpython library must be a shared library also on most platforms. This is not the case in a default Python installation. If after building and installing PostgreSQL you have a file called plpython.so (possibly a different extension), then everything went well. Otherwise you should have seen a notice like this flying by:

    *** Cannot build PL/Python because libpython is not a shared library.
*** You might have to rebuild your Python installation.  Refer to
*** the documentation for details.

    That means you have to rebuild (part of) your Python installation to create this shared library.

    If you have problems, run Python 2.3 or later's configure using the --enable-shared flag. On some operating systems you don't have to build a shared library, but you will have to convince the PostgreSQL build system of this. Consult the Makefile in the src/pl/plpython directory for details.

  • To build the PL/Tcl procedural language, you of course need a Tcl installation. If you are using a pre-8.4 release of Tcl, ensure that it was built without multithreading support.

  • To enable Native Language Support (NLS), that is, the ability to display a program's messages in a language other than English, you need an implementation of the Gettext API. Some operating systems have this built-in (e.g., Linux, NetBSD, Solaris), for other systems you can download an add-on package from http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/. If you are using the Gettext implementation in the GNU C library then you will additionally need the GNU Gettext package for some utility programs. For any of the other implementations you will not need it.

  • You need Kerberos, OpenSSL, OpenLDAP, and/or PAM, if you want to support authentication or encryption using those services.

If you are building from a Git tree instead of using a released source package, or if you want to do server development, you also need the following packages:

  • GNU Flex and Bison are needed to build from a Git checkout, or if you changed the actual scanner and parser definition files. If you need them, be sure to get Flex 2.5.31 or later and Bison 1.875 or later. Other lex and yacc programs cannot be used.

  • Perl 5.8 or later is needed to build from a Git checkout, or if you changed the input files for any of the build steps that use Perl scripts. If building on Windows you will need Perl in any case.

If you need to get a GNU package, you can find it at your local GNU mirror site (see http://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html for a list) or at ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/.

Also check that you have sufficient disk space. You will need about 100 MB for the source tree during compilation and about 20 MB for the installation directory. An empty database cluster takes about 35 MB; databases take about five times the amount of space that a flat text file with the same data would take. If you are going to run the regression tests you will temporarily need up to an extra 150 MB. Use the df command to check free disk space.

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Getting The Source

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15.3. Getting The Source

The PostgreSQL 9.1.19 sources can be obtained by anonymous FTP from ftp://ftp.postgresql.org/pub/source/v9.1.19/postgresql-9.1.19.tar.gz. Other download options can be found on our website: http://www.postgresql.org/download/. After you have obtained the file, unpack it:

gunzip postgresql-9.1.19.tar.gz
tar xf postgresql-9.1.19.tar

This will create a directory postgresql-9.1.19 under the current directory with the PostgreSQL sources. Change into that directory for the rest of the installation procedure.

You can also get the source directly from the version control repository, see Appendix H.

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Installation Procedure

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15.4. Installation Procedure

  1. Configuration

    The first step of the installation procedure is to configure the source tree for your system and choose the options you would like. This is done by running the configure script. For a default installation simply enter:

    ./configure

    This script will run a number of tests to determine values for various system dependent variables and detect any quirks of your operating system, and finally will create several files in the build tree to record what it found. You can also run configure in a directory outside the source tree, if you want to keep the build directory separate. This procedure is also called a VPATH build. Here's how:

    mkdir build_dir
cd build_dir
/path/to/source/tree/configure [options go here]
gmake

    The default configuration will build the server and utilities, as well as all client applications and interfaces that require only a C compiler. All files will be installed under /usr/local/pgsql by default.

    You can customize the build and installation process by supplying one or more of the following command line options to configure:

    --prefix=PREFIX

    Install all files under the directory PREFIX instead of /usr/local/pgsql. The actual files will be installed into various subdirectories; no files will ever be installed directly into the PREFIX directory.

    If you have special needs, you can also customize the individual subdirectories with the following options. However, if you leave these with their defaults, the installation will be relocatable, meaning you can move the directory after installation. (The man and doc locations are not affected by this.)

    For relocatable installs, you might want to use configure's --disable-rpath option. Also, you will need to tell the operating system how to find the shared libraries.

    --exec-prefix=EXEC-PREFIX

    You can install architecture-dependent files under a different prefix, EXEC-PREFIX, than what PREFIX was set to. This can be useful to share architecture-independent files between hosts. If you omit this, then EXEC-PREFIX is set equal to PREFIX and both architecture-dependent and independent files will be installed under the same tree, which is probably what you want.

    --bindir=DIRECTORY

    Specifies the directory for executable programs. The default is EXEC-PREFIX/bin, which normally means /usr/local/pgsql/bin.

    --sysconfdir=DIRECTORY

    Sets the directory for various configuration files, PREFIX/etc by default.

    --libdir=DIRECTORY

    Sets the location to install libraries and dynamically loadable modules. The default is EXEC-PREFIX/lib.

    --includedir=DIRECTORY

    Sets the directory for installing C and C++ header files. The default is PREFIX/include.

    --datarootdir=DIRECTORY

    Sets the root directory for various types of read-only data files. This only sets the default for some of the following options. The default is PREFIX/share.

    --datadir=DIRECTORY

    Sets the directory for read-only data files used by the installed programs. The default is DATAROOTDIR. Note that this has nothing to do with where your database files will be placed.

    --localedir=DIRECTORY

    Sets the directory for installing locale data, in particular message translation catalog files. The default is DATAROOTDIR/locale.

    --mandir=DIRECTORY

    The man pages that come with PostgreSQL will be installed under this directory, in their respective manx subdirectories. The default is DATAROOTDIR/man.

    --docdir=DIRECTORY

    Sets the root directory for installing documentation files, except "man" pages. This only sets the default for the following options. The default value for this option is DATAROOTDIR/doc/postgresql.

    --htmldir=DIRECTORY

    The HTML-formatted documentation for PostgreSQL will be installed under this directory. The default is DATAROOTDIR.

    Note: Care has been taken to make it possible to install PostgreSQL into shared installation locations (such as /usr/local/include) without interfering with the namespace of the rest of the system. First, the string "/postgresql" is automatically appended to datadir, sysconfdir, and docdir, unless the fully expanded directory name already contains the string "postgres" or "pgsql". For example, if you choose /usr/local as prefix, the documentation will be installed in /usr/local/doc/postgresql, but if the prefix is /opt/postgres, then it will be in /opt/postgres/doc. The public C header files of the client interfaces are installed into includedir and are namespace-clean. The internal header files and the server header files are installed into private directories under includedir. See the documentation of each interface for information about how to access its header files. Finally, a private subdirectory will also be created, if appropriate, under libdir for dynamically loadable modules.

    --with-includes=DIRECTORIES

    DIRECTORIES is a colon-separated list of directories that will be added to the list the compiler searches for header files. If you have optional packages (such as GNU Readline) installed in a non-standard location, you have to use this option and probably also the corresponding --with-libraries option.

    Example: --with-includes=/opt/gnu/include:/usr/sup/include.

    --with-libraries=DIRECTORIES

    DIRECTORIES is a colon-separated list of directories to search for libraries. You will probably have to use this option (and the corresponding --with-includes option) if you have packages installed in non-standard locations.

    Example: --with-libraries=/opt/gnu/lib:/usr/sup/lib.

    --enable-nls[=LANGUAGES]

    Enables Native Language Support (NLS), that is, the ability to display a program's messages in a language other than English. LANGUAGES is an optional space-separated list of codes of the languages that you want supported, for example --enable-nls='de fr'. (The intersection between your list and the set of actually provided translations will be computed automatically.) If you do not specify a list, then all available translations are installed.

    To use this option, you will need an implementation of the Gettext API; see above.

    --with-pgport=NUMBER

    Set NUMBER as the default port number for server and clients. The default is 5432. The port can always be changed later on, but if you specify it here then both server and clients will have the same default compiled in, which can be very convenient. Usually the only good reason to select a non-default value is if you intend to run multiple PostgreSQL servers on the same machine.

    --with-perl

    Build the PL/Perl server-side language.

    --with-python

    Build the PL/Python server-side language.

    --with-tcl

    Build the PL/Tcl server-side language.

    --with-tclconfig=DIRECTORY

    Tcl installs the file tclConfig.sh, which contains configuration information needed to build modules interfacing to Tcl. This file is normally found automatically at a well-known location, but if you want to use a different version of Tcl you can specify the directory in which to look for it.

    --with-gssapi

    Build with support for GSSAPI authentication. On many systems, the GSSAPI (usually a part of the Kerberos installation) system is not installed in a location that is searched by default (e.g., /usr/include, /usr/lib), so you must use the options --with-includes and --with-libraries in addition to this option. configure will check for the required header files and libraries to make sure that your GSSAPI installation is sufficient before proceeding.

    --with-krb5

    Build with support for Kerberos 5 authentication. On many systems, the Kerberos system is not installed in a location that is searched by default (e.g., /usr/include, /usr/lib), so you must use the options --with-includes and --with-libraries in addition to this option. configure will check for the required header files and libraries to make sure that your Kerberos installation is sufficient before proceeding.

    --with-krb-srvnam=NAME

    The default name of the Kerberos service principal (also used by GSSAPI). postgres is the default. There's usually no reason to change this unless you have a Windows environment, in which case it must be set to upper case POSTGRES.

    --with-openssl

    Build with support for SSL (encrypted) connections. This requires the OpenSSL package to be installed. configure will check for the required header files and libraries to make sure that your OpenSSL installation is sufficient before proceeding.

    --with-pam

    Build with PAM (Pluggable Authentication Modules) support.

    --with-ldap

    Build with LDAP support for authentication and connection parameter lookup (see Section 31.16 and Section 19.3.8 for more information). On Unix, this requires the OpenLDAP package to be installed. On Windows, the default WinLDAP library is used. configure will check for the required header files and libraries to make sure that your OpenLDAP installation is sufficient before proceeding.

    --without-readline

    Prevents use of the Readline library (and libedit as well). This option disables command-line editing and history in psql, so it is not recommended.

    --with-libedit-preferred

    Favors the use of the BSD-licensed libedit library rather than GPL-licensed Readline. This option is significant only if you have both libraries installed; the default in that case is to use Readline.

    --with-bonjour

    Build with Bonjour support. This requires Bonjour support in your operating system. Recommended on Mac OS X.

    --with-ossp-uuid

    Build components using the OSSP UUID library. Specifically, build the uuid-ossp module, which provides functions to generate UUIDs.

    --with-libxml

    Build with libxml (enables SQL/XML support). Libxml version 2.6.23 or later is required for this feature.

    Libxml installs a program xml2-config that can be used to detect the required compiler and linker options. PostgreSQL will use it automatically if found. To specify a libxml installation at an unusual location, you can either set the environment variable XML2_CONFIG to point to the xml2-config program belonging to the installation, or use the options --with-includes and --with-libraries.

    --with-libxslt

    Use libxslt when building the xml2 module. xml2 relies on this library to perform XSL transformations of XML.

    --disable-integer-datetimes

    Disable support for 64-bit integer storage for timestamps and intervals, and store datetime values as floating-point numbers instead. Floating-point datetime storage was the default in PostgreSQL releases prior to 8.4, but it is now deprecated, because it does not support microsecond precision for the full range of timestamp values. However, integer-based datetime storage requires a 64-bit integer type. Therefore, this option can be used when no such type is available, or for compatibility with applications written for prior versions of PostgreSQL. See Section 8.5 for more information.

    --disable-float4-byval

    Disable passing float4 values "by value", causing them to be passed "by reference" instead. This option costs performance, but may be needed for compatibility with old user-defined functions that are written in C and use the "version 0" calling convention. A better long-term solution is to update any such functions to use the "version 1" calling convention.

    --disable-float8-byval

    Disable passing float8 values "by value", causing them to be passed "by reference" instead. This option costs performance, but may be needed for compatibility with old user-defined functions that are written in C and use the "version 0" calling convention. A better long-term solution is to update any such functions to use the "version 1" calling convention. Note that this option affects not only float8, but also int8 and some related types such as timestamp. On 32-bit platforms, --disable-float8-byval is the default and it is not allowed to select --enable-float8-byval.

    --with-segsize=SEGSIZE

    Set the segment size, in gigabytes. Large tables are divided into multiple operating-system files, each of size equal to the segment size. This avoids problems with file size limits that exist on many platforms. The default segment size, 1 gigabyte, is safe on all supported platforms. If your operating system has "largefile" support (which most do, nowadays), you can use a larger segment size. This can be helpful to reduce the number of file descriptors consumed when working with very large tables. But be careful not to select a value larger than is supported by your platform and the file systems you intend to use. Other tools you might wish to use, such as tar, could also set limits on the usable file size. It is recommended, though not absolutely required, that this value be a power of 2. Note that changing this value requires an initdb.

    --with-blocksize=BLOCKSIZE

    Set the block size, in kilobytes. This is the unit of storage and I/O within tables. The default, 8 kilobytes, is suitable for most situations; but other values may be useful in special cases. The value must be a power of 2 between 1 and 32 (kilobytes). Note that changing this value requires an initdb.

    --with-wal-segsize=SEGSIZE

    Set the WAL segment size, in megabytes. This is the size of each individual file in the WAL log. It may be useful to adjust this size to control the granularity of WAL log shipping. The default size is 16 megabytes. The value must be a power of 2 between 1 and 64 (megabytes). Note that changing this value requires an initdb.

    --with-wal-blocksize=BLOCKSIZE

    Set the WAL block size, in kilobytes. This is the unit of storage and I/O within the WAL log. The default, 8 kilobytes, is suitable for most situations; but other values may be useful in special cases. The value must be a power of 2 between 1 and 64 (kilobytes). Note that changing this value requires an initdb.

    --disable-spinlocks

    Allow the build to succeed even if PostgreSQL has no CPU spinlock support for the platform. The lack of spinlock support will result in poor performance; therefore, this option should only be used if the build aborts and informs you that the platform lacks spinlock support. If this option is required to build PostgreSQL on your platform, please report the problem to the PostgreSQL developers.

    --disable-thread-safety

    Disable the thread-safety of client libraries. This prevents concurrent threads in libpq and ECPG programs from safely controlling their private connection handles.

    --with-system-tzdata=DIRECTORY

    PostgreSQL includes its own time zone database, which it requires for date and time operations. This time zone database is in fact compatible with the IANA time zone database provided by many operating systems such as FreeBSD, Linux, and Solaris, so it would be redundant to install it again. When this option is used, the system-supplied time zone database in DIRECTORY is used instead of the one included in the PostgreSQL source distribution. DIRECTORY must be specified as an absolute path. /usr/share/zoneinfo is a likely directory on some operating systems. Note that the installation routine will not detect mismatching or erroneous time zone data. If you use this option, you are advised to run the regression tests to verify that the time zone data you have pointed to works correctly with PostgreSQL.

    This option is mainly aimed at binary package distributors who know their target operating system well. The main advantage of using this option is that the PostgreSQL package won't need to be upgraded whenever any of the many local daylight-saving time rules change. Another advantage is that PostgreSQL can be cross-compiled more straightforwardly if the time zone database files do not need to be built during the installation.

    --without-zlib

    Prevents use of the Zlib library. This disables support for compressed archives in pg_dump and pg_restore. This option is only intended for those rare systems where this library is not available.

    --enable-debug

    Compiles all programs and libraries with debugging symbols. This means that you can run the programs in a debugger to analyze problems. This enlarges the size of the installed executables considerably, and on non-GCC compilers it usually also disables compiler optimization, causing slowdowns. However, having the symbols available is extremely helpful for dealing with any problems that might arise. Currently, this option is recommended for production installations only if you use GCC. But you should always have it on if you are doing development work or running a beta version.

    --enable-coverage

    If using GCC, all programs and libraries are compiled with code coverage testing instrumentation. When run, they generate files in the build directory with code coverage metrics. See Section 30.4 for more information. This option is for use only with GCC and when doing development work.

    --enable-profiling

    If using GCC, all programs and libraries are compiled so they can be profiled. On backend exit, a subdirectory will be created that contains the gmon.out file for use in profiling. This option is for use only with GCC and when doing development work.

    --enable-cassert

    Enables assertion checks in the server, which test for many "cannot happen" conditions. This is invaluable for code development purposes, but the tests can slow down the server significantly. Also, having the tests turned on won't necessarily enhance the stability of your server! The assertion checks are not categorized for severity, and so what might be a relatively harmless bug will still lead to server restarts if it triggers an assertion failure. This option is not recommended for production use, but you should have it on for development work or when running a beta version.

    --enable-depend

    Enables automatic dependency tracking. With this option, the makefiles are set up so that all affected object files will be rebuilt when any header file is changed. This is useful if you are doing development work, but is just wasted overhead if you intend only to compile once and install. At present, this option only works with GCC.

    --enable-dtrace

    Compiles PostgreSQL with support for the dynamic tracing tool DTrace. See Section 27.4 for more information.

    To point to the dtrace program, the environment variable DTRACE can be set. This will often be necessary because dtrace is typically installed under /usr/sbin, which might not be in the path.

    Extra command-line options for the dtrace program can be specified in the environment variable DTRACEFLAGS. On Solaris, to include DTrace support in a 64-bit binary, you must specify DTRACEFLAGS="-64" to configure. For example, using the GCC compiler:

    ./configure CC='gcc -m64' --enable-dtrace DTRACEFLAGS='-64' ...

    Using Sun's compiler:

    ./configure CC='/opt/SUNWspro/bin/cc -xtarget=native64' --enable-dtrace DTRACEFLAGS='-64' ...

    If you prefer a C compiler different from the one configure picks, you can set the environment variable CC to the program of your choice. By default, configure will pick gcc if available, else the platform's default (usually cc). Similarly, you can override the default compiler flags if needed with the CFLAGS variable.

    You can specify environment variables on the configure command line, for example:

    ./configure CC=/opt/bin/gcc CFLAGS='-O2 -pipe'

    Here is a list of the significant variables that can be set in this manner:

    BISON

    Bison program

    CC

    C compiler

    CFLAGS

    options to pass to the C compiler

    CPP

    C preprocessor

    CPPFLAGS

    options to pass to the C preprocessor

    DTRACE

    location of the dtrace program

    DTRACEFLAGS

    options to pass to the dtrace program

    FLEX

    Flex program

    LDFLAGS

    options to use when linking either executables or shared libraries

    LDFLAGS_EX

    additional options for linking executables only

    LDFLAGS_SL

    additional options for linking shared libraries only

    MSGFMT

    msgfmt program for native language support

    PERL

    Full path to the Perl interpreter. This will be used to determine the dependencies for building PL/Perl.

    PYTHON

    Full path to the Python interpreter. This will be used to determine the dependencies for building PL/Python. Also, whether Python 2 or 3 is specified here (or otherwise implicitly chosen) determines which variant of the PL/Python language becomes available. See Section 42.1 for more information.

    TCLSH

    Full path to the Tcl interpreter. This will be used to determine the dependencies for building PL/Tcl, and it will be substituted into Tcl scripts.

    XML2_CONFIG

    xml2-config program used to locate the libxml installation.

  2. Build

    To start the build, type:

    gmake

    (Remember to use GNU make.) The build will take a few minutes depending on your hardware. The last line displayed should be:

    All of PostgreSQL is successfully made. Ready to install.

    If you want to build everything that can be built, including the documentation (HTML and man pages), and the additional modules (contrib), type instead:

    gmake world

    The last line displayed should be:

    PostgreSQL, contrib and HTML documentation successfully made. Ready to install.

  3. Regression Tests

    If you want to test the newly built server before you install it, you can run the regression tests at this point. The regression tests are a test suite to verify that PostgreSQL runs on your machine in the way the developers expected it to. Type:

    gmake check

    (This won't work as root; do it as an unprivileged user.) Chapter 30 contains detailed information about interpreting the test results. You can repeat this test at any later time by issuing the same command.

  4. Installing the Files

    Note: If you are upgrading an existing system be sure to read Section 17.6 which has instructions about upgrading a cluster.

    To install PostgreSQL enter:

    gmake install

    This will install files into the directories that were specified in step 1. Make sure that you have appropriate permissions to write into that area. Normally you need to do this step as root. Alternatively, you can create the target directories in advance and arrange for appropriate permissions to be granted.

    To install the documentation (HTML and man pages), enter:

    gmake install-docs

    If you built the world above, type instead:

    gmake install-world

    This also installs the documentation.

    You can use gmake install-strip instead of gmake install to strip the executable files and libraries as they are installed. This will save some space. If you built with debugging support, stripping will effectively remove the debugging support, so it should only be done if debugging is no longer needed. install-strip tries to do a reasonable job saving space, but it does not have perfect knowledge of how to strip every unneeded byte from an executable file, so if you want to save all the disk space you possibly can, you will have to do manual work.

    The standard installation provides all the header files needed for client application development as well as for server-side program development, such as custom functions or data types written in C. (Prior to PostgreSQL 8.0, a separate gmake install-all-headers command was needed for the latter, but this step has been folded into the standard install.)

    Client-only installation: If you want to install only the client applications and interface libraries, then you can use these commands:

    gmake -C src/bin install
gmake -C src/include install
gmake -C src/interfaces install
gmake -C doc install

    src/bin has a few binaries for server-only use, but they are small.

Registering eventlog on Windows: To register a Windows eventlog library with the operating system, issue this command after installation:

regsvr32 pgsql_library_directory/pgevent.dll

This creates registry entries used by the event viewer.

Uninstallation: To undo the installation use the command gmake uninstall. However, this will not remove any created directories.

Cleaning: After the installation you can free disk space by removing the built files from the source tree with the command gmake clean. This will preserve the files made by the configure program, so that you can rebuild everything with gmake later on. To reset the source tree to the state in which it was distributed, use gmake distclean. If you are going to build for several platforms within the same source tree you must do this and re-configure for each platform. (Alternatively, use a separate build tree for each platform, so that the source tree remains unmodified.)

If you perform a build and then discover that your configure options were wrong, or if you change anything that configure investigates (for example, software upgrades), then it's a good idea to do gmake distclean before reconfiguring and rebuilding. Without this, your changes in configuration choices might not propagate everywhere they need to.

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Post-Installation Setup

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15.5. Post-Installation Setup

15.5.1. Shared Libraries

On some systems with shared libraries you need to tell the system how to find the newly installed shared libraries. The systems on which this is not necessary include BSD/OS, FreeBSD, HP-UX, IRIX, Linux, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Tru64 UNIX (formerly Digital UNIX), and Solaris.

The method to set the shared library search path varies between platforms, but the most widely-used method is to set the environment variable LD_LIBRARY_PATH like so: In Bourne shells (sh, ksh, bash, zsh):

LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/pgsql/lib
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH

or in csh or tcsh:

setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH /usr/local/pgsql/lib

Replace /usr/local/pgsql/lib with whatever you set --libdir to in step 1. You should put these commands into a shell start-up file such as /etc/profile or ~/.bash_profile. Some good information about the caveats associated with this method can be found at http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/_/ldpath.html.

On some systems it might be preferable to set the environment variable LD_RUN_PATH before building.

On Cygwin, put the library directory in the PATH or move the .dll files into the bin directory.

If in doubt, refer to the manual pages of your system (perhaps ld.so or rld). If you later get a message like:

psql: error in loading shared libraries
libpq.so.2.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

then this step was necessary. Simply take care of it then.

If you are on BSD/OS, Linux, or SunOS 4 and you have root access you can run:

/sbin/ldconfig /usr/local/pgsql/lib

(or equivalent directory) after installation to enable the run-time linker to find the shared libraries faster. Refer to the manual page of ldconfig for more information. On FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD the command is:

/sbin/ldconfig -m /usr/local/pgsql/lib

instead. Other systems are not known to have an equivalent command.

15.5.2. Environment Variables

If you installed into /usr/local/pgsql or some other location that is not searched for programs by default, you should add /usr/local/pgsql/bin (or whatever you set --bindir to in step 1) into your PATH. Strictly speaking, this is not necessary, but it will make the use of PostgreSQL much more convenient.

To do this, add the following to your shell start-up file, such as ~/.bash_profile (or /etc/profile, if you want it to affect all users):

PATH=/usr/local/pgsql/bin:$PATH
export PATH

If you are using csh or tcsh, then use this command:

set path = ( /usr/local/pgsql/bin $path )

To enable your system to find the man documentation, you need to add lines like the following to a shell start-up file unless you installed into a location that is searched by default:

MANPATH=/usr/local/pgsql/man:$MANPATH
export MANPATH

The environment variables PGHOST and PGPORT specify to client applications the host and port of the database server, overriding the compiled-in defaults. If you are going to run client applications remotely then it is convenient if every user that plans to use the database sets PGHOST. This is not required, however; the settings can be communicated via command line options to most client programs.

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Supported Platforms

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15.6. Supported Platforms

A platform (that is, a CPU architecture and operating system combination) is considered supported by the PostgreSQL development community if the code contains provisions to work on that platform and it has recently been verified to build and pass its regression tests on that platform. Currently, most testing of platform compatibility is done automatically by test machines in the PostgreSQL Build Farm. If you are interested in using PostgreSQL on a platform that is not represented in the build farm, but on which the code works or can be made to work, you are strongly encouraged to set up a build farm member machine so that continued compatibility can be assured.

In general, PostgreSQL can be expected to work on these CPU architectures: x86, x86_64, IA64, PowerPC, PowerPC 64, S/390, S/390x, Sparc, Sparc 64, Alpha, ARM, MIPS, MIPSEL, M68K, and PA-RISC. Code support exists for M32R, NS32K, and VAX, but these architectures are not known to have been tested recently. It is often possible to build on an unsupported CPU type by configuring with --disable-spinlocks, but performance will be poor.

PostgreSQL can be expected to work on these operating systems: Linux (all recent distributions), Windows (Win2000 SP4 and later), FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Mac OS X, AIX, HP/UX, IRIX, Solaris, Tru64 Unix, and UnixWare. Other Unix-like systems may also work but are not currently being tested. In most cases, all CPU architectures supported by a given operating system will work. Look in the Section 15.7 below to see if there is information specific to your operating system, particularly if using an older system.

If you have installation problems on a platform that is known to be supported according to recent build farm results, please report it to <pgsql-bugs@postgresql.org>. If you are interested in porting PostgreSQL to a new platform, <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org> is the appropriate place to discuss that.

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Platform-specific Notes

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15.7. Platform-specific Notes

This section documents additional platform-specific issues regarding the installation and setup of PostgreSQL. Be sure to read the installation instructions, and in particular Section 15.2 as well. Also, check Chapter 30 regarding the interpretation of regression test results.

Platforms that are not covered here have no known platform-specific installation issues.

15.7.1. AIX

PostgreSQL works on AIX, but getting it installed properly can be challenging. AIX versions from 4.3.3 to 6.1 are considered supported. You can use GCC or the native IBM compiler xlc. In general, using recent versions of AIX and PostgreSQL helps. Check the build farm for up to date information about which versions of AIX are known to work.

The minimum recommended fix levels for supported AIX versions are:

AIX 4.3.3

Maintenance Level 11 + post ML11 bundle

AIX 5.1

Maintenance Level 9 + post ML9 bundle

AIX 5.2

Technology Level 10 Service Pack 3

AIX 5.3

Technology Level 7

AIX 6.1

Base Level

To check your current fix level, use oslevel -r in AIX 4.3.3 to AIX 5.2 ML 7, or oslevel -s in later versions.

Use the following configure flags in addition to your own if you have installed Readline or libz in /usr/local: --with-includes=/usr/local/include --with-libraries=/usr/local/lib.

15.7.1.1. GCC Issues

On AIX 5.3, there have been some problems getting PostgreSQL to compile and run using GCC.

You will want to use a version of GCC subsequent to 3.3.2, particularly if you use a prepackaged version. We had good success with 4.0.1. Problems with earlier versions seem to have more to do with the way IBM packaged GCC than with actual issues with GCC, so that if you compile GCC yourself, you might well have success with an earlier version of GCC.

15.7.1.2. Unix-Domain Sockets Broken

AIX 5.3 has a problem where sockaddr_storage is not defined to be large enough. In version 5.3, IBM increased the size of sockaddr_un, the address structure for Unix-domain sockets, but did not correspondingly increase the size of sockaddr_storage. The result of this is that attempts to use Unix-domain sockets with PostgreSQL lead to libpq overflowing the data structure. TCP/IP connections work OK, but not Unix-domain sockets, which prevents the regression tests from working.

The problem was reported to IBM, and is recorded as bug report PMR29657. If you upgrade to maintenance level 5300-03 or later, that will include this fix. A quick workaround is to alter _SS_MAXSIZE to 1025 in /usr/include/sys/socket.h. In either case, recompile PostgreSQL once you have the corrected header file.

15.7.1.3. Internet Address Issues

PostgreSQL relies on the system's getaddrinfo function to parse IP addresses in listen_addresses, pg_hba.conf, etc. Older versions of AIX have assorted bugs in this function. If you have problems related to these settings, updating to the appropriate AIX fix level shown above should take care of it.

One user reports:

When implementing PostgreSQL version 8.1 on AIX 5.3, we periodically ran into problems where the statistics collector would "mysteriously" not come up successfully. This appears to be the result of unexpected behavior in the IPv6 implementation. It looks like PostgreSQL and IPv6 do not play very well together on AIX 5.3.

Any of the following actions "fix" the problem.

  • Delete the IPv6 address for localhost:

    (as root)
# ifconfig lo0 inet6 ::1/0 delete

  • Remove IPv6 from net services. The file /etc/netsvc.conf on AIX is roughly equivalent to /etc/nsswitch.conf on Solaris/Linux. The default, on AIX, is thus:

    hosts=local,bind

    Replace this with:

    hosts=local4,bind4

    to deactivate searching for IPv6 addresses.

Warning

This is really a workaround for problems relating to immaturity of IPv6 support, which improved visibly during the course of AIX 5.3 releases. It has worked with AIX version 5.3, but does not represent an elegant solution to the problem. It has been reported that this workaround is not only unnecessary, but causes problems on AIX 6.1, where IPv6 support has become more mature.

15.7.1.4. Memory Management

AIX can be somewhat peculiar with regards to the way it does memory management. You can have a server with many multiples of gigabytes of RAM free, but still get out of memory or address space errors when running applications. One example is createlang failing with unusual errors. For example, running as the owner of the PostgreSQL installation:

-bash-3.00$ createlang plperl template1
createlang: language installation failed: ERROR:  could not load library "/opt/dbs/pgsql748/lib/plperl.so": A memory address is not in the address space for the process.

Running as a non-owner in the group possessing the PostgreSQL installation:

-bash-3.00$ createlang plperl template1
createlang: language installation failed: ERROR:  could not load library "/opt/dbs/pgsql748/lib/plperl.so": Bad address

Another example is out of memory errors in the PostgreSQL server logs, with every memory allocation near or greater than 256 MB failing.

The overall cause of all these problems is the default bittedness and memory model used by the server process. By default, all binaries built on AIX are 32-bit. This does not depend upon hardware type or kernel in use. These 32-bit processes are limited to 4 GB of memory laid out in 256 MB segments using one of a few models. The default allows for less than 256 MB in the heap as it shares a single segment with the stack.

In the case of the createlang example, above, check your umask and the permissions of the binaries in your PostgreSQL installation. The binaries involved in that example were 32-bit and installed as mode 750 instead of 755. Due to the permissions being set in this fashion, only the owner or a member of the possessing group can load the library. Since it isn't world-readable, the loader places the object into the process' heap instead of the shared library segments where it would otherwise be placed.

The "ideal" solution for this is to use a 64-bit build of PostgreSQL, but that is not always practical, because systems with 32-bit processors can build, but not run, 64-bit binaries.

If a 32-bit binary is desired, set LDR_CNTRL to MAXDATA=0xn0000000, where 1 <= n <= 8, before starting the PostgreSQL server, and try different values and postgresql.conf settings to find a configuration that works satisfactorily. This use of LDR_CNTRL tells AIX that you want the server to have MAXDATA bytes set aside for the heap, allocated in 256 MB segments. When you find a workable configuration, ldedit can be used to modify the binaries so that they default to using the desired heap size. PostgreSQL can also be rebuilt, passing configure LDFLAGS="-Wl,-bmaxdata:0xn0000000" to achieve the same effect.

For a 64-bit build, set OBJECT_MODE to 64 and pass CC="gcc -maix64" and LDFLAGS="-Wl,-bbigtoc" to configure. (Options for xlc might differ.) If you omit the export of OBJECT_MODE, your build may fail with linker errors. When OBJECT_MODE is set, it tells AIX's build utilities such as ar, as, and ld what type of objects to default to handling.

By default, overcommit of paging space can happen. While we have not seen this occur, AIX will kill processes when it runs out of memory and the overcommit is accessed. The closest to this that we have seen is fork failing because the system decided that there was not enough memory for another process. Like many other parts of AIX, the paging space allocation method and out-of-memory kill is configurable on a system- or process-wide basis if this becomes a problem.

References and Resources

"Large Program Support", AIX Documentation: General Programming Concepts: Writing and Debugging Programs.

"Program Address Space Overview", AIX Documentation: General Programming Concepts: Writing and Debugging Programs.

"Performance Overview of the Virtual Memory Manager (VMM)", AIX Documentation: Performance Management Guide.

"Page Space Allocation", AIX Documentation: Performance Management Guide.

"Paging-space thresholds tuning", AIX Documentation: Performance Management Guide.

Developing and Porting C and C++ Applications on AIX, IBM Redbook.

15.7.2. Cygwin

PostgreSQL can be built using Cygwin, a Linux-like environment for Windows, but that method is inferior to the native Windows build (see Chapter 16) and running a server under Cygwin is no longer recommended.

When building from source, proceed according to the normal installation procedure (i.e., ./configure; make; etc.), noting the following-Cygwin specific differences:

  • Set your path to use the Cygwin bin directory before the Windows utilities. This will help prevent problems with compilation.

  • The GNU make command is called make, not gmake.

  • The adduser command is not supported; use the appropriate user management application on Windows NT, 2000, or XP. Otherwise, skip this step.

  • The su command is not supported; use ssh to simulate su on Windows NT, 2000, or XP. Otherwise, skip this step.

  • OpenSSL is not supported.

  • Start cygserver for shared memory support. To do this, enter the command /usr/sbin/cygserver &. This program needs to be running anytime you start the PostgreSQL server or initialize a database cluster (initdb). The default cygserver configuration may need to be changed (e.g., increase SEMMNS) to prevent PostgreSQL from failing due to a lack of system resources.

  • Building might fail on some systems where a locale other than C is in use. To fix this, set the locale to C by doing export LANG=C.utf8 before building, and then setting it back to the previous setting, after you have installed PostgreSQL.

  • The parallel regression tests (make check) can generate spurious regression test failures due to overflowing the listen() backlog queue which causes connection refused errors or hangs. You can limit the number of connections using the make variable MAX_CONNECTIONS thus:

    make MAX_CONNECTIONS=5 check

    (On some systems you can have up to about 10 simultaneous connections).

It is possible to install cygserver and the PostgreSQL server as Windows NT services. For information on how to do this, please refer to the README document included with the PostgreSQL binary package on Cygwin. It is installed in the directory /usr/share/doc/Cygwin.

15.7.3. HP-UX

PostgreSQL 7.3+ should work on Series 700/800 PA-RISC machines running HP-UX 10.X or 11.X, given appropriate system patch levels and build tools. At least one developer routinely tests on HP-UX 10.20, and we have reports of successful installations on HP-UX 11.00 and 11.11.

Aside from the PostgreSQL source distribution, you will need GNU make (HP's make will not do), and either GCC or HP's full ANSI C compiler. If you intend to build from Git sources rather than a distribution tarball, you will also need Flex (GNU lex) and Bison (GNU yacc). We also recommend making sure you are fairly up-to-date on HP patches. At a minimum, if you are building 64 bit binaries on on HP-UX 11.11 you may need PHSS_30966 (11.11) or a successor patch otherwise initdb may hang:

PHSS_30966 s700_800 ld(1) and linker tools cumulative patch

On general principles you should be current on libc and ld/dld patches, as well as compiler patches if you are using HP's C compiler. See HP's support sites such as http://itrc.hp.com and ftp://us-ffs.external.hp.com/ for free copies of their latest patches.

If you are building on a PA-RISC 2.0 machine and want to have 64-bit binaries using GCC, you must use GCC 64-bit version. GCC binaries for HP-UX PA-RISC and Itanium are available from http://www.hp.com/go/gcc. Don't forget to get and install binutils at the same time.

If you are building on a PA-RISC 2.0 machine and want the compiled binaries to run on PA-RISC 1.1 machines you will need to specify +DAportable in CFLAGS.

If you are building on a HP-UX Itanium machine, you will need the latest HP ANSI C compiler with its dependent patch or successor patches:

PHSS_30848 s700_800 HP C Compiler (A.05.57)
PHSS_30849 s700_800 u2comp/be/plugin library Patch

If you have both HP's C compiler and GCC's, then you might want to explicitly select the compiler to use when you run configure:

./configure CC=cc

for HP's C compiler, or

./configure CC=gcc

for GCC. If you omit this setting, then configure will pick gcc if it has a choice.

The default install target location is /usr/local/pgsql, which you might want to change to something under /opt. If so, use the --prefix switch to configure.

In the regression tests, there might be some low-order-digit differences in the geometry tests, which vary depending on which compiler and math library versions you use. Any other error is cause for suspicion.

15.7.4. IRIX

PostgreSQL has been reported to run successfully on MIPS r8000, r10000 (both ip25 and ip27) and r12000(ip35) processors, running IRIX 6.5.5m, 6.5.12, 6.5.13, and 6.5.26 with MIPSPro compilers version 7.30, 7.3.1.2m, 7.3, and 7.4.4m.

You will need the MIPSPro full ANSI C compiler. There are problems trying to build with GCC. It is a known GCC bug (not fixed as of version 3.0) related to using functions that return certain kinds of structures. This bug affects functions like inet_ntoa, inet_lnaof, inet_netof, inet_makeaddr, and semctl. It is supposed to be fixed by forcing code to link those functions with libgcc, but this has not been tested yet.

It is known that version 7.4.1m of the MIPSPro compiler generates incorrect code. The symptom is "invalid primary checkpoint record" when trying to start the database.) Version 7.4.4m is OK; the status of intermediate versions is uncertain.

There may be a compilation problem like the following:

cc-1020 cc: ERROR File = pqcomm.c, Line = 427
  The identifier "TCP_NODELAY" is undefined.

                if (setsockopt(port->sock, IPPROTO_TCP, TCP_NODELAY,

Some versions include TCP definitions in sys/xti.h, so it is necessary to add #include <sys/xti.h> in src/backend/libpq/pqcomm.c and in src/interfaces/libpq/fe-connect.c. If you encounter this, please let us know so we can develop a proper fix.

In the regression tests, there might be some low-order-digit differences in the geometry tests, depending on which FPU are you using. Any other error is cause for suspicion.

15.7.5. MinGW/Native Windows

PostgreSQL for Windows can be built using MinGW, a Unix-like build environment for Microsoft operating systems, or using Microsoft's Visual C++ compiler suite. The MinGW build variant uses the normal build system described in this chapter; the Visual C++ build works completely differently and is described in Chapter 16. It is a fully native build and uses no additional software like MinGW. A ready-made installer is available on the main PostgreSQL web site.

The native Windows port requires a 32 or 64-bit version of Windows 2000 or later. Earlier operating systems do not have sufficient infrastructure (but Cygwin may be used on those). MinGW, the Unix-like build tools, and MSYS, a collection of Unix tools required to run shell scripts like configure, can be downloaded from http://www.mingw.org/. Neither is required to run the resulting binaries; they are needed only for creating the binaries.

To build 64 bit binaries using MinGW, install the 64 bit tool set from http://mingw-w64.sourceforge.net/, put its bin directory in the PATH, and run configure with the --host=x86_64-w64-mingw option.

After you have everything installed, it is suggested that you run psql under CMD.EXE, as the MSYS console has buffering issues.

15.7.5.1. Collecting Crash Dumps on Windows

If PostgreSQL on Windows crashes, it has the ability to generate minidumps that can be used to track down the cause for the crash, similar to core dumps on Unix. These dumps can be read using the Windows Debugger Tools or using Visual Studio. To enable the generation of dumps on Windows, create a subdirectory named crashdumps inside the cluster data directory. The dumps will then be written into this directory with a unique name based on the identifier of the crashing process and the current time of the crash.

15.7.6. SCO OpenServer and SCO UnixWare

PostgreSQL can be built on SCO UnixWare 7 and SCO OpenServer 5. On OpenServer, you can use either the OpenServer Development Kit or the Universal Development Kit. However, some tweaking may be needed, as described below.

15.7.6.1. Skunkware

You should locate your copy of the SCO Skunkware CD. The Skunkware CD is included with UnixWare 7 and current versions of OpenServer 5. Skunkware includes ready-to-install versions of many popular programs that are available on the Internet. For example, gzip, gunzip, GNU Make, Flex, and Bison are all included. For UnixWare 7.1, this CD is now labeled "Open License Software Supplement". If you do not have this CD, the software on it is available from http://www.sco.com/skunkware/.

Skunkware has different versions for UnixWare and OpenServer. Make sure you install the correct version for your operating system, except as noted below.

On UnixWare 7.1.3 and beyond, the GCC compiler is included on the UDK CD as is GNU Make.

15.7.6.2. GNU Make

You need to use the GNU Make program, which is on the Skunkware CD. By default, it installs as /usr/local/bin/make. To avoid confusion with the SCO make program, you may want to rename GNU make to gmake.

As of UnixWare 7.1.3 and above, the GNU Make program is is the OSTK portion of the UDK CD, and is in /usr/gnu/bin/gmake.

15.7.6.3. Readline

The Readline library is on the Skunkware CD. But it is not included on the UnixWare 7.1 Skunkware CD. If you have the UnixWare 7.0.0 or 7.0.1 Skunkware CDs, you can install it from there. Otherwise, try http://www.sco.com/skunkware/.

By default, Readline installs into /usr/local/lib and /usr/local/include. However, the PostgreSQL configure program will not find it there without help. If you installed Readline, then use the following options to configure:

./configure --with-libraries=/usr/local/lib --with-includes=/usr/local/include

15.7.6.4. Using the UDK on OpenServer

If you are using the new Universal Development Kit (UDK) compiler on OpenServer, you need to specify the locations of the UDK libraries:

./configure --with-libraries=/udk/usr/lib --with-includes=/udk/usr/include

Putting these together with the Readline options from above:

./configure --with-libraries="/udk/usr/lib /usr/local/lib" --with-includes="/udk/usr/include /usr/local/include"

15.7.6.5. Reading the PostgreSQL Man Pages

By default, the PostgreSQL man pages are installed into /usr/local/pgsql/man. By default, UnixWare does not look there for man pages. To be able to read them you need to modify the MANPATH variable in /etc/default/man, for example:

MANPATH=/usr/lib/scohelp/%L/man:/usr/dt/man:/usr/man:/usr/share/man:scohelp:/usr/local/man:/usr/local/pgsql/man

On OpenServer, some extra research needs to be invested to make the man pages usable, because the man system is a bit different from other platforms. Currently, PostgreSQL will not install them at all.

15.7.6.6. C99 Issues with the 7.1.1b Feature Supplement

For compilers earlier than the one released with OpenUNIX 8.0.0 (UnixWare 7.1.2), including the 7.1.1b Feature Supplement, you may need to specify -Xb in CFLAGS or the CC environment variable. The indication of this is an error in compiling tuplesort.c referencing inline functions. Apparently there was a change in the 7.1.2(8.0.0) compiler and beyond.

15.7.6.7. Threading on UnixWare

For threading, youmust use -Kpthread on all libpq-using programs. libpq uses pthread_* calls, which are only available with the -Kpthread/-Kthread flag.

15.7.7. Solaris

PostgreSQL is well-supported on Solaris. The more up to date your operating system, the fewer issues you will experience; details below.

15.7.7.1. Required Tools

You can build with either GCC or Sun's compiler suite. For better code optimization, Sun's compiler is strongly recommended on the SPARC architecture. We have heard reports of problems when using GCC 2.95.1; GCC 2.95.3 or later is recommended. If you are using Sun's compiler, be careful not to select /usr/ucb/cc; use /opt/SUNWspro/bin/cc.

You can download Sun Studio from http://developers.sun.com/sunstudio/downloads/. Many of GNU tools are integrated into Solaris 10, or they are present on the Solaris companion CD. If you like packages for older version of Solaris, you can find these tools at http://www.sunfreeware.com or http://www.blastwave.org. If you prefer sources, look at http://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html.

15.7.7.2. Problems with OpenSSL

When you build PostgreSQL with OpenSSL support you might get compilation errors in the following files:

  • src/backend/libpq/crypt.c

  • src/backend/libpq/password.c

  • src/interfaces/libpq/fe-auth.c

  • src/interfaces/libpq/fe-connect.c

This is because of a namespace conflict between the standard /usr/include/crypt.h header and the header files provided by OpenSSL.

Upgrading your OpenSSL installation to version 0.9.6a fixes this problem. Solaris 9 and above has a newer version of OpenSSL.

15.7.7.3. configure Complains About a Failed Test Program

If configure complains about a failed test program, this is probably a case of the run-time linker being unable to find some library, probably libz, libreadline or some other non-standard library such as libssl. To point it to the right location, set the LDFLAGS environment variable on the configure command line, e.g.,

configure ... LDFLAGS="-R /usr/sfw/lib:/opt/sfw/lib:/usr/local/lib"

See the ld man page for more information.

15.7.7.4. 64-bit Build Sometimes Crashes

On Solaris 7 and older, the 64-bit version of libc has a buggy vsnprintf routine, which leads to erratic core dumps in PostgreSQL. The simplest known workaround is to force PostgreSQL to use its own version of vsnprintf rather than the library copy. To do this, after you run configure edit a file produced by configure: In src/Makefile.global, change the line

LIBOBJS =

to read

LIBOBJS = snprintf.o

(There might be other files already listed in this variable. Order does not matter.) Then build as usual.

15.7.7.5. Compiling for Optimal Performance

On the SPARC architecture, Sun Studio is strongly recommended for compilation. Try using the -xO5 optimization flag to generate significantly faster binaries. Do not use any flags that modify behavior of floating-point operations and errno processing (e.g., -fast). These flags could raise some nonstandard PostgreSQL behavior for example in the date/time computing.

If you do not have a reason to use 64-bit binaries on SPARC, prefer the 32-bit version. The 64-bit operations are slower and 64-bit binaries are slower than the 32-bit variants. And on other hand, 32-bit code on the AMD64 CPU family is not native, and that is why 32-bit code is significant slower on this CPU family.

Some tricks for tuning PostgreSQL and Solaris for performance can be found at http://www.sun.com/servers/coolthreads/tnb/applications_postgresql.jsp. This article is primary focused on T2000 platform, but many of the recommendations are also useful on other hardware with Solaris.

15.7.7.6. Using DTrace for Tracing PostgreSQL

Yes, using DTrace is possible. See Section 27.4 for further information. You can also find more information in this article: http://blogs.sun.com/robertlor/entry/user_level_dtrace_probes_in.

If you see the linking of the postgres executable abort with an error message like:

Undefined                       first referenced
 symbol                             in file
AbortTransaction                    utils/probes.o
CommitTransaction                   utils/probes.o
ld: fatal: Symbol referencing errors. No output written to postgres
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
gmake: *** [postgres] Error 1

your DTrace installation is too old to handle probes in static functions. You need Solaris 10u4 or newer.

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Installation from Source Code on Windows

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Chapter 16. Installation from Source Code on Windows

Table of Contents
16.1. Building with Visual C++ or the Platform SDK
16.1.1. Requirements
16.1.2. Special Considerations for 64-bit Windows
16.1.3. Building
16.1.4. Cleaning and Installing
16.1.5. Running the Regression Tests
16.1.6. Building the Documentation
16.2. Building libpq with Visual C++ or Borland C++

It is recommended that most users download the binary distribution for Windows, available as a one-click installer package from the PostgreSQL website. Building from source is only intended for people developing PostgreSQL or extensions.

There are several different ways of building PostgreSQL on Windows. The simplest way to build with Microsoft tools is to install a supported version of the Microsoft Platform SDK and use the included compiler. It is also possible to build with the full Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 or 2008. In some cases that requires the installation of the Platform SDK in addition to the compiler.

It is also possible to build PostgreSQL using the GNU compiler tools provided by MinGW, or using Cygwin for older versions of Windows.

Finally, the client access library (libpq) can be built using Visual C++ 7.1 or Borland C++ for compatibility with statically linked applications built using these tools.

Building using MinGW or Cygwin uses the normal build system, see Chapter 15 and the specific notes in Section 15.7.5 and Section 15.7.2. To produce native 64 bit binaries in these environments, use the tools from MinGW-w64. These tools can also be used to cross-compile for 32 bit and 64 bit Windows targets on other hosts, such as Linux and Darwin. Cygwin is not recommended for running a production server, and it should only be used for running on older versions of Windows where the native build does not work, such as Windows 98. The official binaries are built using Visual Studio.

Native builds of psql don't support command line editing. The Cygwin build does support command line editing, so it should be used where psql is needed for interactive use on Windows.

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Building with Visual C++ or the Platform SDK

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16.1. Building with Visual C++ or the Platform SDK

PostgreSQL can be built using the Visual C++ compiler suite from Microsoft. These compilers can be either from Visual Studio, Visual Studio Express or some versions of the Platform SDK. If you do not already have a Visual Studio environment set up, the easiest way us to use the compilers in the Platform SDK, which is a free download from Microsoft.

PostgreSQL supports the compilers from Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008. When using the Platform SDK only, or when building for 64-bit Windows, only Visual Studio 2008 is supported. Visual Studio 2010 is not yet supported.

When building using the Platform SDK, versions 6.0 to 7.0 of the SDK are supported. Older or newer versions will not work. In particular, versions from 7.0a and later will not work, since they include compilers from Visual Studio 2010.

The tools for building using Visual C++, are in the src/tools/msvc directory. When building, make sure there are no tools from MinGW or Cygwin present in your system PATH. Also, make sure you have all the required Visual C++ tools available in the PATH. In Visual Studio, start the Visual Studio Command Prompt. In the Platform SDK, start the CMD shell listed under the SDK on the Start Menu. If you wish to build a 64-bit version, you must use the 64-bit version of the command, and vice versa. All commands should be run from the src\tools\msvc directory.

Before you build, you may need to edit the file config.pl to reflect any configuration options you want to change, or the paths to any third party libraries to use. The complete configuration is determined by first reading and parsing the file config_default.pl, and then apply any changes from config.pl. For example, to specify the location of your Python installation, put the following in config.pl:

$config->{python} = 'c:\python26';

You only need to specify those parameters that are different from what's in config_default.pl.

If you need to set any other environment variables, create a file called buildenv.pl and put the required commands there. For example, to add the path for bison when it's not in the PATH, create a file containing:

$ENV{PATH}=$ENV{PATH} . ';c:\some\where\bison\bin';

16.1.1. Requirements

The following additional products are required to build PostgreSQL. Use the config.pl file to specify which directories the libraries are available in.

Microsoft Platform SDK

It is recommended that you upgrade to the latest supported version of the Microsoft Platform SDK (currently version 7.0), available for download from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/.

You must always include the Windows Headers and Libraries part of the SDK. If you install the Platform SDK including the Visual C++ Compilers, you don't need Visual Studio to build.

ActiveState Perl

ActiveState Perl is required to run the build generation scripts. MinGW or Cygwin Perl will not work. It must also be present in the PATH. Binaries can be downloaded from http://www.activestate.com (Note: version 5.8 or later is required, the free Standard Distribution is sufficient).

The following additional products are not required to get started, but are required to build the complete package. Use the config.pl file to specify which directories the libraries are available in.

ActiveState TCL

Required for building PL/TCL (Note: version 8.4 is required, the free Standard Distribution is sufficient).

Bison and Flex

Bison and Flex are required to build from Git, but not required when building from a release file. Note that only Bison 1.875 or versions 2.2 and later will work. Also, Flex version 2.5.31 or later is required. Bison can be downloaded from http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net. Flex can be downloaded from http://www.postgresql.org/ftp/misc/winflex/.

Note: The Bison distribution from GnuWin32 appears to have a bug that causes Bison to malfunction when installed in a directory with spaces in the name, such as the default location on English installations C:\Program Files\GnuWin32. Consider installing into C:\GnuWin32 instead.

Diff

Diff is required to run the regression tests, and can be downloaded from http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net.

Gettext

Gettext is required to build with NLS support, and can be downloaded from http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net. Note that binaries, dependencies and developer files are all needed.

MIT Kerberos

Required for Kerberos authentication support. MIT Kerberos can be downloaded from http://web.mit.edu/Kerberos/dist/index.html.

libxml2 and libxslt

Required for XML support. Binaries can be downloaded from http://zlatkovic.com/pub/libxml or source from http://xmlsoft.org. Note that libxml2 requires iconv, which is available from the same download location.

openssl

Required for SSL support. Binaries can be downloaded from http://www.slproweb.com/products/Win32OpenSSL.html or source from http://www.openssl.org.

ossp-uuid

Required for UUID-OSSP support (contrib only). Source can be downloaded from http://www.ossp.org/pkg/lib/uuid/.

Python

Required for building PL/Python. Binaries can be downloaded from http://www.python.org.

zlib

Required for compression support in pg_dump and pg_restore. Binaries can be downloaded from http://www.zlib.net.

16.1.2. Special Considerations for 64-bit Windows

PostgreSQL will only build for the x64 architecture on 64-bit Windows, there is no support for Itanium processors.

Mixing 32- and 64-bit versions in the same build tree is not supported. The build system will automatically detect if it's running in a 32- or 64-bit environment, and build PostgreSQL accordingly. For this reason, it is important to start the correct command prompt before building.

To use a server-side third party library such as python or openssl, this library must also be 64-bit. There is no support for loading a 32-bit library in a 64-bit server. Several of the third party libraries that PostgreSQL supports may only be available in 32-bit versions, in which case they cannot be used with 64-bit PostgreSQL.

16.1.3. Building

To build all of PostgreSQL in release configuration (the default), run the command:

build

To build all of PostgreSQL in debug configuration, run the command:

build DEBUG

To build just a single project, for example psql, run the commands:

build psql
build DEBUG psql

To change the default build configuration to debug, put the following in the buildenv.pl file:

$ENV{CONFIG}="Debug";

It is also possible to build from inside the Visual Studio GUI. In this case, you need to run:

perl mkvcbuild.pl

from the command prompt, and then open the generated pgsql.sln (in the root directory of the source tree) in Visual Studio.

16.1.4. Cleaning and Installing

Most of the time, the automatic dependency tracking in Visual Studio will handle changed files. But if there have been large changes, you may need to clean the installation. To do this, simply run the clean.bat command, which will automatically clean out all generated files. You can also run it with the dist parameter, in which case it will behave like make distclean and remove the flex/bison output files as well.

By default, all files are written into a subdirectory of the debug or release directories. To install these files using the standard layout, and also generate the files required to initialize and use the database, run the command:

install c:\destination\directory

16.1.5. Running the Regression Tests

To run the regression tests, make sure you have completed the build of all required parts first. Also, make sure that the DLLs required to load all parts of the system (such as the Perl and Python DLLs for the procedural languages) are present in the system path. If they are not, set it through the buildenv.pl file. To run the tests, run one of the following commands from the src\tools\msvc directory:

vcregress check
vcregress installcheck
vcregress plcheck
vcregress contribcheck

To change the schedule used (default is parallel), append it to the command line like:

vcregress check serial

For more information about the regression tests, see Chapter 30.

16.1.6. Building the Documentation

Building the PostgreSQL documentation in HTML format requires several tools and files. Create a root directory for all these files, and store them in the subdirectories in the list below.

OpenJade 1.3.1-2

Download from http://sourceforge.net/projects/openjade/files/openjade/1.3.1/openjade-1_3_1-2-bin.zip/download and uncompress in the subdirectory openjade-1.3.1.

DocBook DTD 4.2

Download from http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/sgml/4.2/docbook-4.2.zip and uncompress in the subdirectory docbook.

DocBook DSSSL 1.79

Download from http://sourceforge.net/projects/docbook/files/docbook-dsssl/1.79/docbook-dsssl-1.79.zip/download and uncompress in the subdirectory docbook-dsssl-1.79.

ISO character entities

Download from http://www.oasis-open.org/cover/ISOEnts.zip and uncompress in the subdirectory docbook.

Edit the buildenv.pl file, and add a variable for the location of the root directory, for example:

$ENV{DOCROOT}='c:\docbook';

To build the documentation, run the command builddoc.bat. Note that this will actually run the build twice, in order to generate the indexes. The generated HTML files will be in doc\src\sgml.

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Building libpq with Visual C++ or Borland C++

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16.2. Building libpq with Visual C++ or Borland C++

Using Visual C++ 7.1-9.0 or Borland C++ to build libpq is only recommended if you need a version with different debug/release flags, or if you need a static library to link into an application. For normal use the MinGW or Visual Studio or Platform SDK method is recommended.

To build the libpq client library using Visual Studio 7.1 or later, change into the src directory and type the command:

nmake /f win32.mak

To build a 64-bit version of the libpq client library using Visual Studio 8.0 or later, change into the src directory and type in the command:

nmake /f win32.mak CPU=AMD64

See the win32.mak file for further details about supported variables.

To build the libpq client library using Borland C++, change into the src directory and type the command:

make -N -DCFG=Release /f bcc32.mak

16.2.1. Generated Files

The following files will be built:

interfaces\libpq\Release\libpq.dll

The dynamically linkable frontend library

interfaces\libpq\Release\libpqdll.lib

Import library to link your programs to libpq.dll

interfaces\libpq\Release\libpq.lib

Static version of the frontend library

Normally you do not need to install any of the client files. You should place the libpq.dll file in the same directory as your applications executable file. Do not install libpq.dll into your Windows, System or System32 directory unless absolutely necessary. If this file is installed using a setup program, then it should be installed with version checking using the VERSIONINFO resource included in the file, to ensure that a newer version of the library is not overwritten.

If you are planning to do development using libpq on this machine, you will have to add the src\include and src\interfaces\libpq subdirectories of the source tree to the include path in your compiler's settings.

To use the library, you must add the libpqdll.lib file to your project. (In Visual C++, just right-click on the project and choose to add it.)

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Server Setup and Operation

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Chapter 17. Server Setup and Operation

Table of Contents
17.1. The PostgreSQL User Account
17.2. Creating a Database Cluster
17.2.1. Use of Secondary File Systems
17.2.2. Use of Network File Systems
17.3. Starting the Database Server
17.3.1. Server Start-up Failures
17.3.2. Client Connection Problems
17.4. Managing Kernel Resources
17.4.1. Shared Memory and Semaphores
17.4.2. Resource Limits
17.4.3. Linux Memory Overcommit
17.5. Shutting Down the Server
17.6. Upgrading a PostgreSQL Cluster
17.6.1. Upgrading Data via pg_dump
17.6.2. Non-Dump Upgrade Methods
17.7. Preventing Server Spoofing
17.8. Encryption Options
17.9. Secure TCP/IP Connections with SSL
17.9.1. Using Client Certificates
17.9.2. SSL Server File Usage
17.9.3. Creating a Self-signed Certificate
17.10. Secure TCP/IP Connections with SSH Tunnels

This chapter discusses how to set up and run the database server and its interactions with the operating system.

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The PostgreSQL User Account

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17.1. The PostgreSQL User Account

As with any server daemon that is accessible to the outside world, it is advisable to run PostgreSQL under a separate user account. This user account should only own the data that is managed by the server, and should not be shared with other daemons. (For example, using the user nobody is a bad idea.) It is not advisable to install executables owned by this user because compromised systems could then modify their own binaries.

To add a Unix user account to your system, look for a command useradd or adduser. The user name postgres is often used, and is assumed throughout this book, but you can use another name if you like.

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Creating a Database Cluster

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17.2. Creating a Database Cluster

Before you can do anything, you must initialize a database storage area on disk. We call this a database cluster. (The SQL standard uses the term catalog cluster.) A database cluster is a collection of databases that is managed by a single instance of a running database server. After initialization, a database cluster will contain a database named postgres, which is meant as a default database for use by utilities, users and third party applications. The database server itself does not require the postgres database to exist, but many external utility programs assume it exists. Another database created within each cluster during initialization is called template1. As the name suggests, this will be used as a template for subsequently created databases; it should not be used for actual work. (See Chapter 21 for information about creating new databases within a cluster.)

In file system terms, a database cluster is a single directory under which all data will be stored. We call this the data directory or data area. It is completely up to you where you choose to store your data. There is no default, although locations such as /usr/local/pgsql/data or /var/lib/pgsql/data are popular. To initialize a database cluster, use the command initdb, which is installed with PostgreSQL. The desired file system location of your database cluster is indicated by the -D option, for example:

$ initdb -D /usr/local/pgsql/data

Note that you must execute this command while logged into the PostgreSQL user account, which is described in the previous section.

Tip: As an alternative to the -D option, you can set the environment variable PGDATA.

Alternatively, you can run initdb via the pg_ctl program like so:

$ pg_ctl -D /usr/local/pgsql/data initdb

This may be more intuitive if you are using pg_ctl for starting and stopping the server (see Section 17.3), so that pg_ctl would be the sole command you use for managing the database server instance.

initdb will attempt to create the directory you specify if it does not already exist. Of course, this will fail if initdb does not have permissions to write in the parent directory. It's generally recommendable that the PostgreSQL user own not just the data directory but its parent directory as well, so that this should not be a problem. If the desired parent directory doesn't exist either, you will need to create it first, using root privileges if the grandparent directory isn't writable. So the process might look like this:

root# mkdir /usr/local/pgsql
root# chown postgres /usr/local/pgsql
root# su postgres
postgres$ initdb -D /usr/local/pgsql/data

initdb will refuse to run if the data directory exists and already contains files; this is to prevent accidentally overwriting an existing installation.

Because the data directory contains all the data stored in the database, it is essential that it be secured from unauthorized access. initdb therefore revokes access permissions from everyone but the PostgreSQL user.

However, while the directory contents are secure, the default client authentication setup allows any local user to connect to the database and even become the database superuser. If you do not trust other local users, we recommend you use one of initdb's -W, --pwprompt or --pwfile options to assign a password to the database superuser. Also, specify -A md5 or -A password so that the default trust authentication mode is not used; or modify the generated pg_hba.conf file after running initdb, but before you start the server for the first time. (Other reasonable approaches include using peer authentication or file system permissions to restrict connections. See Chapter 19 for more information.)

initdb also initializes the default locale for the database cluster. Normally, it will just take the locale settings in the environment and apply them to the initialized database. It is possible to specify a different locale for the database; more information about that can be found in Section 22.1. The default sort order used within the particular database cluster is set by initdb, and while you can create new databases using different sort order, the order used in the template databases that initdb creates cannot be changed without dropping and recreating them. There is also a performance impact for using locales other than C or POSIX. Therefore, it is important to make this choice correctly the first time.

initdb also sets the default character set encoding for the database cluster. Normally this should be chosen to match the locale setting. For details see Section 22.3.

17.2.1. Use of Secondary File Systems

Many installations create their database clusters on file systems (volumes) other than the machine's "root" volume. If you choose to do this, it is not advisable to try to use the secondary volume's topmost directory (mount point) as the data directory. Best practice is to create a directory within the mount-point directory that is owned by the PostgreSQL user, and then create the data directory within that. This avoids permissions problems, particularly for operations such as pg_upgrade, and it also ensures clean failures if the secondary volume is taken offline.

17.2.2. Use of Network File Systems

Many installations create their database clusters on network file systems. Sometimes this is done via NFS, or by using a Network Attached Storage (NAS) device that uses NFS internally. PostgreSQL does nothing special for NFS file systems, meaning it assumes NFS behaves exactly like locally-connected drives. If the client or server NFS implementation does not provide standard file system semantics, this can cause reliability problems (see http://www.time-travellers.org/shane/papers/NFS_considered_harmful.html). Specifically, delayed (asynchronous) writes to the NFS server can cause data corruption problems. If possible, mount the NFS file system synchronously (without caching) to avoid this hazard. Also, soft-mounting the NFS file system is not recommended.

Storage Area Networks (SAN) typically use communication protocols other than NFS, and may or may not be subject to hazards of this sort. It's advisable to consult the vendor's documentation concerning data consistency guarantees. PostgreSQL cannot be more reliable than the file system it's using.

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Starting the Database Server

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17.3. Starting the Database Server

Before anyone can access the database, you must start the database server. The database server program is called postgres. The postgres program must know where to find the data it is supposed to use. This is done with the -D option. Thus, the simplest way to start the server is:

$ postgres -D /usr/local/pgsql/data

which will leave the server running in the foreground. This must be done while logged into the PostgreSQL user account. Without -D, the server will try to use the data directory named by the environment variable PGDATA. If that variable is not provided either, it will fail.

Normally it is better to start postgres in the background. For this, use the usual Unix shell syntax:

$ postgres -D /usr/local/pgsql/data >logfile 2>&1 &

It is important to store the server's stdout and stderr output somewhere, as shown above. It will help for auditing purposes and to diagnose problems. (See Section 23.3 for a more thorough discussion of log file handling.)

The postgres program also takes a number of other command-line options. For more information, see the postgres reference page and Chapter 18 below.

This shell syntax can get tedious quickly. Therefore the wrapper program pg_ctl is provided to simplify some tasks. For example:

pg_ctl start -l logfile

will start the server in the background and put the output into the named log file. The -D option has the same meaning here as for postgres. pg_ctl is also capable of stopping the server.

Normally, you will want to start the database server when the computer boots. Autostart scripts are operating-system-specific. There are a few distributed with PostgreSQL in the contrib/start-scripts directory. Installing one will require root privileges.

Different systems have different conventions for starting up daemons at boot time. Many systems have a file /etc/rc.local or /etc/rc.d/rc.local. Others use init.d or rc.d directories. Whatever you do, the server must be run by the PostgreSQL user account and not by root or any other user. Therefore you probably should form your commands using su postgres -c '...'. For example:

su postgres -c 'pg_ctl start -D /usr/local/pgsql/data -l serverlog'

Here are a few more operating-system-specific suggestions. (In each case be sure to use the proper installation directory and user name where we show generic values.)

  • For FreeBSD, look at the file contrib/start-scripts/freebsd in the PostgreSQL source distribution.

  • On OpenBSD, add the following lines to the file /etc/rc.local:

    if [ -x /usr/local/pgsql/bin/pg_ctl -a -x /usr/local/pgsql/bin/postgres ]; then
    su -l postgres -c '/usr/local/pgsql/bin/pg_ctl start -s -l /var/postgresql/log -D /usr/local/pgsql/data'
    echo -n ' postgresql'
fi

  • On Linux systems either add

    /usr/local/pgsql/bin/pg_ctl start -l logfile -D /usr/local/pgsql/data

    to /etc/rc.d/rc.local or /etc/rc.local or look at the file contrib/start-scripts/linux in the PostgreSQL source distribution.

  • On NetBSD, use either the FreeBSD or Linux start scripts, depending on preference.

  • On Solaris, create a file called /etc/init.d/postgresql that contains the following line:

    su - postgres -c "/usr/local/pgsql/bin/pg_ctl start -l logfile -D /usr/local/pgsql/data"

    Then, create a symbolic link to it in /etc/rc3.d as S99postgresql.

While the server is running, its PID is stored in the file postmaster.pid in the data directory. This is used to prevent multiple server instances from running in the same data directory and can also be used for shutting down the server.

17.3.1. Server Start-up Failures

There are several common reasons the server might fail to start. Check the server's log file, or start it by hand (without redirecting standard output or standard error) and see what error messages appear. Below we explain some of the most common error messages in more detail.

LOG:  could not bind IPv4 socket: Address already in use
HINT:  Is another postmaster already running on port 5432? If not, wait a few seconds and retry.
FATAL:  could not create TCP/IP listen socket

This usually means just what it suggests: you tried to start another server on the same port where one is already running. However, if the kernel error message is not Address already in use or some variant of that, there might be a different problem. For example, trying to start a server on a reserved port number might draw something like:

$ postgres -p 666
LOG:  could not bind IPv4 socket: Permission denied
HINT:  Is another postmaster already running on port 666? If not, wait a few seconds and retry.
FATAL:  could not create TCP/IP listen socket

A message like:

FATAL:  could not create shared memory segment: Invalid argument
DETAIL:  Failed system call was shmget(key=5440001, size=4011376640, 03600).

probably means your kernel's limit on the size of shared memory is smaller than the work area PostgreSQL is trying to create (4011376640 bytes in this example). Or it could mean that you do not have System-V-style shared memory support configured into your kernel at all. As a temporary workaround, you can try starting the server with a smaller-than-normal number of buffers (shared_buffers). You will eventually want to reconfigure your kernel to increase the allowed shared memory size. You might also see this message when trying to start multiple servers on the same machine, if their total space requested exceeds the kernel limit.

An error like:

FATAL:  could not create semaphores: No space left on device
DETAIL:  Failed system call was semget(5440126, 17, 03600).

does not mean you've run out of disk space. It means your kernel's limit on the number of System V semaphores is smaller than the number PostgreSQL wants to create. As above, you might be able to work around the problem by starting the server with a reduced number of allowed connections (max_connections), but you'll eventually want to increase the kernel limit.

If you get an "illegal system call" error, it is likely that shared memory or semaphores are not supported in your kernel at all. In that case your only option is to reconfigure the kernel to enable these features.

Details about configuring System V IPC facilities are given in Section 17.4.1.

17.3.2. Client Connection Problems

Although the error conditions possible on the client side are quite varied and application-dependent, a few of them might be directly related to how the server was started. Conditions other than those shown below should be documented with the respective client application.

psql: could not connect to server: Connection refused
        Is the server running on host "server.joe.com" and accepting
        TCP/IP connections on port 5432?

This is the generic "I couldn't find a server to talk to" failure. It looks like the above when TCP/IP communication is attempted. A common mistake is to forget to configure the server to allow TCP/IP connections.

Alternatively, you'll get this when attempting Unix-domain socket communication to a local server:

psql: could not connect to server: No such file or directory
        Is the server running locally and accepting
        connections on Unix domain socket "/tmp/.s.PGSQL.5432"?

The last line is useful in verifying that the client is trying to connect to the right place. If there is in fact no server running there, the kernel error message will typically be either Connection refused or No such file or directory, as illustrated. (It is important to realize that Connection refused in this context does not mean that the server got your connection request and rejected it. That case will produce a different message, as shown in Section 19.4.) Other error messages such as Connection timed out might indicate more fundamental problems, like lack of network connectivity.

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Managing Kernel Resources

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17.4. Managing Kernel Resources

A large PostgreSQL installation can quickly exhaust various operating system resource limits. (On some systems, the factory defaults are so low that you don't even need a really "large" installation.) If you have encountered this kind of problem, keep reading.

17.4.1. Shared Memory and Semaphores

Shared memory and semaphores are collectively referred to as "System V IPC" (together with message queues, which are not relevant for PostgreSQL). Almost all modern operating systems provide these features, but many of them don't have them turned on or sufficiently sized by default, especially as available RAM and the demands of database applications grow. (On Windows, PostgreSQL provides its own replacement implementation of these facilities, so most of this section can be disregarded.)

The complete lack of these facilities is usually manifested by an Illegal system call error upon server start. In that case there is no alternative but to reconfigure your kernel. PostgreSQL won't work without them. This situation is rare, however, among modern operating systems.

When PostgreSQL exceeds one of the various hard IPC limits, the server will refuse to start and should leave an instructive error message describing the problem and what to do about it. (See also Section 17.3.1.) The relevant kernel parameters are named consistently across different systems; Table 17-1 gives an overview. The methods to set them, however, vary. Suggestions for some platforms are given below.

Table 17-1. System V IPC Parameters

Name | Description | Reasonable values
SHMMAX | Maximum size of shared memory segment (bytes) | at least several megabytes (see text)
SHMMIN | Minimum size of shared memory segment (bytes) | 1
SHMALL | Total amount of shared memory available (bytes or pages) | if bytes, same as SHMMAX; if pages, ceil(SHMMAX/PAGE_SIZE)
SHMSEG | Maximum number of shared memory segments per process | only 1 segment is needed, but the default is much higher
SHMMNI | Maximum number of shared memory segments system-wide | like SHMSEG plus room for other applications
SEMMNI | Maximum number of semaphore identifiers (i.e., sets) | at least ceil((max_connections + autovacuum_max_workers + 4) / 16)
SEMMNS | Maximum number of semaphores system-wide | ceil((max_connections + autovacuum_max_workers + 4) / 16) * 17 plus room for other applications
SEMMSL | Maximum number of semaphores per set | at least 17
SEMMAP | Number of entries in semaphore map | see text
SEMVMX | Maximum value of semaphore | at least 1000 (The default is often 32767; do not change unless necessary)

The most important shared memory parameter is SHMMAX, the maximum size, in bytes, of a shared memory segment. If you get an error message from shmget like "Invalid argument", it is likely that this limit has been exceeded. The size of the required shared memory segment varies depending on several PostgreSQL configuration parameters, as shown in Table 17-2. (Any error message you might get will include the exact size of the failed allocation request.) You can, as a temporary solution, lower some of those settings to avoid the failure. While it is possible to get PostgreSQL to run with SHMMAX as small as 2 MB, you need considerably more for acceptable performance. Desirable settings are in the hundreds of megabytes to a few gigabytes.

Some systems also have a limit on the total amount of shared memory in the system (SHMALL). Make sure this is large enough for PostgreSQL plus any other applications that are using shared memory segments. Note that SHMALL is measured in pages rather than bytes on many systems.

Less likely to cause problems is the minimum size for shared memory segments (SHMMIN), which should be at most approximately 500 kB for PostgreSQL (it is usually just 1). The maximum number of segments system-wide (SHMMNI) or per-process (SHMSEG) are unlikely to cause a problem unless your system has them set to zero.

PostgreSQL uses one semaphore per allowed connection (max_connections) and allowed autovacuum worker process (autovacuum_max_workers), in sets of 16. Each such set will also contain a 17th semaphore which contains a "magic number", to detect collision with semaphore sets used by other applications. The maximum number of semaphores in the system is set by SEMMNS, which consequently must be at least as high as max_connections plus autovacuum_max_workers, plus one extra for each 16 allowed connections plus workers (see the formula in Table 17-1). The parameter SEMMNI determines the limit on the number of semaphore sets that can exist on the system at one time. Hence this parameter must be at least ceil((max_connections + autovacuum_max_workers + 4) / 16). Lowering the number of allowed connections is a temporary workaround for failures, which are usually confusingly worded "No space left on device", from the function semget.

In some cases it might also be necessary to increase SEMMAP to be at least on the order of SEMMNS. This parameter defines the size of the semaphore resource map, in which each contiguous block of available semaphores needs an entry. When a semaphore set is freed it is either added to an existing entry that is adjacent to the freed block or it is registered under a new map entry. If the map is full, the freed semaphores get lost (until reboot). Fragmentation of the semaphore space could over time lead to fewer available semaphores than there should be.

The SEMMSL parameter, which determines how many semaphores can be in a set, must be at least 17 for PostgreSQL.

Various other settings related to "semaphore undo", such as SEMMNU and SEMUME, do not affect PostgreSQL.

AIX

At least as of version 5.1, it should not be necessary to do any special configuration for such parameters as SHMMAX, as it appears this is configured to allow all memory to be used as shared memory. That is the sort of configuration commonly used for other databases such as DB/2.

It might, however, be necessary to modify the global ulimit information in /etc/security/limits, as the default hard limits for file sizes (fsize) and numbers of files (nofiles) might be too low.

BSD/OS

Shared Memory. By default, only 4 MB of shared memory is supported. Keep in mind that shared memory is not pageable; it is locked in RAM. To increase the amount of shared memory supported by your system, add something like the following to your kernel configuration file:

options "SHMALL=8192"
options "SHMMAX=\(SHMALL*PAGE_SIZE\)"

SHMALL is measured in 4 kB pages, so a value of 1024 represents 4 MB of shared memory. Therefore the above increases the maximum shared memory area to 32 MB. For those running 4.3 or later, you will probably also need to increase KERNEL_VIRTUAL_MB above the default 248. Once all changes have been made, recompile the kernel, and reboot.

Semaphores. You will probably want to increase the number of semaphores as well; the default system total of 60 will only allow about 50 PostgreSQL connections. Set the values you want in your kernel configuration file, e.g.:

options "SEMMNI=40"
options "SEMMNS=240"

FreeBSD

The default settings are only suitable for small installations (for example, default SHMMAX is 32 MB). Changes can be made via the sysctl or loader interfaces. The following parameters can be set using sysctl:

# sysctl kern.ipc.shmall=32768
# sysctl kern.ipc.shmmax=134217728

To make these settings persist over reboots, modify /etc/sysctl.conf.

These semaphore-related settings are read-only as far as sysctl is concerned, but can be set in /boot/loader.conf:

kern.ipc.semmni=256
kern.ipc.semmns=512
kern.ipc.semmnu=256

After modifying these values a reboot is required for the new settings to take effect. (Note: FreeBSD does not use SEMMAP. Older versions would accept but ignore a setting for kern.ipc.semmap; newer versions reject it altogether.)

You might also want to configure your kernel to lock shared memory into RAM and prevent it from being paged out to swap. This can be accomplished using the sysctl setting kern.ipc.shm_use_phys.

If running in FreeBSD jails by enabling sysctl's security.jail.sysvipc_allowed, postmasters running in different jails should be run by different operating system users. This improves security because it prevents non-root users from interfering with shared memory or semaphores in different jails, and it allows the PostgreSQL IPC cleanup code to function properly. (In FreeBSD 6.0 and later the IPC cleanup code does not properly detect processes in other jails, preventing the running of postmasters on the same port in different jails.)

FreeBSD versions before 4.0 work like OpenBSD (see below).

NetBSD

In NetBSD 5.0 and later, IPC parameters can be adjusted using sysctl, for example:

$ sysctl -w kern.ipc.shmmax=16777216

To have these settings persist over reboots, modify /etc/sysctl.conf.

You might also want to configure your kernel to lock shared memory into RAM and prevent it from being paged out to swap. This can be accomplished using the sysctl setting kern.ipc.shm_use_phys.

NetBSD versions before 5.0 work like OpenBSD (see below), except that parameters should be set with the keyword options not option.

OpenBSD

The options SYSVSHM and SYSVSEM need to be enabled when the kernel is compiled. (They are by default.) The maximum size of shared memory is determined by the option SHMMAXPGS (in pages). The following shows an example of how to set the various parameters:

option        SYSVSHM
option        SHMMAXPGS=4096
option        SHMSEG=256

option        SYSVSEM
option        SEMMNI=256
option        SEMMNS=512
option        SEMMNU=256
option        SEMMAP=256

You might also want to configure your kernel to lock shared memory into RAM and prevent it from being paged out to swap. This can be accomplished using the sysctl setting kern.ipc.shm_use_phys.

HP-UX

The default settings tend to suffice for normal installations. On HP-UX 10, the factory default for SEMMNS is 128, which might be too low for larger database sites.

IPC parameters can be set in the System Administration Manager (SAM) under Kernel Configuration->Configurable Parameters. Choose Create A New Kernel when you're done.

Linux

The default maximum segment size is 32 MB, which is only adequate for very small PostgreSQL installations. The default maximum total size is 2097152 pages. A page is almost always 4096 bytes except in unusual kernel configurations with "huge pages" (use getconf PAGE_SIZE to verify). That makes a default limit of 8 GB, which is often enough, but not always.

The shared memory size settings can be changed via the sysctl interface. For example, to allow 16 GB:

$ sysctl -w kernel.shmmax=17179869184
$ sysctl -w kernel.shmall=4194304

In addition these settings can be preserved between reboots in the file /etc/sysctl.conf. Doing that is highly recommended.

Ancient distributions might not have the sysctl program, but equivalent changes can be made by manipulating the /proc file system:

$ echo 17179869184 >/proc/sys/kernel/shmmax
$ echo 4194304 >/proc/sys/kernel/shmall

The remaining defaults are quite generously sized, and usually do not require changes.

Mac OS X

The recommended method for configuring shared memory in OS X is to create a file named /etc/sysctl.conf, containing variable assignments such as:

kern.sysv.shmmax=4194304
kern.sysv.shmmin=1
kern.sysv.shmmni=32
kern.sysv.shmseg=8
kern.sysv.shmall=1024

Note that in some OS X versions, all five shared-memory parameters must be set in /etc/sysctl.conf, else the values will be ignored.

Beware that recent releases of OS X ignore attempts to set SHMMAX to a value that isn't an exact multiple of 4096.

SHMALL is measured in 4 kB pages on this platform.

In older OS X versions, you will need to reboot to have changes in the shared memory parameters take effect. As of 10.5 it is possible to change all but SHMMNI on the fly, using sysctl. But it's still best to set up your preferred values via /etc/sysctl.conf, so that the values will be kept across reboots.

The file /etc/sysctl.conf is only honored in OS X 10.3.9 and later. If you are running a previous 10.3.x release, you must edit the file /etc/rc and change the values in the following commands:

sysctl -w kern.sysv.shmmax
sysctl -w kern.sysv.shmmin
sysctl -w kern.sysv.shmmni
sysctl -w kern.sysv.shmseg
sysctl -w kern.sysv.shmall

Note that /etc/rc is usually overwritten by OS X system updates, so you should expect to have to redo these edits after each update.

In OS X 10.2 and earlier, instead edit these commands in the file /System/Library/StartupItems/SystemTuning/SystemTuning.

SCO OpenServer

In the default configuration, only 512 kB of shared memory per segment is allowed. To increase the setting, first change to the directory /etc/conf/cf.d. To display the current value of SHMMAX, run:

./configure -y SHMMAX

To set a new value for SHMMAX, run:

./configure SHMMAX=value

where value is the new value you want to use (in bytes). After setting SHMMAX, rebuild the kernel:

./link_unix

and reboot.

Solaris 2.6 to 2.9 (Solaris 6 to Solaris 9)

The default maximum size of a shared memory segment is too low for PostgreSQL. The relevant settings can be changed in /etc/system, for example:

set shmsys:shminfo_shmmax=0x2000000
set shmsys:shminfo_shmmin=1
set shmsys:shminfo_shmmni=256
set shmsys:shminfo_shmseg=256

set semsys:seminfo_semmap=256
set semsys:seminfo_semmni=512
set semsys:seminfo_semmns=512
set semsys:seminfo_semmsl=32

You need to reboot for the changes to take effect. See also http://sunsite.uakom.sk/sunworldonline/swol-09-1997/swol-09-insidesolaris.html for information on shared memory under older versions of Solaris.

Solaris 2.10 (Solaris 10)
OpenSolaris

In Solaris 10 and OpenSolaris, the default shared memory and semaphore settings are good enough for most PostgreSQL applications. Solaris now defaults to a SHMMAX of one-quarter of system RAM. If you need to increase this in order to set shared memory settings slightly higher, you should use a project setting associated with the postgres user. For example, run the following as root:

projadd -c "PostgreSQL DB User" -K "project.max-shm-memory=(privileged,8GB,deny)" -U postgres -G postgres user.postgres

This command adds the user.postgres project and raises the shared memory maximum for the postgres user to 8GB, and takes effect the next time that user logs in, or when you restart PostgreSQL (not reload). The above assumes that PostgreSQL is run by the postgres user in the postgres group. No server reboot is required.

Other recommended kernel setting changes for database servers which will have a large number of connections are:

project.max-shm-ids=(priv,32768,deny)
project.max-sem-ids=(priv,4096,deny)
project.max-msg-ids=(priv,4096,deny)

Additionally, if you are running PostgreSQL inside a zone, you may need to raise the zone resource usage limits as well. See "Chapter2: Projects and Tasks" in the Solaris 10 System Administrator's Guide for more information on projects and prctl.

UnixWare

On UnixWare 7, the maximum size for shared memory segments is only 512 kB in the default configuration. To display the current value of SHMMAX, run:

/etc/conf/bin/idtune -g SHMMAX

which displays the current, default, minimum, and maximum values. To set a new value for SHMMAX, run:

/etc/conf/bin/idtune SHMMAX value

where value is the new value you want to use (in bytes). After setting SHMMAX, rebuild the kernel:

/etc/conf/bin/idbuild -B

and reboot.

Table 17-2. PostgreSQL Shared Memory Usage

Usage | Approximate shared memory bytes required (as of 8.3)
Connections | (1800 + 270 * max_locks_per_transaction) * max_connections
Autovacuum workers | (1800 + 270 * max_locks_per_transaction) * autovacuum_max_workers
Prepared transactions | (770 + 270 * max_locks_per_transaction) * max_prepared_transactions
Shared disk buffers | (block_size + 208) * shared_buffers
WAL buffers | (wal_block_size + 8) * wal_buffers
Fixed space requirements | 770 kB

17.4.2. Resource Limits

Unix-like operating systems enforce various kinds of resource limits that might interfere with the operation of your PostgreSQL server. Of particular importance are limits on the number of processes per user, the number of open files per process, and the amount of memory available to each process. Each of these have a "hard" and a "soft" limit. The soft limit is what actually counts but it can be changed by the user up to the hard limit. The hard limit can only be changed by the root user. The system call setrlimit is responsible for setting these parameters. The shell's built-in command ulimit (Bourne shells) or limit (csh) is used to control the resource limits from the command line. On BSD-derived systems the file /etc/login.conf controls the various resource limits set during login. See the operating system documentation for details. The relevant parameters are maxproc, openfiles, and datasize. For example:

default:\
...
        :datasize-cur=256M:\
        :maxproc-cur=256:\
        :openfiles-cur=256:\
...

(-cur is the soft limit. Append -max to set the hard limit.)

Kernels can also have system-wide limits on some resources.

  • On Linux /proc/sys/fs/file-max determines the maximum number of open files that the kernel will support. It can be changed by writing a different number into the file or by adding an assignment in /etc/sysctl.conf. The maximum limit of files per process is fixed at the time the kernel is compiled; see /usr/src/linux/Documentation/proc.txt for more information.

The PostgreSQL server uses one process per connection so you should provide for at least as many processes as allowed connections, in addition to what you need for the rest of your system. This is usually not a problem but if you run several servers on one machine things might get tight.

The factory default limit on open files is often set to "socially friendly" values that allow many users to coexist on a machine without using an inappropriate fraction of the system resources. If you run many servers on a machine this is perhaps what you want, but on dedicated servers you might want to raise this limit.

On the other side of the coin, some systems allow individual processes to open large numbers of files; if more than a few processes do so then the system-wide limit can easily be exceeded. If you find this happening, and you do not want to alter the system-wide limit, you can set PostgreSQL's max_files_per_process configuration parameter to limit the consumption of open files.

17.4.3. Linux Memory Overcommit

In Linux 2.4 and later, the default virtual memory behavior is not optimal for PostgreSQL. Because of the way that the kernel implements memory overcommit, the kernel might terminate the PostgreSQL postmaster (the master server process) if the memory demands of either PostgreSQL or another process cause the system to run out of virtual memory.

If this happens, you will see a kernel message that looks like this (consult your system documentation and configuration on where to look for such a message):

Out of Memory: Killed process 12345 (postgres).

This indicates that the postgres process has been terminated due to memory pressure. Although existing database connections will continue to function normally, no new connections will be accepted. To recover, PostgreSQL will need to be restarted.

One way to avoid this problem is to run PostgreSQL on a machine where you can be sure that other processes will not run the machine out of memory. If memory is tight, increasing the swap space of the operating system can help avoid the problem, because the out-of-memory (OOM) killer is invoked only when physical memory and swap space are exhausted.

If PostgreSQL itself is the cause of the system running out of memory, you can avoid the problem by changing your configuration. In some cases, it may help to lower memory-related configuration parameters, particularly shared_buffers and work_mem. In other cases, the problem may be caused by allowing too many connections to the database server itself. In many cases, it may be better to reduce max_connections and instead make use of external connection-pooling software.

On Linux 2.6 and later, it is possible to modify the kernel's behavior so that it will not "overcommit" memory. Although this setting will not prevent the OOM killer from being invoked altogether, it will lower the chances significantly and will therefore lead to more robust system behavior. This is done by selecting strict overcommit mode via sysctl:

sysctl -w vm.overcommit_memory=2

or placing an equivalent entry in /etc/sysctl.conf. You might also wish to modify the related setting vm.overcommit_ratio. For details see the kernel documentation file Documentation/vm/overcommit-accounting.

Another approach, which can be used with or without altering vm.overcommit_memory, is to set the process-specific oom_adj value for the postmaster process to -17, thereby guaranteeing it will not be targeted by the OOM killer. The simplest way to do this is to execute

echo -17 > /proc/self/oom_adj

in the postmaster's startup script just before invoking the postmaster. Note that this action must be done as root, or it will have no effect; so a root-owned startup script is the easiest place to do it. If you do this, you may also wish to build PostgreSQL with -DLINUX_OOM_ADJ=0 added to CPPFLAGS. That will cause postmaster child processes to run with the normal oom_adj value of zero, so that the OOM killer can still target them at need.

Note: Some vendors' Linux 2.4 kernels are reported to have early versions of the 2.6 overcommit sysctl parameter. However, setting vm.overcommit_memory to 2 on a 2.4 kernel that does not have the relevant code will make things worse, not better. It is recommended that you inspect the actual kernel source code (see the function vm_enough_memory in the file mm/mmap.c) to verify what is supported in your kernel before you try this in a 2.4 installation. The presence of the overcommit-accounting documentation file should not be taken as evidence that the feature is there. If in any doubt, consult a kernel expert or your kernel vendor.

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Shutting Down the Server

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17.5. Shutting Down the Server

There are several ways to shut down the database server. You control the type of shutdown by sending different signals to the master postgres process.

SIGTERM

This is the Smart Shutdown mode. After receiving SIGTERM, the server disallows new connections, but lets existing sessions end their work normally. It shuts down only after all of the sessions terminate. If the server is in online backup mode, it additionally waits until online backup mode is no longer active. While backup mode is active, new connections will still be allowed, but only to superusers (this exception allows a superuser to connect to terminate online backup mode). If the server is in recovery when a smart shutdown is requested, recovery and streaming replication will be stopped only after all regular sessions have terminated.

SIGINT

This is the Fast Shutdown mode. The server disallows new connections and sends all existing server processes SIGTERM, which will cause them to abort their current transactions and exit promptly. It then waits for all server processes to exit and finally shuts down. If the server is in online backup mode, backup mode will be terminated, rendering the backup useless.

SIGQUIT

This is the Immediate Shutdown mode. The master postgres process will send a SIGQUIT to all child processes and exit immediately, without properly shutting itself down. The child processes likewise exit immediately upon receiving SIGQUIT. This will lead to recovery (by replaying the WAL log) upon next start-up. This is recommended only in emergencies.

The pg_ctl program provides a convenient interface for sending these signals to shut down the server. Alternatively, you can send the signal directly using kill on non-Windows systems. The PID of the postgres process can be found using the ps program, or from the file postmaster.pid in the data directory. For example, to do a fast shutdown:

$ kill -INT `head -1 /usr/local/pgsql/data/postmaster.pid`

Important: It is best not to use SIGKILL to shut down the server. Doing so will prevent the server from releasing shared memory and semaphores, which might then have to be done manually before a new server can be started. Furthermore, SIGKILL kills the postgres process without letting it relay the signal to its subprocesses, so it will be necessary to kill the individual subprocesses by hand as well.

To terminate an individual session while allowing other sessions to continue, use pg_terminate_backend() (see Table 9-56) or send a SIGTERM signal to the child process associated with the session.

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Upgrading a PostgreSQL Cluster

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17.6. Upgrading a PostgreSQL Cluster

This section discusses how to upgrade your database data from one PostgreSQL release to a newer one.

PostgreSQL major versions are represented by the first two digit groups of the version number, e.g., 8.4. PostgreSQL minor versions are represented by the third group of version digits, e.g., 8.4.2 is the second minor release of 8.4. Minor releases never change the internal storage format and are always compatible with earlier and later minor releases of the same major version number, e.g., 8.4.2 is compatible with 8.4, 8.4.1 and 8.4.6. To update between compatible versions, you simply replace the executables while the server is down and restart the server. The data directory remains unchanged — minor upgrades are that simple.

For major releases of PostgreSQL, the internal data storage format is subject to change, thus complicating upgrades. The traditional method for moving data to a new major version is to dump and reload the database. Other methods are available, as discussed below.

New major versions also typically introduce some user-visible incompatibilities, so application programming changes might be required. All user-visible changes are listed in the release notes (Appendix E); pay particular attention to the section labeled "Migration". If you are upgrading across several major versions, be sure to read the release notes for each intervening version.

Cautious users will want to test their client applications on the new version before switching over fully; therefore, it's often a good idea to set up concurrent installations of old and new versions. When testing a PostgreSQL major upgrade, consider the following categories of possible changes:

Administration

The capabilities available for administrators to monitor and control the server often change and improve in each major release.

SQL

Typically this includes new SQL command capabilities and not changes in behavior, unless specifically mentioned in the release notes.

Library API

Typically libraries like libpq only add new functionality, again unless mentioned in the release notes.

System Catalogs

System catalog changes usually only affect database management tools.

Server C-language API

This involves changes in the backend function API, which is written in the C programming language. Such changes affect code that references backend functions deep inside the server.

17.6.1. Upgrading Data via pg_dump

To dump data from one major version of PostgreSQL and reload it in another, you must use pg_dump; file system level backup methods will not work. (There are checks in place that prevent you from using a data directory with an incompatible version of PostgreSQL, so no great harm can be done by trying to start the wrong server version on a data directory.)

It is recommended that you use the pg_dump and pg_dumpall programs from the newer version of PostgreSQL, to take advantage of enhancements that might have been made in these programs. Current releases of the dump programs can read data from any server version back to 7.0.

These instructions assume that your existing installation is under the /usr/local/pgsql directory, and that the data area is in /usr/local/pgsql/data. Substitute your paths appropriately.

  1. If making a backup, make sure that your database is not being updated. This does not affect the integrity of the backup, but the changed data would of course not be included. If necessary, edit the permissions in the file /usr/local/pgsql/data/pg_hba.conf (or equivalent) to disallow access from everyone except you. See Chapter 19 for additional information on access control.

    To back up your database installation, type:

    pg_dumpall > outputfile

    If you need to preserve OIDs (such as when using them as foreign keys), then use the -o option when running pg_dumpall.

    To make the backup, you can use the pg_dumpall command from the version you are currently running. For best results, however, try to use the pg_dumpall command from PostgreSQL 9.1.19, since this version contains bug fixes and improvements over older versions. While this advice might seem idiosyncratic since you haven't installed the new version yet, it is advisable to follow it if you plan to install the new version in parallel with the old version. In that case you can complete the installation normally and transfer the data later. This will also decrease the downtime.

  2. Shut down the old server:

    pg_ctl stop

    On systems that have PostgreSQL started at boot time, there is probably a start-up file that will accomplish the same thing. For example, on a Red Hat Linux system one might find that this works:

    /etc/rc.d/init.d/postgresql stop

    See Chapter 17 for details about starting and stopping the server.

  3. If restoring from backup, rename or delete the old installation directory. It is a good idea to rename the directory, rather than delete it, in case you have trouble and need to revert to it. Keep in mind the directory might consume significant disk space. To rename the directory, use a command like this:

    mv /usr/local/pgsql /usr/local/pgsql.old

    (Be sure to move the directory as a single unit so relative paths remain unchanged.)

  4. Install the new version of PostgreSQL as outlined in Section 15.4.

  5. Create a new database cluster if needed. Remember that you must execute these commands while logged in to the special database user account (which you already have if you are upgrading).

    /usr/local/pgsql/bin/initdb -D /usr/local/pgsql/data

  6. Restore your previous pg_hba.conf and any postgresql.conf modifications.

  7. Start the database server, again using the special database user account:

    /usr/local/pgsql/bin/postgres -D /usr/local/pgsql/data

  8. Finally, restore your data from backup with:

    /usr/local/pgsql/bin/psql -d postgres -f outputfile

    using the new psql.

The least downtime can be achieved by installing the new server in a different directory and running both the old and the new servers in parallel, on different ports. Then you can use something like:

pg_dumpall -p 5432 | psql -d postgres -p 5433

to transfer your data.

17.6.2. Non-Dump Upgrade Methods

The pg_upgrade module allows an installation to be migrated in-place from one major PostgreSQL version to the next. Upgrades can be performed in minutes.

It is also possible to use certain replication methods, such as Slony, to create a standby server with the updated version of PostgreSQL. This is possible because Slony supports replication between different major versions of PostgreSQL. The standby can be on the same computer or a different computer. Once it has synced up with the master server (running the older version of PostgreSQL), you can switch masters and make the standby the master and shut down the older database instance. Such a switch-over results in only several seconds of downtime for an upgrade.

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Preventing Server Spoofing

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17.7. Preventing Server Spoofing

While the server is running, it is not possible for a malicious user to take the place of the normal database server. However, when the server is down, it is possible for a local user to spoof the normal server by starting their own server. The spoof server could read passwords and queries sent by clients, but could not return any data because the PGDATA directory would still be secure because of directory permissions. Spoofing is possible because any user can start a database server; a client cannot identify an invalid server unless it is specially configured.

The simplest way to prevent spoofing for local connections is to use a Unix domain socket directory (unix_socket_directory) that has write permission only for a trusted local user. This prevents a malicious user from creating their own socket file in that directory. If you are concerned that some applications might still reference /tmp for the socket file and hence be vulnerable to spoofing, during operating system startup create a symbolic link /tmp/.s.PGSQL.5432 that points to the relocated socket file. You also might need to modify your /tmp cleanup script to prevent removal of the symbolic link.

To prevent spoofing on TCP connections, the best solution is to use SSL certificates and make sure that clients check the server's certificate. To do that, the server must be configured to accept only hostssl connections (Section 19.1) and have SSL server.key (key) and server.crt (certificate) files (Section 17.9). The TCP client must connect using sslmode=verify-ca or verify-full and have the appropriate root certificate file installed (Section 31.1).

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Encryption Options

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17.8. Encryption Options

PostgreSQL offers encryption at several levels, and provides flexibility in protecting data from disclosure due to database server theft, unscrupulous administrators, and insecure networks. Encryption might also be required to secure sensitive data such as medical records or financial transactions.

Password Storage Encryption

By default, database user passwords are stored as MD5 hashes, so the administrator cannot determine the actual password assigned to the user. If MD5 encryption is used for client authentication, the unencrypted password is never even temporarily present on the server because the client MD5-encrypts it before being sent across the network.

Encryption For Specific Columns

The pgcrypto module allows certain fields to be stored encrypted. This is useful if only some of the data is sensitive. The client supplies the decryption key and the data is decrypted on the server and then sent to the client.

The decrypted data and the decryption key are present on the server for a brief time while it is being decrypted and communicated between the client and server. This presents a brief moment where the data and keys can be intercepted by someone with complete access to the database server, such as the system administrator.

Data Partition Encryption

On Linux, encryption can be layered on top of a file system using a "loopback device". This allows an entire file system partition to be encrypted on disk, and decrypted by the operating system. On FreeBSD, the equivalent facility is called GEOM Based Disk Encryption (gbde), and many other operating systems support this functionality, including Windows.

This mechanism prevents unencrypted data from being read from the drives if the drives or the entire computer is stolen. This does not protect against attacks while the file system is mounted, because when mounted, the operating system provides an unencrypted view of the data. However, to mount the file system, you need some way for the encryption key to be passed to the operating system, and sometimes the key is stored somewhere on the host that mounts the disk.

Encrypting Passwords Across A Network

The MD5 authentication method double-encrypts the password on the client before sending it to the server. It first MD5-encrypts it based on the user name, and then encrypts it based on a random salt sent by the server when the database connection was made. It is this double-encrypted value that is sent over the network to the server. Double-encryption not only prevents the password from being discovered, it also prevents another connection from using the same encrypted password to connect to the database server at a later time.

Encrypting Data Across A Network

SSL connections encrypt all data sent across the network: the password, the queries, and the data returned. The pg_hba.conf file allows administrators to specify which hosts can use non-encrypted connections (host) and which require SSL-encrypted connections (hostssl). Also, clients can specify that they connect to servers only via SSL. Stunnel or SSH can also be used to encrypt transmissions.

SSL Host Authentication

It is possible for both the client and server to provide SSL certificates to each other. It takes some extra configuration on each side, but this provides stronger verification of identity than the mere use of passwords. It prevents a computer from pretending to be the server just long enough to read the password sent by the client. It also helps prevent "man in the middle" attacks where a computer between the client and server pretends to be the server and reads and passes all data between the client and server.

Client-Side Encryption

If the system administrator for the server's machine cannot be trusted, it is necessary for the client to encrypt the data; this way, unencrypted data never appears on the database server. Data is encrypted on the client before being sent to the server, and database results have to be decrypted on the client before being used.

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Secure TCP/IP Connections with SSL

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17.9. Secure TCP/IP Connections with SSL

PostgreSQL has native support for using SSL connections to encrypt client/server communications for increased security. This requires that OpenSSL is installed on both client and server systems and that support in PostgreSQL is enabled at build time (see Chapter 15).

With SSL support compiled in, the PostgreSQL server can be started with SSL enabled by setting the parameter ssl to on in postgresql.conf. The server will listen for both normal and SSL connections on the same TCP port, and will negotiate with any connecting client on whether to use SSL. By default, this is at the client's option; see Section 19.1 about how to set up the server to require use of SSL for some or all connections.

PostgreSQL reads the system-wide OpenSSL configuration file. By default, this file is named openssl.cnf and is located in the directory reported by openssl version -d. This default can be overridden by setting environment variable OPENSSL_CONF to the name of the desired configuration file.

OpenSSL supports a wide range of ciphers and authentication algorithms, of varying strength. While a list of ciphers can be specified in the OpenSSL configuration file, you can specify ciphers specifically for use by the database server by modifying ssl_ciphers in postgresql.conf.

Note: It is possible to have authentication without encryption overhead by using NULL-SHA or NULL-MD5 ciphers. However, a man-in-the-middle could read and pass communications between client and server. Also, encryption overhead is minimal compared to the overhead of authentication. For these reasons NULL ciphers are not recommended.

To start in SSL mode, the files server.crt and server.key must exist in the server's data directory. These files should contain the server certificate and private key, respectively. On Unix systems, the permissions on server.key must disallow any access to world or group; achieve this by the command chmod 0600 server.key. If the private key is protected with a passphrase, the server will prompt for the passphrase and will not start until it has been entered.

In some cases, the server certificate might be signed by an "intermediate" certificate authority, rather than one that is directly trusted by clients. To use such a certificate, append the certificate of the signing authority to the server.crt file, then its parent authority's certificate, and so on up to a "root" authority that is trusted by the clients. The root certificate should be included in every case where server.crt contains more than one certificate.

17.9.1. Using Client Certificates

To require the client to supply a trusted certificate, place certificates of the certificate authorities (CAs) you trust in the file root.crt in the data directory, and set the clientcert parameter to 1 on the appropriate hostssl line(s) in pg_hba.conf. A certificate will then be requested from the client during SSL connection startup. (See Section 31.17 for a description of how to set up certificates on the client.) The server will verify that the client's certificate is signed by one of the trusted certificate authorities. Certificate Revocation List (CRL) entries are also checked if the file root.crl exists. (See http://h71000.www7.hp.com/doc/83final/ba554_90007/ch04s02.html for diagrams showing SSL certificate usage.)

The clientcert option in pg_hba.conf is available for all authentication methods, but only for rows specified as hostssl. When clientcert is not specified or is set to 0, the server will still verify presented client certificates against root.crt if that file exists — but it will not insist that a client certificate be presented.

Note that root.crt lists the top-level CAs that are considered trusted for signing client certificates. In principle it need not list the CA that signed the server's certificate, though in most cases that CA would also be trusted for client certificates.

If you are setting up client certificates, you may wish to use the cert authentication method, so that the certificates control user authentication as well as providing connection security. See Section 19.3.10 for details.

17.9.2. SSL Server File Usage

Table 17-3 summarizes the files that are relevant to the SSL setup on the server.

Table 17-3. SSL Server File Usage

File | Contents | Effect
$PGDATA/server.crt | server certificate | sent to client to indicate server's identity
$PGDATA/server.key | server private key | proves server certificate was sent by the owner; does not indicate certificate owner is trustworthy
$PGDATA/root.crt | trusted certificate authorities | checks that client certificate is signed by a trusted certificate authority
$PGDATA/root.crl | certificates revoked by certificate authorities | client certificate must not be on this list

The files server.key, server.crt, root.crt, and root.crl are only examined during server start; so you must restart the server for changes in them to take effect.

17.9.3. Creating a Self-signed Certificate

To create a quick self-signed certificate for the server, use the following OpenSSL command:

openssl req -new -text -out server.req

Fill out the information that openssl asks for. Make sure you enter the local host name as "Common Name"; the challenge password can be left blank. The program will generate a key that is passphrase protected; it will not accept a passphrase that is less than four characters long. To remove the passphrase (as you must if you want automatic start-up of the server), run the commands:

openssl rsa -in privkey.pem -out server.key
rm privkey.pem

Enter the old passphrase to unlock the existing key. Now do:

openssl req -x509 -in server.req -text -key server.key -out server.crt

to turn the certificate into a self-signed certificate and to copy the key and certificate to where the server will look for them. Finally do:

chmod og-rwx server.key

because the server will reject the file if its permissions are more liberal than this. For more details on how to create your server private key and certificate, refer to the OpenSSL documentation.

A self-signed certificate can be used for testing, but a certificate signed by a certificate authority (CA) (either one of the global CAs or a local one) should be used in production so that clients can verify the server's identity. If all the clients are local to the organization, using a local CA is recommended.

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Secure TCP/IP Connections with SSH Tunnels

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17.10. Secure TCP/IP Connections with SSH Tunnels

It is possible to use SSH to encrypt the network connection between clients and a PostgreSQL server. Done properly, this provides an adequately secure network connection, even for non-SSL-capable clients.

First make sure that an SSH server is running properly on the same machine as the PostgreSQL server and that you can log in using ssh as some user. Then you can establish a secure tunnel with a command like this from the client machine:

ssh -L 63333:localhost:5432 joe@foo.com

The first number in the -L argument, 63333, is the port number of your end of the tunnel; it can be any unused port. (IANA reserves ports 49152 through 65535 for private use.) The second number, 5432, is the remote end of the tunnel: the port number your server is using. The name or IP address between the port numbers is the host with the database server you are going to connect to, as seen from the host you are logging in to, which is foo.com in this example. In order to connect to the database server using this tunnel, you connect to port 63333 on the local machine:

psql -h localhost -p 63333 postgres

To the database server it will then look as though you are really user joe on host foo.com connecting to localhost in that context, and it will use whatever authentication procedure was configured for connections from this user and host. Note that the server will not think the connection is SSL-encrypted, since in fact it is not encrypted between the SSH server and the PostgreSQL server. This should not pose any extra security risk as long as they are on the same machine.

In order for the tunnel setup to succeed you must be allowed to connect via ssh as joe@foo.com, just as if you had attempted to use ssh to create a terminal session.

You could also have set up the port forwarding as

ssh -L 63333:foo.com:5432 joe@foo.com

but then the database server will see the connection as coming in on its foo.com interface, which is not opened by the default setting listen_addresses = 'localhost'. This is usually not what you want.

If you have to "hop" to the database server via some login host, one possible setup could look like this:

ssh -L 63333:db.foo.com:5432 joe@shell.foo.com

Note that this way the connection from shell.foo.com to db.foo.com will not be encrypted by the SSH tunnel. SSH offers quite a few configuration possibilities when the network is restricted in various ways. Please refer to the SSH documentation for details.

Tip: Several other applications exist that can provide secure tunnels using a procedure similar in concept to the one just described.

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Server Configuration

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Chapter 18. Server Configuration

Table of Contents
18.1. Setting Parameters
18.2. File Locations
18.3. Connections and Authentication
18.3.1. Connection Settings
18.3.2. Security and Authentication
18.4. Resource Consumption
18.4.1. Memory
18.4.2. Kernel Resource Usage
18.4.3. Cost-based Vacuum Delay
18.4.4. Background Writer
18.4.5. Asynchronous Behavior
18.5. Write Ahead Log
18.5.1. Settings
18.5.2. Checkpoints
18.5.3. Archiving
18.6. Replication
18.6.1. Master Server
18.6.2. Standby Servers
18.7. Query Planning
18.7.1. Planner Method Configuration
18.7.2. Planner Cost Constants
18.7.3. Genetic Query Optimizer
18.7.4. Other Planner Options
18.8. Error Reporting and Logging
18.8.1. Where To Log
18.8.2. When To Log
18.8.3. What To Log
18.8.4. Using CSV-Format Log Output
18.9. Run-time Statistics
18.9.1. Query and Index Statistics Collector
18.9.2. Statistics Monitoring
18.10. Automatic Vacuuming
18.11. Client Connection Defaults
18.11.1. Statement Behavior
18.11.2. Locale and Formatting
18.11.3. Other Defaults
18.12. Lock Management
18.13. Version and Platform Compatibility
18.13.1. Previous PostgreSQL Versions
18.13.2. Platform and Client Compatibility
18.14. Error Handling
18.15. Preset Options
18.16. Customized Options
18.17. Developer Options
18.18. Short Options

There are many configuration parameters that affect the behavior of the database system. In the first section of this chapter, we describe how to set configuration parameters. The subsequent sections discuss each parameter in detail.

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Setting Parameters

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18.1. Setting Parameters

All parameter names are case-insensitive. Every parameter takes a value of one of five types: Boolean, integer, floating point, string or enum. Boolean values can be written as on, off, true, false, yes, no, 1, 0 (all case-insensitive) or any unambiguous prefix of these.

Some settings specify a memory or time value. Each of these has an implicit unit, which is either kilobytes, blocks (typically eight kilobytes), milliseconds, seconds, or minutes. Default units can be found by referencing pg_settings.unit. For convenience, a different unit can also be specified explicitly. Valid memory units are kB (kilobytes), MB (megabytes), and GB (gigabytes); valid time units are ms (milliseconds), s (seconds), min (minutes), h (hours), and d (days). Note that the multiplier for memory units is 1024, not 1000.

Parameters of type "enum" are specified in the same way as string parameters, but are restricted to a limited set of values. The allowed values can be found from pg_settings.enumvals. Enum parameter values are case-insensitive.

One way to set these parameters is to edit the file postgresql.conf, which is normally kept in the data directory. (A default copy is installed there when the database cluster directory is initialized.) An example of what this file might look like is:

# This is a comment
log_connections = yes
log_destination = 'syslog'
search_path = '"$user", public'
shared_buffers = 128MB

One parameter is specified per line. The equal sign between name and value is optional. Whitespace is insignificant and blank lines are ignored. Hash marks (#) designate the rest of the line as a comment. Parameter values that are not simple identifiers or numbers must be single-quoted. To embed a single quote in a parameter value, write either two quotes (preferred) or backslash-quote.

In addition to parameter settings, the postgresql.conf file can contain include directives, which specify another file to read and process as if it were inserted into the configuration file at this point. Include directives simply look like:

include 'filename'

If the file name is not an absolute path, it is taken as relative to the directory containing the referencing configuration file. Inclusions can be nested.

The configuration file is reread whenever the main server process receives a SIGHUP signal (which is most easily sent by means of pg_ctl reload). The main server process also propagates this signal to all currently running server processes so that existing sessions also get the new value. Alternatively, you can send the signal to a single server process directly. Some parameters can only be set at server start; any changes to their entries in the configuration file will be ignored until the server is restarted.

A second way to set these configuration parameters is to give them as a command-line option to the postgres command, such as:

postgres -c log_connections=yes -c log_destination='syslog'

Command-line options override any conflicting settings in postgresql.conf. Note that this means you won't be able to change the value on-the-fly by editing postgresql.conf, so while the command-line method might be convenient, it can cost you flexibility later.

Occasionally it is useful to give a command line option to one particular session only. The environment variable PGOPTIONS can be used for this purpose on the client side:

env PGOPTIONS='-c geqo=off' psql

(This works for any libpq-based client application, not just psql.) Note that this won't work for parameters that are fixed when the server is started or that must be specified in postgresql.conf.

Furthermore, it is possible to assign a set of parameter settings to a user or a database. Whenever a session is started, the default settings for the user and database involved are loaded. The commands ALTER ROLE and ALTER DATABASE, respectively, are used to configure these settings. Per-database settings override anything received from the postgres command-line or the configuration file, and in turn are overridden by per-user settings; both are overridden by per-session settings.

Some parameters can be changed in individual SQL sessions with the SET command, for example:

SET ENABLE_SEQSCAN TO OFF;

If SET is allowed, it overrides all other sources of values for the parameter. Some parameters cannot be changed via SET: for example, if they control behavior that cannot be changed without restarting the entire PostgreSQL server. Also, some SET or ALTER parameter modifications require superuser permission.

The SHOW command allows inspection of the current values of all parameters.

The virtual table pg_settings also allows displaying and updating session run-time parameters; see Section 45.62 for details and a description of the different variable types and when they can be changed. pg_settings is equivalent to SHOW and SET, but can be more convenient to use because it can be joined with other tables, or selected from using any desired selection condition. It also contains more information about what values are allowed for the parameters.

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File Locations

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18.2. File Locations

In addition to the postgresql.conf file already mentioned, PostgreSQL uses two other manually-edited configuration files, which control client authentication (their use is discussed in Chapter 19). By default, all three configuration files are stored in the database cluster's data directory. The parameters described in this section allow the configuration files to be placed elsewhere. (Doing so can ease administration. In particular it is often easier to ensure that the configuration files are properly backed-up when they are kept separate.)

data_directory (string)

Specifies the directory to use for data storage. This parameter can only be set at server start.

config_file (string)

Specifies the main server configuration file (customarily called postgresql.conf). This parameter can only be set on the postgres command line.

hba_file (string)

Specifies the configuration file for host-based authentication (customarily called pg_hba.conf). This parameter can only be set at server start.

ident_file (string)

Specifies the configuration file for Section 19.2 user name mapping (customarily called pg_ident.conf). This parameter can only be set at server start.

external_pid_file (string)

Specifies the name of an additional process-ID (PID) file that the server should create for use by server administration programs. This parameter can only be set at server start.

In a default installation, none of the above parameters are set explicitly. Instead, the data directory is specified by the -D command-line option or the PGDATA environment variable, and the configuration files are all found within the data directory.

If you wish to keep the configuration files elsewhere than the data directory, the postgres -D command-line option or PGDATA environment variable must point to the directory containing the configuration files, and the data_directory parameter must be set in postgresql.conf (or on the command line) to show where the data directory is actually located. Notice that data_directory overrides -D and PGDATA for the location of the data directory, but not for the location of the configuration files.

If you wish, you can specify the configuration file names and locations individually using the parameters config_file, hba_file and/or ident_file. config_file can only be specified on the postgres command line, but the others can be set within the main configuration file. If all three parameters plus data_directory are explicitly set, then it is not necessary to specify -D or PGDATA.

When setting any of these parameters, a relative path will be interpreted with respect to the directory in which postgres is started.

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Connections and Authentication

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18.3. Connections and Authentication

18.3.1. Connection Settings

listen_addresses (string)

Specifies the TCP/IP address(es) on which the server is to listen for connections from client applications. The value takes the form of a comma-separated list of host names and/or numeric IP addresses. The special entry * corresponds to all available IP interfaces. The entry 0.0.0.0 allows listening for all IPv4 addresses and :: allows listening for all IPv6 addresses. If the list is empty, the server does not listen on any IP interface at all, in which case only Unix-domain sockets can be used to connect to it. The default value is localhost, which allows only local TCP/IP "loopback" connections to be made. While client authentication (Chapter 19) allows fine-grained control over who can access the server, listen_addresses controls which interfaces accept connection attempts, which can help prevent repeated malicious connection requests on insecure network interfaces. This parameter can only be set at server start.

port (integer)

The TCP port the server listens on; 5432 by default. Note that the same port number is used for all IP addresses the server listens on. This parameter can only be set at server start.

max_connections (integer)

Determines the maximum number of concurrent connections to the database server. The default is typically 100 connections, but might be less if your kernel settings will not support it (as determined during initdb). This parameter can only be set at server start.

Increasing this parameter might cause PostgreSQL to request more System V shared memory or semaphores than your operating system's default configuration allows. See Section 17.4.1 for information on how to adjust those parameters, if necessary.

When running a standby server, you must set this parameter to the same or higher value than on the master server. Otherwise, queries will not be allowed in the standby server.

superuser_reserved_connections (integer)

Determines the number of connection "slots" that are reserved for connections by PostgreSQL superusers. At most max_connections connections can ever be active simultaneously. Whenever the number of active concurrent connections is at least max_connections minus superuser_reserved_connections, new connections will be accepted only for superusers, and no new replication connections will be accepted.

The default value is three connections. The value must be less than the value of max_connections. This parameter can only be set at server start.

unix_socket_directory (string)

Specifies the directory of the Unix-domain socket on which the server is to listen for connections from client applications. The default is normally /tmp, but can be changed at build time. This parameter can only be set at server start.

In addition to the socket file itself, which is named .s.PGSQL.nnnn where nnnn is the server's port number, an ordinary file named .s.PGSQL.nnnn.lock will be created in the unix_socket_directory directory. Neither file should ever be removed manually.

This parameter is irrelevant on Windows, which does not have Unix-domain sockets.

unix_socket_group (string)

Sets the owning group of the Unix-domain socket. (The owning user of the socket is always the user that starts the server.) In combination with the parameter unix_socket_permissions this can be used as an additional access control mechanism for Unix-domain connections. By default this is the empty string, which uses the default group of the server user. This parameter can only be set at server start.

This parameter is irrelevant on Windows, which does not have Unix-domain sockets.

unix_socket_permissions (integer)

Sets the access permissions of the Unix-domain socket. Unix-domain sockets use the usual Unix file system permission set. The parameter value is expected to be a numeric mode specified in the format accepted by the chmod and umask system calls. (To use the customary octal format the number must start with a 0 (zero).)

The default permissions are 0777, meaning anyone can connect. Reasonable alternatives are 0770 (only user and group, see also unix_socket_group) and 0700 (only user). (Note that for a Unix-domain socket, only write permission matters, so there is no point in setting or revoking read or execute permissions.)

This access control mechanism is independent of the one described in Chapter 19.

This parameter can only be set at server start.

This parameter is irrelevant on systems, notably Solaris as of Solaris 10, that ignore socket permissions entirely. There, one can achieve a similar effect by pointing unix_socket_directory to a directory having search permission limited to the desired audience. This parameter is also irrelevant on Windows, which does not have Unix-domain sockets.

bonjour (boolean)

Enables advertising the server's existence via Bonjour. The default is off. This parameter can only be set at server start.

bonjour_name (string)

Specifies the Bonjour service name. The computer name is used if this parameter is set to the empty string '' (which is the default). This parameter is ignored if the server was not compiled with Bonjour support. This parameter can only be set at server start.

tcp_keepalives_idle (integer)

Specifies the number of seconds before sending a keepalive packet on an otherwise idle connection. A value of 0 uses the system default. This parameter is supported only on systems that support the TCP_KEEPIDLE or TCP_KEEPALIVE symbols, and on Windows; on other systems, it must be zero. In sessions connected via a Unix-domain socket, this parameter is ignored and always reads as zero.

Note: On Windows, a value of 0 will set this parameter to 2 hours, since Windows does not provide a way to read the system default value.

tcp_keepalives_interval (integer)

Specifies the number of seconds between sending keepalives on an otherwise idle connection. A value of 0 uses the system default. This parameter is supported only on systems that support the TCP_KEEPINTVL symbol, and on Windows; on other systems, it must be zero. In sessions connected via a Unix-domain socket, this parameter is ignored and always reads as zero.

Note: On Windows, a value of 0 will set this parameter to 1 second, since Windows does not provide a way to read the system default value.

tcp_keepalives_count (integer)

Specifies the number of keepalive packets to send on an otherwise idle connection. A value of 0 uses the system default. This parameter is supported only on systems that support the TCP_KEEPCNT symbol; on other systems, it must be zero. In sessions connected via a Unix-domain socket, this parameter is ignored and always reads as zero.

Note: This parameter is not supported on Windows, and must be zero.

18.3.2. Security and Authentication

authentication_timeout (integer)

Maximum time to complete client authentication, in seconds. If a would-be client has not completed the authentication protocol in this much time, the server closes the connection. This prevents hung clients from occupying a connection indefinitely. The default is one minute (1m). This parameter can only be set in the postgresql.conf file or on the server command line.

ssl (boolean)

Enables SSL connections. Please read Section 17.9 before using this. The default is off. This parameter can only be set at server start. SSL communication is only possible with TCP/IP connections.

ssl_renegotiation_limit (integer)

Specifies how much data can flow over an SSL-encrypted connection before renegotiation of the session keys will take place. Renegotiation decreases an attacker's chances of doing cryptanalysis when large amounts of traffic can be examined, but it also carries a large performance penalty. The sum of sent and received traffic is used to check the limit. If this parameter is set to 0, renegotiation is disabled. The default is 0.

Note: SSL libraries from before November 2009 are insecure when using SSL renegotiation, due to a vulnerability in the SSL protocol. As a stop-gap fix for this vulnerability, some vendors shipped SSL libraries incapable of doing renegotiation. If any such libraries are in use on the client or server, SSL renegotiation should be disabled.

Warning

Due to bugs in OpenSSL enabling ssl renegotiation, by configuring a non-zero ssl_renegotiation_limit, is likely to lead to problems like long-lived connections breaking.

ssl_ciphers (string)

Specifies a list of SSL ciphers that are allowed to be used on secure connections. See the openssl manual page for a list of supported ciphers.

password_encryption (boolean)

When a password is specified in CREATE USER or ALTER ROLE without writing either ENCRYPTED or UNENCRYPTED, this parameter determines whether the password is to be encrypted. The default is on (encrypt the password).

krb_server_keyfile (string)

Sets the location of the Kerberos server key file. See Section 19.3.5 or Section 19.3.3 for details. This parameter can only be set in the postgresql.conf file or on the server command line.

krb_srvname (string)

Sets the Kerberos service name. See Section 19.3.5 for details. This parameter can only be set in the postgresql.conf file or on the server command line.

krb_caseins_users (boolean)

Sets whether Kerberos and GSSAPI user names should be treated case-insensitively. The default is off (case sensitive). This parameter can only be set in the postgresql.conf file or on the server command line.

db_user_namespace (boolean)

This parameter enables per-database user names. It is off by default. This parameter can only be set in the postgresql.conf file or on the server command line.

If this is on, you should create users as username@dbname. When username is passed by a connecting client, @ and the database name are appended to the user name and that database-specific user name is looked up by the server. Note that when you create users with names containing @ within the SQL environment, you will need to quote the user name.

With this parameter enabled, you can still create ordinary global users. Simply append @ when specifying the user name in the client, e.g. joe@. The @ will be stripped off before the user name is looked up by the server.

db_user_namespace causes the client's and server's user name representation to differ. Authentication checks are always done with the server's user name so authentication methods must be configured for the server's user name, not the client's. Because md5 uses the user name as salt on both the client and server, md5 cannot be used with db_user_namespace.

Note: This feature is intended as a temporary measure until a complete solution is found. At that time, this option will be removed.

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Resource Consumption

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18.4. Resource Consumption

18.4.1. Memory

shared_buffers (integer)

Sets the amount of memory the database server uses for shared memory buffers. The default is typically 32 megabytes (32MB), but might be less if your kernel settings will not support it (as determined during initdb). This setting must be at least 128 kilobytes. (Non-default values of BLCKSZ change the minimum.) However, settings significantly higher than the minimum are usually needed for good performance. This parameter can only be set at server start.

If you have a dedicated database server with 1GB or more of RAM, a reasonable starting value for shared_buffers is 25% of the memory in your system. There are some workloads where even large settings for shared_buffers are effective, but because PostgreSQL also relies on the operating system cache, it is unlikely that an allocation of more than 40% of RAM to shared_buffers will work better than a smaller amount. Larger settings for shared_buffers usually require a corresponding increase in checkpoint_segments, in order to spread out the process of writing large quantities of new or changed data over a longer period of time.

On systems with less than 1GB of RAM, a smaller percentage of RAM is appropriate, so as to leave adequate space for the operating system. Also, on Windows, large values for shared_buffers aren't as effective. You may find better results keeping the setting relatively low and using the operating system cache more instead. The useful range for shared_buffers on Windows systems is generally from 64MB to 512MB.

Increasing this parameter might cause PostgreSQL to request more System V shared memory than your operating system's default configuration allows. See Section 17.4.1 for information on how to adjust those parameters, if necessary.

temp_buffers (integer)

Sets the maximum number of temporary buffers used by each database session. These are session-local buffers used only for access to temporary tables. The default is eight megabytes (8MB). The setting can be changed within individual sessions, but only before the first use of temporary tables within the session; subsequent attempts to change the value will have no effect on that session.

A session will allocate temporary buffers as needed up to the limit given by temp_buffers. The cost of setting a large value in sessions that do not actually need many temporary buffers is only a buffer descriptor, or about 64 bytes, per increment in temp_buffers. However if a buffer is actually used an additional 8192 bytes will be consumed for it (or in general, BLCKSZ bytes).

max_prepared_transactions (integer)

Sets the maximum number of transactions that can be in the "prepared" state simultaneously (see PREPARE TRANSACTION). Setting this parameter to zero (which is the default) disables the prepared-transaction feature. This parameter can only be set at server start.

If you are not planning to use prepared transactions, this parameter should be set to zero to prevent accidental creation of prepared transactions. If you are using prepared transactions, you will probably want max_prepared_transactions to be at least as large as max_connections, so that every session can have a prepared transaction pending.

Increasing this parameter might cause PostgreSQL to request more System V shared memory than your operating system's default configuration allows. See Section 17.4.1 for information on how to adjust those parameters, if necessary.

When running a standby server, you must set this parameter to the same or higher value than on the master server. Otherwise, queries will not be allowed in the standby server.

work_mem (integer)

Specifies the amount of memory to be used by internal sort operations and hash tables before writing to temporary disk files. The value defaults to one megabyte (1MB). Note that for a complex query, several sort or hash operations might be running in parallel; each operation will be allowed to use as much memory as this value specifies before it starts to write data into temporary files. Also, several running sessions could be doing such operations concurrently. Therefore, the total memory used could be many times the value of work_mem; it is necessary to keep this fact in mind when choosing the value. Sort operations are used for ORDER BY, DISTINCT, and merge joins. Hash tables are used in hash joins, hash-based aggregation, and hash-based processing of IN subqueries.

maintenance_work_mem (integer)

Specifies the maximum amount of memory to be used by maintenance operations, such as VACUUM, CREATE INDEX, and ALTER TABLE ADD FOREIGN KEY. It defaults to 16 megabytes (16MB). Since only one of these operations can be executed at a time by a database session, and an installation normally doesn't have many of them running concurrently, it's safe to set this value significantly larger than work_mem. Larger settings might improve performance for vacuuming and for restoring database dumps.

Note that when autovacuum runs, up to autovacuum_max_workers times this memory may be allocated, so be careful not to set the default value too high.

max_stack_depth (integer)

Specifies the maximum safe depth of the server's execution stack. The ideal setting for this parameter is the actual stack size limit enforced by the kernel (as set by ulimit -s or local equivalent), less a safety margin of a megabyte or so. The safety margin is needed because the stack depth is not checked in every routine in the server, but only in key potentially-recursive routines such as expression evaluation. The default setting is two megabytes (2MB), which is conservatively small and unlikely to risk crashes. However, it might be too small to allow execution of complex functions. Only superusers can change this setting.

Setting max_stack_depth higher than the actual kernel limit will mean that a runaway recursive function can crash an individual backend process. On platforms where PostgreSQL can determine the kernel limit, the server will not allow this variable to be set to an unsafe value. However, not all platforms provide the information, so caution is recommended in selecting a value.

18.4.2. Kernel Resource Usage

max_files_per_process (integer)

Sets the maximum number of simultaneously open files allowed to each server subprocess. The default is one thousand files. If the kernel is enforcing a safe per-process limit, you don't need to worry about this setting. But on some platforms (notably, most BSD systems), the kernel will allow individual processes to open many more files than the system can actually support if many processes all try to open that many files. If you find yourself seeing "Too many open files" failures, try reducing this setting. This parameter can only be set at server start.

shared_preload_libraries (string)

This variable specifies one or more shared libraries to be preloaded at server start. For example, '$libdir/mylib' would cause mylib.so (or on some platforms, mylib.sl) to be preloaded from the installation's standard library directory. All library names are converted to lower case unless double-quoted. If more than one library is to be loaded, separate their names with commas. This parameter can only be set at server start.

PostgreSQL procedural language libraries can be preloaded in this way, typically by using the syntax '$libdir/plXXX' where XXX is pgsql, perl, tcl, or python.

By preloading a shared library, the library startup time is avoided when the library is first used. However, the time to start each new server process might increase slightly, even if that process never uses the library. So this parameter is recommended only for libraries that will be used in most sessions.

Note: On Windows hosts, preloading a library at server start will not reduce the time required to start each new server process; each server process will re-load all preload libraries. However, shared_preload_libraries is still useful on Windows hosts because some shared libraries may need to perform certain operations that only take place at postmaster start (for example, a shared library may need to reserve lightweight locks or shared memory and you can't do that after the postmaster has started).

If a specified library is not found, the server will fail to start.

Every PostgreSQL-supported library has a "magic block" that is checked to guarantee compatibility. For this reason, non-PostgreSQL libraries cannot be loaded in this way.

18.4.3. Cost-based Vacuum Delay

During the execution of VACUUM and ANALYZE commands, the system maintains an internal counter that keeps track of the estimated cost of the various I/O operations that are performed. When the accumulated cost reaches a limit (specified by vacuum_cost_limit), the process performing the operation will sleep for a short period of time, as specified by vacuum_cost_delay. Then it will reset the counter and continue execution.

The intent of this feature is to allow administrators to reduce the I/O impact of these commands on concurrent database activity. There are many situations where it is not important that maintenance commands like VACUUM and ANALYZE finish quickly; however, it is usually very important that these commands do not significantly interfere with the ability of the system to perform other database operations. Cost-based vacuum delay provides a way for administrators to achieve this.

This feature is disabled by default for manually issued VACUUM commands. To enable it, set the vacuum_cost_delay variable to a nonzero value.

vacuum_cost_delay (integer)

The length of time, in milliseconds, that the process will sleep when the cost limit has been exceeded. The default value is zero, which disables the cost-based vacuum delay feature. Positive values enable cost-based vacuuming. Note that on many systems, the effective resolution of sleep delays is 10 milliseconds; setting vacuum_cost_delay to a value that is not a multiple of 10 might have the same results as setting it to the next higher multiple of 10.

When using cost-based vacuuming, appropriate values for vacuum_cost_delay are usually quite small, perhaps 10 or 20 milliseconds. Adjusting vacuum's resource consumption is best done by changing the other vacuum cost parameters.

vacuum_cost_page_hit (integer)

The estimated cost for vacuuming a buffer found in the shared buffer cache. It represents the cost to lock the buffer pool, lookup the shared hash table and scan the content of the page. The default value is one.

vacuum_cost_page_miss (integer)

The estimated cost for vacuuming a buffer that has to be read from disk. This represents the effort to lock the buffer pool, lookup the shared hash table, read the desired block in from the disk and scan its content. The default value is 10.

vacuum_cost_page_dirty (integer)

The estimated cost charged when vacuum modifies a block that was previously clean. It represents the extra I/O required to flush the dirty block out to disk again. The default value is 20.

vacuum_cost_limit (integer)

The accumulated cost that will cause the vacuuming process to sleep. The default value is 200.

Note: There are certain operations that hold critical locks and should therefore complete as quickly as possible. Cost-based vacuum delays do not occur during such operations. Therefore it is possible that the cost accumulates far higher than the specified limit. To avoid uselessly long delays in such cases, the actual delay is calculated as vacuum_cost_delay * accumulated_balance / vacuum_cost_limit with a maximum of vacuum_cost_delay * 4.

18.4.4. Background Writer

There is a separate server process called the background writer, whose function is to issue writes of "dirty" (new or modified) shared buffers. It writes shared buffers so server processes handling user queries seldom or never need to wait for a write to occur. However, the background writer does cause a net overall increase in I/O load, because while a repeatedly-dirtied page might otherwise be written only once per checkpoint interval, the background writer might write it several times as it is dirtied in the same interval. The parameters discussed in this subsection can be used to tune the behavior for local needs.

bgwriter_delay (integer)

Specifies the delay between activity rounds for the background writer. In each round the writer issues writes for some number of dirty buffers (controllable by the following parameters). It then sleeps for bgwriter_delay milliseconds, and repeats. The default value is 200 milliseconds (200ms). Note that on many systems, the effective resolution of sleep delays is 10 milliseconds; setting bgwriter_delay to a value that is not a multiple of 10 might have the same results as setting it to the next higher multiple of 10. This parameter can only be set in the postgresql.conf file or on the server command line.

bgwriter_lru_maxpages (integer)

In each round, no more than this many buffers will be written by the background writer. Setting this to zero disables background writing (except for checkpoint activity). The default value is 100 buffers. This parameter can only be set in the postgresql.conf file or on the server command line.

bgwriter_lru_multiplier (floating point)

The number of dirty buffers written in each round is based on the number of new buffers that have been needed by server processes during recent rounds. The average recent need is multiplied by bgwriter_lru_multiplier to arrive at an estimate of the number of buffers that will be needed during the next round. Dirty buffers are written until there are that many clean, reusable buffers available. (However, no more than bgwriter_lru_maxpages buffers will be written per round.) Thus, a setting of 1.0 represents a "just in time" policy of writing exactly the number of buffers predicted to be needed. Larger values provide some cushion against spikes in demand, while smaller values intentionally leave writes to be done by server processes. The default is 2.0. This parameter can only be set in the postgresql.conf file or on the server command line.

Smaller values of bgwriter_lru_maxpages and bgwriter_lru_multiplier reduce the extra I/O load caused by the background writer, but make it more likely that server processes will have to issue writes for themselves, delaying interactive queries.

18.4.5. Asynchronous Behavior

effective_io_concurrency (integer)

Sets the number of concurrent disk I/O operations that PostgreSQL expects can be executed simultaneously. Raising this value will increase the number of I/O operations that any individual PostgreSQL session attempts to initiate in parallel. The allowed range is 1 to 1000, or zero to disable issuance of asynchronous I/O requests. Currently, this setting only affects bitmap heap scans.

A good starting point for this setting is the number of separate drives comprising a RAID 0 stripe or RAID 1 mirror being used for the database. (For RAID 5 the parity drive should not be counted.) However, if the database is often busy with multiple queries issued in concurrent sessions, lower values may be sufficient to keep the disk array busy. A value higher than needed to keep the disks busy will only result in extra CPU overhead.

For more exotic systems, such as memory-based storage or a RAID array that is limited by bus bandwidth, the correct value might be the number of I/O paths available. Some experimentation may be needed to find the best value.

Asynchronous I/O depends on an effective posix_fadvise function, which some operating systems lack. If the function is not present then setting this parameter to anything but zero will result in an error. On some operating systems (e.g., Solaris), the function is present but does not actually do anything.

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Write Ahead Log

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18.5. Write Ahead Log

See also Section 29.4 for details on WAL and checkpoint tuning.

18.5.1. Settings

wal_level (enum)

wal_level determines how much information is written to the WAL. The default value is minimal, which writes only the information needed to recover from a crash or immediate shutdown. archive adds logging required for WAL archiving, and hot_standby further adds information required to run read-only queries on a standby server. This parameter can only be set at server start.

In minimal level, WAL-logging of some bulk operations can be safely skipped, which can make those operations much faster (see Section 14.4.7). Operations in which this optimization can be applied include:

CREATE TABLE AS
CREATE INDEX
CLUSTER
COPY into tables that were created or truncated in the same transaction

But minimal WAL does not contain enough information to reconstruct the data from a base backup and the WAL logs, so either archive or hot_standby level must be used to enable WAL archiving (archive_mode) and streaming replication.

In hot_standby level, the same information is logged as with archive, plus information needed to reconstruct the status of running transactions from the WAL. To enable read-only queries on a standby server, wal_level must be set to hot_standby on the primary, and hot_standby must be enabled in the standby. It is thought that there is little measurable difference in performance between using hot_standby and archive levels, so feedback is welcome if any production impacts are noticeable.

fsync (boolean)

If this parameter is on, the PostgreSQL server will try to make sure that updates are physically written to disk, by issuing fsync() system calls or various equivalent methods (see wal_sync_method). This ensures that the database cluster can recover to a consistent state after an operating system or hardware crash.

While turning off fsync is often a performance benefit, this can result in unrecoverable data corruption in the event of a power failure or system crash. Thus it is only advisable to turn off fsync if you can easily recreate your entire database from external data.

Examples of safe circumstances for turning off fsync include the initial loading of a new database cluster from a backup file, using a database cluster for processing a batch of data after which the database will be thrown away and recreated, or for a read-only database clone which gets recreated frequently and is not used for failover. High quality hardware alone is not a sufficient justification for turning off fsync.

In many situations, turning off synchronous_commit for noncritical transactions can provide much of the potential performance benefit of turning off fsync, without the attendant risks of data corruption.

fsync can only be set in the postgresql.conf file or on the server command line. If you turn this parameter off, also consider turning off full_page_writes.

synchronous_commit (enum)

Specifies whether transaction commit will wait for WAL records to be written to disk before the command returns a "success" indication to the client. Valid values are on, local, and off. The default, and safe, value is on. When off, there can be a delay between when success is reported to the client and when the transaction is really guaranteed to be safe against a server crash. (The maximum delay is three times wal_writer_delay.) Unlike fsync, setting this parameter to off does not create any risk of database inconsistency: an operating system or database crash might result in some recent allegedly-committed transactions being lost, but the database state will be just the same as if those transactions had been aborted cleanly. So, turning synchronous_commit off can be a useful alternative when performance is more important than exact certainty about the durability of a transaction. For more discussion see Section 29.3.

If synchronous_standby_names is set, this parameter also controls whether or not transaction commit will wait for the transaction's WAL records to be flushed to disk and replicated to the standby server. The commit wait will last until a reply from the current synchronous standby indicates it has written the commit record of the transaction to durable storage. If synchronous replication is in use, it will normally be sensible either to wait both for WAL records to reach both the local and remote disks, or to allow the transaction to commit asynchronously. However, the special value local is available for transactions that wish to wait for local flush to disk, but not synchronous replication.

This parameter can be changed at any time; the behavior for any one transaction is determined by the setting in effect when it commits. It is therefore possible, and useful, to have some transactions commit synchronously and others asynchronously. For example, to make a single multistatement transaction commit asynchronously when the default is the opposite, issue SET LOCAL synchronous_commit TO OFF within the transaction.

wal_sync_method (enum)

Method used for forcing WAL updates out to disk. If fsync is off then this setting is irrelevant, since WAL file updates will not be forced out at all. Possible values are:

  • open_datasync (write WAL files with open() option O_DSYNC)

  • fdatasync (call fdatasync() at each commit)

  • fsync (call fsync() at each commit)

  • fsync_writethrough (call fsync() at each commit, forcing write-through of any disk write cache)

  • open_sync (write WAL files with open() option O_SYNC)

The open_* options also use O_DIRECT if available. Not all of these choices are available on all platforms. The default is the first method in the above list that is supported by the platform, except that fdatasync is the default on Linux. The default is not necessarily ideal; it might be necessary to change this setting or other aspects of your system configuration in order to create a crash-safe configuration or achieve optimal performance. These aspects are discussed in Section 29.1. This parameter can only be set in the postgresql.conf file or on the server command line.

full_page_writes (boolean)

When this parameter is on, the PostgreSQL server writes the entire content of each disk page to WAL during the first modification of that page after a checkpoint. This is needed because a page write that is in process during an operating system crash might be only partially completed, leading to an on-disk page that contains a mix of old and new data. The row-level change data normally stored in WAL will not be enough to completely restore such a page during post-crash recovery. Storing the full page image guarantees that the page can be correctly restored, but at the price of increasing the amount of data that must be written to WAL. (Because WAL replay always starts from a checkpoint, it is sufficient to do this during the first change of each page after a checkpoint. Therefore, one way to reduce the cost of full-page writes is to increase the checkpoint interval parameters.)

Turning this parameter off speeds normal operation, but might lead to either unrecoverable data corruption, or silent data corruption, after a system failure. The risks are similar to turning off fsync, though smaller, and it should be turned off only based on the same circumstances recommended for that parameter.

Turning off this parameter does not affect use of WAL archiving for point-in-time recovery (PITR) (see Section 24.3).

This parameter can only be set in the postgresql.conf file or on the server command line. The default is on.

wal_buffers (integer)

The amount of shared memory used for WAL data that has not yet been written to disk. The default setting of -1 selects a size equal to 1/32nd (about 3%) of shared_buffers, but not less than 64kB nor more than the size of one WAL segment, typically 16MB. This value can be set manually if the automatic choice is too large or too small, but any positive value less than 32kB will be treated as 32kB. This parameter can only be set at server start.

The contents of the WAL buffers are written out to disk at every transaction commit, so extremely large values are unlikely to provide a significant benefit. However, setting this value to at least a few megabytes can improve write performance on a busy server where many clients are committing at once. The auto-tuning selected by the default setting of -1 should give reasonable results in most cases.

Increasing this parameter might cause PostgreSQL to request more System V shared memory than your operating system's default configuration allows. See Section 17.4.1 for information on how to adjust those parameters, if necessary.

wal_writer_delay (integer)

Specifies the delay between activity rounds for the WAL writer. In each round the writer will flush WAL to disk. It then sleeps for wal_writer_delay milliseconds, and repeats. The default value is 200 milliseconds (200ms). Note that on many systems, the effective resolution of sleep delays is 10 milliseconds; setting wal_writer_delay to a value that is not a multiple of 10 might have the same results as setting it to the next higher multiple of 10. This parameter can only be set in the postgresql.conf file or on the server command line.

commit_delay (integer)

When the commit data for a transaction is flushed to disk, any additional commits ready at that time are also flushed out. commit_delay adds a time delay, set in microseconds, before a transaction attempts to flush the WAL buffer out to disk. A nonzero delay can allow more transactions to be committed with only one flush operation, if system load is high enough that additional transactions become ready to commit within the given interval. But the delay is just wasted if no other transactions become ready to commit. Therefore, the delay is only performed if at least commit_siblings other transactions are active at the instant that a server process has written its commit record. The default commit_delay is zero (no delay). Since all pending commit data will be written at every flush regardless of this setting, it is rare that adding delay by increasing this parameter will actually improve performance.

commit_siblings (integer)

Minimum number of concurrent open transactions to require before performing the commit_delay delay. A larger value makes it more probable that at least one other transaction will become ready to commit during the delay interval. The default is five transactions.

18.5.2. Checkpoints

checkpoint_segments (integer)

Maximum number of log file segments between automatic WAL checkpoints (each segment is normally 16 megabytes). The default is three segments. Increasing this parameter can increase the amount of time needed for crash recovery. This parameter can only be set in the postgresql.conf file or on the server command line.

checkpoint_timeout (integer)

Maximum time between automatic WAL checkpoints, in seconds. The default is five minutes (5min). Increasing this parameter can increase the amount of time needed for crash recovery. This parameter can only be set in the postgresql.conf file or on the server command line.

checkpoint_completion_target (floating point)

Specifies the target of checkpoint completion, as a fraction of total time between checkpoints. The default is 0.5. This parameter can only be set in the postgresql.conf file or on the server command line.

checkpoint_warning (integer)

Write a message to the server log if checkpoints caused by the filling of checkpoint segment files happen closer together than this many seconds (which suggests that checkpoint_segments ought to be raised). The default is 30 seconds (30s). Zero disables the warning. This parameter can only be set in the postgresql.conf file or on the server command line.

18.5.3. Archiving

archive_mode (boolean)

When archive_mode is enabled, completed WAL segments are sent to archive storage by setting archive_command. archive_mode and archive_command are separate variables so that archive_command can be changed without leaving archiving mode. This parameter can only be set at server start. archive_mode cannot be enabled when wal_level is set to minimal.

archive_command (string)

The shell command to execute to archive a completed WAL file segment. Any %p in the string is replaced by the path name of the file to archive, and any %f is replaced by only the file name. (The path name is relative to the working directory of the server, i.e., the cluster's data directory.) Use %% to embed an actual % character in the command. It is important for the command to return a zero exit status only if it succeeds. For more information see Section 24.3.1.

This parameter can only be set in the postgresql.conf file or on the server command line. It is ignored unless archive_mode was enabled at server start. If archive_command is an empty string (the default) while archive_mode is enabled, WAL archiving is temporarily disabled, but the server continues to accumulate WAL segment files in the expectation that a command will soon be provided. Setting archive_command to a command that does nothing but return true, e.g. /bin/true (REM on Windows), effectively disables archiving, but also breaks the chain of WAL files needed for archive recovery, so it should only be used in unusual circumstances.

archive_timeout (integer)

The archive_command is only invoked for completed WAL segments. Hence, if your server generates little WAL traffic (or has slack periods where it does so), there could be a long delay between the completion of a transaction and its safe recording in archive storage. To limit how old unarchived data can be, you can set archive_timeout to force the server to switch to a new WAL segment file periodically. When this parameter is greater than zero, the server will switch to a new segment file whenever this many seconds have elapsed since the last segment file switch, and there has been any database activity, including a single checkpoint. (Increasing checkpoint_timeout will reduce unnecessary checkpoints on an idle system.) Note that archived files that are closed early due to a forced switch are still the same length as completely full files. Therefore, it is unwise to use a very short archive_timeout — it will bloat your archive storage. archive_timeout settings of a minute or so are usually reasonable. You should consider using streaming replication, instead of archiving, if you want data to be copied off the master server more quickly than that. This parameter can only be set in the postgresql.conf file or on the server command line.

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Replication

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18.6. Replication

These settings control the behavior of the built-in streaming replication feature (see Section 25.2.5). Some parameters must be set on the master server, while others must be set on the standby server(s) that will receive replication data.

18.6.1. Master Server

These parameters can be set on the primary server that is to send replication data to one or more standby servers. Note that in addition to these parameters, wal_level must be set appropriately on the master server, and you will typically want to enable WAL archiving as well (see Section 18.5.3). The values of these parameters on standby servers are irrelevant, although you may wish to set them there in preparation for the possibility of a standby becoming the master.

max_wal_senders (integer)

Specifies the maximum number of concurrent connections from standby servers or streaming base backup clients (i.e., the maximum number of simultaneously running WAL sender processes). The default is zero, meaning replication is disabled. WAL sender processes count towards the total number of connections, so the parameter cannot be set higher than max_connections. This parameter can only be set at server start. wal_level must be set to archive or hot_standby to allow connections from standby servers.

wal_sender_delay (integer)

Specifies the delay between activity rounds for WAL sender processes. In each round the WAL sender sends any WAL accumulated since the last round to the standby server. It then sleeps for wal_sender_delay milliseconds, and repeats. The sleep is interrupted by transaction commit, so the effects of a committed transaction are sent to standby servers as soon as the commit happens, regardless of this setting. The default value is one second (1s). Note that on many systems, the effective resolution of sleep delays is 10 milliseconds; setting wal_sender_delay to a value that is not a multiple of 10 might have the same results as setting it to the next higher multiple of 10. This parameter can only be set in the postgresql.conf file or on the server command line.

wal_keep_segments (integer)

Specifies the minimum number of past log file segments kept in the pg_xlog directory, in case a standby server needs to fetch them for streaming replication. Each segment is normally 16 megabytes. If a standby server connected to the primary falls behind by more than wal_keep_segments segments, the primary might remove a WAL segment still needed by the standby, in which case the replication connection will be terminated. (However, the standby server can recover by fetching the segment from archive, if WAL archiving is in use.)

This sets only the minimum number of segments retained in pg_xlog; the system might need to retain more segments for WAL archival or to recover from a checkpoint. If wal_keep_segments is zero (the default), the system doesn't keep any extra segments for standby purposes, so the number of old WAL segments available to standby servers is a function of the location of the previous checkpoint and status of WAL archiving. This parameter has no effect on restartpoints. This parameter can only be set in the postgresql.conf file or on the server command line.

vacuum_defer_cleanup_age (integer)

Specifies the number of transactions by which VACUUM and HOT updates will defer cleanup of dead row versions. The default is zero transactions, meaning that dead row versions can be removed as soon as possible, that is, as soon as they are no longer visible to any open transaction. You may wish to set this to a non-zero value on a primary server that is supporting hot standby servers, as described in Section 25.5. This allows more time for queries on the standby to complete without incurring conflicts due to early cleanup of rows. However, since the value is measured in terms of number of write transactions occurring on the primary server, it is difficult to predict just how much additional grace time will be made available to standby queries. This parameter can only be set in the postgresql.conf file or on the server command line.

You should also consider setting hot_standby_feedback as an alternative to using this parameter.

replication_timeout (integer)

Terminate replication connections that are inactive longer than the specified number of milliseconds. This is useful for the primary server to detect a standby crash or network outage. A value of zero disables the timeout mechanism. This parameter can only be set in the postgresql.conf file or on the server command line. The default value is 60 seconds.

To prevent connections from being terminated prematurely, wal_receiver_status_interval must be enabled on the standby, and its value must be less than the value of replication_timeout.

synchronous_standby_names (string)

Specifies a comma-separated list of standby names that can support synchronous replication, as described in Section 25.2.6. At any one time there will be at most one active synchronous standby; transactions waiting for commit will be allowed to proceed after this standby server confirms receipt of their data. The synchronous standby will be the first standby named in this list that is both currently connected and streaming data in real-time (as shown by a state of streaming in the pg_stat_replication view). Other standby servers appearing later in this list represent potential synchronous standbys. If the current synchronous standby disconnects for whatever reason, it will be replaced immediately with the next-highest-priority standby. Specifying more than one standby name can allow very high availability.

The name of a standby server for this purpose is the application_name setting of the standby, as set in the primary_conninfo of the standby's walreceiver. There is no mechanism to enforce uniqueness. In case of duplicates one of the matching standbys will be chosen to be the synchronous standby, though exactly which one is indeterminate. The special entry * matches any application_name, including the default application name of walreceiver.

If no synchronous standby names are specified here, then synchronous replication is not enabled and transaction commits will not wait for replication. This is the default configuration. Even when synchronous replication is enabled, individual transactions can be configured not to wait for replication by setting the synchronous_commit parameter to local or off.

This parameter can only be set in the postgresql.conf file or on the server command line.

18.6.2. Standby Servers

These settings control the behavior of a standby server that is to receive replication data. Their values on the master server are irrelevant.

hot_standby (boolean)

Specifies whether or not you can connect and run queries during recovery, as described in Section 25.5. The default value is off. This parameter can only be set at server start. It only has effect during archive recovery or in standby mode.

max_standby_archive_delay (integer)

When Hot Standby is active, this parameter determines how long the standby server should wait before canceling standby queries that conflict with about-to-be-applied WAL entries, as described in Section 25.5.2. max_standby_archive_delay applies when WAL data is being read from WAL archive (and is therefore not current). The default is 30 seconds. Units are milliseconds if not specified. A value of -1 allows the standby to wait forever for conflicting queries to complete. This parameter can only be set in the postgresql.conf file or on the server command line.

Note that max_standby_archive_delay is not the same as the maximum length of time a query can run before cancellation; rather it is the maximum total time allowed to apply any one WAL segment's data. Thus, if one query has resulted in significant delay earlier in the WAL segment, subsequent conflicting queries will have much less grace time.

max_standby_streaming_delay (integer)

When Hot Standby is active, this parameter determines how long the standby server should wait before canceling standby queries that conflict with about-to-be-applied WAL entries, as described in Section 25.5.2. max_standby_streaming_delay applies when WAL data is being received via streaming replication. The default is 30 seconds. Units are milliseconds if not specified. A value of -1 allows the standby to wait forever for conflicting queries to complete. This parameter can only be set in the postgresql.conf file or on the server command line.

Note that max_standby_streaming_delay is not the same as the maximum length of time a query can run before cancellation; rather it is the maximum total time allowed to apply WAL data once it has been received from the primary server. Thus, if one query has resulted in significant delay, subsequent conflicting queries will have much less grace time until the standby server has caught up again.

wal_receiver_status_interval (integer)

Specifies the minimum frequency for the WAL receiver process on the standby to send information about replication progress to the primary, where it can be seen using the pg_stat_replication view. The standby will report the last transaction log position it has written, the last position it has flushed to disk, and the last position it has applied. This parameter's value is the maximum interval, in seconds, between reports. Updates are sent each time the write or flush positions change, or at least as often as specified by this parameter. Thus, the apply position may lag slightly behind the true position. Setting this parameter to zero disables status updates completely. This parameter can only be set in the postgresql.conf file or on the server command line. The default value is 10 seconds.

When replication_timeout is enabled on the primary, wal_receiver_status_interval must be enabled, and its value must be less than the value of replication_timeout.

hot_standby_feedback (boolean)

Specifies whether or not a hot standby will send feedback to the primary about queries currently executing on the standby. This parameter can be used to eliminate query cancels caused by cleanup records, but can cause database bloat on the primary for some workloads. Feedback messages will not be sent more frequently than once per wal_receiver_status_interval. The default value is off. This parameter can only be set in the postgresql.conf file or on the server command line.

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Query Planning

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18.7. Query Planning

18.7.1. Planner Method Configuration

These configuration parameters provide a crude method of influencing the query plans chosen by the query optimizer. If the default plan chosen by the optimizer for a particular query is not optimal, a temporary solution is to use one of these configuration parameters to force the optimizer to choose a different plan. Better ways to improve the quality of the plans chosen by the optimizer include adjusting the planer cost constants (see Section 18.7.2), running ANALYZE manually, increasing the value of the default_statistics_target configuration parameter, and increasing the amount of statistics collected for specific columns using ALTER TABLE SET STATISTICS.

enable_bitmapscan (boolean)

Enables or disables the query planner's use of bitmap-scan plan types. The default is on.

enable_hashagg (boolean)

Enables or disables the query planner's use of hashed aggregation plan types. The default is on.

enable_hashjoin (boolean)

Enables or disables the query planner's use of hash-join plan types. The default is on.

enable_indexscan (boolean)

Enables or disables the query planner's use of index-scan plan types. The default is on.

enable_material (boolean)

Enables or disables the query planner's use of materialization. It is impossible to suppress materialization entirely, but turning this variable off prevents the planner from inserting materialize nodes except in cases where it is required for correctness. The default is on.

enable_mergejoin (boolean)

Enables or disables the query planner's use of merge-join plan types. The default is on.

enable_nestloop (boolean)

Enables or disables the query planner's use of nested-loop join plans. It is impossible to suppress nested-loop joins entirely, but turning this variable off discourages the planner from using one if there are other methods available. The default is on.

enable_seqscan (boolean)

Enables or disables the query planner's use of sequential scan plan types. It is impossible to suppress sequential scans entirely, but turning this variable off discourages the planner from using one if there are other methods available. The default is on.

enable_sort (boolean)

Enables or disables the query planner's use of explicit sort steps. It is impossible to suppress explicit sorts entirely, but turning this variable off discourages the planner from using one if there are other methods available. The default is on.

enable_tidscan (boolean)

Enables or disables the query planner's use of TID scan plan types. The default is on.

18.7.2. Planner Cost Constants

The cost variables described in this section are measured on an arbitrary scale. Only their relative values matter, hence scaling them all up or down by the same factor will result in no change in the planner's choices. By default, these cost variables are based on the cost of sequential page fetches; that is, seq_page_cost is conventionally set to 1.0 and the other cost variables are set with reference to that. But you can use a different scale if you prefer, such as actual execution times in milliseconds on a particular machine.

Note: Unfortunately, there is no well-defined method for determining ideal values for the cost variables. They are best treated as averages over the entire mix of queries that a particular installation will receive. This means that changing them on the basis of just a few experiments is very risky.

seq_page_cost (floating point)

Sets the planner's estimate of the cost of a disk page fetch that is part of a series of sequential fetches. The default is 1.0. This value can be overridden for a particular tablespace by setting the tablespace parameter of the same name (see ALTER TABLESPACE).

random_page_cost (floating point)

Sets the planner's estimate of the cost of a non-sequentially-fetched disk page. The default is 4.0. This value can be overridden for a particular tablespace by setting the tablespace parameter of the same name (see ALTER TABLESPACE).

Reducing this value relative to seq_page_cost will cause the system to prefer index scans; raising it will make index scans look relatively more expensive. You can raise or lower both values together to change the importance of disk I/O costs relative to CPU costs, which are described by the following parameters.

Tip: Although the system will let you set random_page_cost to less than seq_page_cost, it is not physically sensible to do so. However, setting them equal makes sense if the database is entirely cached in RAM, since in that case there is no penalty for touching pages out of sequence. Also, in a heavily-cached database you should lower both values relative to the CPU parameters, since the cost of fetching a page already in RAM is much smaller than it would normally be.

cpu_tuple_cost (floating point)

Sets the planner's estimate of the cost of processing each row during a query. The default is 0.01.

cpu_index_tuple_cost (floating point)

Sets the planner's estimate of the cost of processing each index entry during an index scan. The default is 0.005.

cpu_operator_cost (floating point)

Sets the planner's estimate of the cost of processing each operator or function executed during a query. The default is 0.0025.

effective_cache_size (integer)

Sets the planner's assumption about the effective size of the disk cache that is available to a single query. This is factored into estimates of the cost of using an index; a higher value makes it more likely index scans will be used, a lower value makes it more likely sequential scans will be used. When setting this parameter you should consider both PostgreSQL's shared buffers and the portion of the kernel's disk cache that will be used for PostgreSQL data files. Also, take into account the expected number of concurrent queries on different tables, since they will have to share the available space. This parameter has no effect on the size of shared memory allocated by PostgreSQL, nor does it reserve kernel disk cache; it is used only for estimation purposes. The system also does not assume data remains in the disk cache between queries. The default is 128 megabytes (128MB).

18.7.3. Genetic Query Optimizer

The genetic query optimizer (GEQO) is an algorithm that does query planning using heuristic searching. This reduces planning time for complex queries (those joining many relations), at the cost of producing plans that are sometimes inferior to those found by the normal exhaustive-search algorithm. For more information see Chapter 51.

geqo (boolean)

Enables or disables genetic query optimization. This is on by default. It is usually best not to turn it off in production; the geqo_threshold variable provides more granular control of GEQO.

geqo_threshold (integer)

Use genetic query optimization to plan queries with at least this many FROM items involved. (Note that a FULL OUTER JOIN construct counts as only one FROM item.) The default is 12. For simpler queries it is usually best to use the regular, exhaustive-search planner, but for queries with many tables the exhaustive search takes too long, often longer than the penalty of executing a suboptimal plan. Thus, a threshold on the size of the query is a convenient way to manage use of GEQO.

geqo_effort (integer)

Controls the trade-off between planning time and query plan quality in GEQO. This variable must be an integer in the range from 1 to 10. The default value is five. Larger values increase the time spent doing query planning, but also increase the likelihood that an efficient query plan will be chosen.

geqo_effort doesn't actually do anything directly; it is only used to compute the default values for the other variables that influence GEQO behavior (described below). If you prefer, you can set the other parameters by hand instead.

geqo_pool_size (integer)

Controls the pool size used by GEQO, that is the number of individuals in the genetic population. It must be at least two, and useful values are typically 100 to 1000. If it is set to zero (the default setting) then a suitable value is chosen based on geqo_effort and the number of tables in the query.

geqo_generations (integer)

Controls the number of generations used by GEQO, that is the number of iterations of the algorithm. It must be at least one, and useful values are in the same range as the pool size. If it is set to zero (the default setting) then a suitable value is chosen based on geqo_pool_size.

geqo_selection_bias (floating point)

Controls the selection bias used by GEQO. The selection bias is the selective pressure within the population. Values can be from 1.50 to 2.00; the latter is the default.

geqo_seed (floating point)

Controls the initial value of the random number generator used by GEQO to select random paths through the join order search space. The value can range from zero (the default) to one. Varying the value changes the set of join paths explored, and may result in a better or worse best path being found.

18.7.4. Other Planner Options

default_statistics_target (integer)

Sets the default statistics target for table columns without a column-specific target set via ALTER TABLE SET STATISTICS. Larger values increase the time needed to do ANALYZE, but might improve the quality of the planner's estimates. The default is 100. For more information on the use of statistics by the PostgreSQL query planner, refer to Section 14.2.

constraint_exclusion (enum)

Controls the query planner's use of table constraints to optimize queries. The allowed values of constraint_exclusion are on (examine constraints for all tables), off (never examine constraints), and partition (examine constraints only for inheritance child tables and UNION ALL subqueries). partition is the default setting. It is often used with inheritance and partitioned tables to improve performance.

When this parameter allows it for a particular table, the planner compares query conditions with the table's CHECK constraints, and omits scanning tables for which the conditions contradict the constraints. For example:

CREATE TABLE parent(key integer, ...);
CREATE TABLE child1000(check (key between 1000 and 1999)) INHERITS(parent);
CREATE TABLE child2000(check (key between 2000 and 2999)) INHERITS(parent);
...
SELECT * FROM parent WHERE key = 2400;

With constraint exclusion enabled, this SELECT will not scan child1000 at all, improving performance.

Currently, constraint exclusion is enabled by default only for cases that are often used to implement table partitioning. Turning it on for all tables imposes extra planning overhead that is quite noticeable on simple queries, and most often will yield no benefit for simple queries. If you have no partitioned tables you might prefer to turn it off entirely.

Refer to Section 5.9.4 for more information on using constraint exclusion and partitioning.

cursor_tuple_fraction (floating point)

Sets the planner's estimate of the fraction of a cursor's rows that will be retrieved. The default is 0.1. Smaller values of this setting bias the planner towards using "fast start" plans for cursors, which will retrieve the first few rows quickly while perhaps taking a long time to fetch all rows. Larger values put more emphasis on the total estimated time. At the maximum setting of 1.0, cursors are planned exactly like regular queries, considering only the total estimated time and not how soon the first rows might be delivered.

from_collapse_limit (integer)

The planner will merge sub-queries into upper queries if the resulting FROM list would have no more than this many items. Smaller values reduce planning time but might yield inferior query plans. The default is eight. For more information see Section 14.3.

Setting this value to geqo_threshold or more may trigger use of the GEQO planner, resulting in non-optimal plans. See Section 18.7.3.

join_collapse_limit (integer)

The planner will rewrite explicit JOIN constructs (except FULL JOINs) into lists of FROM items whenever a list of no more than this many items would result. Smaller values reduce planning time but might yield inferior query plans.

By default, this variable is set the same as from_collapse_limit, which is appropriate for most uses. Setting it to 1 prevents any reordering of explicit JOINs. Thus, the explicit join order specified in the query will be the actual order in which the relations are joined. Because the query planner does not always choose the optimal join order, advanced users can elect to temporarily set this variable to 1, and then specify the join order they desire explicitly. For more information see Section 14.3.

Setting this value to geqo_threshold or more may trigger use of the GEQO planner, resulting in non-optimal plans. See Section 18.7.3.

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Error Reporting and Logging

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18.8. Error Reporting and Logging

18.8.1. Where To Log

log_destination (string)

PostgreSQL supports several methods for logging server messages, including stderr, csvlog and syslog. On Windows, eventlog is also supported. Set this parameter to a list of desired log destinations separated by commas. The default is to log to stderr only. This parameter can only be set in the postgresql.conf file or on the server command line.

If csvlog is included in log_destination, log entries are output in "comma separated value" (CSV) format, which is convenient for loading logs into programs. See Section 18.8.4 for details. logging_collector must be enabled to generate CSV-format log output.

Note: On most Unix systems, you will need to alter the configuration of your system's syslog daemon in order to make use of the syslog option for log_destination. PostgreSQL can log to syslog facilities LOCAL0 through LOCAL7 (see syslog_facility), but the default syslog configuration on most platforms will discard all such messages. You will need to add something like:

local0.*    /var/log/postgresql

to the syslog daemon's configuration file to make it work.

logging_collector (boolean)

This parameter enables the logging collector, which is a background process that captures log messages sent to stderr and redirects them into log files. This approach is often more useful than logging to syslog, since some types of messages might not appear in syslog output. (One common example is dynamic-linker failure messages; another is error messages produced by scripts such as archive_command.) This parameter can only be set at server start.

Note: It is possible to log to stderr without using the logging collector; the log messages will just go to wherever the server's stderr is directed. However, that method is only suitable for low log volumes, since it provides no convenient way to rotate log files. Also, on some platforms not using the logging collector can result in lost or garbled log output, because multiple processes writing concurrently to the same log file can overwrite each other's output.

Note: The logging collector is designed to never lose messages. This means that in case of extremely high load, server processes could be blocked while trying to send additional log messages when the collector has fallen behind. In contrast, syslog prefers to drop messages if it cannot write them, which means it may fail to log some messages in such cases but it will not block the rest of the system.

log_directory (string)

When logging_collector is enabled, this parameter determines the directory in which log files will be created. It can be specified as an absolute path, or relative to the cluster data directory. This parameter can only be set in the postgresql.conf file or on the server command line. The default is pg_log.

log_filename (string)

When logging_collector is enabled, this parameter sets the file names of the created log files. The value is treated as a strftime pattern, so %-escapes can be used to specify time-varying file names. (Note that if there are any time-zone-dependent %-escapes, the computation is done in the zone specified by log_timezone.) The supported %-escapes are similar to those listed in the Open Group's strftime specification. Note that the system's strftime is not used directly, so platform-specific (nonstandard) extensions do not work. The default is postgresql-%Y-%m-%d_%H%M%S.log.

If you specify a file name without escapes, you should plan to use a log rotation utility to avoid eventually filling the entire disk. In releases prior to 8.4, if no % escapes were present, PostgreSQL would append the epoch of the new log file's creation time, but this is no longer the case.

If CSV-format output is enabled in log_destination, .csv will be appended to the timestamped log file name to create the file name for CSV-format output. (If log_filename ends in .log, the suffix is replaced instead.)

This parameter can only be set in the postgresql.conf file or on the server command line.

log_file_mode (integer)

On Unix systems this parameter sets the permissions for log files when logging_collector is enabled. (On Microsoft Windows this parameter is ignored.) The parameter value is expected to be a numeric mode specified in the format accepted by the chmod and umask system calls. (To use the customary octal format the number must start with a 0 (zero).)

The default permissions are 0600, meaning only the server owner can read or write the log files. The other commonly useful setting is 0640, allowing members of the owner's group to read the files. Note however that to make use of such a setting, you'll need to alter log_directory to store the files somewhere outside the cluster data directory. In any case, it's unwise to make the log files world-readable, since they might contain sensitive data.

This parameter can only be set in the postgresql.conf file or on the server command line.

log_rotation_age (integer)

When logging_collector is enabled, this parameter determines the maximum lifetime of an individual log file. After this many minutes have elapsed, a new log file will be created. Set to zero to disable time-based creation of new log files. This parameter can only be set in the postgresql.conf file or on the server command line.

log_rotation_size (integer)

When logging_collector is enabled, this parameter determines the maximum size of an individual log file. After this many kilobytes have been emitted into a log file, a new log file will be created. Set to zero to disable size-based creation of new log files. This parameter can only be set in the postgresql.conf file or on the server command line.

log_truncate_on_rotation (boolean)

When logging_collector is enabled, this parameter will cause PostgreSQL to truncate (overwrite), rather than append to, any existing log file of the same name. However, truncation will occur only when a new file is being opened due to time-based rotation, not during server startup or size-based rotation. When off, pre-existing files will be appended to in all cases. For example, using this setting in combination with a log_filename like postgresql-%H.log would result in generating twenty-four hourly log files and then cyclically overwriting them. This parameter can only be set in the postgresql.conf file or on the server command line.

Example: To keep 7 days of logs, one log file per day named server_log.Mon, server_log.Tue, etc, and automatically overwrite last week's log with this week's log, set log_filename to server_log.%a, log_truncate_on_rotation to on, and log_rotation_age to 1440.

Example: To keep 24 hours of logs, one log file per hour, but also rotate sooner if the log file size exceeds 1GB, set log_filename to server_log.%H%M, log_truncate_on_rotation to on, log_rotation_age to 60, and log_rotation_size to 1000000. Including %M in log_filename allows any size-driven rotations that might occur to select a file name different from the hour's initial file name.

syslog_facility (enum)

When logging to syslog is enabled, this parameter determines the syslog "facility" to be used. You can choose from LOCAL0, LOCAL1, LOCAL2, LOCAL3, LOCAL4, LOCAL5, LOCAL6, LOCAL7; the default is LOCAL0. See also the documentation of your system's syslog daemon. This parameter can only be set in the postgresql.conf file or on the server command line.

syslog_ident (string)

When logging to syslog is enabled, this parameter determines the program name used to identify PostgreSQL messages in syslog logs. The default is postgres. This parameter can only be set in the postgresql.conf file or on the server command line.

silent_mode (boolean)

Runs the server silently. If this parameter is set, the server will automatically run in background and disassociate from the controlling terminal. This parameter can only be set at server start.

Caution

When this parameter is set, the server's standard output and standard error are redirected to the file postmaster.log within the data directory. There is no provision for rotating this file, so it will grow indefinitely unless server log output is redirected elsewhere by other settings. It is recommended that log_destination be set to syslog or that logging_collector be enabled when using this option. Even with those measures, errors reported early during startup may appear in postmaster.log rather than the normal log destination.

18.8.2. When To Log

client_min_messages (enum)

Controls which message levels are sent to the client. Valid values are DEBUG5, DEBUG4, DEBUG3, DEBUG2, DEBUG1, LOG, NOTICE, WARNING, ERROR, FATAL, and PANIC. Each level includes all the levels that follow it. The later the level, the fewer messages are sent. The default is NOTICE. Note that LOG has a different rank here than in log_min_messages.

log_min_messages (enum)

Controls which message levels are written to the server log. Valid values are DEBUG5, DEBUG4, DEBUG3, DEBUG2, DEBUG1, INFO, NOTICE, WARNING, ERROR, LOG, FATAL, and PANIC. Each level includes all the levels that follow it. The later the level, the fewer messages are sent to the log. The default is WARNING. Note that LOG has a different rank here than in client_min_messages. Only superusers can change this setting.

log_min_error_statement (enum)

Controls which SQL statements that cause an error condition are recorded in the server log. The current SQL statement is included in the log entry for any message of the specified severity or higher. Valid values are DEBUG5, DEBUG4, DEBUG3, DEBUG2, DEBUG1, INFO, NOTICE, WARNING, ERROR, LOG, FATAL, and PANIC. The default is ERROR, which means statements causing errors, log messages, fatal errors, or panics will be logged. To effectively turn off logging of failing statements, set this parameter to PANIC. Only superusers can change this setting.

log_min_duration_statement (integer)

Causes the duration of each completed statement to be logged if the statement ran for at least the specified number of milliseconds. Setting this to zero prints all statement durations. Minus-one (the default) disables logging statement durations. For example, if you set it to 250ms then all SQL statements that run 250ms or longer will be logged. Enabling this parameter can be helpful in tracking down unoptimized queries in your applications. Only superusers can change this setting.

For clients using extended query protocol, durations of the Parse, Bind, and Execute steps are logged independently.

Note: When using this option together with log_statement, the text of statements that are logged because of log_statement will not be repeated in the duration log message. If you are not using syslog, it is recommended that you log the PID or session ID using log_line_prefix so that you can link the statement message to the later duration message using the process ID or session ID.

Table 18-1 explains the message severity levels used by PostgreSQL. If logging output is sent to syslog or Windows' eventlog, the severity levels are translated as shown in the table.

Table 18-1. Message Severity Levels

Severity | Usage | syslog | eventlog
DEBUG1..DEBUG5 | Provides successively-more-detailed information for use by developers. | DEBUG | INFORMATION
INFO | Provides information implicitly requested by the user, e.g., output from VACUUM VERBOSE. | INFO | INFORMATION
NOTICE | Provides information that might be helpful to users, e.g., notice of truncation of long identifiers. | NOTICE | INFORMATION
WARNING | Provides warnings of likely problems, e.g., COMMIT outside a transaction block. | NOTICE | WARNING
ERROR | Reports an error that caused the current command to abort. | WARNING | ERROR
LOG | Reports information of interest to administrators, e.g., checkpoint activity. | INFO | INFORMATION
FATAL | Reports an error that caused the current session to abort. | ERR | ERROR
PANIC | Reports an error that caused all database sessions to abort. | CRIT | ERROR

18.8.3. What To Log

application_name (string)

The application_name can be any string of less than NAMEDATALEN characters (64 characters in a standard build). It is typically set by an application upon connection to the server. The name will be displayed in the pg_stat_activity view and included in CSV log entries. It can also be included in regular log entries via the log_line_prefix parameter. Only printable ASCII characters may be used in the application_name value. Other characters will be replaced with question marks (?).

debug_print_parse (boolean)
debug_print_rewritten (boolean)
debug_print_plan (boolean)

These parameters enable various debugging output to be emitted. When set, they print the resulting parse tree, the query rewriter output, or the execution plan for each executed query. These messages are emitted at LOG message level, so by default they will appear in the server log but will not be sent to the client. You can change that by adjusting client_min_messages and/or log_min_messages. These parameters are off by default.

debug_pretty_print (boolean)

When set, debug_pretty_print indents the messages produced by debug_print_parse, debug_print_rewritten, or debug_print_plan. This results in more readable but much longer output than the "compact" format used when it is off. It is on by default.

log_checkpoints (boolean)

Causes checkpoints and restartpoints to be logged in the server log. Some statistics are included in the log messages, including the number of buffers written and the time spent writing them. This parameter can only be set in the postgresql.conf file or on the server command line. The default is off.

log_connections (boolean)

Causes each attempted connection to the server to be logged, as well as successful completion of client authentication. This parameter cannot be changed after session start. The default is off.

Note: Some client programs, like psql, attempt to connect twice while determining if a password is required, so duplicate "connection received" messages do not necessarily indicate a problem.

log_disconnections (boolean)

This outputs a line in the server log similar to log_connections but at session termination, and includes the duration of the session. This is off by default. This parameter cannot be changed after session start.

log_duration (boolean)

Causes the duration of every completed statement to be logged. The default is off. Only superusers can change this setting.

For clients using extended query protocol, durations of the Parse, Bind, and Execute steps are logged independently.

Note: The difference between setting this option and setting log_min_duration_statement to zero is that exceeding log_min_duration_statement forces the text of the query to be logged, but this option doesn't. Thus, if log_duration is on and log_min_duration_statement has a positive value, all durations are logged but the query text is included only for statements exceeding the threshold. This behavior can be useful for gathering statistics in high-load installations.

log_error_verbosity (enum)

Controls the amount of detail written in the server log for each message that is logged. Valid values are TERSE, DEFAULT, and VERBOSE, each adding more fields to displayed messages. TERSE excludes the logging of DETAIL, HINT, QUERY, and CONTEXT error information. VERBOSE output includes the SQLSTATE error code (see also Appendix A) and the source code file name, function name, and line number that generated the error. Only superusers can change this setting.

log_hostname (boolean)

By default, connection log messages only show the IP address of the connecting host. Turning this parameter on causes logging of the host name as well. Note that depending on your host name resolution setup this might impose a non-negligible performance penalty. This parameter can only be set in the postgresql.conf file or on the server command line.

log_line_prefix (string)

This is a printf-style string that is output at the beginning of each log line. % characters begin "escape sequences" that are replaced with status information as outlined below. Unrecognized escapes are ignored. Other characters are copied straight to the log line. Some escapes are only recognized by session processes, and are ignored by background processes such as the main server process. This parameter can only be set in the postgresql.conf file or on the server command line. The default is an empty string.

Escape | Effect | Session only
%a | Application name | yes
%u | User name | yes
%d | Database name | yes
%r | Remote host name or IP address, and remote port | yes
%h | Remote host name or IP address | yes
%p | Process ID | no
%t | Time stamp without milliseconds | no
%m | Time stamp with milliseconds | no
%i | Command tag: type of session's current command | yes
%e | SQLSTATE error code | no
%c | Session ID: see below | no
%l | Number of the log line for each session or process, starting at 1 | no
%s | Process start time stamp | no
%v | Virtual transaction ID (backendID/localXID) | no
%x | Transaction ID (0 if none is assigned) | no
%q | Produces no output, but tells non-session processes to stop at this point in the string; ignored by session processes | no
%% Literal % no

The %c escape prints a quasi-unique session identifier, consisting of two 4-byte hexadecimal numbers (without leading zeros) separated by a dot. The numbers are the process start time and the process ID, so %c can also be used as a space saving way of printing those items. For example, to generate the session identifier from pg_stat_activity, use this query:

SELECT to_hex(EXTRACT(EPOCH FROM backend_start)::integer) || '.' ||
       to_hex(procpid)
FROM pg_stat_activity;

Tip: If you set a nonempty value for log_line_prefix, you should usually make its last character be a space, to provide visual separation from the rest of the log line. A punctuation character can be used too.

Tip: Syslog produces its own time stamp and process ID information, so you probably do not want to include those escapes if you are logging to syslog.

log_lock_waits (boolean)

Controls whether a log message is produced when a session waits longer than deadlock_timeout to acquire a lock. This is useful in determining if lock waits are causing poor performance. The default is off.

log_statement (enum)

Controls which SQL statements are logged. Valid values are none (off), ddl, mod, and all (all statements). ddl logs all data definition statements, such as CREATE, ALTER, and DROP statements. mod logs all ddl statements, plus data-modifying statements such as INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, TRUNCATE, and COPY FROM. PREPARE, EXECUTE, and EXPLAIN ANALYZE statements are also logged if their contained command is of an appropriate type. For clients using extended query protocol, logging occurs when an Execute message is received, and values of the Bind parameters are included (with any embedded single-quote marks doubled).

The default is none. Only superusers can change this setting.

Note: Statements that contain simple syntax errors are not logged even by the log_statement = all setting, because the log message is emitted only after basic parsing has been done to determine the statement type. In the case of extended query protocol, this setting likewise does not log statements that fail before the Execute phase (i.e., during parse analysis or planning). Set log_min_error_statement to ERROR (or lower) to log such statements.

log_temp_files (integer)

Controls logging of temporary file names and sizes. Temporary files can be created for sorts, hashes, and temporary query results. A log entry is made for each temporary file when it is deleted. A value of zero logs all temporary file information, while positive values log only files whose size is greater than or equal to the specified number of kilobytes. The default setting is -1, which disables such logging. Only superusers can change this setting.

log_timezone (string)

Sets the time zone used for timestamps written in the server log. Unlike timezone, this value is cluster-wide, so that all sessions will report timestamps consistently. If not explicitly set, the server initializes this variable to the time zone specified by its system environment. See Section 8.5.3 for more information. This parameter can only be set in the postgresql.conf file or on the server command line.

18.8.4. Using CSV-Format Log Output

Including csvlog in the log_destination list provides a convenient way to import log files into a database table. This option emits log lines in comma-separated-values (CSV) format, with these columns: time stamp with milliseconds, user name, database name, process ID, client host:port number, session ID, per-session line number, command tag, session start time, virtual transaction ID, regular transaction ID, error severity, SQLSTATE code, error message, error message detail, hint, internal query that led to the error (if any), character count of the error position therein, error context, user query that led to the error (if any and enabled by log_min_error_statement), character count of the error position therein, location of the error in the PostgreSQL source code (if log_error_verbosity is set to verbose), and application name. Here is a sample table definition for storing CSV-format log output:

CREATE TABLE postgres_log
(
  log_time timestamp(3) with time zone,
  user_name text,
  database_name text,
  process_id integer,
  connection_from text,
  session_id text,
  session_line_num bigint,
  command_tag text,
  session_start_time timestamp with time zone,
  virtual_transaction_id text,
  transaction_id bigint,
  error_severity text,
  sql_state_code text,
  message text,
  detail text,
  hint text,
  internal_query text,
  internal_query_pos integer,
  context text,
  query text,
  query_pos integer,
  location text,
  application_name text,
  PRIMARY KEY (session_id, session_line_num)
);

To import a log file into this table, use the COPY FROM command:

COPY postgres_log FROM '/full/path/to/logfile.csv' WITH csv;

There are a few things you need to do to simplify importing CSV log files:

  1. Set log_filename and log_rotation_age to provide a consistent, predictable naming scheme for your log files. This lets you predict what the file name will be and know when an individual log file is complete and therefore ready to be imported.

  2. Set log_rotation_size to 0 to disable size-based log rotation, as it makes the log file name difficult to predict.

  3. Set log_truncate_on_rotation to on so that old log data isn't mixed with the new in the same file.

  4. The table definition above includes a primary key specification. This is useful to protect against accidentally importing the same information twice. The COPY command commits all of the data it imports at one time, so any error will cause the entire import to fail. If you import a partial log file and later import the file again when it is complete, the primary key violation will cause the import to fail. Wait until the log is complete and closed before importing. This procedure will also protect against accidentally importing a partial line that hasn't been completely written, which would also cause COPY to fail.

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Run-time Statistics

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18.9. Run-time Statistics

18.9.1. Query and Index Statistics Collector

These parameters control server-wide statistics collection features. When statistics collection is enabled, the data that is produced can be accessed via the pg_stat and pg_statio family of system views. Refer to Chapter 27 for more information.

track_activities (boolean)

Enables the collection of information on the currently executing command of each session, along with the time when that command began execution. This parameter is on by default. Note that even when enabled, this information is not visible to all users, only to superusers and the user owning the session being reported on, so it should not represent a security risk. Only superusers can change this setting.

track_activity_query_size (integer)

Specifies the number of bytes reserved to track the currently executing command for each active session, for the pg_stat_activity.current_query field. The default value is 1024. This parameter can only be set at server start.

track_counts (boolean)

Enables collection of statistics on database activity. This parameter is on by default, because the autovacuum daemon needs the collected information. Only superusers can change this setting.

track_functions (enum)

Enables tracking of function call counts and time used. Specify pl to track only procedural-language functions, all to also track SQL and C language functions. The default is none, which disables function statistics tracking. Only superusers can change this setting.

Note: SQL-language functions that are simple enough to be "inlined" into the calling query will not be tracked, regardless of this setting.

update_process_title (boolean)

Enables updating of the process title every time a new SQL command is received by the server. The process title is typically viewed by the ps command, or in Windows by using the Process Explorer. Only superusers can change this setting.

stats_temp_directory (string)

Sets the directory to store temporary statistics data in. This can be a path relative to the data directory or an absolute path. The default is pg_stat_tmp. Pointing this at a RAM-based file system will decrease physical I/O requirements and can lead to improved performance. This parameter can only be set in the postgresql.conf file or on the server command line.

18.9.2. Statistics Monitoring

log_statement_stats (boolean)
log_parser_stats (boolean)
log_planner_stats (boolean)
log_executor_stats (boolean)

For each query, output performance statistics of the respective module to the server log. This is a crude profiling instrument, similar to the Unix getrusage() operating system facility. log_statement_stats reports total statement statistics, while the others report per-module statistics. log_statement_stats cannot be enabled together with any of the per-module options. All of these options are disabled by default. Only superusers can change these settings.

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Error Reporting and Logging | Up | Automatic Vacuuming


Automatic Vacuuming

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18.10. Automatic Vacuuming

These settings control the behavior of the autovacuum feature. Refer to Section 23.1.5 for more information.

autovacuum (boolean)

Controls whether the server should run the autovacuum launcher daemon. This is on by default; however, track_counts must also be enabled for autovacuum to work. This parameter can only be set in the postgresql.conf file or on the server command line.

Note that even when this parameter is disabled, the system will launch autovacuum processes if necessary to prevent transaction ID wraparound. See Section 23.1.4 for more information.

log_autovacuum_min_duration (integer)

Causes each action executed by autovacuum to be logged if it ran for at least the specified number of milliseconds. Setting this to zero logs all autovacuum actions. Minus-one (the default) disables logging autovacuum actions. For example, if you set this to 250ms then all automatic vacuums and analyzes that run 250ms or longer will be logged. In addition, when this parameter is set to any value other than -1, a message will be logged if an autovacuum action is skipped due to the existence of a conflicting lock. Enabling this parameter can be helpful in tracking autovacuum activity. This setting can only be set in the postgresql.conf file or on the server command line.

autovacuum_max_workers (integer)

Specifies the maximum number of autovacuum processes (other than the autovacuum launcher) which may be running at any one time. The default is three. This parameter can only be set at server start.

autovacuum_naptime (integer)

Specifies the minimum delay between autovacuum runs on any given database. In each round the daemon examines the database and issues VACUUM and ANALYZE commands as needed for tables in that database. The delay is measured in seconds, and the default is one minute (1min). This parameter can only be set in the postgresql.conf file or on the server command line.

autovacuum_vacuum_threshold (integer)

Specifies the minimum number of updated or deleted tuples needed to trigger a VACUUM in any one table. The default is 50 tuples. This parameter can only be set in the postgresql.conf file or on the server command line. This setting can be overridden for individual tables by changing storage parameters.

autovacuum_analyze_threshold (integer)

Specifies the minimum number of inserted, updated or deleted tuples needed to trigger an ANALYZE in any one table. The default is 50 tuples. This parameter can only be set in the postgresql.conf file or on the server command line. This setting can be overridden for individual tables by changing storage parameters.

autovacuum_vacuum_scale_factor (floating point)

Specifies a fraction of the table size to add to autovacuum_vacuum_threshold when deciding whether to trigger a VACUUM. The default is 0.2 (20% of table size). This parameter can only be set in the postgresql.conf file or on the server command line. This setting can be overridden for individual tables by changing storage parameters.

autovacuum_analyze_scale_factor (floating point)

Specifies a fraction of the table size to add to autovacuum_analyze_threshold when deciding whether to trigger an ANALYZE. The default is 0.1 (10% of table size). This parameter can only be set in the postgresql.conf file or on the server command line. This setting can be overridden for individual tables by changing storage parameters.

autovacuum_freeze_max_age (integer)

Specifies the maximum age (in transactions) that a table's pg_class.relfrozenxid field can attain before a VACUUM operation is forced to prevent transaction ID wraparound within the table. Note that the system will launch autovacuum processes to prevent wraparound even when autovacuum is otherwise disabled.

Vacuum also allows removal of old files from the pg_clog subdirectory, which is why the default is a relatively low 200 million transactions. This parameter can only be set at server start, but the setting can be reduced for individual tables by changing storage parameters. For more information see Section 23.1.4.

autovacuum_vacuum_cost_delay (integer)

Specifies the cost delay value that will be used in automatic VACUUM operations. If -1 is specified, the regular vacuum_cost_delay value will be used. The default value is 20 milliseconds. This parameter can only be set in the postgresql.conf file or on the server command line. This setting can be overridden for individual tables by changing storage parameters.

autovacuum_vacuum_cost_limit (integer)

Specifies the cost limit value that will be used in automatic VACUUM operations. If -1 is specified (which is the default), the regular vacuum_cost_limit value will be used. Note that the value is distributed proportionally among the running autovacuum workers, if there is more than one, so that the sum of the limits of each worker never exceeds the limit on this variable. This parameter can only be set in the postgresql.conf file or on the server command line. This setting can be overridden for individual tables by changing storage parameters.

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Client Connection Defaults

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18.11. Client Connection Defaults

18.11.1. Statement Behavior

search_path (string)

This variable specifies the order in which schemas are searched when an object (table, data type, function, etc.) is referenced by a simple name with no schema specified. When there are objects of identical names in different schemas, the one found first in the search path is used. An object that is not in any of the schemas in the search path can only be referenced by specifying its containing schema with a qualified (dotted) name.

The value for search_path must be a comma-separated list of schema names. If one of the list items is the special value $user, then the schema having the name returned by SESSION_USER is substituted, if there is such a schema. (If not, $user is ignored.)

The system catalog schema, pg_catalog, is always searched, whether it is mentioned in the path or not. If it is mentioned in the path then it will be searched in the specified order. If pg_catalog is not in the path then it will be searched before searching any of the path items.

Likewise, the current session's temporary-table schema, pg_temp_nnn, is always searched if it exists. It can be explicitly listed in the path by using the alias pg_temp. If it is not listed in the path then it is searched first (even before pg_catalog). However, the temporary schema is only searched for relation (table, view, sequence, etc) and data type names. It is never searched for function or operator names.

When objects are created without specifying a particular target schema, they will be placed in the first schema listed in the search path. An error is reported if the search path is empty.

The default value for this parameter is '"$user", public' (where the second part will be ignored if there is no schema named public). This supports shared use of a database (where no users have private schemas, and all share use of public), private per-user schemas, and combinations of these. Other effects can be obtained by altering the default search path setting, either globally or per-user.

The current effective value of the search path can be examined via the SQL function current_schemas (see Section 9.23). This is not quite the same as examining the value of search_path, since current_schemas shows how the items appearing in search_path were resolved.

For more information on schema handling, see Section 5.7.

default_tablespace (string)

This variable specifies the default tablespace in which to create objects (tables and indexes) when a CREATE command does not explicitly specify a tablespace.

The value is either the name of a tablespace, or an empty string to specify using the default tablespace of the current database. If the value does not match the name of any existing tablespace, PostgreSQL will automatically use the default tablespace of the current database. If a nondefault tablespace is specified, the user must have CREATE privilege for it, or creation attempts will fail.

This variable is not used for temporary tables; for them, temp_tablespaces is consulted instead.

This variable is also not used when creating databases. By default, a new database inherits its tablespace setting from the template database it is copied from.

For more information on tablespaces, see Section 21.6.

temp_tablespaces (string)

This variable specifies tablespaces in which to create temporary objects (temp tables and indexes on temp tables) when a CREATE command does not explicitly specify a tablespace. Temporary files for purposes such as sorting large data sets are also created in these tablespaces.

The value is a list of names of tablespaces. When there is more than one name in the list, PostgreSQL chooses a random member of the list each time a temporary object is to be created; except that within a transaction, successively created temporary objects are placed in successive tablespaces from the list. If the selected element of the list is an empty string, PostgreSQL will automatically use the default tablespace of the current database instead.

When temp_tablespaces is set interactively, specifying a nonexistent tablespace is an error, as is specifying a tablespace for which the user does not have CREATE privilege. However, when using a previously set value, nonexistent tablespaces are ignored, as are tablespaces for which the user lacks CREATE privilege. In particular, this rule applies when using a value set in postgresql.conf.

The default value is an empty string, which results in all temporary objects being created in the default tablespace of the current database.

See also default_tablespace.

check_function_bodies (boolean)

This parameter is normally on. When set to off, it disables validation of the function body string during CREATE FUNCTION. Disabling validation avoids side effects of the validation process and avoids false positives due to problems such as forward references. Set this parameter to off before loading functions on behalf of other users; pg_dump does so automatically.

default_transaction_isolation (enum)

Each SQL transaction has an isolation level, which can be either "read uncommitted", "read committed", "repeatable read", or "serializable". This parameter controls the default isolation level of each new transaction. The default is "read committed".

Consult Chapter 13 and SET TRANSACTION for more information.

default_transaction_read_only (boolean)

A read-only SQL transaction cannot alter non-temporary tables. This parameter controls the default read-only status of each new transaction. The default is off (read/write).

Consult SET TRANSACTION for more information.

default_transaction_deferrable (boolean)

When running at the serializable isolation level, a deferrable read-only SQL transaction may be delayed before it is allowed to proceed. However, once it begins executing it does not incur any of the overhead required to ensure serializability; so serialization code will have no reason to force it to abort because of concurrent updates, making this option suitable for long-running read-only transactions.

This parameter controls the default deferrable status of each new transaction. It currently has no effect on read-write transactions or those operating at isolation levels lower than serializable. The default is off.

Consult SET TRANSACTION for more information.

session_replication_role (enum)

Controls firing of replication-related triggers and rules for the current session. Setting this variable requires superuser privilege and results in discarding any previously cached query plans. Possible values are origin (the default), replica and local. See ALTER TABLE for more information.

statement_timeout (integer)

Abort any statement that takes over the specified number of milliseconds, starting from the time the command arrives at the server from the client. If log_min_error_statement is set to ERROR or lower, the statement that timed out will also be logged. A value of zero (the default) turns this off.

Setting statement_timeout in postgresql.conf is not recommended because it affects all sessions.

vacuum_freeze_table_age (integer)

VACUUM performs a whole-table scan if the table's pg_class.relfrozenxid field has reached the age specified by this setting. The default is 150 million transactions. Although users can set this value anywhere from zero to one billion, VACUUM will silently limit the effective value to 95% of autovacuum_freeze_max_age, so that a periodical manual VACUUM has a chance to run before an anti-wraparound autovacuum is launched for the table. For more information see Section 23.1.4.

vacuum_freeze_min_age (integer)

Specifies the cutoff age (in transactions) that VACUUM should use to decide whether to replace transaction IDs with FrozenXID while scanning a table. The default is 50 million transactions. Although users can set this value anywhere from zero to one billion, VACUUM will silently limit the effective value to half the value of autovacuum_freeze_max_age, so that there is not an unreasonably short time between forced autovacuums. For more information see Section 23.1.4.

bytea_output (enum)

Sets the output format for values of type bytea. Valid values are hex (the default) and escape (the traditional PostgreSQL format). See Section 8.4 for more information. The bytea type always accepts both formats on input, regardless of this setting.

xmlbinary (enum)

Sets how binary values are to be encoded in XML. This applies for example when bytea values are converted to XML by the functions xmlelement or xmlforest. Possible values are base64 and hex, which are both defined in the XML Schema standard. The default is base64. For further information about XML-related functions, see Section 9.14.

The actual choice here is mostly a matter of taste, constrained only by possible restrictions in client applications. Both methods support all possible values, although the hex encoding will be somewhat larger than the base64 encoding.

xmloption (enum)

Sets whether DOCUMENT or CONTENT is implicit when converting between XML and character string values. See Section 8.13 for a description of this. Valid values are DOCUMENT and CONTENT. The default is CONTENT.

According to the SQL standard, the command to set this option is

SET XML OPTION { DOCUMENT | CONTENT };

This syntax is also available in PostgreSQL.

18.11.2. Locale and Formatting

DateStyle (string)

Sets the display format for date and time values, as well as the rules for interpreting ambiguous date input values. For historical reasons, this variable contains two independent components: the output format specification (ISO, Postgres, SQL, or German) and the input/output specification for year/month/day ordering (DMY, MDY, or YMD). These can be set separately or together. The keywords Euro and European are synonyms for DMY; the keywords US, NonEuro, and NonEuropean are synonyms for MDY. See Section 8.5 for more information. The built-in default is ISO, MDY, but initdb will initialize the configuration file with a setting that corresponds to the behavior of the chosen lc_time locale.

IntervalStyle (enum)

Sets the display format for interval values. The value sql_standard will produce output matching SQL standard interval literals. The value postgres (which is the default) will produce output matching PostgreSQL releases prior to 8.4 when the DateStyle parameter was set to ISO. The value postgres_verbose will produce output matching PostgreSQL releases prior to 8.4 when the DateStyle parameter was set to non-ISO output. The value iso_8601 will produce output matching the time interval "format with designators" defined in section 4.4.3.2 of ISO 8601.

The IntervalStyle parameter also affects the interpretation of ambiguous interval input. See Section 8.5.4 for more information.

timezone (string)

Sets the time zone for displaying and interpreting time stamps. If not explicitly set, the server initializes this variable to the time zone specified by its system environment. See Section 8.5.3 for more information.

timezone_abbreviations (string)

Sets the collection of time zone abbreviations that will be accepted by the server for datetime input. The default is 'Default', which is a collection that works in most of the world; there are also 'Australia' and 'India', and other collections can be defined for a particular installation. See Section B.3 for more information.

extra_float_digits (integer)

This parameter adjusts the number of digits displayed for floating-point values, including float4, float8, and geometric data types. The parameter value is added to the standard number of digits (FLT_DIG or DBL_DIG as appropriate). The value can be set as high as 3, to include partially-significant digits; this is especially useful for dumping float data that needs to be restored exactly. Or it can be set negative to suppress unwanted digits. See also Section 8.1.3.

client_encoding (string)

Sets the client-side encoding (character set). The default is to use the database encoding. The character sets supported by the PostgreSQL server are described in Section 22.3.1.

lc_messages (string)

Sets the language in which messages are displayed. Acceptable values are system-dependent; see Section 22.1 for more information. If this variable is set to the empty string (which is the default) then the value is inherited from the execution environment of the server in a system-dependent way.

On some systems, this locale category does not exist. Setting this variable will still work, but there will be no effect. Also, there is a chance that no translated messages for the desired language exist. In that case you will continue to see the English messages.

Only superusers can change this setting, because it affects the messages sent to the server log as well as to the client, and an improper value might obscure the readability of the server logs.

lc_monetary (string)

Sets the locale to use for formatting monetary amounts, for example with the to_char family of functions. Acceptable values are system-dependent; see Section 22.1 for more information. If this variable is set to the empty string (which is the default) then the value is inherited from the execution environment of the server in a system-dependent way.

lc_numeric (string)

Sets the locale to use for formatting numbers, for example with the to_char family of functions. Acceptable values are system-dependent; see Section 22.1 for more information. If this variable is set to the empty string (which is the default) then the value is inherited from the execution environment of the server in a system-dependent way.

lc_time (string)

Sets the locale to use for formatting dates and times, for example with the to_char family of functions. Acceptable values are system-dependent; see Section 22.1 for more information. If this variable is set to the empty string (which is the default) then the value is inherited from the execution environment of the server in a system-dependent way.

default_text_search_config (string)

Selects the text search configuration that is used by those variants of the text search functions that do not have an explicit argument specifying the configuration. See Chapter 12 for further information. The built-in default is pg_catalog.simple, but initdb will initialize the configuration file with a setting that corresponds to the chosen lc_ctype locale, if a configuration matching that locale can be identified.

18.11.3. Other Defaults

dynamic_library_path (string)

If a dynamically loadable module needs to be opened and the file name specified in the CREATE FUNCTION or LOAD command does not have a directory component (i.e., the name does not contain a slash), the system will search this path for the required file.

The value for dynamic_library_path must be a list of absolute directory paths separated by colons (or semi-colons on Windows). If a list element starts with the special string $libdir, the compiled-in PostgreSQL package library directory is substituted for $libdir; this is where the modules provided by the standard PostgreSQL distribution are installed. (Use pg_config --pkglibdir to find out the name of this directory.) For example:

dynamic_library_path = '/usr/local/lib/postgresql:/home/my_project/lib:$libdir'

or, in a Windows environment:

dynamic_library_path = 'C:\tools\postgresql;H:\my_project\lib;$libdir'

The default value for this parameter is '$libdir'. If the value is set to an empty string, the automatic path search is turned off.

This parameter can be changed at run time by superusers, but a setting done that way will only persist until the end of the client connection, so this method should be reserved for development purposes. The recommended way to set this parameter is in the postgresql.conf configuration file.

gin_fuzzy_search_limit (integer)

Soft upper limit of the size of the set returned by GIN index scans. For more information see Section 54.4.

local_preload_libraries (string)

This variable specifies one or more shared libraries that are to be preloaded at connection start. If more than one library is to be loaded, separate their names with commas. All library names are converted to lower case unless double-quoted. This parameter cannot be changed after the start of a particular session.

Because this is not a superuser-only option, the libraries that can be loaded are restricted to those appearing in the plugins subdirectory of the installation's standard library directory. (It is the database administrator's responsibility to ensure that only "safe" libraries are installed there.) Entries in local_preload_libraries can specify this directory explicitly, for example $libdir/plugins/mylib, or just specify the library name — mylib would have the same effect as $libdir/plugins/mylib.

Unlike shared_preload_libraries, there is no performance advantage to loading a library at session start rather than when it is first used. Rather, the intent of this feature is to allow debugging or performance-measurement libraries to be loaded into specific sessions without an explicit LOAD command being given. For example, debugging could be enabled for a session by setting this parameter via the PGOPTIONS environment variable.

If a specified library is not found, the connection attempt will fail.

Every PostgreSQL-supported library has a "magic block" that is checked to guarantee compatibility. For this reason, non-PostgreSQL libraries cannot be loaded in this way.

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Lock Management

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18.12. Lock Management

deadlock_timeout (integer)

This is the amount of time, in milliseconds, to wait on a lock before checking to see if there is a deadlock condition. The check for deadlock is relatively expensive, so the server doesn't run it every time it waits for a lock. We optimistically assume that deadlocks are not common in production applications and just wait on the lock for a while before checking for a deadlock. Increasing this value reduces the amount of time wasted in needless deadlock checks, but slows down reporting of real deadlock errors. The default is one second (1s), which is probably about the smallest value you would want in practice. On a heavily loaded server you might want to raise it. Ideally the setting should exceed your typical transaction time, so as to improve the odds that a lock will be released before the waiter decides to check for deadlock.

When log_lock_waits is set, this parameter also determines the length of time to wait before a log message is issued about the lock wait. If you are trying to investigate locking delays you might want to set a shorter than normal deadlock_timeout.

max_locks_per_transaction (integer)

The shared lock table tracks locks on max_locks_per_transaction * (max_connections + max_prepared_transactions) objects (e.g., tables); hence, no more than this many distinct objects can be locked at any one time. This parameter controls the average number of object locks allocated for each transaction; individual transactions can lock more objects as long as the locks of all transactions fit in the lock table. This is not the number of rows that can be locked; that value is unlimited. The default, 64, has historically proven sufficient, but you might need to raise this value if you have clients that touch many different tables in a single transaction. This parameter can only be set at server start.

Increasing this parameter might cause PostgreSQL to request more System V shared memory than your operating system's default configuration allows. See Section 17.4.1 for information on how to adjust those parameters, if necessary.

When running a standby server, you must set this parameter to the same or higher value than on the master server. Otherwise, queries will not be allowed in the standby server.

max_pred_locks_per_transaction (integer)

The shared predicate lock table tracks locks on max_pred_locks_per_transaction * (max_connections + max_prepared_transactions) objects (e.g., tables); hence, no more than this many distinct objects can be locked at any one time. This parameter controls the average number of object locks allocated for each transaction; individual transactions can lock more objects as long as the locks of all transactions fit in the lock table. This is not the number of rows that can be locked; that value is unlimited. The default, 64, has generally been sufficient in testing, but you might need to raise this value if you have clients that touch many different tables in a single serializable transaction. This parameter can only be set at server start.

Increasing this parameter might cause PostgreSQL to request more System V shared memory than your operating system's default configuration allows. See Section 17.4.1 for information on how to adjust those parameters, if necessary.

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Version and Platform Compatibility

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18.13. Version and Platform Compatibility

18.13.1. Previous PostgreSQL Versions

array_nulls (boolean)

This controls whether the array input parser recognizes unquoted NULL as specifying a null array element. By default, this is on, allowing array values containing null values to be entered. However, PostgreSQL versions before 8.2 did not support null values in arrays, and therefore would treat NULL as specifying a normal array element with the string value "NULL". For backward compatibility with applications that require the old behavior, this variable can be turned off.

Note that it is possible to create array values containing null values even when this variable is off.

backslash_quote (enum)

This controls whether a quote mark can be represented by \' in a string literal. The preferred, SQL-standard way to represent a quote mark is by doubling it ('') but PostgreSQL has historically also accepted \'. However, use of \' creates security risks because in some client character set encodings, there are multibyte characters in which the last byte is numerically equivalent to ASCII \. If client-side code does escaping incorrectly then a SQL-injection attack is possible. This risk can be prevented by making the server reject queries in which a quote mark appears to be escaped by a backslash. The allowed values of backslash_quote are on (allow \' always), off (reject always), and safe_encoding (allow only if client encoding does not allow ASCII \ within a multibyte character). safe_encoding is the default setting.

Note that in a standard-conforming string literal, \ just means \ anyway. This parameter only affects the handling of non-standard-conforming literals, including escape string syntax (E'...').

default_with_oids (boolean)

This controls whether CREATE TABLE and CREATE TABLE AS include an OID column in newly-created tables, if neither WITH OIDS nor WITHOUT OIDS is specified. It also determines whether OIDs will be included in tables created by SELECT INTO. The parameter is off by default; in PostgreSQL 8.0 and earlier, it was on by default.

The use of OIDs in user tables is considered deprecated, so most installations should leave this variable disabled. Applications that require OIDs for a particular table should specify WITH OIDS when creating the table. This variable can be enabled for compatibility with old applications that do not follow this behavior.

escape_string_warning (boolean)

When on, a warning is issued if a backslash (\) appears in an ordinary string literal ('...' syntax) and standard_conforming_strings is off. The default is on.

Applications that wish to use backslash as escape should be modified to use escape string syntax (E'...'), because the default behavior of ordinary strings is now to treat backslash as an ordinary character, per SQL standard. This variable can be enabled to help locate code that needs to be changed.

lo_compat_privileges (boolean)

In PostgreSQL releases prior to 9.0, large objects did not have access privileges and were, in effect, readable and writable by all users. Setting this variable to on disables the new privilege checks, for compatibility with prior releases. The default is off.

Setting this variable does not disable all security checks related to large objects — only those for which the default behavior has changed in PostgreSQL 9.0. For example, lo_import() and lo_export() need superuser privileges independent of this setting.

quote_all_identifiers (boolean)

When the database generates SQL, force all identifiers to be quoted, even if they are not (currently) keywords. This will affect the output of EXPLAIN as well as the results of functions like pg_get_viewdef. See also the --quote-all-identifiers option of pg_dump and pg_dumpall.

sql_inheritance (boolean)

This setting controls whether undecorated table references are considered to include inheritance child tables. The default is on, which means child tables are included (thus, a * suffix is assumed by default). If turned off, child tables are not included (thus, an ONLY prefix is assumed). The SQL standard requires child tables to be included, so the off setting is not spec-compliant, but it is provided for compatibility with PostgreSQL releases prior to 7.1. See Section 5.8 for more information.

Turning sql_inheritance off is deprecated, because that behavior has been found to be error-prone as well as contrary to SQL standard. Discussions of inheritance behavior elsewhere in this manual generally assume that it is on.

standard_conforming_strings (boolean)

This controls whether ordinary string literals ('...') treat backslashes literally, as specified in the SQL standard. Beginning in PostgreSQL 9.1, the default is on (prior releases defaulted to off). Applications can check this parameter to determine how string literals will be processed. The presence of this parameter can also be taken as an indication that the escape string syntax (E'...') is supported. Escape string syntax (Section 4.1.2.2) should be used if an application desires backslashes to be treated as escape characters.

synchronize_seqscans (boolean)

This allows sequential scans of large tables to synchronize with each other, so that concurrent scans read the same block at about the same time and hence share the I/O workload. When this is enabled, a scan might start in the middle of the table and then "wrap around" the end to cover all rows, so as to synchronize with the activity of scans already in progress. This can result in unpredictable changes in the row ordering returned by queries that have no ORDER BY clause. Setting this parameter to off ensures the pre-8.3 behavior in which a sequential scan always starts from the beginning of the table. The default is on.

18.13.2. Platform and Client Compatibility

transform_null_equals (boolean)

When on, expressions of the form expr = NULL (or NULL = expr) are treated as expr IS NULL, that is, they return true if expr evaluates to the null value, and false otherwise. The correct SQL-spec-compliant behavior of expr = NULL is to always return null (unknown). Therefore this parameter defaults to off.

However, filtered forms in Microsoft Access generate queries that appear to use expr = NULL to test for null values, so if you use that interface to access the database you might want to turn this option on. Since expressions of the form expr = NULL always return the null value (using the SQL standard interpretation), they are not very useful and do not appear often in normal applications so this option does little harm in practice. But new users are frequently confused about the semantics of expressions involving null values, so this option is off by default.

Note that this option only affects the exact form = NULL, not other comparison operators or other expressions that are computationally equivalent to some expression involving the equals operator (such as IN). Thus, this option is not a general fix for bad programming.

Refer to Section 9.2 for related information.

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Error Handling

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18.14. Error Handling

exit_on_error (boolean)

If true, any error will terminate the current session. By default, this is set to false, so that only FATAL errors will terminate the session.

restart_after_crash (boolean)

When set to true, which is the default, PostgreSQL will automatically reinitialize after a backend crash. Leaving this value set to true is normally the best way to maximize the availability of the database. However, in some circumstances, such as when PostgreSQL is being invoked by clusterware, it may be useful to disable the restart so that the clusterware can gain control and take any actions it deems appropriate.

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Preset Options

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18.15. Preset Options

The following "parameters" are read-only, and are determined when PostgreSQL is compiled or when it is installed. As such, they have been excluded from the sample postgresql.conf file. These options report various aspects of PostgreSQL behavior that might be of interest to certain applications, particularly administrative front-ends.

block_size (integer)

Reports the size of a disk block. It is determined by the value of BLCKSZ when building the server. The default value is 8192 bytes. The meaning of some configuration variables (such as shared_buffers) is influenced by block_size. See Section 18.4 for information.

integer_datetimes (boolean)

Reports whether PostgreSQL was built with support for 64-bit-integer dates and times. This can be disabled by configuring with --disable-integer-datetimes when building PostgreSQL. The default value is on.

lc_collate (string)

Reports the locale in which sorting of textual data is done. See Section 22.1 for more information. This value is determined when a database is created.

lc_ctype (string)

Reports the locale that determines character classifications. See Section 22.1 for more information. This value is determined when a database is created. Ordinarily this will be the same as lc_collate, but for special applications it might be set differently.

max_function_args (integer)

Reports the maximum number of function arguments. It is determined by the value of FUNC_MAX_ARGS when building the server. The default value is 100 arguments.

max_identifier_length (integer)

Reports the maximum identifier length. It is determined as one less than the value of NAMEDATALEN when building the server. The default value of NAMEDATALEN is 64; therefore the default max_identifier_length is 63 bytes, which can be less than 63 characters when using multibyte encodings.

max_index_keys (integer)

Reports the maximum number of index keys. It is determined by the value of INDEX_MAX_KEYS when building the server. The default value is 32 keys.

segment_size (integer)

Reports the number of blocks (pages) that can be stored within a file segment. It is determined by the value of RELSEG_SIZE when building the server. The maximum size of a segment file in bytes is equal to segment_size multiplied by block_size; by default this is 1GB.

server_encoding (string)

Reports the database encoding (character set). It is determined when the database is created. Ordinarily, clients need only be concerned with the value of client_encoding.

server_version (string)

Reports the version number of the server. It is determined by the value of PG_VERSION when building the server.

server_version_num (integer)

Reports the version number of the server as an integer. It is determined by the value of PG_VERSION_NUM when building the server.

wal_block_size (integer)

Reports the size of a WAL disk block. It is determined by the value of XLOG_BLCKSZ when building the server. The default value is 8192 bytes.

wal_segment_size (integer)

Reports the number of blocks (pages) in a WAL segment file. The total size of a WAL segment file in bytes is equal to wal_segment_size multiplied by wal_block_size; by default this is 16MB. See Section 29.4 for more information.

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Customized Options

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18.16. Customized Options

This feature was designed to allow parameters not normally known to PostgreSQL to be added by add-on modules (such as procedural languages). This allows add-on modules to be configured in the standard ways.

custom_variable_classes (string)

This variable specifies one or several class names to be used for custom variables, in the form of a comma-separated list. A custom variable is a variable not normally known to PostgreSQL proper but used by some add-on module. Such variables must have names consisting of a class name, a dot, and a variable name. custom_variable_classes specifies all the class names in use in a particular installation. This parameter can only be set in the postgresql.conf file or on the server command line.

The difficulty with setting custom variables in postgresql.conf is that the file must be read before add-on modules have been loaded, and so custom variables would ordinarily be rejected as unknown. When custom_variable_classes is set, the server will accept definitions of arbitrary variables within each specified class. These variables will be treated as placeholders and will have no function until the module that defines them is loaded. When a module for a specific class is loaded, it will add the proper variable definitions for its class name, convert any placeholder values according to those definitions, and issue warnings for any unrecognized placeholders of its class that remain.

Here is an example of what postgresql.conf might contain when using custom variables:

custom_variable_classes = 'plpgsql,plperl'
plpgsql.variable_conflict = use_variable
plperl.use_strict = true
plruby.use_strict = true        # generates error: unknown class name

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Developer Options

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18.17. Developer Options

The following parameters are intended for work on the PostgreSQL source code, and in some cases to assist with recovery of severely damaged databases. There should be no reason to use them on a production database. As such, they have been excluded from the sample postgresql.conf file. Note that many of these parameters require special source compilation flags to work at all.

allow_system_table_mods (boolean)

Allows modification of the structure of system tables. This is used by initdb. This parameter can only be set at server start.

debug_assertions (boolean)

Turns on various assertion checks. This is a debugging aid. If you are experiencing strange problems or crashes you might want to turn this on, as it might expose programming mistakes. To use this parameter, the macro USE_ASSERT_CHECKING must be defined when PostgreSQL is built (accomplished by the configure option --enable-cassert). Note that debug_assertions defaults to on if PostgreSQL has been built with assertions enabled.

ignore_system_indexes (boolean)

Ignore system indexes when reading system tables (but still update the indexes when modifying the tables). This is useful when recovering from damaged system indexes. This parameter cannot be changed after session start.

post_auth_delay (integer)

If nonzero, a delay of this many seconds occurs when a new server process is started, after it conducts the authentication procedure. This is intended to give developers an opportunity to attach to the server process with a debugger. This parameter cannot be changed after session start.

pre_auth_delay (integer)

If nonzero, a delay of this many seconds occurs just after a new server process is forked, before it conducts the authentication procedure. This is intended to give developers an opportunity to attach to the server process with a debugger to trace down misbehavior in authentication. This parameter can only be set in the postgresql.conf file or on the server command line.

trace_notify (boolean)

Generates a great amount of debugging output for the LISTEN and NOTIFY commands. client_min_messages or log_min_messages must be DEBUG1 or lower to send this output to the client or server logs, respectively.

trace_recovery_messages (enum)

Enables logging of recovery-related debugging output that otherwise would not be logged. This parameter allows the user to override the normal setting of log_min_messages, but only for specific messages. This is intended for use in debugging Hot Standby. Valid values are DEBUG5, DEBUG4, DEBUG3, DEBUG2, DEBUG1, and LOG. The default, LOG, does not affect logging decisions at all. The other values cause recovery-related debug messages of that priority or higher to be logged as though they had LOG priority; for common settings of log_min_messages this results in unconditionally sending them to the server log. This parameter can only be set in the postgresql.conf file or on the server command line.

trace_sort (boolean)

If on, emit information about resource usage during sort operations. This parameter is only available if the TRACE_SORT macro was defined when PostgreSQL was compiled. (However, TRACE_SORT is currently defined by default.)

trace_locks (boolean)

If on, emit information about lock usage. Information dumped includes the type of lock operation, the type of lock and the unique identifier of the object being locked or unlocked. Also included are bit masks for the lock types already granted on this object as well as for the lock types awaited on this object. For each lock type a count of the number of granted locks and waiting locks is also dumped as well as the totals. An example of the log file output is shown here:

LOG:  LockAcquire: new: lock(0xb7acd844) id(24688,24696,0,0,0,1)
      grantMask(0) req(0,0,0,0,0,0,0)=0 grant(0,0,0,0,0,0,0)=0
      wait(0) type(AccessShareLock)
LOG:  GrantLock: lock(0xb7acd844) id(24688,24696,0,0,0,1)
      grantMask(2) req(1,0,0,0,0,0,0)=1 grant(1,0,0,0,0,0,0)=1
      wait(0) type(AccessShareLock)
LOG:  UnGrantLock: updated: lock(0xb7acd844) id(24688,24696,0,0,0,1)
      grantMask(0) req(0,0,0,0,0,0,0)=0 grant(0,0,0,0,0,0,0)=0
      wait(0) type(AccessShareLock)
LOG:  CleanUpLock: deleting: lock(0xb7acd844) id(24688,24696,0,0,0,1)
      grantMask(0) req(0,0,0,0,0,0,0)=0 grant(0,0,0,0,0,0,0)=0
      wait(0) type(INVALID)

Details of the structure being dumped may be found in src/include/storage/lock.h.

This parameter is only available if the LOCK_DEBUG macro was defined when PostgreSQL was compiled.

trace_lwlocks (boolean)

If on, emit information about lightweight lock usage. Lightweight locks are intended primarily to provide mutual exclusion of access to shared-memory data structures.

This parameter is only available if the LOCK_DEBUG macro was defined when PostgreSQL was compiled.

trace_userlocks (boolean)

If on, emit information about user lock usage. Output is the same as for trace_locks, only for advisory locks.

This parameter is only available if the LOCK_DEBUG macro was defined when PostgreSQL was compiled.

trace_lock_oidmin (integer)

If set, do not trace locks for tables below this OID. (use to avoid output on system tables)

This parameter is only available if the LOCK_DEBUG macro was defined when PostgreSQL was compiled.

trace_lock_table (integer)

Unconditionally trace locks on this table (OID).

This parameter is only available if the LOCK_DEBUG macro was defined when PostgreSQL was compiled.

debug_deadlocks (boolean)

If set, dumps information about all current locks when a deadlock timeout occurs.

This parameter is only available if the LOCK_DEBUG macro was defined when PostgreSQL was compiled.

log_btree_build_stats (boolean)

If set, logs system resource usage statistics (memory and CPU) on various B-tree operations.

This parameter is only available if the BTREE_BUILD_STATS macro was defined when PostgreSQL was compiled.

wal_debug (boolean)

If on, emit WAL-related debugging output. This parameter is only available if the WAL_DEBUG macro was defined when PostgreSQL was compiled.

zero_damaged_pages (boolean)

Detection of a damaged page header normally causes PostgreSQL to report an error, aborting the current transaction. Setting zero_damaged_pages to on causes the system to instead report a warning, zero out the damaged page in memory, and continue processing. This behavior will destroy data, namely all the rows on the damaged page. However, it does allow you to get past the error and retrieve rows from any undamaged pages that might be present in the table. It is useful for recovering data if corruption has occurred due to a hardware or software error. You should generally not set this on until you have given up hope of recovering data from the damaged pages of a table. Zeroed-out pages are not forced to disk so it is recommended to recreate the table or the index before turning this parameter off again. The default setting is off, and it can only be changed by a superuser.

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Short Options

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18.18. Short Options

For convenience there are also single letter command-line option switches available for some parameters. They are described in Table 18-2. Some of these options exist for historical reasons, and their presence as a single-letter option does not necessarily indicate an endorsement to use the option heavily.

Table 18-2. Short Option Key

Short Option | Equivalent
-A x | debug_assertions = x
-B x | shared_buffers = x
-d x | log_min_messages = DEBUGx
-e | datestyle = euro
-fb, -fh, -fi, -fm, -fn, -fs, -ft | enable_bitmapscan = off, enable_hashjoin = off, enable_indexscan = off, enable_mergejoin = off, enable_nestloop = off, enable_seqscan = off, enable_tidscan = off
-F | fsync = off
-h x | listen_addresses = x
-i | listen_addresses = '*'
-k x | unix_socket_directory = x
-l | ssl = on
-N x | max_connections = x
-O | allow_system_table_mods = on
-p x | port = x
-P | ignore_system_indexes = on
-s | log_statement_stats = on
-S x | work_mem = x
-tpa, -tpl, -te | log_parser_stats = on, log_planner_stats = on, log_executor_stats = on
-W x | post_auth_delay = x
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Client Authentication

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Chapter 19. Client Authentication

Table of Contents
19.1. The pg_hba.conf File
19.2. User Name Maps
19.3. Authentication Methods
19.3.1. Trust Authentication
19.3.2. Password Authentication
19.3.3. GSSAPI Authentication
19.3.4. SSPI Authentication
19.3.5. Kerberos Authentication
19.3.6. Ident Authentication
19.3.7. Peer Authentication
19.3.8. LDAP Authentication
19.3.9. RADIUS Authentication
19.3.10. Certificate Authentication
19.3.11. PAM Authentication
19.4. Authentication Problems

When a client application connects to the database server, it specifies which PostgreSQL database user name it wants to connect as, much the same way one logs into a Unix computer as a particular user. Within the SQL environment the active database user name determines access privileges to database objects — see Chapter 20 for more information. Therefore, it is essential to restrict which database users can connect.

Note: As explained in Chapter 20, PostgreSQL actually does privilege management in terms of "roles". In this chapter, we consistently use database user to mean "role with the LOGIN privilege".

Authentication is the process by which the database server establishes the identity of the client, and by extension determines whether the client application (or the user who runs the client application) is permitted to connect with the database user name that was requested.

PostgreSQL offers a number of different client authentication methods. The method used to authenticate a particular client connection can be selected on the basis of (client) host address, database, and user.

PostgreSQL database user names are logically separate from user names of the operating system in which the server runs. If all the users of a particular server also have accounts on the server's machine, it makes sense to assign database user names that match their operating system user names. However, a server that accepts remote connections might have many database users who have no local operating system account, and in such cases there need be no connection between database user names and OS user names.

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The pg_hba.conf File

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19.1. The pg_hba.conf File

Client authentication is controlled by a configuration file, which traditionally is named pg_hba.conf and is stored in the database cluster's data directory. (HBA stands for host-based authentication.) A default pg_hba.conf file is installed when the data directory is initialized by initdb. It is possible to place the authentication configuration file elsewhere, however; see the hba_file configuration parameter.

The general format of the pg_hba.conf file is a set of records, one per line. Blank lines are ignored, as is any text after the # comment character. Records cannot be continued across lines. A record is made up of a number of fields which are separated by spaces and/or tabs. Fields can contain white space if the field value is quoted. Quoting one of the keywords in a database, user, or address field (e.g., all or replication) makes the word lose its special character, and just match a database, user, or host with that name.

Each record specifies a connection type, a client IP address range (if relevant for the connection type), a database name, a user name, and the authentication method to be used for connections matching these parameters. The first record with a matching connection type, client address, requested database, and user name is used to perform authentication. There is no "fall-through" or "backup": if one record is chosen and the authentication fails, subsequent records are not considered. If no record matches, access is denied.

A record can have one of the seven formats

local      database  user  auth-method  [auth-options]
host       database  user  address  auth-method  [auth-options]
hostssl    database  user  address  auth-method  [auth-options]
hostnossl  database  user  address  auth-method  [auth-options]
host       database  user  IP-address  IP-mask  auth-method  [auth-options]
hostssl    database  user  IP-address  IP-mask  auth-method  [auth-options]
hostnossl  database  user  IP-address  IP-mask  auth-method  [auth-options]

The meaning of the fields is as follows:

local

This record matches connection attempts using Unix-domain sockets. Without a record of this type, Unix-domain socket connections are disallowed.

host

This record matches connection attempts made using TCP/IP. host records match either SSL or non-SSL connection attempts.

Note: Remote TCP/IP connections will not be possible unless the server is started with an appropriate value for the listen_addresses configuration parameter, since the default behavior is to listen for TCP/IP connections only on the local loopback address localhost.

hostssl

This record matches connection attempts made using TCP/IP, but only when the connection is made with SSL encryption.

To make use of this option the server must be built with SSL support. Furthermore, SSL must be enabled at server start time by setting the ssl configuration parameter (see Section 17.9 for more information).

hostnossl

This record type has the opposite behavior of hostssl; it only matches connection attempts made over TCP/IP that do not use SSL.

database

Specifies which database name(s) this record matches. The value all specifies that it matches all databases. The value sameuser specifies that the record matches if the requested database has the same name as the requested user. The value samerole specifies that the requested user must be a member of the role with the same name as the requested database. (samegroup is an obsolete but still accepted spelling of samerole.) The value replication specifies that the record matches if a replication connection is requested (note that replication connections do not specify any particular database). Otherwise, this is the name of a specific PostgreSQL database. Multiple database names can be supplied by separating them with commas. A separate file containing database names can be specified by preceding the file name with @.

user

Specifies which database user name(s) this record matches. The value all specifies that it matches all users. Otherwise, this is either the name of a specific database user, or a group name preceded by +. (Recall that there is no real distinction between users and groups in PostgreSQL; a + mark really means "match any of the roles that are directly or indirectly members of this role", while a name without a + mark matches only that specific role.) Multiple user names can be supplied by separating them with commas. A separate file containing user names can be specified by preceding the file name with @.

address

Specifies the client machine address(es) that this record matches. This field can contain either a host name, an IP address range, or one of the special key words mentioned below.

An IP address range is specified using standard numeric notation for the range's starting address, then a slash (/) and a CIDR mask length. The mask length indicates the number of high-order bits of the client IP address that must match. Bits to the right of this should be zero in the given IP address. There must not be any white space between the IP address, the /, and the CIDR mask length.

Typical examples of an IPv4 address range specified this way are 172.20.143.89/32 for a single host, or 172.20.143.0/24 for a small network, or 10.6.0.0/16 for a larger one. An IPv6 address range might look like ::1/128 for a single host (in this case the IPv6 loopback address) or fe80::7a31:c1ff:0000:0000/96 for a small network. 0.0.0.0/0 represents all IPv4 addresses, and ::0/0 represents all IPv6 addresses. To specify a single host, use a mask length of 32 for IPv4 or 128 for IPv6. In a network address, do not omit trailing zeroes.

An entry given in IPv4 format will match only IPv4 connections, and an entry given in IPv6 format will match only IPv6 connections, even if the represented address is in the IPv4-in-IPv6 range. Note that entries in IPv6 format will be rejected if the system's C library does not have support for IPv6 addresses.

You can also write all to match any IP address, samehost to match any of the server's own IP addresses, or samenet to match any address in any subnet that the server is directly connected to.

If a host name is specified (anything that is not an IP address range or a special key word is treated as a host name), that name is compared with the result of a reverse name resolution of the client's IP address (e.g., reverse DNS lookup, if DNS is used). Host name comparisons are case insensitive. If there is a match, then a forward name resolution (e.g., forward DNS lookup) is performed on the host name to check whether any of the addresses it resolves to are equal to the client's IP address. If both directions match, then the entry is considered to match. (The host name that is used in pg_hba.conf should be the one that address-to-name resolution of the client's IP address returns, otherwise the line won't be matched. Some host name databases allow associating an IP address with multiple host names, but the operating system will only return one host name when asked to resolve an IP address.)

A host name specification that starts with a dot (.) matches a suffix of the actual host name. So .example.com would match foo.example.com (but not just example.com).

When host names are specified in pg_hba.conf, you should make sure that name resolution is reasonably fast. It can be of advantage to set up a local name resolution cache such as nscd. Also, you may wish to enable the configuration parameter log_hostname to see the client's host name instead of the IP address in the log.

Occasionally, users have wondered why host names are handled in this seemingly complicated way with two name resolutions and requiring reverse lookup of IP addresses, which is sometimes not set up or points to some undesirable host name. It is primarily for efficiency: A connection attempt requires two resolver lookups of the current client's address. If there is resolver problem with that address, it becomes only that client's problem. A hypothetical alternative implementation which only does forward lookups would have to resolve every host name mentioned in pg_hba.conf at every connection attempt. That would already be slow by itself. And if there is a resolver problem with one of the host names, it becomes everyone's problem.

Also, a reverse lookup is necessary to implement the suffix matching feature, because the actual client host name needs to be known in order to match it against the pattern.

Note that this behavior is consistent with other popular implementations of host name-based access control, such as the Apache HTTP Server and TCP Wrappers.

This field only applies to host, hostssl, and hostnossl records.

IP-address
IP-mask

These two fields can be used as an alternative to the IP-address/mask-length notation. Instead of specifying the mask length, the actual mask is specified in a separate column. For example, 255.0.0.0 represents an IPv4 CIDR mask length of 8, and 255.255.255.255 represents a CIDR mask length of 32.

These fields only apply to host, hostssl, and hostnossl records.

auth-method

Specifies the authentication method to use when a connection matches this record. The possible choices are summarized here; details are in Section 19.3.

trust

Allow the connection unconditionally. This method allows anyone that can connect to the PostgreSQL database server to login as any PostgreSQL user they wish, without the need for a password or any other authentication. See Section 19.3.1 for details.

reject

Reject the connection unconditionally. This is useful for "filtering out" certain hosts from a group, for example a reject line could block a specific host from connecting, while a later line allows the remaining hosts in a specific network to connect.

md5

Require the client to supply an MD5-encrypted password for authentication. See Section 19.3.2 for details.

password

Require the client to supply an unencrypted password for authentication. Since the password is sent in clear text over the network, this should not be used on untrusted networks. See Section 19.3.2 for details.

gss

Use GSSAPI to authenticate the user. This is only available for TCP/IP connections. See Section 19.3.3 for details.

sspi

Use SSPI to authenticate the user. This is only available on Windows. See Section 19.3.4 for details.

krb5

Use Kerberos V5 to authenticate the user. This is only available for TCP/IP connections. See Section 19.3.5 for details.

ident

Obtain the operating system user name of the client by contacting the ident server on the client and check if it matches the requested database user name. Ident authentication can only be used on TCP/IP connections. When specified for local connections, peer authentication will be used instead. See Section 19.3.6 for details.

peer

Obtain the client's operating system user name from the operating system and check if it matches the requested database user name. This is only available for local connections. See Section 19.3.7 for details.

ldap

Authenticate using an LDAP server. See Section 19.3.8 for details.

radius

Authenticate using a RADIUS server. See Section 19.3.9 for details.

cert

Authenticate using SSL client certificates. See Section 19.3.10 for details.

pam

Authenticate using the Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM) service provided by the operating system. See Section 19.3.11 for details.

auth-options

After the auth-method field, there can be field(s) of the form name=value that specify options for the authentication method. Details about which options are available for which authentication methods appear below.

Files included by @ constructs are read as lists of names, which can be separated by either whitespace or commas. Comments are introduced by #, just as in pg_hba.conf, and nested @ constructs are allowed. Unless the file name following @ is an absolute path, it is taken to be relative to the directory containing the referencing file.

Since the pg_hba.conf records are examined sequentially for each connection attempt, the order of the records is significant. Typically, earlier records will have tight connection match parameters and weaker authentication methods, while later records will have looser match parameters and stronger authentication methods. For example, one might wish to use trust authentication for local TCP/IP connections but require a password for remote TCP/IP connections. In this case a record specifying trust authentication for connections from 127.0.0.1 would appear before a record specifying password authentication for a wider range of allowed client IP addresses.

The pg_hba.conf file is read on start-up and when the main server process receives a SIGHUP signal. If you edit the file on an active system, you will need to signal the postmaster (using pg_ctl reload or kill -HUP) to make it re-read the file.

Tip: To connect to a particular database, a user must not only pass the pg_hba.conf checks, but must have the CONNECT privilege for the database. If you wish to restrict which users can connect to which databases, it's usually easier to control this by granting/revoking CONNECT privilege than to put the rules in pg_hba.conf entries.

Some examples of pg_hba.conf entries are shown in Example 19-1. See the next section for details on the different authentication methods.

Example 19-1. Example pg_hba.conf Entries

# Allow any user on the local system to connect to any database with
# any database user name using Unix-domain sockets (the default for local
# connections).
#
# TYPE  DATABASE        USER            ADDRESS                 METHOD
local   all             all                                     trust

# The same using local loopback TCP/IP connections.
#
# TYPE  DATABASE        USER            ADDRESS                 METHOD
host    all             all             127.0.0.1/32            trust

# The same as the previous line, but using a separate netmask column
#
# TYPE  DATABASE        USER            IP-ADDRESS      IP-MASK             METHOD
host    all             all             127.0.0.1       255.255.255.255     trust

# The same over IPv6.
#
# TYPE  DATABASE        USER            ADDRESS                 METHOD
host    all             all             ::1/128                 trust

# The same using a host name (would typically cover both IPv4 and IPv6).
#
# TYPE  DATABASE        USER            ADDRESS                 METHOD
host    all             all             localhost               trust

# Allow any user from any host with IP address 192.168.93.x to connect
# to database "postgres" as the same user name that ident reports for
# the connection (typically the operating system user name).
#
# TYPE  DATABASE        USER            ADDRESS                 METHOD
host    postgres        all             192.168.93.0/24         ident

# Allow any user from host 192.168.12.10 to connect to database
# "postgres" if the user's password is correctly supplied.
#
# TYPE  DATABASE        USER            ADDRESS                 METHOD
host    postgres        all             192.168.12.10/32        md5

# Allow any user from hosts in the example.com domain to connect to
# any database if the user's password is correctly supplied.
#
# TYPE  DATABASE        USER            ADDRESS                 METHOD
host    all             all             .example.com            md5

# In the absence of preceding "host" lines, these two lines will
# reject all connections from 192.168.54.1 (since that entry will be
# matched first), but allow Kerberos 5 connections from anywhere else
# on the Internet.  The zero mask causes no bits of the host IP
# address to be considered, so it matches any host.
#
# TYPE  DATABASE        USER            ADDRESS                 METHOD
host    all             all             192.168.54.1/32         reject
host    all             all             0.0.0.0/0               krb5

# Allow users from 192.168.x.x hosts to connect to any database, if
# they pass the ident check.  If, for example, ident says the user is
# "bryanh" and he requests to connect as PostgreSQL user "guest1", the
# connection is allowed if there is an entry in pg_ident.conf for map
# "omicron" that says "bryanh" is allowed to connect as "guest1".
#
# TYPE  DATABASE        USER            ADDRESS                 METHOD
host    all             all             192.168.0.0/16          ident map=omicron

# If these are the only three lines for local connections, they will
# allow local users to connect only to their own databases (databases
# with the same name as their database user name) except for administrators
# and members of role "support", who can connect to all databases.  The file
# $PGDATA/admins contains a list of names of administrators.  Passwords
# are required in all cases.
#
# TYPE  DATABASE        USER            ADDRESS                 METHOD
local   sameuser        all                                     md5
local   all             @admins                                 md5
local   all             +support                                md5

# The last two lines above can be combined into a single line:
local   all             @admins,+support                        md5

# The database column can also use lists and file names:
local   db1,db2,@demodbs  all                                   md5
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User Name Maps

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19.2. User Name Maps

When using an external authentication system like Ident or GSSAPI, the name of the operating system user that initiated the connection might not be the same as the database user he needs to connect as. In this case, a user name map can be applied to map the operating system user name to a database user. To use user name mapping, specify map=map-name in the options field in pg_hba.conf. This option is supported for all authentication methods that receive external user names. Since different mappings might be needed for different connections, the name of the map to be used is specified in the map-name parameter in pg_hba.conf to indicate which map to use for each individual connection.

User name maps are defined in the ident map file, which by default is named pg_ident.conf and is stored in the cluster's data directory. (It is possible to place the map file elsewhere, however; see the ident_file configuration parameter.) The ident map file contains lines of the general form:

map-name system-username database-username

Comments and whitespace are handled in the same way as in pg_hba.conf. The map-name is an arbitrary name that will be used to refer to this mapping in pg_hba.conf. The other two fields specify an operating system user name and a matching database user name. The same map-name can be used repeatedly to specify multiple user-mappings within a single map.

There is no restriction regarding how many database users a given operating system user can correspond to, nor vice versa. Thus, entries in a map should be thought of as meaning "this operating system user is allowed to connect as this database user", rather than implying that they are equivalent. The connection will be allowed if there is any map entry that pairs the user name obtained from the external authentication system with the database user name that the user has requested to connect as.

If the system-username field starts with a slash (/), the remainder of the field is treated as a regular expression. (See Section 9.7.3.1 for details of PostgreSQL's regular expression syntax.) The regular expression can include a single capture, or parenthesized subexpression, which can then be referenced in the database-username field as \1 (backslash-one). This allows the mapping of multiple user names in a single line, which is particularly useful for simple syntax substitutions. For example, these entries

mymap   /^(.*)@mydomain\.com$      \1
mymap   /^(.*)@otherdomain\.com$   guest

will remove the domain part for users with system user names that end with @mydomain.com, and allow any user whose system name ends with @otherdomain.com to log in as guest.

Tip: Keep in mind that by default, a regular expression can match just part of a string. It's usually wise to use ^ and $, as shown in the above example, to force the match to be to the entire system user name.

The pg_ident.conf file is read on start-up and when the main server process receives a SIGHUP signal. If you edit the file on an active system, you will need to signal the postmaster (using pg_ctl reload or kill -HUP) to make it re-read the file.

A pg_ident.conf file that could be used in conjunction with the pg_hba.conf file in Example 19-1 is shown in Example 19-2. In this example, anyone logged in to a machine on the 192.168 network that does not have the operating system user name bryanh, ann, or robert would not be granted access. Unix user robert would only be allowed access when he tries to connect as PostgreSQL user bob, not as robert or anyone else. ann would only be allowed to connect as ann. User bryanh would be allowed to connect as either bryanh or as guest1.

Example 19-2. An Example pg_ident.conf File

# MAPNAME       SYSTEM-USERNAME         PG-USERNAME

omicron         bryanh                  bryanh
omicron         ann                     ann
# bob has user name robert on these machines
omicron         robert                  bob
# bryanh can also connect as guest1
omicron         bryanh                  guest1
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Authentication Methods

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19.3. Authentication Methods

The following subsections describe the authentication methods in more detail.

19.3.1. Trust Authentication

When trust authentication is specified, PostgreSQL assumes that anyone who can connect to the server is authorized to access the database with whatever database user name they specify (even superuser names). Of course, restrictions made in the database and user columns still apply. This method should only be used when there is adequate operating-system-level protection on connections to the server.

trust authentication is appropriate and very convenient for local connections on a single-user workstation. It is usually not appropriate by itself on a multiuser machine. However, you might be able to use trust even on a multiuser machine, if you restrict access to the server's Unix-domain socket file using file-system permissions. To do this, set the unix_socket_permissions (and possibly unix_socket_group) configuration parameters as described in Section 18.3. Or you could set the unix_socket_directory configuration parameter to place the socket file in a suitably restricted directory.

Setting file-system permissions only helps for Unix-socket connections. Local TCP/IP connections are not restricted by file-system permissions. Therefore, if you want to use file-system permissions for local security, remove the host ... 127.0.0.1 ... line from pg_hba.conf, or change it to a non-trust authentication method.

trust authentication is only suitable for TCP/IP connections if you trust every user on every machine that is allowed to connect to the server by the pg_hba.conf lines that specify trust. It is seldom reasonable to use trust for any TCP/IP connections other than those from localhost (127.0.0.1).

19.3.2. Password Authentication

The password-based authentication methods are md5 and password. These methods operate similarly except for the way that the password is sent across the connection, namely MD5-hashed and clear-text respectively.

If you are at all concerned about password "sniffing" attacks then md5 is preferred. Plain password should always be avoided if possible. However, md5 cannot be used with the db_user_namespace feature. If the connection is protected by SSL encryption then password can be used safely (though SSL certificate authentication might be a better choice if one is depending on using SSL).

PostgreSQL database passwords are separate from operating system user passwords. The password for each database user is stored in the pg_authid system catalog. Passwords can be managed with the SQL commands CREATE USER and ALTER ROLE, e.g., CREATE USER foo WITH PASSWORD 'secret'. If no password has been set up for a user, the stored password is null and password authentication will always fail for that user.

19.3.3. GSSAPI Authentication

GSSAPI is an industry-standard protocol for secure authentication defined in RFC 2743. PostgreSQL supports GSSAPI with Kerberos authentication according to RFC 1964. GSSAPI provides automatic authentication (single sign-on) for systems that support it. The authentication itself is secure, but the data sent over the database connection will be sent unencrypted unless SSL is used.

When GSSAPI uses Kerberos, it uses a standard principal in the format servicename/hostname@realm. For information about the parts of the principal, and how to set up the required keys, see Section 19.3.5.

GSSAPI support has to be enabled when PostgreSQL is built; see Chapter 15 for more information.

The following configuration options are supported for GSSAPI:

include_realm

If set to 1, the realm name from the authenticated user principal is included in the system user name that's passed through user name mapping (Section 19.2). This is the recommended configuration as, otherwise, it is impossible to differentiate users with the same username who are from different realms. The default for this parameter is 0 (meaning to not include the realm in the system user name) but may change to 1 in a future version of PostgreSQL. Users can set it explicitly to avoid any issues when upgrading.

map

Allows for mapping between system and database user names. See Section 19.2 for details. For a GSSAPI/Kerberos principal, such as username@EXAMPLE.COM (or, less commonly, username/hostbased@EXAMPLE.COM), the default user name used for mapping is username (or username/hostbased, respectively), unless include_realm has been set to 1 (as recommended, see above), in which case username@EXAMPLE.COM (or username/hostbased@EXAMPLE.COM) is what is seen as the system username when mapping.

krb_realm

Sets the realm to match user principal names against. If this parameter is set, only users of that realm will be accepted. If it is not set, users of any realm can connect, subject to whatever user name mapping is done.

19.3.4. SSPI Authentication

SSPI is a Windows technology for secure authentication with single sign-on. PostgreSQL will use SSPI in negotiate mode, which will use Kerberos when possible and automatically fall back to NTLM in other cases. SSPI authentication only works when both server and client are running Windows, or, on non-Windows platforms, when GSSAPI is available.

When using Kerberos authentication, SSPI works the same way GSSAPI does; see Section 19.3.3 for details.

The following configuration options are supported for SSPI:

include_realm

If set to 1, the realm name from the authenticated user principal is included in the system user name that's passed through user name mapping (Section 19.2). This is the recommended configuration as, otherwise, it is impossible to differentiate users with the same username who are from different realms. The default for this parameter is 0 (meaning to not include the realm in the system user name) but may change to 1 in a future version of PostgreSQL. Users can set it explicitly to avoid any issues when upgrading.

map

Allows for mapping between system and database user names. See Section 19.2 for details. For a SSPI/Kerberos principal, such as username@EXAMPLE.COM (or, less commonly, username/hostbased@EXAMPLE.COM), the default user name used for mapping is username (or username/hostbased, respectively), unless include_realm has been set to 1 (as recommended, see above), in which case username@EXAMPLE.COM (or username/hostbased@EXAMPLE.COM) is what is seen as the system username when mapping.

krb_realm

Sets the realm to match user principal names against. If this parameter is set, only users of that realm will be accepted. If it is not set, users of any realm can connect, subject to whatever user name mapping is done.

19.3.5. Kerberos Authentication

Note: Native Kerberos authentication has been deprecated and should be used only for backward compatibility. New and upgraded installations are encouraged to use the industry-standard GSSAPI authentication method (see Section 19.3.3) instead.

Kerberos is an industry-standard secure authentication system suitable for distributed computing over a public network. A description of the Kerberos system is beyond the scope of this document; in full generality it can be quite complex (yet powerful). The Kerberos FAQ or MIT Kerberos page can be good starting points for exploration. Several sources for Kerberos distributions exist. Kerberos provides secure authentication but does not encrypt queries or data passed over the network; for that use SSL.

PostgreSQL supports Kerberos version 5. Kerberos support has to be enabled when PostgreSQL is built; see Chapter 15 for more information.

PostgreSQL operates like a normal Kerberos service. The name of the service principal is servicename/hostname@realm.

servicename can be set on the server side using the krb_srvname configuration parameter, and on the client side using the krbsrvname connection parameter. (See also Section 31.1.) The installation default can be changed from the default postgres at build time using ./configure --with-krb-srvnam=whatever. In most environments, this parameter never needs to be changed. However, it is necessary when supporting multiple PostgreSQL installations on the same host. Some Kerberos implementations might also require a different service name, such as Microsoft Active Directory which requires the service name to be in upper case (POSTGRES).

hostname is the fully qualified host name of the server machine. The service principal's realm is the preferred realm of the server machine.

Client principals must have their PostgreSQL database user name as their first component, for example pgusername@realm. Alternatively, you can use a user name mapping to map from the first component of the principal name to the database user name. By default, the realm of the client is not checked by PostgreSQL. If you have cross-realm authentication enabled and need to verify the realm, use the krb_realm parameter, or enable include_realm and use user name mapping to check the realm.

Make sure that your server keytab file is readable (and preferably only readable) by the PostgreSQL server account. (See also Section 17.1.) The location of the key file is specified by the krb_server_keyfile configuration parameter. The default is /usr/local/pgsql/etc/krb5.keytab (or whatever directory was specified as sysconfdir at build time).

The keytab file is generated by the Kerberos software; see the Kerberos documentation for details. The following example is for MIT-compatible Kerberos 5 implementations:

kadmin% ank -randkey postgres/server.my.domain.org
kadmin% ktadd -k krb5.keytab postgres/server.my.domain.org

When connecting to the database make sure you have a ticket for a principal matching the requested database user name. For example, for database user name fred, principal fred@EXAMPLE.COM would be able to connect. To also allow principal fred/users.example.com@EXAMPLE.COM, use a user name map, as described in Section 19.2.

If you use mod_auth_kerb and mod_perl on your Apache web server, you can use AuthType KerberosV5SaveCredentials with a mod_perl script. This gives secure database access over the web, with no additional passwords required.

The following configuration options are supported for Kerberos:

map

Allows for mapping between system and database user names. See Section 19.2 for details.

include_realm

If set to 1, the realm name from the authenticated user principal is included in the system user name that's passed through user name mapping (Section 19.2). This is useful for handling users from multiple realms.

krb_realm

Sets the realm to match user principal names against. If this parameter is set, only users of that realm will be accepted. If it is not set, users of any realm can connect, subject to whatever user name mapping is done.

krb_server_hostname

Sets the host name part of the service principal. This, combined with krb_srvname, is used to generate the complete service principal, that is krb_srvname/krb_server_hostname@REALM. If not set, the default is the server host name.

19.3.6. Ident Authentication

The ident authentication method works by obtaining the client's operating system user name from an ident server and using it as the allowed database user name (with an optional user name mapping). This is only supported on TCP/IP connections.

Note: When ident is specified for a local (non-TCP/IP) connection, peer authentication (see Section 19.3.7) will be used instead.

The following configuration options are supported for ident:

map

Allows for mapping between system and database user names. See Section 19.2 for details.

The "Identification Protocol" is described in RFC 1413. Virtually every Unix-like operating system ships with an ident server that listens on TCP port 113 by default. The basic functionality of an ident server is to answer questions like "What user initiated the connection that goes out of your port X and connects to my port Y?". Since PostgreSQL knows both X and Y when a physical connection is established, it can interrogate the ident server on the host of the connecting client and can theoretically determine the operating system user for any given connection.

The drawback of this procedure is that it depends on the integrity of the client: if the client machine is untrusted or compromised, an attacker could run just about any program on port 113 and return any user name he chooses. This authentication method is therefore only appropriate for closed networks where each client machine is under tight control and where the database and system administrators operate in close contact. In other words, you must trust the machine running the ident server. Heed the warning:

The Identification Protocol is not intended as an authorization or access control protocol.

--RFC 1413

Some ident servers have a nonstandard option that causes the returned user name to be encrypted, using a key that only the originating machine's administrator knows. This option must not be used when using the ident server with PostgreSQL, since PostgreSQL does not have any way to decrypt the returned string to determine the actual user name.

19.3.7. Peer Authentication

The peer authentication method works by obtaining the client's operating system user name from the kernel and using it as the allowed database user name (with optional user name mapping). This method is only supported on local connections.

The following configuration options are supported for peer:

map

Allows for mapping between system and database user names. See Section 19.2 for details.

Peer authentication is only available on operating systems providing the getpeereid() function, the SO_PEERCRED socket parameter, or similar mechanisms. Currently that includes Linux, most flavors of BSD including Mac OS X, and Solaris.

19.3.8. LDAP Authentication

This authentication method operates similarly to password except that it uses LDAP as the password verification method. LDAP is used only to validate the user name/password pairs. Therefore the user must already exist in the database before LDAP can be used for authentication.

LDAP authentication can operate in two modes. In the first mode, the server will bind to the distinguished name constructed as prefix username suffix. Typically, the prefix parameter is used to specify cn=, or DOMAIN\ in an Active Directory environment. suffix is used to specify the remaining part of the DN in a non-Active Directory environment.

In the second mode, the server first binds to the LDAP directory with a fixed user name and password, specified with ldapbinddn and ldapbindpasswd, and performs a search for the user trying to log in to the database. If no user and password is configured, an anonymous bind will be attempted to the directory. The search will be performed over the subtree at ldapbasedn, and will try to do an exact match of the attribute specified in ldapsearchattribute. If no attribute is specified, the uid attribute will be used. Once the user has been found in this search, the server disconnects and re-binds to the directory as this user, using the password specified by the client, to verify that the login is correct. This method allows for significantly more flexibility in where the user objects are located in the directory, but will cause two separate connections to the LDAP server to be made.

The following configuration options are supported for LDAP:

ldapserver

Names or IP addresses of LDAP servers to connect to. Multiple servers may be specified, separated by spaces.

ldapport

Port number on LDAP server to connect to. If no port is specified, the LDAP library's default port setting will be used.

ldaptls

Set to 1 to make the connection between PostgreSQL and the LDAP server use TLS encryption. Note that this only encrypts the traffic to the LDAP server — the connection to the client will still be unencrypted unless SSL is used.

ldapprefix

String to prepend to the user name when forming the DN to bind as, when doing simple bind authentication.

ldapsuffix

String to append to the user name when forming the DN to bind as, when doing simple bind authentication.

ldapbasedn

Root DN to begin the search for the user in, when doing search+bind authentication.

ldapbinddn

DN of user to bind to the directory with to perform the search when doing search+bind authentication.

ldapbindpasswd

Password for user to bind to the directory with to perform the search when doing search+bind authentication.

ldapsearchattribute

Attribute to match against the user name in the search when doing search+bind authentication.

Note: Since LDAP often uses commas and spaces to separate the different parts of a DN, it is often necessary to use double-quoted parameter values when configuring LDAP options, for example:

ldapserver=ldap.example.net ldapprefix="cn=" ldapsuffix=", dc=example, dc=net"

19.3.9. RADIUS Authentication

This authentication method operates similarly to password except that it uses RADIUS as the password verification method. RADIUS is used only to validate the user name/password pairs. Therefore the user must already exist in the database before RADIUS can be used for authentication.

When using RADIUS authentication, an Access Request message will be sent to the configured RADIUS server. This request will be of type Authenticate Only, and include parameters for user name, password (encrypted) and NAS Identifier. The request will be encrypted using a secret shared with the server. The RADIUS server will respond to this server with either Access Accept or Access Reject. There is no support for RADIUS accounting.

The following configuration options are supported for RADIUS:

radiusserver

The name or IP address of the RADIUS server to connect to. This parameter is required.

radiussecret

The shared secret used when talking securely to the RADIUS server. This must have exactly the same value on the PostgreSQL and RADIUS servers. It is recommended that this be a string of at least 16 characters. This parameter is required.

Note: The encryption vector used will only be cryptographically strong if PostgreSQL is built with support for OpenSSL. In other cases, the transmission to the RADIUS server should only be considered obfuscated, not secured, and external security measures should be applied if necessary.

radiusport

The port number on the RADIUS server to connect to. If no port is specified, the default port 1812 will be used.

radiusidentifier

The string used as NAS Identifier in the RADIUS requests. This parameter can be used as a second parameter identifying for example which database user the user is attempting to authenticate as, which can be used for policy matching on the RADIUS server. If no identifier is specified, the default postgresql will be used.

19.3.10. Certificate Authentication

This authentication method uses SSL client certificates to perform authentication. It is therefore only available for SSL connections. When using this authentication method, the server will require that the client provide a valid certificate. No password prompt will be sent to the client. The cn (Common Name) attribute of the certificate will be compared to the requested database user name, and if they match the login will be allowed. User name mapping can be used to allow cn to be different from the database user name.

The following configuration options are supported for SSL certificate authentication:

map

Allows for mapping between system and database user names. See Section 19.2 for details.

19.3.11. PAM Authentication

This authentication method operates similarly to password except that it uses PAM (Pluggable Authentication Modules) as the authentication mechanism. The default PAM service name is postgresql. PAM is used only to validate user name/password pairs. Therefore the user must already exist in the database before PAM can be used for authentication. For more information about PAM, please read the Linux-PAM Page and the Solaris PAM Page.

The following configuration options are supported for PAM:

pamservice

PAM service name.

Note: If PAM is set up to read /etc/shadow, authentication will fail because the PostgreSQL server is started by a non-root user. However, this is not an issue when PAM is configured to use LDAP or other authentication methods.

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Authentication Problems

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19.4. Authentication Problems

Authentication failures and related problems generally manifest themselves through error messages like the following:

FATAL:  no pg_hba.conf entry for host "123.123.123.123", user "andym", database "testdb"

This is what you are most likely to get if you succeed in contacting the server, but it does not want to talk to you. As the message suggests, the server refused the connection request because it found no matching entry in its pg_hba.conf configuration file.

FATAL:  password authentication failed for user "andym"

Messages like this indicate that you contacted the server, and it is willing to talk to you, but not until you pass the authorization method specified in the pg_hba.conf file. Check the password you are providing, or check your Kerberos or ident software if the complaint mentions one of those authentication types.

FATAL:  user "andym" does not exist

The indicated database user name was not found.

FATAL:  database "testdb" does not exist

The database you are trying to connect to does not exist. Note that if you do not specify a database name, it defaults to the database user name, which might or might not be the right thing.

Tip: The server log might contain more information about an authentication failure than is reported to the client. If you are confused about the reason for a failure, check the server log.

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Database Roles

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Chapter 20. Database Roles

Table of Contents
20.1. Database Roles
20.2. Role Attributes
20.3. Role Membership
20.4. Function and Trigger Security

PostgreSQL manages database access permissions using the concept of roles. A role can be thought of as either a database user, or a group of database users, depending on how the role is set up. Roles can own database objects (for example, tables) and can assign privileges on those objects to other roles to control who has access to which objects. Furthermore, it is possible to grant membership in a role to another role, thus allowing the member role to use privileges assigned to another role.

The concept of roles subsumes the concepts of "users" and "groups". In PostgreSQL versions before 8.1, users and groups were distinct kinds of entities, but now there are only roles. Any role can act as a user, a group, or both.

This chapter describes how to create and manage roles. More information about the effects of role privileges on various database objects can be found in Section 5.6.

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Database Roles

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20.1. Database Roles

Database roles are conceptually completely separate from operating system users. In practice it might be convenient to maintain a correspondence, but this is not required. Database roles are global across a database cluster installation (and not per individual database). To create a role use the CREATE ROLE SQL command:

CREATE ROLE name;

name follows the rules for SQL identifiers: either unadorned without special characters, or double-quoted. (In practice, you will usually want to add additional options, such as LOGIN, to the command. More details appear below.) To remove an existing role, use the analogous DROP ROLE command:

DROP ROLE name;

For convenience, the programs createuser and dropuser are provided as wrappers around these SQL commands that can be called from the shell command line:

createuser name
dropuser name

To determine the set of existing roles, examine the pg_roles system catalog, for example

SELECT rolname FROM pg_roles;

The psql program's \du meta-command is also useful for listing the existing roles.

In order to bootstrap the database system, a freshly initialized system always contains one predefined role. This role is always a "superuser", and by default (unless altered when running initdb) it will have the same name as the operating system user that initialized the database cluster. Customarily, this role will be named postgres. In order to create more roles you first have to connect as this initial role.

Every connection to the database server is made using the name of some particular role, and this role determines the initial access privileges for commands issued in that connection. The role name to use for a particular database connection is indicated by the client that is initiating the connection request in an application-specific fashion. For example, the psql program uses the -U command line option to indicate the role to connect as. Many applications assume the name of the current operating system user by default (including createuser and psql). Therefore it is often convenient to maintain a naming correspondence between roles and operating system users.

The set of database roles a given client connection can connect as is determined by the client authentication setup, as explained in Chapter 19. (Thus, a client is not limited to connect as the role matching its operating system user, just as a person's login name need not match her real name.) Since the role identity determines the set of privileges available to a connected client, it is important to carefully configure privileges when setting up a multiuser environment.

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Role Attributes

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20.2. Role Attributes

A database role can have a number of attributes that define its privileges and interact with the client authentication system.

login privilege

Only roles that have the LOGIN attribute can be used as the initial role name for a database connection. A role with the LOGIN attribute can be considered the same as a "database user". To create a role with login privilege, use either:

CREATE ROLE name LOGIN;
CREATE USER name;

(CREATE USER is equivalent to CREATE ROLE except that CREATE USER assumes LOGIN by default, while CREATE ROLE does not.)

superuser status

A database superuser bypasses all permission checks, except the right to log in or the right to initiate replication. This is a dangerous privilege and should not be used carelessly; it is best to do most of your work as a role that is not a superuser. To create a new database superuser, use CREATE ROLE name SUPERUSER. You must do this as a role that is already a superuser. Creating a superuser will by default also grant permissions to initiate streaming replication. For increased security this can be disallowed using CREATE ROLE name SUPERUSER NOREPLICATION.

database creation

A role must be explicitly given permission to create databases (except for superusers, since those bypass all permission checks). To create such a role, use CREATE ROLE name CREATEDB.

role creation

A role must be explicitly given permission to create more roles (except for superusers, since those bypass all permission checks). To create such a role, use CREATE ROLE name CREATEROLE. A role with CREATEROLE privilege can alter and drop other roles, too, as well as grant or revoke membership in them. However, to create, alter, drop, or change membership of a superuser role, superuser status is required; CREATEROLE is insufficient for that.

initiating replication

A role must explicitly be given permission to initiate streaming replication. A role used for streaming replication must always have LOGIN permission as well. To create such a role, use CREATE ROLE name REPLICATION LOGIN.

password

A password is only significant if the client authentication method requires the user to supply a password when connecting to the database. The password and md5 authentication methods make use of passwords. Database passwords are separate from operating system passwords. Specify a password upon role creation with CREATE ROLE name PASSWORD 'string'.

A role's attributes can be modified after creation with ALTER ROLE. See the reference pages for the CREATE ROLE and ALTER ROLE commands for details.

Tip: It is good practice to create a role that has the CREATEDB and CREATEROLE privileges, but is not a superuser, and then use this role for all routine management of databases and roles. This approach avoids the dangers of operating as a superuser for tasks that do not really require it.

A role can also have role-specific defaults for many of the run-time configuration settings described in Chapter 18. For example, if for some reason you want to disable index scans (hint: not a good idea) anytime you connect, you can use:

ALTER ROLE myname SET enable_indexscan TO off;

This will save the setting (but not set it immediately). In subsequent connections by this role it will appear as though SET enable_indexscan TO off had been executed just before the session started. You can still alter this setting during the session; it will only be the default. To remove a role-specific default setting, use ALTER ROLE rolename RESET varname. Note that role-specific defaults attached to roles without LOGIN privilege are fairly useless, since they will never be invoked.

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Role Membership

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20.3. Role Membership

It is frequently convenient to group users together to ease management of privileges: that way, privileges can be granted to, or revoked from, a group as a whole. In PostgreSQL this is done by creating a role that represents the group, and then granting membership in the group role to individual user roles.

To set up a group role, first create the role:

CREATE ROLE name;

Typically a role being used as a group would not have the LOGIN attribute, though you can set it if you wish.

Once the group role exists, you can add and remove members using the GRANT and REVOKE commands:

GRANT group_role TO role1, ... ;
REVOKE group_role FROM role1, ... ;

You can grant membership to other group roles, too (since there isn't really any distinction between group roles and non-group roles). The database will not let you set up circular membership loops. Also, it is not permitted to grant membership in a role to PUBLIC.

The members of a group role can use the privileges of the role in two ways. First, every member of a group can explicitly do SET ROLE to temporarily "become" the group role. In this state, the database session has access to the privileges of the group role rather than the original login role, and any database objects created are considered owned by the group role not the login role. Second, member roles that have the INHERIT attribute automatically have use of the privileges of roles of which they are members, including any privileges inherited by those roles. As an example, suppose we have done:

CREATE ROLE joe LOGIN INHERIT;
CREATE ROLE admin NOINHERIT;
CREATE ROLE wheel NOINHERIT;
GRANT admin TO joe;
GRANT wheel TO admin;

Immediately after connecting as role joe, a database session will have use of privileges granted directly to joe plus any privileges granted to admin, because joe "inherits" admin's privileges. However, privileges granted to wheel are not available, because even though joe is indirectly a member of wheel, the membership is via admin which has the NOINHERIT attribute. After:

SET ROLE admin;

the session would have use of only those privileges granted to admin, and not those granted to joe. After:

SET ROLE wheel;

the session would have use of only those privileges granted to wheel, and not those granted to either joe or admin. The original privilege state can be restored with any of:

SET ROLE joe;
SET ROLE NONE;
RESET ROLE;

Note: The SET ROLE command always allows selecting any role that the original login role is directly or indirectly a member of. Thus, in the above example, it is not necessary to become admin before becoming wheel.

Note: In the SQL standard, there is a clear distinction between users and roles, and users do not automatically inherit privileges while roles do. This behavior can be obtained in PostgreSQL by giving roles being used as SQL roles the INHERIT attribute, while giving roles being used as SQL users the NOINHERIT attribute. However, PostgreSQL defaults to giving all roles the INHERIT attribute, for backward compatibility with pre-8.1 releases in which users always had use of permissions granted to groups they were members of.

The role attributes LOGIN, SUPERUSER, CREATEDB, and CREATEROLE can be thought of as special privileges, but they are never inherited as ordinary privileges on database objects are. You must actually SET ROLE to a specific role having one of these attributes in order to make use of the attribute. Continuing the above example, we might choose to grant CREATEDB and CREATEROLE to the admin role. Then a session connecting as role joe would not have these privileges immediately, only after doing SET ROLE admin.

To destroy a group role, use DROP ROLE:

DROP ROLE name;

Any memberships in the group role are automatically revoked (but the member roles are not otherwise affected). Note however that any objects owned by the group role must first be dropped or reassigned to other owners; and any permissions granted to the group role must be revoked.

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Function and Trigger Security

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20.4. Function and Trigger Security

Functions and triggers allow users to insert code into the backend server that other users might execute unintentionally. Hence, both mechanisms permit users to "Trojan horse" others with relative ease. The only real protection is tight control over who can define functions.

Functions run inside the backend server process with the operating system permissions of the database server daemon. If the programming language used for the function allows unchecked memory accesses, it is possible to change the server's internal data structures. Hence, among many other things, such functions can circumvent any system access controls. Function languages that allow such access are considered "untrusted", and PostgreSQL allows only superusers to create functions written in those languages.

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Managing Databases

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Chapter 21. Managing Databases

Table of Contents
21.1. Overview
21.2. Creating a Database
21.3. Template Databases
21.4. Database Configuration
21.5. Destroying a Database
21.6. Tablespaces

Every instance of a running PostgreSQL server manages one or more databases. Databases are therefore the topmost hierarchical level for organizing SQL objects ("database objects"). This chapter describes the properties of databases, and how to create, manage, and destroy them.

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Overview

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21.1. Overview

A database is a named collection of SQL objects ("database objects"). Generally, every database object (tables, functions, etc.) belongs to one and only one database. (However there are a few system catalogs, for example pg_database, that belong to a whole cluster and are accessible from each database within the cluster.) More accurately, a database is a collection of schemas and the schemas contain the tables, functions, etc. So the full hierarchy is: server, database, schema, table (or some other kind of object, such as a function).

When connecting to the database server, a client must specify in its connection request the name of the database it wants to connect to. It is not possible to access more than one database per connection. However, an application is not restricted in the number of connections it opens to the same or other databases. Databases are physically separated and access control is managed at the connection level. If one PostgreSQL server instance is to house projects or users that should be separate and for the most part unaware of each other, it is therefore recommendable to put them into separate databases. If the projects or users are interrelated and should be able to use each other's resources, they should be put in the same database but possibly into separate schemas. Schemas are a purely logical structure and who can access what is managed by the privilege system. More information about managing schemas is in Section 5.7.

Databases are created with the CREATE DATABASE command (see Section 21.2) and destroyed with the DROP DATABASE command (see Section 21.5). To determine the set of existing databases, examine the pg_database system catalog, for example

SELECT datname FROM pg_database;

The psql program's \l meta-command and -l command-line option are also useful for listing the existing databases.

Note: The SQL standard calls databases "catalogs", but there is no difference in practice.

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Creating a Database

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21.2. Creating a Database

In order to create a database, the PostgreSQL server must be up and running (see Section 17.3).

Databases are created with the SQL command CREATE DATABASE:

CREATE DATABASE name;

where name follows the usual rules for SQL identifiers. The current role automatically becomes the owner of the new database. It is the privilege of the owner of a database to remove it later (which also removes all the objects in it, even if they have a different owner).

The creation of databases is a restricted operation. See Section 20.2 for how to grant permission.

Since you need to be connected to the database server in order to execute the CREATE DATABASE command, the question remains how the first database at any given site can be created. The first database is always created by the initdb command when the data storage area is initialized. (See Section 17.2.) This database is called postgres. So to create the first "ordinary" database you can connect to postgres.

A second database, template1, is also created during database cluster initialization. Whenever a new database is created within the cluster, template1 is essentially cloned. This means that any changes you make in template1 are propagated to all subsequently created databases. Because of this, avoid creating objects in template1 unless you want them propagated to every newly created database. More details appear in Section 21.3.

As a convenience, there is a program you can execute from the shell to create new databases, createdb.

createdb dbname

createdb does no magic. It connects to the postgres database and issues the CREATE DATABASE command, exactly as described above. The createdb reference page contains the invocation details. Note that createdb without any arguments will create a database with the current user name.

Note: Chapter 19 contains information about how to restrict who can connect to a given database.

Sometimes you want to create a database for someone else, and have him become the owner of the new database, so he can configure and manage it himself. To achieve that, use one of the following commands:

CREATE DATABASE dbname OWNER rolename;

from the SQL environment, or:

createdb -O rolename dbname

from the shell. Only the superuser is allowed to create a database for someone else (that is, for a role you are not a member of).

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Template Databases

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21.3. Template Databases

CREATE DATABASE actually works by copying an existing database. By default, it copies the standard system database named template1. Thus that database is the "template" from which new databases are made. If you add objects to template1, these objects will be copied into subsequently created user databases. This behavior allows site-local modifications to the standard set of objects in databases. For example, if you install the procedural language PL/Perl in template1, it will automatically be available in user databases without any extra action being taken when those databases are created.

There is a second standard system database named template0. This database contains the same data as the initial contents of template1, that is, only the standard objects predefined by your version of PostgreSQL. template0 should never be changed after the database cluster has been initialized. By instructing CREATE DATABASE to copy template0 instead of template1, you can create a "virgin" user database that contains none of the site-local additions in template1. This is particularly handy when restoring a pg_dump dump: the dump script should be restored in a virgin database to ensure that one recreates the correct contents of the dumped database, without conflicting with objects that might have been added to template1 later on.

Another common reason for copying template0 instead of template1 is that new encoding and locale settings can be specified when copying template0, whereas a copy of template1 must use the same settings it does. This is because template1 might contain encoding-specific or locale-specific data, while template0 is known not to.

To create a database by copying template0, use:

CREATE DATABASE dbname TEMPLATE template0;

from the SQL environment, or:

createdb -T template0 dbname

from the shell.

It is possible to create additional template databases, and indeed one can copy any database in a cluster by specifying its name as the template for CREATE DATABASE. It is important to understand, however, that this is not (yet) intended as a general-purpose "COPY DATABASE" facility. The principal limitation is that no other sessions can be connected to the source database while it is being copied. CREATE DATABASE will fail if any other connection exists when it starts; during the copy operation, new connections to the source database are prevented.

Two useful flags exist in pg_database for each database: the columns datistemplate and datallowconn. datistemplate can be set to indicate that a database is intended as a template for CREATE DATABASE. If this flag is set, the database can be cloned by any user with CREATEDB privileges; if it is not set, only superusers and the owner of the database can clone it. If datallowconn is false, then no new connections to that database will be allowed (but existing sessions are not terminated simply by setting the flag false). The template0 database is normally marked datallowconn = false to prevent its modification. Both template0 and template1 should always be marked with datistemplate = true.

Note: template1 and template0 do not have any special status beyond the fact that the name template1 is the default source database name for CREATE DATABASE. For example, one could drop template1 and recreate it from template0 without any ill effects. This course of action might be advisable if one has carelessly added a bunch of junk in template1. (To delete template1, it must have pg_database.datistemplate = false.)

The postgres database is also created when a database cluster is initialized. This database is meant as a default database for users and applications to connect to. It is simply a copy of template1 and can be dropped and recreated if necessary.

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Database Configuration

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21.4. Database Configuration

Recall from Chapter 18 that the PostgreSQL server provides a large number of run-time configuration variables. You can set database-specific default values for many of these settings.

For example, if for some reason you want to disable the GEQO optimizer for a given database, you'd ordinarily have to either disable it for all databases or make sure that every connecting client is careful to issue SET geqo TO off. To make this setting the default within a particular database, you can execute the command:

ALTER DATABASE mydb SET geqo TO off;

This will save the setting (but not set it immediately). In subsequent connections to this database it will appear as though SET geqo TO off; had been executed just before the session started. Note that users can still alter this setting during their sessions; it will only be the default. To undo any such setting, use ALTER DATABASE dbname RESET varname.

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Destroying a Database

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21.5. Destroying a Database

Databases are destroyed with the command DROP DATABASE:

DROP DATABASE name;

Only the owner of the database, or a superuser, can drop a database. Dropping a database removes all objects that were contained within the database. The destruction of a database cannot be undone.

You cannot execute the DROP DATABASE command while connected to the victim database. You can, however, be connected to any other database, including the template1 database. template1 would be the only option for dropping the last user database of a given cluster.

For convenience, there is also a shell program to drop databases, dropdb:

dropdb dbname

(Unlike createdb, it is not the default action to drop the database with the current user name.)

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Tablespaces

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21.6. Tablespaces

Tablespaces in PostgreSQL allow database administrators to define locations in the file system where the files representing database objects can be stored. Once created, a tablespace can be referred to by name when creating database objects.

By using tablespaces, an administrator can control the disk layout of a PostgreSQL installation. This is useful in at least two ways. First, if the partition or volume on which the cluster was initialized runs out of space and cannot be extended, a tablespace can be created on a different partition and used until the system can be reconfigured.

Second, tablespaces allow an administrator to use knowledge of the usage pattern of database objects to optimize performance. For example, an index which is very heavily used can be placed on a very fast, highly available disk, such as an expensive solid state device. At the same time a table storing archived data which is rarely used or not performance critical could be stored on a less expensive, slower disk system.

To define a tablespace, use the CREATE TABLESPACE command, for example::

CREATE TABLESPACE fastspace LOCATION '/mnt/sda1/postgresql/data';

The location must be an existing, empty directory that is owned by the PostgreSQL operating system user. All objects subsequently created within the tablespace will be stored in files underneath this directory.

Note: There is usually not much point in making more than one tablespace per logical file system, since you cannot control the location of individual files within a logical file system. However, PostgreSQL does not enforce any such limitation, and indeed it is not directly aware of the file system boundaries on your system. It just stores files in the directories you tell it to use.

Creation of the tablespace itself must be done as a database superuser, but after that you can allow ordinary database users to use it. To do that, grant them the CREATE privilege on it.

Tables, indexes, and entire databases can be assigned to particular tablespaces. To do so, a user with the CREATE privilege on a given tablespace must pass the tablespace name as a parameter to the relevant command. For example, the following creates a table in the tablespace space1:

CREATE TABLE foo(i int) TABLESPACE space1;

Alternatively, use the default_tablespace parameter:

SET default_tablespace = space1;
CREATE TABLE foo(i int);

When default_tablespace is set to anything but an empty string, it supplies an implicit TABLESPACE clause for CREATE TABLE and CREATE INDEX commands that do not have an explicit one.

There is also a temp_tablespaces parameter, which determines the placement of temporary tables and indexes, as well as temporary files that are used for purposes such as sorting large data sets. This can be a list of tablespace names, rather than only one, so that the load associated with temporary objects can be spread over multiple tablespaces. A random member of the list is picked each time a temporary object is to be created.

The tablespace associated with a database is used to store the system catalogs of that database. Furthermore, it is the default tablespace used for tables, indexes, and temporary files created within the database, if no TABLESPACE clause is given and no other selection is specified by default_tablespace or temp_tablespaces (as appropriate). If a database is created without specifying a tablespace for it, it uses the same tablespace as the template database it is copied from.

Two tablespaces are automatically created when the database cluster is initialized. The pg_global tablespace is used for shared system catalogs. The pg_default tablespace is the default tablespace of the template1 and template0 databases (and, therefore, will be the default tablespace for other databases as well, unless overridden by a TABLESPACE clause in CREATE DATABASE).

Once created, a tablespace can be used from any database, provided the requesting user has sufficient privilege. This means that a tablespace cannot be dropped until all objects in all databases using the tablespace have been removed.

To remove an empty tablespace, use the DROP TABLESPACE command.

To determine the set of existing tablespaces, examine the pg_tablespace system catalog, for example

SELECT spcname FROM pg_tablespace;

The psql program's \db meta-command is also useful for listing the existing tablespaces.

PostgreSQL makes use of symbolic links to simplify the implementation of tablespaces. This means that tablespaces can be used only on systems that support symbolic links.

The directory $PGDATA/pg_tblspc contains symbolic links that point to each of the non-built-in tablespaces defined in the cluster. Although not recommended, it is possible to adjust the tablespace layout by hand by redefining these links. Two warnings: do not do so while the server is running; and after you restart the server, update the pg_tablespace catalog with the new locations. (If you do not, pg_dump will continue to output the old tablespace locations.)

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Localization

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Chapter 22. Localization

Table of Contents
22.1. Locale Support
22.1.1. Overview
22.1.2. Behavior
22.1.3. Problems
22.2. Collation Support
22.2.1. Concepts
22.2.2. Managing Collations
22.3. Character Set Support
22.3.1. Supported Character Sets
22.3.2. Setting the Character Set
22.3.3. Automatic Character Set Conversion Between Server and Client
22.3.4. Further Reading

This chapter describes the available localization features from the point of view of the administrator. PostgreSQL supports two localization facilities:

  • Using the locale features of the operating system to provide locale-specific collation order, number formatting, translated messages, and other aspects. This is covered in Section 22.1 and Section 22.2.

  • Providing a number of different character sets to support storing text in all kinds of languages, and providing character set translation between client and server. This is covered in Section 22.3.

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Locale Support

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22.1. Locale Support

Locale support refers to an application respecting cultural preferences regarding alphabets, sorting, number formatting, etc. PostgreSQL uses the standard ISO C and POSIX locale facilities provided by the server operating system. For additional information refer to the documentation of your system.

22.1.1. Overview

Locale support is automatically initialized when a database cluster is created using initdb. initdb will initialize the database cluster with the locale setting of its execution environment by default, so if your system is already set to use the locale that you want in your database cluster then there is nothing else you need to do. If you want to use a different locale (or you are not sure which locale your system is set to), you can instruct initdb exactly which locale to use by specifying the --locale option. For example:

initdb --locale=sv_SE

This example for Unix systems sets the locale to Swedish (sv) as spoken in Sweden (SE). Other possibilities might include en_US (U.S. English) and fr_CA (French Canadian). If more than one character set can be used for a locale then the specifications can take the form language_territory.codeset. For example, fr_BE.UTF-8 represents the French language (fr) as spoken in Belgium (BE), with a UTF-8 character set encoding.

What locales are available on your system under what names depends on what was provided by the operating system vendor and what was installed. On most Unix systems, the command locale -a will provide a list of available locales. Windows uses more verbose locale names, such as German_Germany or Swedish_Sweden.1252, but the principles are the same.

Occasionally it is useful to mix rules from several locales, e.g., use English collation rules but Spanish messages. To support that, a set of locale subcategories exist that control only certain aspects of the localization rules:

LC_COLLATE | String sort order
LC_CTYPE | Character classification (What is a letter? Its upper-case equivalent?)
LC_MESSAGES | Language of messages
LC_MONETARY | Formatting of currency amounts
LC_NUMERIC | Formatting of numbers
LC_TIME | Formatting of dates and times

The category names translate into names of initdb options to override the locale choice for a specific category. For instance, to set the locale to French Canadian, but use U.S. rules for formatting currency, use initdb --locale=fr_CA --lc-monetary=en_US.

If you want the system to behave as if it had no locale support, use the special locale name C, or equivalently POSIX.

Some locale categories must have their values fixed when the database is created. You can use different settings for different databases, but once a database is created, you cannot change them for that database anymore. LC_COLLATE and LC_CTYPE are these categories. They affect the sort order of indexes, so they must be kept fixed, or indexes on text columns would become corrupt. (But you can alleviate this restriction using collations, as discussed in Section 22.2.) The default values for these categories are determined when initdb is run, and those values are used when new databases are created, unless specified otherwise in the CREATE DATABASE command.

The other locale categories can be changed whenever desired by setting the server configuration parameters that have the same name as the locale categories (see Section 18.11.2 for details). The values that are chosen by initdb are actually only written into the configuration file postgresql.conf to serve as defaults when the server is started. If you remove these assignments from postgresql.conf then the server will inherit the settings from its execution environment.

Note that the locale behavior of the server is determined by the environment variables seen by the server, not by the environment of any client. Therefore, be careful to configure the correct locale settings before starting the server. A consequence of this is that if client and server are set up in different locales, messages might appear in different languages depending on where they originated.

Note: When we speak of inheriting the locale from the execution environment, this means the following on most operating systems: For a given locale category, say the collation, the following environment variables are consulted in this order until one is found to be set: LC_ALL, LC_COLLATE (or the variable corresponding to the respective category), LANG. If none of these environment variables are set then the locale defaults to C.

Some message localization libraries also look at the environment variable LANGUAGE which overrides all other locale settings for the purpose of setting the language of messages. If in doubt, please refer to the documentation of your operating system, in particular the documentation about gettext.

To enable messages to be translated to the user's preferred language, NLS must have been selected at build time (configure --enable-nls). All other locale support is built in automatically.

22.1.2. Behavior

The locale settings influence the following SQL features:

  • Sort order in queries using ORDER BY or the standard comparison operators on textual data

  • The upper, lower, and initcap functions

  • Pattern matching operators (LIKE, SIMILAR TO, and POSIX-style regular expressions); locales affect both case insensitive matching and the classification of characters by character-class regular expressions

  • The to_char family of functions

  • The ability to use indexes with LIKE clauses

The drawback of using locales other than C or POSIX in PostgreSQL is its performance impact. It slows character handling and prevents ordinary indexes from being used by LIKE. For this reason use locales only if you actually need them.

As a workaround to allow PostgreSQL to use indexes with LIKE clauses under a non-C locale, several custom operator classes exist. These allow the creation of an index that performs a strict character-by-character comparison, ignoring locale comparison rules. Refer to Section 11.9 for more information. Another approach is to create indexes using the C collation, as discussed in Section 22.2.

22.1.3. Problems

If locale support doesn't work according to the explanation above, check that the locale support in your operating system is correctly configured. To check what locales are installed on your system, you can use the command locale -a if your operating system provides it.

Check that PostgreSQL is actually using the locale that you think it is. The LC_COLLATE and LC_CTYPE settings are determined when a database is created, and cannot be changed except by creating a new database. Other locale settings including LC_MESSAGES and LC_MONETARY are initially determined by the environment the server is started in, but can be changed on-the-fly. You can check the active locale settings using the SHOW command.

The directory src/test/locale in the source distribution contains a test suite for PostgreSQL's locale support.

Client applications that handle server-side errors by parsing the text of the error message will obviously have problems when the server's messages are in a different language. Authors of such applications are advised to make use of the error code scheme instead.

Maintaining catalogs of message translations requires the on-going efforts of many volunteers that want to see PostgreSQL speak their preferred language well. If messages in your language are currently not available or not fully translated, your assistance would be appreciated. If you want to help, refer to Chapter 48 or write to the developers' mailing list.

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Collation Support

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22.2. Collation Support

The collation feature allows specifying the sort order and character classification behavior of data per-column, or even per-operation. This alleviates the restriction that the LC_COLLATE and LC_CTYPE settings of a database cannot be changed after its creation.

22.2.1. Concepts

Conceptually, every expression of a collatable data type has a collation. (The built-in collatable data types are text, varchar, and char. User-defined base types can also be marked collatable, and of course a domain over a collatable data type is collatable.) If the expression is a column reference, the collation of the expression is the defined collation of the column. If the expression is a constant, the collation is the default collation of the data type of the constant. The collation of a more complex expression is derived from the collations of its inputs, as described below.

The collation of an expression can be the "default" collation, which means the locale settings defined for the database. It is also possible for an expression's collation to be indeterminate. In such cases, ordering operations and other operations that need to know the collation will fail.

When the database system has to perform an ordering or a character classification, it uses the collation of the input expression. This happens, for example, with ORDER BY clauses and function or operator calls such as <. The collation to apply for an ORDER BY clause is simply the collation of the sort key. The collation to apply for a function or operator call is derived from the arguments, as described below. In addition to comparison operators, collations are taken into account by functions that convert between lower and upper case letters, such as lower, upper, and initcap; by pattern matching operators; and by to_char and related functions.

For a function or operator call, the collation that is derived by examining the argument collations is used at run time for performing the specified operation. If the result of the function or operator call is of a collatable data type, the collation is also used at parse time as the defined collation of the function or operator expression, in case there is a surrounding expression that requires knowledge of its collation.

The collation derivation of an expression can be implicit or explicit. This distinction affects how collations are combined when multiple different collations appear in an expression. An explicit collation derivation occurs when a COLLATE clause is used; all other collation derivations are implicit. When multiple collations need to be combined, for example in a function call, the following rules are used:

  1. If any input expression has an explicit collation derivation, then all explicitly derived collations among the input expressions must be the same, otherwise an error is raised. If any explicitly derived collation is present, that is the result of the collation combination.

  2. Otherwise, all input expressions must have the same implicit collation derivation or the default collation. If any non-default collation is present, that is the result of the collation combination. Otherwise, the result is the default collation.

  3. If there are conflicting non-default implicit collations among the input expressions, then the combination is deemed to have indeterminate collation. This is not an error condition unless the particular function being invoked requires knowledge of the collation it should apply. If it does, an error will be raised at run-time.

For example, consider this table definition:

CREATE TABLE test1 (
    a text COLLATE "de_DE",
    b text COLLATE "es_ES",
    ...
);

Then in

SELECT a < 'foo' FROM test1;

the < comparison is performed according to de_DE rules, because the expression combines an implicitly derived collation with the default collation. But in

SELECT a < ('foo' COLLATE "fr_FR") FROM test1;

the comparison is performed using fr_FR rules, because the explicit collation derivation overrides the implicit one. Furthermore, given

SELECT a < b FROM test1;

the parser cannot determine which collation to apply, since the a and b columns have conflicting implicit collations. Since the < operator does need to know which collation to use, this will result in an error. The error can be resolved by attaching an explicit collation specifier to either input expression, thus:

SELECT a < b COLLATE "de_DE" FROM test1;

or equivalently

SELECT a COLLATE "de_DE" < b FROM test1;

On the other hand, the structurally similar case

SELECT a || b FROM test1;

does not result in an error, because the || operator does not care about collations: its result is the same regardless of the collation.

The collation assigned to a function or operator's combined input expressions is also considered to apply to the function or operator's result, if the function or operator delivers a result of a collatable data type. So, in

SELECT * FROM test1 ORDER BY a || 'foo';

the ordering will be done according to de_DE rules. But this query:

SELECT * FROM test1 ORDER BY a || b;

results in an error, because even though the || operator doesn't need to know a collation, the ORDER BY clause does. As before, the conflict can be resolved with an explicit collation specifier:

SELECT * FROM test1 ORDER BY a || b COLLATE "fr_FR";

22.2.2. Managing Collations

A collation is an SQL schema object that maps an SQL name to operating system locales. In particular, it maps to a combination of LC_COLLATE and LC_CTYPE. (As the name would suggest, the main purpose of a collation is to set LC_COLLATE, which controls the sort order. But it is rarely necessary in practice to have an LC_CTYPE setting that is different from LC_COLLATE, so it is more convenient to collect these under one concept than to create another infrastructure for setting LC_CTYPE per expression.) Also, a collation is tied to a character set encoding (see Section 22.3). The same collation name may exist for different encodings.

On all platforms, the collations named default, C, and POSIX are available. Additional collations may be available depending on operating system support. The default collation selects the LC_COLLATE and LC_CTYPE values specified at database creation time. The C and POSIX collations both specify "traditional C" behavior, in which only the ASCII letters "A" through "Z" are treated as letters, and sorting is done strictly by character code byte values.

If the operating system provides support for using multiple locales within a single program (newlocale and related functions), then when a database cluster is initialized, initdb populates the system catalog pg_collation with collations based on all the locales it finds on the operating system at the time. For example, the operating system might provide a locale named de_DE.utf8. initdb would then create a collation named de_DE.utf8 for encoding UTF8 that has both LC_COLLATE and LC_CTYPE set to de_DE.utf8. It will also create a collation with the .utf8 tag stripped off the name. So you could also use the collation under the name de_DE, which is less cumbersome to write and makes the name less encoding-dependent. Note that, nevertheless, the initial set of collation names is platform-dependent.

In case a collation is needed that has different values for LC_COLLATE and LC_CTYPE, a new collation may be created using the CREATE COLLATION command. That command can also be used to create a new collation from an existing collation, which can be useful to be able to use operating-system-independent collation names in applications.

Within any particular database, only collations that use that database's encoding are of interest. Other entries in pg_collation are ignored. Thus, a stripped collation name such as de_DE can be considered unique within a given database even though it would not be unique globally. Use of the stripped collation names is recommendable, since it will make one less thing you need to change if you decide to change to another database encoding. Note however that the default, C, and POSIX collations can be used regardless of the database encoding.

PostgreSQL considers distinct collation objects to be incompatible even when they have identical properties. Thus for example,

SELECT a COLLATE "C" < b COLLATE "POSIX" FROM test1;

will draw an error even though the C and POSIX collations have identical behaviors. Mixing stripped and non-stripped collation names is therefore not recommended.

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Character Set Support

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22.3. Character Set Support

The character set support in PostgreSQL allows you to store text in a variety of character sets (also called encodings), including single-byte character sets such as the ISO 8859 series and multiple-byte character sets such as EUC (Extended Unix Code), UTF-8, and Mule internal code. All supported character sets can be used transparently by clients, but a few are not supported for use within the server (that is, as a server-side encoding). The default character set is selected while initializing your PostgreSQL database cluster using initdb. It can be overridden when you create a database, so you can have multiple databases each with a different character set.

An important restriction, however, is that each database's character set must be compatible with the database's LC_CTYPE (character classification) and LC_COLLATE (string sort order) locale settings. For C or POSIX locale, any character set is allowed, but for other locales there is only one character set that will work correctly. (On Windows, however, UTF-8 encoding can be used with any locale.)

22.3.1. Supported Character Sets

Table 22-1 shows the character sets available for use in PostgreSQL.

Table 22-1. PostgreSQL Character Sets

Name | Description | Language | Server? | Bytes/Char | Aliases
BIG5 | Big Five | Traditional Chinese | No | 1-2 | WIN950, Windows950
EUC_CN | Extended UNIX Code-CN | Simplified Chinese | Yes | 1-3 |
EUC_JP | Extended UNIX Code-JP | Japanese | Yes | 1-3 |
EUC_JIS_2004 | Extended UNIX Code-JP, JIS X 0213 | Japanese | Yes | 1-3 |
EUC_KR | Extended UNIX Code-KR | Korean | Yes | 1-3 |
EUC_TW | Extended UNIX Code-TW | Traditional Chinese, Taiwanese | Yes | 1-3 |
GB18030 | National Standard | Chinese | No | 1-4 |
GBK | Extended National Standard | Simplified Chinese | No | 1-2 | WIN936, Windows936
ISO_8859_5 | ISO 8859-5, ECMA 113 | Latin/Cyrillic | Yes | 1 |
ISO_8859_6 | ISO 8859-6, ECMA 114 | Latin/Arabic | Yes | 1 |
ISO_8859_7 | ISO 8859-7, ECMA 118 | Latin/Greek | Yes | 1 |
ISO_8859_8 | ISO 8859-8, ECMA 121 | Latin/Hebrew | Yes | 1 |
JOHAB | JOHAB | Korean (Hangul) | No | 1-3 |
KOI8R | KOI8-R | Cyrillic (Russian) | Yes | 1 | KOI8
KOI8U | KOI8-U | Cyrillic (Ukrainian) | Yes | 1 |
LATIN1 | ISO 8859-1, ECMA 94 | Western European | Yes | 1 | ISO88591
LATIN2 | ISO 8859-2, ECMA 94 | Central European | Yes | 1 | ISO88592
LATIN3 | ISO 8859-3, ECMA 94 | South European | Yes | 1 | ISO88593
LATIN4 | ISO 8859-4, ECMA 94 | North European | Yes | 1 | ISO88594
LATIN5 | ISO 8859-9, ECMA 128 | Turkish | Yes | 1 | ISO88599
LATIN6 | ISO 8859-10, ECMA 144 | Nordic | Yes | 1 | ISO885910
LATIN7 | ISO 8859-13 | Baltic | Yes | 1 | ISO885913
LATIN8 | ISO 8859-14 | Celtic | Yes | 1 | ISO885914
LATIN9 | ISO 8859-15 | LATIN1 with Euro and accents | Yes | 1 | ISO885915
LATIN10 | ISO 8859-16, ASRO SR 14111 | Romanian | Yes | 1 | ISO885916
MULE_INTERNAL | Mule internal code | Multilingual Emacs | Yes | 1-4 |
SJIS | Shift JIS | Japanese | No | 1-2 | Mskanji, ShiftJIS, WIN932, Windows932
SHIFT_JIS_2004 | Shift JIS, JIS X 0213 | Japanese | No | 1-2 |
SQL_ASCII | unspecified (see text) | any | Yes | 1 |
UHC | Unified Hangul Code | Korean | No | 1-2 | WIN949, Windows949
UTF8 | Unicode, 8-bit | all | Yes | 1-4 | Unicode
WIN866 | Windows CP866 | Cyrillic | Yes | 1 | ALT
WIN874 | Windows CP874 | Thai | Yes | 1 |
WIN1250 | Windows CP1250 | Central European | Yes | 1 |
WIN1251 | Windows CP1251 | Cyrillic | Yes | 1 | WIN
WIN1252 | Windows CP1252 | Western European | Yes | 1 |
WIN1253 | Windows CP1253 | Greek | Yes | 1 |
WIN1254 | Windows CP1254 | Turkish | Yes | 1 |
WIN1255 | Windows CP1255 | Hebrew | Yes | 1 |
WIN1256 | Windows CP1256 | Arabic | Yes | 1 |
WIN1257 | Windows CP1257 | Baltic | Yes | 1 |
WIN1258 | Windows CP1258 | Vietnamese | Yes | 1 | ABC, TCVN, TCVN5712, VSCII

Not all client APIs support all the listed character sets. For example, the PostgreSQL JDBC driver does not support MULE_INTERNAL, LATIN6, LATIN8, and LATIN10.

The SQL_ASCII setting behaves considerably differently from the other settings. When the server character set is SQL_ASCII, the server interprets byte values 0-127 according to the ASCII standard, while byte values 128-255 are taken as uninterpreted characters. No encoding conversion will be done when the setting is SQL_ASCII. Thus, this setting is not so much a declaration that a specific encoding is in use, as a declaration of ignorance about the encoding. In most cases, if you are working with any non-ASCII data, it is unwise to use the SQL_ASCII setting because PostgreSQL will be unable to help you by converting or validating non-ASCII characters.

22.3.2. Setting the Character Set

initdb defines the default character set (encoding) for a PostgreSQL cluster. For example,

initdb -E EUC_JP

sets the default character set to EUC_JP (Extended Unix Code for Japanese). You can use --encoding instead of -E if you prefer longer option strings. If no -E or --encoding option is given, initdb attempts to determine the appropriate encoding to use based on the specified or default locale.

You can specify a non-default encoding at database creation time, provided that the encoding is compatible with the selected locale:

createdb -E EUC_KR -T template0 --lc-collate=ko_KR.euckr --lc-ctype=ko_KR.euckr korean

This will create a database named korean that uses the character set EUC_KR, and locale ko_KR. Another way to accomplish this is to use this SQL command:

CREATE DATABASE korean WITH ENCODING 'EUC_KR' LC_COLLATE='ko_KR.euckr' LC_CTYPE='ko_KR.euckr' TEMPLATE=template0;

Notice that the above commands specify copying the template0 database. When copying any other database, the encoding and locale settings cannot be changed from those of the source database, because that might result in corrupt data. For more information see Section 21.3.

The encoding for a database is stored in the system catalog pg_database. You can see it by using the psql -l option or the \l command.

$ psql -l
                                         List of databases
   Name    |  Owner   | Encoding  |  Collation  |    Ctype    |          Access Privileges
-----------+----------+-----------+-------------+-------------+-------------------------------------
 clocaledb | hlinnaka | SQL_ASCII | C           | C           |
 englishdb | hlinnaka | UTF8      | en_GB.UTF8  | en_GB.UTF8  |
 japanese  | hlinnaka | UTF8      | ja_JP.UTF8  | ja_JP.UTF8  |
 korean    | hlinnaka | EUC_KR    | ko_KR.euckr | ko_KR.euckr |
 postgres  | hlinnaka | UTF8      | fi_FI.UTF8  | fi_FI.UTF8  |
 template0 | hlinnaka | UTF8      | fi_FI.UTF8  | fi_FI.UTF8  | {=c/hlinnaka,hlinnaka=CTc/hlinnaka}
 template1 | hlinnaka | UTF8      | fi_FI.UTF8  | fi_FI.UTF8  | {=c/hlinnaka,hlinnaka=CTc/hlinnaka}
(7 rows)

Important: On most modern operating systems, PostgreSQL can determine which character set is implied by the LC_CTYPE setting, and it will enforce that only the matching database encoding is used. On older systems it is your responsibility to ensure that you use the encoding expected by the locale you have selected. A mistake in this area is likely to lead to strange behavior of locale-dependent operations such as sorting.

PostgreSQL will allow superusers to create databases with SQL_ASCII encoding even when LC_CTYPE is not C or POSIX. As noted above, SQL_ASCII does not enforce that the data stored in the database has any particular encoding, and so this choice poses risks of locale-dependent misbehavior. Using this combination of settings is deprecated and may someday be forbidden altogether.

22.3.3. Automatic Character Set Conversion Between Server and Client

PostgreSQL supports automatic character set conversion between server and client for certain character set combinations. The conversion information is stored in the pg_conversion system catalog. PostgreSQL comes with some predefined conversions, as shown in Table 22-2. You can create a new conversion using the SQL command CREATE CONVERSION.

Table 22-2. Client/Server Character Set Conversions

Server Character Set | Available Client Character Sets
BIG5 | not supported as a server encoding
EUC_CN | EUC_CN, MULE_INTERNAL, UTF8
EUC_JP | EUC_JP, MULE_INTERNAL, SJIS, UTF8
EUC_KR | EUC_KR, MULE_INTERNAL, UTF8
EUC_TW | EUC_TW, BIG5, MULE_INTERNAL, UTF8
GB18030 | not supported as a server encoding
GBK | not supported as a server encoding
ISO_8859_5 | ISO_8859_5, KOI8R, MULE_INTERNAL, UTF8, WIN866, WIN1251
ISO_8859_6 | ISO_8859_6, UTF8
ISO_8859_7 | ISO_8859_7, UTF8
ISO_8859_8 | ISO_8859_8, UTF8
JOHAB | JOHAB, UTF8
KOI8R | KOI8R, ISO_8859_5, MULE_INTERNAL, UTF8, WIN866, WIN1251
KOI8U | KOI8U, UTF8
LATIN1 | LATIN1, MULE_INTERNAL, UTF8
LATIN2 | LATIN2, MULE_INTERNAL, UTF8, WIN1250
LATIN3 | LATIN3, MULE_INTERNAL, UTF8
LATIN4 | LATIN4, MULE_INTERNAL, UTF8
LATIN5 | LATIN5, UTF8
LATIN6 | LATIN6, UTF8
LATIN7 | LATIN7, UTF8
LATIN8 | LATIN8, UTF8
LATIN9 | LATIN9, UTF8
LATIN10 | LATIN10, UTF8
MULE_INTERNAL | MULE_INTERNAL, BIG5, EUC_CN, EUC_JP, EUC_KR, EUC_TW, ISO_8859_5, KOI8R, LATIN1 to LATIN4, SJIS, WIN866, WIN1250, WIN1251
SJIS | not supported as a server encoding
SQL_ASCII | any (no conversion will be performed)
UHC | not supported as a server encoding
UTF8 | all supported encodings
WIN866 | WIN866, ISO_8859_5, KOI8R, MULE_INTERNAL, UTF8, WIN1251
WIN874 | WIN874, UTF8
WIN1250 | WIN1250, LATIN2, MULE_INTERNAL, UTF8
WIN1251 | WIN1251, ISO_8859_5, KOI8R, MULE_INTERNAL, UTF8, WIN866
WIN1252 | WIN1252, UTF8
WIN1253 | WIN1253, UTF8
WIN1254 | WIN1254, UTF8
WIN1255 | WIN1255, UTF8
WIN1256 | WIN1256, UTF8
WIN1257 | WIN1257, UTF8
WIN1258 | WIN1258, UTF8

To enable automatic character set conversion, you have to tell PostgreSQL the character set (encoding) you would like to use in the client. There are several ways to accomplish this:

  • Using the \encoding command in psql. \encoding allows you to change client encoding on the fly. For example, to change the encoding to SJIS, type:

    \encoding SJIS

  • libpq (Section 31.9) has functions to control the client encoding.

  • Using SET client_encoding TO. Setting the client encoding can be done with this SQL command:

    SET CLIENT_ENCODING TO 'value';

    Also you can use the standard SQL syntax SET NAMES for this purpose:

    SET NAMES 'value';

    To query the current client encoding:

    SHOW client_encoding;

    To return to the default encoding:

    RESET client_encoding;

  • Using PGCLIENTENCODING. If the environment variable PGCLIENTENCODING is defined in the client's environment, that client encoding is automatically selected when a connection to the server is made. (This can subsequently be overridden using any of the other methods mentioned above.)

  • Using the configuration variable client_encoding. If the client_encoding variable is set, that client encoding is automatically selected when a connection to the server is made. (This can subsequently be overridden using any of the other methods mentioned above.)

If the conversion of a particular character is not possible — suppose you chose EUC_JP for the server and LATIN1 for the client, and some Japanese characters are returned that do not have a representation in LATIN1 — an error is reported.

If the client character set is defined as SQL_ASCII, encoding conversion is disabled, regardless of the server's character set. Just as for the server, use of SQL_ASCII is unwise unless you are working with all-ASCII data.

22.3.4. Further Reading

These are good sources to start learning about various kinds of encoding systems.

CJKV Information Processing: Chinese, Japanese, Korean & Vietnamese Computing

Contains detailed explanations of EUC_JP, EUC_CN, EUC_KR, EUC_TW.

http://www.unicode.org/

The web site of the Unicode Consortium.

RFC 3629

UTF-8 (8-bit UCS/Unicode Transformation Format) is defined here.

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Routine Database Maintenance Tasks

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Chapter 23. Routine Database Maintenance Tasks

Table of Contents
23.1. Routine Vacuuming
23.1.1. Vacuuming Basics
23.1.2. Recovering Disk Space
23.1.3. Updating Planner Statistics
23.1.4. Preventing Transaction ID Wraparound Failures
23.1.5. The Autovacuum Daemon
23.2. Routine Reindexing
23.3. Log File Maintenance

PostgreSQL, like any database software, requires that certain tasks be performed regularly to achieve optimum performance. The tasks discussed here are required, but they are repetitive in nature and can easily be automated using standard tools such as cron scripts or Windows' Task Scheduler. It is the database administrator's responsibility to set up appropriate scripts, and to check that they execute successfully.

One obvious maintenance task is the creation of backup copies of the data on a regular schedule. Without a recent backup, you have no chance of recovery after a catastrophe (disk failure, fire, mistakenly dropping a critical table, etc.). The backup and recovery mechanisms available in PostgreSQL are discussed at length in Chapter 24.

The other main category of maintenance task is periodic "vacuuming" of the database. This activity is discussed in Section 23.1. Closely related to this is updating the statistics that will be used by the query planner, as discussed in Section 23.1.3.

Another task that might need periodic attention is log file management. This is discussed in Section 23.3.

check_postgres is available for monitoring database health and reporting unusual conditions. check_postgres integrates with Nagios and MRTG, but can be run standalone too.

PostgreSQL is low-maintenance compared to some other database management systems. Nonetheless, appropriate attention to these tasks will go far towards ensuring a pleasant and productive experience with the system.

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Routine Vacuuming

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23.1. Routine Vacuuming

PostgreSQL databases require periodic maintenance known as vacuuming. For many installations, it is sufficient to let vacuuming be performed by the autovacuum daemon, which is described in Section 23.1.5. You might need to adjust the autovacuuming parameters described there to obtain best results for your situation. Some database administrators will want to supplement or replace the daemon's activities with manually-managed VACUUM commands, which typically are executed according to a schedule by cron or Task Scheduler scripts. To set up manually-managed vacuuming properly, it is essential to understand the issues discussed in the next few subsections. Administrators who rely on autovacuuming may still wish to skim this material to help them understand and adjust autovacuuming.

23.1.1. Vacuuming Basics

PostgreSQL's VACUUM command has to process each table on a regular basis for several reasons:

  1. To recover or reuse disk space occupied by updated or deleted rows.

  2. To update data statistics used by the PostgreSQL query planner.

  3. To protect against loss of very old data due to transaction ID wraparound.

Each of these reasons dictates performing VACUUM operations of varying frequency and scope, as explained in the following subsections.

There are two variants of VACUUM: standard VACUUM and VACUUM FULL. VACUUM FULL can reclaim more disk space but runs much more slowly. Also, the standard form of VACUUM can run in parallel with production database operations. (Commands such as SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE will continue to function normally, though you will not be able to modify the definition of a table with commands such as ALTER TABLE while it is being vacuumed.) VACUUM FULL requires exclusive lock on the table it is working on, and therefore cannot be done in parallel with other use of the table. Generally, therefore, administrators should strive to use standard VACUUM and avoid VACUUM FULL.

VACUUM creates a substantial amount of I/O traffic, which can cause poor performance for other active sessions. There are configuration parameters that can be adjusted to reduce the performance impact of background vacuuming — see Section 18.4.3.

23.1.2. Recovering Disk Space

In PostgreSQL, an UPDATE or DELETE of a row does not immediately remove the old version of the row. This approach is necessary to gain the benefits of multiversion concurrency control (MVCC, see Chapter 13): the row version must not be deleted while it is still potentially visible to other transactions. But eventually, an outdated or deleted row version is no longer of interest to any transaction. The space it occupies must then be reclaimed for reuse by new rows, to avoid unbounded growth of disk space requirements. This is done by running VACUUM.

The standard form of VACUUM removes dead row versions in tables and indexes and marks the space available for future reuse. However, it will not return the space to the operating system, except in the special case where one or more pages at the end of a table become entirely free and an exclusive table lock can be easily obtained. In contrast, VACUUM FULL actively compacts tables by writing a complete new version of the table file with no dead space. This minimizes the size of the table, but can take a long time. It also requires extra disk space for the new copy of the table, until the operation completes.

The usual goal of routine vacuuming is to do standard VACUUMs often enough to avoid needing VACUUM FULL. The autovacuum daemon attempts to work this way, and in fact will never issue VACUUM FULL. In this approach, the idea is not to keep tables at their minimum size, but to maintain steady-state usage of disk space: each table occupies space equivalent to its minimum size plus however much space gets used up between vacuumings. Although VACUUM FULL can be used to shrink a table back to its minimum size and return the disk space to the operating system, there is not much point in this if the table will just grow again in the future. Thus, moderately-frequent standard VACUUM runs are a better approach than infrequent VACUUM FULL runs for maintaining heavily-updated tables.

Some administrators prefer to schedule vacuuming themselves, for example doing all the work at night when load is low. The difficulty with doing vacuuming according to a fixed schedule is that if a table has an unexpected spike in update activity, it may get bloated to the point that VACUUM FULL is really necessary to reclaim space. Using the autovacuum daemon alleviates this problem, since the daemon schedules vacuuming dynamically in response to update activity. It is unwise to disable the daemon completely unless you have an extremely predictable workload. One possible compromise is to set the daemon's parameters so that it will only react to unusually heavy update activity, thus keeping things from getting out of hand, while scheduled VACUUMs are expected to do the bulk of the work when the load is typical.

For those not using autovacuum, a typical approach is to schedule a database-wide VACUUM once a day during a low-usage period, supplemented by more frequent vacuuming of heavily-updated tables as necessary. (Some installations with extremely high update rates vacuum their busiest tables as often as once every few minutes.) If you have multiple databases in a cluster, don't forget to VACUUM each one; the program vacuumdb might be helpful.

Tip: Plain VACUUM may not be satisfactory when a table contains large numbers of dead row versions as a result of massive update or delete activity. If you have such a table and you need to reclaim the excess disk space it occupies, you will need to use VACUUM FULL, or alternatively CLUSTER or one of the table-rewriting variants of ALTER TABLE. These commands rewrite an entire new copy of the table and build new indexes for it. All these options require exclusive lock. Note that they also temporarily use extra disk space approximately equal to the size of the table, since the old copies of the table and indexes can't be released until the new ones are complete.

Tip: If you have a table whose entire contents are deleted on a periodic basis, consider doing it with TRUNCATE rather than using DELETE followed by VACUUM. TRUNCATE removes the entire content of the table immediately, without requiring a subsequent VACUUM or VACUUM FULL to reclaim the now-unused disk space. The disadvantage is that strict MVCC semantics are violated.

23.1.3. Updating Planner Statistics

The PostgreSQL query planner relies on statistical information about the contents of tables in order to generate good plans for queries. These statistics are gathered by the ANALYZE command, which can be invoked by itself or as an optional step in VACUUM. It is important to have reasonably accurate statistics, otherwise poor choices of plans might degrade database performance.

The autovacuum daemon, if enabled, will automatically issue ANALYZE commands whenever the content of a table has changed sufficiently. However, administrators might prefer to rely on manually-scheduled ANALYZE operations, particularly if it is known that update activity on a table will not affect the statistics of "interesting" columns. The daemon schedules ANALYZE strictly as a function of the number of rows inserted or updated; it has no knowledge of whether that will lead to meaningful statistical changes.

As with vacuuming for space recovery, frequent updates of statistics are more useful for heavily-updated tables than for seldom-updated ones. But even for a heavily-updated table, there might be no need for statistics updates if the statistical distribution of the data is not changing much. A simple rule of thumb is to think about how much the minimum and maximum values of the columns in the table change. For example, a timestamp column that contains the time of row update will have a constantly-increasing maximum value as rows are added and updated; such a column will probably need more frequent statistics updates than, say, a column containing URLs for pages accessed on a website. The URL column might receive changes just as often, but the statistical distribution of its values probably changes relatively slowly.

It is possible to run ANALYZE on specific tables and even just specific columns of a table, so the flexibility exists to update some statistics more frequently than others if your application requires it. In practice, however, it is usually best to just analyze the entire database, because it is a fast operation. ANALYZE uses a statistically random sampling of the rows of a table rather than reading every single row.

Tip: Although per-column tweaking of ANALYZE frequency might not be very productive, you might find it worthwhile to do per-column adjustment of the level of detail of the statistics collected by ANALYZE. Columns that are heavily used in WHERE clauses and have highly irregular data distributions might require a finer-grain data histogram than other columns. See ALTER TABLE SET STATISTICS, or change the database-wide default using the default_statistics_target configuration parameter.

Also, by default there is limited information available about the selectivity of functions. However, if you create an expression index that uses a function call, useful statistics will be gathered about the function, which can greatly improve query plans that use the expression index.

23.1.4. Preventing Transaction ID Wraparound Failures

PostgreSQL's MVCC transaction semantics depend on being able to compare transaction ID (XID) numbers: a row version with an insertion XID greater than the current transaction's XID is "in the future" and should not be visible to the current transaction. But since transaction IDs have limited size (32 bits) a cluster that runs for a long time (more than 4 billion transactions) would suffer transaction ID wraparound: the XID counter wraps around to zero, and all of a sudden transactions that were in the past appear to be in the future — which means their output become invisible. In short, catastrophic data loss. (Actually the data is still there, but that's cold comfort if you cannot get at it.) To avoid this, it is necessary to vacuum every table in every database at least once every two billion transactions.

The reason that periodic vacuuming solves the problem is that PostgreSQL reserves a special XID as FrozenXID. This XID does not follow the normal XID comparison rules and is always considered older than every normal XID. Normal XIDs are compared using modulo-232 arithmetic. This means that for every normal XID, there are two billion XIDs that are "older" and two billion that are "newer"; another way to say it is that the normal XID space is circular with no endpoint. Therefore, once a row version has been created with a particular normal XID, the row version will appear to be "in the past" for the next two billion transactions, no matter which normal XID we are talking about. If the row version still exists after more than two billion transactions, it will suddenly appear to be in the future. To prevent this, old row versions must be reassigned the XID FrozenXID sometime before they reach the two-billion-transactions-old mark. Once they are assigned this special XID, they will appear to be "in the past" to all normal transactions regardless of wraparound issues, and so such row versions will be valid until deleted, no matter how long that is. This reassignment of old XIDs is handled by VACUUM.

vacuum_freeze_min_age controls how old an XID value has to be before it's replaced with FrozenXID. Larger values of this setting preserve transactional information longer, while smaller values increase the number of transactions that can elapse before the table must be vacuumed again.

VACUUM normally skips pages that don't have any dead row versions, but those pages might still have row versions with old XID values. To ensure all old XIDs have been replaced by FrozenXID, a scan of the whole table is needed. vacuum_freeze_table_age controls when VACUUM does that: a whole table sweep is forced if the table hasn't been fully scanned for vacuum_freeze_table_age minus vacuum_freeze_min_age transactions. Setting it to 0 forces VACUUM to always scan all pages, effectively ignoring the visibility map.

The maximum time that a table can go unvacuumed is two billion transactions minus the vacuum_freeze_min_age value at the time VACUUM last scanned the whole table. If it were to go unvacuumed for longer than that, data loss could result. To ensure that this does not happen, autovacuum is invoked on any table that might contain XIDs older than the age specified by the configuration parameter autovacuum_freeze_max_age. (This will happen even if autovacuum is disabled.)

This implies that if a table is not otherwise vacuumed, autovacuum will be invoked on it approximately once every autovacuum_freeze_max_age minus vacuum_freeze_min_age transactions. For tables that are regularly vacuumed for space reclamation purposes, this is of little importance. However, for static tables (including tables that receive inserts, but no updates or deletes), there is no need to vacuum for space reclamation, so it can be useful to try to maximize the interval between forced autovacuums on very large static tables. Obviously one can do this either by increasing autovacuum_freeze_max_age or decreasing vacuum_freeze_min_age.

The effective maximum for vacuum_freeze_table_age is 0.95 * autovacuum_freeze_max_age; a setting higher than that will be capped to the maximum. A value higher than autovacuum_freeze_max_age wouldn't make sense because an anti-wraparound autovacuum would be triggered at that point anyway, and the 0.95 multiplier leaves some breathing room to run a manual VACUUM before that happens. As a rule of thumb, vacuum_freeze_table_age should be set to a value somewhat below autovacuum_freeze_max_age, leaving enough gap so that a regularly scheduled VACUUM or an autovacuum triggered by normal delete and update activity is run in that window. Setting it too close could lead to anti-wraparound autovacuums, even though the table was recently vacuumed to reclaim space, whereas lower values lead to more frequent whole-table scans.

The sole disadvantage of increasing autovacuum_freeze_max_age (and vacuum_freeze_table_age along with it) is that the pg_clog subdirectory of the database cluster will take more space, because it must store the commit status of all transactions back to the autovacuum_freeze_max_age horizon. The commit status uses two bits per transaction, so if autovacuum_freeze_max_age is set to its maximum allowed value of two billion, pg_clog can be expected to grow to about half a gigabyte. If this is trivial compared to your total database size, setting autovacuum_freeze_max_age to its maximum allowed value is recommended. Otherwise, set it depending on what you are willing to allow for pg_clog storage. (The default, 200 million transactions, translates to about 50MB of pg_clog storage.)

One disadvantage of decreasing vacuum_freeze_min_age is that it might cause VACUUM to do useless work: changing a table row's XID to FrozenXID is a waste of time if the row is modified soon thereafter (causing it to acquire a new XID). So the setting should be large enough that rows are not frozen until they are unlikely to change any more. Another disadvantage of decreasing this setting is that details about exactly which transaction inserted or modified a row will be lost sooner. This information sometimes comes in handy, particularly when trying to analyze what went wrong after a database failure. For these two reasons, decreasing this setting is not recommended except for completely static tables.

To track the age of the oldest XIDs in a database, VACUUM stores XID statistics in the system tables pg_class and pg_database. In particular, the relfrozenxid column of a table's pg_class row contains the freeze cutoff XID that was used by the last whole-table VACUUM for that table. All normal XIDs older than this cutoff XID are guaranteed to have been replaced by FrozenXID within the table. Similarly, the datfrozenxid column of a database's pg_database row is a lower bound on the normal XIDs appearing in that database — it is just the minimum of the per-table relfrozenxid values within the database. A convenient way to examine this information is to execute queries such as:

SELECT c.oid::regclass as table_name,
       greatest(age(c.relfrozenxid),age(t.relfrozenxid)) as age
FROM pg_class c
LEFT JOIN pg_class t ON c.reltoastrelid = t.oid
WHERE c.relkind = 'r';

SELECT datname, age(datfrozenxid) FROM pg_database;

The age column measures the number of transactions from the cutoff XID to the current transaction's XID.

VACUUM normally only scans pages that have been modified since the last vacuum, but relfrozenxid can only be advanced when the whole table is scanned. The whole table is scanned when relfrozenxid is more than vacuum_freeze_table_age transactions old, when VACUUM's FREEZE option is used, or when all pages happen to require vacuuming to remove dead row versions. When VACUUM scans the whole table, after it's finished age(relfrozenxid) should be a little more than the vacuum_freeze_min_age setting that was used (more by the number of transactions started since the VACUUM started). If no whole-table-scanning VACUUM is issued on the table until autovacuum_freeze_max_age is reached, an autovacuum will soon be forced for the table.

If for some reason autovacuum fails to clear old XIDs from a table, the system will begin to emit warning messages like this when the database's oldest XIDs reach ten million transactions from the wraparound point:

WARNING:  database "mydb" must be vacuumed within 177009986 transactions
HINT:  To avoid a database shutdown, execute a database-wide VACUUM in "mydb".

(A manual VACUUM should fix the problem, as suggested by the hint; but note that the VACUUM must be performed by a superuser, else it will fail to process system catalogs and thus not be able to advance the database's datfrozenxid.) If these warnings are ignored, the system will shut down and refuse to start any new transactions once there are fewer than 1 million transactions left until wraparound:

ERROR:  database is not accepting commands to avoid wraparound data loss in database "mydb"
HINT:  Stop the postmaster and use a standalone backend to VACUUM in "mydb".

The 1-million-transaction safety margin exists to let the administrator recover without data loss, by manually executing the required VACUUM commands. However, since the system will not execute commands once it has gone into the safety shutdown mode, the only way to do this is to stop the server and use a single-user backend to execute VACUUM. The shutdown mode is not enforced by a single-user backend. See the postgres reference page for details about using a single-user backend.

23.1.5. The Autovacuum Daemon

PostgreSQL has an optional but highly recommended feature called autovacuum, whose purpose is to automate the execution of VACUUM and ANALYZE commands. When enabled, autovacuum checks for tables that have had a large number of inserted, updated or deleted tuples. These checks use the statistics collection facility; therefore, autovacuum cannot be used unless track_counts is set to true. In the default configuration, autovacuuming is enabled and the related configuration parameters are appropriately set.

The "autovacuum daemon" actually consists of multiple processes. There is a persistent daemon process, called the autovacuum launcher, which is in charge of starting autovacuum worker processes for all databases. The launcher will distribute the work across time, attempting to start one worker within each database every autovacuum_naptime seconds. (Therefore, if the installation has N databases, a new worker will be launched every autovacuum_naptime/N seconds.) A maximum of autovacuum_max_workers worker processes are allowed to run at the same time. If there are more than autovacuum_max_workers databases to be processed, the next database will be processed as soon as the first worker finishes. Each worker process will check each table within its database and execute VACUUM and/or ANALYZE as needed.

If several large tables all become eligible for vacuuming in a short amount of time, all autovacuum workers might become occupied with vacuuming those tables for a long period. This would result in other tables and databases not being vacuumed until a worker became available. There is no limit on how many workers might be in a single database, but workers do try to avoid repeating work that has already been done by other workers. Note that the number of running workers does not count towards max_connections or superuser_reserved_connections limits.

Tables whose relfrozenxid value is more than autovacuum_freeze_max_age transactions old are always vacuumed (this also applies to those tables whose freeze max age has been modified via storage parameters; see below). Otherwise, if the number of tuples obsoleted since the last VACUUM exceeds the "vacuum threshold", the table is vacuumed. The vacuum threshold is defined as:

vacuum threshold = vacuum base threshold + vacuum scale factor * number of tuples

where the vacuum base threshold is autovacuum_vacuum_threshold, the vacuum scale factor is autovacuum_vacuum_scale_factor, and the number of tuples is pg_class.reltuples. The number of obsolete tuples is obtained from the statistics collector; it is a semi-accurate count updated by each UPDATE and DELETE operation. (It is only semi-accurate because some information might be lost under heavy load.) If the relfrozenxid value of the table is more than vacuum_freeze_table_age transactions old, the whole table is scanned to freeze old tuples and advance relfrozenxid, otherwise only pages that have been modified since the last vacuum are scanned.

For analyze, a similar condition is used: the threshold, defined as:

analyze threshold = analyze base threshold + analyze scale factor * number of tuples

is compared to the total number of tuples inserted, updated, or deleted since the last ANALYZE.

Temporary tables cannot be accessed by autovacuum. Therefore, appropriate vacuum and analyze operations should be performed via session SQL commands.

The default thresholds and scale factors are taken from postgresql.conf, but it is possible to override them on a table-by-table basis; see Storage Parameters for more information. If a setting has been changed via storage parameters, that value is used; otherwise the global settings are used. See Section 18.10 for more details on the global settings.

Besides the base threshold values and scale factors, there are six more autovacuum parameters that can be set for each table via storage parameters. The first parameter, autovacuum_enabled, can be set to false to instruct the autovacuum daemon to skip that particular table entirely. In this case autovacuum will only touch the table if it must do so to prevent transaction ID wraparound. Another two parameters, autovacuum_vacuum_cost_delay and autovacuum_vacuum_cost_limit, are used to set table-specific values for the cost-based vacuum delay feature (see Section 18.4.3). autovacuum_freeze_min_age, autovacuum_freeze_max_age and autovacuum_freeze_table_age are used to set values for vacuum_freeze_min_age, autovacuum_freeze_max_age and vacuum_freeze_table_age respectively.

When multiple workers are running, the cost delay parameters are "balanced" among all the running workers, so that the total I/O impact on the system is the same regardless of the number of workers actually running. However, any workers processing tables whose autovacuum_vacuum_cost_delay or autovacuum_vacuum_cost_limit have been set are not considered in the balancing algorithm.

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Routine Reindexing

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23.2. Routine Reindexing

In some situations it is worthwhile to rebuild indexes periodically with the REINDEX command.

B-tree index pages that have become completely empty are reclaimed for re-use. However, there is still a possibility of inefficient use of space: if all but a few index keys on a page have been deleted, the page remains allocated. Therefore, a usage pattern in which most, but not all, keys in each range are eventually deleted will see poor use of space. For such usage patterns, periodic reindexing is recommended.

The potential for bloat in non-B-tree indexes has not been well researched. It is a good idea to periodically monitor the index's physical size when using any non-B-tree index type.

Also, for B-tree indexes, a freshly-constructed index is slightly faster to access than one that has been updated many times because logically adjacent pages are usually also physically adjacent in a newly built index. (This consideration does not apply to non-B-tree indexes.) It might be worthwhile to reindex periodically just to improve access speed.

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Log File Maintenance

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23.3. Log File Maintenance

It is a good idea to save the database server's log output somewhere, rather than just discarding it via /dev/null. The log output is invaluable when diagnosing problems. However, the log output tends to be voluminous (especially at higher debug levels) so you won't want to save it indefinitely. You need to rotate the log files so that new log files are started and old ones removed after a reasonable period of time.

If you simply direct the stderr of postgres into a file, you will have log output, but the only way to truncate the log file is to stop and restart the server. This might be acceptable if you are using PostgreSQL in a development environment, but few production servers would find this behavior acceptable.

A better approach is to send the server's stderr output to some type of log rotation program. There is a built-in log rotation facility, which you can use by setting the configuration parameter logging_collector to true in postgresql.conf. The control parameters for this program are described in Section 18.8.1. You can also use this approach to capture the log data in machine readable CSV (comma-separated values) format.

Alternatively, you might prefer to use an external log rotation program if you have one that you are already using with other server software. For example, the rotatelogs tool included in the Apache distribution can be used with PostgreSQL. To do this, just pipe the server's stderr output to the desired program. If you start the server with pg_ctl, then stderr is already redirected to stdout, so you just need a pipe command, for example:

pg_ctl start | rotatelogs /var/log/pgsql_log 86400

Another production-grade approach to managing log output is to send it to syslog and let syslog deal with file rotation. To do this, set the configuration parameter log_destination to syslog (to log to syslog only) in postgresql.conf. Then you can send a SIGHUP signal to the syslog daemon whenever you want to force it to start writing a new log file. If you want to automate log rotation, the logrotate program can be configured to work with log files from syslog.

On many systems, however, syslog is not very reliable, particularly with large log messages; it might truncate or drop messages just when you need them the most. Also, on Linux, syslog will flush each message to disk, yielding poor performance. (You can use a "-" at the start of the file name in the syslog configuration file to disable syncing.)

Note that all the solutions described above take care of starting new log files at configurable intervals, but they do not handle deletion of old, no-longer-useful log files. You will probably want to set up a batch job to periodically delete old log files. Another possibility is to configure the rotation program so that old log files are overwritten cyclically.

pgFouine is an external project that does sophisticated log file analysis. check_postgres provides Nagios alerts when important messages appear in the log files, as well as detection of many other extraordinary conditions.

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Backup and Restore

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Chapter 24. Backup and Restore

Table of Contents
24.1. SQL Dump
24.1.1. Restoring the Dump
24.1.2. Using pg_dumpall
24.1.3. Handling Large Databases
24.2. File System Level Backup
24.3. Continuous Archiving and Point-in-Time Recovery (PITR)
24.3.1. Setting Up WAL Archiving
24.3.2. Making a Base Backup
24.3.3. Recovering Using a Continuous Archive Backup
24.3.4. Timelines
24.3.5. Tips and Examples
24.3.6. Caveats

As with everything that contains valuable data, PostgreSQL databases should be backed up regularly. While the procedure is essentially simple, it is important to have a clear understanding of the underlying techniques and assumptions.

There are three fundamentally different approaches to backing up PostgreSQL data:

  • SQL dump

  • File system level backup

  • Continuous archiving

Each has its own strengths and weaknesses; each is discussed in turn in the following sections.

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SQL Dump

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24.1. SQL Dump

The idea behind this dump method is to generate a text file with SQL commands that, when fed back to the server, will recreate the database in the same state as it was at the time of the dump. PostgreSQL provides the utility program pg_dump for this purpose. The basic usage of this command is:

pg_dump dbname > outfile

As you see, pg_dump writes its result to the standard output. We will see below how this can be useful.

pg_dump is a regular PostgreSQL client application (albeit a particularly clever one). This means that you can perform this backup procedure from any remote host that has access to the database. But remember that pg_dump does not operate with special permissions. In particular, it must have read access to all tables that you want to back up, so in practice you almost always have to run it as a database superuser.

To specify which database server pg_dump should contact, use the command line options -h host and -p port. The default host is the local host or whatever your PGHOST environment variable specifies. Similarly, the default port is indicated by the PGPORT environment variable or, failing that, by the compiled-in default. (Conveniently, the server will normally have the same compiled-in default.)

Like any other PostgreSQL client application, pg_dump will by default connect with the database user name that is equal to the current operating system user name. To override this, either specify the -U option or set the environment variable PGUSER. Remember that pg_dump connections are subject to the normal client authentication mechanisms (which are described in Chapter 19).

An important advantage of pg_dump over the other backup methods described later is that pg_dump's output can generally be re-loaded into newer versions of PostgreSQL, whereas file-level backups and continuous archiving are both extremely server-version-specific. pg_dump is also the only method that will work when transferring a database to a different machine architecture, such as going from a 32-bit to a 64-bit server.

Dumps created by pg_dump are internally consistent, meaning, the dump represents a snapshot of the database at the time pg_dump began running. pg_dump does not block other operations on the database while it is working. (Exceptions are those operations that need to operate with an exclusive lock, such as most forms of ALTER TABLE.)

Important: If your database schema relies on OIDs (for instance, as foreign keys) you must instruct pg_dump to dump the OIDs as well. To do this, use the -o command-line option.

24.1.1. Restoring the Dump

The text files created by pg_dump are intended to be read in by the psql program. The general command form to restore a dump is

psql dbname < infile

where infile is the file output by the pg_dump command. The database dbname will not be created by this command, so you must create it yourself from template0 before executing psql (e.g., with createdb -T template0 dbname). psql supports options similar to pg_dump for specifying the database server to connect to and the user name to use. See the psql reference page for more information.

Before restoring an SQL dump, all the users who own objects or were granted permissions on objects in the dumped database must already exist. If they do not, the restore will fail to recreate the objects with the original ownership and/or permissions. (Sometimes this is what you want, but usually it is not.)

By default, the psql script will continue to execute after an SQL error is encountered. You might wish to run psql with the ON_ERROR_STOP variable set to alter that behavior and have psql exit with an exit status of 3 if an SQL error occurs:

psql --set ON_ERROR_STOP=on dbname < infile

Either way, you will only have a partially restored database. Alternatively, you can specify that the whole dump should be restored as a single transaction, so the restore is either fully completed or fully rolled back. This mode can be specified by passing the -1 or --single-transaction command-line options to psql. When using this mode, be aware that even a minor error can rollback a restore that has already run for many hours. However, that might still be preferable to manually cleaning up a complex database after a partially restored dump.

The ability of pg_dump and psql to write to or read from pipes makes it possible to dump a database directly from one server to another, for example:

pg_dump -h host1 dbname | psql -h host2 dbname

Important: The dumps produced by pg_dump are relative to template0. This means that any languages, procedures, etc. added via template1 will also be dumped by pg_dump. As a result, when restoring, if you are using a customized template1, you must create the empty database from template0, as in the example above.

After restoring a backup, it is wise to run ANALYZE on each database so the query optimizer has useful statistics; see Section 23.1.3 and Section 23.1.5 for more information. For more advice on how to load large amounts of data into PostgreSQL efficiently, refer to Section 14.4.

24.1.2. Using pg_dumpall

pg_dump dumps only a single database at a time, and it does not dump information about roles or tablespaces (because those are cluster-wide rather than per-database). To support convenient dumping of the entire contents of a database cluster, the pg_dumpall program is provided. pg_dumpall backs up each database in a given cluster, and also preserves cluster-wide data such as role and tablespace definitions. The basic usage of this command is:

pg_dumpall > outfile

The resulting dump can be restored with psql:

psql -f infile postgres

(Actually, you can specify any existing database name to start from, but if you are loading into an empty cluster then postgres should usually be used.) It is always necessary to have database superuser access when restoring a pg_dumpall dump, as that is required to restore the role and tablespace information. If you use tablespaces, make sure that the tablespace paths in the dump are appropriate for the new installation.

pg_dumpall works by emitting commands to re-create roles, tablespaces, and empty databases, then invoking pg_dump for each database. This means that while each database will be internally consistent, the snapshots of different databases might not be exactly in-sync.

24.1.3. Handling Large Databases

Some operating systems have maximum file size limits that cause problems when creating large pg_dump output files. Fortunately, pg_dump can write to the standard output, so you can use standard Unix tools to work around this potential problem. There are several possible methods:

Use compressed dumps. You can use your favorite compression program, for example gzip:

pg_dump dbname | gzip > filename.gz

Reload with:

gunzip -c filename.gz | psql dbname

or:

cat filename.gz | gunzip | psql dbname

Use split. The split command allows you to split the output into smaller files that are acceptable in size to the underlying file system. For example, to make chunks of 1 megabyte:

pg_dump dbname | split -b 1m - filename

Reload with:

cat filename* | psql dbname

Use pg_dump's custom dump format. If PostgreSQL was built on a system with the zlib compression library installed, the custom dump format will compress data as it writes it to the output file. This will produce dump file sizes similar to using gzip, but it has the added advantage that tables can be restored selectively. The following command dumps a database using the custom dump format:

pg_dump -Fc dbname > filename

A custom-format dump is not a script for psql, but instead must be restored with pg_restore, for example:

pg_restore -d dbname filename

See the pg_dump and pg_restore reference pages for details.

For very large databases, you might need to combine split with one of the other two approaches.

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File System Level Backup

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24.2. File System Level Backup

An alternative backup strategy is to directly copy the files that PostgreSQL uses to store the data in the database; Section 17.2 explains where these files are located. You can use whatever method you prefer for doing file system backups; for example:

tar -cf backup.tar /usr/local/pgsql/data

There are two restrictions, however, which make this method impractical, or at least inferior to the pg_dump method:

  1. The database server must be shut down in order to get a usable backup. Half-way measures such as disallowing all connections will not work (in part because tar and similar tools do not take an atomic snapshot of the state of the file system, but also because of internal buffering within the server). Information about stopping the server can be found in Section 17.5. Needless to say, you also need to shut down the server before restoring the data.

  2. If you have dug into the details of the file system layout of the database, you might be tempted to try to back up or restore only certain individual tables or databases from their respective files or directories. This will not work because the information contained in these files is not usable without the commit log files, pg_clog/*, which contain the commit status of all transactions. A table file is only usable with this information. Of course it is also impossible to restore only a table and the associated pg_clog data because that would render all other tables in the database cluster useless. So file system backups only work for complete backup and restoration of an entire database cluster.

An alternative file-system backup approach is to make a "consistent snapshot" of the data directory, if the file system supports that functionality (and you are willing to trust that it is implemented correctly). The typical procedure is to make a "frozen snapshot" of the volume containing the database, then copy the whole data directory (not just parts, see above) from the snapshot to a backup device, then release the frozen snapshot. This will work even while the database server is running. However, a backup created in this way saves the database files in a state as if the database server was not properly shut down; therefore, when you start the database server on the backed-up data, it will think the previous server instance crashed and will replay the WAL log. This is not a problem; just be aware of it (and be sure to include the WAL files in your backup). You can perform a CHECKPOINT before taking the snapshot to reduce recovery time.

If your database is spread across multiple file systems, there might not be any way to obtain exactly-simultaneous frozen snapshots of all the volumes. For example, if your data files and WAL log are on different disks, or if tablespaces are on different file systems, it might not be possible to use snapshot backup because the snapshots must be simultaneous. Read your file system documentation very carefully before trusting the consistent-snapshot technique in such situations.

If simultaneous snapshots are not possible, one option is to shut down the database server long enough to establish all the frozen snapshots. Another option is to perform a continuous archiving base backup (Section 24.3.2) because such backups are immune to file system changes during the backup. This requires enabling continuous archiving just during the backup process; restore is done using continuous archive recovery (Section 24.3.3).

Another option is to use rsync to perform a file system backup. This is done by first running rsync while the database server is running, then shutting down the database server just long enough to do a second rsync. The second rsync will be much quicker than the first, because it has relatively little data to transfer, and the end result will be consistent because the server was down. This method allows a file system backup to be performed with minimal downtime.

Note that a file system backup will typically be larger than an SQL dump. (pg_dump does not need to dump the contents of indexes for example, just the commands to recreate them.) However, taking a file system backup might be faster.

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Continuous Archiving and Point-in-Time Recovery (PITR)

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24.3. Continuous Archiving and Point-in-Time Recovery (PITR)

At all times, PostgreSQL maintains a write ahead log (WAL) in the pg_xlog/ subdirectory of the cluster's data directory. The log records every change made to the database's data files. This log exists primarily for crash-safety purposes: if the system crashes, the database can be restored to consistency by "replaying" the log entries made since the last checkpoint. However, the existence of the log makes it possible to use a third strategy for backing up databases: we can combine a file-system-level backup with backup of the WAL files. If recovery is needed, we restore the file system backup and then replay from the backed-up WAL files to bring the system to a current state. This approach is more complex to administer than either of the previous approaches, but it has some significant benefits:

  • We do not need a perfectly consistent file system backup as the starting point. Any internal inconsistency in the backup will be corrected by log replay (this is not significantly different from what happens during crash recovery). So we do not need a file system snapshot capability, just tar or a similar archiving tool.

  • Since we can combine an indefinitely long sequence of WAL files for replay, continuous backup can be achieved simply by continuing to archive the WAL files. This is particularly valuable for large databases, where it might not be convenient to take a full backup frequently.

  • It is not necessary to replay the WAL entries all the way to the end. We could stop the replay at any point and have a consistent snapshot of the database as it was at that time. Thus, this technique supports point-in-time recovery: it is possible to restore the database to its state at any time since your base backup was taken.

  • If we continuously feed the series of WAL files to another machine that has been loaded with the same base backup file, we have a warm standby system: at any point we can bring up the second machine and it will have a nearly-current copy of the database.

Note: pg_dump and pg_dumpall do not produce file-system-level backups and cannot be used as part of a continuous-archiving solution. Such dumps are logical and do not contain enough information to be used by WAL replay.

As with the plain file-system-backup technique, this method can only support restoration of an entire database cluster, not a subset. Also, it requires a lot of archival storage: the base backup might be bulky, and a busy system will generate many megabytes of WAL traffic that have to be archived. Still, it is the preferred backup technique in many situations where high reliability is needed.

To recover successfully using continuous archiving (also called "online backup" by many database vendors), you need a continuous sequence of archived WAL files that extends back at least as far as the start time of your backup. So to get started, you should set up and test your procedure for archiving WAL files before you take your first base backup. Accordingly, we first discuss the mechanics of archiving WAL files.

24.3.1. Setting Up WAL Archiving

In an abstract sense, a running PostgreSQL system produces an indefinitely long sequence of WAL records. The system physically divides this sequence into WAL segment files, which are normally 16MB apiece (although the segment size can be altered when building PostgreSQL). The segment files are given numeric names that reflect their position in the abstract WAL sequence. When not using WAL archiving, the system normally creates just a few segment files and then "recycles" them by renaming no-longer-needed segment files to higher segment numbers. It's assumed that segment files whose contents precede the checkpoint-before-last are no longer of interest and can be recycled.

When archiving WAL data, we need to capture the contents of each segment file once it is filled, and save that data somewhere before the segment file is recycled for reuse. Depending on the application and the available hardware, there could be many different ways of "saving the data somewhere": we could copy the segment files to an NFS-mounted directory on another machine, write them onto a tape drive (ensuring that you have a way of identifying the original name of each file), or batch them together and burn them onto CDs, or something else entirely. To provide the database administrator with flexibility, PostgreSQL tries not to make any assumptions about how the archiving will be done. Instead, PostgreSQL lets the administrator specify a shell command to be executed to copy a completed segment file to wherever it needs to go. The command could be as simple as a cp, or it could invoke a complex shell script — it's all up to you.

To enable WAL archiving, set the wal_level configuration parameter to archive (or hot_standby), archive_mode to on, and specify the shell command to use in the archive_command configuration parameter. In practice these settings will always be placed in the postgresql.conf file. In archive_command, %p is replaced by the path name of the file to archive, while %f is replaced by only the file name. (The path name is relative to the current working directory, i.e., the cluster's data directory.) Use %% if you need to embed an actual % character in the command. The simplest useful command is something like:

archive_command = 'test ! -f /mnt/server/archivedir/%f && cp %p /mnt/server/archivedir/%f'  # Unix
archive_command = 'copy "%p" "C:\\server\\archivedir\\%f"'  # Windows

which will copy archivable WAL segments to the directory /mnt/server/archivedir. (This is an example, not a recommendation, and might not work on all platforms.) After the %p and %f parameters have been replaced, the actual command executed might look like this:

test ! -f /mnt/server/archivedir/00000001000000A900000065 && cp pg_xlog/00000001000000A900000065 /mnt/server/archivedir/00000001000000A900000065

A similar command will be generated for each new file to be archived.

The archive command will be executed under the ownership of the same user that the PostgreSQL server is running as. Since the series of WAL files being archived contains effectively everything in your database, you will want to be sure that the archived data is protected from prying eyes; for example, archive into a directory that does not have group or world read access.

It is important that the archive command return zero exit status if and only if it succeeds. Upon getting a zero result, PostgreSQL will assume that the file has been successfully archived, and will remove or recycle it. However, a nonzero status tells PostgreSQL that the file was not archived; it will try again periodically until it succeeds.

The archive command should generally be designed to refuse to overwrite any pre-existing archive file. This is an important safety feature to preserve the integrity of your archive in case of administrator error (such as sending the output of two different servers to the same archive directory).

It is advisable to test your proposed archive command to ensure that it indeed does not overwrite an existing file, and that it returns nonzero status in this case. The example command above for Unix ensures this by including a separate test step. On some Unix platforms, cp has switches such as -i that can be used to do the same thing less verbosely, but you should not rely on these without verifying that the right exit status is returned. (In particular, GNU cp will return status zero when -i is used and the target file already exists, which is not the desired behavior.)

While designing your archiving setup, consider what will happen if the archive command fails repeatedly because some aspect requires operator intervention or the archive runs out of space. For example, this could occur if you write to tape without an autochanger; when the tape fills, nothing further can be archived until the tape is swapped. You should ensure that any error condition or request to a human operator is reported appropriately so that the situation can be resolved reasonably quickly. The pg_xlog/ directory will continue to fill with WAL segment files until the situation is resolved. (If the file system containing pg_xlog/ fills up, PostgreSQL will do a PANIC shutdown. No committed transactions will be lost, but the database will remain offline until you free some space.)

The speed of the archiving command is unimportant as long as it can keep up with the average rate at which your server generates WAL data. Normal operation continues even if the archiving process falls a little behind. If archiving falls significantly behind, this will increase the amount of data that would be lost in the event of a disaster. It will also mean that the pg_xlog/ directory will contain large numbers of not-yet-archived segment files, which could eventually exceed available disk space. You are advised to monitor the archiving process to ensure that it is working as you intend.

In writing your archive command, you should assume that the file names to be archived can be up to 64 characters long and can contain any combination of ASCII letters, digits, and dots. It is not necessary to preserve the original relative path (%p) but it is necessary to preserve the file name (%f).

Note that although WAL archiving will allow you to restore any modifications made to the data in your PostgreSQL database, it will not restore changes made to configuration files (that is, postgresql.conf, pg_hba.conf and pg_ident.conf), since those are edited manually rather than through SQL operations. You might wish to keep the configuration files in a location that will be backed up by your regular file system backup procedures. See Section 18.2 for how to relocate the configuration files.

The archive command is only invoked on completed WAL segments. Hence, if your server generates only little WAL traffic (or has slack periods where it does so), there could be a long delay between the completion of a transaction and its safe recording in archive storage. To put a limit on how old unarchived data can be, you can set archive_timeout to force the server to switch to a new WAL segment file at least that often. Note that archived files that are archived early due to a forced switch are still the same length as completely full files. It is therefore unwise to set a very short archive_timeout — it will bloat your archive storage. archive_timeout settings of a minute or so are usually reasonable.

Also, you can force a segment switch manually with pg_switch_xlog if you want to ensure that a just-finished transaction is archived as soon as possible. Other utility functions related to WAL management are listed in Table 9-57.

When wal_level is minimal some SQL commands are optimized to avoid WAL logging, as described in Section 14.4.7. If archiving or streaming replication were turned on during execution of one of these statements, WAL would not contain enough information for archive recovery. (Crash recovery is unaffected.) For this reason, wal_level can only be changed at server start. However, archive_command can be changed with a configuration file reload. If you wish to temporarily stop archiving, one way to do it is to set archive_command to the empty string (''). This will cause WAL files to accumulate in pg_xlog/ until a working archive_command is re-established.

24.3.2. Making a Base Backup

The procedure for making a base backup is relatively simple:

  1. Ensure that WAL archiving is enabled and working.

  2. Connect to the database as a superuser and issue the command:

    SELECT pg_start_backup('label');

    where label is any string you want to use to uniquely identify this backup operation. (One good practice is to use the full path where you intend to put the backup dump file.) pg_start_backup creates a backup label file, called backup_label, in the cluster directory with information about your backup, including the start time and label string.

    It does not matter which database within the cluster you connect to to issue this command. You can ignore the result returned by the function; but if it reports an error, deal with that before proceeding.

    By default, pg_start_backup can take a long time to finish. This is because it performs a checkpoint, and the I/O required for the checkpoint will be spread out over a significant period of time, by default half your inter-checkpoint interval (see the configuration parameter checkpoint_completion_target). This is usually what you want, because it minimizes the impact on query processing. If you want to start the backup as soon as possible, use:

    SELECT pg_start_backup('label', true);

    This forces the checkpoint to be done as quickly as possible.

  3. Perform the backup, using any convenient file-system-backup tool such as tar or cpio (not pg_dump or pg_dumpall). It is neither necessary nor desirable to stop normal operation of the database while you do this.

  4. Again connect to the database as a superuser, and issue the command:

    SELECT pg_stop_backup();

    This terminates the backup mode and performs an automatic switch to the next WAL segment. The reason for the switch is to arrange for the last WAL segment file written during the backup interval to be ready to archive.

  5. Once the WAL segment files active during the backup are archived, you are done. The file identified by pg_stop_backup's result is the last segment that is required to form a complete set of backup files. If archive_mode is enabled, pg_stop_backup does not return until the last segment has been archived. Archiving of these files happens automatically since you have already configured archive_command. In most cases this happens quickly, but you are advised to monitor your archive system to ensure there are no delays. If the archive process has fallen behind because of failures of the archive command, it will keep retrying until the archive succeeds and the backup is complete. If you wish to place a time limit on the execution of pg_stop_backup, set an appropriate statement_timeout value.

You can also use the pg_basebackup tool to take the backup, instead of manually copying the files. This tool will do the equivalent of pg_start_backup(), copy and pg_stop_backup() steps automatically, and transfers the backup over a regular PostgreSQL connection using the replication protocol, instead of requiring file system level access. pg_basebackup does not interfere with file system level backups taken using pg_start_backup()/pg_stop_backup().

Some file system backup tools emit warnings or errors if the files they are trying to copy change while the copy proceeds. When taking a base backup of an active database, this situation is normal and not an error. However, you need to ensure that you can distinguish complaints of this sort from real errors. For example, some versions of rsync return a separate exit code for "vanished source files", and you can write a driver script to accept this exit code as a non-error case. Also, some versions of GNU tar return an error code indistinguishable from a fatal error if a file was truncated while tar was copying it. Fortunately, GNU tar versions 1.16 and later exit with 1 if a file was changed during the backup, and 2 for other errors.

It is not necessary to be concerned about the amount of time elapsed between pg_start_backup and the start of the actual backup, nor between the end of the backup and pg_stop_backup; a few minutes' delay won't hurt anything. (However, if you normally run the server with full_page_writes disabled, you might notice a drop in performance between pg_start_backup and pg_stop_backup, since full_page_writes is effectively forced on during backup mode.) You must ensure that these steps are carried out in sequence, without any possible overlap, or you will invalidate the backup.

Be certain that your backup dump includes all of the files under the database cluster directory (e.g., /usr/local/pgsql/data). If you are using tablespaces that do not reside underneath this directory, be careful to include them as well (and be sure that your backup dump archives symbolic links as links, otherwise the restore will corrupt your tablespaces).

You can, however, omit from the backup dump the files within the cluster's pg_xlog/ subdirectory. This slight adjustment is worthwhile because it reduces the risk of mistakes when restoring. This is easy to arrange if pg_xlog/ is a symbolic link pointing to someplace outside the cluster directory, which is a common setup anyway for performance reasons. You might also want to exclude postmaster.pid and postmaster.opts, which record information about the running postmaster, not about the postmaster which will eventually use this backup. (These files can confuse pg_ctl.)

To make use of the backup, you will need to keep all the WAL segment files generated during and after the file system backup. To aid you in doing this, the pg_stop_backup function creates a backup history file that is immediately stored into the WAL archive area. This file is named after the first WAL segment file that you need for the file system backup. For example, if the starting WAL file is 0000000100001234000055CD the backup history file will be named something like 0000000100001234000055CD.007C9330.backup. (The second part of the file name stands for an exact position within the WAL file, and can ordinarily be ignored.) Once you have safely archived the file system backup and the WAL segment files used during the backup (as specified in the backup history file), all archived WAL segments with names numerically less are no longer needed to recover the file system backup and can be deleted. However, you should consider keeping several backup sets to be absolutely certain that you can recover your data.

The backup history file is just a small text file. It contains the label string you gave to pg_start_backup, as well as the starting and ending times and WAL segments of the backup. If you used the label to identify the associated dump file, then the archived history file is enough to tell you which dump file to restore.

Since you have to keep around all the archived WAL files back to your last base backup, the interval between base backups should usually be chosen based on how much storage you want to expend on archived WAL files. You should also consider how long you are prepared to spend recovering, if recovery should be necessary — the system will have to replay all those WAL segments, and that could take awhile if it has been a long time since the last base backup.

It's also worth noting that the pg_start_backup function makes a file named backup_label in the database cluster directory, which is removed by pg_stop_backup. This file will of course be archived as a part of your backup dump file. The backup label file includes the label string you gave to pg_start_backup, as well as the time at which pg_start_backup was run, and the name of the starting WAL file. In case of confusion it is therefore possible to look inside a backup dump file and determine exactly which backup session the dump file came from.

It is also possible to make a backup dump while the server is stopped. In this case, you obviously cannot use pg_start_backup or pg_stop_backup, and you will therefore be left to your own devices to keep track of which backup dump is which and how far back the associated WAL files go. It is generally better to follow the continuous archiving procedure above.

24.3.3. Recovering Using a Continuous Archive Backup

Okay, the worst has happened and you need to recover from your backup. Here is the procedure:

  1. Stop the server, if it's running.

  2. If you have the space to do so, copy the whole cluster data directory and any tablespaces to a temporary location in case you need them later. Note that this precaution will require that you have enough free space on your system to hold two copies of your existing database. If you do not have enough space, you should at least save the contents of the cluster's pg_xlog subdirectory, as it might contain logs which were not archived before the system went down.

  3. Remove all existing files and subdirectories under the cluster data directory and under the root directories of any tablespaces you are using.

  4. Restore the database files from your file system backup. Be sure that they are restored with the right ownership (the database system user, not root!) and with the right permissions. If you are using tablespaces, you should verify that the symbolic links in pg_tblspc/ were correctly restored.

  5. Remove any files present in pg_xlog/; these came from the file system backup and are therefore probably obsolete rather than current. If you didn't archive pg_xlog/ at all, then recreate it with proper permissions, being careful to ensure that you re-establish it as a symbolic link if you had it set up that way before.

  6. If you have unarchived WAL segment files that you saved in step 2, copy them into pg_xlog/. (It is best to copy them, not move them, so you still have the unmodified files if a problem occurs and you have to start over.)

  7. Create a recovery command file recovery.conf in the cluster data directory (see Chapter 26). You might also want to temporarily modify pg_hba.conf to prevent ordinary users from connecting until you are sure the recovery was successful.

  8. Start the server. The server will go into recovery mode and proceed to read through the archived WAL files it needs. Should the recovery be terminated because of an external error, the server can simply be restarted and it will continue recovery. Upon completion of the recovery process, the server will rename recovery.conf to recovery.done (to prevent accidentally re-entering recovery mode later) and then commence normal database operations.

  9. Inspect the contents of the database to ensure you have recovered to the desired state. If not, return to step 1. If all is well, allow your users to connect by restoring pg_hba.conf to normal.

The key part of all this is to set up a recovery configuration file that describes how you want to recover and how far the recovery should run. You can use recovery.conf.sample (normally located in the installation's share/ directory) as a prototype. The one thing that you absolutely must specify in recovery.conf is the restore_command, which tells PostgreSQL how to retrieve archived WAL file segments. Like the archive_command, this is a shell command string. It can contain %f, which is replaced by the name of the desired log file, and %p, which is replaced by the path name to copy the log file to. (The path name is relative to the current working directory, i.e., the cluster's data directory.) Write %% if you need to embed an actual % character in the command. The simplest useful command is something like:

restore_command = 'cp /mnt/server/archivedir/%f %p'

which will copy previously archived WAL segments from the directory /mnt/server/archivedir. Of course, you can use something much more complicated, perhaps even a shell script that requests the operator to mount an appropriate tape.

It is important that the command return nonzero exit status on failure. The command will be called requesting files that are not present in the archive; it must return nonzero when so asked. This is not an error condition. Not all of the requested files will be WAL segment files; you should also expect requests for files with a suffix of .backup or .history. Also be aware that the base name of the %p path will be different from %f; do not expect them to be interchangeable.

WAL segments that cannot be found in the archive will be sought in pg_xlog/; this allows use of recent un-archived segments. However, segments that are available from the archive will be used in preference to files in pg_xlog/. The system will not overwrite the existing contents of pg_xlog/ when retrieving archived files.

Normally, recovery will proceed through all available WAL segments, thereby restoring the database to the current point in time (or as close as possible given the available WAL segments). Therefore, a normal recovery will end with a "file not found" message, the exact text of the error message depending upon your choice of restore_command. You may also see an error message at the start of recovery for a file named something like 00000001.history. This is also normal and does not indicate a problem in simple recovery situations; see Section 24.3.4 for discussion.

If you want to recover to some previous point in time (say, right before the junior DBA dropped your main transaction table), just specify the required stopping point in recovery.conf. You can specify the stop point, known as the "recovery target", either by date/time, named restore point or by completion of a specific transaction ID. As of this writing only the date/time and named restore point options are very usable, since there are no tools to help you identify with any accuracy which transaction ID to use.

Note: The stop point must be after the ending time of the base backup, i.e., the end time of pg_stop_backup. You cannot use a base backup to recover to a time when that backup was in progress. (To recover to such a time, you must go back to your previous base backup and roll forward from there.)

If recovery finds corrupted WAL data, recovery will halt at that point and the server will not start. In such a case the recovery process could be re-run from the beginning, specifying a "recovery target" before the point of corruption so that recovery can complete normally. If recovery fails for an external reason, such as a system crash or if the WAL archive has become inaccessible, then the recovery can simply be restarted and it will restart almost from where it failed. Recovery restart works much like checkpointing in normal operation: the server periodically forces all its state to disk, and then updates the pg_control file to indicate that the already-processed WAL data need not be scanned again.

24.3.4. Timelines

The ability to restore the database to a previous point in time creates some complexities that are akin to science-fiction stories about time travel and parallel universes. For example, in the original history of the database, suppose you dropped a critical table at 5:15PM on Tuesday evening, but didn't realize your mistake until Wednesday noon. Unfazed, you get out your backup, restore to the point-in-time 5:14PM Tuesday evening, and are up and running. In this history of the database universe, you never dropped the table. But suppose you later realize this wasn't such a great idea, and would like to return to sometime Wednesday morning in the original history. You won't be able to if, while your database was up-and-running, it overwrote some of the WAL segment files that led up to the time you now wish you could get back to. Thus, to avoid this, you need to distinguish the series of WAL records generated after you've done a point-in-time recovery from those that were generated in the original database history.

To deal with this problem, PostgreSQL has a notion of timelines. Whenever an archive recovery completes, a new timeline is created to identify the series of WAL records generated after that recovery. The timeline ID number is part of WAL segment file names so a new timeline does not overwrite the WAL data generated by previous timelines. It is in fact possible to archive many different timelines. While that might seem like a useless feature, it's often a lifesaver. Consider the situation where you aren't quite sure what point-in-time to recover to, and so have to do several point-in-time recoveries by trial and error until you find the best place to branch off from the old history. Without timelines this process would soon generate an unmanageable mess. With timelines, you can recover to any prior state, including states in timeline branches that you abandoned earlier.

Every time a new timeline is created, PostgreSQL creates a "timeline history" file that shows which timeline it branched off from and when. These history files are necessary to allow the system to pick the right WAL segment files when recovering from an archive that contains multiple timelines. Therefore, they are archived into the WAL archive area just like WAL segment files. The history files are just small text files, so it's cheap and appropriate to keep them around indefinitely (unlike the segment files which are large). You can, if you like, add comments to a history file to record your own notes about how and why this particular timeline was created. Such comments will be especially valuable when you have a thicket of different timelines as a result of experimentation.

The default behavior of recovery is to recover along the same timeline that was current when the base backup was taken. If you wish to recover into some child timeline (that is, you want to return to some state that was itself generated after a recovery attempt), you need to specify the target timeline ID in recovery.conf. You cannot recover into timelines that branched off earlier than the base backup.

24.3.5. Tips and Examples

Some tips for configuring continuous archiving are given here.

24.3.5.1. Standalone Hot Backups

It is possible to use PostgreSQL's backup facilities to produce standalone hot backups. These are backups that cannot be used for point-in-time recovery, yet are typically much faster to backup and restore than pg_dump dumps. (They are also much larger than pg_dump dumps, so in some cases the speed advantage might be negated.)

To prepare for standalone hot backups, set wal_level to archive (or hot_standby), archive_mode to on, and set up an archive_command that performs archiving only when a switch file exists. For example:

archive_command = 'test ! -f /var/lib/pgsql/backup_in_progress || (test ! -f /var/lib/pgsql/archive/%f && cp %p /var/lib/pgsql/archive/%f)'

This command will perform archiving when /var/lib/pgsql/backup_in_progress exists, and otherwise silently return zero exit status (allowing PostgreSQL to recycle the unwanted WAL file).

With this preparation, a backup can be taken using a script like the following:

touch /var/lib/pgsql/backup_in_progress
psql -c "select pg_start_backup('hot_backup');"
tar -cf /var/lib/pgsql/backup.tar /var/lib/pgsql/data/
psql -c "select pg_stop_backup();"
rm /var/lib/pgsql/backup_in_progress
tar -rf /var/lib/pgsql/backup.tar /var/lib/pgsql/archive/

The switch file /var/lib/pgsql/backup_in_progress is created first, enabling archiving of completed WAL files to occur. After the backup the switch file is removed. Archived WAL files are then added to the backup so that both base backup and all required WAL files are part of the same tar file. Please remember to add error handling to your backup scripts.

24.3.5.2. Compressed Archive Logs

If archive storage size is a concern, use pg_compresslog, http://pglesslog.projects.postgresql.org, to remove unnecessary full_page_writes and trailing space from the WAL files. You can then use gzip to further compress the output of pg_compresslog:

archive_command = 'pg_compresslog %p - | gzip > /var/lib/pgsql/archive/%f'

You will then need to use gunzip and pg_decompresslog during recovery:

restore_command = 'gunzip < /mnt/server/archivedir/%f | pg_decompresslog - %p'

24.3.5.3. archive_command Scripts

Many people choose to use scripts to define their archive_command, so that their postgresql.conf entry looks very simple:

archive_command = 'local_backup_script.sh "%p" "%f"'

Using a separate script file is advisable any time you want to use more than a single command in the archiving process. This allows all complexity to be managed within the script, which can be written in a popular scripting language such as bash or perl.

Examples of requirements that might be solved within a script include:

  • Copying data to secure off-site data storage

  • Batching WAL files so that they are transferred every three hours, rather than one at a time

  • Interfacing with other backup and recovery software

  • Interfacing with monitoring software to report errors

Tip: When using an archive_command script, it's desirable to enable logging_collector. Any messages written to stderr from the script will then appear in the database server log, allowing complex configurations to be diagnosed easily if they fail.

24.3.6. Caveats

At this writing, there are several limitations of the continuous archiving technique. These will probably be fixed in future releases:

  • Operations on hash indexes are not presently WAL-logged, so replay will not update these indexes. This will mean that any new inserts will be ignored by the index, updated rows will apparently disappear and deleted rows will still retain pointers. In other words, if you modify a table with a hash index on it then you will get incorrect query results on a standby server. When recovery completes it is recommended that you manually REINDEX each such index after completing a recovery operation.

  • If a CREATE DATABASE command is executed while a base backup is being taken, and then the template database that the CREATE DATABASE copied is modified while the base backup is still in progress, it is possible that recovery will cause those modifications to be propagated into the created database as well. This is of course undesirable. To avoid this risk, it is best not to modify any template databases while taking a base backup.

  • CREATE TABLESPACE commands are WAL-logged with the literal absolute path, and will therefore be replayed as tablespace creations with the same absolute path. This might be undesirable if the log is being replayed on a different machine. It can be dangerous even if the log is being replayed on the same machine, but into a new data directory: the replay will still overwrite the contents of the original tablespace. To avoid potential gotchas of this sort, the best practice is to take a new base backup after creating or dropping tablespaces.

It should also be noted that the default WAL format is fairly bulky since it includes many disk page snapshots. These page snapshots are designed to support crash recovery, since we might need to fix partially-written disk pages. Depending on your system hardware and software, the risk of partial writes might be small enough to ignore, in which case you can significantly reduce the total volume of archived logs by turning off page snapshots using the full_page_writes parameter. (Read the notes and warnings in Chapter 29 before you do so.) Turning off page snapshots does not prevent use of the logs for PITR operations. An area for future development is to compress archived WAL data by removing unnecessary page copies even when full_page_writes is on. In the meantime, administrators might wish to reduce the number of page snapshots included in WAL by increasing the checkpoint interval parameters as much as feasible.

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High Availability, Load Balancing, and Replication

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Chapter 25. High Availability, Load Balancing, and Replication

Table of Contents
25.1. Comparison of Different Solutions
25.2. Log-Shipping Standby Servers
25.2.1. Planning
25.2.2. Standby Server Operation
25.2.3. Preparing the Master for Standby Servers
25.2.4. Setting Up a Standby Server
25.2.5. Streaming Replication
25.2.6. Synchronous Replication
25.3. Failover
25.4. Alternative Method for Log Shipping
25.4.1. Implementation
25.4.2. Record-based Log Shipping
25.5. Hot Standby
25.5.1. User's Overview
25.5.2. Handling Query Conflicts
25.5.3. Administrator's Overview
25.5.4. Hot Standby Parameter Reference
25.5.5. Caveats

Database servers can work together to allow a second server to take over quickly if the primary server fails (high availability), or to allow several computers to serve the same data (load balancing). Ideally, database servers could work together seamlessly. Web servers serving static web pages can be combined quite easily by merely load-balancing web requests to multiple machines. In fact, read-only database servers can be combined relatively easily too. Unfortunately, most database servers have a read/write mix of requests, and read/write servers are much harder to combine. This is because though read-only data needs to be placed on each server only once, a write to any server has to be propagated to all servers so that future read requests to those servers return consistent results.

This synchronization problem is the fundamental difficulty for servers working together. Because there is no single solution that eliminates the impact of the sync problem for all use cases, there are multiple solutions. Each solution addresses this problem in a different way, and minimizes its impact for a specific workload.

Some solutions deal with synchronization by allowing only one server to modify the data. Servers that can modify data are called read/write, master or primary servers. Servers that track changes in the master are called standby or slave servers. A standby server that cannot be connected to until it is promoted to a master server is called a warm standby server, and one that can accept connections and serves read-only queries is called a hot standby server.

Some solutions are synchronous, meaning that a data-modifying transaction is not considered committed until all servers have committed the transaction. This guarantees that a failover will not lose any data and that all load-balanced servers will return consistent results no matter which server is queried. In contrast, asynchronous solutions allow some delay between the time of a commit and its propagation to the other servers, opening the possibility that some transactions might be lost in the switch to a backup server, and that load balanced servers might return slightly stale results. Asynchronous communication is used when synchronous would be too slow.

Solutions can also be categorized by their granularity. Some solutions can deal only with an entire database server, while others allow control at the per-table or per-database level.

Performance must be considered in any choice. There is usually a trade-off between functionality and performance. For example, a fully synchronous solution over a slow network might cut performance by more than half, while an asynchronous one might have a minimal performance impact.

The remainder of this section outlines various failover, replication, and load balancing solutions. A glossary is also available.

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Comparison of Different Solutions

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25.1. Comparison of Different Solutions

Shared Disk Failover

Shared disk failover avoids synchronization overhead by having only one copy of the database. It uses a single disk array that is shared by multiple servers. If the main database server fails, the standby server is able to mount and start the database as though it were recovering from a database crash. This allows rapid failover with no data loss.

Shared hardware functionality is common in network storage devices. Using a network file system is also possible, though care must be taken that the file system has full POSIX behavior (see Section 17.2.2). One significant limitation of this method is that if the shared disk array fails or becomes corrupt, the primary and standby servers are both nonfunctional. Another issue is that the standby server should never access the shared storage while the primary server is running.

File System (Block-Device) Replication

A modified version of shared hardware functionality is file system replication, where all changes to a file system are mirrored to a file system residing on another computer. The only restriction is that the mirroring must be done in a way that ensures the standby server has a consistent copy of the file system — specifically, writes to the standby must be done in the same order as those on the master. DRBD is a popular file system replication solution for Linux.

Warm and Hot Standby Using Point-In-Time Recovery (PITR)

Warm and hot standby servers can be kept current by reading a stream of write-ahead log (WAL) records. If the main server fails, the standby contains almost all of the data of the main server, and can be quickly made the new master database server. This is asynchronous and can only be done for the entire database server.

A PITR standby server can be implemented using file-based log shipping (Section 25.2) or streaming replication (see Section 25.2.5), or a combination of both. For information on hot standby, see Section 25.5.

Trigger-Based Master-Standby Replication

A master-standby replication setup sends all data modification queries to the master server. The master server asynchronously sends data changes to the standby server. The standby can answer read-only queries while the master server is running. The standby server is ideal for data warehouse queries.

Slony-I is an example of this type of replication, with per-table granularity, and support for multiple standby servers. Because it updates the standby server asynchronously (in batches), there is possible data loss during fail over.

Statement-Based Replication Middleware

With statement-based replication middleware, a program intercepts every SQL query and sends it to one or all servers. Each server operates independently. Read-write queries must be sent to all servers, so that every server receives any changes. But read-only queries can be sent to just one server, allowing the read workload to be distributed among them.

If queries are simply broadcast unmodified, functions like random(), CURRENT_TIMESTAMP, and sequences can have different values on different servers. This is because each server operates independently, and because SQL queries are broadcast (and not actual modified rows). If this is unacceptable, either the middleware or the application must query such values from a single server and then use those values in write queries. Another option is to use this replication option with a traditional master-standby setup, i.e. data modification queries are sent only to the master and are propagated to the standby servers via master-standby replication, not by the replication middleware. Care must also be taken that all transactions either commit or abort on all servers, perhaps using two-phase commit (PREPARE TRANSACTION and COMMIT PREPARED. Pgpool-II and Continuent Tungsten are examples of this type of replication.

Asynchronous Multimaster Replication

For servers that are not regularly connected, like laptops or remote servers, keeping data consistent among servers is a challenge. Using asynchronous multimaster replication, each server works independently, and periodically communicates with the other servers to identify conflicting transactions. The conflicts can be resolved by users or conflict resolution rules. Bucardo is an example of this type of replication.

Synchronous Multimaster Replication

In synchronous multimaster replication, each server can accept write requests, and modified data is transmitted from the original server to every other server before each transaction commits. Heavy write activity can cause excessive locking, leading to poor performance. In fact, write performance is often worse than that of a single server. Read requests can be sent to any server. Some implementations use shared disk to reduce the communication overhead. Synchronous multimaster replication is best for mostly read workloads, though its big advantage is that any server can accept write requests — there is no need to partition workloads between master and standby servers, and because the data changes are sent from one server to another, there is no problem with non-deterministic functions like random().

PostgreSQL does not offer this type of replication, though PostgreSQL two-phase commit (PREPARE TRANSACTION and COMMIT PREPARED) can be used to implement this in application code or middleware.

Commercial Solutions

Because PostgreSQL is open source and easily extended, a number of companies have taken PostgreSQL and created commercial closed-source solutions with unique failover, replication, and load balancing capabilities.

Table 25-1 summarizes the capabilities of the various solutions listed above.

Table 25-1. High Availability, Load Balancing, and Replication Feature Matrix

Feature | Shared Disk Failover | File System Replication | Hot/Warm Standby Using PITR | Trigger-Based Master-Standby Replication | Statement-Based Replication Middleware | Asynchronous Multimaster Replication | Synchronous Multimaster Replication
Most Common Implementation | NAS | DRBD | PITR | Slony | pgpool-II | Bucardo |
Communication Method | shared disk | disk blocks | WAL | table rows | SQL | table rows | table rows and row locks
No special hardware required |  | • | • | • | • | • | •
Allows multiple master servers |  |  |  |  | • | • | •
No master server overhead | • |  | • |  | • |  |
No waiting for multiple servers | • |  | • | • |  | • |
Master failure will never lose data | • | • |  |  | • |  | •
Standby accept read-only queries |  |  | Hot only | • | • | • | •
Per-table granularity |  |  |  | • |  | • | •
No conflict resolution necessary | • | • | • | • |  |  | •

There are a few solutions that do not fit into the above categories:

Data Partitioning

Data partitioning splits tables into data sets. Each set can be modified by only one server. For example, data can be partitioned by offices, e.g., London and Paris, with a server in each office. If queries combining London and Paris data are necessary, an application can query both servers, or master/standby replication can be used to keep a read-only copy of the other office's data on each server.

Multiple-Server Parallel Query Execution

Many of the above solutions allow multiple servers to handle multiple queries, but none allow a single query to use multiple servers to complete faster. This solution allows multiple servers to work concurrently on a single query. It is usually accomplished by splitting the data among servers and having each server execute its part of the query and return results to a central server where they are combined and returned to the user. Pgpool-II has this capability. Also, this can be implemented using the PL/Proxy tool set.

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Log-Shipping Standby Servers

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25.2. Log-Shipping Standby Servers

Continuous archiving can be used to create a high availability (HA) cluster configuration with one or more standby servers ready to take over operations if the primary server fails. This capability is widely referred to as warm standby or log shipping.

The primary and standby server work together to provide this capability, though the servers are only loosely coupled. The primary server operates in continuous archiving mode, while each standby server operates in continuous recovery mode, reading the WAL files from the primary. No changes to the database tables are required to enable this capability, so it offers low administration overhead compared to some other replication solutions. This configuration also has relatively low performance impact on the primary server.

Directly moving WAL records from one database server to another is typically described as log shipping. PostgreSQL implements file-based log shipping by transferring WAL records one file (WAL segment) at a time. WAL files (16MB) can be shipped easily and cheaply over any distance, whether it be to an adjacent system, another system at the same site, or another system on the far side of the globe. The bandwidth required for this technique varies according to the transaction rate of the primary server. Record-based log shipping is more granular and streams WAL changes incrementally over a network connection (see Section 25.2.5).

It should be noted that log shipping is asynchronous, i.e., the WAL records are shipped after transaction commit. As a result, there is a window for data loss should the primary server suffer a catastrophic failure; transactions not yet shipped will be lost. The size of the data loss window in file-based log shipping can be limited by use of the archive_timeout parameter, which can be set as low as a few seconds. However such a low setting will substantially increase the bandwidth required for file shipping. Streaming replication (see Section 25.2.5) allows a much smaller window of data loss.

Recovery performance is sufficiently good that the standby will typically be only moments away from full availability once it has been activated. As a result, this is called a warm standby configuration which offers high availability. Restoring a server from an archived base backup and rollforward will take considerably longer, so that technique only offers a solution for disaster recovery, not high availability. A standby server can also be used for read-only queries, in which case it is called a Hot Standby server. See Section 25.5 for more information.

25.2.1. Planning

It is usually wise to create the primary and standby servers so that they are as similar as possible, at least from the perspective of the database server. In particular, the path names associated with tablespaces will be passed across unmodified, so both primary and standby servers must have the same mount paths for tablespaces if that feature is used. Keep in mind that if CREATE TABLESPACE is executed on the primary, any new mount point needed for it must be created on the primary and all standby servers before the command is executed. Hardware need not be exactly the same, but experience shows that maintaining two identical systems is easier than maintaining two dissimilar ones over the lifetime of the application and system. In any case the hardware architecture must be the same — shipping from, say, a 32-bit to a 64-bit system will not work.

In general, log shipping between servers running different major PostgreSQL release levels is not possible. It is the policy of the PostgreSQL Global Development Group not to make changes to disk formats during minor release upgrades, so it is likely that running different minor release levels on primary and standby servers will work successfully. However, no formal support for that is offered and you are advised to keep primary and standby servers at the same release level as much as possible. When updating to a new minor release, the safest policy is to update the standby servers first — a new minor release is more likely to be able to read WAL files from a previous minor release than vice versa.

25.2.2. Standby Server Operation

In standby mode, the server continuously applies WAL received from the master server. The standby server can read WAL from a WAL archive (see restore_command) or directly from the master over a TCP connection (streaming replication). The standby server will also attempt to restore any WAL found in the standby cluster's pg_xlog directory. That typically happens after a server restart, when the standby replays again WAL that was streamed from the master before the restart, but you can also manually copy files to pg_xlog at any time to have them replayed.

At startup, the standby begins by restoring all WAL available in the archive location, calling restore_command. Once it reaches the end of WAL available there and restore_command fails, it tries to restore any WAL available in the pg_xlog directory. If that fails, and streaming replication has been configured, the standby tries to connect to the primary server and start streaming WAL from the last valid record found in archive or pg_xlog. If that fails or streaming replication is not configured, or if the connection is later disconnected, the standby goes back to step 1 and tries to restore the file from the archive again. This loop of retries from the archive, pg_xlog, and via streaming replication goes on until the server is stopped or failover is triggered by a trigger file.

Standby mode is exited and the server switches to normal operation when pg_ctl promote is run or a trigger file is found (trigger_file). Before failover, any WAL immediately available in the archive or in pg_xlog will be restored, but no attempt is made to connect to the master.

25.2.3. Preparing the Master for Standby Servers

Set up continuous archiving on the primary to an archive directory accessible from the standby, as described in Section 24.3. The archive location should be accessible from the standby even when the master is down, i.e. it should reside on the standby server itself or another trusted server, not on the master server.

If you want to use streaming replication, set up authentication on the primary server to allow replication connections from the standby server(s); that is, create a role and provide a suitable entry or entries in pg_hba.conf with the database field set to replication. Also ensure max_wal_senders is set to a sufficiently large value in the configuration file of the primary server.

Take a base backup as described in Section 24.3.2 to bootstrap the standby server.

25.2.4. Setting Up a Standby Server

To set up the standby server, restore the base backup taken from primary server (see Section 24.3.3). Create a recovery command file recovery.conf in the standby's cluster data directory, and turn on standby_mode. Set restore_command to a simple command to copy files from the WAL archive. If you plan to have multiple standby servers for high availability purposes, set recovery_target_timeline to latest, to make the standby server follow the timeline change that occurs at failover to another standby.

Note: Do not use pg_standby or similar tools with the built-in standby mode described here. restore_command should return immediately if the file does not exist; the server will retry the command again if necessary. See Section 25.4 for using tools like pg_standby.

If you want to use streaming replication, fill in primary_conninfo with a libpq connection string, including the host name (or IP address) and any additional details needed to connect to the primary server. If the primary needs a password for authentication, the password needs to be specified in primary_conninfo as well.

If you're setting up the standby server for high availability purposes, set up WAL archiving, connections and authentication like the primary server, because the standby server will work as a primary server after failover.

If you're using a WAL archive, its size can be minimized using the archive_cleanup_command parameter to remove files that are no longer required by the standby server. The pg_archivecleanup utility is designed specifically to be used with archive_cleanup_command in typical single-standby configurations, see pg_archivecleanup. Note however, that if you're using the archive for backup purposes, you need to retain files needed to recover from at least the latest base backup, even if they're no longer needed by the standby.

A simple example of a recovery.conf is:

standby_mode = 'on'
primary_conninfo = 'host=192.168.1.50 port=5432 user=foo password=foopass'
restore_command = 'cp /path/to/archive/%f %p'
archive_cleanup_command = 'pg_archivecleanup /path/to/archive %r'

You can have any number of standby servers, but if you use streaming replication, make sure you set max_wal_senders high enough in the primary to allow them to be connected simultaneously.

25.2.5. Streaming Replication

Streaming replication allows a standby server to stay more up-to-date than is possible with file-based log shipping. The standby connects to the primary, which streams WAL records to the standby as they're generated, without waiting for the WAL file to be filled.

Streaming replication is asynchronous by default (see Section 25.2.6), in which case there is a small delay between committing a transaction in the primary and the changes becoming visible in the standby. This delay is however much smaller than with file-based log shipping, typically under one second assuming the standby is powerful enough to keep up with the load. With streaming replication, archive_timeout is not required to reduce the data loss window.

If you use streaming replication without file-based continuous archiving, you have to set wal_keep_segments in the master to a value high enough to ensure that old WAL segments are not recycled too early, while the standby might still need them to catch up. If the standby falls behind too much, it needs to be reinitialized from a new base backup. If you set up a WAL archive that's accessible from the standby, wal_keep_segments is not required as the standby can always use the archive to catch up.

To use streaming replication, set up a file-based log-shipping standby server as described in Section 25.2. The step that turns a file-based log-shipping standby into streaming replication standby is setting primary_conninfo setting in the recovery.conf file to point to the primary server. Set listen_addresses and authentication options (see pg_hba.conf) on the primary so that the standby server can connect to the replication pseudo-database on the primary server (see Section 25.2.5.1).

On systems that support the keepalive socket option, setting tcp_keepalives_idle, tcp_keepalives_interval and tcp_keepalives_count helps the primary promptly notice a broken connection.

Set the maximum number of concurrent connections from the standby servers (see max_wal_senders for details).

When the standby is started and primary_conninfo is set correctly, the standby will connect to the primary after replaying all WAL files available in the archive. If the connection is established successfully, you will see a walreceiver process in the standby, and a corresponding walsender process in the primary.

25.2.5.1. Authentication

It is very important that the access privileges for replication be set up so that only trusted users can read the WAL stream, because it is easy to extract privileged information from it. Standby servers must authenticate to the primary as an account that has the REPLICATION privilege. So a role with the REPLICATION and LOGIN privileges needs to be created on the primary.

Note: It is recommended that a dedicated user account is used for replication. While the REPLICATION privilege is granted to superuser accounts by default, it is not recommended to use superuser accounts for replication. While REPLICATION privilege gives very high permissions, it does not allow the user to modify any data on the primary system, which the SUPERUSER privilege does.

Client authentication for replication is controlled by a pg_hba.conf record specifying replication in the database field. For example, if the standby is running on host IP 192.168.1.100 and the account name for replication is foo, the administrator can add the following line to the pg_hba.conf file on the primary:

# Allow the user "foo" from host 192.168.1.100 to connect to the primary
# as a replication standby if the user's password is correctly supplied.
#
# TYPE  DATABASE        USER            ADDRESS                 METHOD
host    replication     foo             192.168.1.100/32        md5

The host name and port number of the primary, connection user name, and password are specified in the recovery.conf file. The password can also be set in the ~/.pgpass file on the standby (specify replication in the database field). For example, if the primary is running on host IP 192.168.1.50, port 5432, the account name for replication is foo, and the password is foopass, the administrator can add the following line to the recovery.conf file on the standby:

# The standby connects to the primary that is running on host 192.168.1.50
# and port 5432 as the user "foo" whose password is "foopass".
primary_conninfo = 'host=192.168.1.50 port=5432 user=foo password=foopass'

25.2.5.2. Monitoring

An important health indicator of streaming replication is the amount of WAL records generated in the primary, but not yet applied in the standby. You can calculate this lag by comparing the current WAL write location on the primary with the last WAL location received by the standby. They can be retrieved using pg_current_xlog_location on the primary and the pg_last_xlog_receive_location on the standby, respectively (see Table 9-57 and Table 9-58 for details). The last WAL receive location in the standby is also displayed in the process status of the WAL receiver process, displayed using the ps command (see Section 27.1 for details).

You can retrieve a list of WAL sender processes via the pg_stat_replication view. Large differences between pg_current_xlog_location and sent_location field might indicate that the master server is under heavy load, while differences between sent_location and pg_last_xlog_receive_location on the standby might indicate network delay, or that the standby is under heavy load.

25.2.6. Synchronous Replication

PostgreSQL streaming replication is asynchronous by default. If the primary server crashes then some transactions that were committed may not have been replicated to the standby server, causing data loss. The amount of data loss is proportional to the replication delay at the time of failover.

Synchronous replication offers the ability to confirm that all changes made by a transaction have been transferred to one synchronous standby server. This extends the standard level of durability offered by a transaction commit. This level of protection is referred to as 2-safe replication in computer science theory.

When requesting synchronous replication, each commit of a write transaction will wait until confirmation is received that the commit has been written to the transaction log on disk of both the primary and standby server. The only possibility that data can be lost is if both the primary and the standby suffer crashes at the same time. This can provide a much higher level of durability, though only if the sysadmin is cautious about the placement and management of the two servers. Waiting for confirmation increases the user's confidence that the changes will not be lost in the event of server crashes but it also necessarily increases the response time for the requesting transaction. The minimum wait time is the roundtrip time between primary to standby.

Read only transactions and transaction rollbacks need not wait for replies from standby servers. Subtransaction commits do not wait for responses from standby servers, only top-level commits. Long running actions such as data loading or index building do not wait until the very final commit message. All two-phase commit actions require commit waits, including both prepare and commit.

25.2.6.1. Basic Configuration

Once streaming replication has been configured, configuring synchronous replication requires only one additional configuration step: synchronous_standby_names must be set to a non-empty value. synchronous_commit must also be set to on, but since this is the default value, typically no change is required. This configuration will cause each commit to wait for confirmation that the standby has written the commit record to durable storage, even if that takes a very long time. synchronous_commit can be set by individual users, so can be configured in the configuration file, for particular users or databases, or dynamically by applications, in order to control the durability guarantee on a per-transaction basis.

After a commit record has been written to disk on the primary, the WAL record is then sent to the standby. The standby sends reply messages each time a new batch of WAL data is written to disk, unless wal_receiver_status_interval is set to zero on the standby. If the standby is the first matching standby, as specified in synchronous_standby_names on the primary, the reply messages from that standby will be used to wake users waiting for confirmation that the commit record has been received. These parameters allow the administrator to specify which standby servers should be synchronous standbys. Note that the configuration of synchronous replication is mainly on the master.

Users will stop waiting if a fast shutdown is requested. However, as when using asynchronous replication, the server will does not fully shutdown until all outstanding WAL records are transferred to the currently connected standby servers.

25.2.6.2. Planning for Performance

Synchronous replication usually requires carefully planned and placed standby servers to ensure applications perform acceptably. Waiting doesn't utilise system resources, but transaction locks continue to be held until the transfer is confirmed. As a result, incautious use of synchronous replication will reduce performance for database applications because of increased response times and higher contention.

PostgreSQL allows the application developer to specify the durability level required via replication. This can be specified for the system overall, though it can also be specified for specific users or connections, or even individual transactions.

For example, an application workload might consist of: 10% of changes are important customer details, while 90% of changes are less important data that the business can more easily survive if it is lost, such as chat messages between users.

With synchronous replication options specified at the application level (on the primary) we can offer synchronous replication for the most important changes, without slowing down the bulk of the total workload. Application level options are an important and practical tool for allowing the benefits of synchronous replication for high performance applications.

You should consider that the network bandwidth must be higher than the rate of generation of WAL data.

25.2.6.3. Planning for High Availability

Commits made when synchronous_commit is set to on will wait until the sync standby responds. The response may never occur if the last, or only, standby should crash.

The best solution for avoiding data loss is to ensure you don't lose your last remaining sync standby. This can be achieved by naming multiple potential synchronous standbys using synchronous_standby_names. The first named standby will be used as the synchronous standby. Standbys listed after this will take over the role of synchronous standby if the first one should fail.

When a standby first attaches to the primary, it will not yet be properly synchronized. This is described as catchup mode. Once the lag between standby and primary reaches zero for the first time we move to real-time streaming state. The catch-up duration may be long immediately after the standby has been created. If the standby is shut down, then the catch-up period will increase according to the length of time the standby has been down. The standby is only able to become a synchronous standby once it has reached streaming state.

If primary restarts while commits are waiting for acknowledgement, those waiting transactions will be marked fully committed once the primary database recovers. There is no way to be certain that all standbys have received all outstanding WAL data at time of the crash of the primary. Some transactions may not show as committed on the standby, even though they show as committed on the primary. The guarantee we offer is that the application will not receive explicit acknowledgement of the successful commit of a transaction until the WAL data is known to be safely received by the standby.

If you really do lose your last standby server then you should disable synchronous_standby_names and reload the configuration file on the primary server.

If the primary is isolated from remaining standby servers you should fail over to the best candidate of those other remaining standby servers.

If you need to re-create a standby server while transactions are waiting, make sure that the commands to run pg_start_backup() and pg_stop_backup() are run in a session with synchronous_commit = off, otherwise those requests will wait forever for the standby to appear.

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Comparison of Different Solutions | Up | Failover


Failover

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25.3. Failover

If the primary server fails then the standby server should begin failover procedures.

If the standby server fails then no failover need take place. If the standby server can be restarted, even some time later, then the recovery process can also be restarted immediately, taking advantage of restartable recovery. If the standby server cannot be restarted, then a full new standby server instance should be created.

If the primary server fails and the standby server becomes the new primary, and then the old primary restarts, you must have a mechanism for informing the old primary that it is no longer the primary. This is sometimes known as STONITH (Shoot The Other Node In The Head), which is necessary to avoid situations where both systems think they are the primary, which will lead to confusion and ultimately data loss.

Many failover systems use just two systems, the primary and the standby, connected by some kind of heartbeat mechanism to continually verify the connectivity between the two and the viability of the primary. It is also possible to use a third system (called a witness server) to prevent some cases of inappropriate failover, but the additional complexity might not be worthwhile unless it is set up with sufficient care and rigorous testing.

PostgreSQL does not provide the system software required to identify a failure on the primary and notify the standby database server. Many such tools exist and are well integrated with the operating system facilities required for successful failover, such as IP address migration.

Once failover to the standby occurs, there is only a single server in operation. This is known as a degenerate state. The former standby is now the primary, but the former primary is down and might stay down. To return to normal operation, a standby server must be recreated, either on the former primary system when it comes up, or on a third, possibly new, system. Once complete, the primary and standby can be considered to have switched roles. Some people choose to use a third server to provide backup for the new primary until the new standby server is recreated, though clearly this complicates the system configuration and operational processes.

So, switching from primary to standby server can be fast but requires some time to re-prepare the failover cluster. Regular switching from primary to standby is useful, since it allows regular downtime on each system for maintenance. This also serves as a test of the failover mechanism to ensure that it will really work when you need it. Written administration procedures are advised.

To trigger failover of a log-shipping standby server, run pg_ctl promote or create a trigger file with the file name and path specified by the trigger_file setting in recovery.conf. If you're planning to use pg_ctl promote to fail over, trigger_file is not required. If you're setting up the reporting servers that are only used to offload read-only queries from the primary, not for high availability purposes, you don't need to promote it.

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Alternative Method for Log Shipping

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25.4. Alternative Method for Log Shipping

An alternative to the built-in standby mode described in the previous sections is to use a restore_command that polls the archive location. This was the only option available in versions 8.4 and below. In this setup, set standby_mode off, because you are implementing the polling required for standby operation yourself. See the pg_standby module for a reference implementation of this.

Note that in this mode, the server will apply WAL one file at a time, so if you use the standby server for queries (see Hot Standby), there is a delay between an action in the master and when the action becomes visible in the standby, corresponding the time it takes to fill up the WAL file. archive_timeout can be used to make that delay shorter. Also note that you can't combine streaming replication with this method.

The operations that occur on both primary and standby servers are normal continuous archiving and recovery tasks. The only point of contact between the two database servers is the archive of WAL files that both share: primary writing to the archive, standby reading from the archive. Care must be taken to ensure that WAL archives from separate primary servers do not become mixed together or confused. The archive need not be large if it is only required for standby operation.

The magic that makes the two loosely coupled servers work together is simply a restore_command used on the standby that, when asked for the next WAL file, waits for it to become available from the primary. The restore_command is specified in the recovery.conf file on the standby server. Normal recovery processing would request a file from the WAL archive, reporting failure if the file was unavailable. For standby processing it is normal for the next WAL file to be unavailable, so the standby must wait for it to appear. For files ending in .backup or .history there is no need to wait, and a non-zero return code must be returned. A waiting restore_command can be written as a custom script that loops after polling for the existence of the next WAL file. There must also be some way to trigger failover, which should interrupt the restore_command, break the loop and return a file-not-found error to the standby server. This ends recovery and the standby will then come up as a normal server.

Pseudocode for a suitable restore_command is:

triggered = false;
while (!NextWALFileReady() && !triggered)
{
    sleep(100000L);         /* wait for ~0.1 sec */
    if (CheckForExternalTrigger())
        triggered = true;
}
if (!triggered)
        CopyWALFileForRecovery();

A working example of a waiting restore_command is provided in the pg_standby module. It should be used as a reference on how to correctly implement the logic described above. It can also be extended as needed to support specific configurations and environments.

The method for triggering failover is an important part of planning and design. One potential option is the restore_command command. It is executed once for each WAL file, but the process running the restore_command is created and dies for each file, so there is no daemon or server process, and signals or a signal handler cannot be used. Therefore, the restore_command is not suitable to trigger failover. It is possible to use a simple timeout facility, especially if used in conjunction with a known archive_timeout setting on the primary. However, this is somewhat error prone since a network problem or busy primary server might be sufficient to initiate failover. A notification mechanism such as the explicit creation of a trigger file is ideal, if this can be arranged.

25.4.1. Implementation

The short procedure for configuring a standby server using this alternative method is as follows. For full details of each step, refer to previous sections as noted.

  1. Set up primary and standby systems as nearly identical as possible, including two identical copies of PostgreSQL at the same release level.

  2. Set up continuous archiving from the primary to a WAL archive directory on the standby server. Ensure that archive_mode, archive_command and archive_timeout are set appropriately on the primary (see Section 24.3.1).

  3. Make a base backup of the primary server (see Section 24.3.2), and load this data onto the standby.

  4. Begin recovery on the standby server from the local WAL archive, using a recovery.conf that specifies a restore_command that waits as described previously (see Section 24.3.3).

Recovery treats the WAL archive as read-only, so once a WAL file has been copied to the standby system it can be copied to tape at the same time as it is being read by the standby database server. Thus, running a standby server for high availability can be performed at the same time as files are stored for longer term disaster recovery purposes.

For testing purposes, it is possible to run both primary and standby servers on the same system. This does not provide any worthwhile improvement in server robustness, nor would it be described as HA.

25.4.2. Record-based Log Shipping

It is also possible to implement record-based log shipping using this alternative method, though this requires custom development, and changes will still only become visible to hot standby queries after a full WAL file has been shipped.

An external program can call the pg_xlogfile_name_offset() function (see Section 9.24) to find out the file name and the exact byte offset within it of the current end of WAL. It can then access the WAL file directly and copy the data from the last known end of WAL through the current end over to the standby servers. With this approach, the window for data loss is the polling cycle time of the copying program, which can be very small, and there is no wasted bandwidth from forcing partially-used segment files to be archived. Note that the standby servers' restore_command scripts can only deal with whole WAL files, so the incrementally copied data is not ordinarily made available to the standby servers. It is of use only when the primary dies — then the last partial WAL file is fed to the standby before allowing it to come up. The correct implementation of this process requires cooperation of the restore_command script with the data copying program.

Starting with PostgreSQL version 9.0, you can use streaming replication (see Section 25.2.5) to achieve the same benefits with less effort.

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Hot Standby

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25.5. Hot Standby

Hot Standby is the term used to describe the ability to connect to the server and run read-only queries while the server is in archive recovery or standby mode. This is useful both for replication purposes and for restoring a backup to a desired state with great precision. The term Hot Standby also refers to the ability of the server to move from recovery through to normal operation while users continue running queries and/or keep their connections open.

Running queries in hot standby mode is similar to normal query operation, though there are several usage and administrative differences explained below.

25.5.1. User's Overview

When the hot_standby parameter is set to true on a standby server, it will begin accepting connections once the recovery has brought the system to a consistent state. All such connections are strictly read-only; not even temporary tables may be written.

The data on the standby takes some time to arrive from the primary server so there will be a measurable delay between primary and standby. Running the same query nearly simultaneously on both primary and standby might therefore return differing results. We say that data on the standby is eventually consistent with the primary. Once the commit record for a transaction is replayed on the standby, the changes made by that transaction will be visible to any new snapshots taken on the standby. Snapshots may be taken at the start of each query or at the start of each transaction, depending on the current transaction isolation level. For more details, see Section 13.2.

Transactions started during hot standby may issue the following commands:

  • Query access - SELECT, COPY TO

  • Cursor commands - DECLARE, FETCH, CLOSE

  • Parameters - SHOW, SET, RESET

  • Transaction management commands

    • BEGIN, END, ABORT, START TRANSACTION

    • SAVEPOINT, RELEASE, ROLLBACK TO SAVEPOINT

    • EXCEPTION blocks and other internal subtransactions

  • LOCK TABLE, though only when explicitly in one of these modes: ACCESS SHARE, ROW SHARE or ROW EXCLUSIVE.

  • Plans and resources - PREPARE, EXECUTE, DEALLOCATE, DISCARD

  • Plugins and extensions - LOAD

Transactions started during hot standby will never be assigned a transaction ID and cannot write to the system write-ahead log. Therefore, the following actions will produce error messages:

  • Data Manipulation Language (DML) - INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, COPY FROM, TRUNCATE. Note that there are no allowed actions that result in a trigger being executed during recovery. This restriction applies even to temporary tables, because table rows cannot be read or written without assigning a transaction ID, which is currently not possible in a Hot Standby environment.

  • Data Definition Language (DDL) - CREATE, DROP, ALTER, COMMENT. This restriction applies even to temporary tables, because carrying out these operations would require updating the system catalog tables.

  • SELECT ... FOR SHARE | UPDATE, because row locks cannot be taken without updating the underlying data files.

  • Rules on SELECT statements that generate DML commands.

  • LOCK that explicitly requests a mode higher than ROW EXCLUSIVE MODE.

  • LOCK in short default form, since it requests ACCESS EXCLUSIVE MODE.

  • Transaction management commands that explicitly set non-read-only state:

    • BEGIN READ WRITE, START TRANSACTION READ WRITE

    • SET TRANSACTION READ WRITE, SET SESSION CHARACTERISTICS AS TRANSACTION READ WRITE

    • SET transaction_read_only = off

  • Two-phase commit commands - PREPARE TRANSACTION, COMMIT PREPARED, ROLLBACK PREPARED because even read-only transactions need to write WAL in the prepare phase (the first phase of two phase commit).

  • Sequence updates - nextval(), setval()

  • LISTEN, UNLISTEN, NOTIFY

In normal operation, "read-only" transactions are allowed to update sequences and to use LISTEN, UNLISTEN, and NOTIFY, so Hot Standby sessions operate under slightly tighter restrictions than ordinary read-only sessions. It is possible that some of these restrictions might be loosened in a future release.

During hot standby, the parameter transaction_read_only is always true and may not be changed. But as long as no attempt is made to modify the database, connections during hot standby will act much like any other database connection. If failover or switchover occurs, the database will switch to normal processing mode. Sessions will remain connected while the server changes mode. Once hot standby finishes, it will be possible to initiate read-write transactions (even from a session begun during hot standby).

Users will be able to tell whether their session is read-only by issuing SHOW transaction_read_only. In addition, a set of functions (Table 9-58) allow users to access information about the standby server. These allow you to write programs that are aware of the current state of the database. These can be used to monitor the progress of recovery, or to allow you to write complex programs that restore the database to particular states.

25.5.2. Handling Query Conflicts

The primary and standby servers are in many ways loosely connected. Actions on the primary will have an effect on the standby. As a result, there is potential for negative interactions or conflicts between them. The easiest conflict to understand is performance: if a huge data load is taking place on the primary then this will generate a similar stream of WAL records on the standby, so standby queries may contend for system resources, such as I/O.

There are also additional types of conflict that can occur with Hot Standby. These conflicts are hard conflicts in the sense that queries might need to be canceled and, in some cases, sessions disconnected to resolve them. The user is provided with several ways to handle these conflicts. Conflict cases include:

  • Access Exclusive locks taken on the primary server, including both explicit LOCK commands and various DDL actions, conflict with table accesses in standby queries.

  • Dropping a tablespace on the primary conflicts with standby queries using that tablespace for temporary work files.

  • Dropping a database on the primary conflicts with sessions connected to that database on the standby.

  • Application of a vacuum cleanup record from WAL conflicts with standby transactions whose snapshots can still "see" any of the rows to be removed.

  • Application of a vacuum cleanup record from WAL conflicts with queries accessing the target page on the standby, whether or not the data to be removed is visible.

On the primary server, these cases simply result in waiting; and the user might choose to cancel either of the conflicting actions. However, on the standby there is no choice: the WAL-logged action already occurred on the primary so the standby must not fail to apply it. Furthermore, allowing WAL application to wait indefinitely may be very undesirable, because the standby's state will become increasingly far behind the primary's. Therefore, a mechanism is provided to forcibly cancel standby queries that conflict with to-be-applied WAL records.

An example of the problem situation is an administrator on the primary server running DROP TABLE on a table that is currently being queried on the standby server. Clearly the standby query cannot continue if the DROP TABLE is applied on the standby. If this situation occurred on the primary, the DROP TABLE would wait until the other query had finished. But when DROP TABLE is run on the primary, the primary doesn't have information about what queries are running on the standby, so it will not wait for any such standby queries. The WAL change records come through to the standby while the standby query is still running, causing a conflict. The standby server must either delay application of the WAL records (and everything after them, too) or else cancel the conflicting query so that the DROP TABLE can be applied.

When a conflicting query is short, it's typically desirable to allow it to complete by delaying WAL application for a little bit; but a long delay in WAL application is usually not desirable. So the cancel mechanism has parameters, max_standby_archive_delay and max_standby_streaming_delay, that define the maximum allowed delay in WAL application. Conflicting queries will be canceled once it has taken longer than the relevant delay setting to apply any newly-received WAL data. There are two parameters so that different delay values can be specified for the case of reading WAL data from an archive (i.e., initial recovery from a base backup or "catching up" a standby server that has fallen far behind) versus reading WAL data via streaming replication.

In a standby server that exists primarily for high availability, it's best to set the delay parameters relatively short, so that the server cannot fall far behind the primary due to delays caused by standby queries. However, if the standby server is meant for executing long-running queries, then a high or even infinite delay value may be preferable. Keep in mind however that a long-running query could cause other sessions on the standby server to not see recent changes on the primary, if it delays application of WAL records.

Once the delay specified by max_standby_archive_delay or max_standby_streaming_delay has been exceeded, conflicting queries will be canceled. This usually results just in a cancellation error, although in the case of replaying a DROP DATABASE the entire conflicting session will be terminated. Also, if the conflict is over a lock held by an idle transaction, the conflicting session is terminated (this behavior might change in the future).

Canceled queries may be retried immediately (after beginning a new transaction, of course). Since query cancellation depends on the nature of the WAL records being replayed, a query that was canceled may well succeed if it is executed again.

Keep in mind that the delay parameters are compared to the elapsed time since the WAL data was received by the standby server. Thus, the grace period allowed to any one query on the standby is never more than the delay parameter, and could be considerably less if the standby has already fallen behind as a result of waiting for previous queries to complete, or as a result of being unable to keep up with a heavy update load.

The most common reason for conflict between standby queries and WAL replay is "early cleanup". Normally, PostgreSQL allows cleanup of old row versions when there are no transactions that need to see them to ensure correct visibility of data according to MVCC rules. However, this rule can only be applied for transactions executing on the master. So it is possible that cleanup on the master will remove row versions that are still visible to a transaction on the standby.

Experienced users should note that both row version cleanup and row version freezing will potentially conflict with standby queries. Running a manual VACUUM FREEZE is likely to cause conflicts even on tables with no updated or deleted rows.

Users should be clear that tables that are regularly and heavily updated on the primary server will quickly cause cancellation of longer running queries on the standby. In such cases the setting of a finite value for max_standby_archive_delay or max_standby_streaming_delay can be considered similar to setting statement_timeout.

Remedial possibilities exist if the number of standby-query cancellations is found to be unacceptable. The first option is to set the parameter hot_standby_feedback, which prevents VACUUM from removing recently-dead rows and so cleanup conflicts do not occur. If you do this, you should note that this will delay cleanup of dead rows on the primary, which may result in undesirable table bloat. However, the cleanup situation will be no worse than if the standby queries were running directly on the primary server, and you are still getting the benefit of off-loading execution onto the standby. max_standby_archive_delay must be kept large in this case, because delayed WAL files might already contain entries that conflict with the desired standby queries.

Another option is to increase vacuum_defer_cleanup_age on the primary server, so that dead rows will not be cleaned up as quickly as they normally would be. This will allow more time for queries to execute before they are canceled on the standby, without having to set a high max_standby_streaming_delay. However it is difficult to guarantee any specific execution-time window with this approach, since vacuum_defer_cleanup_age is measured in transactions executed on the primary server.

The number of query cancels and the reason for them can be viewed using the pg_stat_database_conflicts system view on the standby server. The pg_stat_database system view also contains summary information.

25.5.3. Administrator's Overview

If hot_standby is turned on in postgresql.conf and there is a recovery.conf file present, the server will run in Hot Standby mode. However, it may take some time for Hot Standby connections to be allowed, because the server will not accept connections until it has completed sufficient recovery to provide a consistent state against which queries can run. During this period, clients that attempt to connect will be refused with an error message. To confirm the server has come up, either loop trying to connect from the application, or look for these messages in the server logs:

LOG:  entering standby mode

... then some time later ...

LOG:  consistent recovery state reached
LOG:  database system is ready to accept read only connections

Consistency information is recorded once per checkpoint on the primary. It is not possible to enable hot standby when reading WAL written during a period when wal_level was not set to hot_standby on the primary. Reaching a consistent state can also be delayed in the presence of both of these conditions:

  • A write transaction has more than 64 subtransactions

  • Very long-lived write transactions

If you are running file-based log shipping ("warm standby"), you might need to wait until the next WAL file arrives, which could be as long as the archive_timeout setting on the primary.

The setting of some parameters on the standby will need reconfiguration if they have been changed on the primary. For these parameters, the value on the standby must be equal to or greater than the value on the primary. If these parameters are not set high enough then the standby will refuse to start. Higher values can then be supplied and the server restarted to begin recovery again. These parameters are:

  • max_connections

  • max_prepared_transactions

  • max_locks_per_transaction

It is important that the administrator select appropriate settings for max_standby_archive_delay and max_standby_streaming_delay. The best choices vary depending on business priorities. For example if the server is primarily tasked as a High Availability server, then you will want low delay settings, perhaps even zero, though that is a very aggressive setting. If the standby server is tasked as an additional server for decision support queries then it might be acceptable to set the maximum delay values to many hours, or even -1 which means wait forever for queries to complete.

Transaction status "hint bits" written on the primary are not WAL-logged, so data on the standby will likely re-write the hints again on the standby. Thus, the standby server will still perform disk writes even though all users are read-only; no changes occur to the data values themselves. Users will still write large sort temporary files and re-generate relcache info files, so no part of the database is truly read-only during hot standby mode. Note also that writes to remote databases using dblink module, and other operations outside the database using PL functions will still be possible, even though the transaction is read-only locally.

The following types of administration commands are not accepted during recovery mode:

  • Data Definition Language (DDL) - e.g. CREATE INDEX

  • Privilege and Ownership - GRANT, REVOKE, REASSIGN

  • Maintenance commands - ANALYZE, VACUUM, CLUSTER, REINDEX

Again, note that some of these commands are actually allowed during "read only" mode transactions on the primary.

As a result, you cannot create additional indexes that exist solely on the standby, nor statistics that exist solely on the standby. If these administration commands are needed, they should be executed on the primary, and eventually those changes will propagate to the standby.

pg_cancel_backend() will work on user backends, but not the Startup process, which performs recovery. pg_stat_activity does not show an entry for the Startup process, nor do recovering transactions show as active. As a result, pg_prepared_xacts is always empty during recovery. If you wish to resolve in-doubt prepared transactions, view pg_prepared_xacts on the primary and issue commands to resolve transactions there.

pg_locks will show locks held by backends, as normal. pg_locks also shows a virtual transaction managed by the Startup process that owns all AccessExclusiveLocks held by transactions being replayed by recovery. Note that the Startup process does not acquire locks to make database changes, and thus locks other than AccessExclusiveLocks do not show in pg_locks for the Startup process; they are just presumed to exist.

The Nagios plugin check_pgsql will work, because the simple information it checks for exists. The check_postgres monitoring script will also work, though some reported values could give different or confusing results. For example, last vacuum time will not be maintained, since no vacuum occurs on the standby. Vacuums running on the primary do still send their changes to the standby.

WAL file control commands will not work during recovery, e.g. pg_start_backup, pg_switch_xlog etc.

Dynamically loadable modules work, including pg_stat_statements.

Advisory locks work normally in recovery, including deadlock detection. Note that advisory locks are never WAL logged, so it is impossible for an advisory lock on either the primary or the standby to conflict with WAL replay. Nor is it possible to acquire an advisory lock on the primary and have it initiate a similar advisory lock on the standby. Advisory locks relate only to the server on which they are acquired.

Trigger-based replication systems such as Slony, Londiste and Bucardo won't run on the standby at all, though they will run happily on the primary server as long as the changes are not sent to standby servers to be applied. WAL replay is not trigger-based so you cannot relay from the standby to any system that requires additional database writes or relies on the use of triggers.

New OIDs cannot be assigned, though some UUID generators may still work as long as they do not rely on writing new status to the database.

Currently, temporary table creation is not allowed during read only transactions, so in some cases existing scripts will not run correctly. This restriction might be relaxed in a later release. This is both a SQL Standard compliance issue and a technical issue.

DROP TABLESPACE can only succeed if the tablespace is empty. Some standby users may be actively using the tablespace via their temp_tablespaces parameter. If there are temporary files in the tablespace, all active queries are canceled to ensure that temporary files are removed, so the tablespace can be removed and WAL replay can continue.

Running DROP DATABASE or ALTER DATABASE ... SET TABLESPACE on the primary will generate a WAL entry that will cause all users connected to that database on the standby to be forcibly disconnected. This action occurs immediately, whatever the setting of max_standby_streaming_delay. Note that ALTER DATABASE ... RENAME does not disconnect users, which in most cases will go unnoticed, though might in some cases cause a program confusion if it depends in some way upon database name.

In normal (non-recovery) mode, if you issue DROP USER or DROP ROLE for a role with login capability while that user is still connected then nothing happens to the connected user - they remain connected. The user cannot reconnect however. This behavior applies in recovery also, so a DROP USER on the primary does not disconnect that user on the standby.

The statistics collector is active during recovery. All scans, reads, blocks, index usage, etc., will be recorded normally on the standby. Replayed actions will not duplicate their effects on primary, so replaying an insert will not increment the Inserts column of pg_stat_user_tables. The stats file is deleted at the start of recovery, so stats from primary and standby will differ; this is considered a feature, not a bug.

Autovacuum is not active during recovery. It will start normally at the end of recovery.

The background writer is active during recovery and will perform restartpoints (similar to checkpoints on the primary) and normal block cleaning activities. This can include updates of the hint bit information stored on the standby server. The CHECKPOINT command is accepted during recovery, though it performs a restartpoint rather than a new checkpoint.

25.5.4. Hot Standby Parameter Reference

Various parameters have been mentioned above in Section 25.5.2 and Section 25.5.3.

On the primary, parameters wal_level and vacuum_defer_cleanup_age can be used. max_standby_archive_delay and max_standby_streaming_delay have no effect if set on the primary.

On the standby, parameters hot_standby, max_standby_archive_delay and max_standby_streaming_delay can be used. vacuum_defer_cleanup_age has no effect as long as the server remains in standby mode, though it will become relevant if the standby becomes primary.

25.5.5. Caveats

There are several limitations of Hot Standby. These can and probably will be fixed in future releases:

  • Operations on hash indexes are not presently WAL-logged, so replay will not update these indexes.

  • Full knowledge of running transactions is required before snapshots can be taken. Transactions that use large numbers of subtransactions (currently greater than 64) will delay the start of read only connections until the completion of the longest running write transaction. If this situation occurs, explanatory messages will be sent to the server log.

  • Valid starting points for standby queries are generated at each checkpoint on the master. If the standby is shut down while the master is in a shutdown state, it might not be possible to re-enter Hot Standby until the primary is started up, so that it generates further starting points in the WAL logs. This situation isn't a problem in the most common situations where it might happen. Generally, if the primary is shut down and not available anymore, that's likely due to a serious failure that requires the standby being converted to operate as the new primary anyway. And in situations where the primary is being intentionally taken down, coordinating to make sure the standby becomes the new primary smoothly is also standard procedure.

  • At the end of recovery, AccessExclusiveLocks held by prepared transactions will require twice the normal number of lock table entries. If you plan on running either a large number of concurrent prepared transactions that normally take AccessExclusiveLocks, or you plan on having one large transaction that takes many AccessExclusiveLocks, you are advised to select a larger value of max_locks_per_transaction, perhaps as much as twice the value of the parameter on the primary server. You need not consider this at all if your setting of max_prepared_transactions is 0.

  • The Serializable transaction isolation level is not yet available in hot standby. (See Section 13.2.3 and Section 13.4.1 for details.) An attempt to set a transaction to the serializable isolation level in hot standby mode will generate an error.

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Recovery Configuration

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Chapter 26. Recovery Configuration

Table of Contents
26.1. Archive Recovery Settings
26.2. Recovery Target Settings
26.3. Standby Server Settings

This chapter describes the settings available in the recovery.conf file. They apply only for the duration of the recovery. They must be reset for any subsequent recovery you wish to perform. They cannot be changed once recovery has begun.

Settings in recovery.conf are specified in the format name = 'value'. One parameter is specified per line. Hash marks (#) designate the rest of the line as a comment. To embed a single quote in a parameter value, write two quotes ('').

A sample file, share/recovery.conf.sample, is provided in the installation's share/ directory.

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Archive Recovery Settings

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26.1. Archive Recovery Settings

restore_command (string)

The shell command to execute to retrieve an archived segment of the WAL file series. This parameter is required for archive recovery, but optional for streaming replication. Any %f in the string is replaced by the name of the file to retrieve from the archive, and any %p is replaced by the copy destination path name on the server. (The path name is relative to the current working directory, i.e., the cluster's data directory.) Any %r is replaced by the name of the file containing the last valid restart point. That is the earliest file that must be kept to allow a restore to be restartable, so this information can be used to truncate the archive to just the minimum required to support restarting from the current restore. %r is typically only used by warm-standby configurations (see Section 25.2). Write %% to embed an actual % character.

It is important for the command to return a zero exit status only if it succeeds. The command will be asked for file names that are not present in the archive; it must return nonzero when so asked. Examples:

restore_command = 'cp /mnt/server/archivedir/%f "%p"'
restore_command = 'copy "C:\\server\\archivedir\\%f" "%p"'  # Windows

archive_cleanup_command (string)

This optional parameter specifies a shell command that will be executed at every restartpoint. The purpose of archive_cleanup_command is to provide a mechanism for cleaning up old archived WAL files that are no longer needed by the standby server. Any %r is replaced by the name of the file containing the last valid restart point. That is the earliest file that must be kept to allow a restore to be restartable, and so all files earlier than %r may be safely removed. This information can be used to truncate the archive to just the minimum required to support restart from the current restore. The pg_archivecleanup module is often used in archive_cleanup_command for single-standby configurations, for example:

archive_cleanup_command = 'pg_archivecleanup /mnt/server/archivedir %r'

Note however that if multiple standby servers are restoring from the same archive directory, you will need to ensure that you do not delete WAL files until they are no longer needed by any of the servers. archive_cleanup_command would typically be used in a warm-standby configuration (see Section 25.2). Write %% to embed an actual % character in the command.

If the command returns a non-zero exit status then a WARNING log message will be written.

recovery_end_command (string)

This parameter specifies a shell command that will be executed once only at the end of recovery. This parameter is optional. The purpose of the recovery_end_command is to provide a mechanism for cleanup following replication or recovery. Any %r is replaced by the name of the file containing the last valid restart point, like in archive_cleanup_command.

If the command returns a non-zero exit status then a WARNING log message will be written and the database will proceed to start up anyway. An exception is that if the command was terminated by a signal, the database will not proceed with startup.

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Recovery Target Settings

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26.2. Recovery Target Settings

recovery_target_name (string)

This parameter specifies the named restore point, created with pg_create_restore_point() to which recovery will proceed. At most one of recovery_target_name, recovery_target_time or recovery_target_xid can be specified. The default is to recover to the end of the WAL log.

recovery_target_time (timestamp)

This parameter specifies the time stamp up to which recovery will proceed. At most one of recovery_target_time, recovery_target_name or recovery_target_xid can be specified. The default is to recover to the end of the WAL log. The precise stopping point is also influenced by recovery_target_inclusive.

recovery_target_xid (string)

This parameter specifies the transaction ID up to which recovery will proceed. Keep in mind that while transaction IDs are assigned sequentially at transaction start, transactions can complete in a different numeric order. The transactions that will be recovered are those that committed before (and optionally including) the specified one. At most one of recovery_target_xid, recovery_target_name or recovery_target_time can be specified. The default is to recover to the end of the WAL log. The precise stopping point is also influenced by recovery_target_inclusive.

recovery_target_inclusive (boolean)

Specifies whether we stop just after the specified recovery target (true), or just before the recovery target (false). Applies to both recovery_target_time and recovery_target_xid, whichever one is specified for this recovery. This indicates whether transactions having exactly the target commit time or ID, respectively, will be included in the recovery. Default is true.

recovery_target_timeline (string)

Specifies recovering into a particular timeline. The default is to recover along the same timeline that was current when the base backup was taken. Setting this to latest recovers to the latest timeline found in the archive, which is useful in a standby server. Other than that you only need to set this parameter in complex re-recovery situations, where you need to return to a state that itself was reached after a point-in-time recovery. See Section 24.3.4 for discussion.

pause_at_recovery_target (boolean)

Specifies whether recovery should pause when the recovery target is reached. The default is true. This is intended to allow queries to be executed against the database to check if this recovery target is the most desirable point for recovery. The paused state can be resumed by using pg_xlog_replay_resume() (See Table 9-59), which then causes recovery to end. If this recovery target is not the desired stopping point, then shutdown the server, change the recovery target settings to a later target and restart to continue recovery.

This setting has no effect if hot_standby is not enabled, or if no recovery target is set.

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Standby Server Settings

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26.3. Standby Server Settings

standby_mode (boolean)

Specifies whether to start the PostgreSQL server as a standby. If this parameter is on, the server will not stop recovery when the end of archived WAL is reached, but will keep trying to continue recovery by fetching new WAL segments using restore_command and/or by connecting to the primary server as specified by the primary_conninfo setting.

primary_conninfo (string)

Specifies a connection string to be used for the standby server to connect with the primary. This string is in the format accepted by the libpq PQconnectdb function, described in Section 31.1. If any option is unspecified in this string, then the corresponding environment variable (see Section 31.13) is checked. If the environment variable is not set either, then defaults are used.

The connection string should specify the host name (or address) of the primary server, as well as the port number if it is not the same as the standby server's default. Also specify a user name corresponding to a role that has the REPLICATION and LOGIN privileges on the primary (see Section 25.2.5.1). A password needs to be provided too, if the primary demands password authentication. It can be provided in the primary_conninfo string, or in a separate ~/.pgpass file on the standby server (use replication as the database name). Do not specify a database name in the primary_conninfo string.

This setting has no effect if standby_mode is off.

trigger_file (string)

Specifies a trigger file whose presence ends recovery in the standby. Even if this value is not set, you can still promote the standby using pg_ctl promote. This setting has no effect if standby_mode is off.

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Monitoring Database Activity

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Chapter 27. Monitoring Database Activity

Table of Contents
27.1. Standard Unix Tools
27.2. The Statistics Collector
27.2.1. Statistics Collection Configuration
27.2.2. Viewing Collected Statistics
27.3. Viewing Locks
27.4. Dynamic Tracing
27.4.1. Compiling for Dynamic Tracing
27.4.2. Built-in Probes
27.4.3. Using Probes
27.4.4. Defining New Probes

A database administrator frequently wonders, "What is the system doing right now?" This chapter discusses how to find that out.

Several tools are available for monitoring database activity and analyzing performance. Most of this chapter is devoted to describing PostgreSQL's statistics collector, but one should not neglect regular Unix monitoring programs such as ps, top, iostat, and vmstat. Also, once one has identified a poorly-performing query, further investigation might be needed using PostgreSQL's EXPLAIN command. Section 14.1 discusses EXPLAIN and other methods for understanding the behavior of an individual query.

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Standard Unix Tools

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27.1. Standard Unix Tools

On most Unix platforms, PostgreSQL modifies its command title as reported by ps, so that individual server processes can readily be identified. A sample display is

$ ps auxww | grep ^postgres
postgres   960  0.0  1.1  6104 1480 pts/1    SN   13:17   0:00 postgres -i
postgres   963  0.0  1.1  7084 1472 pts/1    SN   13:17   0:00 postgres: writer process
postgres   965  0.0  1.1  6152 1512 pts/1    SN   13:17   0:00 postgres: stats collector process
postgres   998  0.0  2.3  6532 2992 pts/1    SN   13:18   0:00 postgres: tgl runbug 127.0.0.1 idle
postgres  1003  0.0  2.4  6532 3128 pts/1    SN   13:19   0:00 postgres: tgl regression [local] SELECT waiting
postgres  1016  0.1  2.4  6532 3080 pts/1    SN   13:19   0:00 postgres: tgl regression [local] idle in transaction

(The appropriate invocation of ps varies across different platforms, as do the details of what is shown. This example is from a recent Linux system.) The first process listed here is the master server process. The command arguments shown for it are the same ones used when it was launched. The next two processes are background worker processes automatically launched by the master process. (The "stats collector" process will not be present if you have set the system not to start the statistics collector.) Each of the remaining processes is a server process handling one client connection. Each such process sets its command line display in the form

postgres: user database host activity

The user, database, and (client) host items remain the same for the life of the client connection, but the activity indicator changes. The activity can be idle (i.e., waiting for a client command), idle in transaction (waiting for client inside a BEGIN block), or a command type name such as SELECT. Also, waiting is appended if the server process is presently waiting on a lock held by another session. In the above example we can infer that process 1003 is waiting for process 1016 to complete its transaction and thereby release some lock.

If you have turned off update_process_title then the activity indicator is not updated; the process title is set only once when a new process is launched. On some platforms this saves a measurable amount of per-command overhead; on others it's insignificant.

Tip: Solaris requires special handling. You must use /usr/ucb/ps, rather than /bin/ps. You also must use two w flags, not just one. In addition, your original invocation of the postgres command must have a shorter ps status display than that provided by each server process. If you fail to do all three things, the ps output for each server process will be the original postgres command line.

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The Statistics Collector

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27.2. The Statistics Collector

PostgreSQL's statistics collector is a subsystem that supports collection and reporting of information about server activity. Presently, the collector can count accesses to tables and indexes in both disk-block and individual-row terms. It also tracks the total number of rows in each table, and information about vacuum and analyze actions for each table. It can also count calls to user-defined functions and the total time spent in each one.

PostgreSQL also supports reporting of the exact command currently being executed by other server processes. This facility is independent of the collector process.

27.2.1. Statistics Collection Configuration

Since collection of statistics adds some overhead to query execution, the system can be configured to collect or not collect information. This is controlled by configuration parameters that are normally set in postgresql.conf. (See Chapter 18 for details about setting configuration parameters.)

The parameter track_counts controls whether statistics are collected about table and index accesses.

The parameter track_functions enables tracking of usage of user-defined functions.

The parameter track_activities enables monitoring of the current command being executed by any server process.

Normally these parameters are set in postgresql.conf so that they apply to all server processes, but it is possible to turn them on or off in individual sessions using the SET command. (To prevent ordinary users from hiding their activity from the administrator, only superusers are allowed to change these parameters with SET.)

The statistics collector transmits the collected information to backends (including autovacuum) through temporary files. These files are stored in the pg_stat_tmp subdirectory. When the postmaster shuts down, a permanent copy of the statistics data is stored in the global subdirectory. For increased performance, the parameter stats_temp_directory can be pointed at a RAM-based file system, decreasing physical I/O requirements.

27.2.2. Viewing Collected Statistics

Several predefined views, listed in Table 27-1, are available to show the results of statistics collection. Alternatively, one can build custom views using the underlying statistics functions.

When using the statistics to monitor current activity, it is important to realize that the information does not update instantaneously. Each individual server process transmits new statistical counts to the collector just before going idle; so a query or transaction still in progress does not affect the displayed totals. Also, the collector itself emits a new report at most once per PGSTAT_STAT_INTERVAL milliseconds (500 unless altered while building the server). So the displayed information lags behind actual activity. However, current-query information collected by track_activities is always up-to-date.

Another important point is that when a server process is asked to display any of these statistics, it first fetches the most recent report emitted by the collector process and then continues to use this snapshot for all statistical views and functions until the end of its current transaction. So the statistics will show static information as long as you continue the current transaction. Similarly, information about the current queries of all sessions is collected when any such information is first requested within a transaction, and the same information will be displayed throughout the transaction. This is a feature, not a bug, because it allows you to perform several queries on the statistics and correlate the results without worrying that the numbers are changing underneath you. But if you want to see new results with each query, be sure to do the queries outside any transaction block. Alternatively, you can invoke pg_stat_clear_snapshot(), which will discard the current transaction's statistics snapshot (if any). The next use of statistical information will cause a new snapshot to be fetched.

A transaction can also see its own statistics (as yet untransmitted to the collector) in the views pg_stat_xact_all_tables, pg_stat_xact_sys_tables, pg_stat_xact_user_tables, and pg_stat_xact_user_functions, or via these views' underlying functions. These numbers do not act as stated above; instead they update continuously throughout the transaction.

Table 27-1. Standard Statistics Views

View Name | Description
pg_stat_activity | One row per server process, showing database OID, database name, process ID, user OID, user name, application name, client's address, host name (if available), and port number, times at which the server process, current transaction, and current query began execution, process's waiting status, and text of the current query. The columns that report data on the current query are available unless the parameter track_activities has been turned off. Furthermore, these columns are only visible if the user examining the view is a superuser or the same as the user owning the process being reported on. The client's host name will be available only if log_hostname is set or if the user's host name needed to be looked up during pg_hba.conf processing.
pg_stat_bgwriter | One row only, showing cluster-wide statistics from the background writer: number of scheduled checkpoints, requested checkpoints, buffers written by checkpoints and cleaning scans, and the number of times the background writer stopped a cleaning scan because it had written too many buffers. Also includes statistics about the shared buffer pool, including buffers written by backends (that is, not by the background writer), how many times those backends had to execute their own fsync calls (normally the background writer handles those even when the backend does its own write), total buffers allocated, and time of last statistics reset.
pg_stat_database | One row per database, showing database OID, database name, number of active server processes connected to that database, number of transactions committed and rolled back in that database, total disk blocks read, total buffer hits (i.e., block read requests avoided by finding the block already in buffer cache), number of rows returned, fetched, inserted, updated and deleted, the total number of queries canceled due to conflict with recovery (on standby servers), and time of last statistics reset.
pg_stat_database_conflicts | One row per database, showing database OID, database name and the number of queries that have been canceled in this database due to dropped tablespaces, lock timeouts, old snapshots, pinned buffers and deadlocks. Will only contain information on standby servers, since conflicts do not occur on master servers.
pg_stat_replication | One row per WAL sender process, showing process ID, user OID, user name, application name, client's address, host name (if available) and port number, time at which the server process began execution, and the current WAL sender state and transaction log location. In addition, the standby reports the last transaction log position it received and wrote, the last position it flushed to disk, and the last position it replayed, and this information is also displayed here. If the standby's application names matches one of the settings in synchronous_standby_names then the sync_priority is shown here also, that is the order in which standbys will become the synchronous standby. The columns detailing what exactly the connection is doing are only visible if the user examining the view is a superuser. The client's host name will be available only if log_hostname is set or if the user's host name needed to be looked up during pg_hba.conf processing.
pg_stat_all_tables | For each table in the current database (including TOAST tables), the table OID, schema and table name, number of sequential scans initiated, number of live rows fetched by sequential scans, number of index scans initiated (over all indexes belonging to the table), number of live rows fetched by index scans, numbers of row insertions, updates, and deletions, number of row updates that were HOT (i.e., no separate index update), numbers of live and dead rows, the last time the table was non-FULL vacuumed manually, the last time it was vacuumed by the autovacuum daemon, the last time it was analyzed manually, the last time it was analyzed by the autovacuum daemon, number of times it has been non-FULL vacuumed manually, number of times it has been vacuumed by the autovacuum daemon, number of times it has been analyzed manually, and the number of times it has been analyzed by the autovacuum daemon.
pg_stat_sys_tables | Same as pg_stat_all_tables, except that only system tables are shown.
pg_stat_user_tables | Same as pg_stat_all_tables, except that only user tables are shown.
pg_stat_xact_all_tables | Similar to pg_stat_all_tables, but counts actions taken so far within the current transaction (which are not yet included in pg_stat_all_tables and related views). The columns for numbers of live and dead rows and vacuum and analyze actions are not present in this view.
pg_stat_xact_sys_tables | Same as pg_stat_xact_all_tables, except that only system tables are shown.
pg_stat_xact_user_tables | Same as pg_stat_xact_all_tables, except that only user tables are shown.
pg_stat_all_indexes | For each index in the current database, the table and index OID, schema, table and index name, number of index scans initiated on that index, number of index entries returned by index scans, and number of live table rows fetched by simple index scans using that index.
pg_stat_sys_indexes | Same as pg_stat_all_indexes, except that only indexes on system tables are shown.
pg_stat_user_indexes | Same as pg_stat_all_indexes, except that only indexes on user tables are shown.
pg_statio_all_tables | For each table in the current database (including TOAST tables), the table OID, schema and table name, number of disk blocks read from that table, number of buffer hits, numbers of disk blocks read and buffer hits in all indexes of that table, numbers of disk blocks read and buffer hits from that table's auxiliary TOAST table (if any), and numbers of disk blocks read and buffer hits for the TOAST table's index.
pg_statio_sys_tables | Same as pg_statio_all_tables, except that only system tables are shown.
pg_statio_user_tables | Same as pg_statio_all_tables, except that only user tables are shown.
pg_statio_all_indexes | For each index in the current database, the table and index OID, schema, table and index name, numbers of disk blocks read and buffer hits in that index.
pg_statio_sys_indexes | Same as pg_statio_all_indexes, except that only indexes on system tables are shown.
pg_statio_user_indexes | Same as pg_statio_all_indexes, except that only indexes on user tables are shown.
pg_statio_all_sequences | For each sequence object in the current database, the sequence OID, schema and sequence name, numbers of disk blocks read and buffer hits in that sequence.
pg_statio_sys_sequences | Same as pg_statio_all_sequences, except that only system sequences are shown. (Presently, no system sequences are defined, so this view is always empty.)
pg_statio_user_sequences | Same as pg_statio_all_sequences, except that only user sequences are shown.
pg_stat_user_functions | For all tracked functions, function OID, schema, name, number of calls, total time, and self time. Self time is the amount of time spent in the function itself, total time includes the time spent in functions it called. Time values are in milliseconds.
pg_stat_xact_user_functions | Similar to pg_stat_user_functions, but counts only calls during the current transaction (which are not yet included in pg_stat_user_functions).

The per-index statistics are particularly useful to determine which indexes are being used and how effective they are.

Indexes can be used either directly or via "bitmap scans". In a bitmap scan the output of several indexes can be combined via AND or OR rules; so it is difficult to associate individual heap row fetches with specific indexes when a bitmap scan is used. Therefore, a bitmap scan increments the pg_stat_all_indexes.idx_tup_read count(s) for the index(es) it uses, and it increments the pg_stat_all_tables.idx_tup_fetch count for the table, but it does not affect pg_stat_all_indexes.idx_tup_fetch.

Note: Before PostgreSQL 8.1, the idx_tup_read and idx_tup_fetch counts were essentially always equal. Now they can be different even without considering bitmap scans, because idx_tup_read counts index entries retrieved from the index while idx_tup_fetch counts live rows fetched from the table; the latter will be less if any dead or not-yet-committed rows are fetched using the index.

The pg_statio_ views are primarily useful to determine the effectiveness of the buffer cache. When the number of actual disk reads is much smaller than the number of buffer hits, then the cache is satisfying most read requests without invoking a kernel call. However, these statistics do not give the entire story: due to the way in which PostgreSQL handles disk I/O, data that is not in the PostgreSQL buffer cache might still reside in the kernel's I/O cache, and might therefore still be fetched without requiring a physical read. Users interested in obtaining more detailed information on PostgreSQL I/O behavior are advised to use the PostgreSQL statistics collector in combination with operating system utilities that allow insight into the kernel's handling of I/O.

Other ways of looking at the statistics can be set up by writing queries that use the same underlying statistics access functions as these standard views do. These functions are listed in Table 27-2. The per-database access functions take a database OID as argument to identify which database to report on. The per-table and per-index functions take a table or index OID. The functions for function-call statistics take a function OID. (Note that only tables, indexes, and functions in the current database can be seen with these functions.) The per-server-process access functions take a server process number, which ranges from one to the number of currently active server processes.

Table 27-2. Statistics Access Functions

Function | Return Type | Description
pg_stat_get_db_numbackends(oid) | integer | Number of active server processes for database
pg_stat_get_db_xact_commit(oid) | bigint | Number of transactions committed in database
pg_stat_get_db_xact_rollback(oid) | bigint | Number of transactions rolled back in database
pg_stat_get_db_blocks_fetched(oid) | bigint | Number of disk block fetch requests for database
pg_stat_get_db_blocks_hit(oid) | bigint | Number of disk block fetch requests found in cache for database
pg_stat_get_db_tuples_returned(oid) | bigint | Number of tuples returned for database
pg_stat_get_db_tuples_fetched(oid) | bigint | Number of tuples fetched for database
pg_stat_get_db_tuples_inserted(oid) | bigint | Number of tuples inserted in database
pg_stat_get_db_tuples_updated(oid) | bigint | Number of tuples updated in database
pg_stat_get_db_tuples_deleted(oid) | bigint | Number of tuples deleted in database
pg_stat_get_db_conflict_tablespace(oid) | bigint | Number of queries canceled because of recovery conflict with dropped tablespaces in database
pg_stat_get_db_conflict_lock(oid) | bigint | Number of queries canceled because of recovery conflict with locks in database
pg_stat_get_db_conflict_snapshot(oid) | bigint | Number of queries canceled because of recovery conflict with old snapshots in database
pg_stat_get_db_conflict_bufferpin(oid) | bigint | Number of queries canceled because of recovery conflict with pinned buffers in database
pg_stat_get_db_conflict_startup_deadlock(oid) | bigint | Number of queries canceled because of recovery conflict with deadlocks in database
pg_stat_get_db_stat_reset_time(oid) | timestamptz | Time of the last statistics reset for the database. Initialized to the system time during the first connection to each database. The reset time is updated when you call pg_stat_reset on the database, as well as upon execution of pg_stat_reset_single_table_counters against any table or index in it.
pg_stat_get_numscans(oid) | bigint | Number of sequential scans done when argument is a table, or number of index scans done when argument is an index
pg_stat_get_tuples_returned(oid) | bigint | Number of rows read by sequential scans when argument is a table, or number of index entries returned when argument is an index
pg_stat_get_tuples_fetched(oid) | bigint | Number of table rows fetched by bitmap scans when argument is a table, or table rows fetched by simple index scans using the index when argument is an index
pg_stat_get_tuples_inserted(oid) | bigint | Number of rows inserted into table
pg_stat_get_tuples_updated(oid) | bigint | Number of rows updated in table (includes HOT updates)
pg_stat_get_tuples_deleted(oid) | bigint | Number of rows deleted from table
pg_stat_get_tuples_hot_updated(oid) | bigint | Number of rows HOT-updated in table
pg_stat_get_live_tuples(oid) | bigint | Number of live rows in table
pg_stat_get_dead_tuples(oid) | bigint | Number of dead rows in table
pg_stat_get_blocks_fetched(oid) | bigint | Number of disk block fetch requests for table or index
pg_stat_get_blocks_hit(oid) | bigint | Number of disk block requests found in cache for table or index
pg_stat_get_last_vacuum_time(oid) | timestamptz | Time of the last non-FULL vacuum initiated by the user on this table
pg_stat_get_last_autovacuum_time(oid) | timestamptz | Time of the last vacuum initiated by the autovacuum daemon on this table
pg_stat_get_last_analyze_time(oid) | timestamptz | Time of the last analyze initiated by the user on this table
pg_stat_get_last_autoanalyze_time(oid) | timestamptz | Time of the last analyze initiated by the autovacuum daemon on this table
pg_stat_get_vacuum_count(oid) | bigint | The number of times this table has been non-FULL vacuumed manually
pg_stat_get_autovacuum_count(oid) | bigint | The number of times this table has been vacuumed by the autovacuum daemon
pg_stat_get_analyze_count(oid) | bigint | The number of times this table has been analyzed manually
pg_stat_get_autoanalyze_count(oid) | bigint | The number of times this table has been analyzed by the autovacuum daemon
pg_stat_get_xact_numscans(oid) | bigint | Number of sequential scans done when argument is a table, or number of index scans done when argument is an index, in the current transaction
pg_stat_get_xact_tuples_returned(oid) | bigint | Number of rows read by sequential scans when argument is a table, or number of index entries returned when argument is an index, in the current transaction
pg_stat_get_xact_tuples_fetched(oid) | bigint | Number of table rows fetched by bitmap scans when argument is a table, or table rows fetched by simple index scans using the index when argument is an index, in the current transaction
pg_stat_get_xact_tuples_inserted(oid) | bigint | Number of rows inserted into table, in the current transaction
pg_stat_get_xact_tuples_updated(oid) | bigint | Number of rows updated in table (includes HOT updates), in the current transaction
pg_stat_get_xact_tuples_deleted(oid) | bigint | Number of rows deleted from table, in the current transaction
pg_stat_get_xact_tuples_hot_updated(oid) | bigint | Number of rows HOT-updated in table, in the current transaction
pg_stat_get_xact_blocks_fetched(oid) | bigint | Number of disk block fetch requests for table or index, in the current transaction
pg_stat_get_xact_blocks_hit(oid) | bigint | Number of disk block requests found in cache for table or index, in the current transaction
pg_backend_pid() | integer | Process ID of the server process attached to the current session
pg_stat_get_activity(integer) | setof record | Returns a record of information about the backend with the specified PID, or one record for each active backend in the system if NULL is specified. The fields returned are a subset of those in the pg_stat_activity view.
pg_stat_get_function_calls(oid) | bigint | Number of times the function has been called
pg_stat_get_function_time(oid) | bigint | Total wall clock time spent in the function, in microseconds. Includes the time spent in functions called by this one.
pg_stat_get_function_self_time(oid) | bigint | Time spent in only this function. Time spent in called functions is excluded.
pg_stat_get_xact_function_calls(oid) | bigint | Number of times the function has been called, in the current transaction.
pg_stat_get_xact_function_time(oid) | bigint | Total wall clock time spent in the function, in microseconds, in the current transaction. Includes the time spent in functions called by this one.
pg_stat_get_xact_function_self_time(oid) | bigint | Time spent in only this function, in the current transaction. Time spent in called functions is excluded.
pg_stat_get_backend_idset() | setof integer | Set of currently active server process numbers (from 1 to the number of active server processes). See usage example in the text.
pg_stat_get_backend_pid(integer) | integer | Process ID of the given server process
pg_stat_get_backend_dbid(integer) | oid | Database ID of the given server process
pg_stat_get_backend_userid(integer) | oid | User ID of the given server process
pg_stat_get_backend_activity(integer) | text | Active command of the given server process, but only if the current user is a superuser or the same user as that of the session being queried (and track_activities is on)
pg_stat_get_backend_waiting(integer) | boolean | True if the given server process is waiting for a lock, but only if the current user is a superuser or the same user as that of the session being queried (and track_activities is on)
pg_stat_get_backend_activity_start(integer) | timestamp with time zone | The time at which the given server process' currently executing query was started, but only if the current user is a superuser or the same user as that of the session being queried (and track_activities is on)
pg_stat_get_backend_xact_start(integer) | timestamp with time zone | The time at which the given server process' currently executing transaction was started, but only if the current user is a superuser or the same user as that of the session being queried (and track_activities is on)
pg_stat_get_backend_start(integer) | timestamp with time zone | The time at which the given server process was started, or null if the current user is not a superuser nor the same user as that of the session being queried
pg_stat_get_backend_client_addr(integer) | inet | The IP address of the client connected to the given server process; null if the connection is over a Unix domain socket, also null if the current user is not a superuser nor the same user as that of the session being queried
pg_stat_get_backend_client_port(integer) | integer | The TCP port number of the client connected to the given server process; -1 if the connection is over a Unix domain socket, null if the current user is not a superuser nor the same user as that of the session being queried
pg_stat_get_bgwriter_timed_checkpoints() | bigint | Number of times the background writer has started timed checkpoints (because the checkpoint_timeout time has expired)
pg_stat_get_bgwriter_requested_checkpoints() | bigint | Number of times the background writer has started checkpoints based on requests from backends because the checkpoint_segments has been exceeded or because the CHECKPOINT command has been issued
pg_stat_get_bgwriter_buf_written_checkpoints() | bigint | Number of buffers written by the background writer during checkpoints
pg_stat_get_bgwriter_buf_written_clean() | bigint | Number of buffers written by the background writer for routine cleaning of dirty pages
pg_stat_get_bgwriter_maxwritten_clean() | bigint | Number of times the background writer has stopped its cleaning scan because it has written more buffers than specified in the bgwriter_lru_maxpages parameter
pg_stat_get_bgwriter_stat_reset_time() | timestamptz | Time of the last statistics reset for the background writer, updated when executing pg_stat_reset_shared('bgwriter') on the database cluster.
pg_stat_get_buf_written_backend() | bigint | Number of buffers written by backends because they needed to allocate a new buffer
pg_stat_get_buf_alloc() | bigint | Total number of buffer allocations
pg_stat_get_wal_senders() | setof record | One record for each active wal sender. The fields returned are a subset of those in the pg_stat_replication view.
pg_stat_clear_snapshot() | void | Discard the current statistics snapshot
pg_stat_reset() | void | Reset all statistics counters for the current database to zero (requires superuser privileges)
pg_stat_reset_shared(text) | void | Reset some of the shared statistics counters for the database cluster to zero (requires superuser privileges). Calling pg_stat_reset_shared('bgwriter') will zero all the values shown by pg_stat_bgwriter.
pg_stat_reset_single_table_counters(oid) | void | Reset statistics for a single table or index in the current database to zero (requires superuser privileges)
pg_stat_reset_single_function_counters(oid) | void | Reset statistics for a single function in the current database to zero (requires superuser privileges)

Note: pg_stat_get_blocks_fetched minus pg_stat_get_blocks_hit gives the number of kernel read() calls issued for the table, index, or database; the number of actual physical reads is usually lower due to kernel-level buffering. The *_blks_read statistics columns use this subtraction, i.e., fetched minus hit.

All functions to access information about backends are indexed by backend id number, except pg_stat_get_activity which is indexed by PID. The function pg_stat_get_backend_idset provides a convenient way to generate one row for each active server process. For example, to show the PIDs and current queries of all server processes:

SELECT pg_stat_get_backend_pid(s.backendid) AS procpid,
       pg_stat_get_backend_activity(s.backendid) AS current_query
    FROM (SELECT pg_stat_get_backend_idset() AS backendid) AS s;

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Viewing Locks

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27.3. Viewing Locks

Another useful tool for monitoring database activity is the pg_locks system table. It allows the database administrator to view information about the outstanding locks in the lock manager. For example, this capability can be used to:

  • View all the locks currently outstanding, all the locks on relations in a particular database, all the locks on a particular relation, or all the locks held by a particular PostgreSQL session.

  • Determine the relation in the current database with the most ungranted locks (which might be a source of contention among database clients).

  • Determine the effect of lock contention on overall database performance, as well as the extent to which contention varies with overall database traffic.

Details of the pg_locks view appear in Section 45.56. For more information on locking and managing concurrency with PostgreSQL, refer to Chapter 13.

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Dynamic Tracing

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27.4. Dynamic Tracing

PostgreSQL provides facilities to support dynamic tracing of the database server. This allows an external utility to be called at specific points in the code and thereby trace execution.

A number of probes or trace points are already inserted into the source code. These probes are intended to be used by database developers and administrators. By default the probes are not compiled into PostgreSQL; the user needs to explicitly tell the configure script to make the probes available.

Currently, only the DTrace utility is supported, which is available on OpenSolaris, Solaris 10, and Mac OS X Leopard. It is expected that DTrace will be available in the future on FreeBSD and possibly other operating systems. The SystemTap project for Linux also provides a DTrace equivalent. Supporting other dynamic tracing utilities is theoretically possible by changing the definitions for the macros in src/include/utils/probes.h.

27.4.1. Compiling for Dynamic Tracing

By default, probes are not available, so you will need to explicitly tell the configure script to make the probes available in PostgreSQL. To include DTrace support specify --enable-dtrace to configure. See Section 15.4 for further information.

27.4.2. Built-in Probes

A number of standard probes are provided in the source code, as shown in Table 27-3; Table 27-4 shows the types used in the probes. More probes can certainly be added to enhance PostgreSQL's observability.

Table 27-3. Built-in DTrace Probes

Name | Parameters | Description
transaction-start | (LocalTransactionId) | Probe that fires at the start of a new transaction. arg0 is the transaction ID.
transaction-commit | (LocalTransactionId) | Probe that fires when a transaction completes successfully. arg0 is the transaction ID.
transaction-abort | (LocalTransactionId) | Probe that fires when a transaction completes unsuccessfully. arg0 is the transaction ID.
query-start | (const char *) | Probe that fires when the processing of a query is started. arg0 is the query string.
query-done | (const char *) | Probe that fires when the processing of a query is complete. arg0 is the query string.
query-parse-start | (const char *) | Probe that fires when the parsing of a query is started. arg0 is the query string.
query-parse-done | (const char *) | Probe that fires when the parsing of a query is complete. arg0 is the query string.
query-rewrite-start | (const char *) | Probe that fires when the rewriting of a query is started. arg0 is the query string.
query-rewrite-done | (const char *) | Probe that fires when the rewriting of a query is complete. arg0 is the query string.
query-plan-start | () | Probe that fires when the planning of a query is started.
query-plan-done | () | Probe that fires when the planning of a query is complete.
query-execute-start | () | Probe that fires when the execution of a query is started.
query-execute-done | () | Probe that fires when the execution of a query is complete.
statement-status | (const char *) | Probe that fires anytime the server process updates its pg_stat_activity.current_query status. arg0 is the new status string.
checkpoint-start | (int) | Probe that fires when a checkpoint is started. arg0 holds the bitwise flags used to distinguish different checkpoint types, such as shutdown, immediate or force.
checkpoint-done | (int, int, int, int, int) | Probe that fires when a checkpoint is complete. (The probes listed next fire in sequence during checkpoint processing.) arg0 is the number of buffers written. arg1 is the total number of buffers. arg2, arg3 and arg4 contain the number of xlog file(s) added, removed and recycled respectively.
clog-checkpoint-start | (bool) | Probe that fires when the CLOG portion of a checkpoint is started. arg0 is true for normal checkpoint, false for shutdown checkpoint.
clog-checkpoint-done | (bool) | Probe that fires when the CLOG portion of a checkpoint is complete. arg0 has the same meaning as for clog-checkpoint-start.
subtrans-checkpoint-start | (bool) | Probe that fires when the SUBTRANS portion of a checkpoint is started. arg0 is true for normal checkpoint, false for shutdown checkpoint.
subtrans-checkpoint-done | (bool) | Probe that fires when the SUBTRANS portion of a checkpoint is complete. arg0 has the same meaning as for subtrans-checkpoint-start.
multixact-checkpoint-start | (bool) | Probe that fires when the MultiXact portion of a checkpoint is started. arg0 is true for normal checkpoint, false for shutdown checkpoint.
multixact-checkpoint-done | (bool) | Probe that fires when the MultiXact portion of a checkpoint is complete. arg0 has the same meaning as for multixact-checkpoint-start.
buffer-checkpoint-start | (int) | Probe that fires when the buffer-writing portion of a checkpoint is started. arg0 holds the bitwise flags used to distinguish different checkpoint types, such as shutdown, immediate or force.
buffer-sync-start | (int, int) | Probe that fires when we begin to write dirty buffers during checkpoint (after identifying which buffers must be written). arg0 is the total number of buffers. arg1 is the number that are currently dirty and need to be written.
buffer-sync-written | (int) | Probe that fires after each buffer is written during checkpoint. arg0 is the ID number of the buffer.
buffer-sync-done | (int, int, int) | Probe that fires when all dirty buffers have been written. arg0 is the total number of buffers. arg1 is the number of buffers actually written by the checkpoint process. arg2 is the number that were expected to be written (arg1 of buffer-sync-start); any difference reflects other processes flushing buffers during the checkpoint.
buffer-checkpoint-sync-start | () | Probe that fires after dirty buffers have been written to the kernel, and before starting to issue fsync requests.
buffer-checkpoint-done | () | Probe that fires when syncing of buffers to disk is complete.
twophase-checkpoint-start | () | Probe that fires when the two-phase portion of a checkpoint is started.
twophase-checkpoint-done | () | Probe that fires when the two-phase portion of a checkpoint is complete.
buffer-read-start | (ForkNumber, BlockNumber, Oid, Oid, Oid, int, bool) | Probe that fires when a buffer read is started. arg0 and arg1 contain the fork and block numbers of the page (but arg1 will be -1 if this is a relation extension request). arg2, arg3, and arg4 contain the tablespace, database, and relation OIDs identifying the relation. arg5 is the ID of the backend which created the temporary relation for a local buffer, or InvalidBackendId (-1) for a shared buffer. arg6 is true for a relation extension request, false for normal read.
buffer-read-done | (ForkNumber, BlockNumber, Oid, Oid, Oid, int, bool, bool) | Probe that fires when a buffer read is complete. arg0 and arg1 contain the fork and block numbers of the page (if this is a relation extension request, arg1 now contains the block number of the newly added block). arg2, arg3, and arg4 contain the tablespace, database, and relation OIDs identifying the relation. arg5 is the ID of the backend which created the temporary relation for a local buffer, or InvalidBackendId (-1) for a shared buffer. arg6 is true for a relation extension request, false for normal read. arg7 is true if the buffer was found in the pool, false if not.
buffer-flush-start | (ForkNumber, BlockNumber, Oid, Oid, Oid) | Probe that fires before issuing any write request for a shared buffer. arg0 and arg1 contain the fork and block numbers of the page. arg2, arg3, and arg4 contain the tablespace, database, and relation OIDs identifying the relation.
buffer-flush-done | (ForkNumber, BlockNumber, Oid, Oid, Oid) | Probe that fires when a write request is complete. (Note that this just reflects the time to pass the data to the kernel; it's typically not actually been written to disk yet.) The arguments are the same as for buffer-flush-start.
buffer-write-dirty-start | (ForkNumber, BlockNumber, Oid, Oid, Oid) | Probe that fires when a server process begins to write a dirty buffer. (If this happens often, it implies that shared_buffers is too small or the bgwriter control parameters need adjustment.) arg0 and arg1 contain the fork and block numbers of the page. arg2, arg3, and arg4 contain the tablespace, database, and relation OIDs identifying the relation.
buffer-write-dirty-done | (ForkNumber, BlockNumber, Oid, Oid, Oid) | Probe that fires when a dirty-buffer write is complete. The arguments are the same as for buffer-write-dirty-start.
wal-buffer-write-dirty-start | () | Probe that fires when when a server process begins to write a dirty WAL buffer because no more WAL buffer space is available. (If this happens often, it implies that wal_buffers is too small.)
wal-buffer-write-dirty-done | () | Probe that fires when a dirty WAL buffer write is complete.
xlog-insert | (unsigned char, unsigned char) | Probe that fires when a WAL record is inserted. arg0 is the resource manager (rmid) for the record. arg1 contains the info flags.
xlog-switch | () | Probe that fires when a WAL segment switch is requested.
smgr-md-read-start | (ForkNumber, BlockNumber, Oid, Oid, Oid, int) | Probe that fires when beginning to read a block from a relation. arg0 and arg1 contain the fork and block numbers of the page. arg2, arg3, and arg4 contain the tablespace, database, and relation OIDs identifying the relation. arg5 is the ID of the backend which created the temporary relation for a local buffer, or InvalidBackendId (-1) for a shared buffer.
smgr-md-read-done | (ForkNumber, BlockNumber, Oid, Oid, Oid, int, int, int) | Probe that fires when a block read is complete. arg0 and arg1 contain the fork and block numbers of the page. arg2, arg3, and arg4 contain the tablespace, database, and relation OIDs identifying the relation. arg5 is the ID of the backend which created the temporary relation for a local buffer, or InvalidBackendId (-1) for a shared buffer. arg6 is the number of bytes actually read, while arg7 is the number requested (if these are different it indicates trouble).
smgr-md-write-start | (ForkNumber, BlockNumber, Oid, Oid, Oid, int) | Probe that fires when beginning to write a block to a relation. arg0 and arg1 contain the fork and block numbers of the page. arg2, arg3, and arg4 contain the tablespace, database, and relation OIDs identifying the relation. arg5 is the ID of the backend which created the temporary relation for a local buffer, or InvalidBackendId (-1) for a shared buffer.
smgr-md-write-done | (ForkNumber, BlockNumber, Oid, Oid, Oid, int, int, int) | Probe that fires when a block write is complete. arg0 and arg1 contain the fork and block numbers of the page. arg2, arg3, and arg4 contain the tablespace, database, and relation OIDs identifying the relation. arg5 is the ID of the backend which created the temporary relation for a local buffer, or InvalidBackendId (-1) for a shared buffer. arg6 is the number of bytes actually written, while arg7 is the number requested (if these are different it indicates trouble).
sort-start | (int, bool, int, int, bool) | Probe that fires when a sort operation is started. arg0 indicates heap, index or datum sort. arg1 is true for unique-value enforcement. arg2 is the number of key columns. arg3 is the number of kilobytes of work memory allowed. arg4 is true if random access to the sort result is required.
sort-done | (bool, long) | Probe that fires when a sort is complete. arg0 is true for external sort, false for internal sort. arg1 is the number of disk blocks used for an external sort, or kilobytes of memory used for an internal sort.
lwlock-acquire | (LWLockId, LWLockMode) | Probe that fires when an LWLock has been acquired. arg0 is the LWLock's ID. arg1 is the requested lock mode, either exclusive or shared.
lwlock-release | (LWLockId) | Probe that fires when an LWLock has been released (but note that any released waiters have not yet been awakened). arg0 is the LWLock's ID.
lwlock-wait-start | (LWLockId, LWLockMode) | Probe that fires when an LWLock was not immediately available and a server process has begun to wait for the lock to become available. arg0 is the LWLock's ID. arg1 is the requested lock mode, either exclusive or shared.
lwlock-wait-done | (LWLockId, LWLockMode) | Probe that fires when a server process has been released from its wait for an LWLock (it does not actually have the lock yet). arg0 is the LWLock's ID. arg1 is the requested lock mode, either exclusive or shared.
lwlock-condacquire | (LWLockId, LWLockMode) | Probe that fires when an LWLock was successfully acquired when the caller specified no waiting. arg0 is the LWLock's ID. arg1 is the requested lock mode, either exclusive or shared.
lwlock-condacquire-fail | (LWLockId, LWLockMode) | Probe that fires when an LWLock was not successfully acquired when the caller specified no waiting. arg0 is the LWLock's ID. arg1 is the requested lock mode, either exclusive or shared.
lock-wait-start | (unsigned int, unsigned int, unsigned int, unsigned int, unsigned int, LOCKMODE) | Probe that fires when a request for a heavyweight lock (lmgr lock) has begun to wait because the lock is not available. arg0 through arg3 are the tag fields identifying the object being locked. arg4 indicates the type of object being locked. arg5 indicates the lock type being requested.
lock-wait-done | (unsigned int, unsigned int, unsigned int, unsigned int, unsigned int, LOCKMODE) | Probe that fires when a request for a heavyweight lock (lmgr lock) has finished waiting (i.e., has acquired the lock). The arguments are the same as for lock-wait-start.
deadlock-found | () | Probe that fires when a deadlock is found by the deadlock detector.

Table 27-4. Defined Types Used in Probe Parameters

Type | Definition
LocalTransactionId | unsigned int
LWLockId | int
LWLockMode | int
LOCKMODE | int
BlockNumber | unsigned int
Oid | unsigned int
ForkNumber | int
bool | char

27.4.3. Using Probes

The example below shows a DTrace script for analyzing transaction counts in the system, as an alternative to snapshotting pg_stat_database before and after a performance test:

#!/usr/sbin/dtrace -qs

postgresql$1:::transaction-start
{
      @start["Start"] = count();
      self->ts  = timestamp;
}

postgresql$1:::transaction-abort
{
      @abort["Abort"] = count();
}

postgresql$1:::transaction-commit
/self->ts/
{
      @commit["Commit"] = count();
      @time["Total time (ns)"] = sum(timestamp - self->ts);
      self->ts=0;
}

When executed, the example D script gives output such as:

# ./txn_count.d `pgrep -n postgres` or ./txn_count.d <PID>
^C

Start                                          71
Commit                                         70
Total time (ns)                        2312105013

Note: SystemTap uses a different notation for trace scripts than DTrace does, even though the underlying trace points are compatible. One point worth noting is that at this writing, SystemTap scripts must reference probe names using double underscores in place of hyphens. This is expected to be fixed in future SystemTap releases.

You should remember that DTrace scripts need to be carefully written and debugged, otherwise the trace information collected might be meaningless. In most cases where problems are found it is the instrumentation that is at fault, not the underlying system. When discussing information found using dynamic tracing, be sure to enclose the script used to allow that too to be checked and discussed.

More example scripts can be found in the PgFoundry dtrace project.

27.4.4. Defining New Probes

New probes can be defined within the code wherever the developer desires, though this will require a recompilation. Below are the steps for inserting new probes:

  1. Decide on probe names and data to be made available through the probes

  2. Add the probe definitions to src/backend/utils/probes.d

  3. Include pg_trace.h if it is not already present in the module(s) containing the probe points, and insert TRACE_POSTGRESQL probe macros at the desired locations in the source code

  4. Recompile and verify that the new probes are available

Example: Here is an example of how you would add a probe to trace all new transactions by transaction ID.

  1. Decide that the probe will be named transaction-start and requires a parameter of type LocalTransactionId

  2. Add the probe definition to src/backend/utils/probes.d:

    probe transaction__start(LocalTransactionId);

    Note the use of the double underline in the probe name. In a DTrace script using the probe, the double underline needs to be replaced with a hyphen, so transaction-start is the name to document for users.

  3. At compile time, transaction__start is converted to a macro called TRACE_POSTGRESQL_TRANSACTION_START (notice the underscores are single here), which is available by including pg_trace.h. Add the macro call to the appropriate location in the source code. In this case, it looks like the following:

    TRACE_POSTGRESQL_TRANSACTION_START(vxid.localTransactionId);

  4. After recompiling and running the new binary, check that your newly added probe is available by executing the following DTrace command. You should see similar output:

    # dtrace -ln transaction-start
   ID    PROVIDER          MODULE           FUNCTION NAME
18705 postgresql49878     postgres     StartTransactionCommand transaction-start
18755 postgresql49877     postgres     StartTransactionCommand transaction-start
18805 postgresql49876     postgres     StartTransactionCommand transaction-start
18855 postgresql49875     postgres     StartTransactionCommand transaction-start
18986 postgresql49873     postgres     StartTransactionCommand transaction-start

There are a few things to be careful about when adding trace macros to the C code:

  • You should take care that the data types specified for a probe's parameters match the data types of the variables used in the macro. Otherwise, you will get compilation errors.

  • On most platforms, if PostgreSQL is built with --enable-dtrace, the arguments to a trace macro will be evaluated whenever control passes through the macro, even if no tracing is being done. This is usually not worth worrying about if you are just reporting the values of a few local variables. But beware of putting expensive function calls into the arguments. If you need to do that, consider protecting the macro with a check to see if the trace is actually enabled:

    if (TRACE_POSTGRESQL_TRANSACTION_START_ENABLED())
    TRACE_POSTGRESQL_TRANSACTION_START(some_function(...));

    Each trace macro has a corresponding ENABLED macro.

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Monitoring Disk Usage

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Chapter 28. Monitoring Disk Usage

Table of Contents
28.1. Determining Disk Usage
28.2. Disk Full Failure

This chapter discusses how to monitor the disk usage of a PostgreSQL database system.

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Determining Disk Usage

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28.1. Determining Disk Usage

Each table has a primary heap disk file where most of the data is stored. If the table has any columns with potentially-wide values, there also might be a TOAST file associated with the table, which is used to store values too wide to fit comfortably in the main table (see Section 55.2). There will be one index on the TOAST table, if present. There also might be indexes associated with the base table. Each table and index is stored in a separate disk file — possibly more than one file, if the file would exceed one gigabyte. Naming conventions for these files are described in Section 55.1.

You can monitor disk space in three ways: using the SQL functions listed in Table 9-60, using the oid2name module, or using manual inspection of the system catalogs. The SQL functions are the easiest to use and are generally recommended. The remainder of this section shows how to do it by inspection of the system catalogs.

Using psql on a recently vacuumed or analyzed database, you can issue queries to see the disk usage of any table:

SELECT pg_relation_filepath(oid), relpages FROM pg_class WHERE relname = 'customer';

 pg_relation_filepath | relpages
----------------------+----------
 base/16384/16806     |       60
(1 row)

Each page is typically 8 kilobytes. (Remember, relpages is only updated by VACUUM, ANALYZE, and a few DDL commands such as CREATE INDEX.) The file path name is of interest if you want to examine the table's disk file directly.

To show the space used by TOAST tables, use a query like the following:

SELECT relname, relpages
FROM pg_class,
     (SELECT reltoastrelid
      FROM pg_class
      WHERE relname = 'customer') AS ss
WHERE oid = ss.reltoastrelid OR
      oid = (SELECT reltoastidxid
             FROM pg_class
             WHERE oid = ss.reltoastrelid)
ORDER BY relname;

       relname        | relpages
----------------------+----------
 pg_toast_16806       |        0
 pg_toast_16806_index |        1

You can easily display index sizes, too:

SELECT c2.relname, c2.relpages
FROM pg_class c, pg_class c2, pg_index i
WHERE c.relname = 'customer' AND
      c.oid = i.indrelid AND
      c2.oid = i.indexrelid
ORDER BY c2.relname;

       relname        | relpages
----------------------+----------
 customer_id_indexdex |       26

It is easy to find your largest tables and indexes using this information:

SELECT relname, relpages
FROM pg_class
ORDER BY relpages DESC;

       relname        | relpages
----------------------+----------
 bigtable             |     3290
 customer             |     3144

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Disk Full Failure

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28.2. Disk Full Failure

The most important disk monitoring task of a database administrator is to make sure the disk doesn't become full. A filled data disk will not result in data corruption, but it might prevent useful activity from occurring. If the disk holding the WAL files grows full, database server panic and consequent shutdown might occur.

If you cannot free up additional space on the disk by deleting other things, you can move some of the database files to other file systems by making use of tablespaces. See Section 21.6 for more information about that.

Tip: Some file systems perform badly when they are almost full, so do not wait until the disk is completely full to take action.

If your system supports per-user disk quotas, then the database will naturally be subject to whatever quota is placed on the user the server runs as. Exceeding the quota will have the same bad effects as running out of disk space entirely.

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Reliability and the Write-Ahead Log

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Chapter 29. Reliability and the Write-Ahead Log

Table of Contents
29.1. Reliability
29.2. Write-Ahead Logging (WAL)
29.3. Asynchronous Commit
29.4. WAL Configuration
29.5. WAL Internals

This chapter explains how the Write-Ahead Log is used to obtain efficient, reliable operation.

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Reliability

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29.1. Reliability

Reliability is an important property of any serious database system, and PostgreSQL does everything possible to guarantee reliable operation. One aspect of reliable operation is that all data recorded by a committed transaction should be stored in a nonvolatile area that is safe from power loss, operating system failure, and hardware failure (except failure of the nonvolatile area itself, of course). Successfully writing the data to the computer's permanent storage (disk drive or equivalent) ordinarily meets this requirement. In fact, even if a computer is fatally damaged, if the disk drives survive they can be moved to another computer with similar hardware and all committed transactions will remain intact.

While forcing data to the disk platters periodically might seem like a simple operation, it is not. Because disk drives are dramatically slower than main memory and CPUs, several layers of caching exist between the computer's main memory and the disk platters. First, there is the operating system's buffer cache, which caches frequently requested disk blocks and combines disk writes. Fortunately, all operating systems give applications a way to force writes from the buffer cache to disk, and PostgreSQL uses those features. (See the wal_sync_method parameter to adjust how this is done.)

Next, there might be a cache in the disk drive controller; this is particularly common on RAID controller cards. Some of these caches are write-through, meaning writes are sent to the drive as soon as they arrive. Others are write-back, meaning data is sent to the drive at some later time. Such caches can be a reliability hazard because the memory in the disk controller cache is volatile, and will lose its contents in a power failure. Better controller cards have battery-backup units (BBUs), meaning the card has a battery that maintains power to the cache in case of system power loss. After power is restored the data will be written to the disk drives.

And finally, most disk drives have caches. Some are write-through while some are write-back, and the same concerns about data loss exist for write-back drive caches as for disk controller caches. Consumer-grade IDE and SATA drives are particularly likely to have write-back caches that will not survive a power failure. Many solid-state drives (SSD) also have volatile write-back caches.

These caches can typically be disabled; however, the method for doing this varies by operating system and drive type:

  • On Linux, IDE drives can be queried using hdparm -I; write caching is enabled if there is a * next to Write cache. hdparm -W can be used to turn off write caching. SCSI drives can be queried using sdparm. Use sdparm --get=WCE to check whether the write cache is enabled and sdparm --clear=WCE to disable it.

  • On FreeBSD, IDE drives can be queried using atacontrol and write caching turned off using hw.ata.wc=0 in /boot/loader.conf; SCSI drives can be queried using camcontrol identify, and the write cache both queried and changed using sdparm when available.

  • On Solaris, the disk write cache is controlled by format -e. (The Solaris ZFS file system is safe with disk write-cache enabled because it issues its own disk cache flush commands.)

  • On Windows, if wal_sync_method is open_datasync (the default), write caching can be disabled by unchecking My Computer\Open\disk drive\Properties\Hardware\Properties\Policies\Enable write caching on the disk. Alternatively, set wal_sync_method to fsync or fsync_writethrough, which prevent write caching.

  • On Mac OS X, write caching can be prevented by setting wal_sync_method to fsync_writethrough.

Recent SATA drives (those following ATAPI-6 or later) offer a drive cache flush command (FLUSH CACHE EXT), while SCSI drives have long supported a similar command SYNCHRONIZE CACHE. These commands are not directly accessible to PostgreSQL, but some file systems (e.g., ZFS, ext4) can use them to flush data to the platters on write-back-enabled drives. Unfortunately, such file systems behave suboptimally when combined with battery-backup unit (BBU) disk controllers. In such setups, the synchronize command forces all data from the controller cache to the disks, eliminating much of the benefit of the BBU. You can run the pg_test_fsync module to see if you are affected. If you are affected, the performance benefits of the BBU can be regained by turning off write barriers in the file system or reconfiguring the disk controller, if that is an option. If write barriers are turned off, make sure the battery remains functional; a faulty battery can potentially lead to data loss. Hopefully file system and disk controller designers will eventually address this suboptimal behavior.

When the operating system sends a write request to the storage hardware, there is little it can do to make sure the data has arrived at a truly non-volatile storage area. Rather, it is the administrator's responsibility to make certain that all storage components ensure data integrity. Avoid disk controllers that have non-battery-backed write caches. At the drive level, disable write-back caching if the drive cannot guarantee the data will be written before shutdown. If you use SSDs, be aware that many of these do not honor cache flush commands by default. You can test for reliable I/O subsystem behavior using diskchecker.pl.

Another risk of data loss is posed by the disk platter write operations themselves. Disk platters are divided into sectors, commonly 512 bytes each. Every physical read or write operation processes a whole sector. When a write request arrives at the drive, it might be for some multiple of 512 bytes (PostgreSQL typically writes 8192 bytes, or 16 sectors, at a time), and the process of writing could fail due to power loss at any time, meaning some of the 512-byte sectors were written while others were not. To guard against such failures, PostgreSQL periodically writes full page images to permanent WAL storage before modifying the actual page on disk. By doing this, during crash recovery PostgreSQL can restore partially-written pages from WAL. If you have file-system software that prevents partial page writes (e.g., ZFS), you can turn off this page imaging by turning off the full_page_writes parameter. Battery-Backed Unit (BBU) disk controllers do not prevent partial page writes unless they guarantee that data is written to the BBU as full (8kB) pages.

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Write-Ahead Logging (WAL)

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29.2. Write-Ahead Logging (WAL)

Write-Ahead Logging (WAL) is a standard method for ensuring data integrity. A detailed description can be found in most (if not all) books about transaction processing. Briefly, WAL's central concept is that changes to data files (where tables and indexes reside) must be written only after those changes have been logged, that is, after log records describing the changes have been flushed to permanent storage. If we follow this procedure, we do not need to flush data pages to disk on every transaction commit, because we know that in the event of a crash we will be able to recover the database using the log: any changes that have not been applied to the data pages can be redone from the log records. (This is roll-forward recovery, also known as REDO.)

Tip: Because WAL restores database file contents after a crash, journaled file systems are not necessary for reliable storage of the data files or WAL files. In fact, journaling overhead can reduce performance, especially if journaling causes file system data to be flushed to disk. Fortunately, data flushing during journaling can often be disabled with a file system mount option, e.g. data=writeback on a Linux ext3 file system. Journaled file systems do improve boot speed after a crash.

Using WAL results in a significantly reduced number of disk writes, because only the log file needs to be flushed to disk to guarantee that a transaction is committed, rather than every data file changed by the transaction. The log file is written sequentially, and so the cost of syncing the log is much less than the cost of flushing the data pages. This is especially true for servers handling many small transactions touching different parts of the data store. Furthermore, when the server is processing many small concurrent transactions, one fsync of the log file may suffice to commit many transactions.

WAL also makes it possible to support on-line backup and point-in-time recovery, as described in Section 24.3. By archiving the WAL data we can support reverting to any time instant covered by the available WAL data: we simply install a prior physical backup of the database, and replay the WAL log just as far as the desired time. What's more, the physical backup doesn't have to be an instantaneous snapshot of the database state — if it is made over some period of time, then replaying the WAL log for that period will fix any internal inconsistencies.

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Asynchronous Commit

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29.3. Asynchronous Commit

Asynchronous commit is an option that allows transactions to complete more quickly, at the cost that the most recent transactions may be lost if the database should crash. In many applications this is an acceptable trade-off.

As described in the previous section, transaction commit is normally synchronous: the server waits for the transaction's WAL records to be flushed to permanent storage before returning a success indication to the client. The client is therefore guaranteed that a transaction reported to be committed will be preserved, even in the event of a server crash immediately after. However, for short transactions this delay is a major component of the total transaction time. Selecting asynchronous commit mode means that the server returns success as soon as the transaction is logically completed, before the WAL records it generated have actually made their way to disk. This can provide a significant boost in throughput for small transactions.

Asynchronous commit introduces the risk of data loss. There is a short time window between the report of transaction completion to the client and the time that the transaction is truly committed (that is, it is guaranteed not to be lost if the server crashes). Thus asynchronous commit should not be used if the client will take external actions relying on the assumption that the transaction will be remembered. As an example, a bank would certainly not use asynchronous commit for a transaction recording an ATM's dispensing of cash. But in many scenarios, such as event logging, there is no need for a strong guarantee of this kind.

The risk that is taken by using asynchronous commit is of data loss, not data corruption. If the database should crash, it will recover by replaying WAL up to the last record that was flushed. The database will therefore be restored to a self-consistent state, but any transactions that were not yet flushed to disk will not be reflected in that state. The net effect is therefore loss of the last few transactions. Because the transactions are replayed in commit order, no inconsistency can be introduced — for example, if transaction B made changes relying on the effects of a previous transaction A, it is not possible for A's effects to be lost while B's effects are preserved.

The user can select the commit mode of each transaction, so that it is possible to have both synchronous and asynchronous commit transactions running concurrently. This allows flexible trade-offs between performance and certainty of transaction durability. The commit mode is controlled by the user-settable parameter synchronous_commit, which can be changed in any of the ways that a configuration parameter can be set. The mode used for any one transaction depends on the value of synchronous_commit when transaction commit begins.

Certain utility commands, for instance DROP TABLE, are forced to commit synchronously regardless of the setting of synchronous_commit. This is to ensure consistency between the server's file system and the logical state of the database. The commands supporting two-phase commit, such as PREPARE TRANSACTION, are also always synchronous.

If the database crashes during the risk window between an asynchronous commit and the writing of the transaction's WAL records, then changes made during that transaction will be lost. The duration of the risk window is limited because a background process (the "WAL writer") flushes unwritten WAL records to disk every wal_writer_delay milliseconds. The actual maximum duration of the risk window is three times wal_writer_delay because the WAL writer is designed to favor writing whole pages at a time during busy periods.

Caution

An immediate-mode shutdown is equivalent to a server crash, and will therefore cause loss of any unflushed asynchronous commits.

Asynchronous commit provides behavior different from setting fsync = off. fsync is a server-wide setting that will alter the behavior of all transactions. It disables all logic within PostgreSQL that attempts to synchronize writes to different portions of the database, and therefore a system crash (that is, a hardware or operating system crash, not a failure of PostgreSQL itself) could result in arbitrarily bad corruption of the database state. In many scenarios, asynchronous commit provides most of the performance improvement that could be obtained by turning off fsync, but without the risk of data corruption.

commit_delay also sounds very similar to asynchronous commit, but it is actually a synchronous commit method (in fact, commit_delay is ignored during an asynchronous commit). commit_delay causes a delay just before a synchronous commit attempts to flush WAL to disk, in the hope that a single flush executed by one such transaction can also serve other transactions committing at about the same time. Setting commit_delay can only help when there are many concurrently committing transactions, and it is difficult to tune it to a value that actually helps rather than hurts throughput.

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WAL Configuration

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29.4. WAL Configuration

There are several WAL-related configuration parameters that affect database performance. This section explains their use. Consult Chapter 18 for general information about setting server configuration parameters.

Checkpoints are points in the sequence of transactions at which it is guaranteed that the heap and index data files have been updated with all information written before the checkpoint. At checkpoint time, all dirty data pages are flushed to disk and a special checkpoint record is written to the log file. (The changes were previously flushed to the WAL files.) In the event of a crash, the crash recovery procedure looks at the latest checkpoint record to determine the point in the log (known as the redo record) from which it should start the REDO operation. Any changes made to data files before that point are guaranteed to be already on disk. Hence, after a checkpoint, log segments preceding the one containing the redo record are no longer needed and can be recycled or removed. (When WAL archiving is being done, the log segments must be archived before being recycled or removed.)

The checkpoint requirement of flushing all dirty data pages to disk can cause a significant I/O load. For this reason, checkpoint activity is throttled so I/O begins at checkpoint start and completes before the next checkpoint starts; this minimizes performance degradation during checkpoints.

The server's background writer process automatically performs a checkpoint every so often. A checkpoint is created every checkpoint_segments log segments, or every checkpoint_timeout seconds, whichever comes first. The default settings are 3 segments and 300 seconds (5 minutes), respectively. It is also possible to force a checkpoint by using the SQL command CHECKPOINT.

Reducing checkpoint_segments and/or checkpoint_timeout causes checkpoints to occur more often. This allows faster after-crash recovery (since less work will need to be redone). However, one must balance this against the increased cost of flushing dirty data pages more often. If full_page_writes is set (as is the default), there is another factor to consider. To ensure data page consistency, the first modification of a data page after each checkpoint results in logging the entire page content. In that case, a smaller checkpoint interval increases the volume of output to the WAL log, partially negating the goal of using a smaller interval, and in any case causing more disk I/O.

Checkpoints are fairly expensive, first because they require writing out all currently dirty buffers, and second because they result in extra subsequent WAL traffic as discussed above. It is therefore wise to set the checkpointing parameters high enough that checkpoints don't happen too often. As a simple sanity check on your checkpointing parameters, you can set the checkpoint_warning parameter. If checkpoints happen closer together than checkpoint_warning seconds, a message will be output to the server log recommending increasing checkpoint_segments. Occasional appearance of such a message is not cause for alarm, but if it appears often then the checkpoint control parameters should be increased. Bulk operations such as large COPY transfers might cause a number of such warnings to appear if you have not set checkpoint_segments high enough.

To avoid flooding the I/O system with a burst of page writes, writing dirty buffers during a checkpoint is spread over a period of time. That period is controlled by checkpoint_completion_target, which is given as a fraction of the checkpoint interval. The I/O rate is adjusted so that the checkpoint finishes when the given fraction of checkpoint_segments WAL segments have been consumed since checkpoint start, or the given fraction of checkpoint_timeout seconds have elapsed, whichever is sooner. With the default value of 0.5, PostgreSQL can be expected to complete each checkpoint in about half the time before the next checkpoint starts. On a system that's very close to maximum I/O throughput during normal operation, you might want to increase checkpoint_completion_target to reduce the I/O load from checkpoints. The disadvantage of this is that prolonging checkpoints affects recovery time, because more WAL segments will need to be kept around for possible use in recovery. Although checkpoint_completion_target can be set as high as 1.0, it is best to keep it less than that (perhaps 0.9 at most) since checkpoints include some other activities besides writing dirty buffers. A setting of 1.0 is quite likely to result in checkpoints not being completed on time, which would result in performance loss due to unexpected variation in the number of WAL segments needed.

There will always be at least one WAL segment file, and will normally not be more than (2 + checkpoint_completion_target) * checkpoint_segments + 1 or checkpoint_segments + wal_keep_segments + 1 files. Each segment file is normally 16 MB (though this size can be altered when building the server). You can use this to estimate space requirements for WAL. Ordinarily, when old log segment files are no longer needed, they are recycled (renamed to become the next segments in the numbered sequence). If, due to a short-term peak of log output rate, there are more than 3 * checkpoint_segments + 1 segment files, the unneeded segment files will be deleted instead of recycled until the system gets back under this limit.

In archive recovery or standby mode, the server periodically performs restartpoints which are similar to checkpoints in normal operation: the server forces all its state to disk, updates the pg_control file to indicate that the already-processed WAL data need not be scanned again, and then recycles any old log segment files in pg_xlog directory. A restartpoint is triggered if at least one checkpoint record has been replayed and checkpoint_timeout seconds have passed since last restartpoint. In standby mode, a restartpoint is also triggered if checkpoint_segments log segments have been replayed since last restartpoint and at least one checkpoint record has been replayed. Restartpoints can't be performed more frequently than checkpoints in the master because restartpoints can only be performed at checkpoint records.

There are two commonly used internal WAL functions: LogInsert and LogFlush. LogInsert is used to place a new record into the WAL buffers in shared memory. If there is no space for the new record, LogInsert will have to write (move to kernel cache) a few filled WAL buffers. This is undesirable because LogInsert is used on every database low level modification (for example, row insertion) at a time when an exclusive lock is held on affected data pages, so the operation needs to be as fast as possible. What is worse, writing WAL buffers might also force the creation of a new log segment, which takes even more time. Normally, WAL buffers should be written and flushed by a LogFlush request, which is made, for the most part, at transaction commit time to ensure that transaction records are flushed to permanent storage. On systems with high log output, LogFlush requests might not occur often enough to prevent LogInsert from having to do writes. On such systems one should increase the number of WAL buffers by modifying the configuration parameter wal_buffers. When full_page_writes is set and the system is very busy, setting this value higher will help smooth response times during the period immediately following each checkpoint.

The commit_delay parameter defines for how many microseconds the server process will sleep after writing a commit record to the log with LogInsert but before performing a LogFlush. This delay allows other server processes to add their commit records to the log so as to have all of them flushed with a single log sync. No sleep will occur if fsync is not enabled, or if fewer than commit_siblings other sessions are currently in active transactions; this avoids sleeping when it's unlikely that any other session will commit soon. Note that on most platforms, the resolution of a sleep request is ten milliseconds, so that any nonzero commit_delay setting between 1 and 10000 microseconds would have the same effect. Good values for these parameters are not yet clear; experimentation is encouraged.

The wal_sync_method parameter determines how PostgreSQL will ask the kernel to force WAL updates out to disk. All the options should be the same in terms of reliability, with the exception of fsync_writethrough, which can sometimes force a flush of the disk cache even when other options do not do so. However, it's quite platform-specific which one will be the fastest; you can test option speeds using the pg_test_fsync module. Note that this parameter is irrelevant if fsync has been turned off.

Enabling the wal_debug configuration parameter (provided that PostgreSQL has been compiled with support for it) will result in each LogInsert and LogFlush WAL call being logged to the server log. This option might be replaced by a more general mechanism in the future.

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WAL Internals

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29.5. WAL Internals

WAL is automatically enabled; no action is required from the administrator except ensuring that the disk-space requirements for the WAL logs are met, and that any necessary tuning is done (see Section 29.4).

WAL logs are stored in the directory pg_xlog under the data directory, as a set of segment files, normally each 16 MB in size (but the size can be changed by altering the --with-wal-segsize configure option when building the server). Each segment is divided into pages, normally 8 kB each (this size can be changed via the --with-wal-blocksize configure option). The log record headers are described in access/xlog.h; the record content is dependent on the type of event that is being logged. Segment files are given ever-increasing numbers as names, starting at 000000010000000000000000. The numbers do not wrap, but it will take a very, very long time to exhaust the available stock of numbers.

It is advantageous if the log is located on a different disk from the main database files. This can be achieved by moving the pg_xlog directory to another location (while the server is shut down, of course) and creating a symbolic link from the original location in the main data directory to the new location.

The aim of WAL is to ensure that the log is written before database records are altered, but this can be subverted by disk drives that falsely report a successful write to the kernel, when in fact they have only cached the data and not yet stored it on the disk. A power failure in such a situation might lead to irrecoverable data corruption. Administrators should try to ensure that disks holding PostgreSQL's WAL log files do not make such false reports. (See Section 29.1.)

After a checkpoint has been made and the log flushed, the checkpoint's position is saved in the file pg_control. Therefore, at the start of recovery, the server first reads pg_control and then the checkpoint record; then it performs the REDO operation by scanning forward from the log position indicated in the checkpoint record. Because the entire content of data pages is saved in the log on the first page modification after a checkpoint (assuming full_page_writes is not disabled), all pages changed since the checkpoint will be restored to a consistent state.

To deal with the case where pg_control is corrupt, we should support the possibility of scanning existing log segments in reverse order — newest to oldest — in order to find the latest checkpoint. This has not been implemented yet. pg_control is small enough (less than one disk page) that it is not subject to partial-write problems, and as of this writing there have been no reports of database failures due solely to the inability to read pg_control itself. So while it is theoretically a weak spot, pg_control does not seem to be a problem in practice.

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Regression Tests

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Chapter 30. Regression Tests

Table of Contents
30.1. Running the Tests
30.1.1. Running the Tests Against a Temporary Installation
30.1.2. Running the Tests Against an Existing Installation
30.1.3. Additional Test Suites
30.1.4. Locale and Encoding
30.1.5. Extra Tests
30.1.6. Testing Hot Standby
30.2. Test Evaluation
30.2.1. Error Message Differences
30.2.2. Locale Differences
30.2.3. Date and Time Differences
30.2.4. Floating-Point Differences
30.2.5. Row Ordering Differences
30.2.6. Insufficient Stack Depth
30.2.7. The "random" Test
30.2.8. Configuration Parameters
30.3. Variant Comparison Files
30.4. Test Coverage Examination

The regression tests are a comprehensive set of tests for the SQL implementation in PostgreSQL. They test standard SQL operations as well as the extended capabilities of PostgreSQL.

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Running the Tests

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30.1. Running the Tests

The regression tests can be run against an already installed and running server, or using a temporary installation within the build tree. Furthermore, there is a "parallel" and a "sequential" mode for running the tests. The sequential method runs each test script alone, while the parallel method starts up multiple server processes to run groups of tests in parallel. Parallel testing adds confidence that interprocess communication and locking are working correctly.

30.1.1. Running the Tests Against a Temporary Installation

To run the parallel regression tests after building but before installation, type:

gmake check

in the top-level directory. (Or you can change to src/test/regress and run the command there.) At the end you should see something like:

=======================
 All 115 tests passed.
=======================

or otherwise a note about which tests failed. See Section 30.2 below before assuming that a "failure" represents a serious problem.

Because this test method runs a temporary server, it will not work if you did the build as the root user, since the server will not start as root. Recommended procedure is not to do the build as root, or else to perform testing after completing the installation.

If you have configured PostgreSQL to install into a location where an older PostgreSQL installation already exists, and you perform gmake check before installing the new version, you might find that the tests fail because the new programs try to use the already-installed shared libraries. (Typical symptoms are complaints about undefined symbols.) If you wish to run the tests before overwriting the old installation, you'll need to build with configure --disable-rpath. It is not recommended that you use this option for the final installation, however.

The parallel regression test starts quite a few processes under your user ID. Presently, the maximum concurrency is twenty parallel test scripts, which means forty processes: there's a server process and a psql process for each test script. So if your system enforces a per-user limit on the number of processes, make sure this limit is at least fifty or so, else you might get random-seeming failures in the parallel test. If you are not in a position to raise the limit, you can cut down the degree of parallelism by setting the MAX_CONNECTIONS parameter. For example:

gmake MAX_CONNECTIONS=10 check

runs no more than ten tests concurrently.

30.1.2. Running the Tests Against an Existing Installation

To run the tests after installation (see Chapter 15), initialize a data area and start the server as explained in Chapter 17, then type:

gmake installcheck

or for a parallel test:

gmake installcheck-parallel

The tests will expect to contact the server at the local host and the default port number, unless directed otherwise by PGHOST and PGPORT environment variables. The tests will be run in a database named regression; any existing database by this name will be dropped. The tests will also transiently create some cluster-wide objects, such as user identities named regressuserN.

30.1.3. Additional Test Suites

The gmake check and gmake installcheck commands run only the "core" regression tests, which test built-in functionality of the PostgreSQL server. The source distribution also contains additional test suites, most of them having to do with add-on functionality such as optional procedural languages.

To run all test suites applicable to the modules that have been selected to be built, including the core tests, type one of these commands at the top of the build tree:

gmake check-world
gmake installcheck-world

These commands run the tests using temporary servers or an already-installed server, respectively, just as previously explained for gmake check and gmake installcheck. Other considerations are the same as previously explained for each method. Note that gmake check-world builds a separate temporary installation tree for each tested module, so it requires a great deal more time and disk space than gmake installcheck-world.

Alternatively, you can run individual test suites by typing gmake check or gmake installcheck in the appropriate subdirectory of the build tree. Keep in mind that gmake installcheck assumes you've installed the relevant module(s), not only the core server.

The additional tests that can be invoked this way include:

  • Regression tests for optional procedural languages (other than PL/pgSQL, which is tested by the core tests). These are located under src/pl.

  • Regression tests for contrib modules, located under contrib. Not all contrib modules have tests.

  • Regression tests for the ECPG interface library, located in src/interfaces/ecpg/test.

  • Tests stressing behavior of concurrent sessions, located in src/test/isolation.

When using installcheck mode, these tests will destroy any existing databases named pl_regression, contrib_regression, isolationtest, regress1, or connectdb, as well as regression.

30.1.4. Locale and Encoding

By default, tests using a temporary installation use the locale defined in the current environment and the corresponding database encoding as determined by initdb. It can be useful to test different locales by setting the appropriate environment variables, for example:

gmake check LANG=C
gmake check LC_COLLATE=en_US.utf8 LC_CTYPE=fr_CA.utf8

For implementation reasons, setting LC_ALL does not work for this purpose; all the other locale-related environment variables do work.

When testing against an existing installation, the locale is determined by the existing database cluster and cannot be set separately for the test run.

You can also choose the database encoding explicitly by setting the variable ENCODING, for example:

gmake check LANG=C ENCODING=EUC_JP

Setting the database encoding this way typically only makes sense if the locale is C; otherwise the encoding is chosen automatically from the locale, and specifying an encoding that does not match the locale will result in an error.

The database encoding can be set for tests against either a temporary or an existing installation, though in the latter case it must be compatible with the installation's locale.

30.1.5. Extra Tests

The core regression test suite contains a few test files that are not run by default, because they might be platform-dependent or take a very long time to run. You can run these or other extra test files by setting the variable EXTRA_TESTS. For example, to run the numeric_big test:

gmake check EXTRA_TESTS=numeric_big

To run the collation tests:

gmake check EXTRA_TESTS=collate.linux.utf8 LANG=en_US.utf8

The collate.linux.utf8 test works only on Linux/glibc platforms, and only when run in a database that uses UTF-8 encoding.

30.1.6. Testing Hot Standby

The source distribution also contains regression tests for the static behavior of Hot Standby. These tests require a running primary server and a running standby server that is accepting new WAL changes from the primary (using either file-based log shipping or streaming replication). Those servers are not automatically created for you, nor is replication setup documented here. Please check the various sections of the documentation devoted to the required commands and related issues.

To run the Hot Standby tests, first create a database called regression on the primary:

psql -h primary -c "CREATE DATABASE regression"

Next, run the preparatory script src/test/regress/sql/hs_primary_setup.sql on the primary in the regression database, for example:

psql -h primary -f src/test/regress/sql/hs_primary_setup.sql regression

Allow these changes to propagate to the standby.

Now arrange for the default database connection to be to the standby server under test (for example, by setting the PGHOST and PGPORT environment variables). Finally, run gmake standbycheck in the regression directory:

cd src/test/regress
gmake standbycheck

Some extreme behaviors can also be generated on the primary using the script src/test/regress/sql/hs_primary_extremes.sql to allow the behavior of the standby to be tested.

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Test Evaluation

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30.2. Test Evaluation

Some properly installed and fully functional PostgreSQL installations can "fail" some of these regression tests due to platform-specific artifacts such as varying floating-point representation and message wording. The tests are currently evaluated using a simple diff comparison against the outputs generated on a reference system, so the results are sensitive to small system differences. When a test is reported as "failed", always examine the differences between expected and actual results; you might find that the differences are not significant. Nonetheless, we still strive to maintain accurate reference files across all supported platforms, so it can be expected that all tests pass.

The actual outputs of the regression tests are in files in the src/test/regress/results directory. The test script uses diff to compare each output file against the reference outputs stored in the src/test/regress/expected directory. Any differences are saved for your inspection in src/test/regress/regression.diffs. (When running a test suite other than the core tests, these files of course appear in the relevant subdirectory, not src/test/regress.)

If for some reason a particular platform generates a "failure" for a given test, but inspection of the output convinces you that the result is valid, you can add a new comparison file to silence the failure report in future test runs. See Section 30.3 for details.

30.2.1. Error Message Differences

Some of the regression tests involve intentional invalid input values. Error messages can come from either the PostgreSQL code or from the host platform system routines. In the latter case, the messages can vary between platforms, but should reflect similar information. These differences in messages will result in a "failed" regression test that can be validated by inspection.

30.2.2. Locale Differences

If you run the tests against a server that was initialized with a collation-order locale other than C, then there might be differences due to sort order and subsequent failures. The regression test suite is set up to handle this problem by providing alternate result files that together are known to handle a large number of locales.

To run the tests in a different locale when using the temporary-installation method, pass the appropriate locale-related environment variables on the gmake command line, for example:

gmake check LANG=de_DE.utf8

(The regression test driver unsets LC_ALL, so it does not work to choose the locale using that variable.) To use no locale, either unset all locale-related environment variables (or set them to C) or use the following special invocation:

gmake check NO_LOCALE=1

When running the tests against an existing installation, the locale setup is determined by the existing installation. To change it, initialize the database cluster with a different locale by passing the appropriate options to initdb.

In general, it is advisable to try to run the regression tests in the locale setup that is wanted for production use, as this will exercise the locale- and encoding-related code portions that will actually be used in production. Depending on the operating system environment, you might get failures, but then you will at least know what locale-specific behaviors to expect when running real applications.

30.2.3. Date and Time Differences

Most of the date and time results are dependent on the time zone environment. The reference files are generated for time zone PST8PDT (Berkeley, California), and there will be apparent failures if the tests are not run with that time zone setting. The regression test driver sets environment variable PGTZ to PST8PDT, which normally ensures proper results.

30.2.4. Floating-Point Differences

Some of the tests involve computing 64-bit floating-point numbers (double precision) from table columns. Differences in results involving mathematical functions of double precision columns have been observed. The float8 and geometry tests are particularly prone to small differences across platforms, or even with different compiler optimization settings. Human eyeball comparison is needed to determine the real significance of these differences which are usually 10 places to the right of the decimal point.

Some systems display minus zero as -0, while others just show 0.

Some systems signal errors from pow() and exp() differently from the mechanism expected by the current PostgreSQL code.

30.2.5. Row Ordering Differences

You might see differences in which the same rows are output in a different order than what appears in the expected file. In most cases this is not, strictly speaking, a bug. Most of the regression test scripts are not so pedantic as to use an ORDER BY for every single SELECT, and so their result row orderings are not well-defined according to the SQL specification. In practice, since we are looking at the same queries being executed on the same data by the same software, we usually get the same result ordering on all platforms, so the lack of ORDER BY is not a problem. Some queries do exhibit cross-platform ordering differences, however. When testing against an already-installed server, ordering differences can also be caused by non-C locale settings or non-default parameter settings, such as custom values of work_mem or the planner cost parameters.

Therefore, if you see an ordering difference, it's not something to worry about, unless the query does have an ORDER BY that your result is violating. However, please report it anyway, so that we can add an ORDER BY to that particular query to eliminate the bogus "failure" in future releases.

You might wonder why we don't order all the regression test queries explicitly to get rid of this issue once and for all. The reason is that that would make the regression tests less useful, not more, since they'd tend to exercise query plan types that produce ordered results to the exclusion of those that don't.

30.2.6. Insufficient Stack Depth

If the errors test results in a server crash at the select infinite_recurse() command, it means that the platform's limit on process stack size is smaller than the max_stack_depth parameter indicates. This can be fixed by running the server under a higher stack size limit (4MB is recommended with the default value of max_stack_depth). If you are unable to do that, an alternative is to reduce the value of max_stack_depth.

On platforms supporting getrlimit(), the server should automatically choose a safe value of max_stack_depth; so unless you've manually overridden this setting, a failure of this kind is a reportable bug.

30.2.7. The "random" Test

The random test script is intended to produce random results. In very rare cases, this causes that regression test to fail. Typing:

diff results/random.out expected/random.out

should produce only one or a few lines of differences. You need not worry unless the random test fails repeatedly.

30.2.8. Configuration Parameters

When running the tests against an existing installation, some non-default parameter settings could cause the tests to fail. For example, changing parameters such as enable_seqscan or enable_indexscan could cause plan changes that would affect the results of tests that use EXPLAIN.

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Variant Comparison Files

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30.3. Variant Comparison Files

Since some of the tests inherently produce environment-dependent results, we have provided ways to specify alternate "expected" result files. Each regression test can have several comparison files showing possible results on different platforms. There are two independent mechanisms for determining which comparison file is used for each test.

The first mechanism allows comparison files to be selected for specific platforms. There is a mapping file, src/test/regress/resultmap, that defines which comparison file to use for each platform. To eliminate bogus test "failures" for a particular platform, you first choose or make a variant result file, and then add a line to the resultmap file.

Each line in the mapping file is of the form

testname:output:platformpattern=comparisonfilename

The test name is just the name of the particular regression test module. The output value indicates which output file to check. For the standard regression tests, this is always out. The value corresponds to the file extension of the output file. The platform pattern is a pattern in the style of the Unix tool expr (that is, a regular expression with an implicit ^ anchor at the start). It is matched against the platform name as printed by config.guess. The comparison file name is the base name of the substitute result comparison file.

For example: some systems interpret very small floating-point values as zero, rather than reporting an underflow error. This causes a few differences in the float8 regression test. Therefore, we provide a variant comparison file, float8-small-is-zero.out, which includes the results to be expected on these systems. To silence the bogus "failure" message on OpenBSD platforms, resultmap includes:

float8:out:i.86-.*-openbsd=float8-small-is-zero.out

which will trigger on any machine where the output of config.guess matches i.86-.*-openbsd. Other lines in resultmap select the variant comparison file for other platforms where it's appropriate.

The second selection mechanism for variant comparison files is much more automatic: it simply uses the "best match" among several supplied comparison files. The regression test driver script considers both the standard comparison file for a test, testname.out, and variant files named testname_digit.out (where the digit is any single digit 0-9). If any such file is an exact match, the test is considered to pass; otherwise, the one that generates the shortest diff is used to create the failure report. (If resultmap includes an entry for the particular test, then the base testname is the substitute name given in resultmap.)

For example, for the char test, the comparison file char.out contains results that are expected in the C and POSIX locales, while the file char_1.out contains results sorted as they appear in many other locales.

The best-match mechanism was devised to cope with locale-dependent results, but it can be used in any situation where the test results cannot be predicted easily from the platform name alone. A limitation of this mechanism is that the test driver cannot tell which variant is actually "correct" for the current environment; it will just pick the variant that seems to work best. Therefore it is safest to use this mechanism only for variant results that you are willing to consider equally valid in all contexts.

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Test Coverage Examination

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30.4. Test Coverage Examination

The PostgreSQL source code can be compiled with coverage testing instrumentation, so that it becomes possible to examine which parts of the code are covered by the regression tests or any other test suite that is run with the code. This is currently supported when compiling with GCC and requires the gcov and lcov programs.

A typical workflow would look like this:

./configure --enable-coverage ... OTHER OPTIONS ...
gmake
gmake check # or other test suite
gmake coverage-html

Then point your HTML browser to coverage/index.html. The gmake commands also work in subdirectories.

To reset the execution counts between test runs, run:

gmake coverage-clean

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Client Interfaces

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IV. Client Interfaces

This part describes the client programming interfaces distributed with PostgreSQL. Each of these chapters can be read independently. Note that there are many other programming interfaces for client programs that are distributed separately and contain their own documentation (Appendix G lists some of the more popular ones). Readers of this part should be familiar with using SQL commands to manipulate and query the database (see Part II) and of course with the programming language that the interface uses.

Table of Contents
31. libpq - C Library
31.1. Database Connection Control Functions
31.2. Connection Status Functions
31.3. Command Execution Functions
31.4. Asynchronous Command Processing
31.5. Canceling Queries in Progress
31.6. The Fast-Path Interface
31.7. Asynchronous Notification
31.8. Functions Associated with the COPY Command
31.9. Control Functions
31.10. Miscellaneous Functions
31.11. Notice Processing
31.12. Event System
31.13. Environment Variables
31.14. The Password File
31.15. The Connection Service File
31.16. LDAP Lookup of Connection Parameters
31.17. SSL Support
31.18. Behavior in Threaded Programs
31.19. Building libpq Programs
31.20. Example Programs
32. Large Objects
32.1. Introduction
32.2. Implementation Features
32.3. Client Interfaces
32.4. Server-side Functions
32.5. Example Program
33. ECPG - Embedded SQL in C
33.1. The Concept
33.2. Managing Database Connections
33.3. Running SQL Commands
33.4. Using Host Variables
33.5. Dynamic SQL
33.6. pgtypes Library
33.7. Using Descriptor Areas
33.8. Error Handling
33.9. Preprocessor Directives
33.10. Processing Embedded SQL Programs
33.11. Library Functions
33.12. Large Objects
33.13. C++ Applications
33.14. Embedded SQL Commands
33.15. Informix Compatibility Mode
33.16. Internals
34. The Information Schema
34.1. The Schema
34.2. Data Types
34.3. information_schema_catalog_name
34.4. administrable_role_authorizations
34.5. applicable_roles
34.6. attributes
34.7. character_sets
34.8. check_constraint_routine_usage
34.9. check_constraints
34.10. collations
34.11. collation_character_set_applicability
34.12. column_domain_usage
34.13. column_privileges
34.14. column_udt_usage
34.15. columns
34.16. constraint_column_usage
34.17. constraint_table_usage
34.18. data_type_privileges
34.19. domain_constraints
34.20. domain_udt_usage
34.21. domains
34.22. element_types
34.23. enabled_roles
34.24. foreign_data_wrapper_options
34.25. foreign_data_wrappers
34.26. foreign_server_options
34.27. foreign_servers
34.28. foreign_table_options
34.29. foreign_tables
34.30. key_column_usage
34.31. parameters
34.32. referential_constraints
34.33. role_column_grants
34.34. role_routine_grants
34.35. role_table_grants
34.36. role_usage_grants
34.37. routine_privileges
34.38. routines
34.39. schemata
34.40. sequences
34.41. sql_features
34.42. sql_implementation_info
34.43. sql_languages
34.44. sql_packages
34.45. sql_parts
34.46. sql_sizing
34.47. sql_sizing_profiles
34.48. table_constraints
34.49. table_privileges
34.50. tables
34.51. triggered_update_columns
34.52. triggers
34.53. usage_privileges
34.54. user_mapping_options
34.55. user_mappings
34.56. view_column_usage
34.57. view_routine_usage
34.58. view_table_usage
34.59. views
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libpq - C Library

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Chapter 31. libpq - C Library

Table of Contents
31.1. Database Connection Control Functions
31.2. Connection Status Functions
31.3. Command Execution Functions
31.3.1. Main Functions
31.3.2. Retrieving Query Result Information
31.3.3. Retrieving Other Result Information
31.3.4. Escaping Strings for Inclusion in SQL Commands
31.4. Asynchronous Command Processing
31.5. Canceling Queries in Progress
31.6. The Fast-Path Interface
31.7. Asynchronous Notification
31.8. Functions Associated with the COPY Command
31.8.1. Functions for Sending COPY Data
31.8.2. Functions for Receiving COPY Data
31.8.3. Obsolete Functions for COPY
31.9. Control Functions
31.10. Miscellaneous Functions
31.11. Notice Processing
31.12. Event System
31.12.1. Event Types
31.12.2. Event Callback Procedure
31.12.3. Event Support Functions
31.12.4. Event Example
31.13. Environment Variables
31.14. The Password File
31.15. The Connection Service File
31.16. LDAP Lookup of Connection Parameters
31.17. SSL Support
31.17.1. Client Verification of Server Certificates
31.17.2. Client Certificates
31.17.3. Protection Provided in Different Modes
31.17.4. SSL Client File Usage
31.17.5. SSL Library Initialization
31.18. Behavior in Threaded Programs
31.19. Building libpq Programs
31.20. Example Programs

libpq is the C application programmer's interface to PostgreSQL. libpq is a set of library functions that allow client programs to pass queries to the PostgreSQL backend server and to receive the results of these queries.

libpq is also the underlying engine for several other PostgreSQL application interfaces, including those written for C++, Perl, Python, Tcl and ECPG. So some aspects of libpq's behavior will be important to you if you use one of those packages. In particular, Section 31.13, Section 31.14 and Section 31.17 describe behavior that is visible to the user of any application that uses libpq.

Some short programs are included at the end of this chapter (Section 31.20) to show how to write programs that use libpq. There are also several complete examples of libpq applications in the directory src/test/examples in the source code distribution.

Client programs that use libpq must include the header file libpq-fe.h and must link with the libpq library.

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Database Connection Control Functions

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31.1. Database Connection Control Functions

The following functions deal with making a connection to a PostgreSQL backend server. An application program can have several backend connections open at one time. (One reason to do that is to access more than one database.) Each connection is represented by a PGconn object, which is obtained from the function PQconnectdb, PQconnectdbParams, or PQsetdbLogin. Note that these functions will always return a non-null object pointer, unless perhaps there is too little memory even to allocate the PGconn object. The PQstatus function should be called to check the return value for a successful connection before queries are sent via the connection object.

Warning

On Unix, forking a process with open libpq connections can lead to unpredictable results because the parent and child processes share the same sockets and operating system resources. For this reason, such usage is not recommended, though doing an exec from the child process to load a new executable is safe.

Note: On Windows, there is a way to improve performance if a single database connection is repeatedly started and shutdown. Internally, libpq calls WSAStartup() and WSACleanup() for connection startup and shutdown, respectively. WSAStartup() increments an internal Windows library reference count which is decremented by WSACleanup(). When the reference count is just one, calling WSACleanup() frees all resources and all DLLs are unloaded. This is an expensive operation. To avoid this, an application can manually call WSAStartup() so resources will not be freed when the last database connection is closed.

PQconnectdbParams

Makes a new connection to the database server.

PGconn *PQconnectdbParams(const char **keywords, const char **values, int expand_dbname);

This function opens a new database connection using the parameters taken from two NULL-terminated arrays. The first, keywords, is defined as an array of strings, each one being a key word. The second, values, gives the value for each key word. Unlike PQsetdbLogin below, the parameter set can be extended without changing the function signature, so use of this function (or its nonblocking analogs PQconnectStartParams and PQconnectPoll) is preferred for new application programming.

When expand_dbname is non-zero, the dbname key word value is allowed to be recognized as a conninfo string. See below for details.

The passed arrays can be empty to use all default parameters, or can contain one or more parameter settings. They should be matched in length. Processing will stop with the last non-NULL element of the keywords array.

The currently recognized parameter key words are:

host

Name of host to connect to. If this begins with a slash, it specifies Unix-domain communication rather than TCP/IP communication; the value is the name of the directory in which the socket file is stored. The default behavior when host is not specified is to connect to a Unix-domain socket in /tmp (or whatever socket directory was specified when PostgreSQL was built). On machines without Unix-domain sockets, the default is to connect to localhost.

hostaddr

Numeric IP address of host to connect to. This should be in the standard IPv4 address format, e.g., 172.28.40.9. If your machine supports IPv6, you can also use those addresses. TCP/IP communication is always used when a nonempty string is specified for this parameter.

Using hostaddr instead of host allows the application to avoid a host name look-up, which might be important in applications with time constraints. However, a host name is required for Kerberos, GSSAPI, or SSPI authentication methods, as well as for verify-full SSL certificate verification. The following rules are used:

  • If host is specified without hostaddr, a host name lookup occurs.

  • If hostaddr is specified without host, the value for hostaddr gives the server network address. The connection attempt will fail if the authentication method requires a host name.

  • If both host and hostaddr are specified, the value for hostaddr gives the server network address. The value for host is ignored unless the authentication method requires it, in which case it will be used as the host name.

Note that authentication is likely to fail if host is not the name of the server at network address hostaddr. Also, note that host rather than hostaddr is used to identify the connection in ~/.pgpass (see Section 31.14).

Without either a host name or host address, libpq will connect using a local Unix-domain socket; or on machines without Unix-domain sockets, it will attempt to connect to localhost.

port

Port number to connect to at the server host, or socket file name extension for Unix-domain connections.

dbname

The database name. Defaults to be the same as the user name.

user

PostgreSQL user name to connect as. Defaults to be the same as the operating system name of the user running the application.

password

Password to be used if the server demands password authentication.

connect_timeout

Maximum wait for connection, in seconds (write as a decimal integer string). Zero or not specified means wait indefinitely. It is not recommended to use a timeout of less than 2 seconds.

client_encoding

This sets the client_encoding configuration parameter for this connection. In addition to the values accepted by the corresponding server option, you can use auto to determine the right encoding from the current locale in the client (LC_CTYPE environment variable on Unix systems).

options

Adds command-line options to send to the server at run-time. For example, setting this to -c geqo=off sets the session's value of the geqo parameter to off. For a detailed discussion of the available options, consult Chapter 18.

application_name

Specifies a value for the application_name configuration parameter.

fallback_application_name

Specifies a fallback value for the application_name configuration parameter. This value will be used if no value has been given for application_name via a connection parameter or the PGAPPNAME environment variable. Specifying a fallback name is useful in generic utility programs that wish to set a default application name but allow it to be overridden by the user.

keepalives

Controls whether client-side TCP keepalives are used. The default value is 1, meaning on, but you can change this to 0, meaning off, if keepalives are not wanted. This parameter is ignored for connections made via a Unix-domain socket.

keepalives_idle

Controls the number of seconds of inactivity after which TCP should send a keepalive message to the server. A value of zero uses the system default. This parameter is ignored for connections made via a Unix-domain socket, or if keepalives are disabled. It is only supported on systems where the TCP_KEEPIDLE or TCP_KEEPALIVE socket option is available, and on Windows; on other systems, it has no effect.

keepalives_interval

Controls the number of seconds after which a TCP keepalive message that is not acknowledged by the server should be retransmitted. A value of zero uses the system default. This parameter is ignored for connections made via a Unix-domain socket, or if keepalives are disabled. It is only supported on systems where the TCP_KEEPINTVL socket option is available, and on Windows; on other systems, it has no effect.

keepalives_count

Controls the number of TCP keepalives that can be lost before the client's connection to the server is considered dead. A value of zero uses the system default. This parameter is ignored for connections made via a Unix-domain socket, or if keepalives are disabled. It is only supported on systems where the TCP_KEEPCNT socket option is available; on other systems, it has no effect.

tty

Ignored (formerly, this specified where to send server debug output).

sslmode

This option determines whether or with what priority a secure SSL TCP/IP connection will be negotiated with the server. There are six modes:

disable

only try a non-SSL connection

allow

first try a non-SSL connection; if that fails, try an SSL connection

prefer (default)

first try an SSL connection; if that fails, try a non-SSL connection

require

only try an SSL connection. If a root CA file is present, verify the certificate in the same way as if verify-ca was specified

verify-ca

only try an SSL connection, and verify that the server certificate is issued by a trusted certificate authority (CA)

verify-full

only try an SSL connection, verify that the server certificate is issued by a trusted CA and that the server host name matches that in the certificate

See Section 31.17 for a detailed description of how these options work.

sslmode is ignored for Unix domain socket communication. If PostgreSQL is compiled without SSL support, using options require, verify-ca, or verify-full will cause an error, while options allow and prefer will be accepted but libpq will not actually attempt an SSL connection.

requiressl

This option is deprecated in favor of the sslmode setting.

If set to 1, an SSL connection to the server is required (this is equivalent to sslmode require). libpq will then refuse to connect if the server does not accept an SSL connection. If set to 0 (default), libpq will negotiate the connection type with the server (equivalent to sslmode prefer). This option is only available if PostgreSQL is compiled with SSL support.

sslcert

This parameter specifies the file name of the client SSL certificate, replacing the default ~/.postgresql/postgresql.crt. This parameter is ignored if an SSL connection is not made.

sslkey

This parameter specifies the location for the secret key used for the client certificate. It can either specify a file name that will be used instead of the default ~/.postgresql/postgresql.key, or it can specify a key obtained from an external "engine" (engines are OpenSSL loadable modules). An external engine specification should consist of a colon-separated engine name and an engine-specific key identifier. This parameter is ignored if an SSL connection is not made.

sslrootcert

This parameter specifies the name of a file containing SSL certificate authority (CA) certificate(s). If the file exists, the server's certificate will be verified to be signed by one of these authorities. The default is ~/.postgresql/root.crt.

sslcrl

This parameter specifies the file name of the SSL certificate revocation list (CRL). Certificates listed in this file, if it exists, will be rejected while attempting to authenticate the server's certificate. The default is ~/.postgresql/root.crl.

requirepeer

This parameter specifies the operating-system user name of the server, for example requirepeer=postgres. When making a Unix-domain socket connection, if this parameter is set, the client checks at the beginning of the connection that the server process is running under the specified user name; if it is not, the connection is aborted with an error. This parameter can be used to provide server authentication similar to that available with SSL certificates on TCP/IP connections. (Note that if the Unix-domain socket is in /tmp or another publicly writable location, any user could start a server listening there. Use this parameter to ensure that you are connected to a server run by a trusted user.) This option is only supported on platforms for which the peer authentication method is implemented; see Section 19.3.7.

krbsrvname

Kerberos service name to use when authenticating with Kerberos 5 or GSSAPI. This must match the service name specified in the server configuration for Kerberos authentication to succeed. (See also Section 19.3.5 and Section 19.3.3.)

gsslib

GSS library to use for GSSAPI authentication. Only used on Windows. Set to gssapi to force libpq to use the GSSAPI library for authentication instead of the default SSPI.

service

Service name to use for additional parameters. It specifies a service name in pg_service.conf that holds additional connection parameters. This allows applications to specify only a service name so connection parameters can be centrally maintained. See Section 31.15.

If any parameter is unspecified, then the corresponding environment variable (see Section 31.13) is checked. If the environment variable is not set either, then the indicated built-in defaults are used.

If expand_dbname is non-zero and dbname contains an = sign, it is taken as a conninfo string in exactly the same way as if it had been passed to PQconnectdb(see below). Previously processed key words will be overridden by key words in the conninfo string.

In general key words are processed from the beginning of these arrays in index order. The effect of this is that when key words are repeated, the last processed value is retained. Therefore, through careful placement of the dbname key word, it is possible to determine what may be overridden by a conninfo string, and what may not.

PQconnectdb

Makes a new connection to the database server.

PGconn *PQconnectdb(const char *conninfo);

This function opens a new database connection using the parameters taken from the string conninfo.

The passed string can be empty to use all default parameters, or it can contain one or more parameter settings separated by whitespace. Each parameter setting is in the form keyword = value. Spaces around the equal sign are optional. To write an empty value, or a value containing spaces, surround it with single quotes, e.g., keyword = 'a value'. Single quotes and backslashes within the value must be escaped with a backslash, i.e., \' and \\.

The currently recognized parameter key words are the same as above.

PQsetdbLogin

Makes a new connection to the database server.

PGconn *PQsetdbLogin(const char *pghost,
                     const char *pgport,
                     const char *pgoptions,
                     const char *pgtty,
                     const char *dbName,
                     const char *login,
                     const char *pwd);

This is the predecessor of PQconnectdb with a fixed set of parameters. It has the same functionality except that the missing parameters will always take on default values. Write NULL or an empty string for any one of the fixed parameters that is to be defaulted.

If the dbName contains an = sign, it is taken as a conninfo string in exactly the same way as if it had been passed to PQconnectdb, and the remaining parameters are then applied as above.

PQsetdb

Makes a new connection to the database server.

PGconn *PQsetdb(char *pghost,
                char *pgport,
                char *pgoptions,
                char *pgtty,
                char *dbName);

This is a macro that calls PQsetdbLogin with null pointers for the login and pwd parameters. It is provided for backward compatibility with very old programs.

PQconnectStartParams
PQconnectStart
PQconnectPoll

Make a connection to the database server in a nonblocking manner.

PGconn *PQconnectStartParams(const char **keywords,
                             const char **values,
                             int expand_dbname);

PGconn *PQconnectStart(const char *conninfo);

PostgresPollingStatusType PQconnectPoll(PGconn *conn);

These three functions are used to open a connection to a database server such that your application's thread of execution is not blocked on remote I/O whilst doing so. The point of this approach is that the waits for I/O to complete can occur in the application's main loop, rather than down inside PQconnectdbParams or PQconnectdb, and so the application can manage this operation in parallel with other activities.

With PQconnectStartParams, the database connection is made using the parameters taken from the keywords and values arrays, and controlled by expand_dbname, as described above for PQconnectdbParams.

With PQconnectStart, the database connection is made using the parameters taken from the string conninfo as described above for PQconnectdb.

Neither PQconnectStartParams nor PQconnectStart nor PQconnectPoll will block, so long as a number of restrictions are met:

  • The hostaddr and host parameters are used appropriately to ensure that name and reverse name queries are not made. See the documentation of these parameters under PQconnectdbParams above for details.

  • If you call PQtrace, ensure that the stream object into which you trace will not block.

  • You ensure that the socket is in the appropriate state before calling PQconnectPoll, as described below.

Note: use of PQconnectStartParams is analogous to PQconnectStart shown below.

To begin a nonblocking connection request, call conn = PQconnectStart("connection_info_string"). If conn is null, then libpq has been unable to allocate a new PGconn structure. Otherwise, a valid PGconn pointer is returned (though not yet representing a valid connection to the database). On return from PQconnectStart, call status = PQstatus(conn). If status equals CONNECTION_BAD, PQconnectStart has failed.

If PQconnectStart succeeds, the next stage is to poll libpq so that it can proceed with the connection sequence. Use PQsocket(conn) to obtain the descriptor of the socket underlying the database connection. Loop thus: If PQconnectPoll(conn) last returned PGRES_POLLING_READING, wait until the socket is ready to read (as indicated by select(), poll(), or similar system function). Then call PQconnectPoll(conn) again. Conversely, if PQconnectPoll(conn) last returned PGRES_POLLING_WRITING, wait until the socket is ready to write, then call PQconnectPoll(conn) again. If you have yet to call PQconnectPoll, i.e., just after the call to PQconnectStart, behave as if it last returned PGRES_POLLING_WRITING. Continue this loop until PQconnectPoll(conn) returns PGRES_POLLING_FAILED, indicating the connection procedure has failed, or PGRES_POLLING_OK, indicating the connection has been successfully made.

At any time during connection, the status of the connection can be checked by calling PQstatus. If this call returns CONNECTION_BAD, then the connection procedure has failed; if the call returns CONNECTION_OK, then the connection is ready. Both of these states are equally detectable from the return value of PQconnectPoll, described above. Other states might also occur during (and only during) an asynchronous connection procedure. These indicate the current stage of the connection procedure and might be useful to provide feedback to the user for example. These statuses are:

CONNECTION_STARTED

Waiting for connection to be made.

CONNECTION_MADE

Connection OK; waiting to send.

CONNECTION_AWAITING_RESPONSE

Waiting for a response from the server.

CONNECTION_AUTH_OK

Received authentication; waiting for backend start-up to finish.

CONNECTION_SSL_STARTUP

Negotiating SSL encryption.

CONNECTION_SETENV

Negotiating environment-driven parameter settings.

Note that, although these constants will remain (in order to maintain compatibility), an application should never rely upon these occurring in a particular order, or at all, or on the status always being one of these documented values. An application might do something like this:

switch(PQstatus(conn))
{
        case CONNECTION_STARTED:
            feedback = "Connecting...";
            break;

        case CONNECTION_MADE:
            feedback = "Connected to server...";
            break;
.
.
.
        default:
            feedback = "Connecting...";
}

The connect_timeout connection parameter is ignored when using PQconnectPoll; it is the application's responsibility to decide whether an excessive amount of time has elapsed. Otherwise, PQconnectStart followed by a PQconnectPoll loop is equivalent to PQconnectdb.

Note that if PQconnectStart returns a non-null pointer, you must call PQfinish when you are finished with it, in order to dispose of the structure and any associated memory blocks. This must be done even if the connection attempt fails or is abandoned.

PQconndefaults

Returns the default connection options.

PQconninfoOption *PQconndefaults(void);

typedef struct
{
    char   *keyword;   /* The keyword of the option */
    char   *envvar;    /* Fallback environment variable name */
    char   *compiled;  /* Fallback compiled in default value */
    char   *val;       /* Option's current value, or NULL */
    char   *label;     /* Label for field in connect dialog */
    char   *dispchar;  /* Indicates how to display this field
                          in a connect dialog. Values are:
                          ""        Display entered value as is
                          "*"       Password field - hide value
                          "D"       Debug option - don't show by default */
    int     dispsize;  /* Field size in characters for dialog */
} PQconninfoOption;

Returns a connection options array. This can be used to determine all possible PQconnectdb options and their current default values. The return value points to an array of PQconninfoOption structures, which ends with an entry having a null keyword pointer. The null pointer is returned if memory could not be allocated. Note that the current default values (val fields) will depend on environment variables and other context. Callers must treat the connection options data as read-only.

After processing the options array, free it by passing it to PQconninfoFree. If this is not done, a small amount of memory is leaked for each call to PQconndefaults.

PQconninfoParse

Returns parsed connection options from the provided connection string.

PQconninfoOption *PQconninfoParse(const char *conninfo, char **errmsg);

Parses a connection string and returns the resulting options as an array; or returns NULL if there is a problem with the connection string. This function can be used to extract the PQconnectdb options in the provided connection string. The return value points to an array of PQconninfoOption structures, which ends with an entry having a null keyword pointer.

Note that only options explicitly specified in the string will have values set in the result array; no defaults are inserted.

If errmsg is not NULL, then *errmsg is set to NULL on success, else to a malloc'd error string explaining the problem. (It is also possible for *errmsg to be set to NULL and the function to return NULL; this indicates an out-of-memory condition.)

After processing the options array, free it by passing it to PQconninfoFree. If this is not done, some memory is leaked for each call to PQconninfoParse. Conversely, if an error occurs and errmsg is not NULL, be sure to free the error string using PQfreemem.

PQfinish

Closes the connection to the server. Also frees memory used by the PGconn object.

void PQfinish(PGconn *conn);

Note that even if the server connection attempt fails (as indicated by PQstatus), the application should call PQfinish to free the memory used by the PGconn object. The PGconn pointer must not be used again after PQfinish has been called.

PQreset

Resets the communication channel to the server.

void PQreset(PGconn *conn);

This function will close the connection to the server and attempt to reestablish a new connection to the same server, using all the same parameters previously used. This might be useful for error recovery if a working connection is lost.

PQresetStart
PQresetPoll

Reset the communication channel to the server, in a nonblocking manner.

int PQresetStart(PGconn *conn);

PostgresPollingStatusType PQresetPoll(PGconn *conn);

These functions will close the connection to the server and attempt to reestablish a new connection to the same server, using all the same parameters previously used. This can be useful for error recovery if a working connection is lost. They differ from PQreset (above) in that they act in a nonblocking manner. These functions suffer from the same restrictions as PQconnectStartParams, PQconnectStart and PQconnectPoll.

To initiate a connection reset, call PQresetStart. If it returns 0, the reset has failed. If it returns 1, poll the reset using PQresetPoll in exactly the same way as you would create the connection using PQconnectPoll.

PQpingParams

PQpingParams reports the status of the server. It accepts connection parameters identical to those of PQconnectdbParams, described above. It is not, however, necessary to supply correct user name, password, or database name values to obtain the server status.

PGPing PQpingParams(const char **keywords, const char **values, int expand_dbname);

The function returns one of the following values:

PQPING_OK

The server is running and appears to be accepting connections.

PQPING_REJECT

The server is running but is in a state that disallows connections (startup, shutdown, or crash recovery).

PQPING_NO_RESPONSE

The server could not be contacted. This might indicate that the server is not running, or that there is something wrong with the given connection parameters (for example, wrong port number), or that there is a network connectivity problem (for example, a firewall blocking the connection request).

PQPING_NO_ATTEMPT

No attempt was made to contact the server, because the supplied parameters were obviously incorrect or there was some client-side problem (for example, out of memory).

PQping

PQping reports the status of the server. It accepts connection parameters identical to those of PQconnectdb, described above. It is not, however, necessary to supply correct user name, password, or database name values to obtain the server status.

PGPing PQping(const char *conninfo);

The return values are the same as for PQpingParams.

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libpq - C Library | Up | Connection Status Functions


Connection Status Functions

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31.2. Connection Status Functions

These functions can be used to interrogate the status of an existing database connection object.

Tip: libpq application programmers should be careful to maintain the PGconn abstraction. Use the accessor functions described below to get at the contents of PGconn. Reference to internal PGconn fields using libpq-int.h is not recommended because they are subject to change in the future.

The following functions return parameter values established at connection. These values are fixed for the life of the PGconn object.

PQdb

Returns the database name of the connection.

char *PQdb(const PGconn *conn);

PQuser

Returns the user name of the connection.

char *PQuser(const PGconn *conn);

PQpass

Returns the password of the connection.

char *PQpass(const PGconn *conn);

PQhost

Returns the server host name of the connection.

char *PQhost(const PGconn *conn);

PQport

Returns the port of the connection.

char *PQport(const PGconn *conn);

PQtty

Returns the debug TTY of the connection. (This is obsolete, since the server no longer pays attention to the TTY setting, but the function remains for backward compatibility.)

char *PQtty(const PGconn *conn);

PQoptions

Returns the command-line options passed in the connection request.

char *PQoptions(const PGconn *conn);

The following functions return status data that can change as operations are executed on the PGconn object.

PQstatus

Returns the status of the connection.

ConnStatusType PQstatus(const PGconn *conn);

The status can be one of a number of values. However, only two of these are seen outside of an asynchronous connection procedure: CONNECTION_OK and CONNECTION_BAD. A good connection to the database has the status CONNECTION_OK. A failed connection attempt is signaled by status CONNECTION_BAD. Ordinarily, an OK status will remain so until PQfinish, but a communications failure might result in the status changing to CONNECTION_BAD prematurely. In that case the application could try to recover by calling PQreset.

See the entry for PQconnectStartParams, PQconnectStart and PQconnectPoll with regards to other status codes that might be returned.

PQtransactionStatus

Returns the current in-transaction status of the server.

PGTransactionStatusType PQtransactionStatus(const PGconn *conn);

The status can be PQTRANS_IDLE (currently idle), PQTRANS_ACTIVE (a command is in progress), PQTRANS_INTRANS (idle, in a valid transaction block), or PQTRANS_INERROR (idle, in a failed transaction block). PQTRANS_UNKNOWN is reported if the connection is bad. PQTRANS_ACTIVE is reported only when a query has been sent to the server and not yet completed.

Caution

PQtransactionStatus will give incorrect results when using a PostgreSQL 7.3 server that has the parameter autocommit set to off. The server-side autocommit feature has been deprecated and does not exist in later server versions.

PQparameterStatus

Looks up a current parameter setting of the server.

const char *PQparameterStatus(const PGconn *conn, const char *paramName);

Certain parameter values are reported by the server automatically at connection startup or whenever their values change. PQparameterStatus can be used to interrogate these settings. It returns the current value of a parameter if known, or NULL if the parameter is not known.

Parameters reported as of the current release include server_version, server_encoding, client_encoding, application_name, is_superuser, session_authorization, DateStyle, IntervalStyle, TimeZone, integer_datetimes, and standard_conforming_strings. (server_encoding, TimeZone, and integer_datetimes were not reported by releases before 8.0; standard_conforming_strings was not reported by releases before 8.1; IntervalStyle was not reported by releases before 8.4; application_name was not reported by releases before 9.0.) Note that server_version, server_encoding and integer_datetimes cannot change after startup.

Pre-3.0-protocol servers do not report parameter settings, but libpq includes logic to obtain values for server_version and client_encoding anyway. Applications are encouraged to use PQparameterStatus rather than ad hoc code to determine these values. (Beware however that on a pre-3.0 connection, changing client_encoding via SET after connection startup will not be reflected by PQparameterStatus.) For server_version, see also PQserverVersion, which returns the information in a numeric form that is much easier to compare against.

If no value for standard_conforming_strings is reported, applications can assume it is off, that is, backslashes are treated as escapes in string literals. Also, the presence of this parameter can be taken as an indication that the escape string syntax (E'...') is accepted.

Although the returned pointer is declared const, it in fact points to mutable storage associated with the PGconn structure. It is unwise to assume the pointer will remain valid across queries.

PQprotocolVersion

Interrogates the frontend/backend protocol being used.

int PQprotocolVersion(const PGconn *conn);

Applications might wish to use this function to determine whether certain features are supported. Currently, the possible values are 2 (2.0 protocol), 3 (3.0 protocol), or zero (connection bad). The protocol version will not change after connection startup is complete, but it could theoretically change during a connection reset. The 3.0 protocol will normally be used when communicating with PostgreSQL 7.4 or later servers; pre-7.4 servers support only protocol 2.0. (Protocol 1.0 is obsolete and not supported by libpq.)

PQserverVersion

Returns an integer representing the backend version.

int PQserverVersion(const PGconn *conn);

Applications might use this function to determine the version of the database server they are connected to. The number is formed by converting the major, minor, and revision numbers into two-decimal-digit numbers and appending them together. For example, version 8.1.5 will be returned as 80105, and version 8.2 will be returned as 80200 (leading zeroes are not shown). Zero is returned if the connection is bad.

PQerrorMessage

Returns the error message most recently generated by an operation on the connection.

char *PQerrorMessage(const PGconn *conn);

Nearly all libpq functions will set a message for PQerrorMessage if they fail. Note that by libpq convention, a nonempty PQerrorMessage result can consist of multiple lines, and will include a trailing newline. The caller should not free the result directly. It will be freed when the associated PGconn handle is passed to PQfinish. The result string should not be expected to remain the same across operations on the PGconn structure.

PQsocket

Obtains the file descriptor number of the connection socket to the server. A valid descriptor will be greater than or equal to 0; a result of -1 indicates that no server connection is currently open. (This will not change during normal operation, but could change during connection setup or reset.)

int PQsocket(const PGconn *conn);

PQbackendPID

Returns the process ID (PID) of the backend process handling this connection.

int PQbackendPID(const PGconn *conn);

The backend PID is useful for debugging purposes and for comparison to NOTIFY messages (which include the PID of the notifying backend process). Note that the PID belongs to a process executing on the database server host, not the local host!

PQconnectionNeedsPassword

Returns true (1) if the connection authentication method required a password, but none was available. Returns false (0) if not.

int PQconnectionNeedsPassword(const PGconn *conn);

This function can be applied after a failed connection attempt to decide whether to prompt the user for a password.

PQconnectionUsedPassword

Returns true (1) if the connection authentication method used a password. Returns false (0) if not.

int PQconnectionUsedPassword(const PGconn *conn);

This function can be applied after either a failed or successful connection attempt to detect whether the server demanded a password.

PQgetssl

Returns the SSL structure used in the connection, or null if SSL is not in use.

SSL *PQgetssl(const PGconn *conn);

This structure can be used to verify encryption levels, check server certificates, and more. Refer to the OpenSSL documentation for information about this structure.

You must define USE_SSL in order to get the correct prototype for this function. Doing so will also automatically include ssl.h from OpenSSL.

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Command Execution Functions

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31.3. Command Execution Functions

Once a connection to a database server has been successfully established, the functions described here are used to perform SQL queries and commands.

31.3.1. Main Functions

PQexec

Submits a command to the server and waits for the result.

PGresult *PQexec(PGconn *conn, const char *command);

Returns a PGresult pointer or possibly a null pointer. A non-null pointer will generally be returned except in out-of-memory conditions or serious errors such as inability to send the command to the server. The PQresultStatus function should be called to check the return value for any errors (including the value of a null pointer, in which case it will return PGRES_FATAL_ERROR). Use PQerrorMessage to get more information about such errors.

The command string can include multiple SQL commands (separated by semicolons). Multiple queries sent in a single PQexec call are processed in a single transaction, unless there are explicit BEGIN/COMMIT commands included in the query string to divide it into multiple transactions. Note however that the returned PGresult structure describes only the result of the last command executed from the string. Should one of the commands fail, processing of the string stops with it and the returned PGresult describes the error condition.

PQexecParams

Submits a command to the server and waits for the result, with the ability to pass parameters separately from the SQL command text.

PGresult *PQexecParams(PGconn *conn,
                       const char *command,
                       int nParams,
                       const Oid *paramTypes,
                       const char * const *paramValues,
                       const int *paramLengths,
                       const int *paramFormats,
                       int resultFormat);

PQexecParams is like PQexec, but offers additional functionality: parameter values can be specified separately from the command string proper, and query results can be requested in either text or binary format. PQexecParams is supported only in protocol 3.0 and later connections; it will fail when using protocol 2.0.

The function arguments are:

conn

The connection object to send the command through.

command

The SQL command string to be executed. If parameters are used, they are referred to in the command string as $1, $2, etc.

nParams

The number of parameters supplied; it is the length of the arrays paramTypes[], paramValues[], paramLengths[], and paramFormats[]. (The array pointers can be NULL when nParams is zero.)

paramTypes[]

Specifies, by OID, the data types to be assigned to the parameter symbols. If paramTypes is NULL, or any particular element in the array is zero, the server infers a data type for the parameter symbol in the same way it would do for an untyped literal string.

paramValues[]

Specifies the actual values of the parameters. A null pointer in this array means the corresponding parameter is null; otherwise the pointer points to a zero-terminated text string (for text format) or binary data in the format expected by the server (for binary format).

paramLengths[]

Specifies the actual data lengths of binary-format parameters. It is ignored for null parameters and text-format parameters. The array pointer can be null when there are no binary parameters.

paramFormats[]

Specifies whether parameters are text (put a zero in the array entry for the corresponding parameter) or binary (put a one in the array entry for the corresponding parameter). If the array pointer is null then all parameters are presumed to be text strings.

Values passed in binary format require knowledge of the internal representation expected by the backend. For example, integers must be passed in network byte order. Passing numeric values requires knowledge of the server storage format, as implemented in src/backend/utils/adt/numeric.c::numeric_send() and src/backend/utils/adt/numeric.c::numeric_recv().

resultFormat

Specify zero to obtain results in text format, or one to obtain results in binary format. (There is not currently a provision to obtain different result columns in different formats, although that is possible in the underlying protocol.)

The primary advantage of PQexecParams over PQexec is that parameter values can be separated from the command string, thus avoiding the need for tedious and error-prone quoting and escaping.

Unlike PQexec, PQexecParams allows at most one SQL command in the given string. (There can be semicolons in it, but not more than one nonempty command.) This is a limitation of the underlying protocol, but has some usefulness as an extra defense against SQL-injection attacks.

Tip: Specifying parameter types via OIDs is tedious, particularly if you prefer not to hard-wire particular OID values into your program. However, you can avoid doing so even in cases where the server by itself cannot determine the type of the parameter, or chooses a different type than you want. In the SQL command text, attach an explicit cast to the parameter symbol to show what data type you will send. For example:

SELECT * FROM mytable WHERE x = $1::bigint;

This forces parameter $1 to be treated as bigint, whereas by default it would be assigned the same type as x. Forcing the parameter type decision, either this way or by specifying a numeric type OID, is strongly recommended when sending parameter values in binary format, because binary format has less redundancy than text format and so there is less chance that the server will detect a type mismatch mistake for you.

PQprepare

Submits a request to create a prepared statement with the given parameters, and waits for completion.

PGresult *PQprepare(PGconn *conn,
                    const char *stmtName,
                    const char *query,
                    int nParams,
                    const Oid *paramTypes);

PQprepare creates a prepared statement for later execution with PQexecPrepared. This feature allows commands that will be used repeatedly to be parsed and planned just once, rather than each time they are executed. PQprepare is supported only in protocol 3.0 and later connections; it will fail when using protocol 2.0.

The function creates a prepared statement named stmtName from the query string, which must contain a single SQL command. stmtName can be "" to create an unnamed statement, in which case any pre-existing unnamed statement is automatically replaced; otherwise it is an error if the statement name is already defined in the current session. If any parameters are used, they are referred to in the query as $1, $2, etc. nParams is the number of parameters for which types are pre-specified in the array paramTypes[]. (The array pointer can be NULL when nParams is zero.) paramTypes[] specifies, by OID, the data types to be assigned to the parameter symbols. If paramTypes is NULL, or any particular element in the array is zero, the server assigns a data type to the parameter symbol in the same way it would do for an untyped literal string. Also, the query can use parameter symbols with numbers higher than nParams; data types will be inferred for these symbols as well. (See PQdescribePrepared for a means to find out what data types were inferred.)

As with PQexec, the result is normally a PGresult object whose contents indicate server-side success or failure. A null result indicates out-of-memory or inability to send the command at all. Use PQerrorMessage to get more information about such errors.

Prepared statements for use with PQexecPrepared can also be created by executing SQL PREPARE statements. Also, although there is no libpq function for deleting a prepared statement, the SQL DEALLOCATE statement can be used for that purpose.

PQexecPrepared

Sends a request to execute a prepared statement with given parameters, and waits for the result.

PGresult *PQexecPrepared(PGconn *conn,
                         const char *stmtName,
                         int nParams,
                         const char * const *paramValues,
                         const int *paramLengths,
                         const int *paramFormats,
                         int resultFormat);

PQexecPrepared is like PQexecParams, but the command to be executed is specified by naming a previously-prepared statement, instead of giving a query string. This feature allows commands that will be used repeatedly to be parsed and planned just once, rather than each time they are executed. The statement must have been prepared previously in the current session. PQexecPrepared is supported only in protocol 3.0 and later connections; it will fail when using protocol 2.0.

The parameters are identical to PQexecParams, except that the name of a prepared statement is given instead of a query string, and the paramTypes[] parameter is not present (it is not needed since the prepared statement's parameter types were determined when it was created).

PQdescribePrepared

Submits a request to obtain information about the specified prepared statement, and waits for completion.

PGresult *PQdescribePrepared(PGconn *conn, const char *stmtName);

PQdescribePrepared allows an application to obtain information about a previously prepared statement. PQdescribePrepared is supported only in protocol 3.0 and later connections; it will fail when using protocol 2.0.

stmtName can be "" or NULL to reference the unnamed statement, otherwise it must be the name of an existing prepared statement. On success, a PGresult with status PGRES_COMMAND_OK is returned. The functions PQnparams and PQparamtype can be applied to this PGresult to obtain information about the parameters of the prepared statement, and the functions PQnfields, PQfname, PQftype, etc provide information about the result columns (if any) of the statement.

PQdescribePortal

Submits a request to obtain information about the specified portal, and waits for completion.

PGresult *PQdescribePortal(PGconn *conn, const char *portalName);

PQdescribePortal allows an application to obtain information about a previously created portal. (libpq does not provide any direct access to portals, but you can use this function to inspect the properties of a cursor created with a DECLARE CURSOR SQL command.) PQdescribePortal is supported only in protocol 3.0 and later connections; it will fail when using protocol 2.0.

portalName can be "" or NULL to reference the unnamed portal, otherwise it must be the name of an existing portal. On success, a PGresult with status PGRES_COMMAND_OK is returned. The functions PQnfields, PQfname, PQftype, etc can be applied to the PGresult to obtain information about the result columns (if any) of the portal.

The PGresult structure encapsulates the result returned by the server. libpq application programmers should be careful to maintain the PGresult abstraction. Use the accessor functions below to get at the contents of PGresult. Avoid directly referencing the fields of the PGresult structure because they are subject to change in the future.

PQresultStatus

Returns the result status of the command.

ExecStatusType PQresultStatus(const PGresult *res);

PQresultStatus can return one of the following values:

PGRES_EMPTY_QUERY

The string sent to the server was empty.

PGRES_COMMAND_OK

Successful completion of a command returning no data.

PGRES_TUPLES_OK

Successful completion of a command returning data (such as a SELECT or SHOW).

PGRES_COPY_OUT

Copy Out (from server) data transfer started.

PGRES_COPY_IN

Copy In (to server) data transfer started.

PGRES_BAD_RESPONSE

The server's response was not understood.

PGRES_NONFATAL_ERROR

A nonfatal error (a notice or warning) occurred.

PGRES_FATAL_ERROR

A fatal error occurred.

PGRES_COPY_BOTH

Copy In/Out (to and from server) data transfer started. This is currently used only for streaming replication.

If the result status is PGRES_TUPLES_OK, then the functions described below can be used to retrieve the rows returned by the query. Note that a SELECT command that happens to retrieve zero rows still shows PGRES_TUPLES_OK. PGRES_COMMAND_OK is for commands that can never return rows (INSERT, UPDATE, etc.). A response of PGRES_EMPTY_QUERY might indicate a bug in the client software.

A result of status PGRES_NONFATAL_ERROR will never be returned directly by PQexec or other query execution functions; results of this kind are instead passed to the notice processor (see Section 31.11).

PQresStatus

Converts the enumerated type returned by PQresultStatus into a string constant describing the status code. The caller should not free the result.

char *PQresStatus(ExecStatusType status);

PQresultErrorMessage

Returns the error message associated with the command, or an empty string if there was no error.

char *PQresultErrorMessage(const PGresult *res);

If there was an error, the returned string will include a trailing newline. The caller should not free the result directly. It will be freed when the associated PGresult handle is passed to PQclear.

Immediately following a PQexec or PQgetResult call, PQerrorMessage (on the connection) will return the same string as PQresultErrorMessage (on the result). However, a PGresult will retain its error message until destroyed, whereas the connection's error message will change when subsequent operations are done. Use PQresultErrorMessage when you want to know the status associated with a particular PGresult; use PQerrorMessage when you want to know the status from the latest operation on the connection.

PQresultErrorField

Returns an individual field of an error report.

char *PQresultErrorField(const PGresult *res, int fieldcode);

fieldcode is an error field identifier; see the symbols listed below. NULL is returned if the PGresult is not an error or warning result, or does not include the specified field. Field values will normally not include a trailing newline. The caller should not free the result directly. It will be freed when the associated PGresult handle is passed to PQclear.

The following field codes are available:

PG_DIAG_SEVERITY

The severity; the field contents are ERROR, FATAL, or PANIC (in an error message), or WARNING, NOTICE, DEBUG, INFO, or LOG (in a notice message), or a localized translation of one of these. Always present.

PG_DIAG_SQLSTATE

The SQLSTATE code for the error. The SQLSTATE code identifies the type of error that has occurred; it can be used by front-end applications to perform specific operations (such as error handling) in response to a particular database error. For a list of the possible SQLSTATE codes, see Appendix A. This field is not localizable, and is always present.

PG_DIAG_MESSAGE_PRIMARY

The primary human-readable error message (typically one line). Always present.

PG_DIAG_MESSAGE_DETAIL

Detail: an optional secondary error message carrying more detail about the problem. Might run to multiple lines.

PG_DIAG_MESSAGE_HINT

Hint: an optional suggestion what to do about the problem. This is intended to differ from detail in that it offers advice (potentially inappropriate) rather than hard facts. Might run to multiple lines.

PG_DIAG_STATEMENT_POSITION

A string containing a decimal integer indicating an error cursor position as an index into the original statement string. The first character has index 1, and positions are measured in characters not bytes.

PG_DIAG_INTERNAL_POSITION

This is defined the same as the PG_DIAG_STATEMENT_POSITION field, but it is used when the cursor position refers to an internally generated command rather than the one submitted by the client. The PG_DIAG_INTERNAL_QUERY field will always appear when this field appears.

PG_DIAG_INTERNAL_QUERY

The text of a failed internally-generated command. This could be, for example, a SQL query issued by a PL/pgSQL function.

PG_DIAG_CONTEXT

An indication of the context in which the error occurred. Presently this includes a call stack traceback of active procedural language functions and internally-generated queries. The trace is one entry per line, most recent first.

PG_DIAG_SOURCE_FILE

The file name of the source-code location where the error was reported.

PG_DIAG_SOURCE_LINE

The line number of the source-code location where the error was reported.

PG_DIAG_SOURCE_FUNCTION

The name of the source-code function reporting the error.

The client is responsible for formatting displayed information to meet its needs; in particular it should break long lines as needed. Newline characters appearing in the error message fields should be treated as paragraph breaks, not line breaks.

Errors generated internally by libpq will have severity and primary message, but typically no other fields. Errors returned by a pre-3.0-protocol server will include severity and primary message, and sometimes a detail message, but no other fields.

Note that error fields are only available from PGresult objects, not PGconn objects; there is no PQerrorField function.

PQclear

Frees the storage associated with a PGresult. Every command result should be freed via PQclear when it is no longer needed.

void PQclear(PGresult *res);

You can keep a PGresult object around for as long as you need it; it does not go away when you issue a new command, nor even if you close the connection. To get rid of it, you must call PQclear. Failure to do this will result in memory leaks in your application.

31.3.2. Retrieving Query Result Information

These functions are used to extract information from a PGresult object that represents a successful query result (that is, one that has status PGRES_TUPLES_OK). They can also be used to extract information from a successful Describe operation: a Describe's result has all the same column information that actual execution of the query would provide, but it has zero rows. For objects with other status values, these functions will act as though the result has zero rows and zero columns.

PQntuples

Returns the number of rows (tuples) in the query result. Because it returns an integer result, large result sets might overflow the return value on 32-bit operating systems.

int PQntuples(const PGresult *res);

PQnfields

Returns the number of columns (fields) in each row of the query result.

int PQnfields(const PGresult *res);

PQfname

Returns the column name associated with the given column number. Column numbers start at 0. The caller should not free the result directly. It will be freed when the associated PGresult handle is passed to PQclear.

char *PQfname(const PGresult *res,
              int column_number);

NULL is returned if the column number is out of range.

PQfnumber

Returns the column number associated with the given column name.

int PQfnumber(const PGresult *res,
              const char *column_name);

-1 is returned if the given name does not match any column.

The given name is treated like an identifier in an SQL command, that is, it is downcased unless double-quoted. For example, given a query result generated from the SQL command:

SELECT 1 AS FOO, 2 AS "BAR";

we would have the results:

PQfname(res, 0)              foo
PQfname(res, 1)              BAR
PQfnumber(res, "FOO")        0
PQfnumber(res, "foo")        0
PQfnumber(res, "BAR")        -1
PQfnumber(res, "\"BAR\"")    1

PQftable

Returns the OID of the table from which the given column was fetched. Column numbers start at 0.

Oid PQftable(const PGresult *res,
             int column_number);

InvalidOid is returned if the column number is out of range, or if the specified column is not a simple reference to a table column, or when using pre-3.0 protocol. You can query the system table pg_class to determine exactly which table is referenced.

The type Oid and the constant InvalidOid will be defined when you include the libpq header file. They will both be some integer type.

PQftablecol

Returns the column number (within its table) of the column making up the specified query result column. Query-result column numbers start at 0, but table columns have nonzero numbers.

int PQftablecol(const PGresult *res,
                int column_number);

Zero is returned if the column number is out of range, or if the specified column is not a simple reference to a table column, or when using pre-3.0 protocol.

PQfformat

Returns the format code indicating the format of the given column. Column numbers start at 0.

int PQfformat(const PGresult *res,
              int column_number);

Format code zero indicates textual data representation, while format code one indicates binary representation. (Other codes are reserved for future definition.)

PQftype

Returns the data type associated with the given column number. The integer returned is the internal OID number of the type. Column numbers start at 0.

Oid PQftype(const PGresult *res,
            int column_number);

You can query the system table pg_type to obtain the names and properties of the various data types. The OIDs of the built-in data types are defined in the file src/include/catalog/pg_type.h in the source tree.

PQfmod

Returns the type modifier of the column associated with the given column number. Column numbers start at 0.

int PQfmod(const PGresult *res,
           int column_number);

The interpretation of modifier values is type-specific; they typically indicate precision or size limits. The value -1 is used to indicate "no information available". Most data types do not use modifiers, in which case the value is always -1.

PQfsize

Returns the size in bytes of the column associated with the given column number. Column numbers start at 0.

int PQfsize(const PGresult *res,
            int column_number);

PQfsize returns the space allocated for this column in a database row, in other words the size of the server's internal representation of the data type. (Accordingly, it is not really very useful to clients.) A negative value indicates the data type is variable-length.

PQbinaryTuples

Returns 1 if the PGresult contains binary data and 0 if it contains text data.

int PQbinaryTuples(const PGresult *res);

This function is deprecated (except for its use in connection with COPY), because it is possible for a single PGresult to contain text data in some columns and binary data in others. PQfformat is preferred. PQbinaryTuples returns 1 only if all columns of the result are binary (format 1).

PQgetvalue

Returns a single field value of one row of a PGresult. Row and column numbers start at 0. The caller should not free the result directly. It will be freed when the associated PGresult handle is passed to PQclear.

char *PQgetvalue(const PGresult *res,
                 int row_number,
                 int column_number);

For data in text format, the value returned by PQgetvalue is a null-terminated character string representation of the field value. For data in binary format, the value is in the binary representation determined by the data type's typsend and typreceive functions. (The value is actually followed by a zero byte in this case too, but that is not ordinarily useful, since the value is likely to contain embedded nulls.)

An empty string is returned if the field value is null. See PQgetisnull to distinguish null values from empty-string values.

The pointer returned by PQgetvalue points to storage that is part of the PGresult structure. One should not modify the data it points to, and one must explicitly copy the data into other storage if it is to be used past the lifetime of the PGresult structure itself.

PQgetisnull

Tests a field for a null value. Row and column numbers start at 0.

int PQgetisnull(const PGresult *res,
                int row_number,
                int column_number);

This function returns 1 if the field is null and 0 if it contains a non-null value. (Note that PQgetvalue will return an empty string, not a null pointer, for a null field.)

PQgetlength

Returns the actual length of a field value in bytes. Row and column numbers start at 0.

int PQgetlength(const PGresult *res,
                int row_number,
                int column_number);

This is the actual data length for the particular data value, that is, the size of the object pointed to by PQgetvalue. For text data format this is the same as strlen(). For binary format this is essential information. Note that one should not rely on PQfsize to obtain the actual data length.

PQnparams

Returns the number of parameters of a prepared statement.

int PQnparams(const PGresult *res);

This function is only useful when inspecting the result of PQdescribePrepared. For other types of queries it will return zero.

PQparamtype

Returns the data type of the indicated statement parameter. Parameter numbers start at 0.

Oid PQparamtype(const PGresult *res, int param_number);

This function is only useful when inspecting the result of PQdescribePrepared. For other types of queries it will return zero.

PQprint

Prints out all the rows and, optionally, the column names to the specified output stream.

void PQprint(FILE *fout,      /* output stream */
             const PGresult *res,
             const PQprintOpt *po);
typedef struct
{
    pqbool  header;      /* print output field headings and row count */
    pqbool  align;       /* fill align the fields */
    pqbool  standard;    /* old brain dead format */
    pqbool  html3;       /* output HTML tables */
    pqbool  expanded;    /* expand tables */
    pqbool  pager;       /* use pager for output if needed */
    char    *fieldSep;   /* field separator */
    char    *tableOpt;   /* attributes for HTML table element */
    char    *caption;    /* HTML table caption */
    char    **fieldName; /* null-terminated array of replacement field names */
} PQprintOpt;

This function was formerly used by psql to print query results, but this is no longer the case. Note that it assumes all the data is in text format.

31.3.3. Retrieving Other Result Information

These functions are used to extract other information from PGresult objects.

PQcmdStatus

Returns the command status tag from the SQL command that generated the PGresult.

char *PQcmdStatus(PGresult *res);

Commonly this is just the name of the command, but it might include additional data such as the number of rows processed. The caller should not free the result directly. It will be freed when the associated PGresult handle is passed to PQclear.

PQcmdTuples

Returns the number of rows affected by the SQL command.

char *PQcmdTuples(PGresult *res);

This function returns a string containing the number of rows affected by the SQL statement that generated the PGresult. This function can only be used following the execution of a SELECT, CREATE TABLE AS, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, MOVE, FETCH, or COPY statement, or an EXECUTE of a prepared query that contains an INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE statement. If the command that generated the PGresult was anything else, PQcmdTuples returns an empty string. The caller should not free the return value directly. It will be freed when the associated PGresult handle is passed to PQclear.

PQoidValue

Returns the OID of the inserted row, if the SQL command was an INSERT that inserted exactly one row into a table that has OIDs, or a EXECUTE of a prepared query containing a suitable INSERT statement. Otherwise, this function returns InvalidOid. This function will also return InvalidOid if the table affected by the INSERT statement does not contain OIDs.

Oid PQoidValue(const PGresult *res);

PQoidStatus

This function is deprecated in favor of PQoidValue and is not thread-safe. It returns a string with the OID of the inserted row, while PQoidValue returns the OID value.

char *PQoidStatus(const PGresult *res);

31.3.4. Escaping Strings for Inclusion in SQL Commands

PQescapeLiteral

char *PQescapeLiteral(PGconn *conn, const char *str, size_t length);

PQescapeLiteral escapes a string for use within an SQL command. This is useful when inserting data values as literal constants in SQL commands. Certain characters (such as quotes and backslashes) must be escaped to prevent them from being interpreted specially by the SQL parser. PQescapeLiteral performs this operation.

PQescapeLiteral returns an escaped version of the str parameter in memory allocated with malloc(). This memory should be freed using PQfreemem() when the result is no longer needed. A terminating zero byte is not required, and should not be counted in length. (If a terminating zero byte is found before length bytes are processed, PQescapeLiteral stops at the zero; the behavior is thus rather like strncpy.) The return string has all special characters replaced so that they can be properly processed by the PostgreSQL string literal parser. A terminating zero byte is also added. The single quotes that must surround PostgreSQL string literals are included in the result string.

On error, PQescapeLiteral returns NULL and a suitable message is stored in the conn object.

Tip: It is especially important to do proper escaping when handling strings that were received from an untrustworthy source. Otherwise there is a security risk: you are vulnerable to "SQL injection" attacks wherein unwanted SQL commands are fed to your database.

Note that it is not necessary nor correct to do escaping when a data value is passed as a separate parameter in PQexecParams or its sibling routines.

PQescapeIdentifier

char *PQescapeIdentifier(PGconn *conn, const char *str, size_t length);

PQescapeIdentifier escapes a string for use as an SQL identifier, such as a table, column, or function name. This is useful when a user-supplied identifier might contain special characters that would otherwise not be interpreted as part of the identifier by the SQL parser, or when the identifier might contain upper case characters whose case should be preserved.

PQescapeIdentifier returns a version of the str parameter escaped as an SQL identifier in memory allocated with malloc(). This memory must be freed using PQfreemem() when the result is no longer needed. A terminating zero byte is not required, and should not be counted in length. (If a terminating zero byte is found before length bytes are processed, PQescapeIdentifier stops at the zero; the behavior is thus rather like strncpy.) The return string has all special characters replaced so that it will be properly processed as an SQL identifier. A terminating zero byte is also added. The return string will also be surrounded by double quotes.

On error, PQescapeIdentifier returns NULL and a suitable message is stored in the conn object.

Tip: As with string literals, to prevent SQL injection attacks, SQL identifiers must be escaped when they are received from an untrustworthy source.

PQescapeStringConn

size_t PQescapeStringConn(PGconn *conn,
                          char *to, const char *from, size_t length,
                          int *error);

PQescapeStringConn escapes string literals, much like PQescapeLiteral. Unlike PQescapeLiteral, the caller is responsible for providing an appropriately sized buffer. Furthermore, PQescapeStringConn does not generate the single quotes that must surround PostgreSQL string literals; they should be provided in the SQL command that the result is inserted into. The parameter from points to the first character of the string that is to be escaped, and the length parameter gives the number of bytes in this string. A terminating zero byte is not required, and should not be counted in length. (If a terminating zero byte is found before length bytes are processed, PQescapeStringConn stops at the zero; the behavior is thus rather like strncpy.) to shall point to a buffer that is able to hold at least one more byte than twice the value of length, otherwise the behavior is undefined. Behavior is likewise undefined if the to and from strings overlap.

If the error parameter is not NULL, then *error is set to zero on success, nonzero on error. Presently the only possible error conditions involve invalid multibyte encoding in the source string. The output string is still generated on error, but it can be expected that the server will reject it as malformed. On error, a suitable message is stored in the conn object, whether or not error is NULL.

PQescapeStringConn returns the number of bytes written to to, not including the terminating zero byte.

PQescapeString

PQescapeString is an older, deprecated version of PQescapeStringConn.

size_t PQescapeString (char *to, const char *from, size_t length);

The only difference from PQescapeStringConn is that PQescapeString does not take PGconn or error parameters. Because of this, it cannot adjust its behavior depending on the connection properties (such as character encoding) and therefore it might give the wrong results. Also, it has no way to report error conditions.

PQescapeString can be used safely in client programs that work with only one PostgreSQL connection at a time (in this case it can find out what it needs to know "behind the scenes"). In other contexts it is a security hazard and should be avoided in favor of PQescapeStringConn.

PQescapeByteaConn

Escapes binary data for use within an SQL command with the type bytea. As with PQescapeStringConn, this is only used when inserting data directly into an SQL command string.

unsigned char *PQescapeByteaConn(PGconn *conn,
                                 const unsigned char *from,
                                 size_t from_length,
                                 size_t *to_length);

Certain byte values must be escaped when used as part of a bytea literal in an SQL statement. PQescapeByteaConn escapes bytes using either hex encoding or backslash escaping. See Section 8.4 for more information.

The from parameter points to the first byte of the string that is to be escaped, and the from_length parameter gives the number of bytes in this binary string. (A terminating zero byte is neither necessary nor counted.) The to_length parameter points to a variable that will hold the resultant escaped string length. This result string length includes the terminating zero byte of the result.

PQescapeByteaConn returns an escaped version of the from parameter binary string in memory allocated with malloc(). This memory should be freed using PQfreemem() when the result is no longer needed. The return string has all special characters replaced so that they can be properly processed by the PostgreSQL string literal parser, and the bytea input function. A terminating zero byte is also added. The single quotes that must surround PostgreSQL string literals are not part of the result string.

On error, a null pointer is returned, and a suitable error message is stored in the conn object. Currently, the only possible error is insufficient memory for the result string.

PQescapeBytea

PQescapeBytea is an older, deprecated version of PQescapeByteaConn.

unsigned char *PQescapeBytea(const unsigned char *from,
                             size_t from_length,
                             size_t *to_length);

The only difference from PQescapeByteaConn is that PQescapeBytea does not take a PGconn parameter. Because of this, PQescapeBytea can only be used safely in client programs that use a single PostgreSQL connection at a time (in this case it can find out what it needs to know "behind the scenes"). It might give the wrong results if used in programs that use multiple database connections (use PQescapeByteaConn in such cases).

PQunescapeBytea

Converts a string representation of binary data into binary data — the reverse of PQescapeBytea. This is needed when retrieving bytea data in text format, but not when retrieving it in binary format.

unsigned char *PQunescapeBytea(const unsigned char *from, size_t *to_length);

The from parameter points to a string such as might be returned by PQgetvalue when applied to a bytea column. PQunescapeBytea converts this string representation into its binary representation. It returns a pointer to a buffer allocated with malloc(), or NULL on error, and puts the size of the buffer in to_length. The result must be freed using PQfreemem when it is no longer needed.

This conversion is not exactly the inverse of PQescapeBytea, because the string is not expected to be "escaped" when received from PQgetvalue. In particular this means there is no need for string quoting considerations, and so no need for a PGconn parameter.

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Asynchronous Command Processing

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31.4. Asynchronous Command Processing

The PQexec function is adequate for submitting commands in normal, synchronous applications. It has a couple of deficiencies, however, that can be of importance to some users:

  • PQexec waits for the command to be completed. The application might have other work to do (such as maintaining a user interface), in which case it won't want to block waiting for the response.

  • Since the execution of the client application is suspended while it waits for the result, it is hard for the application to decide that it would like to try to cancel the ongoing command. (It can be done from a signal handler, but not otherwise.)

  • PQexec can return only one PGresult structure. If the submitted command string contains multiple SQL commands, all but the last PGresult are discarded by PQexec.

Applications that do not like these limitations can instead use the underlying functions that PQexec is built from: PQsendQuery and PQgetResult. There are also PQsendQueryParams, PQsendPrepare, PQsendQueryPrepared, PQsendDescribePrepared, and PQsendDescribePortal, which can be used with PQgetResult to duplicate the functionality of PQexecParams, PQprepare, PQexecPrepared, PQdescribePrepared, and PQdescribePortal respectively.

PQsendQuery

Submits a command to the server without waiting for the result(s). 1 is returned if the command was successfully dispatched and 0 if not (in which case, use PQerrorMessage to get more information about the failure).

int PQsendQuery(PGconn *conn, const char *command);

After successfully calling PQsendQuery, call PQgetResult one or more times to obtain the results. PQsendQuery cannot be called again (on the same connection) until PQgetResult has returned a null pointer, indicating that the command is done.

PQsendQueryParams

Submits a command and separate parameters to the server without waiting for the result(s).

int PQsendQueryParams(PGconn *conn,
                      const char *command,
                      int nParams,
                      const Oid *paramTypes,
                      const char * const *paramValues,
                      const int *paramLengths,
                      const int *paramFormats,
                      int resultFormat);

This is equivalent to PQsendQuery except that query parameters can be specified separately from the query string. The function's parameters are handled identically to PQexecParams. Like PQexecParams, it will not work on 2.0-protocol connections, and it allows only one command in the query string.

PQsendPrepare

Sends a request to create a prepared statement with the given parameters, without waiting for completion.

int PQsendPrepare(PGconn *conn,
                  const char *stmtName,
                  const char *query,
                  int nParams,
                  const Oid *paramTypes);

This is an asynchronous version of PQprepare: it returns 1 if it was able to dispatch the request, and 0 if not. After a successful call, call PQgetResult to determine whether the server successfully created the prepared statement. The function's parameters are handled identically to PQprepare. Like PQprepare, it will not work on 2.0-protocol connections.

PQsendQueryPrepared

Sends a request to execute a prepared statement with given parameters, without waiting for the result(s).

int PQsendQueryPrepared(PGconn *conn,
                        const char *stmtName,
                        int nParams,
                        const char * const *paramValues,
                        const int *paramLengths,
                        const int *paramFormats,
                        int resultFormat);

This is similar to PQsendQueryParams, but the command to be executed is specified by naming a previously-prepared statement, instead of giving a query string. The function's parameters are handled identically to PQexecPrepared. Like PQexecPrepared, it will not work on 2.0-protocol connections.

PQsendDescribePrepared

Submits a request to obtain information about the specified prepared statement, without waiting for completion.

int PQsendDescribePrepared(PGconn *conn, const char *stmtName);

This is an asynchronous version of PQdescribePrepared: it returns 1 if it was able to dispatch the request, and 0 if not. After a successful call, call PQgetResult to obtain the results. The function's parameters are handled identically to PQdescribePrepared. Like PQdescribePrepared, it will not work on 2.0-protocol connections.

PQsendDescribePortal

Submits a request to obtain information about the specified portal, without waiting for completion.

int PQsendDescribePortal(PGconn *conn, const char *portalName);

This is an asynchronous version of PQdescribePortal: it returns 1 if it was able to dispatch the request, and 0 if not. After a successful call, call PQgetResult to obtain the results. The function's parameters are handled identically to PQdescribePortal. Like PQdescribePortal, it will not work on 2.0-protocol connections.

PQgetResult

Waits for the next result from a prior PQsendQuery, PQsendQueryParams, PQsendPrepare, or PQsendQueryPrepared call, and returns it. A null pointer is returned when the command is complete and there will be no more results.

PGresult *PQgetResult(PGconn *conn);

PQgetResult must be called repeatedly until it returns a null pointer, indicating that the command is done. (If called when no command is active, PQgetResult will just return a null pointer at once.) Each non-null result from PQgetResult should be processed using the same PGresult accessor functions previously described. Don't forget to free each result object with PQclear when done with it. Note that PQgetResult will block only if a command is active and the necessary response data has not yet been read by PQconsumeInput.

Note: Even when PQresultStatus indicates a fatal error, PQgetResult should be called until it returns a null pointer to allow libpq to process the error information completely.

Using PQsendQuery and PQgetResult solves one of PQexec's problems: If a command string contains multiple SQL commands, the results of those commands can be obtained individually. (This allows a simple form of overlapped processing, by the way: the client can be handling the results of one command while the server is still working on later queries in the same command string.) However, calling PQgetResult will still cause the client to block until the server completes the next SQL command. This can be avoided by proper use of two more functions:

PQconsumeInput

If input is available from the server, consume it.

int PQconsumeInput(PGconn *conn);

PQconsumeInput normally returns 1 indicating "no error", but returns 0 if there was some kind of trouble (in which case PQerrorMessage can be consulted). Note that the result does not say whether any input data was actually collected. After calling PQconsumeInput, the application can check PQisBusy and/or PQnotifies to see if their state has changed.

PQconsumeInput can be called even if the application is not prepared to deal with a result or notification just yet. The function will read available data and save it in a buffer, thereby causing a select() read-ready indication to go away. The application can thus use PQconsumeInput to clear the select() condition immediately, and then examine the results at leisure.

PQisBusy

Returns 1 if a command is busy, that is, PQgetResult would block waiting for input. A 0 return indicates that PQgetResult can be called with assurance of not blocking.

int PQisBusy(PGconn *conn);

PQisBusy will not itself attempt to read data from the server; therefore PQconsumeInput must be invoked first, or the busy state will never end.

A typical application using these functions will have a main loop that uses select() or poll() to wait for all the conditions that it must respond to. One of the conditions will be input available from the server, which in terms of select() means readable data on the file descriptor identified by PQsocket. When the main loop detects input ready, it should call PQconsumeInput to read the input. It can then call PQisBusy, followed by PQgetResult if PQisBusy returns false (0). It can also call PQnotifies to detect NOTIFY messages (see Section 31.7).

A client that uses PQsendQuery/PQgetResult can also attempt to cancel a command that is still being processed by the server; see Section 31.5. But regardless of the return value of PQcancel, the application must continue with the normal result-reading sequence using PQgetResult. A successful cancellation will simply cause the command to terminate sooner than it would have otherwise.

By using the functions described above, it is possible to avoid blocking while waiting for input from the database server. However, it is still possible that the application will block waiting to send output to the server. This is relatively uncommon but can happen if very long SQL commands or data values are sent. (It is much more probable if the application sends data via COPY IN, however.) To prevent this possibility and achieve completely nonblocking database operation, the following additional functions can be used.

PQsetnonblocking

Sets the nonblocking status of the connection.

int PQsetnonblocking(PGconn *conn, int arg);

Sets the state of the connection to nonblocking if arg is 1, or blocking if arg is 0. Returns 0 if OK, -1 if error.

In the nonblocking state, calls to PQsendQuery, PQputline, PQputnbytes, and PQendcopy will not block but instead return an error if they need to be called again.

Note that PQexec does not honor nonblocking mode; if it is called, it will act in blocking fashion anyway.

PQisnonblocking

Returns the blocking status of the database connection.

int PQisnonblocking(const PGconn *conn);

Returns 1 if the connection is set to nonblocking mode and 0 if blocking.

PQflush

Attempts to flush any queued output data to the server. Returns 0 if successful (or if the send queue is empty), -1 if it failed for some reason, or 1 if it was unable to send all the data in the send queue yet (this case can only occur if the connection is nonblocking).

int PQflush(PGconn *conn);

After sending any command or data on a nonblocking connection, call PQflush. If it returns 1, wait for the socket to become read- or write-ready. If it becomes write-ready, call PQflush again. If it becomes read-ready, call PQconsumeInput, then call PQflush again. Repeat until PQflush returns 0. (It is necessary to check for read-ready and drain the input with PQconsumeInput, because the server can block trying to send us data, e.g. NOTICE messages, and won't read our data until we read its.) Once PQflush returns 0, wait for the socket to be read-ready and then read the response as described above.

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Canceling Queries in Progress

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31.5. Canceling Queries in Progress

A client application can request cancellation of a command that is still being processed by the server, using the functions described in this section.

PQgetCancel

Creates a data structure containing the information needed to cancel a command issued through a particular database connection.

PGcancel *PQgetCancel(PGconn *conn);

PQgetCancel creates a PGcancel object given a PGconn connection object. It will return NULL if the given conn is NULL or an invalid connection. The PGcancel object is an opaque structure that is not meant to be accessed directly by the application; it can only be passed to PQcancel or PQfreeCancel.

PQfreeCancel

Frees a data structure created by PQgetCancel.

void PQfreeCancel(PGcancel *cancel);

PQfreeCancel frees a data object previously created by PQgetCancel.

PQcancel

Requests that the server abandon processing of the current command.

int PQcancel(PGcancel *cancel, char *errbuf, int errbufsize);

The return value is 1 if the cancel request was successfully dispatched and 0 if not. If not, errbuf is filled with an explanatory error message. errbuf must be a char array of size errbufsize (the recommended size is 256 bytes).

Successful dispatch is no guarantee that the request will have any effect, however. If the cancellation is effective, the current command will terminate early and return an error result. If the cancellation fails (say, because the server was already done processing the command), then there will be no visible result at all.

PQcancel can safely be invoked from a signal handler, if the errbuf is a local variable in the signal handler. The PGcancel object is read-only as far as PQcancel is concerned, so it can also be invoked from a thread that is separate from the one manipulating the PGconn object.

PQrequestCancel

PQrequestCancel is a deprecated variant of PQcancel.

int PQrequestCancel(PGconn *conn);

Requests that the server abandon processing of the current command. It operates directly on the PGconn object, and in case of failure stores the error message in the PGconn object (whence it can be retrieved by PQerrorMessage). Although the functionality is the same, this approach creates hazards for multiple-thread programs and signal handlers, since it is possible that overwriting the PGconn's error message will mess up the operation currently in progress on the connection.

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The Fast-Path Interface

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31.6. The Fast-Path Interface

PostgreSQL provides a fast-path interface to send simple function calls to the server.

Tip: This interface is somewhat obsolete, as one can achieve similar performance and greater functionality by setting up a prepared statement to define the function call. Then, executing the statement with binary transmission of parameters and results substitutes for a fast-path function call.

The function PQfn requests execution of a server function via the fast-path interface:

PGresult *PQfn(PGconn *conn,
               int fnid,
               int *result_buf,
               int *result_len,
               int result_is_int,
               const PQArgBlock *args,
               int nargs);

typedef struct
{
    int len;
    int isint;
    union
    {
        int *ptr;
        int integer;
    } u;
} PQArgBlock;

The fnid argument is the OID of the function to be executed. args and nargs define the parameters to be passed to the function; they must match the declared function argument list. When the isint field of a parameter structure is true, the u.integer value is sent to the server as an integer of the indicated length (this must be 2 or 4 bytes); proper byte-swapping occurs. When isint is false, the indicated number of bytes at *u.ptr are sent with no processing; the data must be in the format expected by the server for binary transmission of the function's argument data type. (The declaration of u.ptr as being of type int * is historical; it would be better to consider it void *.) result_buf points to the buffer in which to place the function's return value. The caller must have allocated sufficient space to store the return value. (There is no check!) The actual result length in bytes will be returned in the integer pointed to by result_len. If a 2- or 4-byte integer result is expected, set result_is_int to 1, otherwise set it to 0. Setting result_is_int to 1 causes libpq to byte-swap the value if necessary, so that it is delivered as a proper int value for the client machine; note that a 4-byte integer is delivered into *result_buf for either allowed result size. When result_is_int is 0, the binary-format byte string sent by the server is returned unmodified. (In this case it's better to consider result_buf as being of type void *.)

PQfn always returns a valid PGresult pointer. The result status should be checked before the result is used. The caller is responsible for freeing the PGresult with PQclear when it is no longer needed.

Note that it is not possible to handle null arguments, null results, nor set-valued results when using this interface.

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Asynchronous Notification

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31.7. Asynchronous Notification

PostgreSQL offers asynchronous notification via the LISTEN and NOTIFY commands. A client session registers its interest in a particular notification channel with the LISTEN command (and can stop listening with the UNLISTEN command). All sessions listening on a particular channel will be notified asynchronously when a NOTIFY command with that channel name is executed by any session. A "payload" string can be passed to communicate additional data to the listeners.

libpq applications submit LISTEN, UNLISTEN, and NOTIFY commands as ordinary SQL commands. The arrival of NOTIFY messages can subsequently be detected by calling PQnotifies.

The function PQnotifies returns the next notification from a list of unhandled notification messages received from the server. It returns a null pointer if there are no pending notifications. Once a notification is returned from PQnotifies, it is considered handled and will be removed from the list of notifications.

PGnotify *PQnotifies(PGconn *conn);

typedef struct pgNotify
{
    char *relname;              /* notification channel name */
    int  be_pid;                /* process ID of notifying server process */
    char *extra;                /* notification payload string */
} PGnotify;

After processing a PGnotify object returned by PQnotifies, be sure to free it with PQfreemem. It is sufficient to free the PGnotify pointer; the relname and extra fields do not represent separate allocations. (The names of these fields are historical; in particular, channel names need not have anything to do with relation names.)

Example 31-2 gives a sample program that illustrates the use of asynchronous notification.

PQnotifies does not actually read data from the server; it just returns messages previously absorbed by another libpq function. In prior releases of libpq, the only way to ensure timely receipt of NOTIFY messages was to constantly submit commands, even empty ones, and then check PQnotifies after each PQexec. While this still works, it is deprecated as a waste of processing power.

A better way to check for NOTIFY messages when you have no useful commands to execute is to call PQconsumeInput, then check PQnotifies. You can use select() to wait for data to arrive from the server, thereby using no CPU power unless there is something to do. (See PQsocket to obtain the file descriptor number to use with select().) Note that this will work OK whether you submit commands with PQsendQuery/PQgetResult or simply use PQexec. You should, however, remember to check PQnotifies after each PQgetResult or PQexec, to see if any notifications came in during the processing of the command.

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Functions Associated with the COPY Command

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31.8. Functions Associated with the COPY Command

The COPY command in PostgreSQL has options to read from or write to the network connection used by libpq. The functions described in this section allow applications to take advantage of this capability by supplying or consuming copied data.

The overall process is that the application first issues the SQL COPY command via PQexec or one of the equivalent functions. The response to this (if there is no error in the command) will be a PGresult object bearing a status code of PGRES_COPY_OUT or PGRES_COPY_IN (depending on the specified copy direction). The application should then use the functions of this section to receive or transmit data rows. When the data transfer is complete, another PGresult object is returned to indicate success or failure of the transfer. Its status will be PGRES_COMMAND_OK for success or PGRES_FATAL_ERROR if some problem was encountered. At this point further SQL commands can be issued via PQexec. (It is not possible to execute other SQL commands using the same connection while the COPY operation is in progress.)

If a COPY command is issued via PQexec in a string that could contain additional commands, the application must continue fetching results via PQgetResult after completing the COPY sequence. Only when PQgetResult returns NULL is it certain that the PQexec command string is done and it is safe to issue more commands.

The functions of this section should be executed only after obtaining a result status of PGRES_COPY_OUT or PGRES_COPY_IN from PQexec or PQgetResult.

A PGresult object bearing one of these status values carries some additional data about the COPY operation that is starting. This additional data is available using functions that are also used in connection with query results:

PQnfields

Returns the number of columns (fields) to be copied.

PQbinaryTuples

0 indicates the overall copy format is textual (rows separated by newlines, columns separated by separator characters, etc). 1 indicates the overall copy format is binary. See COPY for more information.

PQfformat

Returns the format code (0 for text, 1 for binary) associated with each column of the copy operation. The per-column format codes will always be zero when the overall copy format is textual, but the binary format can support both text and binary columns. (However, as of the current implementation of COPY, only binary columns appear in a binary copy; so the per-column formats always match the overall format at present.)

Note: These additional data values are only available when using protocol 3.0. When using protocol 2.0, all these functions will return 0.

31.8.1. Functions for Sending COPY Data

These functions are used to send data during COPY FROM STDIN. They will fail if called when the connection is not in COPY_IN state.

PQputCopyData

Sends data to the server during COPY_IN state.

int PQputCopyData(PGconn *conn,
                  const char *buffer,
                  int nbytes);

Transmits the COPY data in the specified buffer, of length nbytes, to the server. The result is 1 if the data was sent, zero if it was not sent because the attempt would block (this case is only possible if the connection is in nonblocking mode), or -1 if an error occurred. (Use PQerrorMessage to retrieve details if the return value is -1. If the value is zero, wait for write-ready and try again.)

The application can divide the COPY data stream into buffer loads of any convenient size. Buffer-load boundaries have no semantic significance when sending. The contents of the data stream must match the data format expected by the COPY command; see COPY for details.

PQputCopyEnd

Sends end-of-data indication to the server during COPY_IN state.

int PQputCopyEnd(PGconn *conn,
                 const char *errormsg);

Ends the COPY_IN operation successfully if errormsg is NULL. If errormsg is not NULL then the COPY is forced to fail, with the string pointed to by errormsg used as the error message. (One should not assume that this exact error message will come back from the server, however, as the server might have already failed the COPY for its own reasons. Also note that the option to force failure does not work when using pre-3.0-protocol connections.)

The result is 1 if the termination data was sent, zero if it was not sent because the attempt would block (this case is only possible if the connection is in nonblocking mode), or -1 if an error occurred. (Use PQerrorMessage to retrieve details if the return value is -1. If the value is zero, wait for write-ready and try again.)

After successfully calling PQputCopyEnd, call PQgetResult to obtain the final result status of the COPY command. One can wait for this result to be available in the usual way. Then return to normal operation.

31.8.2. Functions for Receiving COPY Data

These functions are used to receive data during COPY TO STDOUT. They will fail if called when the connection is not in COPY_OUT state.

PQgetCopyData

Receives data from the server during COPY_OUT state.

int PQgetCopyData(PGconn *conn,
                  char **buffer,
                  int async);

Attempts to obtain another row of data from the server during a COPY. Data is always returned one data row at a time; if only a partial row is available, it is not returned. Successful return of a data row involves allocating a chunk of memory to hold the data. The buffer parameter must be non-NULL. *buffer is set to point to the allocated memory, or to NULL in cases where no buffer is returned. A non-NULL result buffer should be freed using PQfreemem when no longer needed.

When a row is successfully returned, the return value is the number of data bytes in the row (this will always be greater than zero). The returned string is always null-terminated, though this is probably only useful for textual COPY. A result of zero indicates that the COPY is still in progress, but no row is yet available (this is only possible when async is true). A result of -1 indicates that the COPY is done. A result of -2 indicates that an error occurred (consult PQerrorMessage for the reason).

When async is true (not zero), PQgetCopyData will not block waiting for input; it will return zero if the COPY is still in progress but no complete row is available. (In this case wait for read-ready and then call PQconsumeInput before calling PQgetCopyData again.) When async is false (zero), PQgetCopyData will block until data is available or the operation completes.

After PQgetCopyData returns -1, call PQgetResult to obtain the final result status of the COPY command. One can wait for this result to be available in the usual way. Then return to normal operation.

31.8.3. Obsolete Functions for COPY

These functions represent older methods of handling COPY. Although they still work, they are deprecated due to poor error handling, inconvenient methods of detecting end-of-data, and lack of support for binary or nonblocking transfers.

PQgetline

Reads a newline-terminated line of characters (transmitted by the server) into a buffer string of size length.

int PQgetline(PGconn *conn,
              char *buffer,
              int length);

This function copies up to length-1 characters into the buffer and converts the terminating newline into a zero byte. PQgetline returns EOF at the end of input, 0 if the entire line has been read, and 1 if the buffer is full but the terminating newline has not yet been read.

Note that the application must check to see if a new line consists of the two characters \., which indicates that the server has finished sending the results of the COPY command. If the application might receive lines that are more than length-1 characters long, care is needed to be sure it recognizes the \. line correctly (and does not, for example, mistake the end of a long data line for a terminator line).

PQgetlineAsync

Reads a row of COPY data (transmitted by the server) into a buffer without blocking.

int PQgetlineAsync(PGconn *conn,
                   char *buffer,
                   int bufsize);

This function is similar to PQgetline, but it can be used by applications that must read COPY data asynchronously, that is, without blocking. Having issued the COPY command and gotten a PGRES_COPY_OUT response, the application should call PQconsumeInput and PQgetlineAsync until the end-of-data signal is detected.

Unlike PQgetline, this function takes responsibility for detecting end-of-data.

On each call, PQgetlineAsync will return data if a complete data row is available in libpq's input buffer. Otherwise, no data is returned until the rest of the row arrives. The function returns -1 if the end-of-copy-data marker has been recognized, or 0 if no data is available, or a positive number giving the number of bytes of data returned. If -1 is returned, the caller must next call PQendcopy, and then return to normal processing.

The data returned will not extend beyond a data-row boundary. If possible a whole row will be returned at one time. But if the buffer offered by the caller is too small to hold a row sent by the server, then a partial data row will be returned. With textual data this can be detected by testing whether the last returned byte is \n or not. (In a binary COPY, actual parsing of the COPY data format will be needed to make the equivalent determination.) The returned string is not null-terminated. (If you want to add a terminating null, be sure to pass a bufsize one smaller than the room actually available.)

PQputline

Sends a null-terminated string to the server. Returns 0 if OK and EOF if unable to send the string.

int PQputline(PGconn *conn,
              const char *string);

The COPY data stream sent by a series of calls to PQputline has the same format as that returned by PQgetlineAsync, except that applications are not obliged to send exactly one data row per PQputline call; it is okay to send a partial line or multiple lines per call.

Note: Before PostgreSQL protocol 3.0, it was necessary for the application to explicitly send the two characters \. as a final line to indicate to the server that it had finished sending COPY data. While this still works, it is deprecated and the special meaning of \. can be expected to be removed in a future release. It is sufficient to call PQendcopy after having sent the actual data.

PQputnbytes

Sends a non-null-terminated string to the server. Returns 0 if OK and EOF if unable to send the string.

int PQputnbytes(PGconn *conn,
                const char *buffer,
                int nbytes);

This is exactly like PQputline, except that the data buffer need not be null-terminated since the number of bytes to send is specified directly. Use this procedure when sending binary data.

PQendcopy

Synchronizes with the server.

int PQendcopy(PGconn *conn);

This function waits until the server has finished the copying. It should either be issued when the last string has been sent to the server using PQputline or when the last string has been received from the server using PGgetline. It must be issued or the server will get "out of sync" with the client. Upon return from this function, the server is ready to receive the next SQL command. The return value is 0 on successful completion, nonzero otherwise. (Use PQerrorMessage to retrieve details if the return value is nonzero.)

When using PQgetResult, the application should respond to a PGRES_COPY_OUT result by executing PQgetline repeatedly, followed by PQendcopy after the terminator line is seen. It should then return to the PQgetResult loop until PQgetResult returns a null pointer. Similarly a PGRES_COPY_IN result is processed by a series of PQputline calls followed by PQendcopy, then return to the PQgetResult loop. This arrangement will ensure that a COPY command embedded in a series of SQL commands will be executed correctly.

Older applications are likely to submit a COPY via PQexec and assume that the transaction is done after PQendcopy. This will work correctly only if the COPY is the only SQL command in the command string.

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Control Functions

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31.9. Control Functions

These functions control miscellaneous details of libpq's behavior.

PQclientEncoding

Returns the client encoding.

int PQclientEncoding(const PGconn *conn);

Note that it returns the encoding ID, not a symbolic string such as EUC_JP. To convert an encoding ID to an encoding name, you can use:

char *pg_encoding_to_char(int encoding_id);

PQsetClientEncoding

Sets the client encoding.

int PQsetClientEncoding(PGconn *conn, const char *encoding);

conn is a connection to the server, and encoding is the encoding you want to use. If the function successfully sets the encoding, it returns 0, otherwise -1. The current encoding for this connection can be determined by using PQclientEncoding.

PQsetErrorVerbosity

Determines the verbosity of messages returned by PQerrorMessage and PQresultErrorMessage.

typedef enum
{
    PQERRORS_TERSE,
    PQERRORS_DEFAULT,
    PQERRORS_VERBOSE
} PGVerbosity;

PGVerbosity PQsetErrorVerbosity(PGconn *conn, PGVerbosity verbosity);

PQsetErrorVerbosity sets the verbosity mode, returning the connection's previous setting. In TERSE mode, returned messages include severity, primary text, and position only; this will normally fit on a single line. The default mode produces messages that include the above plus any detail, hint, or context fields (these might span multiple lines). The VERBOSE mode includes all available fields. Changing the verbosity does not affect the messages available from already-existing PGresult objects, only subsequently-created ones.

PQtrace

Enables tracing of the client/server communication to a debugging file stream.

void PQtrace(PGconn *conn, FILE *stream);

Note: On Windows, if the libpq library and an application are compiled with different flags, this function call will crash the application because the internal representation of the FILE pointers differ. Specifically, multithreaded/single-threaded, release/debug, and static/dynamic flags should be the same for the library and all applications using that library.

PQuntrace

Disables tracing started by PQtrace.

void PQuntrace(PGconn *conn);

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Miscellaneous Functions

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31.10. Miscellaneous Functions

As always, there are some functions that just don't fit anywhere.

PQfreemem

Frees memory allocated by libpq.

void PQfreemem(void *ptr);

Frees memory allocated by libpq, particularly PQescapeByteaConn, PQescapeBytea, PQunescapeBytea, and PQnotifies. It is particularly important that this function, rather than free(), be used on Microsoft Windows. This is because allocating memory in a DLL and releasing it in the application works only if multithreaded/single-threaded, release/debug, and static/dynamic flags are the same for the DLL and the application. On non-Microsoft Windows platforms, this function is the same as the standard library function free().

PQconninfoFree

Frees the data structures allocated by PQconndefaults or PQconninfoParse.

void PQconninfoFree(PQconninfoOption *connOptions);

A simple PQfreemem will not do for this, since the array contains references to subsidiary strings.

PQencryptPassword

Prepares the encrypted form of a PostgreSQL password.

char * PQencryptPassword(const char *passwd, const char *user);

This function is intended to be used by client applications that wish to send commands like ALTER USER joe PASSWORD 'pwd'. It is good practice not to send the original cleartext password in such a command, because it might be exposed in command logs, activity displays, and so on. Instead, use this function to convert the password to encrypted form before it is sent. The arguments are the cleartext password, and the SQL name of the user it is for. The return value is a string allocated by malloc, or NULL if out of memory. The caller can assume the string doesn't contain any special characters that would require escaping. Use PQfreemem to free the result when done with it.

PQmakeEmptyPGresult

Constructs an empty PGresult object with the given status.

PGresult *PQmakeEmptyPGresult(PGconn *conn, ExecStatusType status);

This is libpq's internal function to allocate and initialize an empty PGresult object. This function returns NULL if memory could not be allocated. It is exported because some applications find it useful to generate result objects (particularly objects with error status) themselves. If conn is not null and status indicates an error, the current error message of the specified connection is copied into the PGresult. Also, if conn is not null, any event procedures registered in the connection are copied into the PGresult. (They do not get PGEVT_RESULTCREATE calls, but see PQfireResultCreateEvents.) Note that PQclear should eventually be called on the object, just as with a PGresult returned by libpq itself.

PQfireResultCreateEvents

Fires a PGEVT_RESULTCREATE event (see Section 31.12) for each event procedure registered in the PGresult object. Returns non-zero for success, zero if any event procedure fails.

int PQfireResultCreateEvents(PGconn *conn, PGresult *res);

The conn argument is passed through to event procedures but not used directly. It can be NULL if the event procedures won't use it.

Event procedures that have already received a PGEVT_RESULTCREATE or PGEVT_RESULTCOPY event for this object are not fired again.

The main reason that this function is separate from PQmakeEmptyPGresult is that it is often appropriate to create a PGresult and fill it with data before invoking the event procedures.

PQcopyResult

Makes a copy of a PGresult object. The copy is not linked to the source result in any way and PQclear must be called when the copy is no longer needed. If the function fails, NULL is returned.

PGresult *PQcopyResult(const PGresult *src, int flags);

This is not intended to make an exact copy. The returned result is always put into PGRES_TUPLES_OK status, and does not copy any error message in the source. (It does copy the command status string, however.) The flags argument determines what else is copied. It is a bitwise OR of several flags. PG_COPYRES_ATTRS specifies copying the source result's attributes (column definitions). PG_COPYRES_TUPLES specifies copying the source result's tuples. (This implies copying the attributes, too.) PG_COPYRES_NOTICEHOOKS specifies copying the source result's notify hooks. PG_COPYRES_EVENTS specifies copying the source result's events. (But any instance data associated with the source is not copied.)

PQsetResultAttrs

Sets the attributes of a PGresult object.

int PQsetResultAttrs(PGresult *res, int numAttributes, PGresAttDesc *attDescs);

The provided attDescs are copied into the result. If the attDescs pointer is NULL or numAttributes is less than one, the request is ignored and the function succeeds. If res already contains attributes, the function will fail. If the function fails, the return value is zero. If the function succeeds, the return value is non-zero.

PQsetvalue

Sets a tuple field value of a PGresult object.

int PQsetvalue(PGresult *res, int tup_num, int field_num, char *value, int len);

The function will automatically grow the result's internal tuples array as needed. However, the tup_num argument must be less than or equal to PQntuples, meaning this function can only grow the tuples array one tuple at a time. But any field of any existing tuple can be modified in any order. If a value at field_num already exists, it will be overwritten. If len is -1 or value is NULL, the field value will be set to an SQL null value. The value is copied into the result's private storage, thus is no longer needed after the function returns. If the function fails, the return value is zero. If the function succeeds, the return value is non-zero.

PQresultAlloc

Allocate subsidiary storage for a PGresult object.

void *PQresultAlloc(PGresult *res, size_t nBytes);

Any memory allocated with this function will be freed when res is cleared. If the function fails, the return value is NULL. The result is guaranteed to be adequately aligned for any type of data, just as for malloc.

PQlibVersion

Return the version of libpq that is being used.

int PQlibVersion(void);

The result of this function can be used to determine, at run time, if specific functionality is available in the currently loaded version of libpq. The function can be used, for example, to determine which connection options are available for PQconnectdb or if the hex bytea output added in PostgreSQL 9.0 is supported.

The number is formed by converting the major, minor, and revision numbers into two-decimal-digit numbers and appending them together. For example, version 9.1 will be returned as 90100, and version 9.1.2 will be returned as 90102 (leading zeroes are not shown).

Note: This function appeared in PostgreSQL version 9.1, so it cannot be used to detect required functionality in earlier versions, since linking to it will create a link dependency on version 9.1.

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Notice Processing

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31.11. Notice Processing

Notice and warning messages generated by the server are not returned by the query execution functions, since they do not imply failure of the query. Instead they are passed to a notice handling function, and execution continues normally after the handler returns. The default notice handling function prints the message on stderr, but the application can override this behavior by supplying its own handling function.

For historical reasons, there are two levels of notice handling, called the notice receiver and notice processor. The default behavior is for the notice receiver to format the notice and pass a string to the notice processor for printing. However, an application that chooses to provide its own notice receiver will typically ignore the notice processor layer and just do all the work in the notice receiver.

The function PQsetNoticeReceiver sets or examines the current notice receiver for a connection object. Similarly, PQsetNoticeProcessor sets or examines the current notice processor.

typedef void (*PQnoticeReceiver) (void *arg, const PGresult *res);

PQnoticeReceiver
PQsetNoticeReceiver(PGconn *conn,
                    PQnoticeReceiver proc,
                    void *arg);

typedef void (*PQnoticeProcessor) (void *arg, const char *message);

PQnoticeProcessor
PQsetNoticeProcessor(PGconn *conn,
                     PQnoticeProcessor proc,
                     void *arg);

Each of these functions returns the previous notice receiver or processor function pointer, and sets the new value. If you supply a null function pointer, no action is taken, but the current pointer is returned.

When a notice or warning message is received from the server, or generated internally by libpq, the notice receiver function is called. It is passed the message in the form of a PGRES_NONFATAL_ERROR PGresult. (This allows the receiver to extract individual fields using PQresultErrorField, or the complete preformatted message using PQresultErrorMessage.) The same void pointer passed to PQsetNoticeReceiver is also passed. (This pointer can be used to access application-specific state if needed.)

The default notice receiver simply extracts the message (using PQresultErrorMessage) and passes it to the notice processor.

The notice processor is responsible for handling a notice or warning message given in text form. It is passed the string text of the message (including a trailing newline), plus a void pointer that is the same one passed to PQsetNoticeProcessor. (This pointer can be used to access application-specific state if needed.)

The default notice processor is simply:

static void
defaultNoticeProcessor(void *arg, const char *message)
{
    fprintf(stderr, "%s", message);
}

Once you have set a notice receiver or processor, you should expect that that function could be called as long as either the PGconn object or PGresult objects made from it exist. At creation of a PGresult, the PGconn's current notice handling pointers are copied into the PGresult for possible use by functions like PQgetvalue.

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Event System

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31.12. Event System

libpq's event system is designed to notify registered event handlers about interesting libpq events, such as the creation or destruction of PGconn and PGresult objects. A principal use case is that this allows applications to associate their own data with a PGconn or PGresult and ensure that that data is freed at an appropriate time.

Each registered event handler is associated with two pieces of data, known to libpq only as opaque void * pointers. There is a passthrough pointer that is provided by the application when the event handler is registered with a PGconn. The passthrough pointer never changes for the life of the PGconn and all PGresults generated from it; so if used, it must point to long-lived data. In addition there is an instance data pointer, which starts out NULL in every PGconn and PGresult. This pointer can be manipulated using the PQinstanceData, PQsetInstanceData, PQresultInstanceData and PQsetResultInstanceData functions. Note that unlike the passthrough pointer, instance data of a PGconn is not automatically inherited by PGresults created from it. libpq does not know what passthrough and instance data pointers point to (if anything) and will never attempt to free them — that is the responsibility of the event handler.

31.12.1. Event Types

The enum PGEventId names the types of events handled by the event system. All its values have names beginning with PGEVT. For each event type, there is a corresponding event info structure that carries the parameters passed to the event handlers. The event types are:

PGEVT_REGISTER

The register event occurs when PQregisterEventProc is called. It is the ideal time to initialize any instanceData an event procedure may need. Only one register event will be fired per event handler per connection. If the event procedure fails, the registration is aborted.

typedef struct
{
    PGconn *conn;
} PGEventRegister;

When a PGEVT_REGISTER event is received, the evtInfo pointer should be cast to a PGEventRegister *. This structure contains a PGconn that should be in the CONNECTION_OK status; guaranteed if one calls PQregisterEventProc right after obtaining a good PGconn. When returning a failure code, all cleanup must be performed as no PGEVT_CONNDESTROY event will be sent.

PGEVT_CONNRESET

The connection reset event is fired on completion of PQreset or PQresetPoll. In both cases, the event is only fired if the reset was successful. If the event procedure fails, the entire connection reset will fail; the PGconn is put into CONNECTION_BAD status and PQresetPoll will return PGRES_POLLING_FAILED.

typedef struct
{
    PGconn *conn;
} PGEventConnReset;

When a PGEVT_CONNRESET event is received, the evtInfo pointer should be cast to a PGEventConnReset *. Although the contained PGconn was just reset, all event data remains unchanged. This event should be used to reset/reload/requery any associated instanceData. Note that even if the event procedure fails to process PGEVT_CONNRESET, it will still receive a PGEVT_CONNDESTROY event when the connection is closed.

PGEVT_CONNDESTROY

The connection destroy event is fired in response to PQfinish. It is the event procedure's responsibility to properly clean up its event data as libpq has no ability to manage this memory. Failure to clean up will lead to memory leaks.

typedef struct
{
    PGconn *conn;
} PGEventConnDestroy;

When a PGEVT_CONNDESTROY event is received, the evtInfo pointer should be cast to a PGEventConnDestroy *. This event is fired prior to PQfinish performing any other cleanup. The return value of the event procedure is ignored since there is no way of indicating a failure from PQfinish. Also, an event procedure failure should not abort the process of cleaning up unwanted memory.

PGEVT_RESULTCREATE

The result creation event is fired in response to any query execution function that generates a result, including PQgetResult. This event will only be fired after the result has been created successfully.

typedef struct
{
    PGconn *conn;
    PGresult *result;
} PGEventResultCreate;

When a PGEVT_RESULTCREATE event is received, the evtInfo pointer should be cast to a PGEventResultCreate *. The conn is the connection used to generate the result. This is the ideal place to initialize any instanceData that needs to be associated with the result. If the event procedure fails, the result will be cleared and the failure will be propagated. The event procedure must not try to PQclear the result object for itself. When returning a failure code, all cleanup must be performed as no PGEVT_RESULTDESTROY event will be sent.

PGEVT_RESULTCOPY

The result copy event is fired in response to PQcopyResult. This event will only be fired after the copy is complete. Only event procedures that have successfully handled the PGEVT_RESULTCREATE or PGEVT_RESULTCOPY event for the source result will receive PGEVT_RESULTCOPY events.

typedef struct
{
    const PGresult *src;
    PGresult *dest;
} PGEventResultCopy;

When a PGEVT_RESULTCOPY event is received, the evtInfo pointer should be cast to a PGEventResultCopy *. The src result is what was copied while the dest result is the copy destination. This event can be used to provide a deep copy of instanceData, since PQcopyResult cannot do that. If the event procedure fails, the entire copy operation will fail and the dest result will be cleared. When returning a failure code, all cleanup must be performed as no PGEVT_RESULTDESTROY event will be sent for the destination result.

PGEVT_RESULTDESTROY

The result destroy event is fired in response to a PQclear. It is the event procedure's responsibility to properly clean up its event data as libpq has no ability to manage this memory. Failure to clean up will lead to memory leaks.

typedef struct
{
    PGresult *result;
} PGEventResultDestroy;

When a PGEVT_RESULTDESTROY event is received, the evtInfo pointer should be cast to a PGEventResultDestroy *. This event is fired prior to PQclear performing any other cleanup. The return value of the event procedure is ignored since there is no way of indicating a failure from PQclear. Also, an event procedure failure should not abort the process of cleaning up unwanted memory.

31.12.2. Event Callback Procedure

PGEventProc

PGEventProc is a typedef for a pointer to an event procedure, that is, the user callback function that receives events from libpq. The signature of an event procedure must be

int eventproc(PGEventId evtId, void *evtInfo, void *passThrough)

The evtId parameter indicates which PGEVT event occurred. The evtInfo pointer must be cast to the appropriate structure type to obtain further information about the event. The passThrough parameter is the pointer provided to PQregisterEventProc when the event procedure was registered. The function should return a non-zero value if it succeeds and zero if it fails.

A particular event procedure can be registered only once in any PGconn. This is because the address of the procedure is used as a lookup key to identify the associated instance data.

Caution

On Windows, functions can have two different addresses: one visible from outside a DLL and another visible from inside the DLL. One should be careful that only one of these addresses is used with libpq's event-procedure functions, else confusion will result. The simplest rule for writing code that will work is to ensure that event procedures are declared static. If the procedure's address must be available outside its own source file, expose a separate function to return the address.

31.12.3. Event Support Functions

PQregisterEventProc

Registers an event callback procedure with libpq.

int PQregisterEventProc(PGconn *conn, PGEventProc proc,
                        const char *name, void *passThrough);

An event procedure must be registered once on each PGconn you want to receive events about. There is no limit, other than memory, on the number of event procedures that can be registered with a connection. The function returns a non-zero value if it succeeds and zero if it fails.

The proc argument will be called when a libpq event is fired. Its memory address is also used to lookup instanceData. The name argument is used to refer to the event procedure in error messages. This value cannot be NULL or a zero-length string. The name string is copied into the PGconn, so what is passed need not be long-lived. The passThrough pointer is passed to the proc whenever an event occurs. This argument can be NULL.

PQsetInstanceData

Sets the connection conn's instanceData for procedure proc to data. This returns non-zero for success and zero for failure. (Failure is only possible if proc has not been properly registered in conn.)

int PQsetInstanceData(PGconn *conn, PGEventProc proc, void *data);

PQinstanceData

Returns the connection conn's instanceData associated with procedure proc, or NULL if there is none.

void *PQinstanceData(const PGconn *conn, PGEventProc proc);

PQresultSetInstanceData

Sets the result's instanceData for proc to data. This returns non-zero for success and zero for failure. (Failure is only possible if proc has not been properly registered in the result.)

int PQresultSetInstanceData(PGresult *res, PGEventProc proc, void *data);

PQresultInstanceData

Returns the result's instanceData associated with proc, or NULL if there is none.

void *PQresultInstanceData(const PGresult *res, PGEventProc proc);

31.12.4. Event Example

Here is a skeleton example of managing private data associated with libpq connections and results.

/* required header for libpq events (note: includes libpq-fe.h) */
#include <libpq-events.h>

/* The instanceData */
typedef struct
{
    int n;
    char *str;
} mydata;

/* PGEventProc */
static int myEventProc(PGEventId evtId, void *evtInfo, void *passThrough);

int
main(void)
{
    mydata *data;
    PGresult *res;
    PGconn *conn = PQconnectdb("dbname = postgres");

    if (PQstatus(conn) != CONNECTION_OK)
    {
        fprintf(stderr, "Connection to database failed: %s",
                PQerrorMessage(conn));
        PQfinish(conn);
        return 1;
    }

    /* called once on any connection that should receive events.
     * Sends a PGEVT_REGISTER to myEventProc.
     */
    if (!PQregisterEventProc(conn, myEventProc, "mydata_proc", NULL))
    {
        fprintf(stderr, "Cannot register PGEventProc\n");
        PQfinish(conn);
        return 1;
    }

    /* conn instanceData is available */
    data = PQinstanceData(conn, myEventProc);

    /* Sends a PGEVT_RESULTCREATE to myEventProc */
    res = PQexec(conn, "SELECT 1 + 1");

    /* result instanceData is available */
    data = PQresultInstanceData(res, myEventProc);

    /* If PG_COPYRES_EVENTS is used, sends a PGEVT_RESULTCOPY to myEventProc */
    res_copy = PQcopyResult(res, PG_COPYRES_TUPLES | PG_COPYRES_EVENTS);

    /* result instanceData is available if PG_COPYRES_EVENTS was
     * used during the PQcopyResult call.
     */
    data = PQresultInstanceData(res_copy, myEventProc);

    /* Both clears send a PGEVT_RESULTDESTROY to myEventProc */
    PQclear(res);
    PQclear(res_copy);

    /* Sends a PGEVT_CONNDESTROY to myEventProc */
    PQfinish(conn);

    return 0;
}

static int
myEventProc(PGEventId evtId, void *evtInfo, void *passThrough)
{
    switch (evtId)
    {
        case PGEVT_REGISTER:
        {
            PGEventRegister *e = (PGEventRegister *)evtInfo;
            mydata *data = get_mydata(e->conn);

            /* associate app specific data with connection */
            PQsetInstanceData(e->conn, myEventProc, data);
            break;
        }

        case PGEVT_CONNRESET:
        {
            PGEventConnReset *e = (PGEventConnReset *)evtInfo;
            mydata *data = PQinstanceData(e->conn, myEventProc);

            if (data)
              memset(data, 0, sizeof(mydata));
            break;
        }

        case PGEVT_CONNDESTROY:
        {
            PGEventConnDestroy *e = (PGEventConnDestroy *)evtInfo;
            mydata *data = PQinstanceData(e->conn, myEventProc);

            /* free instance data because the conn is being destroyed */
            if (data)
              free_mydata(data);
            break;
        }

        case PGEVT_RESULTCREATE:
        {
            PGEventResultCreate *e = (PGEventResultCreate *)evtInfo;
            mydata *conn_data = PQinstanceData(e->conn, myEventProc);
            mydata *res_data = dup_mydata(conn_data);

            /* associate app specific data with result (copy it from conn) */
            PQsetResultInstanceData(e->result, myEventProc, res_data);
            break;
        }

        case PGEVT_RESULTCOPY:
        {
            PGEventResultCopy *e = (PGEventResultCopy *)evtInfo;
            mydata *src_data = PQresultInstanceData(e->src, myEventProc);
            mydata *dest_data = dup_mydata(src_data);

            /* associate app specific data with result (copy it from a result) */
            PQsetResultInstanceData(e->dest, myEventProc, dest_data);
            break;
        }

        case PGEVT_RESULTDESTROY:
        {
            PGEventResultDestroy *e = (PGEventResultDestroy *)evtInfo;
            mydata *data = PQresultInstanceData(e->result, myEventProc);

            /* free instance data because the result is being destroyed */
            if (data)
              free_mydata(data);
            break;
        }

        /* unknown event ID, just return TRUE. */
        default:
            break;
    }

    return TRUE; /* event processing succeeded */
}
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Environment Variables

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31.13. Environment Variables

The following environment variables can be used to select default connection parameter values, which will be used by PQconnectdb, PQsetdbLogin and PQsetdb if no value is directly specified by the calling code. These are useful to avoid hard-coding database connection information into simple client applications, for example.

  • PGHOST behaves the same as the host connection parameter.

  • PGHOSTADDR behaves the same as the hostaddr connection parameter. This can be set instead of or in addition to PGHOST to avoid DNS lookup overhead.

  • PGPORT behaves the same as the port connection parameter.

  • PGDATABASE behaves the same as the dbname connection parameter.

  • PGUSER behaves the same as the user connection parameter.

  • PGPASSWORD behaves the same as the password connection parameter. Use of this environment variable is not recommended for security reasons, as some operating systems allow non-root users to see process environment variables via ps; instead consider using the ~/.pgpass file (see Section 31.14).

  • PGPASSFILE specifies the name of the password file to use for lookups. If not set, it defaults to ~/.pgpass (see Section 31.14).

  • PGSERVICE behaves the same as the service connection parameter.

  • PGSERVICEFILE specifies the name of the per-user connection service file. If not set, it defaults to ~/.pg_service.conf (see Section 31.15).

  • PGREALM sets the Kerberos realm to use with PostgreSQL, if it is different from the local realm. If PGREALM is set, libpq applications will attempt authentication with servers for this realm and use separate ticket files to avoid conflicts with local ticket files. This environment variable is only used if Kerberos authentication is selected by the server.

  • PGOPTIONS behaves the same as the options connection parameter.

  • PGAPPNAME behaves the same as the application_name connection parameter.

  • PGSSLMODE behaves the same as the sslmode connection parameter.

  • PGREQUIRESSL behaves the same as the requiressl connection parameter.

  • PGSSLCERT behaves the same as the sslcert connection parameter.

  • PGSSLKEY behaves the same as the sslkey connection parameter.

  • PGSSLROOTCERT behaves the same as the sslrootcert connection parameter.

  • PGSSLCRL behaves the same as the sslcrl connection parameter.

  • PGREQUIREPEER behaves the same as the requirepeer connection parameter.

  • PGKRBSRVNAME behaves the same as the krbsrvname connection parameter.

  • PGGSSLIB behaves the same as the gsslib connection parameter.

  • PGCONNECT_TIMEOUT behaves the same as the connect_timeout connection parameter.

  • PGCLIENTENCODING behaves the same as the client_encoding connection parameter.

The following environment variables can be used to specify default behavior for each PostgreSQL session. (See also the ALTER ROLE and ALTER DATABASE commands for ways to set default behavior on a per-user or per-database basis.)

  • PGDATESTYLE sets the default style of date/time representation. (Equivalent to SET datestyle TO ....)

  • PGTZ sets the default time zone. (Equivalent to SET timezone TO ....)

  • PGGEQO sets the default mode for the genetic query optimizer. (Equivalent to SET geqo TO ....)

Refer to the SQL command SET for information on correct values for these environment variables.

The following environment variables determine internal behavior of libpq; they override compiled-in defaults.

  • PGSYSCONFDIR sets the directory containing the pg_service.conf file and in a future version possibly other system-wide configuration files.

  • PGLOCALEDIR sets the directory containing the locale files for message internationalization.

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The Password File

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31.14. The Password File

The file .pgpass in a user's home directory or the file referenced by PGPASSFILE can contain passwords to be used if the connection requires a password (and no password has been specified otherwise). On Microsoft Windows the file is named %APPDATA%\postgresql\pgpass.conf (where %APPDATA% refers to the Application Data subdirectory in the user's profile).

This file should contain lines of the following format:

hostname:port:database:username:password

(You can add a reminder comment to the file by copying the line above and preceding it with #.) Each of the first four fields can be a literal value, or *, which matches anything. The password field from the first line that matches the current connection parameters will be used. (Therefore, put more-specific entries first when you are using wildcards.) If an entry needs to contain : or \, escape this character with \. A host name of localhost matches both TCP (host name localhost) and Unix domain socket (pghost empty or the default socket directory) connections coming from the local machine. In a standby server, a database name of replication matches streaming replication connections made to the master server. The database field is of limited usefulness because users have the same password for all databases in the same cluster.

On Unix systems, the permissions on .pgpass must disallow any access to world or group; achieve this by the command chmod 0600 ~/.pgpass. If the permissions are less strict than this, the file will be ignored. On Microsoft Windows, it is assumed that the file is stored in a directory that is secure, so no special permissions check is made.

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The Connection Service File

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31.15. The Connection Service File

The connection service file allows libpq connection parameters to be associated with a single service name. That service name can then be specified by a libpq connection, and the associated settings will be used. This allows connection parameters to be modified without requiring a recompile of the libpq application. The service name can also be specified using the PGSERVICE environment variable.

The connection service file can be a per-user service file at ~/.pg_service.conf or the location specified by the environment variable PGSERVICEFILE, or it can be a system-wide file at `pg_config --sysconfdir`/pg_service.conf or in the directory specified by the environment variable PGSYSCONFDIR. If service definitions with the same name exist in the user and the system file, the user file takes precedence.

The file uses an "INI file" format where the section name is the service name and the parameters are connection parameters; see Section 31.1 for a list. For example:

# comment
[mydb]
host=somehost
port=5433
user=admin

An example file is provided at share/pg_service.conf.sample.

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The Password File | Up | LDAP Lookup of Connection Parameters


LDAP Lookup of Connection Parameters

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31.16. LDAP Lookup of Connection Parameters

If libpq has been compiled with LDAP support (option --with-ldap for configure) it is possible to retrieve connection options like host or dbname via LDAP from a central server. The advantage is that if the connection parameters for a database change, the connection information doesn't have to be updated on all client machines.

LDAP connection parameter lookup uses the connection service file pg_service.conf (see Section 31.15). A line in a pg_service.conf stanza that starts with ldap:// will be recognized as an LDAP URL and an LDAP query will be performed. The result must be a list of keyword = value pairs which will be used to set connection options. The URL must conform to RFC 1959 and be of the form

ldap://[hostname[:port]]/search_base?attribute?search_scope?filter

where hostname defaults to localhost and port defaults to 389.

Processing of pg_service.conf is terminated after a successful LDAP lookup, but is continued if the LDAP server cannot be contacted. This is to provide a fallback with further LDAP URL lines that point to different LDAP servers, classical keyword = value pairs, or default connection options. If you would rather get an error message in this case, add a syntactically incorrect line after the LDAP URL.

A sample LDAP entry that has been created with the LDIF file

version:1
dn:cn=mydatabase,dc=mycompany,dc=com
changetype:add
objectclass:top
objectclass:groupOfUniqueNames
cn:mydatabase
uniqueMember:host=dbserver.mycompany.com
uniqueMember:port=5439
uniqueMember:dbname=mydb
uniqueMember:user=mydb_user
uniqueMember:sslmode=require

might be queried with the following LDAP URL:

ldap://ldap.mycompany.com/dc=mycompany,dc=com?uniqueMember?one?(cn=mydatabase)

You can also mix regular service file entries with LDAP lookups. A complete example for a stanza in pg_service.conf would be:

# only host and port are stored in LDAP, specify dbname and user explicitly
[customerdb]
dbname=customer
user=appuser
ldap://ldap.acme.com/cn=dbserver,cn=hosts?pgconnectinfo?base?(objectclass=*)

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SSL Support

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31.17. SSL Support

PostgreSQL has native support for using SSL connections to encrypt client/server communications for increased security. See Section 17.9 for details about the server-side SSL functionality.

libpq reads the system-wide OpenSSL configuration file. By default, this file is named openssl.cnf and is located in the directory reported by openssl version -d. This default can be overridden by setting environment variable OPENSSL_CONF to the name of the desired configuration file.

31.17.1. Client Verification of Server Certificates

By default, PostgreSQL will not perform any verification of the server certificate. This means that it is possible to spoof the server identity (for example by modifying a DNS record or by taking over the server IP address) without the client knowing. In order to prevent spoofing, SSL certificate verification must be used.

If the parameter sslmode is set to verify-ca, libpq will verify that the server is trustworthy by checking the certificate chain up to a trusted certificate authority (CA). If sslmode is set to verify-full, libpq will also verify that the server host name matches its certificate. The SSL connection will fail if the server certificate cannot be verified. verify-full is recommended in most security-sensitive environments.

In verify-full mode, the cn (Common Name) attribute of the certificate is matched against the host name. If the cn attribute starts with an asterisk (*), it will be treated as a wildcard, and will match all characters except a dot (.). This means the certificate will not match subdomains. If the connection is made using an IP address instead of a host name, the IP address will be matched (without doing any DNS lookups).

To allow server certificate verification, the certificate(s) of one or more trusted CAs must be placed in the file ~/.postgresql/root.crt in the user's home directory. (On Microsoft Windows the file is named %APPDATA%\postgresql\root.crt.)

Certificate Revocation List (CRL) entries are also checked if the file ~/.postgresql/root.crl exists (%APPDATA%\postgresql\root.crl on Microsoft Windows).

The location of the root certificate file and the CRL can be changed by setting the connection parameters sslrootcert and sslcrl or the environment variables PGSSLROOTCERT and PGSSLCRL.

Note: For backwards compatibility with earlier versions of PostgreSQL, if a root CA file exists, the behavior of sslmode=require will be the same as that of verify-ca, meaning the server certificate is validated against the CA. Relying on this behavior is discouraged, and applications that need certificate validation should always use verify-ca or verify-full.

31.17.2. Client Certificates

If the server requests a trusted client certificate, libpq will send the certificate stored in file ~/.postgresql/postgresql.crt in the user's home directory. The certificate must be signed by one of the certificate authorities (CA) trusted by the server. A matching private key file ~/.postgresql/postgresql.key must also be present. The private key file must not allow any access to world or group; achieve this by the command chmod 0600 ~/.postgresql/postgresql.key. On Microsoft Windows these files are named %APPDATA%\postgresql\postgresql.crt and %APPDATA%\postgresql\postgresql.key, and there is no special permissions check since the directory is presumed secure. The location of the certificate and key files can be overridden by the connection parameters sslcert and sslkey or the environment variables PGSSLCERT and PGSSLKEY.

In some cases, the client certificate might be signed by an "intermediate" certificate authority, rather than one that is directly trusted by the server. To use such a certificate, append the certificate of the signing authority to the postgresql.crt file, then its parent authority's certificate, and so on up to a "root" authority that is trusted by the server. The root certificate should be included in every case where postgresql.crt contains more than one certificate.

Note that root.crt lists the top-level CAs that are considered trusted for signing server certificates. In principle it need not list the CA that signed the client's certificate, though in most cases that CA would also be trusted for server certificates.

31.17.3. Protection Provided in Different Modes

The different values for the sslmode parameter provide different levels of protection. SSL can provide protection against three types of attacks:

Eavesdropping

If a third party can examine the network traffic between the client and the server, it can read both connection information (including the user name and password) and the data that is passed. SSL uses encryption to prevent this.

Man in the middle (MITM)

If a third party can modify the data while passing between the client and server, it can pretend to be the server and therefore see and modify data even if it is encrypted. The third party can then forward the connection information and data to the original server, making it impossible to detect this attack. Common vectors to do this include DNS poisoning and address hijacking, whereby the client is directed to a different server than intended. There are also several other attack methods that can accomplish this. SSL uses certificate verification to prevent this, by authenticating the server to the client.

Impersonation

If a third party can pretend to be an authorized client, it can simply access data it should not have access to. Typically this can happen through insecure password management. SSL uses client certificates to prevent this, by making sure that only holders of valid certificates can access the server.

For a connection to be known secure, SSL usage must be configured on both the client and the server before the connection is made. If it is only configured on the server, the client may end up sending sensitive information (e.g. passwords) before it knows that the server requires high security. In libpq, secure connections can be ensured by setting the sslmode parameter to verify-full or verify-ca, and providing the system with a root certificate to verify against. This is analogous to using an https URL for encrypted web browsing.

Once the server has been authenticated, the client can pass sensitive data. This means that up until this point, the client does not need to know if certificates will be used for authentication, making it safe to specify that only in the server configuration.

All SSL options carry overhead in the form of encryption and key-exchange, so there is a tradeoff that has to be made between performance and security. Table 31-1 illustrates the risks the different sslmode values protect against, and what statement they make about security and overhead.

Table 31-1. SSL Mode Descriptions

sslmode | Eavesdropping protection | MITM protection | Statement
disable | No | No | I don't care about security, and I don't want to pay the overhead of encryption.
allow | Maybe | No | I don't care about security, but I will pay the overhead of encryption if the server insists on it.
prefer | Maybe | No | I don't care about encryption, but I wish to pay the overhead of encryption if the server supports it.
require | Yes | No | I want my data to be encrypted, and I accept the overhead. I trust that the network will make sure I always connect to the server I want.
verify-ca | Yes | Depends on CA-policy | I want my data encrypted, and I accept the overhead. I want to be sure that I connect to a server that I trust.
verify-full | Yes | Yes | I want my data encrypted, and I accept the overhead. I want to be sure that I connect to a server I trust, and that it's the one I specify.

The difference between verify-ca and verify-full depends on the policy of the root CA. If a public CA is used, verify-ca allows connections to a server that somebody else may have registered with the CA. In this case, verify-full should always be used. If a local CA is used, or even a self-signed certificate, using verify-ca often provides enough protection.

The default value for sslmode is prefer. As is shown in the table, this makes no sense from a security point of view, and it only promises performance overhead if possible. It is only provided as the default for backward compatibility, and is not recommended in secure deployments.

31.17.4. SSL Client File Usage

Table 31-2 summarizes the files that are relevant to the SSL setup on the client.

Table 31-2. Libpq/Client SSL File Usage

File | Contents | Effect
~/.postgresql/postgresql.crt | client certificate | requested by server
~/.postgresql/postgresql.key | client private key | proves client certificate sent by owner; does not indicate certificate owner is trustworthy
~/.postgresql/root.crt | trusted certificate authorities | checks that server certificate is signed by a trusted certificate authority
~/.postgresql/root.crl | certificates revoked by certificate authorities | server certificate must not be on this list

31.17.5. SSL Library Initialization

If your application initializes libssl and/or libcrypto libraries and libpq is built with SSL support, you should call PQinitOpenSSL to tell libpq that the libssl and/or libcrypto libraries have been initialized by your application, so that libpq will not also initialize those libraries. See http://h71000.www7.hp.com/doc/83final/ba554_90007/ch04.html for details on the SSL API.

PQinitOpenSSL

Allows applications to select which security libraries to initialize.

void PQinitOpenSSL(int do_ssl, int do_crypto);

When do_ssl is non-zero, libpq will initialize the OpenSSL library before first opening a database connection. When do_crypto is non-zero, the libcrypto library will be initialized. By default (if PQinitOpenSSL is not called), both libraries are initialized. When SSL support is not compiled in, this function is present but does nothing.

If your application uses and initializes either OpenSSL or its underlying libcrypto library, you must call this function with zeroes for the appropriate parameter(s) before first opening a database connection. Also be sure that you have done that initialization before opening a database connection.

PQinitSSL

Allows applications to select which security libraries to initialize.

void PQinitSSL(int do_ssl);

This function is equivalent to PQinitOpenSSL(do_ssl, do_ssl). It is sufficient for applications that initialize both or neither of OpenSSL and libcrypto.

PQinitSSL has been present since PostgreSQL 8.0, while PQinitOpenSSL was added in PostgreSQL 8.4, so PQinitSSL might be preferable for applications that need to work with older versions of libpq.

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Behavior in Threaded Programs

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31.18. Behavior in Threaded Programs

libpq is reentrant and thread-safe by default. You might need to use special compiler command-line options when you compile your application code. Refer to your system's documentation for information about how to build thread-enabled applications, or look in src/Makefile.global for PTHREAD_CFLAGS and PTHREAD_LIBS. This function allows the querying of libpq's thread-safe status:

PQisthreadsafe

Returns the thread safety status of the libpq library.

int PQisthreadsafe();

Returns 1 if the libpq is thread-safe and 0 if it is not.

One thread restriction is that no two threads attempt to manipulate the same PGconn object at the same time. In particular, you cannot issue concurrent commands from different threads through the same connection object. (If you need to run concurrent commands, use multiple connections.)

PGresult objects are normally read-only after creation, and so can be passed around freely between threads. However, if you use any of the PGresult-modifying functions described in Section 31.10 or Section 31.12, it's up to you to avoid concurrent operations on the same PGresult, too.

The deprecated functions PQrequestCancel and PQoidStatus are not thread-safe and should not be used in multithread programs. PQrequestCancel can be replaced by PQcancel. PQoidStatus can be replaced by PQoidValue.

If you are using Kerberos inside your application (in addition to inside libpq), you will need to do locking around Kerberos calls because Kerberos functions are not thread-safe. See function PQregisterThreadLock in the libpq source code for a way to do cooperative locking between libpq and your application.

If you experience problems with threaded applications, run the program in src/tools/thread to see if your platform has thread-unsafe functions. This program is run by configure, but for binary distributions your library might not match the library used to build the binaries.

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Building libpq Programs

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31.19. Building libpq Programs

To build (i.e., compile and link) a program using libpq you need to do all of the following things:

  • Include the libpq-fe.h header file:

    #include <libpq-fe.h>

    If you failed to do that then you will normally get error messages from your compiler similar to:

    foo.c: In function `main':
foo.c:34: `PGconn' undeclared (first use in this function)
foo.c:35: `PGresult' undeclared (first use in this function)
foo.c:54: `CONNECTION_BAD' undeclared (first use in this function)
foo.c:68: `PGRES_COMMAND_OK' undeclared (first use in this function)
foo.c:95: `PGRES_TUPLES_OK' undeclared (first use in this function)

  • Point your compiler to the directory where the PostgreSQL header files were installed, by supplying the -Idirectory option to your compiler. (In some cases the compiler will look into the directory in question by default, so you can omit this option.) For instance, your compile command line could look like:

    cc -c -I/usr/local/pgsql/include testprog.c

    If you are using makefiles then add the option to the CPPFLAGS variable:

    CPPFLAGS += -I/usr/local/pgsql/include

    If there is any chance that your program might be compiled by other users then you should not hardcode the directory location like that. Instead, you can run the utility pg_config to find out where the header files are on the local system:

    $ pg_config --includedir
/usr/local/include

    Failure to specify the correct option to the compiler will result in an error message such as:

    testlibpq.c:8:22: libpq-fe.h: No such file or directory

  • When linking the final program, specify the option -lpq so that the libpq library gets pulled in, as well as the option -Ldirectory to point the compiler to the directory where the libpq library resides. (Again, the compiler will search some directories by default.) For maximum portability, put the -L option before the -lpq option. For example:

    cc -o testprog testprog1.o testprog2.o -L/usr/local/pgsql/lib -lpq

    You can find out the library directory using pg_config as well:

    $ pg_config --libdir
/usr/local/pgsql/lib

    Error messages that point to problems in this area could look like the following:

    testlibpq.o: In function `main':
testlibpq.o(.text+0x60): undefined reference to `PQsetdbLogin'
testlibpq.o(.text+0x71): undefined reference to `PQstatus'
testlibpq.o(.text+0xa4): undefined reference to `PQerrorMessage'

    This means you forgot -lpq.

    /usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lpq

    This means you forgot the -L option or did not specify the right directory.

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Example Programs

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31.20. Example Programs

These examples and others can be found in the directory src/test/examples in the source code distribution.

Example 31-1. libpq Example Program 1

/*
 * testlibpq.c
 *
 *      Test the C version of libpq, the PostgreSQL frontend library.
 */
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <libpq-fe.h>

static void
exit_nicely(PGconn *conn)
{
    PQfinish(conn);
    exit(1);
}

int
main(int argc, char **argv)
{
    const char *conninfo;
    PGconn     *conn;
    PGresult   *res;
    int         nFields;
    int         i,
                j;

    /*
     * If the user supplies a parameter on the command line, use it as the
     * conninfo string; otherwise default to setting dbname=postgres and using
     * environment variables or defaults for all other connection parameters.
     */
    if (argc > 1)
        conninfo = argv[1];
    else
        conninfo = "dbname = postgres";

    /* Make a connection to the database */
    conn = PQconnectdb(conninfo);

    /* Check to see that the backend connection was successfully made */
    if (PQstatus(conn) != CONNECTION_OK)
    {
        fprintf(stderr, "Connection to database failed: %s",
                PQerrorMessage(conn));
        exit_nicely(conn);
    }

    /*
     * Our test case here involves using a cursor, for which we must be inside
     * a transaction block.  We could do the whole thing with a single
     * PQexec() of "select * from pg_database", but that's too trivial to make
     * a good example.
     */

    /* Start a transaction block */
    res = PQexec(conn, "BEGIN");
    if (PQresultStatus(res) != PGRES_COMMAND_OK)
    {
        fprintf(stderr, "BEGIN command failed: %s", PQerrorMessage(conn));
        PQclear(res);
        exit_nicely(conn);
    }

    /*
     * Should PQclear PGresult whenever it is no longer needed to avoid memory
     * leaks
     */
    PQclear(res);

    /*
     * Fetch rows from pg_database, the system catalog of databases
     */
    res = PQexec(conn, "DECLARE myportal CURSOR FOR select * from pg_database");
    if (PQresultStatus(res) != PGRES_COMMAND_OK)
    {
        fprintf(stderr, "DECLARE CURSOR failed: %s", PQerrorMessage(conn));
        PQclear(res);
        exit_nicely(conn);
    }
    PQclear(res);

    res = PQexec(conn, "FETCH ALL in myportal");
    if (PQresultStatus(res) != PGRES_TUPLES_OK)
    {
        fprintf(stderr, "FETCH ALL failed: %s", PQerrorMessage(conn));
        PQclear(res);
        exit_nicely(conn);
    }

    /* first, print out the attribute names */
    nFields = PQnfields(res);
    for (i = 0; i < nFields; i++)
        printf("%-15s", PQfname(res, i));
    printf("\n\n");

    /* next, print out the rows */
    for (i = 0; i < PQntuples(res); i++)
    {
        for (j = 0; j < nFields; j++)
            printf("%-15s", PQgetvalue(res, i, j));
        printf("\n");
    }

    PQclear(res);

    /* close the portal ... we don't bother to check for errors ... */
    res = PQexec(conn, "CLOSE myportal");
    PQclear(res);

    /* end the transaction */
    res = PQexec(conn, "END");
    PQclear(res);

    /* close the connection to the database and cleanup */
    PQfinish(conn);

    return 0;
}

Example 31-2. libpq Example Program 2

/*
 * testlibpq2.c
 *      Test of the asynchronous notification interface
 *
 * Start this program, then from psql in another window do
 *   NOTIFY TBL2;
 * Repeat four times to get this program to exit.
 *
 * Or, if you want to get fancy, try this:
 * populate a database with the following commands
 * (provided in src/test/examples/testlibpq2.sql):
 *
 *   CREATE TABLE TBL1 (i int4);
 *
 *   CREATE TABLE TBL2 (i int4);
 *
 *   CREATE RULE r1 AS ON INSERT TO TBL1 DO
 *     (INSERT INTO TBL2 VALUES (new.i); NOTIFY TBL2);
 *
 * and do this four times:
 *
 *   INSERT INTO TBL1 VALUES (10);
 */
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <errno.h>
#include <sys/time.h>
#include <libpq-fe.h>

static void
exit_nicely(PGconn *conn)
{
    PQfinish(conn);
    exit(1);
}

int
main(int argc, char **argv)
{
    const char *conninfo;
    PGconn     *conn;
    PGresult   *res;
    PGnotify   *notify;
    int         nnotifies;

    /*
     * If the user supplies a parameter on the command line, use it as the
     * conninfo string; otherwise default to setting dbname=postgres and using
     * environment variables or defaults for all other connection parameters.
     */
    if (argc > 1)
        conninfo = argv[1];
    else
        conninfo = "dbname = postgres";

    /* Make a connection to the database */
    conn = PQconnectdb(conninfo);

    /* Check to see that the backend connection was successfully made */
    if (PQstatus(conn) != CONNECTION_OK)
    {
        fprintf(stderr, "Connection to database failed: %s",
                PQerrorMessage(conn));
        exit_nicely(conn);
    }

    /*
     * Issue LISTEN command to enable notifications from the rule's NOTIFY.
     */
    res = PQexec(conn, "LISTEN TBL2");
    if (PQresultStatus(res) != PGRES_COMMAND_OK)
    {
        fprintf(stderr, "LISTEN command failed: %s", PQerrorMessage(conn));
        PQclear(res);
        exit_nicely(conn);
    }

    /*
     * should PQclear PGresult whenever it is no longer needed to avoid memory
     * leaks
     */
    PQclear(res);

    /* Quit after four notifies are received. */
    nnotifies = 0;
    while (nnotifies < 4)
    {
        /*
         * Sleep until something happens on the connection.  We use select(2)
         * to wait for input, but you could also use poll() or similar
         * facilities.
         */
        int         sock;
        fd_set      input_mask;

        sock = PQsocket(conn);

        if (sock < 0)
            break;              /* shouldn't happen */

        FD_ZERO(&input_mask);
        FD_SET(sock, &input_mask);

        if (select(sock + 1, &input_mask, NULL, NULL, NULL) < 0)
        {
            fprintf(stderr, "select() failed: %s\n", strerror(errno));
            exit_nicely(conn);
        }

        /* Now check for input */
        PQconsumeInput(conn);
        while ((notify = PQnotifies(conn)) != NULL)
        {
            fprintf(stderr,
                    "ASYNC NOTIFY of '%s' received from backend PID %d\n",
                    notify->relname, notify->be_pid);
            PQfreemem(notify);
            nnotifies++;
        }
    }

    fprintf(stderr, "Done.\n");

    /* close the connection to the database and cleanup */
    PQfinish(conn);

    return 0;
}

Example 31-3. libpq Example Program 3

/*
 * testlibpq3.c
 *      Test out-of-line parameters and binary I/O.
 *
 * Before running this, populate a database with the following commands
 * (provided in src/test/examples/testlibpq3.sql):
 *
 * CREATE TABLE test1 (i int4, t text, b bytea);
 *
 * INSERT INTO test1 values (1, 'joe''s place', '\\000\\001\\002\\003\\004');
 * INSERT INTO test1 values (2, 'ho there', '\\004\\003\\002\\001\\000');
 *
 * The expected output is:
 *
 * tuple 0: got
 *  i = (4 bytes) 1
 *  t = (11 bytes) 'joe's place'
 *  b = (5 bytes) \000\001\002\003\004
 *
 * tuple 0: got
 *  i = (4 bytes) 2
 *  t = (8 bytes) 'ho there'
 *  b = (5 bytes) \004\003\002\001\000
 */
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <libpq-fe.h>

/* for ntohl/htonl */
#include <netinet/in.h>
#include <arpa/inet.h>

static void
exit_nicely(PGconn *conn)
{
    PQfinish(conn);
    exit(1);
}

/*
 * This function prints a query result that is a binary-format fetch from
 * a table defined as in the comment above.  We split it out because the
 * main() function uses it twice.
 */
static void
show_binary_results(PGresult *res)
{
    int         i,
                j;
    int         i_fnum,
                t_fnum,
                b_fnum;

    /* Use PQfnumber to avoid assumptions about field order in result */
    i_fnum = PQfnumber(res, "i");
    t_fnum = PQfnumber(res, "t");
    b_fnum = PQfnumber(res, "b");

    for (i = 0; i < PQntuples(res); i++)
    {
        char       *iptr;
        char       *tptr;
        char       *bptr;
        int         blen;
        int         ival;

        /* Get the field values (we ignore possibility they are null!) */
        iptr = PQgetvalue(res, i, i_fnum);
        tptr = PQgetvalue(res, i, t_fnum);
        bptr = PQgetvalue(res, i, b_fnum);

        /*
         * The binary representation of INT4 is in network byte order, which
         * we'd better coerce to the local byte order.
         */
        ival = ntohl(*((uint32_t *) iptr));

        /*
         * The binary representation of TEXT is, well, text, and since libpq
         * was nice enough to append a zero byte to it, it'll work just fine
         * as a C string.
         *
         * The binary representation of BYTEA is a bunch of bytes, which could
         * include embedded nulls so we have to pay attention to field length.
         */
        blen = PQgetlength(res, i, b_fnum);

        printf("tuple %d: got\n", i);
        printf(" i = (%d bytes) %d\n",
               PQgetlength(res, i, i_fnum), ival);
        printf(" t = (%d bytes) '%s'\n",
               PQgetlength(res, i, t_fnum), tptr);
        printf(" b = (%d bytes) ", blen);
        for (j = 0; j < blen; j++)
            printf("\\%03o", bptr[j]);
        printf("\n\n");
    }
}

int
main(int argc, char **argv)
{
    const char *conninfo;
    PGconn     *conn;
    PGresult   *res;
    const char *paramValues[1];
    int         paramLengths[1];
    int         paramFormats[1];
    uint32_t    binaryIntVal;

    /*
     * If the user supplies a parameter on the command line, use it as the
     * conninfo string; otherwise default to setting dbname=postgres and using
     * environment variables or defaults for all other connection parameters.
     */
    if (argc > 1)
        conninfo = argv[1];
    else
        conninfo = "dbname = postgres";

    /* Make a connection to the database */
    conn = PQconnectdb(conninfo);

    /* Check to see that the backend connection was successfully made */
    if (PQstatus(conn) != CONNECTION_OK)
    {
        fprintf(stderr, "Connection to database failed: %s",
                PQerrorMessage(conn));
        exit_nicely(conn);
    }

    /*
     * The point of this program is to illustrate use of PQexecParams() with
     * out-of-line parameters, as well as binary transmission of data.
     *
     * This first example transmits the parameters as text, but receives the
     * results in binary format.  By using out-of-line parameters we can
     * avoid a lot of tedious mucking about with quoting and escaping, even
     * though the data is text.  Notice how we don't have to do anything
     * special with the quote mark in the parameter value.
     */

    /* Here is our out-of-line parameter value */
    paramValues[0] = "joe's place";

    res = PQexecParams(conn,
                       "SELECT * FROM test1 WHERE t = $1",
                       1,       /* one param */
                       NULL,    /* let the backend deduce param type */
                       paramValues,
                       NULL,    /* don't need param lengths since text */
                       NULL,    /* default to all text params */
                       1);      /* ask for binary results */

    if (PQresultStatus(res) != PGRES_TUPLES_OK)
    {
        fprintf(stderr, "SELECT failed: %s", PQerrorMessage(conn));
        PQclear(res);
        exit_nicely(conn);
    }

    show_binary_results(res);

    PQclear(res);

    /*
     * In this second example we transmit an integer parameter in binary
     * form, and again retrieve the results in binary form.
     *
     * Although we tell PQexecParams we are letting the backend deduce
     * parameter type, we really force the decision by casting the parameter
     * symbol in the query text.  This is a good safety measure when sending
     * binary parameters.
     */

    /* Convert integer value "2" to network byte order */
    binaryIntVal = htonl((uint32_t) 2);

    /* Set up parameter arrays for PQexecParams */
    paramValues[0] = (char *) &binaryIntVal;
    paramLengths[0] = sizeof(binaryIntVal);
    paramFormats[0] = 1;        /* binary */

    res = PQexecParams(conn,
                       "SELECT * FROM test1 WHERE i = $1::int4",
                       1,       /* one param */
                       NULL,    /* let the backend deduce param type */
                       paramValues,
                       paramLengths,
                       paramFormats,
                       1);      /* ask for binary results */

    if (PQresultStatus(res) != PGRES_TUPLES_OK)
    {
        fprintf(stderr, "SELECT failed: %s", PQerrorMessage(conn));
        PQclear(res);
        exit_nicely(conn);
    }

    show_binary_results(res);

    PQclear(res);

    /* close the connection to the database and cleanup */
    PQfinish(conn);

    return 0;
}
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Large Objects

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Chapter 32. Large Objects

Table of Contents
32.1. Introduction
32.2. Implementation Features
32.3. Client Interfaces
32.3.1. Creating a Large Object
32.3.2. Importing a Large Object
32.3.3. Exporting a Large Object
32.3.4. Opening an Existing Large Object
32.3.5. Writing Data to a Large Object
32.3.6. Reading Data from a Large Object
32.3.7. Seeking in a Large Object
32.3.8. Obtaining the Seek Position of a Large Object
32.3.9. Truncating a Large Object
32.3.10. Closing a Large Object Descriptor
32.3.11. Removing a Large Object
32.4. Server-side Functions
32.5. Example Program

PostgreSQL has a large object facility, which provides stream-style access to user data that is stored in a special large-object structure. Streaming access is useful when working with data values that are too large to manipulate conveniently as a whole.

This chapter describes the implementation and the programming and query language interfaces to PostgreSQL large object data. We use the libpq C library for the examples in this chapter, but most programming interfaces native to PostgreSQL support equivalent functionality. Other interfaces might use the large object interface internally to provide generic support for large values. This is not described here.

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Introduction

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32.1. Introduction

All large objects are placed in a single system table called pg_largeobject. PostgreSQL also supports a storage system called "TOAST" that automatically stores values larger than a single database page into a secondary storage area per table. This makes the large object facility partially obsolete. One remaining advantage of the large object facility is that it allows values up to 2 GB in size, whereas TOASTed fields can be at most 1 GB. Also, large objects can be randomly modified using a read/write API that is more efficient than performing such operations using TOAST.

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Implementation Features

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32.2. Implementation Features

The large object implementation breaks large objects up into "chunks" and stores the chunks in rows in the database. A B-tree index guarantees fast searches for the correct chunk number when doing random access reads and writes.

As of PostgreSQL 9.0, large objects have an owner and a set of access permissions, which can be managed using GRANT and REVOKE. For compatibility with prior releases, see lo_compat_privileges. SELECT privileges are required to read a large object, and UPDATE privileges are required to write to or truncate it. Only the large object owner (or the database superuser) can unlink, comment on, or change the owner of a large object.

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Client Interfaces

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32.3. Client Interfaces

This section describes the facilities that PostgreSQL client interface libraries provide for accessing large objects. All large object manipulation using these functions must take place within an SQL transaction block. The PostgreSQL large object interface is modeled after the Unix file-system interface, with analogues of open, read, write, lseek, etc.

Client applications which use the large object interface in libpq should include the header file libpq/libpq-fs.h and link with the libpq library.

32.3.1. Creating a Large Object

The function

Oid lo_creat(PGconn *conn, int mode);

creates a new large object. The return value is the OID that was assigned to the new large object, or InvalidOid (zero) on failure. mode is unused and ignored as of PostgreSQL 8.1; however, for backward compatibility with earlier releases it is best to set it to INV_READ, INV_WRITE, or INV_READ | INV_WRITE. (These symbolic constants are defined in the header file libpq/libpq-fs.h.)

An example:

inv_oid = lo_creat(conn, INV_READ|INV_WRITE);

The function

Oid lo_create(PGconn *conn, Oid lobjId);

also creates a new large object. The OID to be assigned can be specified by lobjId; if so, failure occurs if that OID is already in use for some large object. If lobjId is InvalidOid (zero) then lo_create assigns an unused OID (this is the same behavior as lo_creat). The return value is the OID that was assigned to the new large object, or InvalidOid (zero) on failure.

lo_create is new as of PostgreSQL 8.1; if this function is run against an older server version, it will fail and return InvalidOid.

An example:

inv_oid = lo_create(conn, desired_oid);

32.3.2. Importing a Large Object

To import an operating system file as a large object, call

Oid lo_import(PGconn *conn, const char *filename);

filename specifies the operating system name of the file to be imported as a large object. The return value is the OID that was assigned to the new large object, or InvalidOid (zero) on failure. Note that the file is read by the client interface library, not by the server; so it must exist in the client file system and be readable by the client application.

The function

Oid lo_import_with_oid(PGconn *conn, const char *filename, Oid lobjId);

also imports a new large object. The OID to be assigned can be specified by lobjId; if so, failure occurs if that OID is already in use for some large object. If lobjId is InvalidOid (zero) then lo_import_with_oid assigns an unused OID (this is the same behavior as lo_import). The return value is the OID that was assigned to the new large object, or InvalidOid (zero) on failure.

lo_import_with_oid is new as of PostgreSQL 8.4 and uses lo_create internally which is new in 8.1; if this function is run against 8.0 or before, it will fail and return InvalidOid.

32.3.3. Exporting a Large Object

To export a large object into an operating system file, call

int lo_export(PGconn *conn, Oid lobjId, const char *filename);

The lobjId argument specifies the OID of the large object to export and the filename argument specifies the operating system name of the file. Note that the file is written by the client interface library, not by the server. Returns 1 on success, -1 on failure.

32.3.4. Opening an Existing Large Object

To open an existing large object for reading or writing, call

int lo_open(PGconn *conn, Oid lobjId, int mode);

The lobjId argument specifies the OID of the large object to open. The mode bits control whether the object is opened for reading (INV_READ), writing (INV_WRITE), or both. (These symbolic constants are defined in the header file libpq/libpq-fs.h.) A large object cannot be opened before it is created. lo_open returns a (non-negative) large object descriptor for later use in lo_read, lo_write, lo_lseek, lo_tell, and lo_close. The descriptor is only valid for the duration of the current transaction. On failure, -1 is returned.

The server currently does not distinguish between modes INV_WRITE and INV_READ | INV_WRITE: you are allowed to read from the descriptor in either case. However there is a significant difference between these modes and INV_READ alone: with INV_READ you cannot write on the descriptor, and the data read from it will reflect the contents of the large object at the time of the transaction snapshot that was active when lo_open was executed, regardless of later writes by this or other transactions. Reading from a descriptor opened with INV_WRITE returns data that reflects all writes of other committed transactions as well as writes of the current transaction. This is similar to the behavior of REPEATABLE READ versus READ COMMITTED transaction modes for ordinary SQL SELECT commands.

An example:

inv_fd = lo_open(conn, inv_oid, INV_READ|INV_WRITE);

32.3.5. Writing Data to a Large Object

The function

int lo_write(PGconn *conn, int fd, const char *buf, size_t len);

writes len bytes from buf to large object descriptor fd. The fd argument must have been returned by a previous lo_open. The number of bytes actually written is returned. In the event of an error, the return value is negative.

32.3.6. Reading Data from a Large Object

The function

int lo_read(PGconn *conn, int fd, char *buf, size_t len);

reads len bytes from large object descriptor fd into buf. The fd argument must have been returned by a previous lo_open. The number of bytes actually read is returned. In the event of an error, the return value is negative.

32.3.7. Seeking in a Large Object

To change the current read or write location associated with a large object descriptor, call

int lo_lseek(PGconn *conn, int fd, int offset, int whence);

This function moves the current location pointer for the large object descriptor identified by fd to the new location specified by offset. The valid values for whence are SEEK_SET (seek from object start), SEEK_CUR (seek from current position), and SEEK_END (seek from object end). The return value is the new location pointer, or -1 on error.

32.3.8. Obtaining the Seek Position of a Large Object

To obtain the current read or write location of a large object descriptor, call

int lo_tell(PGconn *conn, int fd);

If there is an error, the return value is negative.

32.3.9. Truncating a Large Object

To truncate a large object to a given length, call

int lo_truncate(PGcon *conn, int fd, size_t len);

truncates the large object descriptor fd to length len. The fd argument must have been returned by a previous lo_open. If len is greater than the current large object length, the large object is extended with null bytes ('\0').

The file offset is not changed.

On success lo_truncate returns zero. On error, the return value is negative.

lo_truncate is new as of PostgreSQL 8.3; if this function is run against an older server version, it will fail and return a negative value.

32.3.10. Closing a Large Object Descriptor

A large object descriptor can be closed by calling

int lo_close(PGconn *conn, int fd);

where fd is a large object descriptor returned by lo_open. On success, lo_close returns zero. On error, the return value is negative.

Any large object descriptors that remain open at the end of a transaction will be closed automatically.

32.3.11. Removing a Large Object

To remove a large object from the database, call

int lo_unlink(PGconn *conn, Oid lobjId);

The lobjId argument specifies the OID of the large object to remove. Returns 1 if successful, -1 on failure.

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Server-side Functions

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32.4. Server-side Functions

There are server-side functions callable from SQL that correspond to each of the client-side functions described above; indeed, for the most part the client-side functions are simply interfaces to the equivalent server-side functions. The ones that are actually useful to call via SQL commands are lo_creat, lo_create, lo_unlink, lo_import, and lo_export. Here are examples of their use:

CREATE TABLE image (
    name            text,
    raster          oid
);

SELECT lo_creat(-1);       -- returns OID of new, empty large object

SELECT lo_create(43213);   -- attempts to create large object with OID 43213

SELECT lo_unlink(173454);  -- deletes large object with OID 173454

INSERT INTO image (name, raster)
    VALUES ('beautiful image', lo_import('/etc/motd'));

INSERT INTO image (name, raster)  -- same as above, but specify OID to use
    VALUES ('beautiful image', lo_import('/etc/motd', 68583));

SELECT lo_export(image.raster, '/tmp/motd') FROM image
    WHERE name = 'beautiful image';

The server-side lo_import and lo_export functions behave considerably differently from their client-side analogs. These two functions read and write files in the server's file system, using the permissions of the database's owning user. Therefore, their use is restricted to superusers. In contrast, the client-side import and export functions read and write files in the client's file system, using the permissions of the client program. The client-side functions do not require superuser privilege.

The functionality of lo_read and lo_write is also available via server-side calls, but the names of the server-side functions differ from the client side interfaces in that they do not contain underscores. You must call these functions as loread and lowrite.

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Example Program

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32.5. Example Program

Example 32-1 is a sample program which shows how the large object interface in libpq can be used. Parts of the program are commented out but are left in the source for the reader's benefit. This program can also be found in src/test/examples/testlo.c in the source distribution.

Example 32-1. Large Objects with libpq Example Program

/*--------------------------------------------------------------
 *
 * testlo.c--
 *    test using large objects with libpq
 *
 * Copyright (c) 1994, Regents of the University of California
 *
 *--------------------------------------------------------------
 */
#include <stdio.h>
#include "libpq-fe.h"
#include "libpq/libpq-fs.h"

#define BUFSIZE          1024

/*
 * importFile
 *    import file "in_filename" into database as large object "lobjOid"
 *
 */
Oid
importFile(PGconn *conn, char *filename)
{
    Oid         lobjId;
    int         lobj_fd;
    char        buf[BUFSIZE];
    int         nbytes,
                tmp;
    int         fd;

    /*
     * open the file to be read in
     */
    fd = open(filename, O_RDONLY, 0666);
    if (fd < 0)
    {                           /* error */
        fprintf(stderr, "cannot open unix file %s\n", filename);
    }

    /*
     * create the large object
     */
    lobjId = lo_creat(conn, INV_READ | INV_WRITE);
    if (lobjId == 0)
        fprintf(stderr, "cannot create large object\n");

    lobj_fd = lo_open(conn, lobjId, INV_WRITE);

    /*
     * read in from the Unix file and write to the inversion file
     */
    while ((nbytes = read(fd, buf, BUFSIZE)) > 0)
    {
        tmp = lo_write(conn, lobj_fd, buf, nbytes);
        if (tmp < nbytes)
            fprintf(stderr, "error while reading large object\n");
    }

    (void) close(fd);
    (void) lo_close(conn, lobj_fd);

    return lobjId;
}

void
pickout(PGconn *conn, Oid lobjId, int start, int len)
{
    int         lobj_fd;
    char       *buf;
    int         nbytes;
    int         nread;

    lobj_fd = lo_open(conn, lobjId, INV_READ);
    if (lobj_fd < 0)
    {
        fprintf(stderr, "cannot open large object %d\n",
                lobjId);
    }

    lo_lseek(conn, lobj_fd, start, SEEK_SET);
    buf = malloc(len + 1);

    nread = 0;
    while (len - nread > 0)
    {
        nbytes = lo_read(conn, lobj_fd, buf, len - nread);
        buf[nbytes] = ' ';
        fprintf(stderr, ">>> %s", buf);
        nread += nbytes;
    }
    free(buf);
    fprintf(stderr, "\n");
    lo_close(conn, lobj_fd);
}

void
overwrite(PGconn *conn, Oid lobjId, int start, int len)
{
    int         lobj_fd;
    char       *buf;
    int         nbytes;
    int         nwritten;
    int         i;

    lobj_fd = lo_open(conn, lobjId, INV_WRITE);
    if (lobj_fd < 0)
    {
        fprintf(stderr, "cannot open large object %d\n",
                lobjId);
    }

    lo_lseek(conn, lobj_fd, start, SEEK_SET);
    buf = malloc(len + 1);

    for (i = 0; i < len; i++)
        buf[i] = 'X';
    buf[i] = ' ';

    nwritten = 0;
    while (len - nwritten > 0)
    {
        nbytes = lo_write(conn, lobj_fd, buf + nwritten, len - nwritten);
        nwritten += nbytes;
    }
    free(buf);
    fprintf(stderr, "\n");
    lo_close(conn, lobj_fd);
}

/*
 * exportFile
 *    export large object "lobjOid" to file "out_filename"
 *
 */
void
exportFile(PGconn *conn, Oid lobjId, char *filename)
{
    int         lobj_fd;
    char        buf[BUFSIZE];
    int         nbytes,
                tmp;
    int         fd;

    /*
     * open the large object
     */
    lobj_fd = lo_open(conn, lobjId, INV_READ);
    if (lobj_fd < 0)
    {
        fprintf(stderr, "cannot open large object %d\n",
                lobjId);
    }

    /*
     * open the file to be written to
     */
    fd = open(filename, O_CREAT | O_WRONLY, 0666);
    if (fd < 0)
    {                           /* error */
        fprintf(stderr, "cannot open unix file %s\n",
                filename);
    }

    /*
     * read in from the inversion file and write to the Unix file
     */
    while ((nbytes = lo_read(conn, lobj_fd, buf, BUFSIZE)) > 0)
    {
        tmp = write(fd, buf, nbytes);
        if (tmp < nbytes)
        {
            fprintf(stderr, "error while writing %s\n",
                    filename);
        }
    }

    (void) lo_close(conn, lobj_fd);
    (void) close(fd);

    return;
}

void
exit_nicely(PGconn *conn)
{
    PQfinish(conn);
    exit(1);
}

int
main(int argc, char **argv)
{
    char       *in_filename,
               *out_filename;
    char       *database;
    Oid         lobjOid;
    PGconn     *conn;
    PGresult   *res;

    if (argc != 4)
    {
        fprintf(stderr, "Usage: %s database_name in_filename out_filename\n",
                argv[0]);
        exit(1);
    }

    database = argv[1];
    in_filename = argv[2];
    out_filename = argv[3];

    /*
     * set up the connection
     */
    conn = PQsetdb(NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, database);

    /* check to see that the backend connection was successfully made */
    if (PQstatus(conn) == CONNECTION_BAD)
    {
        fprintf(stderr, "Connection to database '%s' failed.\n", database);
        fprintf(stderr, "%s", PQerrorMessage(conn));
        exit_nicely(conn);
    }

    res = PQexec(conn, "begin");
    PQclear(res);

    printf("importing file %s\n", in_filename);
/*  lobjOid = importFile(conn, in_filename); */
    lobjOid = lo_import(conn, in_filename);
/*
    printf("as large object %d.\n", lobjOid);

    printf("picking out bytes 1000-2000 of the large object\n");
    pickout(conn, lobjOid, 1000, 1000);

    printf("overwriting bytes 1000-2000 of the large object with X's\n");
    overwrite(conn, lobjOid, 1000, 1000);
*/

    printf("exporting large object to file %s\n", out_filename);
/*    exportFile(conn, lobjOid, out_filename); */
    lo_export(conn, lobjOid, out_filename);

    res = PQexec(conn, "end");
    PQclear(res);
    PQfinish(conn);
    exit(0);
}
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ECPG - Embedded SQL in C

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Chapter 33. ECPG - Embedded SQL in C

Table of Contents
33.1. The Concept
33.2. Managing Database Connections
33.2.1. Connecting to the Database Server
33.2.2. Choosing a Connection
33.2.3. Closing a Connection
33.3. Running SQL Commands
33.3.1. Executing SQL Statements
33.3.2. Using Cursors
33.3.3. Managing Transactions
33.3.4. Prepared Statements
33.4. Using Host Variables
33.4.1. Overview
33.4.2. Declare Sections
33.4.3. Retrieving Query Results
33.4.4. Type Mapping
33.4.5. Handling Nonprimitive SQL Data Types
33.4.6. Indicators
33.5. Dynamic SQL
33.5.1. Executing Statements without a Result Set
33.5.2. Executing a Statement with Input Parameters
33.5.3. Executing a Statement with a Result Set
33.6. pgtypes Library
33.6.1. The numeric Type
33.6.2. The date Type
33.6.3. The timestamp Type
33.6.4. The interval Type
33.6.5. The decimal Type
33.6.6. errno Values of pgtypeslib
33.6.7. Special Constants of pgtypeslib
33.7. Using Descriptor Areas
33.7.1. Named SQL Descriptor Areas
33.7.2. SQLDA Descriptor Areas
33.8. Error Handling
33.8.1. Setting Callbacks
33.8.2. sqlca
33.8.3. SQLSTATE vs. SQLCODE
33.9. Preprocessor Directives
33.9.1. Including Files
33.9.2. The define and undef Directives
33.9.3. ifdef, ifndef, else, elif, and endif Directives
33.10. Processing Embedded SQL Programs
33.11. Library Functions
33.12. Large Objects
33.13. C++ Applications
33.13.1. Scope for Host Variables
33.13.2. C++ Application Development with External C Module
33.14. Embedded SQL Commands
ALLOCATE DESCRIPTOR -- allocate an SQL descriptor area
CONNECT -- establish a database connection
DEALLOCATE DESCRIPTOR -- deallocate an SQL descriptor area
DECLARE -- define a cursor
DESCRIBE -- obtain information about a prepared statement or result set
DISCONNECT -- terminate a database connection
EXECUTE IMMEDIATE -- dynamically prepare and execute a statement
GET DESCRIPTOR -- get information from an SQL descriptor area
OPEN -- open a dynamic cursor
PREPARE -- prepare a statement for execution
SET AUTOCOMMIT -- set the autocommit behavior of the current session
SET CONNECTION -- select a database connection
SET DESCRIPTOR -- set information in an SQL descriptor area
TYPE -- define a new data type
VAR -- define a variable
WHENEVER -- specify the action to be taken when an SQL statement causes a specific class condition to be raised
33.15. Informix Compatibility Mode
33.15.1. Additional Types
33.15.2. Additional/Missing Embedded SQL Statements
33.15.3. Informix-compatible SQLDA Descriptor Areas
33.15.4. Additional Functions
33.15.5. Additional Constants
33.16. Internals

This chapter describes the embedded SQL package for PostgreSQL. It was written by Linus Tolke (<linus@epact.se>) and Michael Meskes (<meskes@postgresql.org>). Originally it was written to work with C. It also works with C++, but it does not recognize all C++ constructs yet.

This documentation is quite incomplete. But since this interface is standardized, additional information can be found in many resources about SQL.

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The Concept

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33.1. The Concept

An embedded SQL program consists of code written in an ordinary programming language, in this case C, mixed with SQL commands in specially marked sections. To build the program, the source code (*.pgc) is first passed through the embedded SQL preprocessor, which converts it to an ordinary C program (*.c), and afterwards it can be processed by a C compiler. (For details about the compiling and linking see Section 33.10). Converted ECPG applications call functions in the libpq library through the embedded SQL library (ecpglib), and communicate with the PostgreSQL server using the normal frontend-backend protocol.

Embedded SQL has advantages over other methods for handling SQL commands from C code. First, it takes care of the tedious passing of information to and from variables in your C program. Second, the SQL code in the program is checked at build time for syntactical correctness. Third, embedded SQL in C is specified in the SQL standard and supported by many other SQL database systems. The PostgreSQL implementation is designed to match this standard as much as possible, and it is usually possible to port embedded SQL programs written for other SQL databases to PostgreSQL with relative ease.

As already stated, programs written for the embedded SQL interface are normal C programs with special code inserted to perform database-related actions. This special code always has the form:

EXEC SQL ...;

These statements syntactically take the place of a C statement. Depending on the particular statement, they can appear at the global level or within a function. Embedded SQL statements follow the case-sensitivity rules of normal SQL code, and not those of C.

The following sections explain all the embedded SQL statements.

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Managing Database Connections

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33.2. Managing Database Connections

This section describes how to open, close, and switch database connections.

33.2.1. Connecting to the Database Server

One connects to a database using the following statement:

EXEC SQL CONNECT TO target [AS connection-name] [USER user-name];

The target can be specified in the following ways:

  • dbname[@hostname][:port]

  • tcp:postgresql://hostname[:port][/dbname][?options]

  • unix:postgresql://hostname[:port][/dbname][?options]

  • an SQL string literal containing one of the above forms

  • a reference to a character variable containing one of the above forms (see examples)

  • DEFAULT

If you specify the connection target literally (that is, not through a variable reference) and you don't quote the value, then the case-insensitivity rules of normal SQL are applied. In that case you can also double-quote the individual parameters separately as needed. In practice, it is probably less error-prone to use a (single-quoted) string literal or a variable reference. The connection target DEFAULT initiates a connection to the default database under the default user name. No separate user name or connection name can be specified in that case.

There are also different ways to specify the user name:

  • username

  • username/password

  • username IDENTIFIED BY password

  • username USING password

As above, the parameters username and password can be an SQL identifier, an SQL string literal, or a reference to a character variable.

The connection-name is used to handle multiple connections in one program. It can be omitted if a program uses only one connection. The most recently opened connection becomes the current connection, which is used by default when an SQL statement is to be executed (see later in this chapter).

Here are some examples of CONNECT statements:

EXEC SQL CONNECT TO mydb@sql.mydomain.com;

EXEC SQL CONNECT TO unix:postgresql://sql.mydomain.com/mydb AS myconnection USER john;

EXEC SQL BEGIN DECLARE SECTION;
const char *target = "mydb@sql.mydomain.com";
const char *user = "john";
EXEC SQL END DECLARE SECTION;
 ...
EXEC SQL CONNECT TO :target USER :user;

The last form makes use of the variant referred to above as character variable reference. You will see in later sections how C variables can be used in SQL statements when you prefix them with a colon.

Be advised that the format of the connection target is not specified in the SQL standard. So if you want to develop portable applications, you might want to use something based on the last example above to encapsulate the connection target string somewhere.

33.2.2. Choosing a Connection

SQL statements in embedded SQL programs are by default executed on the current connection, that is, the most recently opened one. If an application needs to manage multiple connections, then there are two ways to handle this.

The first option is to explicitly choose a connection for each SQL statement, for example:

EXEC SQL AT connection-name SELECT ...;

This option is particularly suitable if the application needs to use several connections in mixed order.

If your application uses multiple threads of execution, they cannot share a connection concurrently. You must either explicitly control access to the connection (using mutexes) or use a connection for each thread. If each thread uses its own connection, you will need to use the AT clause to specify which connection the thread will use.

The second option is to execute a statement to switch the current connection. That statement is:

EXEC SQL SET CONNECTION connection-name;

This option is particularly convenient if many statements are to be executed on the same connection. It is not thread-aware.

Here is an example program managing multiple database connections:

#include <stdio.h>

EXEC SQL BEGIN DECLARE SECTION;
    char dbname[1024];
EXEC SQL END DECLARE SECTION;

int
main()
{
    EXEC SQL CONNECT TO testdb1 AS con1 USER testuser;
    EXEC SQL CONNECT TO testdb2 AS con2 USER testuser;
    EXEC SQL CONNECT TO testdb3 AS con3 USER testuser;

    /* This query would be executed in the last opened database "testdb3". */
    EXEC SQL SELECT current_database() INTO :dbname;
    printf("current=%s (should be testdb3)\n", dbname);

    /* Using "AT" to run a query in "testdb2" */
    EXEC SQL AT con2 SELECT current_database() INTO :dbname;
    printf("current=%s (should be testdb2)\n", dbname);

    /* Switch the current connection to "testdb1". */
    EXEC SQL SET CONNECTION con1;

    EXEC SQL SELECT current_database() INTO :dbname;
    printf("current=%s (should be testdb1)\n", dbname);

    EXEC SQL DISCONNECT ALL;
    return 0;
}

This example would produce this output:

current=testdb3 (should be testdb3)
current=testdb2 (should be testdb2)
current=testdb1 (should be testdb1)

33.2.3. Closing a Connection

To close a connection, use the following statement:

EXEC SQL DISCONNECT [connection];

The connection can be specified in the following ways:

  • connection-name

  • DEFAULT

  • CURRENT

  • ALL

If no connection name is specified, the current connection is closed.

It is good style that an application always explicitly disconnect from every connection it opened.

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Running SQL Commands

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33.3. Running SQL Commands

Any SQL command can be run from within an embedded SQL application. Below are some examples of how to do that.

33.3.1. Executing SQL Statements

Creating a table:

EXEC SQL CREATE TABLE foo (number integer, ascii char(16));
EXEC SQL CREATE UNIQUE INDEX num1 ON foo(number);
EXEC SQL COMMIT;

Inserting rows:

EXEC SQL INSERT INTO foo (number, ascii) VALUES (9999, 'doodad');
EXEC SQL COMMIT;

Deleting rows:

EXEC SQL DELETE FROM foo WHERE number = 9999;
EXEC SQL COMMIT;

Updates:

EXEC SQL UPDATE foo
    SET ascii = 'foobar'
    WHERE number = 9999;
EXEC SQL COMMIT;

SELECT statements that return a single result row can also be executed using EXEC SQL directly. To handle result sets with multiple rows, an application has to use a cursor; see Section 33.3.2 below. (As a special case, an application can fetch multiple rows at once into an array host variable; see Section 33.4.4.3.1.)

Single-row select:

EXEC SQL SELECT foo INTO :FooBar FROM table1 WHERE ascii = 'doodad';

Also, a configuration parameter can be retrieved with the SHOW command:

EXEC SQL SHOW search_path INTO :var;

The tokens of the form :something are host variables, that is, they refer to variables in the C program. They are explained in Section 33.4.

33.3.2. Using Cursors

To retrieve a result set holding multiple rows, an application has to declare a cursor and fetch each row from the cursor. The steps to use a cursor are the following: declare a cursor, open it, fetch a row from the cursor, repeat, and finally close it.

Select using cursors:

EXEC SQL DECLARE foo_bar CURSOR FOR
    SELECT number, ascii FROM foo
    ORDER BY ascii;
EXEC SQL OPEN foo_bar;
EXEC SQL FETCH foo_bar INTO :FooBar, DooDad;
...
EXEC SQL CLOSE foo_bar;
EXEC SQL COMMIT;

For more details about declaration of the cursor, see DECLARE, and see FETCH for FETCH command details.

Note: The ECPG DECLARE command does not actually cause a statement to be sent to the PostgreSQL backend. The cursor is opened in the backend (using the backend's DECLARE command) at the point when the OPEN command is executed.

33.3.3. Managing Transactions

In the default mode, statements are committed only when EXEC SQL COMMIT is issued. The embedded SQL interface also supports autocommit of transactions (similar to libpq behavior) via the -t command-line option to ecpg (see ecpg) or via the EXEC SQL SET AUTOCOMMIT TO ON statement. In autocommit mode, each command is automatically committed unless it is inside an explicit transaction block. This mode can be explicitly turned off using EXEC SQL SET AUTOCOMMIT TO OFF.

The following transaction management commands are available:

EXEC SQL COMMIT

Commit an in-progress transaction.

EXEC SQL ROLLBACK

Roll back an in-progress transaction.

EXEC SQL SET AUTOCOMMIT TO ON

Enable autocommit mode.

SET AUTOCOMMIT TO OFF

Disable autocommit mode. This is the default.

33.3.4. Prepared Statements

When the values to be passed to an SQL statement are not known at compile time, or the same statement is going to be used many times, then prepared statements can be useful.

The statement is prepared using the command PREPARE. For the values that are not known yet, use the placeholder "?":

EXEC SQL PREPARE stmt1 FROM "SELECT oid, datname FROM pg_database WHERE oid = ?";

If a statement returns a single row, the application can call EXECUTE after PREPARE to execute the statement, supplying the actual values for the placeholders with a USING clause:

EXEC SQL EXECUTE stmt1 INTO :dboid, :dbname USING 1;

If a statement returns multiple rows, the application can use a cursor declared based on the prepared statement. To bind input parameters, the cursor must be opened with a USING clause:

EXEC SQL PREPARE stmt1 FROM "SELECT oid,datname FROM pg_database WHERE oid > ?";
EXEC SQL DECLARE foo_bar CURSOR FOR stmt1;

/* when end of result set reached, break out of while loop */
EXEC SQL WHENEVER NOT FOUND DO BREAK;

EXEC SQL OPEN foo_bar USING 100;
...
while (1)
{
    EXEC SQL FETCH NEXT FROM foo_bar INTO :dboid, :dbname;
    ...
}
EXEC SQL CLOSE foo_bar;

When you don't need the prepared statement anymore, you should deallocate it:

EXEC SQL DEALLOCATE PREPARE name;

For more details about PREPARE, see PREPARE. Also see Section 33.5 for more details about using placeholders and input parameters.

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Using Host Variables

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33.4. Using Host Variables

In Section 33.3 you saw how you can execute SQL statements from an embedded SQL program. Some of those statements only used fixed values and did not provide a way to insert user-supplied values into statements or have the program process the values returned by the query. Those kinds of statements are not really useful in real applications. This section explains in detail how you can pass data between your C program and the embedded SQL statements using a simple mechanism called host variables. In an embedded SQL program we consider the SQL statements to be guests in the C program code which is the host language. Therefore the variables of the C program are called host variables.

Another way to exchange values between PostgreSQL backends and ECPG applications is the use of SQL descriptors, described in Section 33.7.

33.4.1. Overview

Passing data between the C program and the SQL statements is particularly simple in embedded SQL. Instead of having the program paste the data into the statement, which entails various complications, such as properly quoting the value, you can simply write the name of a C variable into the SQL statement, prefixed by a colon. For example:

EXEC SQL INSERT INTO sometable VALUES (:v1, 'foo', :v2);

This statements refers to two C variables named v1 and v2 and also uses a regular SQL string literal, to illustrate that you are not restricted to use one kind of data or the other.

This style of inserting C variables in SQL statements works anywhere a value expression is expected in an SQL statement.

33.4.2. Declare Sections

To pass data from the program to the database, for example as parameters in a query, or to pass data from the database back to the program, the C variables that are intended to contain this data need to be declared in specially marked sections, so the embedded SQL preprocessor is made aware of them.

This section starts with:

EXEC SQL BEGIN DECLARE SECTION;

and ends with:

EXEC SQL END DECLARE SECTION;

Between those lines, there must be normal C variable declarations, such as:

int   x = 4;
char  foo[16], bar[16];

As you can see, you can optionally assign an initial value to the variable. The variable's scope is determined by the location of its declaring section within the program. You can also declare variables with the following syntax which implicitly creates a declare section:

EXEC SQL int i = 4;

You can have as many declare sections in a program as you like.

The declarations are also echoed to the output file as normal C variables, so there's no need to declare them again. Variables that are not intended to be used in SQL commands can be declared normally outside these special sections.

The definition of a structure or union also must be listed inside a DECLARE section. Otherwise the preprocessor cannot handle these types since it does not know the definition.

33.4.3. Retrieving Query Results

Now you should be able to pass data generated by your program into an SQL command. But how do you retrieve the results of a query? For that purpose, embedded SQL provides special variants of the usual commands SELECT and FETCH. These commands have a special INTO clause that specifies which host variables the retrieved values are to be stored in. SELECT is used for a query that returns only single row, and FETCH is used for a query that returns multiple rows, using a cursor.

Here is an example:

/*
 * assume this table:
 * CREATE TABLE test1 (a int, b varchar(50));
 */

EXEC SQL BEGIN DECLARE SECTION;
int v1;
VARCHAR v2;
EXEC SQL END DECLARE SECTION;

 ...

EXEC SQL SELECT a, b INTO :v1, :v2 FROM test;

So the INTO clause appears between the select list and the FROM clause. The number of elements in the select list and the list after INTO (also called the target list) must be equal.

Here is an example using the command FETCH:

EXEC SQL BEGIN DECLARE SECTION;
int v1;
VARCHAR v2;
EXEC SQL END DECLARE SECTION;

 ...

EXEC SQL DECLARE foo CURSOR FOR SELECT a, b FROM test;

 ...

do
{
    ...
    EXEC SQL FETCH NEXT FROM foo INTO :v1, :v2;
    ...
} while (...);

Here the INTO clause appears after all the normal clauses.

33.4.4. Type Mapping

When ECPG applications exchange values between the PostgreSQL server and the C application, such as when retrieving query results from the server or executing SQL statements with input parameters, the values need to be converted between PostgreSQL data types and host language variable types (C language data types, concretely). One of the main points of ECPG is that it takes care of this automatically in most cases.

In this respect, there are two kinds of data types: Some simple PostgreSQL data types, such as integer and text, can be read and written by the application directly. Other PostgreSQL data types, such as timestamp and numeric can only be accessed through special library functions; see Section 33.4.4.2.

Table 33-1 shows which PostgreSQL data types correspond to which C data types. When you wish to send or receive a value of a given PostgreSQL data type, you should declare a C variable of the corresponding C data type in the declare section.

Table 33-1. Mapping Between PostgreSQL Data Types and C Variable Types

PostgreSQL data type | Host variable type
smallint | short
integer | int
bigint | long long int
decimal | decimal [a]
numeric | numeric [a]
real | float
double precision | double
serial | int
bigserial | long long int
oid | unsigned int
character(n), varchar(n), text | char[n+1], VARCHAR[n+1] [b]
name | char[NAMEDATALEN]
timestamp | timestamp [a]
interval | interval [a]
date | date [a]
boolean | bool [c]
Notes: a. This type can only be accessed through special library functions; see Section 33.4.4.2. b. declared in ecpglib.h c. declared in ecpglib.h if not native

33.4.4.1. Handling Character Strings

To handle SQL character string data types, such as varchar and text, there are two possible ways to declare the host variables.

One way is using char[], an array of char, which is the most common way to handle character data in C.

EXEC SQL BEGIN DECLARE SECTION;
    char str[50];
EXEC SQL END DECLARE SECTION;

Note that you have to take care of the length yourself. If you use this host variable as the target variable of a query which returns a string with more than 49 characters, a buffer overflow occurs.

The other way is using the VARCHAR type, which is a special type provided by ECPG. The definition on an array of type VARCHAR is converted into a named struct for every variable. A declaration like:

VARCHAR var[180];

is converted into:

struct varchar_var { int len; char arr[180]; } var;

The member arr hosts the string including a terminating zero byte. Thus, to store a string in a VARCHAR host variable, the host variable has to be declared with the length including the zero byte terminator. The member len holds the length of the string stored in the arr without the terminating zero byte. When a host variable is used as input for a query, if strlen(arr) and len are different, the shorter one is used.

VARCHAR can be written in upper or lower case, but not in mixed case.

char and VARCHAR host variables can also hold values of other SQL types, which will be stored in their string forms.

33.4.4.2. Accessing Special Data Types

ECPG contains some special types that help you to interact easily with some special data types from the PostgreSQL server. In particular, it has implemented support for the numeric, decimal, date, timestamp, and interval types. These data types cannot usefully be mapped to primitive host variable types (such as int, long long int, or char[]), because they have a complex internal structure. Applications deal with these types by declaring host variables in special types and accessing them using functions in the pgtypes library. The pgtypes library, described in detail in Section 33.6 contains basic functions to deal with those types, such that you do not need to send a query to the SQL server just for adding an interval to a time stamp for example.

The follow subsections describe these special data types. For more details about pgtypes library functions, see Section 33.6.

33.4.4.2.1. timestamp, date

Here is a pattern for handling timestamp variables in the ECPG host application.

First, the program has to include the header file for the timestamp type:

#include <pgtypes_timestamp.h>

Next, declare a host variable as type timestamp in the declare section:

EXEC SQL BEGIN DECLARE SECTION;
timestamp ts;
EXEC SQL END DECLARE SECTION;

And after reading a value into the host variable, process it using pgtypes library functions. In following example, the timestamp value is converted into text (ASCII) form with the PGTYPEStimestamp_to_asc() function:

EXEC SQL SELECT now()::timestamp INTO :ts;

printf("ts = %s\n", PGTYPEStimestamp_to_asc(ts));

This example will show some result like following:

ts = 2010-06-27 18:03:56.949343

In addition, the DATE type can be handled in the same way. The program has to include pgtypes_date.h, declare a host variable as the date type and convert a DATE value into a text form using PGTYPESdate_to_asc() function. For more details about the pgtypes library functions, see Section 33.6.

33.4.4.2.2. interval

The handling of the interval type is also similar to the timestamp and date types. It is required, however, to allocate memory for an interval type value explicitly. In other words, the memory space for the variable has to be allocated in the heap memory, not in the stack memory.

Here is an example program:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <pgtypes_interval.h>

int
main(void)
{
EXEC SQL BEGIN DECLARE SECTION;
    interval *in;
EXEC SQL END DECLARE SECTION;

    EXEC SQL CONNECT TO testdb;

    in = PGTYPESinterval_new();
    EXEC SQL SELECT '1 min'::interval INTO :in;
    printf("interval = %s\n", PGTYPESinterval_to_asc(in));
    PGTYPESinterval_free(in);

    EXEC SQL COMMIT;
    EXEC SQL DISCONNECT ALL;
    return 0;
}

33.4.4.2.3. numeric, decimal

The handling of the numeric and decimal types is similar to the interval type: It requires defining a pointer, allocating some memory space on the heap, and accessing the variable using the pgtypes library functions. For more details about the pgtypes library functions, see Section 33.6.

No functions are provided specifically for the decimal type. An application has to convert it to a numeric variable using a pgtypes library function to do further processing.

Here is an example program handling numeric and decimal type variables.

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <pgtypes_numeric.h>

EXEC SQL WHENEVER SQLERROR STOP;

int
main(void)
{
EXEC SQL BEGIN DECLARE SECTION;
    numeric *num;
    numeric *num2;
    decimal *dec;
EXEC SQL END DECLARE SECTION;

    EXEC SQL CONNECT TO testdb;

    num = PGTYPESnumeric_new();
    dec = PGTYPESdecimal_new();

    EXEC SQL SELECT 12.345::numeric(4,2), 23.456::decimal(4,2) INTO :num, :dec;

    printf("numeric = %s\n", PGTYPESnumeric_to_asc(num, 0));
    printf("numeric = %s\n", PGTYPESnumeric_to_asc(num, 1));
    printf("numeric = %s\n", PGTYPESnumeric_to_asc(num, 2));

    /* Convert decimal to numeric to show a decimal value. */
    num2 = PGTYPESnumeric_new();
    PGTYPESnumeric_from_decimal(dec, num2);

    printf("decimal = %s\n", PGTYPESnumeric_to_asc(num2, 0));
    printf("decimal = %s\n", PGTYPESnumeric_to_asc(num2, 1));
    printf("decimal = %s\n", PGTYPESnumeric_to_asc(num2, 2));

    PGTYPESnumeric_free(num2);
    PGTYPESdecimal_free(dec);
    PGTYPESnumeric_free(num);

    EXEC SQL COMMIT;
    EXEC SQL DISCONNECT ALL;
    return 0;
}

33.4.4.3. Host Variables with Nonprimitive Types

As a host variable you can also use arrays, typedefs, structs, and pointers.

33.4.4.3.1. Arrays

There are two use cases for arrays as host variables. The first is a way to store some text string in char[] or VARCHAR[], as explained Section 33.4.4.1. The second use case is to retrieve multiple rows from a query result without using a cursor. Without an array, to process a query result consisting of multiple rows, it is required to use a cursor and the FETCH command. But with array host variables, multiple rows can be received at once. The length of the array has to be defined to be able to accommodate all rows, otherwise a buffer overflow will likely occur.

Following example scans the pg_database system table and shows all OIDs and names of the available databases:

int
main(void)
{
EXEC SQL BEGIN DECLARE SECTION;
    int dbid[8];
    char dbname[8][16];
    int i;
EXEC SQL END DECLARE SECTION;

    memset(dbname, 0, sizeof(char)* 16 * 8);
    memset(dbid, 0, sizeof(int) * 8);

    EXEC SQL CONNECT TO testdb;

    /* Retrieve multiple rows into arrays at once. */
    EXEC SQL SELECT oid,datname INTO :dbid, :dbname FROM pg_database;

    for (i = 0; i < 8; i++)
        printf("oid=%d, dbname=%s\n", dbid[i], dbname[i]);

    EXEC SQL COMMIT;
    EXEC SQL DISCONNECT ALL;
    return 0;
}

This example shows following result. (The exact values depend on local circumstances.)

oid=1, dbname=template1
oid=11510, dbname=template0
oid=11511, dbname=postgres
oid=313780, dbname=testdb
oid=0, dbname=
oid=0, dbname=
oid=0, dbname=

33.4.4.3.2. Structures

A structure whose member names match the column names of a query result, can be used to retrieve multiple columns at once. The structure enables handling multiple column values in a single host variable.

The following example retrieves OIDs, names, and sizes of the available databases from the pg_database system table and using the pg_database_size() function. In this example, a structure variable dbinfo_t with members whose names match each column in the SELECT result is used to retrieve one result row without putting multiple host variables in the FETCH statement.

EXEC SQL BEGIN DECLARE SECTION;
    typedef struct
    {
       int oid;
       char datname[65];
       long long int size;
    } dbinfo_t;

    dbinfo_t dbval;
EXEC SQL END DECLARE SECTION;

    memset(&dbval, 0, sizeof(dbinfo_t));

    EXEC SQL DECLARE cur1 CURSOR FOR SELECT oid, datname, pg_database_size(oid) AS size FROM pg_database;
    EXEC SQL OPEN cur1;

    /* when end of result set reached, break out of while loop */
    EXEC SQL WHENEVER NOT FOUND DO BREAK;

    while (1)
    {
        /* Fetch multiple columns into one structure. */
        EXEC SQL FETCH FROM cur1 INTO :dbval;

        /* Print members of the structure. */
        printf("oid=%d, datname=%s, size=%lld\n", dbval.oid, dbval.datname, dbval.size);
    }

    EXEC SQL CLOSE cur1;

This example shows following result. (The exact values depend on local circumstances.)

oid=1, datname=template1, size=4324580
oid=11510, datname=template0, size=4243460
oid=11511, datname=postgres, size=4324580
oid=313780, datname=testdb, size=8183012

Structure host variables "absorb" as many columns as the structure as fields. Additional columns can be assigned to other host variables. For example, the above program could also be restructured like this, with the size variable outside the structure:

EXEC SQL BEGIN DECLARE SECTION;
    typedef struct
    {
       int oid;
       char datname[65];
    } dbinfo_t;

    dbinfo_t dbval;
    long long int size;
EXEC SQL END DECLARE SECTION;

    memset(&dbval, 0, sizeof(dbinfo_t));

    EXEC SQL DECLARE cur1 CURSOR FOR SELECT oid, datname, pg_database_size(oid) AS size FROM pg_database;
    EXEC SQL OPEN cur1;

    /* when end of result set reached, break out of while loop */
    EXEC SQL WHENEVER NOT FOUND DO BREAK;

    while (1)
    {
        /* Fetch multiple columns into one structure. */
        EXEC SQL FETCH FROM cur1 INTO :dbval, :size;

        /* Print members of the structure. */
        printf("oid=%d, datname=%s, size=%lld\n", dbval.oid, dbval.datname, size);
    }

    EXEC SQL CLOSE cur1;

33.4.4.3.3. Typedefs

Use the typedef keyword to map new types to already existing types.

EXEC SQL BEGIN DECLARE SECTION;
    typedef char mychartype[40];
    typedef long serial_t;
EXEC SQL END DECLARE SECTION;

Note that you could also use:

EXEC SQL TYPE serial_t IS long;

This declaration does not need to be part of a declare section.

33.4.4.3.4. Pointers

You can declare pointers to the most common types. Note however that you cannot use pointers as target variables of queries without auto-allocation. See Section 33.7 for more information on auto-allocation.

EXEC SQL BEGIN DECLARE SECTION;
    int   *intp;
    char **charp;
EXEC SQL END DECLARE SECTION;

33.4.5. Handling Nonprimitive SQL Data Types

This section contains information on how to handle nonscalar and user-defined SQL-level data types in ECPG applications. Note that this is distinct from the handling of host variables of nonprimitive types, described in the previous section.

33.4.5.1. Arrays

Multi-dimensional SQL-level arrays are not directly supported in ECPG. One-dimensional SQL-level arrays can be mapped into C array host variables and vice-versa. However, when creating a statement ecpg does not know the types of the columns, so that it cannot check if a C array is input into a corresponding SQL-level array. When processing the output of a SQL statement, ecpg has the necessary information and thus checks if both are arrays.

If a query accesses elements of an array separately, then this avoids the use of arrays in ECPG. Then, a host variable with a type that can be mapped to the element type should be used. For example, if a column type is array of integer, a host variable of type int can be used. Also if the element type is varchar or text, a host variable of type char[] or VARCHAR[] can be used.

Here is an example. Assume the following table:

CREATE TABLE t3 (
    ii integer[]
);

testdb=> SELECT * FROM t3;
     ii
-------------
 {1,2,3,4,5}
(1 row)

The following example program retrieves the 4th element of the array and stores it into a host variable of type int:

EXEC SQL BEGIN DECLARE SECTION;
int ii;
EXEC SQL END DECLARE SECTION;

EXEC SQL DECLARE cur1 CURSOR FOR SELECT ii[4] FROM t3;
EXEC SQL OPEN cur1;

EXEC SQL WHENEVER NOT FOUND DO BREAK;

while (1)
{
    EXEC SQL FETCH FROM cur1 INTO :ii ;
    printf("ii=%d\n", ii);
}

EXEC SQL CLOSE cur1;

This example shows the following result:

ii=4

To map multiple array elements to the multiple elements in an array type host variables each element of array column and each element of the host variable array have to be managed separately, for example:

EXEC SQL BEGIN DECLARE SECTION;
int ii_a[8];
EXEC SQL END DECLARE SECTION;

EXEC SQL DECLARE cur1 CURSOR FOR SELECT ii[1], ii[2], ii[3], ii[4] FROM t3;
EXEC SQL OPEN cur1;

EXEC SQL WHENEVER NOT FOUND DO BREAK;

while (1)
{
    EXEC SQL FETCH FROM cur1 INTO :ii_a[0], :ii_a[1], :ii_a[2], :ii_a[3];
    ...
}

Note again that

EXEC SQL BEGIN DECLARE SECTION;
int ii_a[8];
EXEC SQL END DECLARE SECTION;

EXEC SQL DECLARE cur1 CURSOR FOR SELECT ii FROM t3;
EXEC SQL OPEN cur1;

EXEC SQL WHENEVER NOT FOUND DO BREAK;

while (1)
{
    /* WRONG */
    EXEC SQL FETCH FROM cur1 INTO :ii_a;
    ...
}

would not work correctly in this case, because you cannot map an array type column to an array host variable directly.

Another workaround is to store arrays in their external string representation in host variables of type char[] or VARCHAR[]. For more details about this representation, see Section 8.14.2. Note that this means that the array cannot be accessed naturally as an array in the host program (without further processing that parses the text representation).

33.4.5.2. Composite Types

Composite types are not directly supported in ECPG, but an easy workaround is possible. The available workarounds are similar to the ones described for arrays above: Either access each attribute separately or use the external string representation.

For the following examples, assume the following type and table:

CREATE TYPE comp_t AS (intval integer, textval varchar(32));
CREATE TABLE t4 (compval comp_t);
INSERT INTO t4 VALUES ( (256, 'PostgreSQL') );

The most obvious solution is to access each attribute separately. The following program retrieves data from the example table by selecting each attribute of the type comp_t separately:

EXEC SQL BEGIN DECLARE SECTION;
int intval;
varchar textval[33];
EXEC SQL END DECLARE SECTION;

/* Put each element of the composite type column in the SELECT list. */
EXEC SQL DECLARE cur1 CURSOR FOR SELECT (compval).intval, (compval).textval FROM t4;
EXEC SQL OPEN cur1;

EXEC SQL WHENEVER NOT FOUND DO BREAK;

while (1)
{
    /* Fetch each element of the composite type column into host variables. */
    EXEC SQL FETCH FROM cur1 INTO :intval, :textval;

    printf("intval=%d, textval=%s\n", intval, textval.arr);
}

EXEC SQL CLOSE cur1;

To enhance this example, the host variables to store values in the FETCH command can be gathered into one structure. For more details about the host variable in the structure form, see Section 33.4.4.3.2. To switch to the structure, the example can be modified as below. The two host variables, intval and textval, become members of the comp_t structure, and the structure is specified on the FETCH command.

EXEC SQL BEGIN DECLARE SECTION;
typedef struct
{
    int intval;
    varchar textval[33];
} comp_t;

comp_t compval;
EXEC SQL END DECLARE SECTION;

/* Put each element of the composite type column in the SELECT list. */
EXEC SQL DECLARE cur1 CURSOR FOR SELECT (compval).intval, (compval).textval FROM t4;
EXEC SQL OPEN cur1;

EXEC SQL WHENEVER NOT FOUND DO BREAK;

while (1)
{
    /* Put all values in the SELECT list into one structure. */
    EXEC SQL FETCH FROM cur1 INTO :compval;

    printf("intval=%d, textval=%s\n", compval.intval, compval.textval.arr);
}

EXEC SQL CLOSE cur1;

Although a structure is used in the FETCH command, the attribute names in the SELECT clause are specified one by one. This can be enhanced by using a * to ask for all attributes of the composite type value.

...
EXEC SQL DECLARE cur1 CURSOR FOR SELECT (compval).* FROM t4;
EXEC SQL OPEN cur1;

EXEC SQL WHENEVER NOT FOUND DO BREAK;

while (1)
{
    /* Put all values in the SELECT list into one structure. */
    EXEC SQL FETCH FROM cur1 INTO :compval;

    printf("intval=%d, textval=%s\n", compval.intval, compval.textval.arr);
}
...

This way, composite types can be mapped into structures almost seamlessly, even though ECPG does not understand the composite type itself.

Finally, it is also possible to store composite type values in their external string representation in host variables of type char[] or VARCHAR[]. But that way, it is not easily possible to access the fields of the value from the host program.

33.4.5.3. User-defined Base Types

New user-defined base types are not directly supported by ECPG. You can use the external string representation and host variables of type char[] or VARCHAR[], and this solution is indeed appropriate and sufficient for many types.

Here is an example using the data type complex from the example in Section 35.11. The external string representation of that type is (%lf,%lf), which is defined in the functions complex_in() and complex_out() functions in Section 35.11. The following example inserts the complex type values (1,1) and (3,3) into the columns a and b, and select them from the table after that.

EXEC SQL BEGIN DECLARE SECTION;
    varchar a[64];
    varchar b[64];
EXEC SQL END DECLARE SECTION;

    EXEC SQL INSERT INTO test_complex VALUES ('(1,1)', '(3,3)');

    EXEC SQL DECLARE cur1 CURSOR FOR SELECT a, b FROM test_complex;
    EXEC SQL OPEN cur1;

    EXEC SQL WHENEVER NOT FOUND DO BREAK;

    while (1)
    {
        EXEC SQL FETCH FROM cur1 INTO :a, :b;
        printf("a=%s, b=%s\n", a.arr, b.arr);
    }

    EXEC SQL CLOSE cur1;

This example shows following result:

a=(1,1), b=(3,3)

Another workaround is avoiding the direct use of the user-defined types in ECPG and instead create a function or cast that converts between the user-defined type and a primitive type that ECPG can handle. Note, however, that type casts, especially implicit ones, should be introduced into the type system very carefully.

For example,

CREATE FUNCTION create_complex(r double, i double) RETURNS complex
LANGUAGE SQL
IMMUTABLE
AS $$ SELECT $1 * complex '(1,0')' + $2 * complex '(0,1)' $$;

After this definition, the following

EXEC SQL BEGIN DECLARE SECTION;
double a, b, c, d;
EXEC SQL END DECLARE SECTION;

a = 1;
b = 2;
c = 3;
d = 4;

EXEC SQL INSERT INTO test_complex VALUES (create_complex(:a, :b), create_complex(:c, :d));

has the same effect as

EXEC SQL INSERT INTO test_complex VALUES ('(1,2)', '(3,4)');

33.4.6. Indicators

The examples above do not handle null values. In fact, the retrieval examples will raise an error if they fetch a null value from the database. To be able to pass null values to the database or retrieve null values from the database, you need to append a second host variable specification to each host variable that contains data. This second host variable is called the indicator and contains a flag that tells whether the datum is null, in which case the value of the real host variable is ignored. Here is an example that handles the retrieval of null values correctly:

EXEC SQL BEGIN DECLARE SECTION;
VARCHAR val;
int val_ind;
EXEC SQL END DECLARE SECTION:

 ...

EXEC SQL SELECT b INTO :val :val_ind FROM test1;

The indicator variable val_ind will be zero if the value was not null, and it will be negative if the value was null.

The indicator has another function: if the indicator value is positive, it means that the value is not null, but it was truncated when it was stored in the host variable.

If the argument -r no_indicator is passed to the preprocessor ecpg, it works in "no-indicator" mode. In no-indicator mode, if no indicator variable is specified, null values are signaled (on input and output) for character string types as empty string and for integer types as the lowest possible value for type (for example, INT_MIN for int).

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Dynamic SQL

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33.5. Dynamic SQL

In many cases, the particular SQL statements that an application has to execute are known at the time the application is written. In some cases, however, the SQL statements are composed at run time or provided by an external source. In these cases you cannot embed the SQL statements directly into the C source code, but there is a facility that allows you to call arbitrary SQL statements that you provide in a string variable.

33.5.1. Executing Statements without a Result Set

The simplest way to execute an arbitrary SQL statement is to use the command EXECUTE IMMEDIATE. For example:

EXEC SQL BEGIN DECLARE SECTION;
const char *stmt = "CREATE TABLE test1 (...);";
EXEC SQL END DECLARE SECTION;

EXEC SQL EXECUTE IMMEDIATE :stmt;

EXECUTE IMMEDIATE can be used for SQL statements that do not return a result set (e.g., DDL, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE). You cannot execute statements that retrieve data (e.g., SELECT) this way. The next section describes how to do that.

33.5.2. Executing a Statement with Input Parameters

A more powerful way to execute arbitrary SQL statements is to prepare them once and execute the prepared statement as often as you like. It is also possible to prepare a generalized version of a statement and then execute specific versions of it by substituting parameters. When preparing the statement, write question marks where you want to substitute parameters later. For example:

EXEC SQL BEGIN DECLARE SECTION;
const char *stmt = "INSERT INTO test1 VALUES(?, ?);";
EXEC SQL END DECLARE SECTION;

EXEC SQL PREPARE mystmt FROM :stmt;
 ...
EXEC SQL EXECUTE mystmt USING 42, 'foobar';

When you don't need the prepared statement anymore, you should deallocate it:

EXEC SQL DEALLOCATE PREPARE name;

33.5.3. Executing a Statement with a Result Set

To execute an SQL statement with a single result row, EXECUTE can be used. To save the result, add an INTO clause.

EXEC SQL BEGIN DECLARE SECTION;
const char *stmt = "SELECT a, b, c FROM test1 WHERE a > ?";
int v1, v2;
VARCHAR v3[50];
EXEC SQL END DECLARE SECTION;

EXEC SQL PREPARE mystmt FROM :stmt;
 ...
EXEC SQL EXECUTE mystmt INTO :v1, :v2, :v3 USING 37;

An EXECUTE command can have an INTO clause, a USING clause, both, or neither.

If a query is expected to return more than one result row, a cursor should be used, as in the following example. (See Section 33.3.2 for more details about the cursor.)

EXEC SQL BEGIN DECLARE SECTION;
char dbaname[128];
char datname[128];
char *stmt = "SELECT u.usename as dbaname, d.datname "
             "  FROM pg_database d, pg_user u "
             "  WHERE d.datdba = u.usesysid";
EXEC SQL END DECLARE SECTION;

EXEC SQL CONNECT TO testdb AS con1 USER testuser;

EXEC SQL PREPARE stmt1 FROM :stmt;

EXEC SQL DECLARE cursor1 CURSOR FOR stmt1;
EXEC SQL OPEN cursor1;

EXEC SQL WHENEVER NOT FOUND DO BREAK;

while (1)
{
    EXEC SQL FETCH cursor1 INTO :dbaname,:datname;
    printf("dbaname=%s, datname=%s\n", dbaname, datname);
}

EXEC SQL CLOSE cursor1;

EXEC SQL COMMIT;
EXEC SQL DISCONNECT ALL;

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pgtypes Library

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33.6. pgtypes Library

The pgtypes library maps PostgreSQL database types to C equivalents that can be used in C programs. It also offers functions to do basic calculations with those types within C, i.e., without the help of the PostgreSQL server. See the following example:

EXEC SQL BEGIN DECLARE SECTION;
   date date1;
   timestamp ts1, tsout;
   interval iv1;
   char *out;
EXEC SQL END DECLARE SECTION;

PGTYPESdate_today(&date1);
EXEC SQL SELECT started, duration INTO :ts1, :iv1 FROM datetbl WHERE d=:date1;
PGTYPEStimestamp_add_interval(&ts1, &iv1, &tsout);
out = PGTYPEStimestamp_to_asc(&tsout);
printf("Started + duration: %s\n", out);
free(out);

33.6.1. The numeric Type

The numeric type offers to do calculations with arbitrary precision. See Section 8.1 for the equivalent type in the PostgreSQL server. Because of the arbitrary precision this variable needs to be able to expand and shrink dynamically. That's why you can only create numeric variables on the heap, by means of the PGTYPESnumeric_new and PGTYPESnumeric_free functions. The decimal type, which is similar but limited in precision, can be created on the stack as well as on the heap.

The following functions can be used to work with the numeric type:

PGTYPESnumeric_new

Request a pointer to a newly allocated numeric variable.

numeric *PGTYPESnumeric_new(void);

PGTYPESnumeric_free

Free a numeric type, release all of its memory.

void PGTYPESnumeric_free(numeric *var);

PGTYPESnumeric_from_asc

Parse a numeric type from its string notation.

numeric *PGTYPESnumeric_from_asc(char *str, char **endptr);

Valid formats are for example: -2, .794, +3.44, 592.49E07 or -32.84e-4. If the value could be parsed successfully, a valid pointer is returned, else the NULL pointer. At the moment ECPG always parses the complete string and so it currently does not support to store the address of the first invalid character in *endptr. You can safely set endptr to NULL.

PGTYPESnumeric_to_asc

Returns a pointer to a string allocated by malloc that contains the string representation of the numeric type num.

char *PGTYPESnumeric_to_asc(numeric *num, int dscale);

The numeric value will be printed with dscale decimal digits, with rounding applied if necessary.

PGTYPESnumeric_add

Add two numeric variables into a third one.

int PGTYPESnumeric_add(numeric *var1, numeric *var2, numeric *result);

The function adds the variables var1 and var2 into the result variable result. The function returns 0 on success and -1 in case of error.

PGTYPESnumeric_sub

Subtract two numeric variables and return the result in a third one.

int PGTYPESnumeric_sub(numeric *var1, numeric *var2, numeric *result);

The function subtracts the variable var2 from the variable var1. The result of the operation is stored in the variable result. The function returns 0 on success and -1 in case of error.

PGTYPESnumeric_mul

Multiply two numeric variables and return the result in a third one.

int PGTYPESnumeric_mul(numeric *var1, numeric *var2, numeric *result);

The function multiplies the variables var1 and var2. The result of the operation is stored in the variable result. The function returns 0 on success and -1 in case of error.

PGTYPESnumeric_div

Divide two numeric variables and return the result in a third one.

int PGTYPESnumeric_div(numeric *var1, numeric *var2, numeric *result);

The function divides the variables var1 by var2. The result of the operation is stored in the variable result. The function returns 0 on success and -1 in case of error.

PGTYPESnumeric_cmp

Compare two numeric variables.

int PGTYPESnumeric_cmp(numeric *var1, numeric *var2)

This function compares two numeric variables. In case of error, INT_MAX is returned. On success, the function returns one of three possible results:

  • 1, if var1 is bigger than var2

  • -1, if var1 is smaller than var2

  • 0, if var1 and var2 are equal

PGTYPESnumeric_from_int

Convert an int variable to a numeric variable.

int PGTYPESnumeric_from_int(signed int int_val, numeric *var);

This function accepts a variable of type signed int and stores it in the numeric variable var. Upon success, 0 is returned and -1 in case of a failure.

PGTYPESnumeric_from_long

Convert a long int variable to a numeric variable.

int PGTYPESnumeric_from_long(signed long int long_val, numeric *var);

This function accepts a variable of type signed long int and stores it in the numeric variable var. Upon success, 0 is returned and -1 in case of a failure.

PGTYPESnumeric_copy

Copy over one numeric variable into another one.

int PGTYPESnumeric_copy(numeric *src, numeric *dst);

This function copies over the value of the variable that src points to into the variable that dst points to. It returns 0 on success and -1 if an error occurs.

PGTYPESnumeric_from_double

Convert a variable of type double to a numeric.

int  PGTYPESnumeric_from_double(double d, numeric *dst);

This function accepts a variable of type double and stores the result in the variable that dst points to. It returns 0 on success and -1 if an error occurs.

PGTYPESnumeric_to_double

Convert a variable of type numeric to double.

int PGTYPESnumeric_to_double(numeric *nv, double *dp)

The function converts the numeric value from the variable that nv points to into the double variable that dp points to. It returns 0 on success and -1 if an error occurs, including overflow. On overflow, the global variable errno will be set to PGTYPES_NUM_OVERFLOW additionally.

PGTYPESnumeric_to_int

Convert a variable of type numeric to int.

int PGTYPESnumeric_to_int(numeric *nv, int *ip);

The function converts the numeric value from the variable that nv points to into the integer variable that ip points to. It returns 0 on success and -1 if an error occurs, including overflow. On overflow, the global variable errno will be set to PGTYPES_NUM_OVERFLOW additionally.

PGTYPESnumeric_to_long

Convert a variable of type numeric to long.

int PGTYPESnumeric_to_long(numeric *nv, long *lp);

The function converts the numeric value from the variable that nv points to into the long integer variable that lp points to. It returns 0 on success and -1 if an error occurs, including overflow. On overflow, the global variable errno will be set to PGTYPES_NUM_OVERFLOW additionally.

PGTYPESnumeric_to_decimal

Convert a variable of type numeric to decimal.

int PGTYPESnumeric_to_decimal(numeric *src, decimal *dst);

The function converts the numeric value from the variable that src points to into the decimal variable that dst points to. It returns 0 on success and -1 if an error occurs, including overflow. On overflow, the global variable errno will be set to PGTYPES_NUM_OVERFLOW additionally.

PGTYPESnumeric_from_decimal

Convert a variable of type decimal to numeric.

int PGTYPESnumeric_from_decimal(decimal *src, numeric *dst);

The function converts the decimal value from the variable that src points to into the numeric variable that dst points to. It returns 0 on success and -1 if an error occurs. Since the decimal type is implemented as a limited version of the numeric type, overflow cannot occur with this conversion.

33.6.2. The date Type

The date type in C enables your programs to deal with data of the SQL type date. See Section 8.5 for the equivalent type in the PostgreSQL server.

The following functions can be used to work with the date type:

PGTYPESdate_from_timestamp

Extract the date part from a timestamp.

date PGTYPESdate_from_timestamp(timestamp dt);

The function receives a timestamp as its only argument and returns the extracted date part from this timestamp.

PGTYPESdate_from_asc

Parse a date from its textual representation.

date PGTYPESdate_from_asc(char *str, char **endptr);

The function receives a C char* string str and a pointer to a C char* string endptr. At the moment ECPG always parses the complete string and so it currently does not support to store the address of the first invalid character in *endptr. You can safely set endptr to NULL.

Note that the function always assumes MDY-formatted dates and there is currently no variable to change that within ECPG.

Table 33-2 shows the allowed input formats.

Table 33-2. Valid Input Formats for PGTYPESdate_from_asc

Input | Result
January 8, 1999 | January 8, 1999
1999-01-08 | January 8, 1999
1/8/1999 | January 8, 1999
1/18/1999 | January 18, 1999
01/02/03 | February 1, 2003
1999-Jan-08 | January 8, 1999
Jan-08-1999 | January 8, 1999
08-Jan-1999 | January 8, 1999
99-Jan-08 | January 8, 1999
08-Jan-99 | January 8, 1999
08-Jan-06 | January 8, 2006
Jan-08-99 | January 8, 1999
19990108 | ISO 8601; January 8, 1999
990108 | ISO 8601; January 8, 1999
1999.008 | year and day of year
J2451187 | Julian day
January 8, 99 BC | year 99 before the Common Era
PGTYPESdate_to_asc

Return the textual representation of a date variable.

char *PGTYPESdate_to_asc(date dDate);

The function receives the date dDate as its only parameter. It will output the date in the form 1999-01-18, i.e., in the YYYY-MM-DD format.

PGTYPESdate_julmdy

Extract the values for the day, the month and the year from a variable of type date.

void PGTYPESdate_julmdy(date d, int *mdy);

The function receives the date d and a pointer to an array of 3 integer values mdy. The variable name indicates the sequential order: mdy[0] will be set to contain the number of the month, mdy[1] will be set to the value of the day and mdy[2] will contain the year.

PGTYPESdate_mdyjul

Create a date value from an array of 3 integers that specify the day, the month and the year of the date.

void PGTYPESdate_mdyjul(int *mdy, date *jdate);

The function receives the array of the 3 integers (mdy) as its first argument and as its second argument a pointer to a variable of type date that should hold the result of the operation.

PGTYPESdate_dayofweek

Return a number representing the day of the week for a date value.

int PGTYPESdate_dayofweek(date d);

The function receives the date variable d as its only argument and returns an integer that indicates the day of the week for this date.

  • 0 - Sunday

  • 1 - Monday

  • 2 - Tuesday

  • 3 - Wednesday

  • 4 - Thursday

  • 5 - Friday

  • 6 - Saturday

PGTYPESdate_today

Get the current date.

void PGTYPESdate_today(date *d);

The function receives a pointer to a date variable (d) that it sets to the current date.

PGTYPESdate_fmt_asc

Convert a variable of type date to its textual representation using a format mask.

int PGTYPESdate_fmt_asc(date dDate, char *fmtstring, char *outbuf);

The function receives the date to convert (dDate), the format mask (fmtstring) and the string that will hold the textual representation of the date (outbuf).

On success, 0 is returned and a negative value if an error occurred.

The following literals are the field specifiers you can use:

  • dd - The number of the day of the month.

  • mm - The number of the month of the year.

  • yy - The number of the year as a two digit number.

  • yyyy - The number of the year as a four digit number.

  • ddd - The name of the day (abbreviated).

  • mmm - The name of the month (abbreviated).

All other characters are copied 1:1 to the output string.

Table 33-3 indicates a few possible formats. This will give you an idea of how to use this function. All output lines are based on the same date: November 23, 1959.

Table 33-3. Valid Input Formats for PGTYPESdate_fmt_asc

Format | Result
mmddyy | 112359
ddmmyy | 231159
yymmdd | 591123
yy/mm/dd | 59/11/23
yy mm dd | 59 11 23
yy.mm.dd | 59.11.23
.mm.yyyy.dd. | .11.1959.23.
mmm. dd, yyyy | Nov. 23, 1959
mmm dd yyyy | Nov 23 1959
yyyy dd mm | 1959 23 11
ddd, mmm. dd, yyyy | Mon, Nov. 23, 1959
(ddd) mmm. dd, yyyy | (Mon) Nov. 23, 1959
PGTYPESdate_defmt_asc

Use a format mask to convert a C char* string to a value of type date.

int PGTYPESdate_defmt_asc(date *d, char *fmt, char *str);

The function receives a pointer to the date value that should hold the result of the operation (d), the format mask to use for parsing the date (fmt) and the C char* string containing the textual representation of the date (str). The textual representation is expected to match the format mask. However you do not need to have a 1:1 mapping of the string to the format mask. The function only analyzes the sequential order and looks for the literals yy or yyyy that indicate the position of the year, mm to indicate the position of the month and dd to indicate the position of the day.

Table 33-4 indicates a few possible formats. This will give you an idea of how to use this function.

Table 33-4. Valid Input Formats for rdefmtdate

Format | String | Result
ddmmyy | 21-2-54 | 1954-02-21
ddmmyy | 2-12-54 | 1954-12-02
ddmmyy | 20111954 | 1954-11-20
ddmmyy | 130464 | 1964-04-13
mmm.dd.yyyy | MAR-12-1967 | 1967-03-12
yy/mm/dd | 1954, February 3rd | 1954-02-03
mmm.dd.yyyy | 041269 | 1969-04-12
yy/mm/dd | In the year 2525, in the month of July, mankind will be alive on the 28th day | 2525-07-28
dd-mm-yy | I said on the 28th of July in the year 2525 | 2525-07-28
mmm.dd.yyyy | 9/14/58 | 1958-09-14
yy/mm/dd | 47/03/29 | 1947-03-29
mmm.dd.yyyy | oct 28 1975 | 1975-10-28
mmddyy | Nov 14th, 1985 | 1985-11-14

33.6.3. The timestamp Type

The timestamp type in C enables your programs to deal with data of the SQL type timestamp. See Section 8.5 for the equivalent type in the PostgreSQL server.

The following functions can be used to work with the timestamp type:

PGTYPEStimestamp_from_asc

Parse a timestamp from its textual representation into a timestamp variable.

timestamp PGTYPEStimestamp_from_asc(char *str, char **endptr);

The function receives the string to parse (str) and a pointer to a C char* (endptr). At the moment ECPG always parses the complete string and so it currently does not support to store the address of the first invalid character in *endptr. You can safely set endptr to NULL.

The function returns the parsed timestamp on success. On error, PGTYPESInvalidTimestamp is returned and errno is set to PGTYPES_TS_BAD_TIMESTAMP. See PGTYPESInvalidTimestamp for important notes on this value.

In general, the input string can contain any combination of an allowed date specification, a whitespace character and an allowed time specification. Note that timezones are not supported by ECPG. It can parse them but does not apply any calculation as the PostgreSQL server does for example. Timezone specifiers are silently discarded.

Table 33-5 contains a few examples for input strings.

Table 33-5. Valid Input Formats for PGTYPEStimestamp_from_asc

Input | Result
1999-01-08 04:05:06 | 1999-01-08 04:05:06
January 8 04:05:06 1999 PST | 1999-01-08 04:05:06
1999-Jan-08 04:05:06.789-8 | 1999-01-08 04:05:06.789 (time zone specifier ignored)
J2451187 04:05-08:00 | 1999-01-08 04:05:00 (time zone specifier ignored)
PGTYPEStimestamp_to_asc

Converts a date to a C char* string.

char *PGTYPEStimestamp_to_asc(timestamp tstamp);

The function receives the timestamp tstamp as its only argument and returns an allocated string that contains the textual representation of the timestamp.

PGTYPEStimestamp_current

Retrieve the current timestamp.

void PGTYPEStimestamp_current(timestamp *ts);

The function retrieves the current timestamp and saves it into the timestamp variable that ts points to.

PGTYPEStimestamp_fmt_asc

Convert a timestamp variable to a C char* using a format mask.

int PGTYPEStimestamp_fmt_asc(timestamp *ts, char *output, int str_len, char *fmtstr);

The function receives a pointer to the timestamp to convert as its first argument (ts), a pointer to the output buffer (output), the maximal length that has been allocated for the output buffer (str_len) and the format mask to use for the conversion (fmtstr).

Upon success, the function returns 0 and a negative value if an error occurred.

You can use the following format specifiers for the format mask. The format specifiers are the same ones that are used in the strftime function in libc. Any non-format specifier will be copied into the output buffer.

  • %A - is replaced by national representation of the full weekday name.

  • %a - is replaced by national representation of the abbreviated weekday name.

  • %B - is replaced by national representation of the full month name.

  • %b - is replaced by national representation of the abbreviated month name.

  • %C - is replaced by (year / 100) as decimal number; single digits are preceded by a zero.

  • %c - is replaced by national representation of time and date.

  • %D - is equivalent to %m/%d/%y.

  • %d - is replaced by the day of the month as a decimal number (01-31).

  • %E* %O* - POSIX locale extensions. The sequences %Ec %EC %Ex %EX %Ey %EY %Od %Oe %OH %OI %Om %OM %OS %Ou %OU %OV %Ow %OW %Oy are supposed to provide alternative representations.

    Additionally %OB implemented to represent alternative months names (used standalone, without day mentioned).

  • %e - is replaced by the day of month as a decimal number (1-31); single digits are preceded by a blank.

  • %F - is equivalent to %Y-%m-%d.

  • %G - is replaced by a year as a decimal number with century. This year is the one that contains the greater part of the week (Monday as the first day of the week).

  • %g - is replaced by the same year as in %G, but as a decimal number without century (00-99).

  • %H - is replaced by the hour (24-hour clock) as a decimal number (00-23).

  • %h - the same as %b.

  • %I - is replaced by the hour (12-hour clock) as a decimal number (01-12).

  • %j - is replaced by the day of the year as a decimal number (001-366).

  • %k - is replaced by the hour (24-hour clock) as a decimal number (0-23); single digits are preceded by a blank.

  • %l - is replaced by the hour (12-hour clock) as a decimal number (1-12); single digits are preceded by a blank.

  • %M - is replaced by the minute as a decimal number (00-59).

  • %m - is replaced by the month as a decimal number (01-12).

  • %n - is replaced by a newline.

  • %O* - the same as %E*.

  • %p - is replaced by national representation of either "ante meridiem" or "post meridiem" as appropriate.

  • %R - is equivalent to %H:%M.

  • %r - is equivalent to %I:%M:%S %p.

  • %S - is replaced by the second as a decimal number (00-60).

  • %s - is replaced by the number of seconds since the Epoch, UTC.

  • %T - is equivalent to %H:%M:%S

  • %t - is replaced by a tab.

  • %U - is replaced by the week number of the year (Sunday as the first day of the week) as a decimal number (00-53).

  • %u - is replaced by the weekday (Monday as the first day of the week) as a decimal number (1-7).

  • %V - is replaced by the week number of the year (Monday as the first day of the week) as a decimal number (01-53). If the week containing January 1 has four or more days in the new year, then it is week 1; otherwise it is the last week of the previous year, and the next week is week 1.

  • %v - is equivalent to %e-%b-%Y.

  • %W - is replaced by the week number of the year (Monday as the first day of the week) as a decimal number (00-53).

  • %w - is replaced by the weekday (Sunday as the first day of the week) as a decimal number (0-6).

  • %X - is replaced by national representation of the time.

  • %x - is replaced by national representation of the date.

  • %Y - is replaced by the year with century as a decimal number.

  • %y - is replaced by the year without century as a decimal number (00-99).

  • %Z - is replaced by the time zone name.

  • %z - is replaced by the time zone offset from UTC; a leading plus sign stands for east of UTC, a minus sign for west of UTC, hours and minutes follow with two digits each and no delimiter between them (common form for RFC 822 date headers).

  • %+ - is replaced by national representation of the date and time.

  • %-* - GNU libc extension. Do not do any padding when performing numerical outputs.

  • $_* - GNU libc extension. Explicitly specify space for padding.

  • %0* - GNU libc extension. Explicitly specify zero for padding.

  • %% - is replaced by %.

PGTYPEStimestamp_sub

Subtract one timestamp from another one and save the result in a variable of type interval.

int PGTYPEStimestamp_sub(timestamp *ts1, timestamp *ts2, interval *iv);

The function will subtract the timestamp variable that ts2 points to from the timestamp variable that ts1 points to and will store the result in the interval variable that iv points to.

Upon success, the function returns 0 and a negative value if an error occurred.

PGTYPEStimestamp_defmt_asc

Parse a timestamp value from its textual representation using a formatting mask.

int PGTYPEStimestamp_defmt_asc(char *str, char *fmt, timestamp *d);

The function receives the textual representation of a timestamp in the variable str as well as the formatting mask to use in the variable fmt. The result will be stored in the variable that d points to.

If the formatting mask fmt is NULL, the function will fall back to the default formatting mask which is %Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S.

This is the reverse function to PGTYPEStimestamp_fmt_asc. See the documentation there in order to find out about the possible formatting mask entries.

PGTYPEStimestamp_add_interval

Add an interval variable to a timestamp variable.

int PGTYPEStimestamp_add_interval(timestamp *tin, interval *span, timestamp *tout);

The function receives a pointer to a timestamp variable tin and a pointer to an interval variable span. It adds the interval to the timestamp and saves the resulting timestamp in the variable that tout points to.

Upon success, the function returns 0 and a negative value if an error occurred.

PGTYPEStimestamp_sub_interval

Subtract an interval variable from a timestamp variable.

int PGTYPEStimestamp_sub_interval(timestamp *tin, interval *span, timestamp *tout);

The function subtracts the interval variable that span points to from the timestamp variable that tin points to and saves the result into the variable that tout points to.

Upon success, the function returns 0 and a negative value if an error occurred.

33.6.4. The interval Type

The interval type in C enables your programs to deal with data of the SQL type interval. See Section 8.5 for the equivalent type in the PostgreSQL server.

The following functions can be used to work with the interval type:

PGTYPESinterval_new

Return a pointer to a newly allocated interval variable.

interval *PGTYPESinterval_new(void);

PGTYPESinterval_free

Release the memory of a previously allocated interval variable.

void PGTYPESinterval_new(interval *intvl);

PGTYPESinterval_from_asc

Parse an interval from its textual representation.

interval *PGTYPESinterval_from_asc(char *str, char **endptr);

The function parses the input string str and returns a pointer to an allocated interval variable. At the moment ECPG always parses the complete string and so it currently does not support to store the address of the first invalid character in *endptr. You can safely set endptr to NULL.

PGTYPESinterval_to_asc

Convert a variable of type interval to its textual representation.

char *PGTYPESinterval_to_asc(interval *span);

The function converts the interval variable that span points to into a C char*. The output looks like this example: @ 1 day 12 hours 59 mins 10 secs.

PGTYPESinterval_copy

Copy a variable of type interval.

int PGTYPESinterval_copy(interval *intvlsrc, interval *intvldest);

The function copies the interval variable that intvlsrc points to into the variable that intvldest points to. Note that you need to allocate the memory for the destination variable before.

33.6.5. The decimal Type

The decimal type is similar to the numeric type. However it is limited to a maximum precision of 30 significant digits. In contrast to the numeric type which can be created on the heap only, the decimal type can be created either on the stack or on the heap (by means of the functions PGTYPESdecimal_new and PGTYPESdecimal_free). There are a lot of other functions that deal with the decimal type in the Informix compatibility mode described in Section 33.15.

The following functions can be used to work with the decimal type and are not only contained in the libcompat library.

PGTYPESdecimal_new

Request a pointer to a newly allocated decimal variable.

decimal *PGTYPESdecimal_new(void);

PGTYPESdecimal_free

Free a decimal type, release all of its memory.

void PGTYPESdecimal_free(decimal *var);

33.6.6. errno Values of pgtypeslib

PGTYPES_NUM_BAD_NUMERIC

An argument should contain a numeric variable (or point to a numeric variable) but in fact its in-memory representation was invalid.

PGTYPES_NUM_OVERFLOW

An overflow occurred. Since the numeric type can deal with almost arbitrary precision, converting a numeric variable into other types might cause overflow.

PGTYPES_NUM_UNDERFLOW

An underflow occurred. Since the numeric type can deal with almost arbitrary precision, converting a numeric variable into other types might cause underflow.

PGTYPES_NUM_DIVIDE_ZERO

A division by zero has been attempted.

PGTYPES_DATE_BAD_DATE

An invalid date string was passed to the PGTYPESdate_from_asc function.

PGTYPES_DATE_ERR_EARGS

Invalid arguments were passed to the PGTYPESdate_defmt_asc function.

PGTYPES_DATE_ERR_ENOSHORTDATE

An invalid token in the input string was found by the PGTYPESdate_defmt_asc function.

PGTYPES_INTVL_BAD_INTERVAL

An invalid interval string was passed to the PGTYPESinterval_from_asc function, or an invalid interval value was passed to the PGTYPESinterval_to_asc function.

PGTYPES_DATE_ERR_ENOTDMY

There was a mismatch in the day/month/year assignment in the PGTYPESdate_defmt_asc function.

PGTYPES_DATE_BAD_DAY

An invalid day of the month value was found by the PGTYPESdate_defmt_asc function.

PGTYPES_DATE_BAD_MONTH

An invalid month value was found by the PGTYPESdate_defmt_asc function.

PGTYPES_TS_BAD_TIMESTAMP

An invalid timestamp string pass passed to the PGTYPEStimestamp_from_asc function, or an invalid timestamp value was passed to the PGTYPEStimestamp_to_asc function.

PGTYPES_TS_ERR_EINFTIME

An infinite timestamp value was encountered in a context that cannot handle it.

33.6.7. Special Constants of pgtypeslib

PGTYPESInvalidTimestamp

A value of type timestamp representing an invalid time stamp. This is returned by the function PGTYPEStimestamp_from_asc on parse error. Note that due to the internal representation of the timestamp data type, PGTYPESInvalidTimestamp is also a valid timestamp at the same time. It is set to 1899-12-31 23:59:59. In order to detect errors, make sure that your application does not only test for PGTYPESInvalidTimestamp but also for errno != 0 after each call to PGTYPEStimestamp_from_asc.

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Using Descriptor Areas

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33.7. Using Descriptor Areas

An SQL descriptor area is a more sophisticated method for processing the result of a SELECT, FETCH or a DESCRIBE statement. An SQL descriptor area groups the data of one row of data together with metadata items into one data structure. The metadata is particularly useful when executing dynamic SQL statements, where the nature of the result columns might not be known ahead of time. PostgreSQL provides two ways to use Descriptor Areas: the named SQL Descriptor Areas and the C-structure SQLDAs.

33.7.1. Named SQL Descriptor Areas

A named SQL descriptor area consists of a header, which contains information concerning the entire descriptor, and one or more item descriptor areas, which basically each describe one column in the result row.

Before you can use an SQL descriptor area, you need to allocate one:

EXEC SQL ALLOCATE DESCRIPTOR identifier;

The identifier serves as the "variable name" of the descriptor area. When you don't need the descriptor anymore, you should deallocate it:

EXEC SQL DEALLOCATE DESCRIPTOR identifier;

To use a descriptor area, specify it as the storage target in an INTO clause, instead of listing host variables:

EXEC SQL FETCH NEXT FROM mycursor INTO SQL DESCRIPTOR mydesc;

If the result set is empty, the Descriptor Area will still contain the metadata from the query, i.e. the field names.

For not yet executed prepared queries, the DESCRIBE statement can be used to get the metadata of the result set:

EXEC SQL BEGIN DECLARE SECTION;
char *sql_stmt = "SELECT * FROM table1";
EXEC SQL END DECLARE SECTION;

EXEC SQL PREPARE stmt1 FROM :sql_stmt;
EXEC SQL DESCRIBE stmt1 INTO SQL DESCRIPTOR mydesc;

Before PostgreSQL 9.0, the SQL keyword was optional, so using DESCRIPTOR and SQL DESCRIPTOR produced named SQL Descriptor Areas. Now it is mandatory, omitting the SQL keyword produces SQLDA Descriptor Areas, see Section 33.7.2.

In DESCRIBE and FETCH statements, the INTO and USING keywords can be used to similarly: they produce the result set and the metadata in a Descriptor Area.

Now how do you get the data out of the descriptor area? You can think of the descriptor area as a structure with named fields. To retrieve the value of a field from the header and store it into a host variable, use the following command:

EXEC SQL GET DESCRIPTOR name :hostvar = field;

Currently, there is only one header field defined: COUNT, which tells how many item descriptor areas exist (that is, how many columns are contained in the result). The host variable needs to be of an integer type. To get a field from the item descriptor area, use the following command:

EXEC SQL GET DESCRIPTOR name VALUE num :hostvar = field;

num can be a literal integer or a host variable containing an integer. Possible fields are:

CARDINALITY (integer)

number of rows in the result set

DATA

actual data item (therefore, the data type of this field depends on the query)

DATETIME_INTERVAL_CODE (integer)

When TYPE is 9, DATETIME_INTERVAL_CODE will have a value of 1 for DATE, 2 for TIME, 3 for TIMESTAMP, 4 for TIME WITH TIME ZONE, or 5 for TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE.

DATETIME_INTERVAL_PRECISION (integer)

not implemented

INDICATOR (integer)

the indicator (indicating a null value or a value truncation)

KEY_MEMBER (integer)

not implemented

LENGTH (integer)

length of the datum in characters

NAME (string)

name of the column

NULLABLE (integer)

not implemented

OCTET_LENGTH (integer)

length of the character representation of the datum in bytes

PRECISION (integer)

precision (for type numeric)

RETURNED_LENGTH (integer)

length of the datum in characters

RETURNED_OCTET_LENGTH (integer)

length of the character representation of the datum in bytes

SCALE (integer)

scale (for type numeric)

TYPE (integer)

numeric code of the data type of the column

In EXECUTE, DECLARE and OPEN statements, the effect of the INTO and USING keywords are different. A Descriptor Area can also be manually built to provide the input parameters for a query or a cursor and USING SQL DESCRIPTOR name is the way to pass the input parameters into a parametrized query. The statement to build a named SQL Descriptor Area is below:

EXEC SQL SET DESCRIPTOR name VALUE num field = :hostvar;

PostgreSQL supports retrieving more that one record in one FETCH statement and storing the data in host variables in this case assumes that the variable is an array. E.g.:

EXEC SQL BEGIN DECLARE SECTION;
int id[5];
EXEC SQL END DECLARE SECTION;

EXEC SQL FETCH 5 FROM mycursor INTO SQL DESCRIPTOR mydesc;

EXEC SQL GET DESCRIPTOR mydesc VALUE 1 :id = DATA;

33.7.2. SQLDA Descriptor Areas

An SQLDA Descriptor Area is a C language structure which can be also used to get the result set and the metadata of a query. One structure stores one record from the result set.

EXEC SQL include sqlda.h;
sqlda_t         *mysqlda;

EXEC SQL FETCH 3 FROM mycursor INTO DESCRIPTOR mysqlda;

Note that the SQL keyword is omitted. The paragraphs about the use cases of the INTO and USING keywords in Section 33.7.1 also apply here with an addition. In a DESCRIBE statement the DESCRIPTOR keyword can be completely omitted if the INTO keyword is used:

EXEC SQL DESCRIBE prepared_statement INTO mysqlda;

The general flow of a program that uses SQLDA is:

  1. Prepare a query, and declare a cursor for it.

  2. Declare an SQLDA for the result rows.

  3. Declare an SQLDA for the input parameters, and initialize them (memory allocation, parameter settings).

  4. Open a cursor with the input SQLDA.

  5. Fetch rows from the cursor, and store them into an output SQLDA.

  6. Read values from the output SQLDA into the host variables (with conversion if necessary).

  7. Close the cursor.

  8. Free the memory area allocated for the input SQLDA.

33.7.2.1. SQLDA Data Structure

SQLDA uses three data structure types: sqlda_t, sqlvar_t, and struct sqlname.

Tip: PostgreSQL's SQLDA has a similar data structure to the one in IBM DB2 Universal Database, so some technical information on DB2's SQLDA could help understanding PostgreSQL's one better.

33.7.2.1.1. sqlda_t Structure

The structure type sqlda_t is the type of the actual SQLDA. It holds one record. And two or more sqlda_t structures can be connected in a linked list with the pointer in the desc_next field, thus representing an ordered collection of rows. So, when two or more rows are fetched, the application can read them by following the desc_next pointer in each sqlda_t node.

The definition of sqlda_t is:

struct sqlda_struct
{
    char            sqldaid[8];
    long            sqldabc;
    short           sqln;
    short           sqld;
    struct sqlda_struct *desc_next;
    struct sqlvar_struct sqlvar[1];
};

typedef struct sqlda_struct sqlda_t;

The meaning of the fields is:

sqldaid

It contains the literal string "SQLDA ".

sqldabc

It contains the size of the allocated space in bytes.

sqln

It contains the number of input parameters for a parametrized query case it's passed into OPEN, DECLARE or EXECUTE statements using the USING keyword. In case it's used as output of SELECT, EXECUTE or FETCH statements, its value is the same as sqld statement

sqld

It contains the number of fields in a result set.

desc_next

If the query returns more than one record, multiple linked SQLDA structures are returned, and desc_next holds a pointer to the next entry in the list.

sqlvar

This is the array of the columns in the result set.

33.7.2.1.2. sqlvar_t Structure

The structure type sqlvar_t holds a column value and metadata such as type and length. The definition of the type is:

struct sqlvar_struct
{
    short          sqltype;
    short          sqllen;
    char          *sqldata;
    short         *sqlind;
    struct sqlname sqlname;
};

typedef struct sqlvar_struct sqlvar_t;

The meaning of the fields is:

sqltype

Contains the type identifier of the field. For values, see enum ECPGttype in ecpgtype.h.

sqllen

Contains the binary length of the field. e.g. 4 bytes for ECPGt_int.

sqldata

Points to the data. The format of the data is described in Section 33.4.4.

sqlind

Points to the null indicator. 0 means not null, -1 means null.

sqlname

The the name of the field.

33.7.2.1.3. struct sqlname Structure

A struct sqlname structure holds a column name. It is used as a member of the sqlvar_t structure. The definition of the structure is:

#define NAMEDATALEN 64

struct sqlname
{
        short           length;
        char            data[NAMEDATALEN];
};

The meaning of the fields is:

length

Contains the length of the field name.

data

Contains the actual field name.

33.7.2.2. Retrieving a Result Set Using an SQLDA

The general steps to retrieve a query result set through an SQLDA are:

  1. Declare an sqlda_t structure to receive the result set.

  2. Execute FETCH/EXECUTE/DESCRIBE commands to process a query specifying the declared SQLDA.

  3. Check the number of records in the result set by looking at sqln, a member of the sqlda_t structure.

  4. Get the values of each column from sqlvar[0], sqlvar[1], etc., members of the sqlda_t structure.

  5. Go to next row (sqlda_t structure) by following the desc_next pointer, a member of the sqlda_t structure.

  6. Repeat above as you need.

Here is an example retrieving a result set through an SQLDA.

First, declare a sqlda_t structure to receive the result set.

sqlda_t *sqlda1;

Next, specify the SQLDA in a command. This is a FETCH command example.

EXEC SQL FETCH NEXT FROM cur1 INTO DESCRIPTOR sqlda1;

Run a loop following the linked list to retrieve the rows.

sqlda_t *cur_sqlda;

for (cur_sqlda = sqlda1;
     cur_sqlda != NULL;
     cur_sqlda = cur_sqlda->desc_next)
{
    ...
}

Inside the loop, run another loop to retrieve each column data (sqlvar_t structure) of the row.

for (i = 0; i < cur_sqlda->sqld; i++)
{
    sqlvar_t v = cur_sqlda->sqlvar[i];
    char *sqldata = v.sqldata;
    short sqllen  = v.sqllen;
    ...
}

To get a column value, check the sqltype value, a member of the sqlvar_t structure. Then, switch to an appropriate way, depending on the column type, to copy data from the sqlvar field to a host variable.

char var_buf[1024];

switch (v.sqltype)
{
    case ECPGt_char:
        memset(&var_buf, 0, sizeof(var_buf));
        memcpy(&var_buf, sqldata, (sizeof(var_buf) <= sqllen ? sizeof(var_buf) - 1 : sqllen));
        break;

    case ECPGt_int: /* integer */
        memcpy(&intval, sqldata, sqllen);
        snprintf(var_buf, sizeof(var_buf), "%d", intval);
        break;

    ...
}

33.7.2.3. Passing Query Parameters Using an SQLDA

The general steps to use an SQLDA to pass input parameters to a prepared query are:

  1. Create a prepared query (prepared statement)

  2. Declare a sqlda_t structure as an input SQLDA.

  3. Allocate memory area (as sqlda_t structure) for the input SQLDA.

  4. Set (copy) input values in the allocated memory.

  5. Open a cursor with specifying the input SQLDA.

Here is an example.

First, create a prepared statement.

EXEC SQL BEGIN DECLARE SECTION;
char query[1024] = "SELECT d.oid, * FROM pg_database d, pg_stat_database s WHERE d.oid = s.datid AND (d.datname = ? OR d.oid = ?)";
EXEC SQL END DECLARE SECTION;

EXEC SQL PREPARE stmt1 FROM :query;

Next, allocate memory for an SQLDA, and set the number of input parameters in sqln, a member variable of the sqlda_t structure. When two or more input parameters are required for the prepared query, the application has to allocate additional memory space which is calculated by (nr. of params - 1) * sizeof(sqlvar_t). The example shown here allocates memory space for two input parameters.

sqlda_t *sqlda2;

sqlda2 = (sqlda_t *) malloc(sizeof(sqlda_t) + sizeof(sqlvar_t));
memset(sqlda2, 0, sizeof(sqlda_t) + sizeof(sqlvar_t));

sqlda2->sqln = 2; /* number of input variables */

After memory allocation, store the parameter values into the sqlvar[] array. (This is same array used for retrieving column values when the SQLDA is receiving a result set.) In this example, the input parameters are "postgres", having a string type, and 1, having an integer type.

sqlda2->sqlvar[0].sqltype = ECPGt_char;
sqlda2->sqlvar[0].sqldata = "postgres";
sqlda2->sqlvar[0].sqllen  = 8;

int intval = 1;
sqlda2->sqlvar[1].sqltype = ECPGt_int;
sqlda2->sqlvar[1].sqldata = (char *) &intval;
sqlda2->sqlvar[1].sqllen  = sizeof(intval);

By opening a cursor and specifying the SQLDA that was set up beforehand, the input parameters are passed to the prepared statement.

EXEC SQL OPEN cur1 USING DESCRIPTOR sqlda2;

Finally, after using input SQLDAs, the allocated memory space must be freed explicitly, unlike SQLDAs used for receiving query results.

free(sqlda2);

33.7.2.4. A Sample Application Using SQLDA

Here is an example program, which describes how to fetch access statistics of the databases, specified by the input parameters, from the system catalogs.

This application joins two system tables, pg_database and pg_stat_database on the database OID, and also fetches and shows the database statistics which are retrieved by two input parameters (a database postgres, and OID 1).

First, declare an SQLDA for input and an SQLDA for output.

EXEC SQL include sqlda.h;

sqlda_t *sqlda1; /* an output descriptor */
sqlda_t *sqlda2; /* an input descriptor  */

Next, connect to the database, prepare a statement, and declare a cursor for the prepared statement.

int
main(void)
{
    EXEC SQL BEGIN DECLARE SECTION;
    char query[1024] = "SELECT d.oid,* FROM pg_database d, pg_stat_database s WHERE d.oid=s.datid AND ( d.datname=? OR d.oid=? )";
    EXEC SQL END DECLARE SECTION;

    EXEC SQL CONNECT TO testdb AS con1 USER testuser;

    EXEC SQL PREPARE stmt1 FROM :query;
    EXEC SQL DECLARE cur1 CURSOR FOR stmt1;

Next, put some values in the input SQLDA for the input parameters. Allocate memory for the input SQLDA, and set the number of input parameters to sqln. Store type, value, and value length into sqltype, sqldata, and sqllen in the sqlvar structure.

    /* Create SQLDA structure for input parameters. */
    sqlda2 = (sqlda_t *) malloc(sizeof(sqlda_t) + sizeof(sqlvar_t));
    memset(sqlda2, 0, sizeof(sqlda_t) + sizeof(sqlvar_t));
    sqlda2->sqln = 2; /* number of input variables */

    sqlda2->sqlvar[0].sqltype = ECPGt_char;
    sqlda2->sqlvar[0].sqldata = "postgres";
    sqlda2->sqlvar[0].sqllen  = 8;

    intval = 1;
    sqlda2->sqlvar[1].sqltype = ECPGt_int;
    sqlda2->sqlvar[1].sqldata = (char *)&intval;
    sqlda2->sqlvar[1].sqllen  = sizeof(intval);

After setting up the input SQLDA, open a cursor with the input SQLDA.

    /* Open a cursor with input parameters. */
    EXEC SQL OPEN cur1 USING DESCRIPTOR sqlda2;

Fetch rows into the output SQLDA from the opened cursor. (Generally, you have to call FETCH repeatedly in the loop, to fetch all rows in the result set.)

    while (1)
    {
        sqlda_t *cur_sqlda;

        /* Assign descriptor to the cursor  */
        EXEC SQL FETCH NEXT FROM cur1 INTO DESCRIPTOR sqlda1;

Next, retrieve the fetched records from the SQLDA, by following the linked list of the sqlda_t structure.

    for (cur_sqlda = sqlda1 ;
         cur_sqlda != NULL ;
         cur_sqlda = cur_sqlda->desc_next)
    {
        ...

Read each columns in the first record. The number of columns is stored in sqld, the actual data of the first column is stored in sqlvar[0], both members of the sqlda_t structure.

        /* Print every column in a row. */
        for (i = 0; i < sqlda1->sqld; i++)
        {
            sqlvar_t v = sqlda1->sqlvar[i];
            char *sqldata = v.sqldata;
            short sqllen  = v.sqllen;

            strncpy(name_buf, v.sqlname.data, v.sqlname.length);
            name_buf[v.sqlname.length] = '\0';

Now, the column data is stored in the variable v. Copy every datum into host variables, looking at v.sqltype for the type of the column.

            switch (v.sqltype) {
                int intval;
                double doubleval;
                unsigned long long int longlongval;

                case ECPGt_char:
                    memset(&var_buf, 0, sizeof(var_buf));
                    memcpy(&var_buf, sqldata, (sizeof(var_buf) <= sqllen ? sizeof(var_buf)-1 : sqllen));
                    break;

                case ECPGt_int: /* integer */
                    memcpy(&intval, sqldata, sqllen);
                    snprintf(var_buf, sizeof(var_buf), "%d", intval);
                    break;

                ...

                default:
                    ...
            }

            printf("%s = %s (type: %d)\n", name_buf, var_buf, v.sqltype);
        }

Close the cursor after processing all of records, and disconnect from the database.

    EXEC SQL CLOSE cur1;
    EXEC SQL COMMIT;

    EXEC SQL DISCONNECT ALL;

The whole program is shown in Example 33-1.

Example 33-1. Example SQLDA Program

#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <unistd.h>

EXEC SQL include sqlda.h;

sqlda_t *sqlda1; /* descriptor for output */
sqlda_t *sqlda2; /* descriptor for input */

EXEC SQL WHENEVER NOT FOUND DO BREAK;
EXEC SQL WHENEVER SQLERROR STOP;

int
main(void)
{
    EXEC SQL BEGIN DECLARE SECTION;
    char query[1024] = "SELECT d.oid,* FROM pg_database d, pg_stat_database s WHERE d.oid=s.datid AND ( d.datname=? OR d.oid=? )";

    int intval;
    unsigned long long int longlongval;
    EXEC SQL END DECLARE SECTION;

    EXEC SQL CONNECT TO uptimedb AS con1 USER uptime;

    EXEC SQL PREPARE stmt1 FROM :query;
    EXEC SQL DECLARE cur1 CURSOR FOR stmt1;

    /* Create a SQLDA structure for an input parameter */
    sqlda2 = (sqlda_t *)malloc(sizeof(sqlda_t) + sizeof(sqlvar_t));
    memset(sqlda2, 0, sizeof(sqlda_t) + sizeof(sqlvar_t));
    sqlda2->sqln = 2; /* a number of input variables */

    sqlda2->sqlvar[0].sqltype = ECPGt_char;
    sqlda2->sqlvar[0].sqldata = "postgres";
    sqlda2->sqlvar[0].sqllen  = 8;

    intval = 1;
    sqlda2->sqlvar[1].sqltype = ECPGt_int;
    sqlda2->sqlvar[1].sqldata = (char *) &intval;
    sqlda2->sqlvar[1].sqllen  = sizeof(intval);

    /* Open a cursor with input parameters. */
    EXEC SQL OPEN cur1 USING DESCRIPTOR sqlda2;

    while (1)
    {
        sqlda_t *cur_sqlda;

        /* Assign descriptor to the cursor  */
        EXEC SQL FETCH NEXT FROM cur1 INTO DESCRIPTOR sqlda1;

        for (cur_sqlda = sqlda1 ;
             cur_sqlda != NULL ;
             cur_sqlda = cur_sqlda->desc_next)
        {
            int i;
            char name_buf[1024];
            char var_buf[1024];

            /* Print every column in a row. */
            for (i=0 ; i<cur_sqlda->sqld ; i++)
            {
                sqlvar_t v = cur_sqlda->sqlvar[i];
                char *sqldata = v.sqldata;
                short sqllen  = v.sqllen;

                strncpy(name_buf, v.sqlname.data, v.sqlname.length);
                name_buf[v.sqlname.length] = '\0';

                switch (v.sqltype)
                {
                    case ECPGt_char:
                        memset(&var_buf, 0, sizeof(var_buf));
                        memcpy(&var_buf, sqldata, (sizeof(var_buf)<=sqllen ? sizeof(var_buf)-1 : sqllen) );
                        break;

                    case ECPGt_int: /* integer */
                        memcpy(&intval, sqldata, sqllen);
                        snprintf(var_buf, sizeof(var_buf), "%d", intval);
                        break;

                    case ECPGt_long_long: /* bigint */
                        memcpy(&longlongval, sqldata, sqllen);
                        snprintf(var_buf, sizeof(var_buf), "%lld", longlongval);
                        break;

                    default:
                    {
                        int i;
                        memset(var_buf, 0, sizeof(var_buf));
                        for (i = 0; i < sqllen; i++)
                        {
                            char tmpbuf[16];
                            snprintf(tmpbuf, sizeof(tmpbuf), "%02x ", (unsigned char) sqldata[i]);
                            strncat(var_buf, tmpbuf, sizeof(var_buf));
                        }
                    }
                        break;
                }

                printf("%s = %s (type: %d)\n", name_buf, var_buf, v.sqltype);
            }

            printf("\n");
        }
    }

    EXEC SQL CLOSE cur1;
    EXEC SQL COMMIT;

    EXEC SQL DISCONNECT ALL;

    return 0;
}

The output of this example should look something like the following (some numbers will vary).

oid = 1 (type: 1)
datname = template1 (type: 1)
datdba = 10 (type: 1)
encoding = 0 (type: 5)
datistemplate = t (type: 1)
datallowconn = t (type: 1)
datconnlimit = -1 (type: 5)
datlastsysoid = 11510 (type: 1)
datfrozenxid = 379 (type: 1)
dattablespace = 1663 (type: 1)
datconfig =  (type: 1)
datacl = {=c/uptime,uptime=CTc/uptime} (type: 1)
datid = 1 (type: 1)
datname = template1 (type: 1)
numbackends = 0 (type: 5)
xact_commit = 113606 (type: 9)
xact_rollback = 0 (type: 9)
blks_read = 130 (type: 9)
blks_hit = 7341714 (type: 9)
tup_returned = 38262679 (type: 9)
tup_fetched = 1836281 (type: 9)
tup_inserted = 0 (type: 9)
tup_updated = 0 (type: 9)
tup_deleted = 0 (type: 9)

oid = 11511 (type: 1)
datname = postgres (type: 1)
datdba = 10 (type: 1)
encoding = 0 (type: 5)
datistemplate = f (type: 1)
datallowconn = t (type: 1)
datconnlimit = -1 (type: 5)
datlastsysoid = 11510 (type: 1)
datfrozenxid = 379 (type: 1)
dattablespace = 1663 (type: 1)
datconfig =  (type: 1)
datacl =  (type: 1)
datid = 11511 (type: 1)
datname = postgres (type: 1)
numbackends = 0 (type: 5)
xact_commit = 221069 (type: 9)
xact_rollback = 18 (type: 9)
blks_read = 1176 (type: 9)
blks_hit = 13943750 (type: 9)
tup_returned = 77410091 (type: 9)
tup_fetched = 3253694 (type: 9)
tup_inserted = 0 (type: 9)
tup_updated = 0 (type: 9)
tup_deleted = 0 (type: 9)
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pgtypes Library | Up | Error Handling


Error Handling

Prev Up Chapter 33. ECPG - Embedded SQL in C Next

33.8. Error Handling

This section describes how you can handle exceptional conditions and warnings in an embedded SQL program. There are two nonexclusive facilities for this.

  • Callbacks can be configured to handle warning and error conditions using the WHENEVER command.

  • Detailed information about the error or warning can be obtained from the sqlca variable.

33.8.1. Setting Callbacks

One simple method to catch errors and warnings is to set a specific action to be executed whenever a particular condition occurs. In general:

EXEC SQL WHENEVER condition action;

condition can be one of the following:

SQLERROR

The specified action is called whenever an error occurs during the execution of an SQL statement.

SQLWARNING

The specified action is called whenever a warning occurs during the execution of an SQL statement.

NOT FOUND

The specified action is called whenever an SQL statement retrieves or affects zero rows. (This condition is not an error, but you might be interested in handling it specially.)

action can be one of the following:

CONTINUE

This effectively means that the condition is ignored. This is the default.

GOTO label
GO TO label

Jump to the specified label (using a C goto statement).

SQLPRINT

Print a message to standard error. This is useful for simple programs or during prototyping. The details of the message cannot be configured.

STOP

Call exit(1), which will terminate the program.

DO BREAK

Execute the C statement break. This should only be used in loops or switch statements.

CALL name (args)
DO name (args)

Call the specified C functions with the specified arguments.

The SQL standard only provides for the actions CONTINUE and GOTO (and GO TO).

Here is an example that you might want to use in a simple program. It prints a simple message when a warning occurs and aborts the program when an error happens:

EXEC SQL WHENEVER SQLWARNING SQLPRINT;
EXEC SQL WHENEVER SQLERROR STOP;

The statement EXEC SQL WHENEVER is a directive of the SQL preprocessor, not a C statement. The error or warning actions that it sets apply to all embedded SQL statements that appear below the point where the handler is set, unless a different action was set for the same condition between the first EXEC SQL WHENEVER and the SQL statement causing the condition, regardless of the flow of control in the C program. So neither of the two following C program excerpts will have the desired effect:

/*
 * WRONG
 */
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
    ...
    if (verbose) {
        EXEC SQL WHENEVER SQLWARNING SQLPRINT;
    }
    ...
    EXEC SQL SELECT ...;
    ...
}

/*
 * WRONG
 */
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
    ...
    set_error_handler();
    ...
    EXEC SQL SELECT ...;
    ...
}

static void set_error_handler(void)
{
    EXEC SQL WHENEVER SQLERROR STOP;
}

33.8.2. sqlca

For more powerful error handling, the embedded SQL interface provides a global variable with the name sqlca (SQL communication area) that has the following structure:

struct
{
    char sqlcaid[8];
    long sqlabc;
    long sqlcode;
    struct
    {
        int sqlerrml;
        char sqlerrmc[SQLERRMC_LEN];
    } sqlerrm;
    char sqlerrp[8];
    long sqlerrd[6];
    char sqlwarn[8];
    char sqlstate[5];
} sqlca;

(In a multithreaded program, every thread automatically gets its own copy of sqlca. This works similarly to the handling of the standard C global variable errno.)

sqlca covers both warnings and errors. If multiple warnings or errors occur during the execution of a statement, then sqlca will only contain information about the last one.

If no error occurred in the last SQL statement, sqlca.sqlcode will be 0 and sqlca.sqlstate will be "00000". If a warning or error occurred, then sqlca.sqlcode will be negative and sqlca.sqlstate will be different from "00000". A positive sqlca.sqlcode indicates a harmless condition, such as that the last query returned zero rows. sqlcode and sqlstate are two different error code schemes; details appear below.

If the last SQL statement was successful, then sqlca.sqlerrd[1] contains the OID of the processed row, if applicable, and sqlca.sqlerrd[2] contains the number of processed or returned rows, if applicable to the command.

In case of an error or warning, sqlca.sqlerrm.sqlerrmc will contain a string that describes the error. The field sqlca.sqlerrm.sqlerrml contains the length of the error message that is stored in sqlca.sqlerrm.sqlerrmc (the result of strlen(), not really interesting for a C programmer). Note that some messages are too long to fit in the fixed-size sqlerrmc array; they will be truncated.

In case of a warning, sqlca.sqlwarn[2] is set to W. (In all other cases, it is set to something different from W.) If sqlca.sqlwarn[1] is set to W, then a value was truncated when it was stored in a host variable. sqlca.sqlwarn[0] is set to W if any of the other elements are set to indicate a warning.

The fields sqlcaid, sqlcabc, sqlerrp, and the remaining elements of sqlerrd and sqlwarn currently contain no useful information.

The structure sqlca is not defined in the SQL standard, but is implemented in several other SQL database systems. The definitions are similar at the core, but if you want to write portable applications, then you should investigate the different implementations carefully.

Here is one example that combines the use of WHENEVER and sqlca, printing out the contents of sqlca when an error occurs. This is perhaps useful for debugging or prototyping applications, before installing a more "user-friendly" error handler.

EXEC SQL WHENEVER SQLERROR CALL print_sqlca();

void
print_sqlca()
{
    fprintf(stderr, "==== sqlca ====\n");
    fprintf(stderr, "sqlcode: %ld\n", sqlca.sqlcode);
    fprintf(stderr, "sqlerrm.sqlerrml: %d\n", sqlca.sqlerrm.sqlerrml);
    fprintf(stderr, "sqlerrm.sqlerrmc: %s\n", sqlca.sqlerrm.sqlerrmc);
    fprintf(stderr, "sqlerrd: %ld %ld %ld %ld %ld %ld\n", sqlca.sqlerrd[0],sqlca.sqlerrd[1],sqlca.sqlerrd[2],
                                                          sqlca.sqlerrd[3],sqlca.sqlerrd[4],sqlca.sqlerrd[5]);
    fprintf(stderr, "sqlwarn: %d %d %d %d %d %d %d %d\n", sqlca.sqlwarn[0], sqlca.sqlwarn[1], sqlca.sqlwarn[2],
                                                          sqlca.sqlwarn[3], sqlca.sqlwarn[4], sqlca.sqlwarn[5],
                                                          sqlca.sqlwarn[6], sqlca.sqlwarn[7]);
    fprintf(stderr, "sqlstate: %5s\n", sqlca.sqlstate);
    fprintf(stderr, "===============\n");
}

The result could look as follows (here an error due to a misspelled table name):

==== sqlca ====
sqlcode: -400
sqlerrm.sqlerrml: 49
sqlerrm.sqlerrmc: relation "pg_databasep" does not exist on line 38
sqlerrd: 0 0 0 0 0 0
sqlwarn: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
sqlstate: 42P01
===============

33.8.3. SQLSTATE vs. SQLCODE

The fields sqlca.sqlstate and sqlca.sqlcode are two different schemes that provide error codes. Both are derived from the SQL standard, but SQLCODE has been marked deprecated in the SQL-92 edition of the standard and has been dropped in later editions. Therefore, new applications are strongly encouraged to use SQLSTATE.

SQLSTATE is a five-character array. The five characters contain digits or upper-case letters that represent codes of various error and warning conditions. SQLSTATE has a hierarchical scheme: the first two characters indicate the general class of the condition, the last three characters indicate a subclass of the general condition. A successful state is indicated by the code 00000. The SQLSTATE codes are for the most part defined in the SQL standard. The PostgreSQL server natively supports SQLSTATE error codes; therefore a high degree of consistency can be achieved by using this error code scheme throughout all applications. For further information see Appendix A.

SQLCODE, the deprecated error code scheme, is a simple integer. A value of 0 indicates success, a positive value indicates success with additional information, a negative value indicates an error. The SQL standard only defines the positive value +100, which indicates that the last command returned or affected zero rows, and no specific negative values. Therefore, this scheme can only achieve poor portability and does not have a hierarchical code assignment. Historically, the embedded SQL processor for PostgreSQL has assigned some specific SQLCODE values for its use, which are listed below with their numeric value and their symbolic name. Remember that these are not portable to other SQL implementations. To simplify the porting of applications to the SQLSTATE scheme, the corresponding SQLSTATE is also listed. There is, however, no one-to-one or one-to-many mapping between the two schemes (indeed it is many-to-many), so you should consult the global SQLSTATE listing in Appendix A in each case.

These are the assigned SQLCODE values:

0 (ECPG_NO_ERROR)

Indicates no error. (SQLSTATE 00000)

100 (ECPG_NOT_FOUND)

This is a harmless condition indicating that the last command retrieved or processed zero rows, or that you are at the end of the cursor. (SQLSTATE 02000)

When processing a cursor in a loop, you could use this code as a way to detect when to abort the loop, like this:

while (1)
{
    EXEC SQL FETCH ... ;
    if (sqlca.sqlcode == ECPG_NOT_FOUND)
        break;
}

But WHENEVER NOT FOUND DO BREAK effectively does this internally, so there is usually no advantage in writing this out explicitly.

-12 (ECPG_OUT_OF_MEMORY)

Indicates that your virtual memory is exhausted. The numeric value is defined as -ENOMEM. (SQLSTATE YE001)

-200 (ECPG_UNSUPPORTED)

Indicates the preprocessor has generated something that the library does not know about. Perhaps you are running incompatible versions of the preprocessor and the library. (SQLSTATE YE002)

-201 (ECPG_TOO_MANY_ARGUMENTS)

This means that the command specified more host variables than the command expected. (SQLSTATE 07001 or 07002)

-202 (ECPG_TOO_FEW_ARGUMENTS)

This means that the command specified fewer host variables than the command expected. (SQLSTATE 07001 or 07002)

-203 (ECPG_TOO_MANY_MATCHES)

This means a query has returned multiple rows but the statement was only prepared to store one result row (for example, because the specified variables are not arrays). (SQLSTATE 21000)

-204 (ECPG_INT_FORMAT)

The host variable is of type int and the datum in the database is of a different type and contains a value that cannot be interpreted as an int. The library uses strtol() for this conversion. (SQLSTATE 42804)

-205 (ECPG_UINT_FORMAT)

The host variable is of type unsigned int and the datum in the database is of a different type and contains a value that cannot be interpreted as an unsigned int. The library uses strtoul() for this conversion. (SQLSTATE 42804)

-206 (ECPG_FLOAT_FORMAT)

The host variable is of type float and the datum in the database is of another type and contains a value that cannot be interpreted as a float. The library uses strtod() for this conversion. (SQLSTATE 42804)

-207 (ECPG_NUMERIC_FORMAT)

The host variable is of type numeric and the datum in the database is of another type and contains a value that cannot be interpreted as a numeric value. (SQLSTATE 42804)

-208 (ECPG_INTERVAL_FORMAT)

The host variable is of type interval and the datum in the database is of another type and contains a value that cannot be interpreted as an interval value. (SQLSTATE 42804)

-209 (ECPG_DATE_FORMAT)

The host variable is of type date and the datum in the database is of another type and contains a value that cannot be interpreted as a date value. (SQLSTATE 42804)

-210 (ECPG_TIMESTAMP_FORMAT)

The host variable is of type timestamp and the datum in the database is of another type and contains a value that cannot be interpreted as a timestamp value. (SQLSTATE 42804)

-211 (ECPG_CONVERT_BOOL)

This means the host variable is of type bool and the datum in the database is neither 't' nor 'f'. (SQLSTATE 42804)

-212 (ECPG_EMPTY)

The statement sent to the PostgreSQL server was empty. (This cannot normally happen in an embedded SQL program, so it might point to an internal error.) (SQLSTATE YE002)

-213 (ECPG_MISSING_INDICATOR)

A null value was returned and no null indicator variable was supplied. (SQLSTATE 22002)

-214 (ECPG_NO_ARRAY)

An ordinary variable was used in a place that requires an array. (SQLSTATE 42804)

-215 (ECPG_DATA_NOT_ARRAY)

The database returned an ordinary variable in a place that requires array value. (SQLSTATE 42804)

-220 (ECPG_NO_CONN)

The program tried to access a connection that does not exist. (SQLSTATE 08003)

-221 (ECPG_NOT_CONN)

The program tried to access a connection that does exist but is not open. (This is an internal error.) (SQLSTATE YE002)

-230 (ECPG_INVALID_STMT)

The statement you are trying to use has not been prepared. (SQLSTATE 26000)

-239 (ECPG_INFORMIX_DUPLICATE_KEY)

Duplicate key error, violation of unique constraint (Informix compatibility mode). (SQLSTATE 23505)

-240 (ECPG_UNKNOWN_DESCRIPTOR)

The descriptor specified was not found. The statement you are trying to use has not been prepared. (SQLSTATE 33000)

-241 (ECPG_INVALID_DESCRIPTOR_INDEX)

The descriptor index specified was out of range. (SQLSTATE 07009)

-242 (ECPG_UNKNOWN_DESCRIPTOR_ITEM)

An invalid descriptor item was requested. (This is an internal error.) (SQLSTATE YE002)

-243 (ECPG_VAR_NOT_NUMERIC)

During the execution of a dynamic statement, the database returned a numeric value and the host variable was not numeric. (SQLSTATE 07006)

-244 (ECPG_VAR_NOT_CHAR)

During the execution of a dynamic statement, the database returned a non-numeric value and the host variable was numeric. (SQLSTATE 07006)

-284 (ECPG_INFORMIX_SUBSELECT_NOT_ONE)

A result of the subquery is not single row (Informix compatibility mode). (SQLSTATE 21000)

-400 (ECPG_PGSQL)

Some error caused by the PostgreSQL server. The message contains the error message from the PostgreSQL server.

-401 (ECPG_TRANS)

The PostgreSQL server signaled that we cannot start, commit, or rollback the transaction. (SQLSTATE 08007)

-402 (ECPG_CONNECT)

The connection attempt to the database did not succeed. (SQLSTATE 08001)

-403 (ECPG_DUPLICATE_KEY)

Duplicate key error, violation of unique constraint. (SQLSTATE 23505)

-404 (ECPG_SUBSELECT_NOT_ONE)

A result for the subquery is not single row. (SQLSTATE 21000)

-602 (ECPG_WARNING_UNKNOWN_PORTAL)

An invalid cursor name was specified. (SQLSTATE 34000)

-603 (ECPG_WARNING_IN_TRANSACTION)

Transaction is in progress. (SQLSTATE 25001)

-604 (ECPG_WARNING_NO_TRANSACTION)

There is no active (in-progress) transaction. (SQLSTATE 25P01)

-605 (ECPG_WARNING_PORTAL_EXISTS)

An existing cursor name was specified. (SQLSTATE 42P03)

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Preprocessor Directives

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33.9. Preprocessor Directives

Several preprocessor directives are available that modify how the ecpg preprocessor parses and processes a file.

33.9.1. Including Files

To include an external file into your embedded SQL program, use:

EXEC SQL INCLUDE filename;
EXEC SQL INCLUDE <filename>;
EXEC SQL INCLUDE "filename";

The embedded SQL preprocessor will look for a file named filename.h, preprocess it, and include it in the resulting C output. Thus, embedded SQL statements in the included file are handled correctly.

The ecpg preprocessor will search a file at several directories in following order:

  • current directory

  • /usr/local/include

  • PostgreSQL include directory, defined at build time (e.g., /usr/local/pgsql/include)

  • /usr/include

But when EXEC SQL INCLUDE "filename" is used, only the current directory is searched.

In each directory, the preprocessor will first look for the file name as given, and if not found will append .h to the file name and try again (unless the specified file name already has that suffix).

Note that EXEC SQL INCLUDE is not the same as:

#include <filename.h>

because this file would not be subject to SQL command preprocessing. Naturally, you can continue to use the C #include directive to include other header files.

Note: The include file name is case-sensitive, even though the rest of the EXEC SQL INCLUDE command follows the normal SQL case-sensitivity rules.

33.9.2. The define and undef Directives

Similar to the directive #define that is known from C, embedded SQL has a similar concept:

EXEC SQL DEFINE name;
EXEC SQL DEFINE name value;

So you can define a name:

EXEC SQL DEFINE HAVE_FEATURE;

And you can also define constants:

EXEC SQL DEFINE MYNUMBER 12;
EXEC SQL DEFINE MYSTRING 'abc';

Use undef to remove a previous definition:

EXEC SQL UNDEF MYNUMBER;

Of course you can continue to use the C versions #define and #undef in your embedded SQL program. The difference is where your defined values get evaluated. If you use EXEC SQL DEFINE then the ecpg preprocessor evaluates the defines and substitutes the values. For example if you write:

EXEC SQL DEFINE MYNUMBER 12;
...
EXEC SQL UPDATE Tbl SET col = MYNUMBER;

then ecpg will already do the substitution and your C compiler will never see any name or identifier MYNUMBER. Note that you cannot use #define for a constant that you are going to use in an embedded SQL query because in this case the embedded SQL precompiler is not able to see this declaration.

33.9.3. ifdef, ifndef, else, elif, and endif Directives

You can use the following directives to compile code sections conditionally:

EXEC SQL ifdef name;

Checks a name and processes subsequent lines if name has been created with EXEC SQL define name.

EXEC SQL ifndef name;

Checks a name and processes subsequent lines if name has not been created with EXEC SQL define name.

EXEC SQL else;

Starts processing an alternative section to a section introduced by either EXEC SQL ifdef name or EXEC SQL ifndef name.

EXEC SQL elif name;

Checks name and starts an alternative section if name has been created with EXEC SQL define name.

EXEC SQL endif;

Ends an alternative section.

Example:

EXEC SQL ifndef TZVAR;
EXEC SQL SET TIMEZONE TO 'GMT';
EXEC SQL elif TZNAME;
EXEC SQL SET TIMEZONE TO TZNAME;
EXEC SQL else;
EXEC SQL SET TIMEZONE TO TZVAR;
EXEC SQL endif;

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Processing Embedded SQL Programs

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33.10. Processing Embedded SQL Programs

Now that you have an idea how to form embedded SQL C programs, you probably want to know how to compile them. Before compiling you run the file through the embedded SQL C preprocessor, which converts the SQL statements you used to special function calls. After compiling, you must link with a special library that contains the needed functions. These functions fetch information from the arguments, perform the SQL command using the libpq interface, and put the result in the arguments specified for output.

The preprocessor program is called ecpg and is included in a normal PostgreSQL installation. Embedded SQL programs are typically named with an extension .pgc. If you have a program file called prog1.pgc, you can preprocess it by simply calling:

ecpg prog1.pgc

This will create a file called prog1.c. If your input files do not follow the suggested naming pattern, you can specify the output file explicitly using the -o option.

The preprocessed file can be compiled normally, for example:

cc -c prog1.c

The generated C source files include header files from the PostgreSQL installation, so if you installed PostgreSQL in a location that is not searched by default, you have to add an option such as -I/usr/local/pgsql/include to the compilation command line.

To link an embedded SQL program, you need to include the libecpg library, like so:

cc -o myprog prog1.o prog2.o ... -lecpg

Again, you might have to add an option like -L/usr/local/pgsql/lib to that command line.

If you manage the build process of a larger project using make, it might be convenient to include the following implicit rule to your makefiles:

ECPG = ecpg

%.c: %.pgc
        $(ECPG) $<

The complete syntax of the ecpg command is detailed in ecpg.

The ecpg library is thread-safe by default. However, you might need to use some threading command-line options to compile your client code.

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Library Functions

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33.11. Library Functions

The libecpg library primarily contains "hidden" functions that are used to implement the functionality expressed by the embedded SQL commands. But there are some functions that can usefully be called directly. Note that this makes your code unportable.

  • ECPGdebug(int on, FILE *stream) turns on debug logging if called with the first argument non-zero. Debug logging is done on stream. The log contains all SQL statements with all the input variables inserted, and the results from the PostgreSQL server. This can be very useful when searching for errors in your SQL statements.

    Note: On Windows, if the ecpg libraries and an application are compiled with different flags, this function call will crash the application because the internal representation of the FILE pointers differ. Specifically, multithreaded/single-threaded, release/debug, and static/dynamic flags should be the same for the library and all applications using that library.

  • ECPGget_PGconn(const char *connection_name) returns the library database connection handle identified by the given name. If connection_name is set to NULL, the current connection handle is returned. If no connection handle can be identified, the function returns NULL. The returned connection handle can be used to call any other functions from libpq, if necessary.

    Note: It is a bad idea to manipulate database connection handles made from ecpg directly with libpq routines.

  • ECPGtransactionStatus(const char *connection_name) returns the current transaction status of the given connection identified by connection_name. See Section 31.2 and libpq's PQtransactionStatus() for details about the returned status codes.

  • ECPGstatus(int lineno, const char* connection_name) returns true if you are connected to a database and false if not. connection_name can be NULL if a single connection is being used.

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Large Objects

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33.12. Large Objects

Large objects are not directly supported by ECPG, but ECPG application can manipulate large objects through the libpq large object functions, obtaining the necessary PGconn object by calling the ECPGget_PGconn() function. (However, use of the ECPGget_PGconn() function and touching PGconn objects directly should be done very carefully and ideally not mixed with other ECPG database access calls.)

For more details about the ECPGget_PGconn(), see Section 33.11. For information about the large object function interface, see Chapter 32.

Large object functions have to be called in a transaction block, so when autocommit is off, BEGIN commands have to be issued explicitly.

Example 33-2 shows an example program that illustrates how to create, write, and read a large object in an ECPG application.

Example 33-2. ECPG Program Accessing Large Objects

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <libpq-fe.h>
#include <libpq/libpq-fs.h>

EXEC SQL WHENEVER SQLERROR STOP;

int
main(void)
{
    PGconn     *conn;
    Oid         loid;
    int         fd;
    char        buf[256];
    int         buflen = 256;
    char        buf2[256];
    int         rc;

    memset(buf, 1, buflen);

    EXEC SQL CONNECT TO testdb AS con1;

    conn = ECPGget_PGconn("con1");
    printf("conn = %p\n", conn);

    /* create */
    loid = lo_create(conn, 0);
    if (loid &lt; 0)
        printf("lo_create() failed: %s", PQerrorMessage(conn));

    printf("loid = %d\n", loid);

    /* write test */
    fd = lo_open(conn, loid, INV_READ|INV_WRITE);
    if (fd &lt; 0)
        printf("lo_open() failed: %s", PQerrorMessage(conn));

    printf("fd = %d\n", fd);

    rc = lo_write(conn, fd, buf, buflen);
    if (rc &lt; 0)
        printf("lo_write() failed\n");

    rc = lo_close(conn, fd);
    if (rc &lt; 0)
        printf("lo_close() failed: %s", PQerrorMessage(conn));

    /* read test */
    fd = lo_open(conn, loid, INV_READ);
    if (fd &lt; 0)
        printf("lo_open() failed: %s", PQerrorMessage(conn));

    printf("fd = %d\n", fd);

    rc = lo_read(conn, fd, buf2, buflen);
    if (rc &lt; 0)
        printf("lo_read() failed\n");

    rc = lo_close(conn, fd);
    if (rc &lt; 0)
        printf("lo_close() failed: %s", PQerrorMessage(conn));

    /* check */
    rc = memcmp(buf, buf2, buflen);
    printf("memcmp() = %d\n", rc);

    /* cleanup */
    rc = lo_unlink(conn, loid);
    if (rc &lt; 0)
        printf("lo_unlink() failed: %s", PQerrorMessage(conn));

    EXEC SQL COMMIT;
    EXEC SQL DISCONNECT ALL;
    return 0;
}
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C++ Applications

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33.13. C++ Applications

ECPG has some limited support for C++ applications. This section describes some caveats.

The ecpg preprocessor takes an input file written in C (or something like C) and embedded SQL commands, converts the embedded SQL commands into C language chunks, and finally generates a .c file. The header file declarations of the library functions used by the C language chunks that ecpg generates are wrapped in extern "C" { ... } blocks when used under C++, so they should work seamlessly in C++.

In general, however, the ecpg preprocessor only understands C; it does not handle the special syntax and reserved words of the C++ language. So, some embedded SQL code written in C++ application code that uses complicated features specific to C++ might fail to be preprocessed correctly or might not work as expected.

A safe way to use the embedded SQL code in a C++ application is hiding the ECPG calls in a C module, which the C++ application code calls into to access the database, and linking that together with the rest of the C++ code. See Section 33.13.2 about that.

33.13.1. Scope for Host Variables

The ecpg preprocessor understands the scope of variables in C. In the C language, this is rather simple because the scopes of variables is based on their code blocks. In C++, however, the class member variables are referenced in a different code block from the declared position, so the ecpg preprocessor will not understand the scope of the class member variables.

For example, in the following case, the ecpg preprocessor cannot find any declaration for the variable dbname in the test method, so an error will occur.

class TestCpp
{
    EXEC SQL BEGIN DECLARE SECTION;
    char dbname[1024];
    EXEC SQL END DECLARE SECTION;

  public:
    TestCpp();
    void test();
    ~TestCpp();
};

TestCpp::TestCpp()
{
    EXEC SQL CONNECT TO testdb1;
}

void Test::test()
{
    EXEC SQL SELECT current_database() INTO :dbname;
    printf("current_database = %s\n", dbname);
}

TestCpp::~TestCpp()
{
    EXEC SQL DISCONNECT ALL;
}

This code will result in an error like this:

ecpg test_cpp.pgc
test_cpp.pgc:28: ERROR: variable "dbname" is not declared

To avoid this scope issue, the test method could be modified to use a local variable as intermediate storage. But this approach is only a poor workaround, because it uglifies the code and reduces performance.

void TestCpp::test()
{
    EXEC SQL BEGIN DECLARE SECTION;
    char tmp[1024];
    EXEC SQL END DECLARE SECTION;

    EXEC SQL SELECT current_database() INTO :tmp;
    strlcpy(dbname, tmp, sizeof(tmp));

    printf("current_database = %s\n", dbname);
}

33.13.2. C++ Application Development with External C Module

If you understand these technical limitations of the ecpg preprocessor in C++, you might come to the conclusion that linking C objects and C++ objects at the link stage to enable C++ applications to use ECPG features could be better than writing some embedded SQL commands in C++ code directly. This section describes a way to separate some embedded SQL commands from C++ application code with a simple example. In this example, the application is implemented in C++, while C and ECPG is used to connect to the PostgreSQL server.

Three kinds of files have to be created: a C file (*.pgc), a header file, and a C++ file:

test_mod.pgc

A sub-routine module to execute SQL commands embedded in C. It is going to be converted into test_mod.c by the preprocessor.

#include "test_mod.h"
#include <stdio.h>

void
db_connect()
{
    EXEC SQL CONNECT TO testdb1;
}

void
db_test()
{
    EXEC SQL BEGIN DECLARE SECTION;
    char dbname[1024];
    EXEC SQL END DECLARE SECTION;

    EXEC SQL SELECT current_database() INTO :dbname;
    printf("current_database = %s\n", dbname);
}

void
db_disconnect()
{
    EXEC SQL DISCONNECT ALL;
}

test_mod.h

A header file with declarations of the functions in the C module (test_mod.pgc). It is included by test_cpp.cpp. This file has to have an extern "C" block around the declarations, because it will be linked from the C++ module.

#ifdef __cplusplus
extern "C" {
#endif

void db_connect();
void db_test();
void db_disconnect();

#ifdef __cplusplus
}
#endif

test_cpp.cpp

The main code for the application, including the main routine, and in this example a C++ class.

#include "test_mod.h"

class TestCpp
{
  public:
    TestCpp();
    void test();
    ~TestCpp();
};

TestCpp::TestCpp()
{
    db_connect();
}

void
TestCpp::test()
{
    db_test();
}

TestCpp::~TestCpp()
{
    db_disconnect();
}

int
main(void)
{
    TestCpp *t = new TestCpp();

    t->test();
    return 0;
}

To build the application, proceed as follows. Convert test_mod.pgc into test_mod.c by running ecpg, and generate test_mod.o by compiling test_mod.c with the C compiler:

ecpg -o test_mod.c test_mod.pgc
cc -c test_mod.c -o test_mod.o

Next, generate test_cpp.o by compiling test_cpp.cpp with the C++ compiler:.

c++ -c test_cpp.cpp -o test_cpp.o

Finally, link these object files, test_cpp.o and test_mod.o, into one executable, using the C++ compiler driver:

c++ test_cpp.o test_mod.o -lecpg -o test_cpp

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Embedded SQL Commands

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33.14. Embedded SQL Commands

Table of Contents
ALLOCATE DESCRIPTOR -- allocate an SQL descriptor area
CONNECT -- establish a database connection
DEALLOCATE DESCRIPTOR -- deallocate an SQL descriptor area
DECLARE -- define a cursor
DESCRIBE -- obtain information about a prepared statement or result set
DISCONNECT -- terminate a database connection
EXECUTE IMMEDIATE -- dynamically prepare and execute a statement
GET DESCRIPTOR -- get information from an SQL descriptor area
OPEN -- open a dynamic cursor
PREPARE -- prepare a statement for execution
SET AUTOCOMMIT -- set the autocommit behavior of the current session
SET CONNECTION -- select a database connection
SET DESCRIPTOR -- set information in an SQL descriptor area
TYPE -- define a new data type
VAR -- define a variable
WHENEVER -- specify the action to be taken when an SQL statement causes a specific class condition to be raised

This section describes all SQL commands that are specific to embedded SQL. Also refer to the SQL commands listed in Reference I, SQL Commands, which can also be used in embedded SQL, unless stated otherwise.

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ALLOCATE DESCRIPTOR

Name

ALLOCATE DESCRIPTOR -- allocate an SQL descriptor area

Synopsis

ALLOCATE DESCRIPTOR name

Description

ALLOCATE DESCRIPTOR allocates a new named SQL descriptor area, which can be used to exchange data between the PostgreSQL server and the host program.

Descriptor areas should be freed after use using the DEALLOCATE DESCRIPTOR command.

Parameters

name

A name of SQL descriptor, case sensitive. This can be an SQL identifier or a host variable.

Examples

EXEC SQL ALLOCATE DESCRIPTOR mydesc;

Compatibility

ALLOCATE DESCRIPTOR is specified in the SQL standard.

See Also

DEALLOCATE DESCRIPTOR, GET DESCRIPTOR, SET DESCRIPTOR
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CONNECT

Name

CONNECT -- establish a database connection

Synopsis

CONNECT TO connection_target [ AS connection_name ] [ USER connection_user_name ]
CONNECT TO DEFAULT
CONNECT connection_user_name
DATABASE connection_target

Description

The CONNECT command establishes a connection between the client and the PostgreSQL server.

Parameters

connection_target

connection_target specifies the target server of the connection on one of several forms.

[ database_name ] [ @host ] [ :port ]

Connect over TCP/IP

unix:postgresql://host [ :port ] / [ database_name ] [ ?connection_option ]

Connect over Unix-domain sockets

tcp:postgresql://host [ :port ] / [ database_name ] [ ?connection_option ]

Connect over TCP/IP

SQL string constant

containing a value in one of the above forms

host variable

host variable of type char[] or VARCHAR[] containing a value in one of the above forms

connection_object

An optional identifier for the connection, so that it can be referred to in other commands. This can be an SQL identifier or a host variable.

connection_user

The user name for the database connection.

This parameter can also specify user name and password, using one the forms user_name/password, user_name IDENTIFIED BY password, or user_name USING password.

User name and password can be SQL identifiers, string constants, or host variables.

DEFAULT

Use all default connection parameters, as defined by libpq.

Examples

Here a several variants for specifying connection parameters:

EXEC SQL CONNECT TO "connectdb" AS main;
EXEC SQL CONNECT TO "connectdb" AS second;
EXEC SQL CONNECT TO "unix:postgresql://200.46.204.71/connectdb" AS main USER connectuser;
EXEC SQL CONNECT TO "unix:postgresql://localhost/connectdb" AS main USER connectuser;
EXEC SQL CONNECT TO 'connectdb' AS main;
EXEC SQL CONNECT TO 'unix:postgresql://localhost/connectdb' AS main USER :user;
EXEC SQL CONNECT TO :db AS :id;
EXEC SQL CONNECT TO :db USER connectuser USING :pw;
EXEC SQL CONNECT TO @localhost AS main USER connectdb;
EXEC SQL CONNECT TO REGRESSDB1 as main;
EXEC SQL CONNECT TO AS main USER connectdb;
EXEC SQL CONNECT TO connectdb AS :id;
EXEC SQL CONNECT TO connectdb AS main USER connectuser/connectdb;
EXEC SQL CONNECT TO connectdb AS main;
EXEC SQL CONNECT TO connectdb@localhost AS main;
EXEC SQL CONNECT TO tcp:postgresql://localhost/ USER connectdb;
EXEC SQL CONNECT TO tcp:postgresql://localhost/connectdb USER connectuser IDENTIFIED BY connectpw;
EXEC SQL CONNECT TO tcp:postgresql://localhost:20/connectdb USER connectuser IDENTIFIED BY connectpw;
EXEC SQL CONNECT TO unix:postgresql://localhost/ AS main USER connectdb;
EXEC SQL CONNECT TO unix:postgresql://localhost/connectdb AS main USER connectuser;
EXEC SQL CONNECT TO unix:postgresql://localhost/connectdb USER connectuser IDENTIFIED BY "connectpw";
EXEC SQL CONNECT TO unix:postgresql://localhost/connectdb USER connectuser USING "connectpw";
EXEC SQL CONNECT TO unix:postgresql://localhost/connectdb?connect_timeout=14 USER connectuser;

Here is an example program that illustrates the use of host variables to specify connection parameters:

int
main(void)
{
EXEC SQL BEGIN DECLARE SECTION;
    char *dbname     = "testdb";    /* database name */
    char *user       = "testuser";  /* connection user name */
    char *connection = "tcp:postgresql://localhost:5432/testdb";
                                    /* connection string */
    char ver[256];                  /* buffer to store the version string */
EXEC SQL END DECLARE SECTION;

    ECPGdebug(1, stderr);

    EXEC SQL CONNECT TO :dbname USER :user;
    EXEC SQL SELECT version() INTO :ver;
    EXEC SQL DISCONNECT;

    printf("version: %s\n", ver);

    EXEC SQL CONNECT TO :connection USER :user;
    EXEC SQL SELECT version() INTO :ver;
    EXEC SQL DISCONNECT;

    printf("version: %s\n", ver);

    return 0;
}

Compatibility

CONNECT is specified in the SQL standard, but the format of the connection parameters is implementation-specific.

See Also

DISCONNECT, SET CONNECTION
Prev | Home | Next
ALLOCATE DESCRIPTOR | Up | DEALLOCATE DESCRIPTOR


DEALLOCATE DESCRIPTOR

Name

DEALLOCATE DESCRIPTOR -- deallocate an SQL descriptor area

Synopsis

DEALLOCATE DESCRIPTOR name

Description

DEALLOCATE DESCRIPTOR deallocates a named SQL descriptor area.

Parameters

name

The name of the descriptor which is going to be deallocated. It is case sensitive. This can be an SQL identifier or a host variable.

Examples

EXEC SQL DEALLOCATE DESCRIPTOR mydesc;

Compatibility

DEALLOCATE DESCRIPTOR is specified in the SQL standard.

See Also

ALLOCATE DESCRIPTOR, GET DESCRIPTOR, SET DESCRIPTOR
Prev | Home | Next
CONNECT | Up | DECLARE


DECLARE

Name

DECLARE -- define a cursor

Synopsis

DECLARE cursor_name [ BINARY ] [ INSENSITIVE ] [ [ NO ] SCROLL ] CURSOR [ { WITH | WITHOUT } HOLD ] FOR prepared_name
DECLARE cursor_name [ BINARY ] [ INSENSITIVE ] [ [ NO ] SCROLL ] CURSOR [ { WITH | WITHOUT } HOLD ] FOR query

Description

DECLARE declares a cursor for iterating over the result set of a prepared statement. This command has slightly different semantics from the direct SQL command DECLARE: Whereas the latter executes a query and prepares the result set for retrieval, this embedded SQL command merely declares a name as a "loop variable" for iterating over the result set of a query; the actual execution happens when the cursor is opened with the OPEN command.

Parameters

cursor_name

A cursor name, case sensitive. This can be an SQL identifier or a host variable.

prepared_name

The name of a prepared query, either as an SQL identifier or a host variable.

query

A SELECT or VALUES command which will provide the rows to be returned by the cursor.

For the meaning of the cursor options, see DECLARE.

Examples

Examples declaring a cursor for a query:

EXEC SQL DECLARE C CURSOR FOR SELECT * FROM My_Table;
EXEC SQL DECLARE C CURSOR FOR SELECT Item1 FROM T;
EXEC SQL DECLARE cur1 CURSOR FOR SELECT version();

An example declaring a cursor for a prepared statement:

EXEC SQL PREPARE stmt1 AS SELECT version();
EXEC SQL DECLARE cur1 CURSOR FOR stmt1;

Compatibility

DECLARE is specified in the SQL standard.

See Also

OPEN, CLOSE, DECLARE
Prev | Home | Next
DEALLOCATE DESCRIPTOR | Up | DESCRIBE


DESCRIBE

Name

DESCRIBE -- obtain information about a prepared statement or result set

Synopsis

DESCRIBE [ OUTPUT ] prepared_name USING [ SQL ] DESCRIPTOR descriptor_name
DESCRIBE [ OUTPUT ] prepared_name INTO [ SQL ] DESCRIPTOR descriptor_name
DESCRIBE [ OUTPUT ] prepared_name INTO sqlda_name

Description

DESCRIBE retrieves metadata information about the result columns contained in a prepared statement, without actually fetching a row.

Parameters

prepared_name

The name of a prepared statement. This can be an SQL identifier or a host variable.

descriptor_name

A descriptor name. It is case sensitive. It can be an SQL identifier or a host variable.

sqlda_name

The name of an SQLDA variable.

Examples

EXEC SQL ALLOCATE DESCRIPTOR mydesc;
EXEC SQL PREPARE stmt1 FROM :sql_stmt;
EXEC SQL DESCRIBE stmt1 INTO SQL DESCRIPTOR mydesc;
EXEC SQL GET DESCRIPTOR mydesc VALUE 1 :charvar = NAME;
EXEC SQL DEALLOCATE DESCRIPTOR mydesc;

Compatibility

DESCRIBE is specified in the SQL standard.

See Also

ALLOCATE DESCRIPTOR, GET DESCRIPTOR
Prev | Home | Next
DECLARE | Up | DISCONNECT


DISCONNECT

Name

DISCONNECT -- terminate a database connection

Synopsis

DISCONNECT connection_name
DISCONNECT [ CURRENT ]
DISCONNECT DEFAULT
DISCONNECT ALL

Description

DISCONNECT closes a connection (or all connections) to the database.

Parameters

connection_name

A database connection name established by the CONNECT command.

CURRENT

Close the "current" connection, which is either the most recently opened connection, or the connection set by the SET CONNECTION command. This is also the default if no argument is given to the DISCONNECT command.

DEFAULT

Close the default connection.

ALL

Close all open connections.

Examples

int
main(void)
{
    EXEC SQL CONNECT TO testdb AS DEFAULT USER testuser;
    EXEC SQL CONNECT TO testdb AS con1 USER testuser;
    EXEC SQL CONNECT TO testdb AS con2 USER testuser;
    EXEC SQL CONNECT TO testdb AS con3 USER testuser;

    EXEC SQL DISCONNECT CURRENT;  /* close con3          */
    EXEC SQL DISCONNECT DEFAULT;  /* close DEFAULT       */
    EXEC SQL DISCONNECT ALL;      /* close con2 and con1 */

    return 0;
}

Compatibility

DISCONNECT is specified in the SQL standard.

See Also

CONNECT, SET CONNECTION
Prev | Home | Next
DESCRIBE | Up | EXECUTE IMMEDIATE


EXECUTE IMMEDIATE

Name

EXECUTE IMMEDIATE -- dynamically prepare and execute a statement

Synopsis

EXECUTE IMMEDIATE string

Description

EXECUTE IMMEDIATE immediately prepares and executes a dynamically specified SQL statement, without retrieving result rows.

Parameters

string

A literal C string or a host variable containing the SQL statement to be executed.

Examples

Here is an example that executes an INSERT statement using EXECUTE IMMEDIATE and a host variable named command:

sprintf(command, "INSERT INTO test (name, amount, letter) VALUES ('db: ''r1''', 1, 'f')");
EXEC SQL EXECUTE IMMEDIATE :command;

Compatibility

EXECUTE IMMEDIATE is specified in the SQL standard.

Prev | Home | Next
DISCONNECT | Up | GET DESCRIPTOR


GET DESCRIPTOR

Name

GET DESCRIPTOR -- get information from an SQL descriptor area

Synopsis

GET DESCRIPTOR descriptor_name :cvariable = descriptor_header_item [, ... ]
GET DESCRIPTOR descriptor_name VALUE column_number :cvariable = descriptor_item [, ... ]

Description

GET DESCRIPTOR retrieves information about a query result set from an SQL descriptor area and stores it into host variables. A descriptor area is typically populated using FETCH or SELECT before using this command to transfer the information into host language variables.

This command has two forms: The first form retrieves descriptor "header" items, which apply to the result set in its entirety. One example is the row count. The second form, which requires the column number as additional parameter, retrieves information about a particular column. Examples are the column name and the actual column value.

Parameters

descriptor_name

A descriptor name.

descriptor_header_item

A token identifying which header information item to retrieve. Only COUNT, to get the number of columns in the result set, is currently supported.

column_number

The number of the column about which information is to be retrieved. The count starts at 1.

descriptor_item

A token identifying which item of information about a column to retrieve. See Section 33.7.1 for a list of supported items.

cvariable

A host variable that will receive the data retrieved from the descriptor area.

Examples

An example to retrieve the number of columns in a result set:

EXEC SQL GET DESCRIPTOR d :d_count = COUNT;

An example to retrieve a data length in the first column:

EXEC SQL GET DESCRIPTOR d VALUE 1 :d_returned_octet_length = RETURNED_OCTET_LENGTH;

An example to retrieve the data body of the second column as a string:

EXEC SQL GET DESCRIPTOR d VALUE 2 :d_data = DATA;

Here is an example for a whole procedure of executing SELECT current_database(); and showing the number of columns, the column data length, and the column data:

int
main(void)
{
EXEC SQL BEGIN DECLARE SECTION;
    int  d_count;
    char d_data[1024];
    int  d_returned_octet_length;
EXEC SQL END DECLARE SECTION;

    EXEC SQL CONNECT TO testdb AS con1 USER testuser;
    EXEC SQL ALLOCATE DESCRIPTOR d;

    /* Declare, open a cursor, and assign a descriptor to the cursor  */
    EXEC SQL DECLARE cur CURSOR FOR SELECT current_database();
    EXEC SQL OPEN cur;
    EXEC SQL FETCH NEXT FROM cur INTO SQL DESCRIPTOR d;

    /* Get a number of total columns */
    EXEC SQL GET DESCRIPTOR d :d_count = COUNT;
    printf("d_count                 = %d\n", d_count);

    /* Get length of a returned column */
    EXEC SQL GET DESCRIPTOR d VALUE 1 :d_returned_octet_length = RETURNED_OCTET_LENGTH;
    printf("d_returned_octet_length = %d\n", d_returned_octet_length);

    /* Fetch the returned column as a string */
    EXEC SQL GET DESCRIPTOR d VALUE 1 :d_data = DATA;
    printf("d_data                  = %s\n", d_data);

    /* Closing */
    EXEC SQL CLOSE cur;
    EXEC SQL COMMIT;

    EXEC SQL DEALLOCATE DESCRIPTOR d;
    EXEC SQL DISCONNECT ALL;

    return 0;
}

When the example is executed, the result will look like this:

d_count                 = 1
d_returned_octet_length = 6
d_data                  = testdb

Compatibility

GET DESCRIPTOR is specified in the SQL standard.

See Also

ALLOCATE DESCRIPTOR, SET DESCRIPTOR
Prev | Home | Next
EXECUTE IMMEDIATE | Up | OPEN


OPEN

Name

OPEN -- open a dynamic cursor

Synopsis

OPEN cursor_name
OPEN cursor_name USING value [, ... ]
OPEN cursor_name USING SQL DESCRIPTOR descriptor_name

Description

OPEN opens a cursor and optionally binds actual values to the placeholders in the cursor's declaration. The cursor must previously have been declared with the DECLARE command. The execution of OPEN causes the query to start executing on the server.

Parameters

cursor_name

The name of the cursor to be opened. This can be an SQL identifier or a host variable.

value

A value to be bound to a placeholder in the cursor. This can be an SQL constant, a host variable, or a host variable with indicator.

descriptor_name

The name of a descriptor containing values to be bound to the placeholders in the cursor. This can be an SQL identifier or a host variable.

Examples

EXEC SQL OPEN a;
EXEC SQL OPEN d USING 1, 'test';
EXEC SQL OPEN c1 USING SQL DESCRIPTOR mydesc;
EXEC SQL OPEN :curname1;

Compatibility

OPEN is specified in the SQL standard.

See Also

DECLARE, CLOSE
Prev | Home | Next
GET DESCRIPTOR | Up | PREPARE


PREPARE

Name

PREPARE -- prepare a statement for execution

Synopsis

PREPARE name FROM string

Description

PREPARE prepares a statement dynamically specified as a string for execution. This is different from the direct SQL statement PREPARE, which can also be used in embedded programs. The EXECUTE command is used to execute either kind of prepared statement.

Parameters

prepared_name

An identifier for the prepared query.

string

A literal C string or a host variable containing a preparable statement, one of the SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE.

Examples

char *stmt = "SELECT * FROM test1 WHERE a = ? AND b = ?";

EXEC SQL ALLOCATE DESCRIPTOR outdesc;
EXEC SQL PREPARE foo FROM :stmt;

EXEC SQL EXECUTE foo USING SQL DESCRIPTOR indesc INTO SQL DESCRIPTOR outdesc;

Compatibility

PREPARE is specified in the SQL standard.

See Also

EXECUTE
Prev | Home | Next
OPEN | Up | SET AUTOCOMMIT


SET AUTOCOMMIT

Name

SET AUTOCOMMIT -- set the autocommit behavior of the current session

Synopsis

SET AUTOCOMMIT { = | TO } { ON | OFF }

Description

SET AUTOCOMMIT sets the autocommit behavior of the current database session. By default, embedded SQL programs are not in autocommit mode, so COMMIT needs to be issued explicitly when desired. This command can change the session to autocommit mode, where each individual statement is committed implicitly.

Compatibility

SET AUTOCOMMIT is an extension of PostgreSQL ECPG.

Prev | Home | Next
PREPARE | Up | SET CONNECTION


SET CONNECTION

Name

SET CONNECTION -- select a database connection

Synopsis

SET CONNECTION [ TO | = ] connection_name

Description

SET CONNECTION sets the "current" database connection, which is the one that all commands use unless overridden.

Parameters

connection_name

A database connection name established by the CONNECT command.

DEFAULT

Set the connection to the default connection.

Examples

EXEC SQL SET CONNECTION TO con2;
EXEC SQL SET CONNECTION = con1;

Compatibility

SET CONNECTION is specified in the SQL standard.

See Also

CONNECT, DISCONNECT
Prev | Home | Next
SET AUTOCOMMIT | Up | SET DESCRIPTOR


SET DESCRIPTOR

Name

SET DESCRIPTOR -- set information in an SQL descriptor area

Synopsis

SET DESCRIPTOR descriptor_name descriptor_header_item = value [, ... ]
SET DESCRIPTOR descriptor_name VALUE number descriptor_item = value [, ...]

Description

SET DESCRIPTOR populates an SQL descriptor area with values. The descriptor area is then typically used to bind parameters in a prepared query execution.

This command has two forms: The first form applies to the descriptor "header", which is independent of a particular datum. The second form assigns values to particular datums, identified by number.

Parameters

descriptor_name

A descriptor name.

descriptor_header_item

A token identifying which header information item to set. Only COUNT, to set the number of descriptor items, is currently supported.

number

The number of the descriptor item to set. The count starts at 1.

descriptor_item

A token identifying which item of information to set in the descriptor. See Section 33.7.1 for a list of supported items.

value

A value to store into the descriptor item. This can be an SQL constant or a host variable.

Examples

EXEC SQL SET DESCRIPTOR indesc COUNT = 1;
EXEC SQL SET DESCRIPTOR indesc VALUE 1 DATA = 2;
EXEC SQL SET DESCRIPTOR indesc VALUE 1 DATA = :val1;
EXEC SQL SET DESCRIPTOR indesc VALUE 2 INDICATOR = :val1, DATA = 'some string';
EXEC SQL SET DESCRIPTOR indesc VALUE 2 INDICATOR = :val2null, DATA = :val2;

Compatibility

SET DESCRIPTOR is specified in the SQL standard.

See Also

ALLOCATE DESCRIPTOR, GET DESCRIPTOR
Prev | Home | Next
SET CONNECTION | Up | TYPE


TYPE

Name

TYPE -- define a new data type

Synopsis

TYPE type_name IS ctype

Description

The TYPE command defines a new C type. It is equivalent to putting a typedef into a declare section.

This command is only recognized when ecpg is run with the -c option.

Parameters

type_name

The name for the new type. It must be a valid C type name.

ctype

A C type specification.

Examples

EXEC SQL TYPE customer IS
    struct
    {
        varchar name[50];
        int     phone;
    };

EXEC SQL TYPE cust_ind IS
    struct ind
    {
        short   name_ind;
        short   phone_ind;
    };

EXEC SQL TYPE c IS char reference;
EXEC SQL TYPE ind IS union { int integer; short smallint; };
EXEC SQL TYPE intarray IS int[AMOUNT];
EXEC SQL TYPE str IS varchar[BUFFERSIZ];
EXEC SQL TYPE string IS char[11];

Here is an example program that uses EXEC SQL TYPE:

EXEC SQL WHENEVER SQLERROR SQLPRINT;

EXEC SQL TYPE tt IS
    struct
    {
        varchar v[256];
        int     i;
    };

EXEC SQL TYPE tt_ind IS
    struct ind {
        short   v_ind;
        short   i_ind;
    };

int
main(void)
{
EXEC SQL BEGIN DECLARE SECTION;
    tt t;
    tt_ind t_ind;
EXEC SQL END DECLARE SECTION;

    EXEC SQL CONNECT TO testdb AS con1;

    EXEC SQL SELECT current_database(), 256 INTO :t:t_ind LIMIT 1;

    printf("t.v = %s\n", t.v.arr);
    printf("t.i = %d\n", t.i);

    printf("t_ind.v_ind = %d\n", t_ind.v_ind);
    printf("t_ind.i_ind = %d\n", t_ind.i_ind);

    EXEC SQL DISCONNECT con1;

    return 0;
}

The output from this program looks like this:

t.v = testdb
t.i = 256
t_ind.v_ind = 0
t_ind.i_ind = 0

Compatibility

The TYPE command is a PostgreSQL extension.

Prev | Home | Next
SET DESCRIPTOR | Up | VAR


VAR

Name

VAR -- define a variable

Synopsis

VAR varname IS ctype

Description

The VAR command assigns a new C data type to a host variable. The host variable must be previously declared in a declare section.

Parameters

varname

A C variable name.

ctype

A C type specification.

Examples

Exec sql begin declare section;
short a;
exec sql end declare section;
EXEC SQL VAR a IS int;

Compatibility

The VAR command is a PostgreSQL extension.

Prev | Home | Next
TYPE | Up | WHENEVER


WHENEVER

Name

WHENEVER -- specify the action to be taken when an SQL statement causes a specific class condition to be raised

Synopsis

WHENEVER { NOT FOUND | SQLERROR | SQLWARNING } action

Description

Define a behavior which is called on the special cases (Rows not found, SQL warnings or errors) in the result of SQL execution.

Parameters

See Section 33.8.1 for a description of the parameters.

Examples

EXEC SQL WHENEVER NOT FOUND CONTINUE;
EXEC SQL WHENEVER NOT FOUND DO BREAK;
EXEC SQL WHENEVER SQLWARNING SQLPRINT;
EXEC SQL WHENEVER SQLWARNING DO warn();
EXEC SQL WHENEVER SQLERROR sqlprint;
EXEC SQL WHENEVER SQLERROR CALL print2();
EXEC SQL WHENEVER SQLERROR DO handle_error("select");
EXEC SQL WHENEVER SQLERROR DO sqlnotice(NULL, NONO);
EXEC SQL WHENEVER SQLERROR DO sqlprint();
EXEC SQL WHENEVER SQLERROR GOTO error_label;
EXEC SQL WHENEVER SQLERROR STOP;

A typical application is the use of WHENEVER NOT FOUND BREAK to handle looping through result sets:

int
main(void)
{
    EXEC SQL CONNECT TO testdb AS con1;
    EXEC SQL ALLOCATE DESCRIPTOR d;
    EXEC SQL DECLARE cur CURSOR FOR SELECT current_database(), 'hoge', 256;
    EXEC SQL OPEN cur;

    /* when end of result set reached, break out of while loop */
    EXEC SQL WHENEVER NOT FOUND DO BREAK;

    while (1)
    {
        EXEC SQL FETCH NEXT FROM cur INTO SQL DESCRIPTOR d;
        ...
    }

    EXEC SQL CLOSE cur;
    EXEC SQL COMMIT;

    EXEC SQL DEALLOCATE DESCRIPTOR d;
    EXEC SQL DISCONNECT ALL;

    return 0;
}

Compatibility

WHENEVER is specified in the SQL standard, but most of the actions are PostgreSQL extensions.

Prev | Home | Next
VAR | Up | Informix Compatibility Mode


Informix Compatibility Mode

Prev Up Chapter 33. ECPG - Embedded SQL in C Next

33.15. Informix Compatibility Mode

ecpg can be run in a so-called Informix compatibility mode. If this mode is active, it tries to behave as if it were the Informix precompiler for Informix E/SQL. Generally spoken this will allow you to use the dollar sign instead of the EXEC SQL primitive to introduce embedded SQL commands.:

$int j = 3;
$CONNECT TO :dbname;
$CREATE TABLE test(i INT PRIMARY KEY, j INT);
$INSERT INTO test(i, j) VALUES (7, :j);
$COMMIT;

Note: There must not be any white space between the $ and a following preprocessor directive, that is, include, define, ifdef, etc. Otherwise, the preprocessor will parse the token as a host variable.

There are two compatibility modes: INFORMIX, INFORMIX_SE

When linking programs that use this compatibility mode, remember to link against libcompat that is shipped with ECPG.

Besides the previously explained syntactic sugar, the Informix compatibility mode ports some functions for input, output and transformation of data as well as embedded SQL statements known from E/SQL to ECPG.

Informix compatibility mode is closely connected to the pgtypeslib library of ECPG. pgtypeslib maps SQL data types to data types within the C host program and most of the additional functions of the Informix compatibility mode allow you to operate on those C host program types. Note however that the extent of the compatibility is limited. It does not try to copy Informix behavior; it allows you to do more or less the same operations and gives you functions that have the same name and the same basic behavior but it is no drop-in replacement if you are using Informix at the moment. Moreover, some of the data types are different. For example, PostgreSQL's datetime and interval types do not know about ranges like for example YEAR TO MINUTE so you won't find support in ECPG for that either.

33.15.1. Additional Types

The Informix-special "string" pseudo-type for storing right-trimmed character string data is now supported in Informix-mode without using typedef. In fact, in Informix-mode, ECPG refuses to process source files that contain typedef sometype string;

EXEC SQL BEGIN DECLARE SECTION;
string userid; /* this variable will contain trimmed data */
EXEC SQL END DECLARE SECTION;

EXEC SQL FETCH MYCUR INTO :userid;

33.15.2. Additional/Missing Embedded SQL Statements

CLOSE DATABASE

This statement closes the current connection. In fact, this is a synonym for ECPG's DISCONNECT CURRENT.:

$CLOSE DATABASE;                /* close the current connection */
EXEC SQL CLOSE DATABASE;

FREE cursor_name

Due to the differences how ECPG works compared to Informix's ESQL/C (i.e. which steps are purely grammar transformations and which steps rely on the underlying run-time library) there is no FREE cursor_name statement in ECPG. This is because in ECPG, DECLARE CURSOR doesn't translate to a function call into the run-time library that uses to the cursor name. This means that there's no run-time bookkeeping of SQL cursors in the ECPG run-time library, only in the PostgreSQL server.

FREE statement_name

FREE statement_name is a synonym for DEALLOCATE PREPARE statement_name.

33.15.3. Informix-compatible SQLDA Descriptor Areas

Informix-compatible mode supports a different structure than the one described in Section 33.7.2. See below:

struct sqlvar_compat
{
    short   sqltype;
    int     sqllen;
    char   *sqldata;
    short  *sqlind;
    char   *sqlname;
    char   *sqlformat;
    short   sqlitype;
    short   sqlilen;
    char   *sqlidata;
    int     sqlxid;
    char   *sqltypename;
    short   sqltypelen;
    short   sqlownerlen;
    short   sqlsourcetype;
    char   *sqlownername;
    int     sqlsourceid;
    char   *sqlilongdata;
    int     sqlflags;
    void   *sqlreserved;
};

struct sqlda_compat
{
    short  sqld;
    struct sqlvar_compat *sqlvar;
    char   desc_name[19];
    short  desc_occ;
    struct sqlda_compat *desc_next;
    void  *reserved;
};

typedef struct sqlvar_compat    sqlvar_t;
typedef struct sqlda_compat     sqlda_t;

The global properties are:

sqld

The number of fields in the SQLDA descriptor.

sqlvar

Pointer to the per-field properties.

desc_name

Unused, filled with zero-bytes.

desc_occ

Size of the allocated structure.

desc_next

Pointer to the next SQLDA structure if the result set contains more than one record.

reserved

Unused pointer, contains NULL. Kept for Informix-compatibility.

The per-field properties are below, they are stored in the sqlvar array:

sqltype

Type of the field. Constants are in sqltypes.h

sqllen

Length of the field data.

sqldata

Pointer to the field data. The pointer is of char * type, the data pointed by it is in a binary format. Example:

int intval;

switch (sqldata->sqlvar[i].sqltype)
{
    case SQLINTEGER:
        intval = *(int *)sqldata->sqlvar[i].sqldata;
        break;
  ...
}

sqlind

Pointer to the NULL indicator. If returned by DESCRIBE or FETCH then it's always a valid pointer. If used as input for EXECUTE ... USING sqlda; then NULL-pointer value means that the value for this field is non-NULL. Otherwise a valid pointer and sqlitype has to be properly set. Example:

if (*(int2 *)sqldata->sqlvar[i].sqlind != 0)
    printf("value is NULL\n");

sqlname

Name of the field. 0-terminated string.

sqlformat

Reserved in Informix, value of PQfformat() for the field.

sqlitype

Type of the NULL indicator data. It's always SQLSMINT when returning data from the server. When the SQLDA is used for a parametrized query, the data is treated according to the set type.

sqlilen

Length of the NULL indicator data.

sqlxid

Extended type of the field, result of PQftype().

sqltypename
sqltypelen
sqlownerlen
sqlsourcetype
sqlownername
sqlsourceid
sqlflags
sqlreserved

Unused.

sqlilongdata

It equals to sqldata if sqllen is larger than 32KB.

Example:

EXEC SQL INCLUDE sqlda.h;

    sqlda_t        *sqlda; /* This doesn't need to be under embedded DECLARE SECTION */

    EXEC SQL BEGIN DECLARE SECTION;
    char *prep_stmt = "select * from table1";
    int i;
    EXEC SQL END DECLARE SECTION;

    ...

    EXEC SQL PREPARE mystmt FROM :prep_stmt;

    EXEC SQL DESCRIBE mystmt INTO sqlda;

    printf("# of fields: %d\n", sqlda->sqld);
    for (i = 0; i < sqlda->sqld; i++)
      printf("field %d: \"%s\"\n", sqlda->sqlvar[i]->sqlname);

    EXEC SQL DECLARE mycursor CURSOR FOR mystmt;
    EXEC SQL OPEN mycursor;
    EXEC SQL WHENEVER NOT FOUND GOTO out;

    while (1)
    {
      EXEC SQL FETCH mycursor USING sqlda;
    }

    EXEC SQL CLOSE mycursor;

    free(sqlda); /* The main structure is all to be free(),
                  * sqlda and sqlda->sqlvar is in one allocated area */

For more information, see the sqlda.h header and the src/interfaces/ecpg/test/compat_informix/sqlda.pgc regression test.

33.15.4. Additional Functions

decadd

Add two decimal type values.

int decadd(decimal *arg1, decimal *arg2, decimal *sum);

The function receives a pointer to the first operand of type decimal (arg1), a pointer to the second operand of type decimal (arg2) and a pointer to a value of type decimal that will contain the sum (sum). On success, the function returns 0. ECPG_INFORMIX_NUM_OVERFLOW is returned in case of overflow and ECPG_INFORMIX_NUM_UNDERFLOW in case of underflow. -1 is returned for other failures and errno is set to the respective errno number of the pgtypeslib.

deccmp

Compare two variables of type decimal.

int deccmp(decimal *arg1, decimal *arg2);

The function receives a pointer to the first decimal value (arg1), a pointer to the second decimal value (arg2) and returns an integer value that indicates which is the bigger value.

  • 1, if the value that arg1 points to is bigger than the value that var2 points to

  • -1, if the value that arg1 points to is smaller than the value that arg2 points to

  • 0, if the value that arg1 points to and the value that arg2 points to are equal

deccopy

Copy a decimal value.

void deccopy(decimal *src, decimal *target);

The function receives a pointer to the decimal value that should be copied as the first argument (src) and a pointer to the target structure of type decimal (target) as the second argument.

deccvasc

Convert a value from its ASCII representation into a decimal type.

int deccvasc(char *cp, int len, decimal *np);

The function receives a pointer to string that contains the string representation of the number to be converted (cp) as well as its length len. np is a pointer to the decimal value that saves the result of the operation.

Valid formats are for example: -2, .794, +3.44, 592.49E07 or -32.84e-4.

The function returns 0 on success. If overflow or underflow occurred, ECPG_INFORMIX_NUM_OVERFLOW or ECPG_INFORMIX_NUM_UNDERFLOW is returned. If the ASCII representation could not be parsed, ECPG_INFORMIX_BAD_NUMERIC is returned or ECPG_INFORMIX_BAD_EXPONENT if this problem occurred while parsing the exponent.

deccvdbl

Convert a value of type double to a value of type decimal.

int deccvdbl(double dbl, decimal *np);

The function receives the variable of type double that should be converted as its first argument (dbl). As the second argument (np), the function receives a pointer to the decimal variable that should hold the result of the operation.

The function returns 0 on success and a negative value if the conversion failed.

deccvint

Convert a value of type int to a value of type decimal.

int deccvint(int in, decimal *np);

The function receives the variable of type int that should be converted as its first argument (in). As the second argument (np), the function receives a pointer to the decimal variable that should hold the result of the operation.

The function returns 0 on success and a negative value if the conversion failed.

deccvlong

Convert a value of type long to a value of type decimal.

int deccvlong(long lng, decimal *np);

The function receives the variable of type long that should be converted as its first argument (lng). As the second argument (np), the function receives a pointer to the decimal variable that should hold the result of the operation.

The function returns 0 on success and a negative value if the conversion failed.

decdiv

Divide two variables of type decimal.

int decdiv(decimal *n1, decimal *n2, decimal *result);

The function receives pointers to the variables that are the first (n1) and the second (n2) operands and calculates n1/n2. result is a pointer to the variable that should hold the result of the operation.

On success, 0 is returned and a negative value if the division fails. If overflow or underflow occurred, the function returns ECPG_INFORMIX_NUM_OVERFLOW or ECPG_INFORMIX_NUM_UNDERFLOW respectively. If an attempt to divide by zero is observed, the function returns ECPG_INFORMIX_DIVIDE_ZERO.

decmul

Multiply two decimal values.

int decmul(decimal *n1, decimal *n2, decimal *result);

The function receives pointers to the variables that are the first (n1) and the second (n2) operands and calculates n1*n2. result is a pointer to the variable that should hold the result of the operation.

On success, 0 is returned and a negative value if the multiplication fails. If overflow or underflow occurred, the function returns ECPG_INFORMIX_NUM_OVERFLOW or ECPG_INFORMIX_NUM_UNDERFLOW respectively.

decsub

Subtract one decimal value from another.

int decsub(decimal *n1, decimal *n2, decimal *result);

The function receives pointers to the variables that are the first (n1) and the second (n2) operands and calculates n1-n2. result is a pointer to the variable that should hold the result of the operation.

On success, 0 is returned and a negative value if the subtraction fails. If overflow or underflow occurred, the function returns ECPG_INFORMIX_NUM_OVERFLOW or ECPG_INFORMIX_NUM_UNDERFLOW respectively.

dectoasc

Convert a variable of type decimal to its ASCII representation in a C char* string.

int dectoasc(decimal *np, char *cp, int len, int right)

The function receives a pointer to a variable of type decimal (np) that it converts to its textual representation. cp is the buffer that should hold the result of the operation. The parameter right specifies, how many digits right of the decimal point should be included in the output. The result will be rounded to this number of decimal digits. Setting right to -1 indicates that all available decimal digits should be included in the output. If the length of the output buffer, which is indicated by len is not sufficient to hold the textual representation including the trailing zero byte, only a single * character is stored in the result and -1 is returned.

The function returns either -1 if the buffer cp was too small or ECPG_INFORMIX_OUT_OF_MEMORY if memory was exhausted.

dectodbl

Convert a variable of type decimal to a double.

int dectodbl(decimal *np, double *dblp);

The function receives a pointer to the decimal value to convert (np) and a pointer to the double variable that should hold the result of the operation (dblp).

On success, 0 is returned and a negative value if the conversion failed.

dectoint

Convert a variable to type decimal to an integer.

int dectoint(decimal *np, int *ip);

The function receives a pointer to the decimal value to convert (np) and a pointer to the integer variable that should hold the result of the operation (ip).

On success, 0 is returned and a negative value if the conversion failed. If an overflow occurred, ECPG_INFORMIX_NUM_OVERFLOW is returned.

Note that the ECPG implementation differs from the Informix implementation. Informix limits an integer to the range from -32767 to 32767, while the limits in the ECPG implementation depend on the architecture (-INT_MAX .. INT_MAX).

dectolong

Convert a variable to type decimal to a long integer.

int dectolong(decimal *np, long *lngp);

The function receives a pointer to the decimal value to convert (np) and a pointer to the long variable that should hold the result of the operation (lngp).

On success, 0 is returned and a negative value if the conversion failed. If an overflow occurred, ECPG_INFORMIX_NUM_OVERFLOW is returned.

Note that the ECPG implementation differs from the Informix implementation. Informix limits a long integer to the range from -2,147,483,647 to 2,147,483,647, while the limits in the ECPG implementation depend on the architecture (-LONG_MAX .. LONG_MAX).

rdatestr

Converts a date to a C char* string.

int rdatestr(date d, char *str);

The function receives two arguments, the first one is the date to convert (d and the second one is a pointer to the target string. The output format is always yyyy-mm-dd, so you need to allocate at least 11 bytes (including the zero-byte terminator) for the string.

The function returns 0 on success and a negative value in case of error.

Note that ECPG's implementation differs from the Informix implementation. In Informix the format can be influenced by setting environment variables. In ECPG however, you cannot change the output format.

rstrdate

Parse the textual representation of a date.

int rstrdate(char *str, date *d);

The function receives the textual representation of the date to convert (str) and a pointer to a variable of type date (d). This function does not allow you to specify a format mask. It uses the default format mask of Informix which is mm/dd/yyyy. Internally, this function is implemented by means of rdefmtdate. Therefore, rstrdate is not faster and if you have the choice you should opt for rdefmtdate which allows you to specify the format mask explicitly.

The function returns the same values as rdefmtdate.

rtoday

Get the current date.

void rtoday(date *d);

The function receives a pointer to a date variable (d) that it sets to the current date.

Internally this function uses the PGTYPESdate_today function.

rjulmdy

Extract the values for the day, the month and the year from a variable of type date.

int rjulmdy(date d, short mdy[3]);

The function receives the date d and a pointer to an array of 3 short integer values mdy. The variable name indicates the sequential order: mdy[0] will be set to contain the number of the month, mdy[1] will be set to the value of the day and mdy[2] will contain the year.

The function always returns 0 at the moment.

Internally the function uses the PGTYPESdate_julmdy function.

rdefmtdate

Use a format mask to convert a character string to a value of type date.

int rdefmtdate(date *d, char *fmt, char *str);

The function receives a pointer to the date value that should hold the result of the operation (d), the format mask to use for parsing the date (fmt) and the C char* string containing the textual representation of the date (str). The textual representation is expected to match the format mask. However you do not need to have a 1:1 mapping of the string to the format mask. The function only analyzes the sequential order and looks for the literals yy or yyyy that indicate the position of the year, mm to indicate the position of the month and dd to indicate the position of the day.

The function returns the following values:

  • 0 - The function terminated successfully.

  • ECPG_INFORMIX_ENOSHORTDATE - The date does not contain delimiters between day, month and year. In this case the input string must be exactly 6 or 8 bytes long but isn't.

  • ECPG_INFORMIX_ENOTDMY - The format string did not correctly indicate the sequential order of year, month and day.

  • ECPG_INFORMIX_BAD_DAY - The input string does not contain a valid day.

  • ECPG_INFORMIX_BAD_MONTH - The input string does not contain a valid month.

  • ECPG_INFORMIX_BAD_YEAR - The input string does not contain a valid year.

Internally this function is implemented to use the PGTYPESdate_defmt_asc function. See the reference there for a table of example input.

rfmtdate

Convert a variable of type date to its textual representation using a format mask.

int rfmtdate(date d, char *fmt, char *str);

The function receives the date to convert (d), the format mask (fmt) and the string that will hold the textual representation of the date (str).

On success, 0 is returned and a negative value if an error occurred.

Internally this function uses the PGTYPESdate_fmt_asc function, see the reference there for examples.

rmdyjul

Create a date value from an array of 3 short integers that specify the day, the month and the year of the date.

int rmdyjul(short mdy[3], date *d);

The function receives the array of the 3 short integers (mdy) and a pointer to a variable of type date that should hold the result of the operation.

Currently the function returns always 0.

Internally the function is implemented to use the function PGTYPESdate_mdyjul.

rdayofweek

Return a number representing the day of the week for a date value.

int rdayofweek(date d);

The function receives the date variable d as its only argument and returns an integer that indicates the day of the week for this date.

  • 0 - Sunday

  • 1 - Monday

  • 2 - Tuesday

  • 3 - Wednesday

  • 4 - Thursday

  • 5 - Friday

  • 6 - Saturday

Internally the function is implemented to use the function PGTYPESdate_dayofweek.

dtcurrent

Retrieve the current timestamp.

void dtcurrent(timestamp *ts);

The function retrieves the current timestamp and saves it into the timestamp variable that ts points to.

dtcvasc

Parses a timestamp from its textual representation into a timestamp variable.

int dtcvasc(char *str, timestamp *ts);

The function receives the string to parse (str) and a pointer to the timestamp variable that should hold the result of the operation (ts).

The function returns 0 on success and a negative value in case of error.

Internally this function uses the PGTYPEStimestamp_from_asc function. See the reference there for a table with example inputs.

dtcvfmtasc

Parses a timestamp from its textual representation using a format mask into a timestamp variable.

dtcvfmtasc(char *inbuf, char *fmtstr, timestamp *dtvalue)

The function receives the string to parse (inbuf), the format mask to use (fmtstr) and a pointer to the timestamp variable that should hold the result of the operation (dtvalue).

This function is implemented by means of the PGTYPEStimestamp_defmt_asc function. See the documentation there for a list of format specifiers that can be used.

The function returns 0 on success and a negative value in case of error.

dtsub

Subtract one timestamp from another and return a variable of type interval.

int dtsub(timestamp *ts1, timestamp *ts2, interval *iv);

The function will subtract the timestamp variable that ts2 points to from the timestamp variable that ts1 points to and will store the result in the interval variable that iv points to.

Upon success, the function returns 0 and a negative value if an error occurred.

dttoasc

Convert a timestamp variable to a C char* string.

int dttoasc(timestamp *ts, char *output);

The function receives a pointer to the timestamp variable to convert (ts) and the string that should hold the result of the operation output). It converts ts to its textual representation according to the SQL standard, which is be YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS.

Upon success, the function returns 0 and a negative value if an error occurred.

dttofmtasc

Convert a timestamp variable to a C char* using a format mask.

int dttofmtasc(timestamp *ts, char *output, int str_len, char *fmtstr);

The function receives a pointer to the timestamp to convert as its first argument (ts), a pointer to the output buffer (output), the maximal length that has been allocated for the output buffer (str_len) and the format mask to use for the conversion (fmtstr).

Upon success, the function returns 0 and a negative value if an error occurred.

Internally, this function uses the PGTYPEStimestamp_fmt_asc function. See the reference there for information on what format mask specifiers can be used.

intoasc

Convert an interval variable to a C char* string.

int intoasc(interval *i, char *str);

The function receives a pointer to the interval variable to convert (i) and the string that should hold the result of the operation str). It converts i to its textual representation according to the SQL standard, which is be YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS.

Upon success, the function returns 0 and a negative value if an error occurred.

rfmtlong

Convert a long integer value to its textual representation using a format mask.

int rfmtlong(long lng_val, char *fmt, char *outbuf);

The function receives the long value lng_val, the format mask fmt and a pointer to the output buffer outbuf. It converts the long value according to the format mask to its textual representation.

The format mask can be composed of the following format specifying characters:

  • * (asterisk) - if this position would be blank otherwise, fill it with an asterisk.

  • & (ampersand) - if this position would be blank otherwise, fill it with a zero.

  • # - turn leading zeroes into blanks.

  • < - left-justify the number in the string.

  • , (comma) - group numbers of four or more digits into groups of three digits separated by a comma.

  • . (period) - this character separates the whole-number part of the number from the fractional part.

  • - (minus) - the minus sign appears if the number is a negative value.

  • + (plus) - the plus sign appears if the number is a positive value.

  • ( - this replaces the minus sign in front of the negative number. The minus sign will not appear.

  • ) - this character replaces the minus and is printed behind the negative value.

  • $ - the currency symbol.

rupshift

Convert a string to upper case.

void rupshift(char *str);

The function receives a pointer to the string and transforms every lower case character to upper case.

byleng

Return the number of characters in a string without counting trailing blanks.

int byleng(char *str, int len);

The function expects a fixed-length string as its first argument (str) and its length as its second argument (len). It returns the number of significant characters, that is the length of the string without trailing blanks.

ldchar

Copy a fixed-length string into a null-terminated string.

void ldchar(char *src, int len, char *dest);

The function receives the fixed-length string to copy (src), its length (len) and a pointer to the destination memory (dest). Note that you need to reserve at least len+1 bytes for the string that dest points to. The function copies at most len bytes to the new location (less if the source string has trailing blanks) and adds the null-terminator.

rgetmsg

int rgetmsg(int msgnum, char *s, int maxsize);

This function exists but is not implemented at the moment!

rtypalign

int rtypalign(int offset, int type);

This function exists but is not implemented at the moment!

rtypmsize

int rtypmsize(int type, int len);

This function exists but is not implemented at the moment!

rtypwidth

int rtypwidth(int sqltype, int sqllen);

This function exists but is not implemented at the moment!

rsetnull

Set a variable to NULL.

int rsetnull(int t, char *ptr);

The function receives an integer that indicates the type of the variable and a pointer to the variable itself that is casted to a C char* pointer.

The following types exist:

  • CCHARTYPE - For a variable of type char or char*

  • CSHORTTYPE - For a variable of type short int

  • CINTTYPE - For a variable of type int

  • CBOOLTYPE - For a variable of type boolean

  • CFLOATTYPE - For a variable of type float

  • CLONGTYPE - For a variable of type long

  • CDOUBLETYPE - For a variable of type double

  • CDECIMALTYPE - For a variable of type decimal

  • CDATETYPE - For a variable of type date

  • CDTIMETYPE - For a variable of type timestamp

Here is an example of a call to this function:

$char c[] = "abc       ";
$short s = 17;
$int i = -74874;

rsetnull(CCHARTYPE, (char *) c);
rsetnull(CSHORTTYPE, (char *) &s);
rsetnull(CINTTYPE, (char *) &i);

risnull

Test if a variable is NULL.

int risnull(int t, char *ptr);

The function receives the type of the variable to test (t) as well a pointer to this variable (ptr). Note that the latter needs to be casted to a char*. See the function rsetnull for a list of possible variable types.

Here is an example of how to use this function:

$char c[] = "abc       ";
$short s = 17;
$int i = -74874;

risnull(CCHARTYPE, (char *) c);
risnull(CSHORTTYPE, (char *) &s);
risnull(CINTTYPE, (char *) &i);

33.15.5. Additional Constants

Note that all constants here describe errors and all of them are defined to represent negative values. In the descriptions of the different constants you can also find the value that the constants represent in the current implementation. However you should not rely on this number. You can however rely on the fact all of them are defined to represent negative values.

ECPG_INFORMIX_NUM_OVERFLOW

Functions return this value if an overflow occurred in a calculation. Internally it is defined as -1200 (the Informix definition).

ECPG_INFORMIX_NUM_UNDERFLOW

Functions return this value if an underflow occurred in a calculation. Internally it is defined as -1201 (the Informix definition).

ECPG_INFORMIX_DIVIDE_ZERO

Functions return this value if an attempt to divide by zero is observed. Internally it is defined as -1202 (the Informix definition).

ECPG_INFORMIX_BAD_YEAR

Functions return this value if a bad value for a year was found while parsing a date. Internally it is defined as -1204 (the Informix definition).

ECPG_INFORMIX_BAD_MONTH

Functions return this value if a bad value for a month was found while parsing a date. Internally it is defined as -1205 (the Informix definition).

ECPG_INFORMIX_BAD_DAY

Functions return this value if a bad value for a day was found while parsing a date. Internally it is defined as -1206 (the Informix definition).

ECPG_INFORMIX_ENOSHORTDATE

Functions return this value if a parsing routine needs a short date representation but did not get the date string in the right length. Internally it is defined as -1209 (the Informix definition).

ECPG_INFORMIX_DATE_CONVERT

Functions return this value if an error occurred during date formatting. Internally it is defined as -1210 (the Informix definition).

ECPG_INFORMIX_OUT_OF_MEMORY

Functions return this value if memory was exhausted during their operation. Internally it is defined as -1211 (the Informix definition).

ECPG_INFORMIX_ENOTDMY

Functions return this value if a parsing routine was supposed to get a format mask (like mmddyy) but not all fields were listed correctly. Internally it is defined as -1212 (the Informix definition).

ECPG_INFORMIX_BAD_NUMERIC

Functions return this value either if a parsing routine cannot parse the textual representation for a numeric value because it contains errors or if a routine cannot complete a calculation involving numeric variables because at least one of the numeric variables is invalid. Internally it is defined as -1213 (the Informix definition).

ECPG_INFORMIX_BAD_EXPONENT

Functions return this value if a parsing routine cannot parse an exponent. Internally it is defined as -1216 (the Informix definition).

ECPG_INFORMIX_BAD_DATE

Functions return this value if a parsing routine cannot parse a date. Internally it is defined as -1218 (the Informix definition).

ECPG_INFORMIX_EXTRA_CHARS

Functions return this value if a parsing routine is passed extra characters it cannot parse. Internally it is defined as -1264 (the Informix definition).

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Internals

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33.16. Internals

This section explains how ECPG works internally. This information can occasionally be useful to help users understand how to use ECPG.

The first four lines written by ecpg to the output are fixed lines. Two are comments and two are include lines necessary to interface to the library. Then the preprocessor reads through the file and writes output. Normally it just echoes everything to the output.

When it sees an EXEC SQL statement, it intervenes and changes it. The command starts with EXEC SQL and ends with ;. Everything in between is treated as an SQL statement and parsed for variable substitution.

Variable substitution occurs when a symbol starts with a colon (:). The variable with that name is looked up among the variables that were previously declared within a EXEC SQL DECLARE section.

The most important function in the library is ECPGdo, which takes care of executing most commands. It takes a variable number of arguments. This can easily add up to 50 or so arguments, and we hope this will not be a problem on any platform.

The arguments are:

A line number

This is the line number of the original line; used in error messages only.

A string

This is the SQL command that is to be issued. It is modified by the input variables, i.e., the variables that where not known at compile time but are to be entered in the command. Where the variables should go the string contains ?.

Input variables

Every input variable causes ten arguments to be created. (See below.)

ECPGt_EOIT

An enum telling that there are no more input variables.

Output variables

Every output variable causes ten arguments to be created. (See below.) These variables are filled by the function.

ECPGt_EORT

An enum telling that there are no more variables.

For every variable that is part of the SQL command, the function gets ten arguments:

  1. The type as a special symbol.

  2. A pointer to the value or a pointer to the pointer.

  3. The size of the variable if it is a char or varchar.

  4. The number of elements in the array (for array fetches).

  5. The offset to the next element in the array (for array fetches).

  6. The type of the indicator variable as a special symbol.

  7. A pointer to the indicator variable.

  8. 0

  9. The number of elements in the indicator array (for array fetches).

  10. The offset to the next element in the indicator array (for array fetches).

Note that not all SQL commands are treated in this way. For instance, an open cursor statement like:

EXEC SQL OPEN cursor;

is not copied to the output. Instead, the cursor's DECLARE command is used at the position of the OPEN command because it indeed opens the cursor.

Here is a complete example describing the output of the preprocessor of a file foo.pgc (details might change with each particular version of the preprocessor):

EXEC SQL BEGIN DECLARE SECTION;
int index;
int result;
EXEC SQL END DECLARE SECTION;
...
EXEC SQL SELECT res INTO :result FROM mytable WHERE index = :index;

is translated into:

/* Processed by ecpg (2.6.0) */
/* These two include files are added by the preprocessor */
#include <ecpgtype.h>;
#include <ecpglib.h>;

/* exec sql begin declare section */

#line 1 "foo.pgc"

 int index;
 int result;
/* exec sql end declare section */
...
ECPGdo(__LINE__, NULL, "SELECT res FROM mytable WHERE index = ?     ",
        ECPGt_int,&(index),1L,1L,sizeof(int),
        ECPGt_NO_INDICATOR, NULL , 0L, 0L, 0L, ECPGt_EOIT,
        ECPGt_int,&(result),1L,1L,sizeof(int),
        ECPGt_NO_INDICATOR, NULL , 0L, 0L, 0L, ECPGt_EORT);
#line 147 "foo.pgc"

(The indentation here is added for readability and not something the preprocessor does.)

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The Information Schema

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Chapter 34. The Information Schema

Table of Contents
34.1. The Schema
34.2. Data Types
34.3. information_schema_catalog_name
34.4. administrable_role_authorizations
34.5. applicable_roles
34.6. attributes
34.7. character_sets
34.8. check_constraint_routine_usage
34.9. check_constraints
34.10. collations
34.11. collation_character_set_applicability
34.12. column_domain_usage
34.13. column_privileges
34.14. column_udt_usage
34.15. columns
34.16. constraint_column_usage
34.17. constraint_table_usage
34.18. data_type_privileges
34.19. domain_constraints
34.20. domain_udt_usage
34.21. domains
34.22. element_types
34.23. enabled_roles
34.24. foreign_data_wrapper_options
34.25. foreign_data_wrappers
34.26. foreign_server_options
34.27. foreign_servers
34.28. foreign_table_options
34.29. foreign_tables
34.30. key_column_usage
34.31. parameters
34.32. referential_constraints
34.33. role_column_grants
34.34. role_routine_grants
34.35. role_table_grants
34.36. role_usage_grants
34.37. routine_privileges
34.38. routines
34.39. schemata
34.40. sequences
34.41. sql_features
34.42. sql_implementation_info
34.43. sql_languages
34.44. sql_packages
34.45. sql_parts
34.46. sql_sizing
34.47. sql_sizing_profiles
34.48. table_constraints
34.49. table_privileges
34.50. tables
34.51. triggered_update_columns
34.52. triggers
34.53. usage_privileges
34.54. user_mapping_options
34.55. user_mappings
34.56. view_column_usage
34.57. view_routine_usage
34.58. view_table_usage
34.59. views

The information schema consists of a set of views that contain information about the objects defined in the current database. The information schema is defined in the SQL standard and can therefore be expected to be portable and remain stable — unlike the system catalogs, which are specific to PostgreSQL and are modelled after implementation concerns. The information schema views do not, however, contain information about PostgreSQL-specific features; to inquire about those you need to query the system catalogs or other PostgreSQL-specific views.

Note: When querying the database for constraint information, it is possible for a standard-compliant query that expects to return one row to return several. This is because the SQL standard requires constraint names to be unique within a schema, but PostgreSQL does not enforce this restriction. PostgreSQL automatically-generated constraint names avoid duplicates in the same schema, but users can specify such duplicate names.

This problem can appear when querying information schema views such as check_constraint_routine_usage, check_constraints, domain_constraints, and referential_constraints. Some other views have similar issues but contain the table name to help distinguish duplicate rows, e.g., constraint_column_usage, constraint_table_usage, table_constraints.

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The Schema

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34.1. The Schema

The information schema itself is a schema named information_schema. This schema automatically exists in all databases. The owner of this schema is the initial database user in the cluster, and that user naturally has all the privileges on this schema, including the ability to drop it (but the space savings achieved by that are minuscule).

By default, the information schema is not in the schema search path, so you need to access all objects in it through qualified names. Since the names of some of the objects in the information schema are generic names that might occur in user applications, you should be careful if you want to put the information schema in the path.

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Data Types

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34.2. Data Types

The columns of the information schema views use special data types that are defined in the information schema. These are defined as simple domains over ordinary built-in types. You should not use these types for work outside the information schema, but your applications must be prepared for them if they select from the information schema.

These types are:

cardinal_number

A nonnegative integer.

character_data

A character string (without specific maximum length).

sql_identifier

A character string. This type is used for SQL identifiers, the type character_data is used for any other kind of text data.

time_stamp

A domain over the type timestamp with time zone

yes_or_no

A character string domain that contains either YES or NO. This is used to represent Boolean (true/false) data in the information schema. (The information schema was invented before the type boolean was added to the SQL standard, so this convention is necessary to keep the information schema backward compatible.)

Every column in the information schema has one of these five types.

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information_schema_catalog_name

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34.3. information_schema_catalog_name

information_schema_catalog_name is a table that always contains one row and one column containing the name of the current database (current catalog, in SQL terminology).

Table 34-1. information_schema_catalog_name Columns

Name | Data Type | Description
catalog_name | sql_identifier | Name of the database that contains this information schema
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administrable_role_authorizations

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34.4. administrable_role_authorizations

The view administrable_role_authorizations identifies all roles that the current user has the admin option for.

Table 34-2. administrable_role_authorizations Columns

Name | Data Type | Description
grantee | sql_identifier | Name of the role to which this role membership was granted (can be the current user, or a different role in case of nested role memberships)
role_name | sql_identifier | Name of a role
is_grantable | yes_or_no | Always YES
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applicable_roles

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34.5. applicable_roles

The view applicable_roles identifies all roles whose privileges the current user can use. This means there is some chain of role grants from the current user to the role in question. The current user itself is also an applicable role. The set of applicable roles is generally used for permission checking.

Table 34-3. applicable_roles Columns

Name | Data Type | Description
grantee | sql_identifier | Name of the role to which this role membership was granted (can be the current user, or a different role in case of nested role memberships)
role_name | sql_identifier | Name of a role
is_grantable | yes_or_no | YES if the grantee has the admin option on the role, NO if not
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attributes

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34.6. attributes

The view attributes contains information about the attributes of composite data types defined in the database. (Note that the view does not give information about table columns, which are sometimes called attributes in PostgreSQL contexts.)

Table 34-4. attributes Columns

Name | Data Type | Description
udt_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database containing the data type (always the current database)
udt_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema containing the data type
udt_name | sql_identifier | Name of the data type
attribute_name | sql_identifier | Name of the attribute
ordinal_position | cardinal_number | Ordinal position of the attribute within the data type (count starts at 1)
attribute_default | character_data | Default expression of the attribute
is_nullable | yes_or_no | YES if the attribute is possibly nullable, NO if it is known not nullable.
data_type | character_data | Data type of the attribute, if it is a built-in type, or ARRAY if it is some array (in that case, see the view element_types), else USER-DEFINED (in that case, the type is identified in attribute_udt_name and associated columns).
character_maximum_length | cardinal_number | If data_type identifies a character or bit string type, the declared maximum length; null for all other data types or if no maximum length was declared.
character_octet_length | cardinal_number | If data_type identifies a character type, the maximum possible length in octets (bytes) of a datum; null for all other data types. The maximum octet length depends on the declared character maximum length (see above) and the server encoding.
character_set_catalog | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
character_set_schema | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
character_set_name | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
collation_catalog | sql_identifier | Not yet implemented
collation_schema | sql_identifier | Not yet implemented
collation_name | sql_identifier | Not yet implemented
numeric_precision | cardinal_number | If data_type identifies a numeric type, this column contains the (declared or implicit) precision of the type for this attribute. The precision indicates the number of significant digits. It can be expressed in decimal (base 10) or binary (base 2) terms, as specified in the column numeric_precision_radix. For all other data types, this column is null.
numeric_precision_radix | cardinal_number | If data_type identifies a numeric type, this column indicates in which base the values in the columns numeric_precision and numeric_scale are expressed. The value is either 2 or 10. For all other data types, this column is null.
numeric_scale | cardinal_number | If data_type identifies an exact numeric type, this column contains the (declared or implicit) scale of the type for this attribute. The scale indicates the number of significant digits to the right of the decimal point. It can be expressed in decimal (base 10) or binary (base 2) terms, as specified in the column numeric_precision_radix. For all other data types, this column is null.
datetime_precision | cardinal_number | If data_type identifies a date, time, timestamp, or interval type, this column contains the (declared or implicit) fractional seconds precision of the type for this attribute, that is, the number of decimal digits maintained following the decimal point in the seconds value. For all other data types, this column is null.
interval_type | character_data | Not yet implemented
interval_precision | character_data | Not yet implemented
attribute_udt_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database that the attribute data type is defined in (always the current database)
attribute_udt_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema that the attribute data type is defined in
attribute_udt_name | sql_identifier | Name of the attribute data type
scope_catalog | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
scope_schema | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
scope_name | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
maximum_cardinality | cardinal_number | Always null, because arrays always have unlimited maximum cardinality in PostgreSQL
dtd_identifier | sql_identifier | An identifier of the data type descriptor of the column, unique among the data type descriptors pertaining to the table. This is mainly useful for joining with other instances of such identifiers. (The specific format of the identifier is not defined and not guaranteed to remain the same in future versions.)
is_derived_reference_attribute | yes_or_no | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL

See also under Section 34.15, a similarly structured view, for further information on some of the columns.

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character_sets

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34.7. character_sets

The view character_sets identifies the character sets available in the current database. Since PostgreSQL does not support multiple character sets within one database, this view only shows one, which is the database encoding.

Take note of how the following terms are used in the SQL standard:

character repertoire

An abstract collection of characters, for example UNICODE, UCS, or LATIN1. Not exposed as an SQL object, but visible in this view.

character encoding form

An encoding of some character repertoire. Most older character repertoires only use one encoding form, and so there are no separate names for them (e.g., LATIN1 is an encoding form applicable to the LATIN1 repertoire). But for example Unicode has the encoding forms UTF8, UTF16, etc. (not all supported by PostgreSQL). Encoding forms are not exposed as an SQL object, but are visible in this view.

character set

A named SQL object that identifies a character repertoire, a character encoding, and a default collation. A predefined character set would typically have the same name as an encoding form, but users could define other names. For example, the character set UTF8 would typically identify the character repertoire UCS, encoding form UTF8, and some default collation.

You can think of an "encoding" in PostgreSQL either as a character set or a character encoding form. They will have the same name, and there can only be one in one database.

Table 34-5. character_sets Columns

Name | Data Type | Description
character_set_catalog | sql_identifier | Character sets are currently not implemented as schema objects, so this column is null.
character_set_schema | sql_identifier | Character sets are currently not implemented as schema objects, so this column is null.
character_set_name | sql_identifier | Name of the character set, currently implemented as showing the name of the database encoding
character_repertoire | sql_identifier | Character repertoire, showing UCS if the encoding is UTF8, else just the encoding name
form_of_use | sql_identifier | Character encoding form, same as the database encoding
default_collate_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database containing the default collation (always the current database, if any collation is identified)
default_collate_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema containing the default collation
default_collate_name | sql_identifier | Name of the default collation. The default collation is identified as the collation that matches the COLLATE and CTYPE settings of the current database. If there is no such collation, then this column and the associated schema and catalog columns are null.
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check_constraint_routine_usage

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34.8. check_constraint_routine_usage

The view check_constraint_routine_usage identifies routines (functions and procedures) that are used by a check constraint. Only those routines are shown that are owned by a currently enabled role.

Table 34-6. check_constraint_routine_usage Columns

Name | Data Type | Description
constraint_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database containing the constraint (always the current database)
constraint_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema containing the constraint
constraint_name | sql_identifier | Name of the constraint
specific_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database containing the function (always the current database)
specific_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema containing the function
specific_name | sql_identifier | The "specific name" of the function. See Section 34.38 for more information.
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character_sets | Up | check_constraints


check_constraints

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34.9. check_constraints

The view check_constraints contains all check constraints, either defined on a table or on a domain, that are owned by a currently enabled role. (The owner of the table or domain is the owner of the constraint.)

Table 34-7. check_constraints Columns

Name | Data Type | Description
constraint_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database containing the constraint (always the current database)
constraint_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema containing the constraint
constraint_name | sql_identifier | Name of the constraint
check_clause | character_data | The check expression of the check constraint
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collations

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34.10. collations

The view collations contains the collations available in the current database.

Table 34-8. collations Columns

Name | Data Type | Description
collation_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database containing the collation (always the current database)
collation_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema containing the collation
collation_name | sql_identifier | Name of the default collation
pad_attribute | character_data | Always NO PAD (The alternative PAD SPACE is not supported by PostgreSQL.)
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collation_character_set_applicability

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34.11. collation_character_set_applicability

The view collation_character_set_applicability identifies which character set the available collations are applicable to. In PostgreSQL, there is only one character set per database (see explanation in Section 34.7), so this view does not provide much useful information.

Table 34-9. collation_character_set_applicability Columns

Name | Data Type | Description
collation_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database containing the collation (always the current database)
collation_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema containing the collation
collation_name | sql_identifier | Name of the default collation
character_set_catalog | sql_identifier | Character sets are currently not implemented as schema objects, so this column is null
character_set_schema | sql_identifier | Character sets are currently not implemented as schema objects, so this column is null
character_set_name | sql_identifier | Name of the character set
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collations | Up | column_domain_usage


column_domain_usage

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34.12. column_domain_usage

The view column_domain_usage identifies all columns (of a table or a view) that make use of some domain defined in the current database and owned by a currently enabled role.

Table 34-10. column_domain_usage Columns

Name | Data Type | Description
domain_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database containing the domain (always the current database)
domain_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema containing the domain
domain_name | sql_identifier | Name of the domain
table_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database containing the table (always the current database)
table_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema containing the table
table_name | sql_identifier | Name of the table
column_name | sql_identifier | Name of the column
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column_privileges

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34.13. column_privileges

The view column_privileges identifies all privileges granted on columns to a currently enabled role or by a currently enabled role. There is one row for each combination of column, grantor, and grantee.

If a privilege has been granted on an entire table, it will show up in this view as a grant for each column, but only for the privilege types where column granularity is possible: SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, REFERENCES.

Table 34-11. column_privileges Columns

Name | Data Type | Description
grantor | sql_identifier | Name of the role that granted the privilege
grantee | sql_identifier | Name of the role that the privilege was granted to
table_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database that contains the table that contains the column (always the current database)
table_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema that contains the table that contains the column
table_name | sql_identifier | Name of the table that contains the column
column_name | sql_identifier | Name of the column
privilege_type | character_data | Type of the privilege: SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, or REFERENCES
is_grantable | yes_or_no | YES if the privilege is grantable, NO if not
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column_udt_usage

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34.14. column_udt_usage

The view column_udt_usage identifies all columns that use data types owned by a currently enabled role. Note that in PostgreSQL, built-in data types behave like user-defined types, so they are included here as well. See also Section 34.15 for details.

Table 34-12. column_udt_usage Columns

Name | Data Type | Description
udt_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database that the column data type (the underlying type of the domain, if applicable) is defined in (always the current database)
udt_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema that the column data type (the underlying type of the domain, if applicable) is defined in
udt_name | sql_identifier | Name of the column data type (the underlying type of the domain, if applicable)
table_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database containing the table (always the current database)
table_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema containing the table
table_name | sql_identifier | Name of the table
column_name | sql_identifier | Name of the column
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columns

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34.15. columns

The view columns contains information about all table columns (or view columns) in the database. System columns (oid, etc.) are not included. Only those columns are shown that the current user has access to (by way of being the owner or having some privilege).

Table 34-13. columns Columns

Name | Data Type | Description
table_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database containing the table (always the current database)
table_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema containing the table
table_name | sql_identifier | Name of the table
column_name | sql_identifier | Name of the column
ordinal_position | cardinal_number | Ordinal position of the column within the table (count starts at 1)
column_default | character_data | Default expression of the column
is_nullable | yes_or_no | YES if the column is possibly nullable, NO if it is known not nullable. A not-null constraint is one way a column can be known not nullable, but there can be others.
data_type | character_data | Data type of the column, if it is a built-in type, or ARRAY if it is some array (in that case, see the view element_types), else USER-DEFINED (in that case, the type is identified in udt_name and associated columns). If the column is based on a domain, this column refers to the type underlying the domain (and the domain is identified in domain_name and associated columns).
character_maximum_length | cardinal_number | If data_type identifies a character or bit string type, the declared maximum length; null for all other data types or if no maximum length was declared.
character_octet_length | cardinal_number | If data_type identifies a character type, the maximum possible length in octets (bytes) of a datum; null for all other data types. The maximum octet length depends on the declared character maximum length (see above) and the server encoding.
numeric_precision | cardinal_number | If data_type identifies a numeric type, this column contains the (declared or implicit) precision of the type for this column. The precision indicates the number of significant digits. It can be expressed in decimal (base 10) or binary (base 2) terms, as specified in the column numeric_precision_radix. For all other data types, this column is null.
numeric_precision_radix | cardinal_number | If data_type identifies a numeric type, this column indicates in which base the values in the columns numeric_precision and numeric_scale are expressed. The value is either 2 or 10. For all other data types, this column is null.
numeric_scale | cardinal_number | If data_type identifies an exact numeric type, this column contains the (declared or implicit) scale of the type for this column. The scale indicates the number of significant digits to the right of the decimal point. It can be expressed in decimal (base 10) or binary (base 2) terms, as specified in the column numeric_precision_radix. For all other data types, this column is null.
datetime_precision | cardinal_number | If data_type identifies a date, time, timestamp, or interval type, this column contains the (declared or implicit) fractional seconds precision of the type for this column, that is, the number of decimal digits maintained following the decimal point in the seconds value. For all other data types, this column is null.
interval_type | character_data | Not yet implemented
interval_precision | character_data | Not yet implemented
character_set_catalog | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
character_set_schema | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
character_set_name | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
collation_catalog | sql_identifier | Not yet implemented
collation_schema | sql_identifier | Not yet implemented
collation_name | sql_identifier | Not yet implemented
domain_catalog | sql_identifier | If the column has a domain type, the name of the database that the domain is defined in (always the current database), else null.
domain_schema | sql_identifier | If the column has a domain type, the name of the schema that the domain is defined in, else null.
domain_name | sql_identifier | If the column has a domain type, the name of the domain, else null.
udt_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database that the column data type (the underlying type of the domain, if applicable) is defined in (always the current database)
udt_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema that the column data type (the underlying type of the domain, if applicable) is defined in
udt_name | sql_identifier | Name of the column data type (the underlying type of the domain, if applicable)
scope_catalog | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
scope_schema | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
scope_name | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
maximum_cardinality | cardinal_number | Always null, because arrays always have unlimited maximum cardinality in PostgreSQL
dtd_identifier | sql_identifier | An identifier of the data type descriptor of the column, unique among the data type descriptors pertaining to the table. This is mainly useful for joining with other instances of such identifiers. (The specific format of the identifier is not defined and not guaranteed to remain the same in future versions.)
is_self_referencing | yes_or_no | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
is_identity | yes_or_no | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
identity_generation | character_data | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
identity_start | character_data | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
identity_increment | character_data | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
identity_maximum | character_data | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
identity_minimum | character_data | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
identity_cycle | yes_or_no | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
is_generated | character_data | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
generation_expression | character_data | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
is_updatable | yes_or_no | YES if the column is updatable, NO if not (Columns in base tables are always updatable, columns in views not necessarily)

Since data types can be defined in a variety of ways in SQL, and PostgreSQL contains additional ways to define data types, their representation in the information schema can be somewhat difficult. The column data_type is supposed to identify the underlying built-in type of the column. In PostgreSQL, this means that the type is defined in the system catalog schema pg_catalog. This column might be useful if the application can handle the well-known built-in types specially (for example, format the numeric types differently or use the data in the precision columns). The columns udt_name, udt_schema, and udt_catalog always identify the underlying data type of the column, even if the column is based on a domain. (Since PostgreSQL treats built-in types like user-defined types, built-in types appear here as well. This is an extension of the SQL standard.) These columns should be used if an application wants to process data differently according to the type, because in that case it wouldn't matter if the column is really based on a domain. If the column is based on a domain, the identity of the domain is stored in the columns domain_name, domain_schema, and domain_catalog. If you want to pair up columns with their associated data types and treat domains as separate types, you could write coalesce(domain_name, udt_name), etc.

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constraint_column_usage

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34.16. constraint_column_usage

The view constraint_column_usage identifies all columns in the current database that are used by some constraint. Only those columns are shown that are contained in a table owned by a currently enabled role. For a check constraint, this view identifies the columns that are used in the check expression. For a foreign key constraint, this view identifies the columns that the foreign key references. For a unique or primary key constraint, this view identifies the constrained columns.

Table 34-14. constraint_column_usage Columns

Name | Data Type | Description
table_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database that contains the table that contains the column that is used by some constraint (always the current database)
table_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema that contains the table that contains the column that is used by some constraint
table_name | sql_identifier | Name of the table that contains the column that is used by some constraint
column_name | sql_identifier | Name of the column that is used by some constraint
constraint_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database that contains the constraint (always the current database)
constraint_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema that contains the constraint
constraint_name | sql_identifier | Name of the constraint
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columns | Up | constraint_table_usage


constraint_table_usage

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34.17. constraint_table_usage

The view constraint_table_usage identifies all tables in the current database that are used by some constraint and are owned by a currently enabled role. (This is different from the view table_constraints, which identifies all table constraints along with the table they are defined on.) For a foreign key constraint, this view identifies the table that the foreign key references. For a unique or primary key constraint, this view simply identifies the table the constraint belongs to. Check constraints and not-null constraints are not included in this view.

Table 34-15. constraint_table_usage Columns

Name | Data Type | Description
table_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database that contains the table that is used by some constraint (always the current database)
table_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema that contains the table that is used by some constraint
table_name | sql_identifier | Name of the table that is used by some constraint
constraint_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database that contains the constraint (always the current database)
constraint_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema that contains the constraint
constraint_name | sql_identifier | Name of the constraint
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data_type_privileges

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34.18. data_type_privileges

The view data_type_privileges identifies all data type descriptors that the current user has access to, by way of being the owner of the described object or having some privilege for it. A data type descriptor is generated whenever a data type is used in the definition of a table column, a domain, or a function (as parameter or return type) and stores some information about how the data type is used in that instance (for example, the declared maximum length, if applicable). Each data type descriptor is assigned an arbitrary identifier that is unique among the data type descriptor identifiers assigned for one object (table, domain, function). This view is probably not useful for applications, but it is used to define some other views in the information schema.

Table 34-16. data_type_privileges Columns

Name | Data Type | Description
object_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database that contains the described object (always the current database)
object_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema that contains the described object
object_name | sql_identifier | Name of the described object
object_type | character_data | The type of the described object: one of TABLE (the data type descriptor pertains to a column of that table), DOMAIN (the data type descriptors pertains to that domain), ROUTINE (the data type descriptor pertains to a parameter or the return data type of that function).
dtd_identifier | sql_identifier | The identifier of the data type descriptor, which is unique among the data type descriptors for that same object.
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domain_constraints

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34.19. domain_constraints

The view domain_constraints contains all constraints belonging to domains defined in the current database.

Table 34-17. domain_constraints Columns

Name | Data Type | Description
constraint_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database that contains the constraint (always the current database)
constraint_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema that contains the constraint
constraint_name | sql_identifier | Name of the constraint
domain_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database that contains the domain (always the current database)
domain_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema that contains the domain
domain_name | sql_identifier | Name of the domain
is_deferrable | yes_or_no | YES if the constraint is deferrable, NO if not
initially_deferred | yes_or_no | YES if the constraint is deferrable and initially deferred, NO if not
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domain_udt_usage

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34.20. domain_udt_usage

The view domain_udt_usage identifies all domains that are based on data types owned by a currently enabled role. Note that in PostgreSQL, built-in data types behave like user-defined types, so they are included here as well.

Table 34-18. domain_udt_usage Columns

Name | Data Type | Description
udt_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database that the domain data type is defined in (always the current database)
udt_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema that the domain data type is defined in
udt_name | sql_identifier | Name of the domain data type
domain_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database that contains the domain (always the current database)
domain_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema that contains the domain
domain_name | sql_identifier | Name of the domain
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domains

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34.21. domains

The view domains contains all domains defined in the current database.

Table 34-19. domains Columns

Name | Data Type | Description
domain_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database that contains the domain (always the current database)
domain_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema that contains the domain
domain_name | sql_identifier | Name of the domain
data_type | character_data | Data type of the domain, if it is a built-in type, or ARRAY if it is some array (in that case, see the view element_types), else USER-DEFINED (in that case, the type is identified in udt_name and associated columns).
character_maximum_length | cardinal_number | If the domain has a character or bit string type, the declared maximum length; null for all other data types or if no maximum length was declared.
character_octet_length | cardinal_number | If the domain has a character type, the maximum possible length in octets (bytes) of a datum; null for all other data types. The maximum octet length depends on the declared character maximum length (see above) and the server encoding.
character_set_catalog | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
character_set_schema | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
character_set_name | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
collation_catalog | sql_identifier | Not yet implemented
collation_schema | sql_identifier | Not yet implemented
collation_name | sql_identifier | Not yet implemented
numeric_precision | cardinal_number | If the domain has a numeric type, this column contains the (declared or implicit) precision of the type for this domain. The precision indicates the number of significant digits. It can be expressed in decimal (base 10) or binary (base 2) terms, as specified in the column numeric_precision_radix. For all other data types, this column is null.
numeric_precision_radix | cardinal_number | If the domain has a numeric type, this column indicates in which base the values in the columns numeric_precision and numeric_scale are expressed. The value is either 2 or 10. For all other data types, this column is null.
numeric_scale | cardinal_number | If the domain has an exact numeric type, this column contains the (declared or implicit) scale of the type for this domain. The scale indicates the number of significant digits to the right of the decimal point. It can be expressed in decimal (base 10) or binary (base 2) terms, as specified in the column numeric_precision_radix. For all other data types, this column is null.
datetime_precision | cardinal_number | If data_type identifies a date, time, timestamp, or interval type, this column contains the (declared or implicit) fractional seconds precision of the type for this domain, that is, the number of decimal digits maintained following the decimal point in the seconds value. For all other data types, this column is null.
interval_type | character_data | Not yet implemented
interval_precision | character_data | Not yet implemented
domain_default | character_data | Default expression of the domain
udt_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database that the domain data type is defined in (always the current database)
udt_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema that the domain data type is defined in
udt_name | sql_identifier | Name of the domain data type
scope_catalog | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
scope_schema | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
scope_name | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
maximum_cardinality | cardinal_number | Always null, because arrays always have unlimited maximum cardinality in PostgreSQL
dtd_identifier | sql_identifier | An identifier of the data type descriptor of the domain, unique among the data type descriptors pertaining to the domain (which is trivial, because a domain only contains one data type descriptor). This is mainly useful for joining with other instances of such identifiers. (The specific format of the identifier is not defined and not guaranteed to remain the same in future versions.)
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element_types

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34.22. element_types

The view element_types contains the data type descriptors of the elements of arrays. When a table column, domain, function parameter, or function return value is defined to be of an array type, the respective information schema view only contains ARRAY in the column data_type. To obtain information on the element type of the array, you can join the respective view with this view. For example, to show the columns of a table with data types and array element types, if applicable, you could do:

SELECT c.column_name, c.data_type, e.data_type AS element_type
FROM information_schema.columns c LEFT JOIN information_schema.element_types e
     ON ((c.table_catalog, c.table_schema, c.table_name, 'TABLE', c.dtd_identifier)
       = (e.object_catalog, e.object_schema, e.object_name, e.object_type, e.collection_type_identifier))
WHERE c.table_schema = '...' AND c.table_name = '...'
ORDER BY c.ordinal_position;

This view only includes objects that the current user has access to, by way of being the owner or having some privilege.

Table 34-20. element_types Columns

Name | Data Type | Description
object_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database that contains the object that uses the array being described (always the current database)
object_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema that contains the object that uses the array being described
object_name | sql_identifier | Name of the object that uses the array being described
object_type | character_data | The type of the object that uses the array being described: one of TABLE (the array is used by a column of that table), DOMAIN (the array is used by that domain), ROUTINE (the array is used by a parameter or the return data type of that function).
collection_type_identifier | sql_identifier | The identifier of the data type descriptor of the array being described. Use this to join with the dtd_identifier columns of other information schema views.
data_type | character_data | Data type of the array elements, if it is a built-in type, else USER-DEFINED (in that case, the type is identified in udt_name and associated columns).
character_maximum_length | cardinal_number | Always null, since this information is not applied to array element data types in PostgreSQL
character_octet_length | cardinal_number | Always null, since this information is not applied to array element data types in PostgreSQL
character_set_catalog | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
character_set_schema | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
character_set_name | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
collation_catalog | sql_identifier | Not yet implemented
collation_schema | sql_identifier | Not yet implemented
collation_name | sql_identifier | Not yet implemented
numeric_precision | cardinal_number | Always null, since this information is not applied to array element data types in PostgreSQL
numeric_precision_radix | cardinal_number | Always null, since this information is not applied to array element data types in PostgreSQL
numeric_scale | cardinal_number | Always null, since this information is not applied to array element data types in PostgreSQL
datetime_precision | cardinal_number | Always null, since this information is not applied to array element data types in PostgreSQL
interval_type | character_data | Always null, since this information is not applied to array element data types in PostgreSQL
interval_precision | character_data | Always null, since this information is not applied to array element data types in PostgreSQL
domain_default | character_data | Not yet implemented
udt_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database that the data type of the elements is defined in (always the current database)
udt_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema that the data type of the elements is defined in
udt_name | sql_identifier | Name of the data type of the elements
scope_catalog | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
scope_schema | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
scope_name | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
maximum_cardinality | cardinal_number | Always null, because arrays always have unlimited maximum cardinality in PostgreSQL
dtd_identifier | sql_identifier | An identifier of the data type descriptor of the element. This is currently not useful.
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domains | Up | enabled_roles


enabled_roles

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34.23. enabled_roles

The view enabled_roles identifies the currently "enabled roles". The enabled roles are recursively defined as the current user together with all roles that have been granted to the enabled roles with automatic inheritance. In other words, these are all roles that the current user has direct or indirect, automatically inheriting membership in.

For permission checking, the set of "applicable roles" is applied, which can be broader than the set of enabled roles. So generally, it is better to use the view applicable_roles instead of this one; see also there.

Table 34-21. enabled_roles Columns

Name | Data Type | Description
role_name | sql_identifier | Name of a role
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element_types | Up | foreign_data_wrapper_options


foreign_data_wrapper_options

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34.24. foreign_data_wrapper_options

The view foreign_data_wrapper_options contains all the options defined for foreign-data wrappers in the current database. Only those foreign-data wrappers are shown that the current user has access to (by way of being the owner or having some privilege).

Table 34-22. foreign_data_wrapper_options Columns

Name | Data Type | Description
foreign_data_wrapper_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database that the foreign-data wrapper is defined in (always the current database)
foreign_data_wrapper_name | sql_identifier | Name of the foreign-data wrapper
option_name | sql_identifier | Name of an option
option_value | character_data | Value of the option
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enabled_roles | Up | foreign_data_wrappers


foreign_data_wrappers

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34.25. foreign_data_wrappers

The view foreign_data_wrappers contains all foreign-data wrappers defined in the current database. Only those foreign-data wrappers are shown that the current user has access to (by way of being the owner or having some privilege).

Table 34-23. foreign_data_wrappers Columns

Name | Data Type | Description
foreign_data_wrapper_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database that contains the foreign-data wrapper (always the current database)
foreign_data_wrapper_name | sql_identifier | Name of the foreign-data wrapper
authorization_identifier | sql_identifier | Name of the owner of the foreign server
library_name | character_data | File name of the library that implementing this foreign-data wrapper
foreign_data_wrapper_language | character_data | Language used to implement this foreign-data wrapper
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foreign_data_wrapper_options | Up | foreign_server_options


foreign_server_options

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34.26. foreign_server_options

The view foreign_server_options contains all the options defined for foreign servers in the current database. Only those foreign servers are shown that the current user has access to (by way of being the owner or having some privilege).

Table 34-24. foreign_server_options Columns

Name | Data Type | Description
foreign_server_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database that the foreign server is defined in (always the current database)
foreign_server_name | sql_identifier | Name of the foreign server
option_name | sql_identifier | Name of an option
option_value | character_data | Value of the option
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foreign_data_wrappers | Up | foreign_servers


foreign_servers

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34.27. foreign_servers

The view foreign_servers contains all foreign servers defined in the current database. Only those foreign servers are shown that the current user has access to (by way of being the owner or having some privilege).

Table 34-25. foreign_servers Columns

Name | Data Type | Description
foreign_server_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database that the foreign server is defined in (always the current database)
foreign_server_name | sql_identifier | Name of the foreign server
foreign_data_wrapper_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database that contains the foreign-data wrapper used by the foreign server (always the current database)
foreign_data_wrapper_name | sql_identifier | Name of the foreign-data wrapper used by the foreign server
foreign_server_type | character_data | Foreign server type information, if specified upon creation
foreign_server_version | character_data | Foreign server version information, if specified upon creation
authorization_identifier | sql_identifier | Name of the owner of the foreign server
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foreign_server_options | Up | foreign_table_options


foreign_table_options

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34.28. foreign_table_options

The view foreign_table_options contains all the options defined for foreign tables in the current database. Only those foreign tables are shown that the current user has access to (by way of being the owner or having some privilege).

Table 34-26. foreign_table_options Columns

Name | Data Type | Description
foreign_table_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database that contains the foreign table (always the current database)
foreign_table_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema that contains the foreign table
foreign_table_name | sql_identifier | Name of the foreign table
foreign_server_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database that the foreign server is defined in (always the current database)
foreign_server_name | sql_identifier | Name of the foreign server
option_name | sql_identifier | Name of an option
option_value | character_data | Value of the option
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foreign_servers | Up | foreign_tables


foreign_tables

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34.29. foreign_tables

The view foreign_tables contains all foreign tables defined in the current database. Only those foreign tables are shown that the current user has access to (by way of being the owner or having some privilege).

Table 34-27. foreign_tables Columns

Name | Data Type | Description
foreign_table_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database that the foreign table is defined in (always the current database)
foreign_table_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema that contains the foreign table
foreign_table_name | sql_identifier | Name of the foreign table
foreign_server_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database that the foreign server is defined in (always the current database)
foreign_server_name | sql_identifier | Name of the foreign server
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key_column_usage

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34.30. key_column_usage

The view key_column_usage identifies all columns in the current database that are restricted by some unique, primary key, or foreign key constraint. Check constraints are not included in this view. Only those columns are shown that the current user has access to, by way of being the owner or having some privilege.

Table 34-28. key_column_usage Columns

Name | Data Type | Description
constraint_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database that contains the constraint (always the current database)
constraint_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema that contains the constraint
constraint_name | sql_identifier | Name of the constraint
table_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database that contains the table that contains the column that is restricted by this constraint (always the current database)
table_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema that contains the table that contains the column that is restricted by this constraint
table_name | sql_identifier | Name of the table that contains the column that is restricted by this constraint
column_name | sql_identifier | Name of the column that is restricted by this constraint
ordinal_position | cardinal_number | Ordinal position of the column within the constraint key (count starts at 1)
position_in_unique_constraint | cardinal_number | For a foreign-key constraint, ordinal position of the referenced column within its unique constraint (count starts at 1); otherwise null
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foreign_tables | Up | parameters


parameters

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34.31. parameters

The view parameters contains information about the parameters (arguments) of all functions in the current database. Only those functions are shown that the current user has access to (by way of being the owner or having some privilege).

Table 34-29. parameters Columns

Name | Data Type | Description
specific_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database containing the function (always the current database)
specific_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema containing the function
specific_name | sql_identifier | The "specific name" of the function. See Section 34.38 for more information.
ordinal_position | cardinal_number | Ordinal position of the parameter in the argument list of the function (count starts at 1)
parameter_mode | character_data | IN for input parameter, OUT for output parameter, and INOUT for input/output parameter.
is_result | yes_or_no | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
as_locator | yes_or_no | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
parameter_name | sql_identifier | Name of the parameter, or null if the parameter has no name
data_type | character_data | Data type of the parameter, if it is a built-in type, or ARRAY if it is some array (in that case, see the view element_types), else USER-DEFINED (in that case, the type is identified in udt_name and associated columns).
character_maximum_length | cardinal_number | Always null, since this information is not applied to parameter data types in PostgreSQL
character_octet_length | cardinal_number | Always null, since this information is not applied to parameter data types in PostgreSQL
character_set_catalog | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
character_set_schema | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
character_set_name | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
collation_catalog | sql_identifier | Always null, since this information is not applied to parameter data types in PostgreSQL
collation_schema | sql_identifier | Always null, since this information is not applied to parameter data types in PostgreSQL
collation_name | sql_identifier | Always null, since this information is not applied to parameter data types in PostgreSQL
numeric_precision | cardinal_number | Always null, since this information is not applied to parameter data types in PostgreSQL
numeric_precision_radix | cardinal_number | Always null, since this information is not applied to parameter data types in PostgreSQL
numeric_scale | cardinal_number | Always null, since this information is not applied to parameter data types in PostgreSQL
datetime_precision | cardinal_number | Always null, since this information is not applied to parameter data types in PostgreSQL
interval_type | character_data | Always null, since this information is not applied to parameter data types in PostgreSQL
interval_precision | character_data | Always null, since this information is not applied to parameter data types in PostgreSQL
udt_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database that the data type of the parameter is defined in (always the current database)
udt_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema that the data type of the parameter is defined in
udt_name | sql_identifier | Name of the data type of the parameter
scope_catalog | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
scope_schema | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
scope_name | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
maximum_cardinality | cardinal_number | Always null, because arrays always have unlimited maximum cardinality in PostgreSQL
dtd_identifier | sql_identifier | An identifier of the data type descriptor of the parameter, unique among the data type descriptors pertaining to the function. This is mainly useful for joining with other instances of such identifiers. (The specific format of the identifier is not defined and not guaranteed to remain the same in future versions.)
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key_column_usage | Up | referential_constraints


referential_constraints

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34.32. referential_constraints

The view referential_constraints contains all referential (foreign key) constraints in the current database. Only those constraints are shown for which the current user has write access to the referencing table (by way of being the owner or having some privilege other than SELECT).

Table 34-30. referential_constraints Columns

Name | Data Type | Description
constraint_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database containing the constraint (always the current database)
constraint_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema containing the constraint
constraint_name | sql_identifier | Name of the constraint
unique_constraint_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database that contains the unique or primary key constraint that the foreign key constraint references (always the current database)
unique_constraint_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema that contains the unique or primary key constraint that the foreign key constraint references
unique_constraint_name | sql_identifier | Name of the unique or primary key constraint that the foreign key constraint references
match_option | character_data | Match option of the foreign key constraint: FULL, PARTIAL, or NONE.
update_rule | character_data | Update rule of the foreign key constraint: CASCADE, SET NULL, SET DEFAULT, RESTRICT, or NO ACTION.
delete_rule | character_data | Delete rule of the foreign key constraint: CASCADE, SET NULL, SET DEFAULT, RESTRICT, or NO ACTION.
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parameters | Up | role_column_grants


role_column_grants

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34.33. role_column_grants

The view role_column_grants identifies all privileges granted on columns where the grantor or grantee is a currently enabled role. Further information can be found under column_privileges. The only effective difference between this view and column_privileges is that this view omits columns that have been made accessible to the current user by way of a grant to public.

Table 34-31. role_column_grants Columns

Name | Data Type | Description
grantor | sql_identifier | Name of the role that granted the privilege
grantee | sql_identifier | Name of the role that the privilege was granted to
table_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database that contains the table that contains the column (always the current database)
table_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema that contains the table that contains the column
table_name | sql_identifier | Name of the table that contains the column
column_name | sql_identifier | Name of the column
privilege_type | character_data | Type of the privilege: SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, or REFERENCES
is_grantable | yes_or_no | YES if the privilege is grantable, NO if not
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referential_constraints | Up | role_routine_grants


role_routine_grants

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34.34. role_routine_grants

The view role_routine_grants identifies all privileges granted on functions where the grantor or grantee is a currently enabled role. Further information can be found under routine_privileges. The only effective difference between this view and routine_privileges is that this view omits functions that have been made accessible to the current user by way of a grant to public.

Table 34-32. role_routine_grants Columns

Name | Data Type | Description
grantor | sql_identifier | Name of the role that granted the privilege
grantee | sql_identifier | Name of the role that the privilege was granted to
specific_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database containing the function (always the current database)
specific_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema containing the function
specific_name | sql_identifier | The "specific name" of the function. See Section 34.38 for more information.
routine_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database containing the function (always the current database)
routine_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema containing the function
routine_name | sql_identifier | Name of the function (might be duplicated in case of overloading)
privilege_type | character_data | Always EXECUTE (the only privilege type for functions)
is_grantable | yes_or_no | YES if the privilege is grantable, NO if not
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role_column_grants | Up | role_table_grants


role_table_grants

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34.35. role_table_grants

The view role_table_grants identifies all privileges granted on tables or views where the grantor or grantee is a currently enabled role. Further information can be found under table_privileges. The only effective difference between this view and table_privileges is that this view omits tables that have been made accessible to the current user by way of a grant to public.

Table 34-33. role_table_grants Columns

Name | Data Type | Description
grantor | sql_identifier | Name of the role that granted the privilege
grantee | sql_identifier | Name of the role that the privilege was granted to
table_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database that contains the table (always the current database)
table_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema that contains the table
table_name | sql_identifier | Name of the table
privilege_type | character_data | Type of the privilege: SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, TRUNCATE, REFERENCES, or TRIGGER
is_grantable | yes_or_no | YES if the privilege is grantable, NO if not
with_hierarchy | yes_or_no | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
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role_routine_grants | Up | role_usage_grants


role_usage_grants

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34.36. role_usage_grants

The view role_usage_grants identifies USAGE privileges granted on various kinds of objects where the grantor or grantee is a currently enabled role. Further information can be found under usage_privileges. The only effective difference between this view and usage_privileges is that this view omits objects that have been made accessible to the current user by way of a grant to public.

Table 34-34. role_usage_grants Columns

Name | Data Type | Description
grantor | sql_identifier | The name of the role that granted the privilege
grantee | sql_identifier | The name of the role that the privilege was granted to
object_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database containing the object (always the current database)
object_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema containing the object, if applicable, else an empty string
object_name | sql_identifier | Name of the object
object_type | character_data | COLLATION or DOMAIN or FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER or FOREIGN SERVER
privilege_type | character_data | Always USAGE
is_grantable | yes_or_no | YES if the privilege is grantable, NO if not
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role_table_grants | Up | routine_privileges


routine_privileges

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34.37. routine_privileges

The view routine_privileges identifies all privileges granted on functions to a currently enabled role or by a currently enabled role. There is one row for each combination of function, grantor, and grantee.

Table 34-35. routine_privileges Columns

Name | Data Type | Description
grantor | sql_identifier | Name of the role that granted the privilege
grantee | sql_identifier | Name of the role that the privilege was granted to
specific_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database containing the function (always the current database)
specific_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema containing the function
specific_name | sql_identifier | The "specific name" of the function. See Section 34.38 for more information.
routine_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database containing the function (always the current database)
routine_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema containing the function
routine_name | sql_identifier | Name of the function (might be duplicated in case of overloading)
privilege_type | character_data | Always EXECUTE (the only privilege type for functions)
is_grantable | yes_or_no | YES if the privilege is grantable, NO if not
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role_usage_grants | Up | routines


routines

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34.38. routines

The view routines contains all functions in the current database. Only those functions are shown that the current user has access to (by way of being the owner or having some privilege).

Table 34-36. routines Columns

Name | Data Type | Description
specific_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database containing the function (always the current database)
specific_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema containing the function
specific_name | sql_identifier | The "specific name" of the function. This is a name that uniquely identifies the function in the schema, even if the real name of the function is overloaded. The format of the specific name is not defined, it should only be used to compare it to other instances of specific routine names.
routine_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database containing the function (always the current database)
routine_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema containing the function
routine_name | sql_identifier | Name of the function (might be duplicated in case of overloading)
routine_type | character_data | Always FUNCTION (In the future there might be other types of routines.)
module_catalog | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
module_schema | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
module_name | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
udt_catalog | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
udt_schema | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
udt_name | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
data_type | character_data | Return data type of the function, if it is a built-in type, or ARRAY if it is some array (in that case, see the view element_types), else USER-DEFINED (in that case, the type is identified in type_udt_name and associated columns).
character_maximum_length | cardinal_number | Always null, since this information is not applied to return data types in PostgreSQL
character_octet_length | cardinal_number | Always null, since this information is not applied to return data types in PostgreSQL
character_set_catalog | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
character_set_schema | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
character_set_name | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
collation_catalog | sql_identifier | Always null, since this information is not applied to return data types in PostgreSQL
collation_schema | sql_identifier | Always null, since this information is not applied to return data types in PostgreSQL
collation_name | sql_identifier | Always null, since this information is not applied to return data types in PostgreSQL
numeric_precision | cardinal_number | Always null, since this information is not applied to return data types in PostgreSQL
numeric_precision_radix | cardinal_number | Always null, since this information is not applied to return data types in PostgreSQL
numeric_scale | cardinal_number | Always null, since this information is not applied to return data types in PostgreSQL
datetime_precision | cardinal_number | Always null, since this information is not applied to return data types in PostgreSQL
interval_type | character_data | Always null, since this information is not applied to return data types in PostgreSQL
interval_precision | character_data | Always null, since this information is not applied to return data types in PostgreSQL
type_udt_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database that the return data type of the function is defined in (always the current database)
type_udt_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema that the return data type of the function is defined in
type_udt_name | sql_identifier | Name of the return data type of the function
scope_catalog | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
scope_schema | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
scope_name | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
maximum_cardinality | cardinal_number | Always null, because arrays always have unlimited maximum cardinality in PostgreSQL
dtd_identifier | sql_identifier | An identifier of the data type descriptor of the return data type of this function, unique among the data type descriptors pertaining to the function. This is mainly useful for joining with other instances of such identifiers. (The specific format of the identifier is not defined and not guaranteed to remain the same in future versions.)
routine_body | character_data | If the function is an SQL function, then SQL, else EXTERNAL.
routine_definition | character_data | The source text of the function (null if the function is not owned by a currently enabled role). (According to the SQL standard, this column is only applicable if routine_body is SQL, but in PostgreSQL it will contain whatever source text was specified when the function was created.)
external_name | character_data | If this function is a C function, then the external name (link symbol) of the function; else null. (This works out to be the same value that is shown in routine_definition.)
external_language | character_data | The language the function is written in
parameter_style | character_data | Always GENERAL (The SQL standard defines other parameter styles, which are not available in PostgreSQL.)
is_deterministic | yes_or_no | If the function is declared immutable (called deterministic in the SQL standard), then YES, else NO. (You cannot query the other volatility levels available in PostgreSQL through the information schema.)
sql_data_access | character_data | Always MODIFIES, meaning that the function possibly modifies SQL data. This information is not useful for PostgreSQL.
is_null_call | yes_or_no | If the function automatically returns null if any of its arguments are null, then YES, else NO.
sql_path | character_data | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
schema_level_routine | yes_or_no | Always YES (The opposite would be a method of a user-defined type, which is a feature not available in PostgreSQL.)
max_dynamic_result_sets | cardinal_number | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
is_user_defined_cast | yes_or_no | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
is_implicitly_invocable | yes_or_no | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
security_type | character_data | If the function runs with the privileges of the current user, then INVOKER, if the function runs with the privileges of the user who defined it, then DEFINER.
to_sql_specific_catalog | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
to_sql_specific_schema | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
to_sql_specific_name | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
as_locator | yes_or_no | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
created | time_stamp | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
last_altered | time_stamp | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
new_savepoint_level | yes_or_no | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
is_udt_dependent | yes_or_no | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
result_cast_from_data_type | character_data | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
result_cast_as_locator | yes_or_no | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
result_cast_char_max_length | cardinal_number | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
result_cast_char_octet_length | character_data | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
result_cast_char_set_catalog | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
result_cast_char_set_schema | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
result_cast_char_set_name | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
result_cast_collation_catalog | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
result_cast_collation_schema | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
result_cast_collation_name | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
result_cast_numeric_precision | cardinal_number | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
result_cast_numeric_precision_radix | cardinal_number | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
result_cast_numeric_scale | cardinal_number | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
result_cast_datetime_precision | character_data | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
result_cast_interval_type | character_data | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
result_cast_interval_precision | character_data | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
result_cast_type_udt_catalog | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
result_cast_type_udt_schema | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
result_cast_type_udt_name | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
result_cast_scope_catalog | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
result_cast_scope_schema | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
result_cast_scope_name | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
result_cast_maximum_cardinality | cardinal_number | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
result_cast_dtd_identifier | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
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routine_privileges | Up | schemata


schemata

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34.39. schemata

The view schemata contains all schemas in the current database that are owned by a currently enabled role.

Table 34-37. schemata Columns

Name | Data Type | Description
catalog_name | sql_identifier | Name of the database that the schema is contained in (always the current database)
schema_name | sql_identifier | Name of the schema
schema_owner | sql_identifier | Name of the owner of the schema
default_character_set_catalog | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
default_character_set_schema | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
default_character_set_name | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
sql_path | character_data | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
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routines | Up | sequences


sequences

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34.40. sequences

The view sequences contains all sequences defined in the current database. Only those sequences are shown that the current user has access to (by way of being the owner or having some privilege).

Table 34-38. sequences Columns

Name | Data Type | Description
sequence_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database that contains the sequence (always the current database)
sequence_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema that contains the sequence
sequence_name | sql_identifier | Name of the sequence
data_type | character_data | The data type of the sequence. In PostgreSQL, this is currently always bigint.
numeric_precision | cardinal_number | This column contains the (declared or implicit) precision of the sequence data type (see above). The precision indicates the number of significant digits. It can be expressed in decimal (base 10) or binary (base 2) terms, as specified in the column numeric_precision_radix.
numeric_precision_radix | cardinal_number | This column indicates in which base the values in the columns numeric_precision and numeric_scale are expressed. The value is either 2 or 10.
numeric_scale | cardinal_number | This column contains the (declared or implicit) scale of the sequence data type (see above). The scale indicates the number of significant digits to the right of the decimal point. It can be expressed in decimal (base 10) or binary (base 2) terms, as specified in the column numeric_precision_radix.
start_value | character_data | The start value of the sequence
minimum_value | character_data | The minimum value of the sequence
maximum_value | character_data | The maximum value of the sequence
increment | character_data | The increment of the sequence
cycle_option | yes_or_no | YES if the sequence cycles, else NO

Note that in accordance with the SQL standard, the start, minimum, maximum, and increment values are returned as character strings.

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schemata | Up | sql_features


sql_features

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34.41. sql_features

The table sql_features contains information about which formal features defined in the SQL standard are supported by PostgreSQL. This is the same information that is presented in Appendix D. There you can also find some additional background information.

Table 34-39. sql_features Columns

Name | Data Type | Description
feature_id | character_data | Identifier string of the feature
feature_name | character_data | Descriptive name of the feature
sub_feature_id | character_data | Identifier string of the subfeature, or a zero-length string if not a subfeature
sub_feature_name | character_data | Descriptive name of the subfeature, or a zero-length string if not a subfeature
is_supported | yes_or_no | YES if the feature is fully supported by the current version of PostgreSQL, NO if not
is_verified_by | character_data | Always null, since the PostgreSQL development group does not perform formal testing of feature conformance
comments | character_data | Possibly a comment about the supported status of the feature
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sequences | Up | sql_implementation_info


sql_implementation_info

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34.42. sql_implementation_info

The table sql_implementation_info contains information about various aspects that are left implementation-defined by the SQL standard. This information is primarily intended for use in the context of the ODBC interface; users of other interfaces will probably find this information to be of little use. For this reason, the individual implementation information items are not described here; you will find them in the description of the ODBC interface.

Table 34-40. sql_implementation_info Columns

Name | Data Type | Description
implementation_info_id | character_data | Identifier string of the implementation information item
implementation_info_name | character_data | Descriptive name of the implementation information item
integer_value | cardinal_number | Value of the implementation information item, or null if the value is contained in the column character_value
character_value | character_data | Value of the implementation information item, or null if the value is contained in the column integer_value
comments | character_data | Possibly a comment pertaining to the implementation information item
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sql_features | Up | sql_languages


sql_languages

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34.43. sql_languages

The table sql_languages contains one row for each SQL language binding that is supported by PostgreSQL. PostgreSQL supports direct SQL and embedded SQL in C; that is all you will learn from this table.

This table was removed from the SQL standard in SQL:2008, so there are no entries referring to standards later than SQL:2003.

Table 34-41. sql_languages Columns

Name | Data Type | Description
sql_language_source | character_data | The name of the source of the language definition; always ISO 9075, that is, the SQL standard
sql_language_year | character_data | The year the standard referenced in sql_language_source was approved.
sql_language_conformance | character_data | The standard conformance level for the language binding. For ISO 9075:2003 this is always CORE.
sql_language_integrity | character_data | Always null (This value is relevant to an earlier version of the SQL standard.)
sql_language_implementation | character_data | Always null
sql_language_binding_style | character_data | The language binding style, either DIRECT or EMBEDDED
sql_language_programming_language | character_data | The programming language, if the binding style is EMBEDDED, else null. PostgreSQL only supports the language C.
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sql_implementation_info | Up | sql_packages


sql_packages

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34.44. sql_packages

The table sql_packages contains information about which feature packages defined in the SQL standard are supported by PostgreSQL. Refer to Appendix D for background information on feature packages.

Table 34-42. sql_packages Columns

Name | Data Type | Description
feature_id | character_data | Identifier string of the package
feature_name | character_data | Descriptive name of the package
is_supported | yes_or_no | YES if the package is fully supported by the current version of PostgreSQL, NO if not
is_verified_by | character_data | Always null, since the PostgreSQL development group does not perform formal testing of feature conformance
comments | character_data | Possibly a comment about the supported status of the package
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sql_languages | Up | sql_parts


sql_parts

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34.45. sql_parts

The table sql_parts contains information about which of the several parts of the SQL standard are supported by PostgreSQL.

Table 34-43. sql_parts Columns

Name | Data Type | Description
feature_id | character_data | An identifier string containing the number of the part
feature_name | character_data | Descriptive name of the part
is_supported | yes_or_no | YES if the part is fully supported by the current version of PostgreSQL, NO if not
is_verified_by | character_data | Always null, since the PostgreSQL development group does not perform formal testing of feature conformance
comments | character_data | Possibly a comment about the supported status of the part
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sql_packages | Up | sql_sizing


sql_sizing

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34.46. sql_sizing

The table sql_sizing contains information about various size limits and maximum values in PostgreSQL. This information is primarily intended for use in the context of the ODBC interface; users of other interfaces will probably find this information to be of little use. For this reason, the individual sizing items are not described here; you will find them in the description of the ODBC interface.

Table 34-44. sql_sizing Columns

Name | Data Type | Description
sizing_id | cardinal_number | Identifier of the sizing item
sizing_name | character_data | Descriptive name of the sizing item
supported_value | cardinal_number | Value of the sizing item, or 0 if the size is unlimited or cannot be determined, or null if the features for which the sizing item is applicable are not supported
comments | character_data | Possibly a comment pertaining to the sizing item
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sql_parts | Up | sql_sizing_profiles


sql_sizing_profiles

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34.47. sql_sizing_profiles

The table sql_sizing_profiles contains information about the sql_sizing values that are required by various profiles of the SQL standard. PostgreSQL does not track any SQL profiles, so this table is empty.

Table 34-45. sql_sizing_profiles Columns

Name | Data Type | Description
sizing_id | cardinal_number | Identifier of the sizing item
sizing_name | character_data | Descriptive name of the sizing item
profile_id | character_data | Identifier string of a profile
required_value | cardinal_number | The value required by the SQL profile for the sizing item, or 0 if the profile places no limit on the sizing item, or null if the profile does not require any of the features for which the sizing item is applicable
comments | character_data | Possibly a comment pertaining to the sizing item within the profile
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sql_sizing | Up | table_constraints


table_constraints

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34.48. table_constraints

The view table_constraints contains all constraints belonging to tables that the current user owns or has some non-SELECT privilege on.

Table 34-46. table_constraints Columns

Name | Data Type | Description
constraint_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database that contains the constraint (always the current database)
constraint_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema that contains the constraint
constraint_name | sql_identifier | Name of the constraint
table_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database that contains the table (always the current database)
table_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema that contains the table
table_name | sql_identifier | Name of the table
constraint_type | character_data | Type of the constraint: CHECK, FOREIGN KEY, PRIMARY KEY, or UNIQUE
is_deferrable | yes_or_no | YES if the constraint is deferrable, NO if not
initially_deferred | yes_or_no | YES if the constraint is deferrable and initially deferred, NO if not
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sql_sizing_profiles | Up | table_privileges


table_privileges

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34.49. table_privileges

The view table_privileges identifies all privileges granted on tables or views to a currently enabled role or by a currently enabled role. There is one row for each combination of table, grantor, and grantee.

Table 34-47. table_privileges Columns

Name | Data Type | Description
grantor | sql_identifier | Name of the role that granted the privilege
grantee | sql_identifier | Name of the role that the privilege was granted to
table_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database that contains the table (always the current database)
table_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema that contains the table
table_name | sql_identifier | Name of the table
privilege_type | character_data | Type of the privilege: SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, TRUNCATE, REFERENCES, or TRIGGER
is_grantable | yes_or_no | YES if the privilege is grantable, NO if not
with_hierarchy | yes_or_no | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
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table_constraints | Up | tables


tables

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34.50. tables

The view tables contains all tables and views defined in the current database. Only those tables and views are shown that the current user has access to (by way of being the owner or having some privilege).

Table 34-48. tables Columns

Name | Data Type | Description
table_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database that contains the table (always the current database)
table_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema that contains the table
table_name | sql_identifier | Name of the table
table_type | character_data | Type of the table: BASE TABLE for a persistent base table (the normal table type), VIEW for a view, FOREIGN TABLE for a foreign table, or LOCAL TEMPORARY for a temporary table
self_referencing_column_name | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
reference_generation | character_data | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
user_defined_type_catalog | sql_identifier | If the table is a typed table, the name of the database that contains the underlying data type (always the current database), else null.
user_defined_type_schema | sql_identifier | If the table is a typed table, the name of the schema that contains the underlying data type, else null.
user_defined_type_name | sql_identifier | If the table is a typed table, the name of the underlying data type, else null.
is_insertable_into | yes_or_no | YES if the table is insertable into, NO if not (Base tables are always insertable into, views not necessarily.)
is_typed | yes_or_no | YES if the table is a typed table, NO if not
commit_action | character_data | If the table is a temporary table, then PRESERVE, else null. (The SQL standard defines other commit actions for temporary tables, which are not supported by PostgreSQL.)
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table_privileges | Up | triggered_update_columns


triggered_update_columns

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34.51. triggered_update_columns

For triggers in the current database that specify a column list (like UPDATE OF column1, column2), the view triggered_update_columns identifies these columns. Triggers that do not specify a column list are not included in this view. Only those columns are shown that the current user owns or has some non-SELECT privilege on.

Table 34-49. triggered_update_columns Columns

Name | Data Type | Description
trigger_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database that contains the trigger (always the current database)
trigger_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema that contains the trigger
trigger_name | sql_identifier | Name of the trigger
event_object_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database that contains the table that the trigger is defined on (always the current database)
event_object_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema that contains the table that the trigger is defined on
event_object_table | sql_identifier | Name of the table that the trigger is defined on
event_object_column | sql_identifier | Name of the column that the trigger is defined on
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tables | Up | triggers


triggers

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34.52. triggers

The view triggers contains all triggers defined in the current database on tables and views that the current user owns or has some non-SELECT privilege on.

Table 34-50. triggers Columns

Name | Data Type | Description
trigger_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database that contains the trigger (always the current database)
trigger_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema that contains the trigger
trigger_name | sql_identifier | Name of the trigger
event_manipulation | character_data | Event that fires the trigger (INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE)
event_object_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database that contains the table that the trigger is defined on (always the current database)
event_object_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema that contains the table that the trigger is defined on
event_object_table | sql_identifier | Name of the table that the trigger is defined on
action_order | cardinal_number | Not yet implemented
action_condition | character_data | WHEN condition of the trigger, null if none (also null if the table is not owned by a currently enabled role)
action_statement | character_data | Statement that is executed by the trigger (currently always EXECUTE PROCEDURE function(...))
action_orientation | character_data | Identifies whether the trigger fires once for each processed row or once for each statement (ROW or STATEMENT)
action_timing | character_data | Time at which the trigger fires (BEFORE, AFTER, or INSTEAD OF)
action_reference_old_table | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
action_reference_new_table | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
action_reference_old_row | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
action_reference_new_row | sql_identifier | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
created | time_stamp | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL

Triggers in PostgreSQL have two incompatibilities with the SQL standard that affect the representation in the information schema. First, trigger names are local to each table in PostgreSQL, rather than being independent schema objects. Therefore there can be duplicate trigger names defined in one schema, so long as they belong to different tables. (trigger_catalog and trigger_schema are really the values pertaining to the table that the trigger is defined on.) Second, triggers can be defined to fire on multiple events in PostgreSQL (e.g., ON INSERT OR UPDATE), whereas the SQL standard only allows one. If a trigger is defined to fire on multiple events, it is represented as multiple rows in the information schema, one for each type of event. As a consequence of these two issues, the primary key of the view triggers is really (trigger_catalog, trigger_schema, event_object_table, trigger_name, event_manipulation) instead of (trigger_catalog, trigger_schema, trigger_name), which is what the SQL standard specifies. Nonetheless, if you define your triggers in a manner that conforms with the SQL standard (trigger names unique in the schema and only one event type per trigger), this will not affect you.

Note: Prior to PostgreSQL 9.1, this view's columns action_timing, action_reference_old_table, action_reference_new_table, action_reference_old_row, and action_reference_new_row were named condition_timing, condition_reference_old_table, condition_reference_new_table, condition_reference_old_row, and condition_reference_new_row respectively. That was how they were named in the SQL:1999 standard. The new naming conforms to SQL:2003 and later.

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triggered_update_columns | Up | usage_privileges


usage_privileges

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34.53. usage_privileges

The view usage_privileges identifies USAGE privileges granted on various kinds of objects to a currently enabled role or by a currently enabled role. In PostgreSQL, this currently applies to collations, domains, foreign-data wrappers, and foreign servers. There is one row for each combination of object, grantor, and grantee.

Since collations and domains do not have real privileges in PostgreSQL, this view shows implicit non-grantable USAGE privileges granted by the owner to PUBLIC for all collations and domains. The other object types, however, show real privileges.

Table 34-51. usage_privileges Columns

Name | Data Type | Description
grantor | sql_identifier | Name of the role that granted the privilege
grantee | sql_identifier | Name of the role that the privilege was granted to
object_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database containing the object (always the current database)
object_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema containing the object, if applicable, else an empty string
object_name | sql_identifier | Name of the object
object_type | character_data | COLLATION or DOMAIN or FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER or FOREIGN SERVER
privilege_type | character_data | Always USAGE
is_grantable | yes_or_no | YES if the privilege is grantable, NO if not
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triggers | Up | user_mapping_options


user_mapping_options

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34.54. user_mapping_options

The view user_mapping_options contains all the options defined for user mappings in the current database. Only those user mappings are shown where the current user has access to the corresponding foreign server (by way of being the owner or having some privilege).

Table 34-52. user_mapping_options Columns

Name | Data Type | Description
authorization_identifier | sql_identifier | Name of the user being mapped, or PUBLIC if the mapping is public
foreign_server_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database that the foreign server used by this mapping is defined in (always the current database)
foreign_server_name | sql_identifier | Name of the foreign server used by this mapping
option_name | sql_identifier | Name of an option
option_value | character_data | Value of the option. This column will show as null unless the current user is the user being mapped, or the mapping is for PUBLIC and the current user is the server owner, or the current user is a superuser. The intent is to protect password information stored as user mapping option.
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usage_privileges | Up | user_mappings


user_mappings

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34.55. user_mappings

The view user_mappings contains all user mappings defined in the current database. Only those user mappings are shown where the current user has access to the corresponding foreign server (by way of being the owner or having some privilege).

Table 34-53. user_mappings Columns

Name | Data Type | Description
authorization_identifier | sql_identifier | Name of the user being mapped, or PUBLIC if the mapping is public
foreign_server_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database that the foreign server used by this mapping is defined in (always the current database)
foreign_server_name | sql_identifier | Name of the foreign server used by this mapping
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user_mapping_options | Up | view_column_usage


view_column_usage

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34.56. view_column_usage

The view view_column_usage identifies all columns that are used in the query expression of a view (the SELECT statement that defines the view). A column is only included if the table that contains the column is owned by a currently enabled role.

Note: Columns of system tables are not included. This should be fixed sometime.

Table 34-54. view_column_usage Columns

Name | Data Type | Description
view_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database that contains the view (always the current database)
view_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema that contains the view
view_name | sql_identifier | Name of the view
table_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database that contains the table that contains the column that is used by the view (always the current database)
table_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema that contains the table that contains the column that is used by the view
table_name | sql_identifier | Name of the table that contains the column that is used by the view
column_name | sql_identifier | Name of the column that is used by the view
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user_mappings | Up | view_routine_usage


view_routine_usage

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34.57. view_routine_usage

The view view_routine_usage identifies all routines (functions and procedures) that are used in the query expression of a view (the SELECT statement that defines the view). A routine is only included if that routine is owned by a currently enabled role.

Table 34-55. view_routine_usage Columns

Name | Data Type | Description
table_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database containing the view (always the current database)
table_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema containing the view
table_name | sql_identifier | Name of the view
specific_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database containing the function (always the current database)
specific_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema containing the function
specific_name | sql_identifier | The "specific name" of the function. See Section 34.38 for more information.
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view_column_usage | Up | view_table_usage


view_table_usage

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34.58. view_table_usage

The view view_table_usage identifies all tables that are used in the query expression of a view (the SELECT statement that defines the view). A table is only included if that table is owned by a currently enabled role.

Note: System tables are not included. This should be fixed sometime.

Table 34-56. view_table_usage Columns

Name | Data Type | Description
view_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database that contains the view (always the current database)
view_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema that contains the view
view_name | sql_identifier | Name of the view
table_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database that contains the table that is used by the view (always the current database)
table_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema that contains the table that is used by the view
table_name | sql_identifier | Name of the table that is used by the view
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view_routine_usage | Up | views


views

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34.59. views

The view views contains all views defined in the current database. Only those views are shown that the current user has access to (by way of being the owner or having some privilege).

Table 34-57. views Columns

Name | Data Type | Description
table_catalog | sql_identifier | Name of the database that contains the view (always the current database)
table_schema | sql_identifier | Name of the schema that contains the view
table_name | sql_identifier | Name of the view
view_definition | character_data | Query expression defining the view (null if the view is not owned by a currently enabled role)
check_option | character_data | Applies to a feature not available in PostgreSQL
is_updatable | yes_or_no | YES if the view is updatable (allows UPDATE and DELETE), NO if not
is_insertable_into | yes_or_no | YES if the view is insertable into (allows INSERT), NO if not
is_trigger_updatable | yes_or_no | YES if the view has an INSTEAD OF UPDATE trigger defined on it, NO if not
is_trigger_deletable | yes_or_no | YES if the view has an INSTEAD OF DELETE trigger defined on it, NO if not
is_trigger_insertable_into | yes_or_no | YES if the view has an INSTEAD OF INSERT trigger defined on it, NO if not
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view_table_usage | Up | Server Programming


Server Programming

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V. Server Programming

This part is about extending the server functionality with user-defined functions, data types, triggers, etc. These are advanced topics which should probably be approached only after all the other user documentation about PostgreSQL has been understood. Later chapters in this part describe the server-side programming languages available in the PostgreSQL distribution as well as general issues concerning server-side programming languages. It is essential to read at least the earlier sections of Chapter 35 (covering functions) before diving into the material about server-side programming languages.

Table of Contents
35. Extending SQL
35.1. How Extensibility Works
35.2. The PostgreSQL Type System
35.3. User-defined Functions
35.4. Query Language (SQL) Functions
35.5. Function Overloading
35.6. Function Volatility Categories
35.7. Procedural Language Functions
35.8. Internal Functions
35.9. C-Language Functions
35.10. User-defined Aggregates
35.11. User-defined Types
35.12. User-defined Operators
35.13. Operator Optimization Information
35.14. Interfacing Extensions To Indexes
35.15. Packaging Related Objects into an Extension
35.16. Extension Building Infrastructure
36. Triggers
36.1. Overview of Trigger Behavior
36.2. Visibility of Data Changes
36.3. Writing Trigger Functions in C
36.4. A Complete Trigger Example
37. The Rule System
37.1. The Query Tree
37.2. Views and the Rule System
37.3. Rules on INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE
37.4. Rules and Privileges
37.5. Rules and Command Status
37.6. Rules Versus Triggers
38. Procedural Languages
38.1. Installing Procedural Languages
39. PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language
39.1. Overview
39.2. Structure of PL/pgSQL
39.3. Declarations
39.4. Expressions
39.5. Basic Statements
39.6. Control Structures
39.7. Cursors
39.8. Errors and Messages
39.9. Trigger Procedures
39.10. PL/pgSQL Under the Hood
39.11. Tips for Developing in PL/pgSQL
39.12. Porting from Oracle PL/SQL
40. PL/Tcl - Tcl Procedural Language
40.1. Overview
40.2. PL/Tcl Functions and Arguments
40.3. Data Values in PL/Tcl
40.4. Global Data in PL/Tcl
40.5. Database Access from PL/Tcl
40.6. Trigger Procedures in PL/Tcl
40.7. Modules and the unknown Command
40.8. Tcl Procedure Names
41. PL/Perl - Perl Procedural Language
41.1. PL/Perl Functions and Arguments
41.2. Data Values in PL/Perl
41.3. Built-in Functions
41.4. Global Values in PL/Perl
41.5. Trusted and Untrusted PL/Perl
41.6. PL/Perl Triggers
41.7. PL/Perl Under the Hood
42. PL/Python - Python Procedural Language
42.1. Python 2 vs. Python 3
42.2. PL/Python Functions
42.3. Data Values
42.4. Sharing Data
42.5. Anonymous Code Blocks
42.6. Trigger Functions
42.7. Database Access
42.8. Explicit Subtransactions
42.9. Utility Functions
42.10. Environment Variables
43. Server Programming Interface
43.1. Interface Functions
43.2. Interface Support Functions
43.3. Memory Management
43.4. Visibility of Data Changes
43.5. Examples
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views |  | Extending SQL


Extending SQL

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Chapter 35. Extending SQL

Table of Contents
35.1. How Extensibility Works
35.2. The PostgreSQL Type System
35.2.1. Base Types
35.2.2. Composite Types
35.2.3. Domains
35.2.4. Pseudo-Types
35.2.5. Polymorphic Types
35.3. User-defined Functions
35.4. Query Language (SQL) Functions
35.4.1. SQL Functions on Base Types
35.4.2. SQL Functions on Composite Types
35.4.3. SQL Functions with Parameter Names
35.4.4. SQL Functions with Output Parameters
35.4.5. SQL Functions with Variable Numbers of Arguments
35.4.6. SQL Functions with Default Values for Arguments
35.4.7. SQL Functions as Table Sources
35.4.8. SQL Functions Returning Sets
35.4.9. SQL Functions Returning TABLE
35.4.10. Polymorphic SQL Functions
35.4.11. SQL Functions with Collations
35.5. Function Overloading
35.6. Function Volatility Categories
35.7. Procedural Language Functions
35.8. Internal Functions
35.9. C-Language Functions
35.9.1. Dynamic Loading
35.9.2. Base Types in C-Language Functions
35.9.3. Version 0 Calling Conventions
35.9.4. Version 1 Calling Conventions
35.9.5. Writing Code
35.9.6. Compiling and Linking Dynamically-loaded Functions
35.9.7. Composite-type Arguments
35.9.8. Returning Rows (Composite Types)
35.9.9. Returning Sets
35.9.10. Polymorphic Arguments and Return Types
35.9.11. Shared Memory and LWLocks
35.9.12. Using C++ for Extensibility
35.10. User-defined Aggregates
35.11. User-defined Types
35.12. User-defined Operators
35.13. Operator Optimization Information
35.13.1. COMMUTATOR
35.13.2. NEGATOR
35.13.3. RESTRICT
35.13.4. JOIN
35.13.5. HASHES
35.13.6. MERGES
35.14. Interfacing Extensions To Indexes
35.14.1. Index Methods and Operator Classes
35.14.2. Index Method Strategies
35.14.3. Index Method Support Routines
35.14.4. An Example
35.14.5. Operator Classes and Operator Families
35.14.6. System Dependencies on Operator Classes
35.14.7. Ordering Operators
35.14.8. Special Features of Operator Classes
35.15. Packaging Related Objects into an Extension
35.15.1. Extension Files
35.15.2. Extension Relocatability
35.15.3. Extension Configuration Tables
35.15.4. Extension Updates
35.15.5. Extension Example
35.16. Extension Building Infrastructure

In the sections that follow, we will discuss how you can extend the PostgreSQL SQL query language by adding:

  • functions (starting in Section 35.3)

  • aggregates (starting in Section 35.10)

  • data types (starting in Section 35.11)

  • operators (starting in Section 35.12)

  • operator classes for indexes (starting in Section 35.14)

  • packages of related objects (starting in Section 35.15)

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How Extensibility Works

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35.1. How Extensibility Works

PostgreSQL is extensible because its operation is catalog-driven. If you are familiar with standard relational database systems, you know that they store information about databases, tables, columns, etc., in what are commonly known as system catalogs. (Some systems call this the data dictionary.) The catalogs appear to the user as tables like any other, but the DBMS stores its internal bookkeeping in them. One key difference between PostgreSQL and standard relational database systems is that PostgreSQL stores much more information in its catalogs: not only information about tables and columns, but also information about data types, functions, access methods, and so on. These tables can be modified by the user, and since PostgreSQL bases its operation on these tables, this means that PostgreSQL can be extended by users. By comparison, conventional database systems can only be extended by changing hardcoded procedures in the source code or by loading modules specially written by the DBMS vendor.

The PostgreSQL server can moreover incorporate user-written code into itself through dynamic loading. That is, the user can specify an object code file (e.g., a shared library) that implements a new type or function, and PostgreSQL will load it as required. Code written in SQL is even more trivial to add to the server. This ability to modify its operation "on the fly" makes PostgreSQL uniquely suited for rapid prototyping of new applications and storage structures.

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The PostgreSQL Type System

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35.2. The PostgreSQL Type System

PostgreSQL data types are divided into base types, composite types, domains, and pseudo-types.

35.2.1. Base Types

Base types are those, like int4, that are implemented below the level of the SQL language (typically in a low-level language such as C). They generally correspond to what are often known as abstract data types. PostgreSQL can only operate on such types through functions provided by the user and only understands the behavior of such types to the extent that the user describes them. Base types are further subdivided into scalar and array types. For each scalar type, a corresponding array type is automatically created that can hold variable-size arrays of that scalar type.

35.2.2. Composite Types

Composite types, or row types, are created whenever the user creates a table. It is also possible to use CREATE TYPE to define a "stand-alone" composite type with no associated table. A composite type is simply a list of types with associated field names. A value of a composite type is a row or record of field values. The user can access the component fields from SQL queries. Refer to Section 8.15 for more information on composite types.

35.2.3. Domains

A domain is based on a particular base type and for many purposes is interchangeable with its base type. However, a domain can have constraints that restrict its valid values to a subset of what the underlying base type would allow.

Domains can be created using the SQL command CREATE DOMAIN. Their creation and use is not discussed in this chapter.

35.2.4. Pseudo-Types

There are a few "pseudo-types" for special purposes. Pseudo-types cannot appear as columns of tables or attributes of composite types, but they can be used to declare the argument and result types of functions. This provides a mechanism within the type system to identify special classes of functions. Table 8-24 lists the existing pseudo-types.

35.2.5. Polymorphic Types

Four pseudo-types of special interest are anyelement, anyarray, anynonarray, and anyenum, which are collectively called polymorphic types. Any function declared using these types is said to be a polymorphic function. A polymorphic function can operate on many different data types, with the specific data type(s) being determined by the data types actually passed to it in a particular call.

Polymorphic arguments and results are tied to each other and are resolved to a specific data type when a query calling a polymorphic function is parsed. Each position (either argument or return value) declared as anyelement is allowed to have any specific actual data type, but in any given call they must all be the same actual type. Each position declared as anyarray can have any array data type, but similarly they must all be the same type. If there are positions declared anyarray and others declared anyelement, the actual array type in the anyarray positions must be an array whose elements are the same type appearing in the anyelement positions. anynonarray is treated exactly the same as anyelement, but adds the additional constraint that the actual type must not be an array type. anyenum is treated exactly the same as anyelement, but adds the additional constraint that the actual type must be an enum type.

Thus, when more than one argument position is declared with a polymorphic type, the net effect is that only certain combinations of actual argument types are allowed. For example, a function declared as equal(anyelement, anyelement) will take any two input values, so long as they are of the same data type.

When the return value of a function is declared as a polymorphic type, there must be at least one argument position that is also polymorphic, and the actual data type supplied as the argument determines the actual result type for that call. For example, if there were not already an array subscripting mechanism, one could define a function that implements subscripting as subscript(anyarray, integer) returns anyelement. This declaration constrains the actual first argument to be an array type, and allows the parser to infer the correct result type from the actual first argument's type. Another example is that a function declared as f(anyarray) returns anyenum will only accept arrays of enum types.

Note that anynonarray and anyenum do not represent separate type variables; they are the same type as anyelement, just with an additional constraint. For example, declaring a function as f(anyelement, anyenum) is equivalent to declaring it as f(anyenum, anyenum): both actual arguments have to be the same enum type.

A variadic function (one taking a variable number of arguments, as in Section 35.4.5) can be polymorphic: this is accomplished by declaring its last parameter as VARIADIC anyarray. For purposes of argument matching and determining the actual result type, such a function behaves the same as if you had written the appropriate number of anynonarray parameters.

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User-defined Functions

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35.3. User-defined Functions

PostgreSQL provides four kinds of functions:

  • query language functions (functions written in SQL) (Section 35.4)

  • procedural language functions (functions written in, for example, PL/pgSQL or PL/Tcl) (Section 35.7)

  • internal functions (Section 35.8)

  • C-language functions (Section 35.9)

Every kind of function can take base types, composite types, or combinations of these as arguments (parameters). In addition, every kind of function can return a base type or a composite type. Functions can also be defined to return sets of base or composite values.

Many kinds of functions can take or return certain pseudo-types (such as polymorphic types), but the available facilities vary. Consult the description of each kind of function for more details.

It's easiest to define SQL functions, so we'll start by discussing those. Most of the concepts presented for SQL functions will carry over to the other types of functions.

Throughout this chapter, it can be useful to look at the reference page of the CREATE FUNCTION command to understand the examples better. Some examples from this chapter can be found in funcs.sql and funcs.c in the src/tutorial directory in the PostgreSQL source distribution.

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Query Language (SQL) Functions

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35.4. Query Language (SQL) Functions

SQL functions execute an arbitrary list of SQL statements, returning the result of the last query in the list. In the simple (non-set) case, the first row of the last query's result will be returned. (Bear in mind that "the first row" of a multirow result is not well-defined unless you use ORDER BY.) If the last query happens to return no rows at all, the null value will be returned.

Alternatively, an SQL function can be declared to return a set, by specifying the function's return type as SETOF sometype, or equivalently by declaring it as RETURNS TABLE(columns). In this case all rows of the last query's result are returned. Further details appear below.

The body of an SQL function must be a list of SQL statements separated by semicolons. A semicolon after the last statement is optional. Unless the function is declared to return void, the last statement must be a SELECT, or an INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE that has a RETURNING clause.

Any collection of commands in the SQL language can be packaged together and defined as a function. Besides SELECT queries, the commands can include data modification queries (INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE), as well as other SQL commands. (You cannot use transaction control commands, e.g. COMMIT, SAVEPOINT, and some utility commands, e.g. VACUUM, in SQL functions.) However, the final command must be a SELECT or have a RETURNING clause that returns whatever is specified as the function's return type. Alternatively, if you want to define a SQL function that performs actions but has no useful value to return, you can define it as returning void. For example, this function removes rows with negative salaries from the emp table:

CREATE FUNCTION clean_emp() RETURNS void AS '
    DELETE FROM emp
        WHERE salary < 0;
' LANGUAGE SQL;

SELECT clean_emp();

 clean_emp
-----------

(1 row)

The syntax of the CREATE FUNCTION command requires the function body to be written as a string constant. It is usually most convenient to use dollar quoting (see Section 4.1.2.4) for the string constant. If you choose to use regular single-quoted string constant syntax, you must double single quote marks (') and backslashes (\) (assuming escape string syntax) in the body of the function (see Section 4.1.2.1).

Arguments to the SQL function are referenced in the function body using the syntax $n: $1 refers to the first argument, $2 to the second, and so on. If an argument is of a composite type, then the dot notation, e.g., $1.name, can be used to access attributes of the argument. The arguments can only be used as data values, not as identifiers. Thus for example this is reasonable:

INSERT INTO mytable VALUES ($1);

but this will not work:

INSERT INTO $1 VALUES (42);

35.4.1. SQL Functions on Base Types

The simplest possible SQL function has no arguments and simply returns a base type, such as integer:

CREATE FUNCTION one() RETURNS integer AS $$
    SELECT 1 AS result;
$$ LANGUAGE SQL;

-- Alternative syntax for string literal:
CREATE FUNCTION one() RETURNS integer AS '
    SELECT 1 AS result;
' LANGUAGE SQL;

SELECT one();

 one
-----
   1

Notice that we defined a column alias within the function body for the result of the function (with the name result), but this column alias is not visible outside the function. Hence, the result is labeled one instead of result.

It is almost as easy to define SQL functions that take base types as arguments. In the example below, notice how we refer to the arguments within the function as $1 and $2.

CREATE FUNCTION add_em(integer, integer) RETURNS integer AS $$
    SELECT $1 + $2;
$$ LANGUAGE SQL;

SELECT add_em(1, 2) AS answer;

 answer
--------
      3

Here is a more useful function, which might be used to debit a bank account:

CREATE FUNCTION tf1 (integer, numeric) RETURNS integer AS $$
    UPDATE bank
        SET balance = balance - $2
        WHERE accountno = $1;
    SELECT 1;
$$ LANGUAGE SQL;

A user could execute this function to debit account 17 by $100.00 as follows:

SELECT tf1(17, 100.0);

In practice one would probably like a more useful result from the function than a constant 1, so a more likely definition is:

CREATE FUNCTION tf1 (integer, numeric) RETURNS numeric AS $$
    UPDATE bank
        SET balance = balance - $2
        WHERE accountno = $1;
    SELECT balance FROM bank WHERE accountno = $1;
$$ LANGUAGE SQL;

which adjusts the balance and returns the new balance. The same thing could be done in one command using RETURNING:

CREATE FUNCTION tf1 (integer, numeric) RETURNS numeric AS $$
    UPDATE bank
        SET balance = balance - $2
        WHERE accountno = $1
    RETURNING balance;
$$ LANGUAGE SQL;

35.4.2. SQL Functions on Composite Types

When writing functions with arguments of composite types, we must not only specify which argument we want (as we did above with $1 and $2) but also the desired attribute (field) of that argument. For example, suppose that emp is a table containing employee data, and therefore also the name of the composite type of each row of the table. Here is a function double_salary that computes what someone's salary would be if it were doubled:

CREATE TABLE emp (
    name        text,
    salary      numeric,
    age         integer,
    cubicle     point
);

INSERT INTO emp VALUES ('Bill', 4200, 45, '(2,1)');

CREATE FUNCTION double_salary(emp) RETURNS numeric AS $$
    SELECT $1.salary * 2 AS salary;
$$ LANGUAGE SQL;

SELECT name, double_salary(emp.*) AS dream
    FROM emp
    WHERE emp.cubicle ~= point '(2,1)';

 name | dream
------+-------
 Bill |  8400

Notice the use of the syntax $1.salary to select one field of the argument row value. Also notice how the calling SELECT command uses * to select the entire current row of a table as a composite value. The table row can alternatively be referenced using just the table name, like this:

SELECT name, double_salary(emp) AS dream
    FROM emp
    WHERE emp.cubicle ~= point '(2,1)';

but this usage is deprecated since it's easy to get confused.

Sometimes it is handy to construct a composite argument value on-the-fly. This can be done with the ROW construct. For example, we could adjust the data being passed to the function:

SELECT name, double_salary(ROW(name, salary*1.1, age, cubicle)) AS dream
    FROM emp;

It is also possible to build a function that returns a composite type. This is an example of a function that returns a single emp row:

CREATE FUNCTION new_emp() RETURNS emp AS $$
    SELECT text 'None' AS name,
        1000.0 AS salary,
        25 AS age,
        point '(2,2)' AS cubicle;
$$ LANGUAGE SQL;

In this example we have specified each of the attributes with a constant value, but any computation could have been substituted for these constants.

Note two important things about defining the function:

  • The select list order in the query must be exactly the same as that in which the columns appear in the table associated with the composite type. (Naming the columns, as we did above, is irrelevant to the system.)

  • You must typecast the expressions to match the definition of the composite type, or you will get errors like this:

    ERROR:  function declared to return emp returns varchar instead of text at column 1

A different way to define the same function is:

CREATE FUNCTION new_emp() RETURNS emp AS $$
    SELECT ROW('None', 1000.0, 25, '(2,2)')::emp;
$$ LANGUAGE SQL;

Here we wrote a SELECT that returns just a single column of the correct composite type. This isn't really better in this situation, but it is a handy alternative in some cases — for example, if we need to compute the result by calling another function that returns the desired composite value.

We could call this function directly in either of two ways:

SELECT new_emp();

         new_emp
--------------------------
 (None,1000.0,25,"(2,2)")

SELECT * FROM new_emp();

 name | salary | age | cubicle
------+--------+-----+---------
 None | 1000.0 |  25 | (2,2)

The second way is described more fully in Section 35.4.7.

When you use a function that returns a composite type, you might want only one field (attribute) from its result. You can do that with syntax like this:

SELECT (new_emp()).name;

 name
------
 None

The extra parentheses are needed to keep the parser from getting confused. If you try to do it without them, you get something like this:

SELECT new_emp().name;
ERROR:  syntax error at or near "."
LINE 1: SELECT new_emp().name;
                        ^

Another option is to use functional notation for extracting an attribute. The simple way to explain this is that we can use the notations attribute(table) and table.attribute interchangeably.

SELECT name(new_emp());

 name
------
 None

-- This is the same as:
-- SELECT emp.name AS youngster FROM emp WHERE emp.age < 30;

SELECT name(emp) AS youngster FROM emp WHERE age(emp) < 30;

 youngster
-----------
 Sam
 Andy

Tip: The equivalence between functional notation and attribute notation makes it possible to use functions on composite types to emulate "computed fields". For example, using the previous definition for double_salary(emp), we can write

SELECT emp.name, emp.double_salary FROM emp;

An application using this wouldn't need to be directly aware that double_salary isn't a real column of the table. (You can also emulate computed fields with views.)

Because of this behavior, it's unwise to give a function that takes a single composite-type argument the same name as any of the fields of that composite type.

Another way to use a function returning a composite type is to pass the result to another function that accepts the correct row type as input:

CREATE FUNCTION getname(emp) RETURNS text AS $$
    SELECT $1.name;
$$ LANGUAGE SQL;

SELECT getname(new_emp());
 getname
---------
 None
(1 row)

Still another way to use a function that returns a composite type is to call it as a table function, as described in Section 35.4.7.

35.4.3. SQL Functions with Parameter Names

It is possible to attach names to a function's parameters, for example

CREATE FUNCTION tf1 (acct_no integer, debit numeric) RETURNS numeric AS $$
    UPDATE bank
        SET balance = balance - $2
        WHERE accountno = $1
    RETURNING balance;
$$ LANGUAGE SQL;

Here the first parameter has been given the name acct_no, and the second parameter the name debit. So far as the SQL function itself is concerned, these names are just decoration; you must still refer to the parameters as $1, $2, etc within the function body. (Some procedural languages let you use the parameter names instead.) However, attaching names to the parameters is useful for documentation purposes. When a function has many parameters, it is also useful to use the names while calling the function, as described in Section 4.3.

35.4.4. SQL Functions with Output Parameters

An alternative way of describing a function's results is to define it with output parameters, as in this example:

CREATE FUNCTION add_em (IN x int, IN y int, OUT sum int)
AS 'SELECT $1 + $2'
LANGUAGE SQL;

SELECT add_em(3,7);
 add_em
--------
     10
(1 row)

This is not essentially different from the version of add_em shown in Section 35.4.1. The real value of output parameters is that they provide a convenient way of defining functions that return several columns. For example,

CREATE FUNCTION sum_n_product (x int, y int, OUT sum int, OUT product int)
AS 'SELECT $1 + $2, $1 * $2'
LANGUAGE SQL;

 SELECT * FROM sum_n_product(11,42);
 sum | product
-----+---------
  53 |     462
(1 row)

What has essentially happened here is that we have created an anonymous composite type for the result of the function. The above example has the same end result as

CREATE TYPE sum_prod AS (sum int, product int);

CREATE FUNCTION sum_n_product (int, int) RETURNS sum_prod
AS 'SELECT $1 + $2, $1 * $2'
LANGUAGE SQL;

but not having to bother with the separate composite type definition is often handy. Notice that the names attached to the output parameters are not just decoration, but determine the column names of the anonymous composite type. (If you omit a name for an output parameter, the system will choose a name on its own.)

Notice that output parameters are not included in the calling argument list when invoking such a function from SQL. This is because PostgreSQL considers only the input parameters to define the function's calling signature. That means also that only the input parameters matter when referencing the function for purposes such as dropping it. We could drop the above function with either of

DROP FUNCTION sum_n_product (x int, y int, OUT sum int, OUT product int);
DROP FUNCTION sum_n_product (int, int);

Parameters can be marked as IN (the default), OUT, INOUT, or VARIADIC. An INOUT parameter serves as both an input parameter (part of the calling argument list) and an output parameter (part of the result record type). VARIADIC parameters are input parameters, but are treated specially as described next.

35.4.5. SQL Functions with Variable Numbers of Arguments

SQL functions can be declared to accept variable numbers of arguments, so long as all the "optional" arguments are of the same data type. The optional arguments will be passed to the function as an array. The function is declared by marking the last parameter as VARIADIC; this parameter must be declared as being of an array type. For example:

CREATE FUNCTION mleast(VARIADIC arr numeric[]) RETURNS numeric AS $$
    SELECT min($1[i]) FROM generate_subscripts($1, 1) g(i);
$$ LANGUAGE SQL;

SELECT mleast(10, -1, 5, 4.4);
 mleast
--------
     -1
(1 row)

Effectively, all the actual arguments at or beyond the VARIADIC position are gathered up into a one-dimensional array, as if you had written

SELECT mleast(ARRAY[10, -1, 5, 4.4]);    -- doesn't work

You can't actually write that, though — or at least, it will not match this function definition. A parameter marked VARIADIC matches one or more occurrences of its element type, not of its own type.

Sometimes it is useful to be able to pass an already-constructed array to a variadic function; this is particularly handy when one variadic function wants to pass on its array parameter to another one. You can do that by specifying VARIADIC in the call:

SELECT mleast(VARIADIC ARRAY[10, -1, 5, 4.4]);

This prevents expansion of the function's variadic parameter into its element type, thereby allowing the array argument value to match normally. VARIADIC can only be attached to the last actual argument of a function call.

Specifying VARIADIC in the call is also the only way to pass an empty array to a variadic function, for example:

SELECT mleast(VARIADIC ARRAY[]::numeric[]);

Simply writing SELECT mleast() does not work because a variadic parameter must match at least one actual argument. (You could define a second function also named mleast, with no parameters, if you wanted to allow such calls.)

The array element parameters generated from a variadic parameter are treated as not having any names of their own. This means it is not possible to call a variadic function using named arguments (Section 4.3), except when you specify VARIADIC. For example, this will work:

SELECT mleast(VARIADIC arr := ARRAY[10, -1, 5, 4.4]);

but not these:

SELECT mleast(arr := 10);
SELECT mleast(arr := ARRAY[10, -1, 5, 4.4]);

35.4.6. SQL Functions with Default Values for Arguments

Functions can be declared with default values for some or all input arguments. The default values are inserted whenever the function is called with insufficiently many actual arguments. Since arguments can only be omitted from the end of the actual argument list, all parameters after a parameter with a default value have to have default values as well. (Although the use of named argument notation could allow this restriction to be relaxed, it's still enforced so that positional argument notation works sensibly.)

For example:

CREATE FUNCTION foo(a int, b int DEFAULT 2, c int DEFAULT 3)
RETURNS int
LANGUAGE SQL
AS $$
    SELECT $1 + $2 + $3;
$$;

SELECT foo(10, 20, 30);
 foo
-----
  60
(1 row)

SELECT foo(10, 20);
 foo
-----
  33
(1 row)

SELECT foo(10);
 foo
-----
  15
(1 row)

SELECT foo();  -- fails since there is no default for the first argument
ERROR:  function foo() does not exist

The = sign can also be used in place of the key word DEFAULT.

35.4.7. SQL Functions as Table Sources

All SQL functions can be used in the FROM clause of a query, but it is particularly useful for functions returning composite types. If the function is defined to return a base type, the table function produces a one-column table. If the function is defined to return a composite type, the table function produces a column for each attribute of the composite type.

Here is an example:

CREATE TABLE foo (fooid int, foosubid int, fooname text);
INSERT INTO foo VALUES (1, 1, 'Joe');
INSERT INTO foo VALUES (1, 2, 'Ed');
INSERT INTO foo VALUES (2, 1, 'Mary');

CREATE FUNCTION getfoo(int) RETURNS foo AS $$
    SELECT * FROM foo WHERE fooid = $1;
$$ LANGUAGE SQL;

SELECT *, upper(fooname) FROM getfoo(1) AS t1;

 fooid | foosubid | fooname | upper
-------+----------+---------+-------
     1 |        1 | Joe     | JOE
(1 row)

As the example shows, we can work with the columns of the function's result just the same as if they were columns of a regular table.

Note that we only got one row out of the function. This is because we did not use SETOF. That is described in the next section.

35.4.8. SQL Functions Returning Sets

When an SQL function is declared as returning SETOF sometype, the function's final query is executed to completion, and each row it outputs is returned as an element of the result set.

This feature is normally used when calling the function in the FROM clause. In this case each row returned by the function becomes a row of the table seen by the query. For example, assume that table foo has the same contents as above, and we say:

CREATE FUNCTION getfoo(int) RETURNS SETOF foo AS $$
    SELECT * FROM foo WHERE fooid = $1;
$$ LANGUAGE SQL;

SELECT * FROM getfoo(1) AS t1;

Then we would get:

 fooid | foosubid | fooname
-------+----------+---------
     1 |        1 | Joe
     1 |        2 | Ed
(2 rows)

It is also possible to return multiple rows with the columns defined by output parameters, like this:

CREATE TABLE tab (y int, z int);
INSERT INTO tab VALUES (1, 2), (3, 4), (5, 6), (7, 8);

CREATE FUNCTION sum_n_product_with_tab (x int, OUT sum int, OUT product int)
RETURNS SETOF record
AS $$
    SELECT $1 + tab.y, $1 * tab.y FROM tab;
$$ LANGUAGE SQL;

SELECT * FROM sum_n_product_with_tab(10);
 sum | product
-----+---------
  11 |      10
  13 |      30
  15 |      50
  17 |      70
(4 rows)

The key point here is that you must write RETURNS SETOF record to indicate that the function returns multiple rows instead of just one. If there is only one output parameter, write that parameter's type instead of record.

Currently, functions returning sets can also be called in the select list of a query. For each row that the query generates by itself, the function returning set is invoked, and an output row is generated for each element of the function's result set. Note, however, that this capability is deprecated and might be removed in future releases. The following is an example function returning a set from the select list:

CREATE FUNCTION listchildren(text) RETURNS SETOF text AS $$
    SELECT name FROM nodes WHERE parent = $1
$$ LANGUAGE SQL;

SELECT * FROM nodes;
   name    | parent
-----------+--------
 Top       |
 Child1    | Top
 Child2    | Top
 Child3    | Top
 SubChild1 | Child1
 SubChild2 | Child1
(6 rows)

SELECT listchildren('Top');
 listchildren
--------------
 Child1
 Child2
 Child3
(3 rows)

SELECT name, listchildren(name) FROM nodes;
  name  | listchildren
--------+--------------
 Top    | Child1
 Top    | Child2
 Top    | Child3
 Child1 | SubChild1
 Child1 | SubChild2
(5 rows)

In the last SELECT, notice that no output row appears for Child2, Child3, etc. This happens because listchildren returns an empty set for those arguments, so no result rows are generated.

Note: If a function's last command is INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE with RETURNING, that command will always be executed to completion, even if the function is not declared with SETOF or the calling query does not fetch all the result rows. Any extra rows produced by the RETURNING clause are silently dropped, but the commanded table modifications still happen (and are all completed before returning from the function).

35.4.9. SQL Functions Returning TABLE

There is another way to declare a function as returning a set, which is to use the syntax RETURNS TABLE(columns). This is equivalent to using one or more OUT parameters plus marking the function as returning SETOF record (or SETOF a single output parameter's type, as appropriate). This notation is specified in recent versions of the SQL standard, and thus may be more portable than using SETOF.

For example, the preceding sum-and-product example could also be done this way:

CREATE FUNCTION sum_n_product_with_tab (x int)
RETURNS TABLE(sum int, product int) AS $$
    SELECT $1 + tab.y, $1 * tab.y FROM tab;
$$ LANGUAGE SQL;

It is not allowed to use explicit OUT or INOUT parameters with the RETURNS TABLE notation — you must put all the output columns in the TABLE list.

35.4.10. Polymorphic SQL Functions

SQL functions can be declared to accept and return the polymorphic types anyelement, anyarray, anynonarray, and anyenum. See Section 35.2.5 for a more detailed explanation of polymorphic functions. Here is a polymorphic function make_array that builds up an array from two arbitrary data type elements:

CREATE FUNCTION make_array(anyelement, anyelement) RETURNS anyarray AS $$
    SELECT ARRAY[$1, $2];
$$ LANGUAGE SQL;

SELECT make_array(1, 2) AS intarray, make_array('a'::text, 'b') AS textarray;
 intarray | textarray
----------+-----------
 {1,2}    | {a,b}
(1 row)

Notice the use of the typecast 'a'::text to specify that the argument is of type text. This is required if the argument is just a string literal, since otherwise it would be treated as type unknown, and array of unknown is not a valid type. Without the typecast, you will get errors like this:

ERROR:  could not determine polymorphic type because input has type "unknown"

It is permitted to have polymorphic arguments with a fixed return type, but the converse is not. For example:

CREATE FUNCTION is_greater(anyelement, anyelement) RETURNS boolean AS $$
    SELECT $1 > $2;
$$ LANGUAGE SQL;

SELECT is_greater(1, 2);
 is_greater
------------
 f
(1 row)

CREATE FUNCTION invalid_func() RETURNS anyelement AS $$
    SELECT 1;
$$ LANGUAGE SQL;
ERROR:  cannot determine result data type
DETAIL:  A function returning a polymorphic type must have at least one polymorphic argument.

Polymorphism can be used with functions that have output arguments. For example:

CREATE FUNCTION dup (f1 anyelement, OUT f2 anyelement, OUT f3 anyarray)
AS 'select $1, array[$1,$1]' LANGUAGE SQL;

SELECT * FROM dup(22);
 f2 |   f3
----+---------
 22 | {22,22}
(1 row)

Polymorphism can also be used with variadic functions. For example:

CREATE FUNCTION anyleast (VARIADIC anyarray) RETURNS anyelement AS $$
    SELECT min($1[i]) FROM generate_subscripts($1, 1) g(i);
$$ LANGUAGE SQL;

SELECT anyleast(10, -1, 5, 4);
 anyleast
----------
       -1
(1 row)

SELECT anyleast('abc'::text, 'def');
 anyleast
----------
 abc
(1 row)

CREATE FUNCTION concat_values(text, VARIADIC anyarray) RETURNS text AS $$
    SELECT array_to_string($2, $1);
$$ LANGUAGE SQL;

SELECT concat_values('|', 1, 4, 2);
 concat_values
---------------
 1|4|2
(1 row)

35.4.11. SQL Functions with Collations

When a SQL function has one or more parameters of collatable data types, a collation is identified for each function call depending on the collations assigned to the actual arguments, as described in Section 22.2. If a collation is successfully identified (i.e., there are no conflicts of implicit collations among the arguments) then all the collatable parameters are treated as having that collation implicitly. This will affect the behavior of collation-sensitive operations within the function. For example, using the anyleast function described above, the result of

SELECT anyleast('abc'::text, 'ABC');

will depend on the database's default collation. In C locale the result will be ABC, but in many other locales it will be abc. The collation to use can be forced by adding a COLLATE clause to any of the arguments, for example

SELECT anyleast('abc'::text, 'ABC' COLLATE "C");

Alternatively, if you wish a function to operate with a particular collation regardless of what it is called with, insert COLLATE clauses as needed in the function definition. This version of anyleast would always use en_US locale to compare strings:

CREATE FUNCTION anyleast (VARIADIC anyarray) RETURNS anyelement AS $$
    SELECT min($1[i] COLLATE "en_US") FROM generate_subscripts($1, 1) g(i);
$$ LANGUAGE SQL;

But note that this will throw an error if applied to a non-collatable data type.

If no common collation can be identified among the actual arguments, then a SQL function treats its parameters as having their data types' default collation (which is usually the database's default collation, but could be different for parameters of domain types).

The behavior of collatable parameters can be thought of as a limited form of polymorphism, applicable only to textual data types.

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Function Overloading

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35.5. Function Overloading

More than one function can be defined with the same SQL name, so long as the arguments they take are different. In other words, function names can be overloaded. When a query is executed, the server will determine which function to call from the data types and the number of the provided arguments. Overloading can also be used to simulate functions with a variable number of arguments, up to a finite maximum number.

When creating a family of overloaded functions, one should be careful not to create ambiguities. For instance, given the functions:

CREATE FUNCTION test(int, real) RETURNS ...
CREATE FUNCTION test(smallint, double precision) RETURNS ...

it is not immediately clear which function would be called with some trivial input like test(1, 1.5). The currently implemented resolution rules are described in Chapter 10, but it is unwise to design a system that subtly relies on this behavior.

A function that takes a single argument of a composite type should generally not have the same name as any attribute (field) of that type. Recall that attribute(table) is considered equivalent to table.attribute. In the case that there is an ambiguity between a function on a composite type and an attribute of the composite type, the attribute will always be used. It is possible to override that choice by schema-qualifying the function name (that is, schema.func(table)) but it's better to avoid the problem by not choosing conflicting names.

Another possible conflict is between variadic and non-variadic functions. For instance, it is possible to create both foo(numeric) and foo(VARIADIC numeric[]). In this case it is unclear which one should be matched to a call providing a single numeric argument, such as foo(10.1). The rule is that the function appearing earlier in the search path is used, or if the two functions are in the same schema, the non-variadic one is preferred.

When overloading C-language functions, there is an additional constraint: The C name of each function in the family of overloaded functions must be different from the C names of all other functions, either internal or dynamically loaded. If this rule is violated, the behavior is not portable. You might get a run-time linker error, or one of the functions will get called (usually the internal one). The alternative form of the AS clause for the SQL CREATE FUNCTION command decouples the SQL function name from the function name in the C source code. For instance:

CREATE FUNCTION test(int) RETURNS int
    AS 'filename', 'test_1arg'
    LANGUAGE C;
CREATE FUNCTION test(int, int) RETURNS int
    AS 'filename', 'test_2arg'
    LANGUAGE C;

The names of the C functions here reflect one of many possible conventions.

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Function Volatility Categories

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35.6. Function Volatility Categories

Every function has a volatility classification, with the possibilities being VOLATILE, STABLE, or IMMUTABLE. VOLATILE is the default if the CREATE FUNCTION command does not specify a category. The volatility category is a promise to the optimizer about the behavior of the function:

  • A VOLATILE function can do anything, including modifying the database. It can return different results on successive calls with the same arguments. The optimizer makes no assumptions about the behavior of such functions. A query using a volatile function will re-evaluate the function at every row where its value is needed.

  • A STABLE function cannot modify the database and is guaranteed to return the same results given the same arguments for all rows within a single statement. This category allows the optimizer to optimize multiple calls of the function to a single call. In particular, it is safe to use an expression containing such a function in an index scan condition. (Since an index scan will evaluate the comparison value only once, not once at each row, it is not valid to use a VOLATILE function in an index scan condition.)

  • An IMMUTABLE function cannot modify the database and is guaranteed to return the same results given the same arguments forever. This category allows the optimizer to pre-evaluate the function when a query calls it with constant arguments. For example, a query like SELECT ... WHERE x = 2 + 2 can be simplified on sight to SELECT ... WHERE x = 4, because the function underlying the integer addition operator is marked IMMUTABLE.

For best optimization results, you should label your functions with the strictest volatility category that is valid for them.

Any function with side-effects must be labeled VOLATILE, so that calls to it cannot be optimized away. Even a function with no side-effects needs to be labeled VOLATILE if its value can change within a single query; some examples are random(), currval(), timeofday().

Another important example is that the current_timestamp family of functions qualify as STABLE, since their values do not change within a transaction.

There is relatively little difference between STABLE and IMMUTABLE categories when considering simple interactive queries that are planned and immediately executed: it doesn't matter a lot whether a function is executed once during planning or once during query execution startup. But there is a big difference if the plan is saved and reused later. Labeling a function IMMUTABLE when it really isn't might allow it to be prematurely folded to a constant during planning, resulting in a stale value being re-used during subsequent uses of the plan. This is a hazard when using prepared statements or when using function languages that cache plans (such as PL/pgSQL).

For functions written in SQL or in any of the standard procedural languages, there is a second important property determined by the volatility category, namely the visibility of any data changes that have been made by the SQL command that is calling the function. A VOLATILE function will see such changes, a STABLE or IMMUTABLE function will not. This behavior is implemented using the snapshotting behavior of MVCC (see Chapter 13): STABLE and IMMUTABLE functions use a snapshot established as of the start of the calling query, whereas VOLATILE functions obtain a fresh snapshot at the start of each query they execute.

Note: Functions written in C can manage snapshots however they want, but it's usually a good idea to make C functions work this way too.

Because of this snapshotting behavior, a function containing only SELECT commands can safely be marked STABLE, even if it selects from tables that might be undergoing modifications by concurrent queries. PostgreSQL will execute all commands of a STABLE function using the snapshot established for the calling query, and so it will see a fixed view of the database throughout that query.

The same snapshotting behavior is used for SELECT commands within IMMUTABLE functions. It is generally unwise to select from database tables within an IMMUTABLE function at all, since the immutability will be broken if the table contents ever change. However, PostgreSQL does not enforce that you do not do that.

A common error is to label a function IMMUTABLE when its results depend on a configuration parameter. For example, a function that manipulates timestamps might well have results that depend on the timezone setting. For safety, such functions should be labeled STABLE instead.

Note: Before PostgreSQL release 8.0, the requirement that STABLE and IMMUTABLE functions cannot modify the database was not enforced by the system. Releases 8.0 and later enforce it by requiring SQL functions and procedural language functions of these categories to contain no SQL commands other than SELECT. (This is not a completely bulletproof test, since such functions could still call VOLATILE functions that modify the database. If you do that, you will find that the STABLE or IMMUTABLE function does not notice the database changes applied by the called function, since they are hidden from its snapshot.)

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Procedural Language Functions

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35.7. Procedural Language Functions

PostgreSQL allows user-defined functions to be written in other languages besides SQL and C. These other languages are generically called procedural languages (PLs). Procedural languages aren't built into the PostgreSQL server; they are offered by loadable modules. See Chapter 38 and following chapters for more information.

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Internal Functions

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35.8. Internal Functions

Internal functions are functions written in C that have been statically linked into the PostgreSQL server. The "body" of the function definition specifies the C-language name of the function, which need not be the same as the name being declared for SQL use. (For reasons of backward compatibility, an empty body is accepted as meaning that the C-language function name is the same as the SQL name.)

Normally, all internal functions present in the server are declared during the initialization of the database cluster (see Section 17.2), but a user could use CREATE FUNCTION to create additional alias names for an internal function. Internal functions are declared in CREATE FUNCTION with language name internal. For instance, to create an alias for the sqrt function:

CREATE FUNCTION square_root(double precision) RETURNS double precision
    AS 'dsqrt'
    LANGUAGE internal
    STRICT;

(Most internal functions expect to be declared "strict".)

Note: Not all "predefined" functions are "internal" in the above sense. Some predefined functions are written in SQL.

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C-Language Functions

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35.9. C-Language Functions

User-defined functions can be written in C (or a language that can be made compatible with C, such as C++). Such functions are compiled into dynamically loadable objects (also called shared libraries) and are loaded by the server on demand. The dynamic loading feature is what distinguishes "C language" functions from "internal" functions — the actual coding conventions are essentially the same for both. (Hence, the standard internal function library is a rich source of coding examples for user-defined C functions.)

Two different calling conventions are currently used for C functions. The newer "version 1" calling convention is indicated by writing a PG_FUNCTION_INFO_V1() macro call for the function, as illustrated below. Lack of such a macro indicates an old-style ("version 0") function. The language name specified in CREATE FUNCTION is C in either case. Old-style functions are now deprecated because of portability problems and lack of functionality, but they are still supported for compatibility reasons.

35.9.1. Dynamic Loading

The first time a user-defined function in a particular loadable object file is called in a session, the dynamic loader loads that object file into memory so that the function can be called. The CREATE FUNCTION for a user-defined C function must therefore specify two pieces of information for the function: the name of the loadable object file, and the C name (link symbol) of the specific function to call within that object file. If the C name is not explicitly specified then it is assumed to be the same as the SQL function name.

The following algorithm is used to locate the shared object file based on the name given in the CREATE FUNCTION command:

  1. If the name is an absolute path, the given file is loaded.

  2. If the name starts with the string $libdir, that part is replaced by the PostgreSQL package library directory name, which is determined at build time.

  3. If the name does not contain a directory part, the file is searched for in the path specified by the configuration variable dynamic_library_path.

  4. Otherwise (the file was not found in the path, or it contains a non-absolute directory part), the dynamic loader will try to take the name as given, which will most likely fail. (It is unreliable to depend on the current working directory.)

If this sequence does not work, the platform-specific shared library file name extension (often .so) is appended to the given name and this sequence is tried again. If that fails as well, the load will fail.

It is recommended to locate shared libraries either relative to $libdir or through the dynamic library path. This simplifies version upgrades if the new installation is at a different location. The actual directory that $libdir stands for can be found out with the command pg_config --pkglibdir.

The user ID the PostgreSQL server runs as must be able to traverse the path to the file you intend to load. Making the file or a higher-level directory not readable and/or not executable by the postgres user is a common mistake.

In any case, the file name that is given in the CREATE FUNCTION command is recorded literally in the system catalogs, so if the file needs to be loaded again the same procedure is applied.

Note: PostgreSQL will not compile a C function automatically. The object file must be compiled before it is referenced in a CREATE FUNCTION command. See Section 35.9.6 for additional information.

To ensure that a dynamically loaded object file is not loaded into an incompatible server, PostgreSQL checks that the file contains a "magic block" with the appropriate contents. This allows the server to detect obvious incompatibilities, such as code compiled for a different major version of PostgreSQL. A magic block is required as of PostgreSQL 8.2. To include a magic block, write this in one (and only one) of the module source files, after having included the header fmgr.h:

#ifdef PG_MODULE_MAGIC
PG_MODULE_MAGIC;
#endif

The #ifdef test can be omitted if the code doesn't need to compile against pre-8.2 PostgreSQL releases.

After it is used for the first time, a dynamically loaded object file is retained in memory. Future calls in the same session to the function(s) in that file will only incur the small overhead of a symbol table lookup. If you need to force a reload of an object file, for example after recompiling it, begin a fresh session.

Optionally, a dynamically loaded file can contain initialization and finalization functions. If the file includes a function named _PG_init, that function will be called immediately after loading the file. The function receives no parameters and should return void. If the file includes a function named _PG_fini, that function will be called immediately before unloading the file. Likewise, the function receives no parameters and should return void. Note that _PG_fini will only be called during an unload of the file, not during process termination. (Presently, unloads are disabled and will never occur, but this may change in the future.)

35.9.2. Base Types in C-Language Functions

To know how to write C-language functions, you need to know how PostgreSQL internally represents base data types and how they can be passed to and from functions. Internally, PostgreSQL regards a base type as a "blob of memory". The user-defined functions that you define over a type in turn define the way that PostgreSQL can operate on it. That is, PostgreSQL will only store and retrieve the data from disk and use your user-defined functions to input, process, and output the data.

Base types can have one of three internal formats:

  • pass by value, fixed-length

  • pass by reference, fixed-length

  • pass by reference, variable-length

By-value types can only be 1, 2, or 4 bytes in length (also 8 bytes, if sizeof(Datum) is 8 on your machine). You should be careful to define your types such that they will be the same size (in bytes) on all architectures. For example, the long type is dangerous because it is 4 bytes on some machines and 8 bytes on others, whereas int type is 4 bytes on most Unix machines. A reasonable implementation of the int4 type on Unix machines might be:

/* 4-byte integer, passed by value */
typedef int int4;

On the other hand, fixed-length types of any size can be passed by-reference. For example, here is a sample implementation of a PostgreSQL type:

/* 16-byte structure, passed by reference */
typedef struct
{
    double  x, y;
} Point;

Only pointers to such types can be used when passing them in and out of PostgreSQL functions. To return a value of such a type, allocate the right amount of memory with palloc, fill in the allocated memory, and return a pointer to it. (Also, if you just want to return the same value as one of your input arguments that's of the same data type, you can skip the extra palloc and just return the pointer to the input value.)

Finally, all variable-length types must also be passed by reference. All variable-length types must begin with a length field of exactly 4 bytes, and all data to be stored within that type must be located in the memory immediately following that length field. The length field contains the total length of the structure, that is, it includes the size of the length field itself.

Another important point is to avoid leaving any uninitialized bits within data type values; for example, take care to zero out any alignment padding bytes that might be present in structs. Without this, logically-equivalent constants of your data type might be seen as unequal by the planner, leading to inefficient (though not incorrect) plans.

Warning

Never modify the contents of a pass-by-reference input value. If you do so you are likely to corrupt on-disk data, since the pointer you are given might point directly into a disk buffer. The sole exception to this rule is explained in Section 35.10.

As an example, we can define the type text as follows:

typedef struct {
    int4 length;
    char data[1];
} text;

Obviously, the data field declared here is not long enough to hold all possible strings. Since it's impossible to declare a variable-size structure in C, we rely on the knowledge that the C compiler won't range-check array subscripts. We just allocate the necessary amount of space and then access the array as if it were declared the right length. (This is a common trick, which you can read about in many textbooks about C.)

When manipulating variable-length types, we must be careful to allocate the correct amount of memory and set the length field correctly. For example, if we wanted to store 40 bytes in a text structure, we might use a code fragment like this:

#include "postgres.h"
...
char buffer[40]; /* our source data */
...
text *destination = (text *) palloc(VARHDRSZ + 40);
SET_VARSIZE(destination, VARHDRSZ + 40);
memcpy(destination->data, buffer, 40);
...

VARHDRSZ is the same as sizeof(int4), but it's considered good style to use the macro VARHDRSZ to refer to the size of the overhead for a variable-length type. Also, the length field must be set using the SET_VARSIZE macro, not by simple assignment.

Table 35-1 specifies which C type corresponds to which SQL type when writing a C-language function that uses a built-in type of PostgreSQL. The "Defined In" column gives the header file that needs to be included to get the type definition. (The actual definition might be in a different file that is included by the listed file. It is recommended that users stick to the defined interface.) Note that you should always include postgres.h first in any source file, because it declares a number of things that you will need anyway.

Table 35-1. Equivalent C Types for Built-in SQL Types

SQL Type | C Type | Defined In
abstime | AbsoluteTime | utils/nabstime.h
boolean | bool | postgres.h (maybe compiler built-in)
box | BOX* | utils/geo_decls.h
bytea | bytea* | postgres.h
"char" | char | (compiler built-in)
character | BpChar* | postgres.h
cid | CommandId | postgres.h
date | DateADT | utils/date.h
smallint (int2) | int2 or int16 | postgres.h
int2vector | int2vector* | postgres.h
integer (int4) | int4 or int32 | postgres.h
real (float4) | float4* | postgres.h
double precision (float8) | float8* | postgres.h
interval | Interval* | utils/timestamp.h
lseg | LSEG* | utils/geo_decls.h
name | Name | postgres.h
oid | Oid | postgres.h
oidvector | oidvector* | postgres.h
path | PATH* | utils/geo_decls.h
point | POINT* | utils/geo_decls.h
regproc | regproc | postgres.h
reltime | RelativeTime | utils/nabstime.h
text | text* | postgres.h
tid | ItemPointer | storage/itemptr.h
time | TimeADT | utils/date.h
time with time zone | TimeTzADT | utils/date.h
timestamp | Timestamp* | utils/timestamp.h
tinterval | TimeInterval | utils/nabstime.h
varchar | VarChar* | postgres.h
xid | TransactionId | postgres.h

Now that we've gone over all of the possible structures for base types, we can show some examples of real functions.

35.9.3. Version 0 Calling Conventions

We present the "old style" calling convention first — although this approach is now deprecated, it's easier to get a handle on initially. In the version-0 method, the arguments and result of the C function are just declared in normal C style, but being careful to use the C representation of each SQL data type as shown above.

Here are some examples:

#include "postgres.h"
#include <string.h>
#include "utils/geo_decls.h"

#ifdef PG_MODULE_MAGIC
PG_MODULE_MAGIC;
#endif

/* by value */

int
add_one(int arg)
{
    return arg + 1;
}

/* by reference, fixed length */

float8 *
add_one_float8(float8 *arg)
{
    float8    *result = (float8 *) palloc(sizeof(float8));

    *result = *arg + 1.0;

    return result;
}

Point *
makepoint(Point *pointx, Point *pointy)
{
    Point     *new_point = (Point *) palloc(sizeof(Point));

    new_point->x = pointx->x;
    new_point->y = pointy->y;

    return new_point;
}

/* by reference, variable length */

text *
copytext(text *t)
{
    /*
     * VARSIZE is the total size of the struct in bytes.
     */
    text *new_t = (text *) palloc(VARSIZE(t));
    SET_VARSIZE(new_t, VARSIZE(t));
    /*
     * VARDATA is a pointer to the data region of the struct.
     */
    memcpy((void *) VARDATA(new_t), /* destination */
           (void *) VARDATA(t),     /* source */
           VARSIZE(t) - VARHDRSZ);  /* how many bytes */
    return new_t;
}

text *
concat_text(text *arg1, text *arg2)
{
    int32 new_text_size = VARSIZE(arg1) + VARSIZE(arg2) - VARHDRSZ;
    text *new_text = (text *) palloc(new_text_size);

    SET_VARSIZE(new_text, new_text_size);
    memcpy(VARDATA(new_text), VARDATA(arg1), VARSIZE(arg1) - VARHDRSZ);
    memcpy(VARDATA(new_text) + (VARSIZE(arg1) - VARHDRSZ),
           VARDATA(arg2), VARSIZE(arg2) - VARHDRSZ);
    return new_text;
}

Supposing that the above code has been prepared in file funcs.c and compiled into a shared object, we could define the functions to PostgreSQL with commands like this:

CREATE FUNCTION add_one(integer) RETURNS integer
     AS 'DIRECTORY/funcs', 'add_one'
     LANGUAGE C STRICT;

-- note overloading of SQL function name "add_one"
CREATE FUNCTION add_one(double precision) RETURNS double precision
     AS 'DIRECTORY/funcs', 'add_one_float8'
     LANGUAGE C STRICT;

CREATE FUNCTION makepoint(point, point) RETURNS point
     AS 'DIRECTORY/funcs', 'makepoint'
     LANGUAGE C STRICT;

CREATE FUNCTION copytext(text) RETURNS text
     AS 'DIRECTORY/funcs', 'copytext'
     LANGUAGE C STRICT;

CREATE FUNCTION concat_text(text, text) RETURNS text
     AS 'DIRECTORY/funcs', 'concat_text'
     LANGUAGE C STRICT;

Here, DIRECTORY stands for the directory of the shared library file (for instance the PostgreSQL tutorial directory, which contains the code for the examples used in this section). (Better style would be to use just 'funcs' in the AS clause, after having added DIRECTORY to the search path. In any case, we can omit the system-specific extension for a shared library, commonly .so or .sl.)

Notice that we have specified the functions as "strict", meaning that the system should automatically assume a null result if any input value is null. By doing this, we avoid having to check for null inputs in the function code. Without this, we'd have to check for null values explicitly, by checking for a null pointer for each pass-by-reference argument. (For pass-by-value arguments, we don't even have a way to check!)

Although this calling convention is simple to use, it is not very portable; on some architectures there are problems with passing data types that are smaller than int this way. Also, there is no simple way to return a null result, nor to cope with null arguments in any way other than making the function strict. The version-1 convention, presented next, overcomes these objections.

35.9.4. Version 1 Calling Conventions

The version-1 calling convention relies on macros to suppress most of the complexity of passing arguments and results. The C declaration of a version-1 function is always:

Datum funcname(PG_FUNCTION_ARGS)

In addition, the macro call:

PG_FUNCTION_INFO_V1(funcname);

must appear in the same source file. (Conventionally, it's written just before the function itself.) This macro call is not needed for internal-language functions, since PostgreSQL assumes that all internal functions use the version-1 convention. It is, however, required for dynamically-loaded functions.

In a version-1 function, each actual argument is fetched using a PG_GETARG_xxx() macro that corresponds to the argument's data type, and the result is returned using a PG_RETURN_xxx() macro for the return type. PG_GETARG_xxx() takes as its argument the number of the function argument to fetch, where the count starts at 0. PG_RETURN_xxx() takes as its argument the actual value to return.

Here we show the same functions as above, coded in version-1 style:

#include "postgres.h"
#include <string.h>
#include "fmgr.h"
#include "utils/geo_decls.h"

#ifdef PG_MODULE_MAGIC
PG_MODULE_MAGIC;
#endif

/* by value */

PG_FUNCTION_INFO_V1(add_one);

Datum
add_one(PG_FUNCTION_ARGS)
{
    int32   arg = PG_GETARG_INT32(0);

    PG_RETURN_INT32(arg + 1);
}

/* by reference, fixed length */

PG_FUNCTION_INFO_V1(add_one_float8);

Datum
add_one_float8(PG_FUNCTION_ARGS)
{
    /* The macros for FLOAT8 hide its pass-by-reference nature. */
    float8   arg = PG_GETARG_FLOAT8(0);

    PG_RETURN_FLOAT8(arg + 1.0);
}

PG_FUNCTION_INFO_V1(makepoint);

Datum
makepoint(PG_FUNCTION_ARGS)
{
    /* Here, the pass-by-reference nature of Point is not hidden. */
    Point     *pointx = PG_GETARG_POINT_P(0);
    Point     *pointy = PG_GETARG_POINT_P(1);
    Point     *new_point = (Point *) palloc(sizeof(Point));

    new_point->x = pointx->x;
    new_point->y = pointy->y;

    PG_RETURN_POINT_P(new_point);
}

/* by reference, variable length */

PG_FUNCTION_INFO_V1(copytext);

Datum
copytext(PG_FUNCTION_ARGS)
{
    text     *t = PG_GETARG_TEXT_P(0);
    /*
     * VARSIZE is the total size of the struct in bytes.
     */
    text     *new_t = (text *) palloc(VARSIZE(t));
    SET_VARSIZE(new_t, VARSIZE(t));
    /*
     * VARDATA is a pointer to the data region of the struct.
     */
    memcpy((void *) VARDATA(new_t), /* destination */
           (void *) VARDATA(t),     /* source */
           VARSIZE(t) - VARHDRSZ);  /* how many bytes */
    PG_RETURN_TEXT_P(new_t);
}

PG_FUNCTION_INFO_V1(concat_text);

Datum
concat_text(PG_FUNCTION_ARGS)
{
    text  *arg1 = PG_GETARG_TEXT_P(0);
    text  *arg2 = PG_GETARG_TEXT_P(1);
    int32 new_text_size = VARSIZE(arg1) + VARSIZE(arg2) - VARHDRSZ;
    text *new_text = (text *) palloc(new_text_size);

    SET_VARSIZE(new_text, new_text_size);
    memcpy(VARDATA(new_text), VARDATA(arg1), VARSIZE(arg1) - VARHDRSZ);
    memcpy(VARDATA(new_text) + (VARSIZE(arg1) - VARHDRSZ),
           VARDATA(arg2), VARSIZE(arg2) - VARHDRSZ);
    PG_RETURN_TEXT_P(new_text);
}

The CREATE FUNCTION commands are the same as for the version-0 equivalents.

At first glance, the version-1 coding conventions might appear to be just pointless obscurantism. They do, however, offer a number of improvements, because the macros can hide unnecessary detail. An example is that in coding add_one_float8, we no longer need to be aware that float8 is a pass-by-reference type. Another example is that the GETARG macros for variable-length types allow for more efficient fetching of "toasted" (compressed or out-of-line) values.

One big improvement in version-1 functions is better handling of null inputs and results. The macro PG_ARGISNULL(n) allows a function to test whether each input is null. (Of course, doing this is only necessary in functions not declared "strict".) As with the PG_GETARG_xxx() macros, the input arguments are counted beginning at zero. Note that one should refrain from executing PG_GETARG_xxx() until one has verified that the argument isn't null. To return a null result, execute PG_RETURN_NULL(); this works in both strict and nonstrict functions.

Other options provided in the new-style interface are two variants of the PG_GETARG_xxx() macros. The first of these, PG_GETARG_xxx_COPY(), guarantees to return a copy of the specified argument that is safe for writing into. (The normal macros will sometimes return a pointer to a value that is physically stored in a table, which must not be written to. Using the PG_GETARG_xxx_COPY() macros guarantees a writable result.) The second variant consists of the PG_GETARG_xxx_SLICE() macros which take three arguments. The first is the number of the function argument (as above). The second and third are the offset and length of the segment to be returned. Offsets are counted from zero, and a negative length requests that the remainder of the value be returned. These macros provide more efficient access to parts of large values in the case where they have storage type "external". (The storage type of a column can be specified using ALTER TABLE tablename ALTER COLUMN colname SET STORAGE storagetype. storagetype is one of plain, external, extended, or main.)

Finally, the version-1 function call conventions make it possible to return set results (Section 35.9.9) and implement trigger functions (Chapter 36) and procedural-language call handlers (Chapter 49). Version-1 code is also more portable than version-0, because it does not break restrictions on function call protocol in the C standard. For more details see src/backend/utils/fmgr/README in the source distribution.

35.9.5. Writing Code

Before we turn to the more advanced topics, we should discuss some coding rules for PostgreSQL C-language functions. While it might be possible to load functions written in languages other than C into PostgreSQL, this is usually difficult (when it is possible at all) because other languages, such as C++, FORTRAN, or Pascal often do not follow the same calling convention as C. That is, other languages do not pass argument and return values between functions in the same way. For this reason, we will assume that your C-language functions are actually written in C.

The basic rules for writing and building C functions are as follows:

  • Use pg_config --includedir-server to find out where the PostgreSQL server header files are installed on your system (or the system that your users will be running on).

  • Compiling and linking your code so that it can be dynamically loaded into PostgreSQL always requires special flags. See Section 35.9.6 for a detailed explanation of how to do it for your particular operating system.

  • Remember to define a "magic block" for your shared library, as described in Section 35.9.1.

  • When allocating memory, use the PostgreSQL functions palloc and pfree instead of the corresponding C library functions malloc and free. The memory allocated by palloc will be freed automatically at the end of each transaction, preventing memory leaks.

  • Always zero the bytes of your structures using memset (or allocate them with palloc0 in the first place). Even if you assign to each field of your structure, there might be alignment padding (holes in the structure) that contain garbage values. Without this, it's difficult to support hash indexes or hash joins, as you must pick out only the significant bits of your data structure to compute a hash. The planner also sometimes relies on comparing constants via bitwise equality, so you can get undesirable planning results if logically-equivalent values aren't bitwise equal.

  • Most of the internal PostgreSQL types are declared in postgres.h, while the function manager interfaces (PG_FUNCTION_ARGS, etc.) are in fmgr.h, so you will need to include at least these two files. For portability reasons it's best to include postgres.h first, before any other system or user header files. Including postgres.h will also include elog.h and palloc.h for you.

  • Symbol names defined within object files must not conflict with each other or with symbols defined in the PostgreSQL server executable. You will have to rename your functions or variables if you get error messages to this effect.

35.9.6. Compiling and Linking Dynamically-loaded Functions

Before you are able to use your PostgreSQL extension functions written in C, they must be compiled and linked in a special way to produce a file that can be dynamically loaded by the server. To be precise, a shared library needs to be created.

For information beyond what is contained in this section you should read the documentation of your operating system, in particular the manual pages for the C compiler, cc, and the link editor, ld. In addition, the PostgreSQL source code contains several working examples in the contrib directory. If you rely on these examples you will make your modules dependent on the availability of the PostgreSQL source code, however.

Creating shared libraries is generally analogous to linking executables: first the source files are compiled into object files, then the object files are linked together. The object files need to be created as position-independent code (PIC), which conceptually means that they can be placed at an arbitrary location in memory when they are loaded by the executable. (Object files intended for executables are usually not compiled that way.) The command to link a shared library contains special flags to distinguish it from linking an executable (at least in theory — on some systems the practice is much uglier).

In the following examples we assume that your source code is in a file foo.c and we will create a shared library foo.so. The intermediate object file will be called foo.o unless otherwise noted. A shared library can contain more than one object file, but we only use one here.

BSD/OS

The compiler flag to create PIC is -fpic. The linker flag to create shared libraries is -shared.

gcc -fpic -c foo.c
ld -shared -o foo.so foo.o

This is applicable as of version 4.0 of BSD/OS.

FreeBSD

The compiler flag to create PIC is -fpic. To create shared libraries the compiler flag is -shared.

gcc -fpic -c foo.c
gcc -shared -o foo.so foo.o

This is applicable as of version 3.0 of FreeBSD.

HP-UX

The compiler flag of the system compiler to create PIC is +z. When using GCC it's -fpic. The linker flag for shared libraries is -b. So:

cc +z -c foo.c

or:

gcc -fpic -c foo.c

and then:

ld -b -o foo.sl foo.o

HP-UX uses the extension .sl for shared libraries, unlike most other systems.

IRIX

PIC is the default, no special compiler options are necessary. The linker option to produce shared libraries is -shared.

cc -c foo.c
ld -shared -o foo.so foo.o

Linux

The compiler flag to create PIC is -fpic. On some platforms in some situations -fPIC must be used if -fpic does not work. Refer to the GCC manual for more information. The compiler flag to create a shared library is -shared. A complete example looks like this:

cc -fpic -c foo.c
cc -shared -o foo.so foo.o

Mac OS X

Here is an example. It assumes the developer tools are installed.

cc -c foo.c
cc -bundle -flat_namespace -undefined suppress -o foo.so foo.o

NetBSD

The compiler flag to create PIC is -fpic. For ELF systems, the compiler with the flag -shared is used to link shared libraries. On the older non-ELF systems, ld -Bshareable is used.

gcc -fpic -c foo.c
gcc -shared -o foo.so foo.o

OpenBSD

The compiler flag to create PIC is -fpic. ld -Bshareable is used to link shared libraries.

gcc -fpic -c foo.c
ld -Bshareable -o foo.so foo.o

Solaris

The compiler flag to create PIC is -KPIC with the Sun compiler and -fpic with GCC. To link shared libraries, the compiler option is -G with either compiler or alternatively -shared with GCC.

cc -KPIC -c foo.c
cc -G -o foo.so foo.o

or

gcc -fpic -c foo.c
gcc -G -o foo.so foo.o

Tru64 UNIX

PIC is the default, so the compilation command is the usual one. ld with special options is used to do the linking.

cc -c foo.c
ld -shared -expect_unresolved '*' -o foo.so foo.o

The same procedure is used with GCC instead of the system compiler; no special options are required.

UnixWare

The compiler flag to create PIC is -K PIC with the SCO compiler and -fpic with GCC. To link shared libraries, the compiler option is -G with the SCO compiler and -shared with GCC.

cc -K PIC -c foo.c
cc -G -o foo.so foo.o

or

gcc -fpic -c foo.c
gcc -shared -o foo.so foo.o

Tip: If this is too complicated for you, you should consider using GNU Libtool, which hides the platform differences behind a uniform interface.

The resulting shared library file can then be loaded into PostgreSQL. When specifying the file name to the CREATE FUNCTION command, one must give it the name of the shared library file, not the intermediate object file. Note that the system's standard shared-library extension (usually .so or .sl) can be omitted from the CREATE FUNCTION command, and normally should be omitted for best portability.

Refer back to Section 35.9.1 about where the server expects to find the shared library files.

35.9.7. Composite-type Arguments

Composite types do not have a fixed layout like C structures. Instances of a composite type can contain null fields. In addition, composite types that are part of an inheritance hierarchy can have different fields than other members of the same inheritance hierarchy. Therefore, PostgreSQL provides a function interface for accessing fields of composite types from C.

Suppose we want to write a function to answer the query:

SELECT name, c_overpaid(emp, 1500) AS overpaid
    FROM emp
    WHERE name = 'Bill' OR name = 'Sam';

Using call conventions version 0, we can define c_overpaid as:

#include "postgres.h"
#include "executor/executor.h"  /* for GetAttributeByName() */

#ifdef PG_MODULE_MAGIC
PG_MODULE_MAGIC;
#endif

bool
c_overpaid(HeapTupleHeader t, /* the current row of emp */
           int32 limit)
{
    bool isnull;
    int32 salary;

    salary = DatumGetInt32(GetAttributeByName(t, "salary", &isnull));
    if (isnull)
        return false;
    return salary > limit;
}

In version-1 coding, the above would look like this:

#include "postgres.h"
#include "executor/executor.h"  /* for GetAttributeByName() */

#ifdef PG_MODULE_MAGIC
PG_MODULE_MAGIC;
#endif

PG_FUNCTION_INFO_V1(c_overpaid);

Datum
c_overpaid(PG_FUNCTION_ARGS)
{
    HeapTupleHeader  t = PG_GETARG_HEAPTUPLEHEADER(0);
    int32            limit = PG_GETARG_INT32(1);
    bool isnull;
    Datum salary;

    salary = GetAttributeByName(t, "salary", &isnull);
    if (isnull)
        PG_RETURN_BOOL(false);
    /* Alternatively, we might prefer to do PG_RETURN_NULL() for null salary. */

    PG_RETURN_BOOL(DatumGetInt32(salary) > limit);
}

GetAttributeByName is the PostgreSQL system function that returns attributes out of the specified row. It has three arguments: the argument of type HeapTupleHeader passed into the function, the name of the desired attribute, and a return parameter that tells whether the attribute is null. GetAttributeByName returns a Datum value that you can convert to the proper data type by using the appropriate DatumGetXXX() macro. Note that the return value is meaningless if the null flag is set; always check the null flag before trying to do anything with the result.

There is also GetAttributeByNum, which selects the target attribute by column number instead of name.

The following command declares the function c_overpaid in SQL:

CREATE FUNCTION c_overpaid(emp, integer) RETURNS boolean
    AS 'DIRECTORY/funcs', 'c_overpaid'
    LANGUAGE C STRICT;

Notice we have used STRICT so that we did not have to check whether the input arguments were NULL.

35.9.8. Returning Rows (Composite Types)

To return a row or composite-type value from a C-language function, you can use a special API that provides macros and functions to hide most of the complexity of building composite data types. To use this API, the source file must include:

#include "funcapi.h"

There are two ways you can build a composite data value (henceforth a "tuple"): you can build it from an array of Datum values, or from an array of C strings that can be passed to the input conversion functions of the tuple's column data types. In either case, you first need to obtain or construct a TupleDesc descriptor for the tuple structure. When working with Datums, you pass the TupleDesc to BlessTupleDesc, and then call heap_form_tuple for each row. When working with C strings, you pass the TupleDesc to TupleDescGetAttInMetadata, and then call BuildTupleFromCStrings for each row. In the case of a function returning a set of tuples, the setup steps can all be done once during the first call of the function.

Several helper functions are available for setting up the needed TupleDesc. The recommended way to do this in most functions returning composite values is to call:

TypeFuncClass get_call_result_type(FunctionCallInfo fcinfo,
                                   Oid *resultTypeId,
                                   TupleDesc *resultTupleDesc)

passing the same fcinfo struct passed to the calling function itself. (This of course requires that you use the version-1 calling conventions.) resultTypeId can be specified as NULL or as the address of a local variable to receive the function's result type OID. resultTupleDesc should be the address of a local TupleDesc variable. Check that the result is TYPEFUNC_COMPOSITE; if so, resultTupleDesc has been filled with the needed TupleDesc. (If it is not, you can report an error along the lines of "function returning record called in context that cannot accept type record".)

Tip: get_call_result_type can resolve the actual type of a polymorphic function result; so it is useful in functions that return scalar polymorphic results, not only functions that return composites. The resultTypeId output is primarily useful for functions returning polymorphic scalars.

Note: get_call_result_type has a sibling get_expr_result_type, which can be used to resolve the expected output type for a function call represented by an expression tree. This can be used when trying to determine the result type from outside the function itself. There is also get_func_result_type, which can be used when only the function's OID is available. However these functions are not able to deal with functions declared to return record, and get_func_result_type cannot resolve polymorphic types, so you should preferentially use get_call_result_type.

Older, now-deprecated functions for obtaining TupleDescs are:

TupleDesc RelationNameGetTupleDesc(const char *relname)

to get a TupleDesc for the row type of a named relation, and:

TupleDesc TypeGetTupleDesc(Oid typeoid, List *colaliases)

to get a TupleDesc based on a type OID. This can be used to get a TupleDesc for a base or composite type. It will not work for a function that returns record, however, and it cannot resolve polymorphic types.

Once you have a TupleDesc, call:

TupleDesc BlessTupleDesc(TupleDesc tupdesc)

if you plan to work with Datums, or:

AttInMetadata *TupleDescGetAttInMetadata(TupleDesc tupdesc)

if you plan to work with C strings. If you are writing a function returning set, you can save the results of these functions in the FuncCallContext structure — use the tuple_desc or attinmeta field respectively.

When working with Datums, use:

HeapTuple heap_form_tuple(TupleDesc tupdesc, Datum *values, bool *isnull)

to build a HeapTuple given user data in Datum form.

When working with C strings, use:

HeapTuple BuildTupleFromCStrings(AttInMetadata *attinmeta, char **values)

to build a HeapTuple given user data in C string form. values is an array of C strings, one for each attribute of the return row. Each C string should be in the form expected by the input function of the attribute data type. In order to return a null value for one of the attributes, the corresponding pointer in the values array should be set to NULL. This function will need to be called again for each row you return.

Once you have built a tuple to return from your function, it must be converted into a Datum. Use:

HeapTupleGetDatum(HeapTuple tuple)

to convert a HeapTuple into a valid Datum. This Datum can be returned directly if you intend to return just a single row, or it can be used as the current return value in a set-returning function.

An example appears in the next section.

35.9.9. Returning Sets

There is also a special API that provides support for returning sets (multiple rows) from a C-language function. A set-returning function must follow the version-1 calling conventions. Also, source files must include funcapi.h, as above.

A set-returning function (SRF) is called once for each item it returns. The SRF must therefore save enough state to remember what it was doing and return the next item on each call. The structure FuncCallContext is provided to help control this process. Within a function, fcinfo->flinfo->fn_extra is used to hold a pointer to FuncCallContext across calls.

typedef struct
{
    /*
     * Number of times we've been called before
     *
     * call_cntr is initialized to 0 for you by SRF_FIRSTCALL_INIT(), and
     * incremented for you every time SRF_RETURN_NEXT() is called.
     */
    uint32 call_cntr;

    /*
     * OPTIONAL maximum number of calls
     *
     * max_calls is here for convenience only and setting it is optional.
     * If not set, you must provide alternative means to know when the
     * function is done.
     */
    uint32 max_calls;

    /*
     * OPTIONAL pointer to result slot
     *
     * This is obsolete and only present for backward compatibility, viz,
     * user-defined SRFs that use the deprecated TupleDescGetSlot().
     */
    TupleTableSlot *slot;

    /*
     * OPTIONAL pointer to miscellaneous user-provided context information
     *
     * user_fctx is for use as a pointer to your own data to retain
     * arbitrary context information between calls of your function.
     */
    void *user_fctx;

    /*
     * OPTIONAL pointer to struct containing attribute type input metadata
     *
     * attinmeta is for use when returning tuples (i.e., composite data types)
     * and is not used when returning base data types. It is only needed
     * if you intend to use BuildTupleFromCStrings() to create the return
     * tuple.
     */
    AttInMetadata *attinmeta;

    /*
     * memory context used for structures that must live for multiple calls
     *
     * multi_call_memory_ctx is set by SRF_FIRSTCALL_INIT() for you, and used
     * by SRF_RETURN_DONE() for cleanup. It is the most appropriate memory
     * context for any memory that is to be reused across multiple calls
     * of the SRF.
     */
    MemoryContext multi_call_memory_ctx;

    /*
     * OPTIONAL pointer to struct containing tuple description
     *
     * tuple_desc is for use when returning tuples (i.e., composite data types)
     * and is only needed if you are going to build the tuples with
     * heap_form_tuple() rather than with BuildTupleFromCStrings().  Note that
     * the TupleDesc pointer stored here should usually have been run through
     * BlessTupleDesc() first.
     */
    TupleDesc tuple_desc;

} FuncCallContext;

An SRF uses several functions and macros that automatically manipulate the FuncCallContext structure (and expect to find it via fn_extra). Use:

SRF_IS_FIRSTCALL()

to determine if your function is being called for the first or a subsequent time. On the first call (only) use:

SRF_FIRSTCALL_INIT()

to initialize the FuncCallContext. On every function call, including the first, use:

SRF_PERCALL_SETUP()

to properly set up for using the FuncCallContext and clearing any previously returned data left over from the previous pass.

If your function has data to return, use:

SRF_RETURN_NEXT(funcctx, result)

to return it to the caller. (result must be of type Datum, either a single value or a tuple prepared as described above.) Finally, when your function is finished returning data, use:

SRF_RETURN_DONE(funcctx)

to clean up and end the SRF.

The memory context that is current when the SRF is called is a transient context that will be cleared between calls. This means that you do not need to call pfree on everything you allocated using palloc; it will go away anyway. However, if you want to allocate any data structures to live across calls, you need to put them somewhere else. The memory context referenced by multi_call_memory_ctx is a suitable location for any data that needs to survive until the SRF is finished running. In most cases, this means that you should switch into multi_call_memory_ctx while doing the first-call setup.

A complete pseudo-code example looks like the following:

Datum
my_set_returning_function(PG_FUNCTION_ARGS)
{
    FuncCallContext  *funcctx;
    Datum             result;
    further declarations as needed

    if (SRF_IS_FIRSTCALL())
    {
        MemoryContext oldcontext;

        funcctx = SRF_FIRSTCALL_INIT();
        oldcontext = MemoryContextSwitchTo(funcctx->multi_call_memory_ctx);
        /* One-time setup code appears here: */
        user code
        if returning composite
            build TupleDesc, and perhaps AttInMetadata
        endif returning composite
        user code
        MemoryContextSwitchTo(oldcontext);
    }

    /* Each-time setup code appears here: */
    user code
    funcctx = SRF_PERCALL_SETUP();
    user code

    /* this is just one way we might test whether we are done: */
    if (funcctx->call_cntr < funcctx->max_calls)
    {
        /* Here we want to return another item: */
        user code
        obtain result Datum
        SRF_RETURN_NEXT(funcctx, result);
    }
    else
    {
        /* Here we are done returning items and just need to clean up: */
        user code
        SRF_RETURN_DONE(funcctx);
    }
}

A complete example of a simple SRF returning a composite type looks like:

PG_FUNCTION_INFO_V1(retcomposite);

Datum
retcomposite(PG_FUNCTION_ARGS)
{
    FuncCallContext     *funcctx;
    int                  call_cntr;
    int                  max_calls;
    TupleDesc            tupdesc;
    AttInMetadata       *attinmeta;

    /* stuff done only on the first call of the function */
    if (SRF_IS_FIRSTCALL())
    {
        MemoryContext   oldcontext;

        /* create a function context for cross-call persistence */
        funcctx = SRF_FIRSTCALL_INIT();

        /* switch to memory context appropriate for multiple function calls */
        oldcontext = MemoryContextSwitchTo(funcctx->multi_call_memory_ctx);

        /* total number of tuples to be returned */
        funcctx->max_calls = PG_GETARG_UINT32(0);

        /* Build a tuple descriptor for our result type */
        if (get_call_result_type(fcinfo, NULL, &tupdesc) != TYPEFUNC_COMPOSITE)
            ereport(ERROR,
                    (errcode(ERRCODE_FEATURE_NOT_SUPPORTED),
                     errmsg("function returning record called in context "
                            "that cannot accept type record")));

        /*
         * generate attribute metadata needed later to produce tuples from raw
         * C strings
         */
        attinmeta = TupleDescGetAttInMetadata(tupdesc);
        funcctx->attinmeta = attinmeta;

        MemoryContextSwitchTo(oldcontext);
    }

    /* stuff done on every call of the function */
    funcctx = SRF_PERCALL_SETUP();

    call_cntr = funcctx->call_cntr;
    max_calls = funcctx->max_calls;
    attinmeta = funcctx->attinmeta;

    if (call_cntr < max_calls)    /* do when there is more left to send */
    {
        char       **values;
        HeapTuple    tuple;
        Datum        result;

        /*
         * Prepare a values array for building the returned tuple.
         * This should be an array of C strings which will
         * be processed later by the type input functions.
         */
        values = (char **) palloc(3 * sizeof(char *));
        values[0] = (char *) palloc(16 * sizeof(char));
        values[1] = (char *) palloc(16 * sizeof(char));
        values[2] = (char *) palloc(16 * sizeof(char));

        snprintf(values[0], 16, "%d", 1 * PG_GETARG_INT32(1));
        snprintf(values[1], 16, "%d", 2 * PG_GETARG_INT32(1));
        snprintf(values[2], 16, "%d", 3 * PG_GETARG_INT32(1));

        /* build a tuple */
        tuple = BuildTupleFromCStrings(attinmeta, values);

        /* make the tuple into a datum */
        result = HeapTupleGetDatum(tuple);

        /* clean up (this is not really necessary) */
        pfree(values[0]);
        pfree(values[1]);
        pfree(values[2]);
        pfree(values);

        SRF_RETURN_NEXT(funcctx, result);
    }
    else    /* do when there is no more left */
    {
        SRF_RETURN_DONE(funcctx);
    }
}

One way to declare this function in SQL is:

CREATE TYPE __retcomposite AS (f1 integer, f2 integer, f3 integer);

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION retcomposite(integer, integer)
    RETURNS SETOF __retcomposite
    AS 'filename', 'retcomposite'
    LANGUAGE C IMMUTABLE STRICT;

A different way is to use OUT parameters:

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION retcomposite(IN integer, IN integer,
    OUT f1 integer, OUT f2 integer, OUT f3 integer)
    RETURNS SETOF record
    AS 'filename', 'retcomposite'
    LANGUAGE C IMMUTABLE STRICT;

Notice that in this method the output type of the function is formally an anonymous record type.

The directory contrib/tablefunc module in the source distribution contains more examples of set-returning functions.

35.9.10. Polymorphic Arguments and Return Types

C-language functions can be declared to accept and return the polymorphic types anyelement, anyarray, anynonarray, and anyenum. See Section 35.2.5 for a more detailed explanation of polymorphic functions. When function arguments or return types are defined as polymorphic types, the function author cannot know in advance what data type it will be called with, or need to return. There are two routines provided in fmgr.h to allow a version-1 C function to discover the actual data types of its arguments and the type it is expected to return. The routines are called get_fn_expr_rettype(FmgrInfo *flinfo) and get_fn_expr_argtype(FmgrInfo *flinfo, int argnum). They return the result or argument type OID, or InvalidOid if the information is not available. The structure flinfo is normally accessed as fcinfo->flinfo. The parameter argnum is zero based. get_call_result_type can also be used as an alternative to get_fn_expr_rettype.

For example, suppose we want to write a function to accept a single element of any type, and return a one-dimensional array of that type:

PG_FUNCTION_INFO_V1(make_array);
Datum
make_array(PG_FUNCTION_ARGS)
{
    ArrayType  *result;
    Oid         element_type = get_fn_expr_argtype(fcinfo->flinfo, 0);
    Datum       element;
    bool        isnull;
    int16       typlen;
    bool        typbyval;
    char        typalign;
    int         ndims;
    int         dims[MAXDIM];
    int         lbs[MAXDIM];

    if (!OidIsValid(element_type))
        elog(ERROR, "could not determine data type of input");

    /* get the provided element, being careful in case it's NULL */
    isnull = PG_ARGISNULL(0);
    if (isnull)
        element = (Datum) 0;
    else
        element = PG_GETARG_DATUM(0);

    /* we have one dimension */
    ndims = 1;
    /* and one element */
    dims[0] = 1;
    /* and lower bound is 1 */
    lbs[0] = 1;

    /* get required info about the element type */
    get_typlenbyvalalign(element_type, &typlen, &typbyval, &typalign);

    /* now build the array */
    result = construct_md_array(&element, &isnull, ndims, dims, lbs,
                                element_type, typlen, typbyval, typalign);

    PG_RETURN_ARRAYTYPE_P(result);
}

The following command declares the function make_array in SQL:

CREATE FUNCTION make_array(anyelement) RETURNS anyarray
    AS 'DIRECTORY/funcs', 'make_array'
    LANGUAGE C IMMUTABLE;

There is a variant of polymorphism that is only available to C-language functions: they can be declared to take parameters of type "any". (Note that this type name must be double-quoted, since it's also a SQL reserved word.) This works like anyelement except that it does not constrain different "any" arguments to be the same type, nor do they help determine the function's result type. A C-language function can also declare its final parameter to be VARIADIC "any". This will match one or more actual arguments of any type (not necessarily the same type). These arguments will not be gathered into an array as happens with normal variadic functions; they will just be passed to the function separately. The PG_NARGS() macro and the methods described above must be used to determine the number of actual arguments and their types when using this feature.

35.9.11. Shared Memory and LWLocks

Add-ins can reserve LWLocks and an allocation of shared memory on server startup. The add-in's shared library must be preloaded by specifying it in shared_preload_libraries. Shared memory is reserved by calling:

void RequestAddinShmemSpace(int size)

from your _PG_init function.

LWLocks are reserved by calling:

void RequestAddinLWLocks(int n)

from _PG_init.

To avoid possible race-conditions, each backend should use the LWLock AddinShmemInitLock when connecting to and initializing its allocation of shared memory, as shown here:

static mystruct *ptr = NULL;

if (!ptr)
{
        bool    found;

        LWLockAcquire(AddinShmemInitLock, LW_EXCLUSIVE);
        ptr = ShmemInitStruct("my struct name", size, &found);
        if (!found)
        {
                initialize contents of shmem area;
                acquire any requested LWLocks using:
                ptr->mylockid = LWLockAssign();
        }
        LWLockRelease(AddinShmemInitLock);
}

35.9.12. Using C++ for Extensibility

Although the PostgreSQL backend is written in C, it is possible to write extensions in C++ if these guidelines are followed:

  • All functions accessed by the backend must present a C interface to the backend; these C functions can then call C++ functions. For example, extern C linkage is required for backend-accessed functions. This is also necessary for any functions that are passed as pointers between the backend and C++ code.

  • Free memory using the appropriate deallocation method. For example, most backend memory is allocated using palloc(), so use pfree() to free it. Using C++ delete in such cases will fail.

  • Prevent exceptions from propagating into the C code (use a catch-all block at the top level of all extern C functions). This is necessary even if the C++ code does not explicitly throw any exceptions, because events like out-of-memory can still throw exceptions. Any exceptions must be caught and appropriate errors passed back to the C interface. If possible, compile C++ with -fno-exceptions to eliminate exceptions entirely; in such cases, you must check for failures in your C++ code, e.g. check for NULL returned by new().

  • If calling backend functions from C++ code, be sure that the C++ call stack contains only plain old data structures (POD). This is necessary because backend errors generate a distant longjmp() that does not properly unroll a C++ call stack with non-POD objects.

In summary, it is best to place C++ code behind a wall of extern C functions that interface to the backend, and avoid exception, memory, and call stack leakage.

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User-defined Aggregates

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35.10. User-defined Aggregates

Aggregate functions in PostgreSQL are expressed in terms of state values and state transition functions. That is, an aggregate operates using a state value that is updated as each successive input row is processed. To define a new aggregate function, one selects a data type for the state value, an initial value for the state, and a state transition function. The state transition function is just an ordinary function that could also be used outside the context of the aggregate. A final function can also be specified, in case the desired result of the aggregate is different from the data that needs to be kept in the running state value.

Thus, in addition to the argument and result data types seen by a user of the aggregate, there is an internal state-value data type that might be different from both the argument and result types.

If we define an aggregate that does not use a final function, we have an aggregate that computes a running function of the column values from each row. sum is an example of this kind of aggregate. sum starts at zero and always adds the current row's value to its running total. For example, if we want to make a sum aggregate to work on a data type for complex numbers, we only need the addition function for that data type. The aggregate definition would be:

CREATE AGGREGATE sum (complex)
(
    sfunc = complex_add,
    stype = complex,
    initcond = '(0,0)'
);

SELECT sum(a) FROM test_complex;

   sum
-----------
 (34,53.9)

(Notice that we are relying on function overloading: there is more than one aggregate named sum, but PostgreSQL can figure out which kind of sum applies to a column of type complex.)

The above definition of sum will return zero (the initial state condition) if there are no nonnull input values. Perhaps we want to return null in that case instead — the SQL standard expects sum to behave that way. We can do this simply by omitting the initcond phrase, so that the initial state condition is null. Ordinarily this would mean that the sfunc would need to check for a null state-condition input. But for sum and some other simple aggregates like max and min, it is sufficient to insert the first nonnull input value into the state variable and then start applying the transition function at the second nonnull input value. PostgreSQL will do that automatically if the initial condition is null and the transition function is marked "strict" (i.e., not to be called for null inputs).

Another bit of default behavior for a "strict" transition function is that the previous state value is retained unchanged whenever a null input value is encountered. Thus, null values are ignored. If you need some other behavior for null inputs, do not declare your transition function as strict; instead code it to test for null inputs and do whatever is needed.

avg (average) is a more complex example of an aggregate. It requires two pieces of running state: the sum of the inputs and the count of the number of inputs. The final result is obtained by dividing these quantities. Average is typically implemented by using an array as the state value. For example, the built-in implementation of avg(float8) looks like:

CREATE AGGREGATE avg (float8)
(
    sfunc = float8_accum,
    stype = float8[],
    finalfunc = float8_avg,
    initcond = '{0,0,0}'
);

(float8_accum requires a three-element array, not just two elements, because it accumulates the sum of squares as well as the sum and count of the inputs. This is so that it can be used for some other aggregates besides avg.)

Aggregate functions can use polymorphic state transition functions or final functions, so that the same functions can be used to implement multiple aggregates. See Section 35.2.5 for an explanation of polymorphic functions. Going a step further, the aggregate function itself can be specified with polymorphic input type(s) and state type, allowing a single aggregate definition to serve for multiple input data types. Here is an example of a polymorphic aggregate:

CREATE AGGREGATE array_accum (anyelement)
(
    sfunc = array_append,
    stype = anyarray,
    initcond = '{}'
);

Here, the actual state type for any aggregate call is the array type having the actual input type as elements. The behavior of the aggregate is to concatenate all the inputs into an array of that type. (Note: the built-in aggregate array_agg provides similar functionality, with better performance than this definition would have.)

Here's the output using two different actual data types as arguments:

SELECT attrelid::regclass, array_accum(attname)
    FROM pg_attribute
    WHERE attnum > 0 AND attrelid = 'pg_tablespace'::regclass
    GROUP BY attrelid;

   attrelid    |              array_accum
---------------+---------------------------------------
 pg_tablespace | {spcname,spcowner,spclocation,spcacl}
(1 row)

SELECT attrelid::regclass, array_accum(atttypid::regtype)
    FROM pg_attribute
    WHERE attnum > 0 AND attrelid = 'pg_tablespace'::regclass
    GROUP BY attrelid;

   attrelid    |        array_accum
---------------+---------------------------
 pg_tablespace | {name,oid,text,aclitem[]}
(1 row)

A function written in C can detect that it is being called as an aggregate transition or final function by calling AggCheckCallContext, for example:

if (AggCheckCallContext(fcinfo, NULL))

One reason for checking this is that when it is true for a transition function, the first input must be a temporary transition value and can therefore safely be modified in-place rather than allocating a new copy. See int8inc() for an example. (This is the only case where it is safe for a function to modify a pass-by-reference input. In particular, aggregate final functions should not modify their inputs in any case, because in some cases they will be re-executed on the same final transition value.)

For further details see the CREATE AGGREGATE command.

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User-defined Types

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35.11. User-defined Types

As described in Section 35.2, PostgreSQL can be extended to support new data types. This section describes how to define new base types, which are data types defined below the level of the SQL language. Creating a new base type requires implementing functions to operate on the type in a low-level language, usually C.

The examples in this section can be found in complex.sql and complex.c in the src/tutorial directory of the source distribution. See the README file in that directory for instructions about running the examples.

A user-defined type must always have input and output functions. These functions determine how the type appears in strings (for input by the user and output to the user) and how the type is organized in memory. The input function takes a null-terminated character string as its argument and returns the internal (in memory) representation of the type. The output function takes the internal representation of the type as argument and returns a null-terminated character string. If we want to do anything more with the type than merely store it, we must provide additional functions to implement whatever operations we'd like to have for the type.

Suppose we want to define a type complex that represents complex numbers. A natural way to represent a complex number in memory would be the following C structure:

typedef struct Complex {
    double      x;
    double      y;
} Complex;

We will need to make this a pass-by-reference type, since it's too large to fit into a single Datum value.

As the external string representation of the type, we choose a string of the form (x,y).

The input and output functions are usually not hard to write, especially the output function. But when defining the external string representation of the type, remember that you must eventually write a complete and robust parser for that representation as your input function. For instance:

PG_FUNCTION_INFO_V1(complex_in);

Datum
complex_in(PG_FUNCTION_ARGS)
{
    char       *str = PG_GETARG_CSTRING(0);
    double      x,
                y;
    Complex    *result;

    if (sscanf(str, " ( %lf , %lf )", &x, &y) != 2)
        ereport(ERROR,
                (errcode(ERRCODE_INVALID_TEXT_REPRESENTATION),
                 errmsg("invalid input syntax for complex: \"%s\"",
                        str)));

    result = (Complex *) palloc(sizeof(Complex));
    result->x = x;
    result->y = y;
    PG_RETURN_POINTER(result);
}

The output function can simply be:

PG_FUNCTION_INFO_V1(complex_out);

Datum
complex_out(PG_FUNCTION_ARGS)
{
    Complex    *complex = (Complex *) PG_GETARG_POINTER(0);
    char       *result;

    result = (char *) palloc(100);
    snprintf(result, 100, "(%g,%g)", complex->x, complex->y);
    PG_RETURN_CSTRING(result);
}

You should be careful to make the input and output functions inverses of each other. If you do not, you will have severe problems when you need to dump your data into a file and then read it back in. This is a particularly common problem when floating-point numbers are involved.

Optionally, a user-defined type can provide binary input and output routines. Binary I/O is normally faster but less portable than textual I/O. As with textual I/O, it is up to you to define exactly what the external binary representation is. Most of the built-in data types try to provide a machine-independent binary representation. For complex, we will piggy-back on the binary I/O converters for type float8:

PG_FUNCTION_INFO_V1(complex_recv);

Datum
complex_recv(PG_FUNCTION_ARGS)
{
    StringInfo  buf = (StringInfo) PG_GETARG_POINTER(0);
    Complex    *result;

    result = (Complex *) palloc(sizeof(Complex));
    result->x = pq_getmsgfloat8(buf);
    result->y = pq_getmsgfloat8(buf);
    PG_RETURN_POINTER(result);
}

PG_FUNCTION_INFO_V1(complex_send);

Datum
complex_send(PG_FUNCTION_ARGS)
{
    Complex    *complex = (Complex *) PG_GETARG_POINTER(0);
    StringInfoData buf;

    pq_begintypsend(&buf);
    pq_sendfloat8(&buf, complex->x);
    pq_sendfloat8(&buf, complex->y);
    PG_RETURN_BYTEA_P(pq_endtypsend(&buf));
}

Once we have written the I/O functions and compiled them into a shared library, we can define the complex type in SQL. First we declare it as a shell type:

CREATE TYPE complex;

This serves as a placeholder that allows us to reference the type while defining its I/O functions. Now we can define the I/O functions:

CREATE FUNCTION complex_in(cstring)
    RETURNS complex
    AS 'filename'
    LANGUAGE C IMMUTABLE STRICT;

CREATE FUNCTION complex_out(complex)
    RETURNS cstring
    AS 'filename'
    LANGUAGE C IMMUTABLE STRICT;

CREATE FUNCTION complex_recv(internal)
   RETURNS complex
   AS 'filename'
   LANGUAGE C IMMUTABLE STRICT;

CREATE FUNCTION complex_send(complex)
   RETURNS bytea
   AS 'filename'
   LANGUAGE C IMMUTABLE STRICT;

Finally, we can provide the full definition of the data type:

CREATE TYPE complex (
   internallength = 16,
   input = complex_in,
   output = complex_out,
   receive = complex_recv,
   send = complex_send,
   alignment = double
);

When you define a new base type, PostgreSQL automatically provides support for arrays of that type. The array type typically has the same name as the base type with the underscore character (_) prepended.

Once the data type exists, we can declare additional functions to provide useful operations on the data type. Operators can then be defined atop the functions, and if needed, operator classes can be created to support indexing of the data type. These additional layers are discussed in following sections.

If the values of your data type vary in size (in internal form), you should make the data type TOAST-able (see Section 55.2). You should do this even if the data are always too small to be compressed or stored externally, because TOAST can save space on small data too, by reducing header overhead.

To do this, the internal representation must follow the standard layout for variable-length data: the first four bytes must be a char[4] field which is never accessed directly (customarily named vl_len_). You must use SET_VARSIZE() to store the size of the datum in this field and VARSIZE() to retrieve it. The C functions operating on the data type must always be careful to unpack any toasted values they are handed, by using PG_DETOAST_DATUM. (This detail is customarily hidden by defining type-specific GETARG_DATATYPE_P macros.) Then, when running the CREATE TYPE command, specify the internal length as variable and select the appropriate storage option.

If the alignment is unimportant (either just for a specific function or because the data type specifies byte alignment anyway) then it's possible to avoid some of the overhead of PG_DETOAST_DATUM. You can use PG_DETOAST_DATUM_PACKED instead (customarily hidden by defining a GETARG_DATATYPE_PP macro) and using the macros VARSIZE_ANY_EXHDR and VARDATA_ANY to access a potentially-packed datum. Again, the data returned by these macros is not aligned even if the data type definition specifies an alignment. If the alignment is important you must go through the regular PG_DETOAST_DATUM interface.

Note: Older code frequently declares vl_len_ as an int32 field instead of char[4]. This is OK as long as the struct definition has other fields that have at least int32 alignment. But it is dangerous to use such a struct definition when working with a potentially unaligned datum; the compiler may take it as license to assume the datum actually is aligned, leading to core dumps on architectures that are strict about alignment.

For further details see the description of the CREATE TYPE command.

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User-defined Operators

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35.12. User-defined Operators

Every operator is "syntactic sugar" for a call to an underlying function that does the real work; so you must first create the underlying function before you can create the operator. However, an operator is not merely syntactic sugar, because it carries additional information that helps the query planner optimize queries that use the operator. The next section will be devoted to explaining that additional information.

PostgreSQL supports left unary, right unary, and binary operators. Operators can be overloaded; that is, the same operator name can be used for different operators that have different numbers and types of operands. When a query is executed, the system determines the operator to call from the number and types of the provided operands.

Here is an example of creating an operator for adding two complex numbers. We assume we've already created the definition of type complex (see Section 35.11). First we need a function that does the work, then we can define the operator:

CREATE FUNCTION complex_add(complex, complex)
    RETURNS complex
    AS 'filename', 'complex_add'
    LANGUAGE C IMMUTABLE STRICT;

CREATE OPERATOR + (
    leftarg = complex,
    rightarg = complex,
    procedure = complex_add,
    commutator = +
);

Now we could execute a query like this:

SELECT (a + b) AS c FROM test_complex;

        c
-----------------
 (5.2,6.05)
 (133.42,144.95)

We've shown how to create a binary operator here. To create unary operators, just omit one of leftarg (for left unary) or rightarg (for right unary). The procedure clause and the argument clauses are the only required items in CREATE OPERATOR. The commutator clause shown in the example is an optional hint to the query optimizer. Further details about commutator and other optimizer hints appear in the next section.

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Operator Optimization Information

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35.13. Operator Optimization Information

A PostgreSQL operator definition can include several optional clauses that tell the system useful things about how the operator behaves. These clauses should be provided whenever appropriate, because they can make for considerable speedups in execution of queries that use the operator. But if you provide them, you must be sure that they are right! Incorrect use of an optimization clause can result in slow queries, subtly wrong output, or other Bad Things. You can always leave out an optimization clause if you are not sure about it; the only consequence is that queries might run slower than they need to.

Additional optimization clauses might be added in future versions of PostgreSQL. The ones described here are all the ones that release 9.1.19 understands.

35.13.1. COMMUTATOR

The COMMUTATOR clause, if provided, names an operator that is the commutator of the operator being defined. We say that operator A is the commutator of operator B if (x A y) equals (y B x) for all possible input values x, y. Notice that B is also the commutator of A. For example, operators < and > for a particular data type are usually each others' commutators, and operator + is usually commutative with itself. But operator - is usually not commutative with anything.

The left operand type of a commutable operator is the same as the right operand type of its commutator, and vice versa. So the name of the commutator operator is all that PostgreSQL needs to be given to look up the commutator, and that's all that needs to be provided in the COMMUTATOR clause.

It's critical to provide commutator information for operators that will be used in indexes and join clauses, because this allows the query optimizer to "flip around" such a clause to the forms needed for different plan types. For example, consider a query with a WHERE clause like tab1.x = tab2.y, where tab1.x and tab2.y are of a user-defined type, and suppose that tab2.y is indexed. The optimizer cannot generate an index scan unless it can determine how to flip the clause around to tab2.y = tab1.x, because the index-scan machinery expects to see the indexed column on the left of the operator it is given. PostgreSQL will not simply assume that this is a valid transformation — the creator of the = operator must specify that it is valid, by marking the operator with commutator information.

When you are defining a self-commutative operator, you just do it. When you are defining a pair of commutative operators, things are a little trickier: how can the first one to be defined refer to the other one, which you haven't defined yet? There are two solutions to this problem:

  • One way is to omit the COMMUTATOR clause in the first operator that you define, and then provide one in the second operator's definition. Since PostgreSQL knows that commutative operators come in pairs, when it sees the second definition it will automatically go back and fill in the missing COMMUTATOR clause in the first definition.

  • The other, more straightforward way is just to include COMMUTATOR clauses in both definitions. When PostgreSQL processes the first definition and realizes that COMMUTATOR refers to a nonexistent operator, the system will make a dummy entry for that operator in the system catalog. This dummy entry will have valid data only for the operator name, left and right operand types, and result type, since that's all that PostgreSQL can deduce at this point. The first operator's catalog entry will link to this dummy entry. Later, when you define the second operator, the system updates the dummy entry with the additional information from the second definition. If you try to use the dummy operator before it's been filled in, you'll just get an error message.

35.13.2. NEGATOR

The NEGATOR clause, if provided, names an operator that is the negator of the operator being defined. We say that operator A is the negator of operator B if both return Boolean results and (x A y) equals NOT (x B y) for all possible inputs x, y. Notice that B is also the negator of A. For example, < and >= are a negator pair for most data types. An operator can never validly be its own negator.

Unlike commutators, a pair of unary operators could validly be marked as each other's negators; that would mean (A x) equals NOT (B x) for all x, or the equivalent for right unary operators.

An operator's negator must have the same left and/or right operand types as the operator to be defined, so just as with COMMUTATOR, only the operator name need be given in the NEGATOR clause.

Providing a negator is very helpful to the query optimizer since it allows expressions like NOT (x = y) to be simplified into x <> y. This comes up more often than you might think, because NOT operations can be inserted as a consequence of other rearrangements.

Pairs of negator operators can be defined using the same methods explained above for commutator pairs.

35.13.3. RESTRICT

The RESTRICT clause, if provided, names a restriction selectivity estimation function for the operator. (Note that this is a function name, not an operator name.) RESTRICT clauses only make sense for binary operators that return boolean. The idea behind a restriction selectivity estimator is to guess what fraction of the rows in a table will satisfy a WHERE-clause condition of the form:

column OP constant

for the current operator and a particular constant value. This assists the optimizer by giving it some idea of how many rows will be eliminated by WHERE clauses that have this form. (What happens if the constant is on the left, you might be wondering? Well, that's one of the things that COMMUTATOR is for...)

Writing new restriction selectivity estimation functions is far beyond the scope of this chapter, but fortunately you can usually just use one of the system's standard estimators for many of your own operators. These are the standard restriction estimators:

eqsel for =
neqsel for <>
scalarltsel for < or <=
scalargtsel for > or >=

It might seem a little odd that these are the categories, but they make sense if you think about it. = will typically accept only a small fraction of the rows in a table; <> will typically reject only a small fraction. < will accept a fraction that depends on where the given constant falls in the range of values for that table column (which, it just so happens, is information collected by ANALYZE and made available to the selectivity estimator). <= will accept a slightly larger fraction than < for the same comparison constant, but they're close enough to not be worth distinguishing, especially since we're not likely to do better than a rough guess anyhow. Similar remarks apply to > and >=.

You can frequently get away with using either eqsel or neqsel for operators that have very high or very low selectivity, even if they aren't really equality or inequality. For example, the approximate-equality geometric operators use eqsel on the assumption that they'll usually only match a small fraction of the entries in a table.

You can use scalarltsel and scalargtsel for comparisons on data types that have some sensible means of being converted into numeric scalars for range comparisons. If possible, add the data type to those understood by the function convert_to_scalar() in src/backend/utils/adt/selfuncs.c. (Eventually, this function should be replaced by per-data-type functions identified through a column of the pg_type system catalog; but that hasn't happened yet.) If you do not do this, things will still work, but the optimizer's estimates won't be as good as they could be.

There are additional selectivity estimation functions designed for geometric operators in src/backend/utils/adt/geo_selfuncs.c: areasel, positionsel, and contsel. At this writing these are just stubs, but you might want to use them (or even better, improve them) anyway.

35.13.4. JOIN

The JOIN clause, if provided, names a join selectivity estimation function for the operator. (Note that this is a function name, not an operator name.) JOIN clauses only make sense for binary operators that return boolean. The idea behind a join selectivity estimator is to guess what fraction of the rows in a pair of tables will satisfy a WHERE-clause condition of the form:

table1.column1 OP table2.column2

for the current operator. As with the RESTRICT clause, this helps the optimizer very substantially by letting it figure out which of several possible join sequences is likely to take the least work.

As before, this chapter will make no attempt to explain how to write a join selectivity estimator function, but will just suggest that you use one of the standard estimators if one is applicable:

eqjoinsel for =
neqjoinsel for <>
scalarltjoinsel for < or <=
scalargtjoinsel for > or >=
areajoinsel for 2D area-based comparisons
positionjoinsel for 2D position-based comparisons
contjoinsel for 2D containment-based comparisons

35.13.5. HASHES

The HASHES clause, if present, tells the system that it is permissible to use the hash join method for a join based on this operator. HASHES only makes sense for a binary operator that returns boolean, and in practice the operator must represent equality for some data type or pair of data types.

The assumption underlying hash join is that the join operator can only return true for pairs of left and right values that hash to the same hash code. If two values get put in different hash buckets, the join will never compare them at all, implicitly assuming that the result of the join operator must be false. So it never makes sense to specify HASHES for operators that do not represent some form of equality. In most cases it is only practical to support hashing for operators that take the same data type on both sides. However, sometimes it is possible to design compatible hash functions for two or more data types; that is, functions that will generate the same hash codes for "equal" values, even though the values have different representations. For example, it's fairly simple to arrange this property when hashing integers of different widths.

To be marked HASHES, the join operator must appear in a hash index operator family. This is not enforced when you create the operator, since of course the referencing operator family couldn't exist yet. But attempts to use the operator in hash joins will fail at run time if no such operator family exists. The system needs the operator family to find the data-type-specific hash function(s) for the operator's input data type(s). Of course, you must also create suitable hash functions before you can create the operator family.

Care should be exercised when preparing a hash function, because there are machine-dependent ways in which it might fail to do the right thing. For example, if your data type is a structure in which there might be uninteresting pad bits, you cannot simply pass the whole structure to hash_any. (Unless you write your other operators and functions to ensure that the unused bits are always zero, which is the recommended strategy.) Another example is that on machines that meet the IEEE floating-point standard, negative zero and positive zero are different values (different bit patterns) but they are defined to compare equal. If a float value might contain negative zero then extra steps are needed to ensure it generates the same hash value as positive zero.

A hash-joinable operator must have a commutator (itself if the two operand data types are the same, or a related equality operator if they are different) that appears in the same operator family. If this is not the case, planner errors might occur when the operator is used. Also, it is a good idea (but not strictly required) for a hash operator family that supports multiple data types to provide equality operators for every combination of the data types; this allows better optimization.

Note: The function underlying a hash-joinable operator must be marked immutable or stable. If it is volatile, the system will never attempt to use the operator for a hash join.

Note: If a hash-joinable operator has an underlying function that is marked strict, the function must also be complete: that is, it should return true or false, never null, for any two nonnull inputs. If this rule is not followed, hash-optimization of IN operations might generate wrong results. (Specifically, IN might return false where the correct answer according to the standard would be null; or it might yield an error complaining that it wasn't prepared for a null result.)

35.13.6. MERGES

The MERGES clause, if present, tells the system that it is permissible to use the merge-join method for a join based on this operator. MERGES only makes sense for a binary operator that returns boolean, and in practice the operator must represent equality for some data type or pair of data types.

Merge join is based on the idea of sorting the left- and right-hand tables into order and then scanning them in parallel. So, both data types must be capable of being fully ordered, and the join operator must be one that can only succeed for pairs of values that fall at the "same place" in the sort order. In practice this means that the join operator must behave like equality. But it is possible to merge-join two distinct data types so long as they are logically compatible. For example, the smallint-versus-integer equality operator is merge-joinable. We only need sorting operators that will bring both data types into a logically compatible sequence.

To be marked MERGES, the join operator must appear as an equality member of a btree index operator family. This is not enforced when you create the operator, since of course the referencing operator family couldn't exist yet. But the operator will not actually be used for merge joins unless a matching operator family can be found. The MERGES flag thus acts as a hint to the planner that it's worth looking for a matching operator family.

A merge-joinable operator must have a commutator (itself if the two operand data types are the same, or a related equality operator if they are different) that appears in the same operator family. If this is not the case, planner errors might occur when the operator is used. Also, it is a good idea (but not strictly required) for a btree operator family that supports multiple data types to provide equality operators for every combination of the data types; this allows better optimization.

Note: The function underlying a merge-joinable operator must be marked immutable or stable. If it is volatile, the system will never attempt to use the operator for a merge join.

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Interfacing Extensions To Indexes

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35.14. Interfacing Extensions To Indexes

The procedures described thus far let you define new types, new functions, and new operators. However, we cannot yet define an index on a column of a new data type. To do this, we must define an operator class for the new data type. Later in this section, we will illustrate this concept in an example: a new operator class for the B-tree index method that stores and sorts complex numbers in ascending absolute value order.

Operator classes can be grouped into operator families to show the relationships between semantically compatible classes. When only a single data type is involved, an operator class is sufficient, so we'll focus on that case first and then return to operator families.

35.14.1. Index Methods and Operator Classes

The pg_am table contains one row for every index method (internally known as access method). Support for regular access to tables is built into PostgreSQL, but all index methods are described in pg_am. It is possible to add a new index method by defining the required interface routines and then creating a row in pg_am — but that is beyond the scope of this chapter (see Chapter 52).

The routines for an index method do not directly know anything about the data types that the index method will operate on. Instead, an operator class identifies the set of operations that the index method needs to use to work with a particular data type. Operator classes are so called because one thing they specify is the set of WHERE-clause operators that can be used with an index (i.e., can be converted into an index-scan qualification). An operator class can also specify some support procedures that are needed by the internal operations of the index method, but do not directly correspond to any WHERE-clause operator that can be used with the index.

It is possible to define multiple operator classes for the same data type and index method. By doing this, multiple sets of indexing semantics can be defined for a single data type. For example, a B-tree index requires a sort ordering to be defined for each data type it works on. It might be useful for a complex-number data type to have one B-tree operator class that sorts the data by complex absolute value, another that sorts by real part, and so on. Typically, one of the operator classes will be deemed most commonly useful and will be marked as the default operator class for that data type and index method.

The same operator class name can be used for several different index methods (for example, both B-tree and hash index methods have operator classes named int4_ops), but each such class is an independent entity and must be defined separately.

35.14.2. Index Method Strategies

The operators associated with an operator class are identified by "strategy numbers", which serve to identify the semantics of each operator within the context of its operator class. For example, B-trees impose a strict ordering on keys, lesser to greater, and so operators like "less than" and "greater than or equal to" are interesting with respect to a B-tree. Because PostgreSQL allows the user to define operators, PostgreSQL cannot look at the name of an operator (e.g., < or >=) and tell what kind of comparison it is. Instead, the index method defines a set of "strategies", which can be thought of as generalized operators. Each operator class specifies which actual operator corresponds to each strategy for a particular data type and interpretation of the index semantics.

The B-tree index method defines five strategies, shown in Table 35-2.

Table 35-2. B-tree Strategies

Operation | Strategy Number
less than | 1
less than or equal | 2
equal | 3
greater than or equal | 4
greater than | 5

Hash indexes support only equality comparisons, and so they use only one strategy, shown in Table 35-3.

Table 35-3. Hash Strategies

Operation | Strategy Number
equal | 1

GiST indexes are more flexible: they do not have a fixed set of strategies at all. Instead, the "consistency" support routine of each particular GiST operator class interprets the strategy numbers however it likes. As an example, several of the built-in GiST index operator classes index two-dimensional geometric objects, providing the "R-tree" strategies shown in Table 35-4. Four of these are true two-dimensional tests (overlaps, same, contains, contained by); four of them consider only the X direction; and the other four provide the same tests in the Y direction.

Table 35-4. GiST Two-Dimensional "R-tree" Strategies

Operation | Strategy Number
strictly left of | 1
does not extend to right of | 2
overlaps | 3
does not extend to left of | 4
strictly right of | 5
same | 6
contains | 7
contained by | 8
does not extend above | 9
strictly below | 10
strictly above | 11
does not extend below | 12

GIN indexes are similar to GiST indexes in flexibility: they don't have a fixed set of strategies. Instead the support routines of each operator class interpret the strategy numbers according to the operator class's definition. As an example, the strategy numbers used by the built-in operator classes for arrays are shown in Table 35-5.

Table 35-5. GIN Array Strategies

Operation | Strategy Number
overlap | 1
contains | 2
is contained by | 3
equal | 4

Notice that all the operators listed above return Boolean values. In practice, all operators defined as index method search operators must return type boolean, since they must appear at the top level of a WHERE clause to be used with an index. (Some index access methods also support ordering operators, which typically don't return Boolean values; that feature is discussed in Section 35.14.7.)

35.14.3. Index Method Support Routines

Strategies aren't usually enough information for the system to figure out how to use an index. In practice, the index methods require additional support routines in order to work. For example, the B-tree index method must be able to compare two keys and determine whether one is greater than, equal to, or less than the other. Similarly, the hash index method must be able to compute hash codes for key values. These operations do not correspond to operators used in qualifications in SQL commands; they are administrative routines used by the index methods, internally.

Just as with strategies, the operator class identifies which specific functions should play each of these roles for a given data type and semantic interpretation. The index method defines the set of functions it needs, and the operator class identifies the correct functions to use by assigning them to the "support function numbers" specified by the index method.

B-trees require a single support function, shown in Table 35-6.

Table 35-6. B-tree Support Functions

Function | Support Number
Compare two keys and return an integer less than zero, zero, or greater than zero, indicating whether the first key is less than, equal to, or greater than the second | 1

Hash indexes likewise require one support function, shown in Table 35-7.

Table 35-7. Hash Support Functions

Function | Support Number
Compute the hash value for a key | 1

GiST indexes require seven support functions, with an optional eighth, as shown in Table 35-8.

Table 35-8. GiST Support Functions

Function | Description | Support Number
consistent | determine whether key satisfies the query qualifier | 1
union | compute union of a set of keys | 2
compress | compute a compressed representation of a key or value to be indexed | 3
decompress | compute a decompressed representation of a compressed key | 4
penalty | compute penalty for inserting new key into subtree with given subtree's key | 5
picksplit | determine which entries of a page are to be moved to the new page and compute the union keys for resulting pages | 6
equal | compare two keys and return true if they are equal | 7
distance | (optional method) determine distance from key to query value | 8

GIN indexes require four support functions, with an optional fifth, as shown in Table 35-9.

Table 35-9. GIN Support Functions

Function | Description | Support Number
compare | compare two keys and return an integer less than zero, zero, or greater than zero, indicating whether the first key is less than, equal to, or greater than the second | 1
extractValue | extract keys from a value to be indexed | 2
extractQuery | extract keys from a query condition | 3
consistent | determine whether value matches query condition | 4
comparePartial | (optional method) compare partial key from query and key from index, and return an integer less than zero, zero, or greater than zero, indicating whether GIN should ignore this index entry, treat the entry as a match, or stop the index scan | 5

Unlike search operators, support functions return whichever data type the particular index method expects; for example in the case of the comparison function for B-trees, a signed integer. The number and types of the arguments to each support function are likewise dependent on the index method. For B-tree and hash the support functions take the same input data types as do the operators included in the operator class, but this is not the case for most GIN and GiST support functions.

35.14.4. An Example

Now that we have seen the ideas, here is the promised example of creating a new operator class. (You can find a working copy of this example in src/tutorial/complex.c and src/tutorial/complex.sql in the source distribution.) The operator class encapsulates operators that sort complex numbers in absolute value order, so we choose the name complex_abs_ops. First, we need a set of operators. The procedure for defining operators was discussed in Section 35.12. For an operator class on B-trees, the operators we require are:

  • absolute-value less-than (strategy 1)
  • absolute-value less-than-or-equal (strategy 2)
  • absolute-value equal (strategy 3)
  • absolute-value greater-than-or-equal (strategy 4)
  • absolute-value greater-than (strategy 5)

The least error-prone way to define a related set of comparison operators is to write the B-tree comparison support function first, and then write the other functions as one-line wrappers around the support function. This reduces the odds of getting inconsistent results for corner cases. Following this approach, we first write:

#define Mag(c)  ((c)->x*(c)->x + (c)->y*(c)->y)

static int
complex_abs_cmp_internal(Complex *a, Complex *b)
{
    double      amag = Mag(a),
                bmag = Mag(b);

    if (amag < bmag)
        return -1;
    if (amag > bmag)
        return 1;
    return 0;
}

Now the less-than function looks like:

PG_FUNCTION_INFO_V1(complex_abs_lt);

Datum
complex_abs_lt(PG_FUNCTION_ARGS)
{
    Complex    *a = (Complex *) PG_GETARG_POINTER(0);
    Complex    *b = (Complex *) PG_GETARG_POINTER(1);

    PG_RETURN_BOOL(complex_abs_cmp_internal(a, b) < 0);
}

The other four functions differ only in how they compare the internal function's result to zero.

Next we declare the functions and the operators based on the functions to SQL:

CREATE FUNCTION complex_abs_lt(complex, complex) RETURNS bool
    AS 'filename', 'complex_abs_lt'
    LANGUAGE C IMMUTABLE STRICT;

CREATE OPERATOR < (
   leftarg = complex, rightarg = complex, procedure = complex_abs_lt,
   commutator = > , negator = >= ,
   restrict = scalarltsel, join = scalarltjoinsel
);

It is important to specify the correct commutator and negator operators, as well as suitable restriction and join selectivity functions, otherwise the optimizer will be unable to make effective use of the index. Note that the less-than, equal, and greater-than cases should use different selectivity functions.

Other things worth noting are happening here:

  • There can only be one operator named, say, = and taking type complex for both operands. In this case we don't have any other operator = for complex, but if we were building a practical data type we'd probably want = to be the ordinary equality operation for complex numbers (and not the equality of the absolute values). In that case, we'd need to use some other operator name for complex_abs_eq.

  • Although PostgreSQL can cope with functions having the same SQL name as long as they have different argument data types, C can only cope with one global function having a given name. So we shouldn't name the C function something simple like abs_eq. Usually it's a good practice to include the data type name in the C function name, so as not to conflict with functions for other data types.

  • We could have made the SQL name of the function abs_eq, relying on PostgreSQL to distinguish it by argument data types from any other SQL function of the same name. To keep the example simple, we make the function have the same names at the C level and SQL level.

The next step is the registration of the support routine required by B-trees. The example C code that implements this is in the same file that contains the operator functions. This is how we declare the function:

CREATE FUNCTION complex_abs_cmp(complex, complex)
    RETURNS integer
    AS 'filename'
    LANGUAGE C IMMUTABLE STRICT;

Now that we have the required operators and support routine, we can finally create the operator class:

CREATE OPERATOR CLASS complex_abs_ops
    DEFAULT FOR TYPE complex USING btree AS
        OPERATOR        1       < ,
        OPERATOR        2       <= ,
        OPERATOR        3       = ,
        OPERATOR        4       >= ,
        OPERATOR        5       > ,
        FUNCTION        1       complex_abs_cmp(complex, complex);

And we're done! It should now be possible to create and use B-tree indexes on complex columns.

We could have written the operator entries more verbosely, as in:

        OPERATOR        1       < (complex, complex) ,

but there is no need to do so when the operators take the same data type we are defining the operator class for.

The above example assumes that you want to make this new operator class the default B-tree operator class for the complex data type. If you don't, just leave out the word DEFAULT.

35.14.5. Operator Classes and Operator Families

So far we have implicitly assumed that an operator class deals with only one data type. While there certainly can be only one data type in a particular index column, it is often useful to index operations that compare an indexed column to a value of a different data type. Also, if there is use for a cross-data-type operator in connection with an operator class, it is often the case that the other data type has a related operator class of its own. It is helpful to make the connections between related classes explicit, because this can aid the planner in optimizing SQL queries (particularly for B-tree operator classes, since the planner contains a great deal of knowledge about how to work with them).

To handle these needs, PostgreSQL uses the concept of an operator family. An operator family contains one or more operator classes, and can also contain indexable operators and corresponding support functions that belong to the family as a whole but not to any single class within the family. We say that such operators and functions are "loose" within the family, as opposed to being bound into a specific class. Typically each operator class contains single-data-type operators while cross-data-type operators are loose in the family.

All the operators and functions in an operator family must have compatible semantics, where the compatibility requirements are set by the index method. You might therefore wonder why bother to single out particular subsets of the family as operator classes; and indeed for many purposes the class divisions are irrelevant and the family is the only interesting grouping. The reason for defining operator classes is that they specify how much of the family is needed to support any particular index. If there is an index using an operator class, then that operator class cannot be dropped without dropping the index — but other parts of the operator family, namely other operator classes and loose operators, could be dropped. Thus, an operator class should be specified to contain the minimum set of operators and functions that are reasonably needed to work with an index on a specific data type, and then related but non-essential operators can be added as loose members of the operator family.

As an example, PostgreSQL has a built-in B-tree operator family integer_ops, which includes operator classes int8_ops, int4_ops, and int2_ops for indexes on bigint (int8), integer (int4), and smallint (int2) columns respectively. The family also contains cross-data-type comparison operators allowing any two of these types to be compared, so that an index on one of these types can be searched using a comparison value of another type. The family could be duplicated by these definitions:

CREATE OPERATOR FAMILY integer_ops USING btree;

CREATE OPERATOR CLASS int8_ops
DEFAULT FOR TYPE int8 USING btree FAMILY integer_ops AS
  -- standard int8 comparisons
  OPERATOR 1 < ,
  OPERATOR 2 <= ,
  OPERATOR 3 = ,
  OPERATOR 4 >= ,
  OPERATOR 5 > ,
  FUNCTION 1 btint8cmp(int8, int8) ;

CREATE OPERATOR CLASS int4_ops
DEFAULT FOR TYPE int4 USING btree FAMILY integer_ops AS
  -- standard int4 comparisons
  OPERATOR 1 < ,
  OPERATOR 2 <= ,
  OPERATOR 3 = ,
  OPERATOR 4 >= ,
  OPERATOR 5 > ,
  FUNCTION 1 btint4cmp(int4, int4) ;

CREATE OPERATOR CLASS int2_ops
DEFAULT FOR TYPE int2 USING btree FAMILY integer_ops AS
  -- standard int2 comparisons
  OPERATOR 1 < ,
  OPERATOR 2 <= ,
  OPERATOR 3 = ,
  OPERATOR 4 >= ,
  OPERATOR 5 > ,
  FUNCTION 1 btint2cmp(int2, int2) ;

ALTER OPERATOR FAMILY integer_ops USING btree ADD
  -- cross-type comparisons int8 vs int2
  OPERATOR 1 < (int8, int2) ,
  OPERATOR 2 <= (int8, int2) ,
  OPERATOR 3 = (int8, int2) ,
  OPERATOR 4 >= (int8, int2) ,
  OPERATOR 5 > (int8, int2) ,
  FUNCTION 1 btint82cmp(int8, int2) ,

  -- cross-type comparisons int8 vs int4
  OPERATOR 1 < (int8, int4) ,
  OPERATOR 2 <= (int8, int4) ,
  OPERATOR 3 = (int8, int4) ,
  OPERATOR 4 >= (int8, int4) ,
  OPERATOR 5 > (int8, int4) ,
  FUNCTION 1 btint84cmp(int8, int4) ,

  -- cross-type comparisons int4 vs int2
  OPERATOR 1 < (int4, int2) ,
  OPERATOR 2 <= (int4, int2) ,
  OPERATOR 3 = (int4, int2) ,
  OPERATOR 4 >= (int4, int2) ,
  OPERATOR 5 > (int4, int2) ,
  FUNCTION 1 btint42cmp(int4, int2) ,

  -- cross-type comparisons int4 vs int8
  OPERATOR 1 < (int4, int8) ,
  OPERATOR 2 <= (int4, int8) ,
  OPERATOR 3 = (int4, int8) ,
  OPERATOR 4 >= (int4, int8) ,
  OPERATOR 5 > (int4, int8) ,
  FUNCTION 1 btint48cmp(int4, int8) ,

  -- cross-type comparisons int2 vs int8
  OPERATOR 1 < (int2, int8) ,
  OPERATOR 2 <= (int2, int8) ,
  OPERATOR 3 = (int2, int8) ,
  OPERATOR 4 >= (int2, int8) ,
  OPERATOR 5 > (int2, int8) ,
  FUNCTION 1 btint28cmp(int2, int8) ,

  -- cross-type comparisons int2 vs int4
  OPERATOR 1 < (int2, int4) ,
  OPERATOR 2 <= (int2, int4) ,
  OPERATOR 3 = (int2, int4) ,
  OPERATOR 4 >= (int2, int4) ,
  OPERATOR 5 > (int2, int4) ,
  FUNCTION 1 btint24cmp(int2, int4) ;

Notice that this definition "overloads" the operator strategy and support function numbers: each number occurs multiple times within the family. This is allowed so long as each instance of a particular number has distinct input data types. The instances that have both input types equal to an operator class's input type are the primary operators and support functions for that operator class, and in most cases should be declared as part of the operator class rather than as loose members of the family.

In a B-tree operator family, all the operators in the family must sort compatibly, meaning that the transitive laws hold across all the data types supported by the family: "if A = B and B = C, then A = C", and "if A < B and B < C, then A < C". For each operator in the family there must be a support function having the same two input data types as the operator. It is recommended that a family be complete, i.e., for each combination of data types, all operators are included. Each operator class should include just the non-cross-type operators and support function for its data type.

To build a multiple-data-type hash operator family, compatible hash support functions must be created for each data type supported by the family. Here compatibility means that the functions are guaranteed to return the same hash code for any two values that are considered equal by the family's equality operators, even when the values are of different types. This is usually difficult to accomplish when the types have different physical representations, but it can be done in some cases. Notice that there is only one support function per data type, not one per equality operator. It is recommended that a family be complete, i.e., provide an equality operator for each combination of data types. Each operator class should include just the non-cross-type equality operator and the support function for its data type.

GIN and GiST indexes do not have any explicit notion of cross-data-type operations. The set of operators supported is just whatever the primary support functions for a given operator class can handle.

Note: Prior to PostgreSQL 8.3, there was no concept of operator families, and so any cross-data-type operators intended to be used with an index had to be bound directly into the index's operator class. While this approach still works, it is deprecated because it makes an index's dependencies too broad, and because the planner can handle cross-data-type comparisons more effectively when both data types have operators in the same operator family.

35.14.6. System Dependencies on Operator Classes

PostgreSQL uses operator classes to infer the properties of operators in more ways than just whether they can be used with indexes. Therefore, you might want to create operator classes even if you have no intention of indexing any columns of your data type.

In particular, there are SQL features such as ORDER BY and DISTINCT that require comparison and sorting of values. To implement these features on a user-defined data type, PostgreSQL looks for the default B-tree operator class for the data type. The "equals" member of this operator class defines the system's notion of equality of values for GROUP BY and DISTINCT, and the sort ordering imposed by the operator class defines the default ORDER BY ordering.

Comparison of arrays of user-defined types also relies on the semantics defined by the default B-tree operator class.

If there is no default B-tree operator class for a data type, the system will look for a default hash operator class. But since that kind of operator class only provides equality, in practice it is only enough to support array equality.

When there is no default operator class for a data type, you will get errors like "could not identify an ordering operator" if you try to use these SQL features with the data type.

Note: In PostgreSQL versions before 7.4, sorting and grouping operations would implicitly use operators named =, <, and >. The new behavior of relying on default operator classes avoids having to make any assumption about the behavior of operators with particular names.

Another important point is that an operator that appears in a hash operator family is a candidate for hash joins, hash aggregation, and related optimizations. The hash operator family is essential here since it identifies the hash function(s) to use.

35.14.7. Ordering Operators

Some index access methods (currently, only GiST) support the concept of ordering operators. What we have been discussing so far are search operators. A search operator is one for which the index can be searched to find all rows satisfying WHERE indexed_column operator constant. Note that nothing is promised about the order in which the matching rows will be returned. In contrast, an ordering operator does not restrict the set of rows that can be returned, but instead determines their order. An ordering operator is one for which the index can be scanned to return rows in the order represented by ORDER BY indexed_column operator constant. The reason for defining ordering operators that way is that it supports nearest-neighbor searches, if the operator is one that measures distance. For example, a query like

SELECT * FROM places ORDER BY location <-> point '(101,456)' LIMIT 10;

finds the ten places closest to a given target point. A GiST index on the location column can do this efficiently because <-> is an ordering operator.

While search operators have to return Boolean results, ordering operators usually return some other type, such as float or numeric for distances. This type is normally not the same as the data type being indexed. To avoid hard-wiring assumptions about the behavior of different data types, the definition of an ordering operator is required to name a B-tree operator family that specifies the sort ordering of the result data type. As was stated in the previous section, B-tree operator families define PostgreSQL's notion of ordering, so this is a natural representation. Since the point <-> operator returns float8, it could be specified in an operator class creation command like this:

OPERATOR 15    <-> (point, point) FOR ORDER BY float_ops

where float_ops is the built-in operator family that includes operations on float8. This declaration states that the index is able to return rows in order of increasing values of the <-> operator.

35.14.8. Special Features of Operator Classes

There are two special features of operator classes that we have not discussed yet, mainly because they are not useful with the most commonly used index methods.

Normally, declaring an operator as a member of an operator class (or family) means that the index method can retrieve exactly the set of rows that satisfy a WHERE condition using the operator. For example:

SELECT * FROM table WHERE integer_column < 4;

can be satisfied exactly by a B-tree index on the integer column. But there are cases where an index is useful as an inexact guide to the matching rows. For example, if a GiST index stores only bounding boxes for geometric objects, then it cannot exactly satisfy a WHERE condition that tests overlap between nonrectangular objects such as polygons. Yet we could use the index to find objects whose bounding box overlaps the bounding box of the target object, and then do the exact overlap test only on the objects found by the index. If this scenario applies, the index is said to be "lossy" for the operator. Lossy index searches are implemented by having the index method return a recheck flag when a row might or might not really satisfy the query condition. The core system will then test the original query condition on the retrieved row to see whether it should be returned as a valid match. This approach works if the index is guaranteed to return all the required rows, plus perhaps some additional rows, which can be eliminated by performing the original operator invocation. The index methods that support lossy searches (currently, GiST and GIN) allow the support functions of individual operator classes to set the recheck flag, and so this is essentially an operator-class feature.

Consider again the situation where we are storing in the index only the bounding box of a complex object such as a polygon. In this case there's not much value in storing the whole polygon in the index entry — we might as well store just a simpler object of type box. This situation is expressed by the STORAGE option in CREATE OPERATOR CLASS: we'd write something like:

CREATE OPERATOR CLASS polygon_ops
    DEFAULT FOR TYPE polygon USING gist AS
        ...
        STORAGE box;

At present, only the GiST and GIN index methods support a STORAGE type that's different from the column data type. The GiST compress and decompress support routines must deal with data-type conversion when STORAGE is used. In GIN, the STORAGE type identifies the type of the "key" values, which normally is different from the type of the indexed column — for example, an operator class for integer-array columns might have keys that are just integers. The GIN extractValue and extractQuery support routines are responsible for extracting keys from indexed values.

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Operator Optimization Information | Up | Packaging Related Objects into an Extension


Packaging Related Objects into an Extension

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35.15. Packaging Related Objects into an Extension

A useful extension to PostgreSQL typically includes multiple SQL objects; for example, a new data type will require new functions, new operators, and probably new index operator classes. It is helpful to collect all these objects into a single package to simplify database management. PostgreSQL calls such a package an extension. To define an extension, you need at least a script file that contains the SQL commands to create the extension's objects, and a control file that specifies a few basic properties of the extension itself. If the extension includes C code, there will typically also be a shared library file into which the C code has been built. Once you have these files, a simple CREATE EXTENSION command loads the objects into your database.

The main advantage of using an extension, rather than just running the SQL script to load a bunch of "loose" objects into your database, is that PostgreSQL will then understand that the objects of the extension go together. You can drop all the objects with a single DROP EXTENSION command (no need to maintain a separate "uninstall" script). Even more useful, pg_dump knows that it should not dump the individual member objects of the extension — it will just include a CREATE EXTENSION command in dumps, instead. This vastly simplifies migration to a new version of the extension that might contain more or different objects than the old version. Note however that you must have the extension's control, script, and other files available when loading such a dump into a new database.

PostgreSQL will not let you drop an individual object contained in an extension, except by dropping the whole extension. Also, while you can change the definition of an extension member object (for example, via CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION for a function), bear in mind that the modified definition will not be dumped by pg_dump. Such a change is usually only sensible if you concurrently make the same change in the extension's script file. (But there are special provisions for tables containing configuration data; see below.)

The extension mechanism also has provisions for packaging modification scripts that adjust the definitions of the SQL objects contained in an extension. For example, if version 1.1 of an extension adds one function and changes the body of another function compared to 1.0, the extension author can provide an update script that makes just those two changes. The ALTER EXTENSION UPDATE command can then be used to apply these changes and track which version of the extension is actually installed in a given database.

The kinds of SQL objects that can be members of an extension are shown in the description of ALTER EXTENSION. Notably, objects that are database-cluster-wide, such as databases, roles, and tablespaces, cannot be extension members since an extension is only known within one database. (Although an extension script is not prohibited from creating such objects, if it does so they will not be tracked as part of the extension.) Also notice that while a table can be a member of an extension, its subsidiary objects such as indexes are not directly considered members of the extension. Another important point is that schemas can belong to extensions, but not vice versa: an extension as such has an unqualified name and does not exist "within" any schema. The extension's member objects, however, will belong to schemas whenever appropriate for their object types. It may or may not be appropriate for an extension to own the schema(s) its member objects are within.

35.15.1. Extension Files

The CREATE EXTENSION command relies on a control file for each extension, which must be named the same as the extension with a suffix of .control, and must be placed in the installation's SHAREDIR/extension directory. There must also be at least one SQL script file, which follows the naming pattern extension--version.sql (for example, foo--1.0.sql for version 1.0 of extension foo). By default, the script file(s) are also placed in the SHAREDIR/extension directory; but the control file can specify a different directory for the script file(s).

The file format for an extension control file is the same as for the postgresql.conf file, namely a list of parameter_name = value assignments, one per line. Blank lines and comments introduced by # are allowed. Be sure to quote any value that is not a single word or number.

A control file can set the following parameters:

directory (string)

The directory containing the extension's SQL script file(s). Unless an absolute path is given, the name is relative to the installation's SHAREDIR directory. The default behavior is equivalent to specifying directory = 'extension'.

default_version (string)

The default version of the extension (the one that will be installed if no version is specified in CREATE EXTENSION). Although this can be omitted, that will result in CREATE EXTENSION failing if no VERSION option appears, so you generally don't want to do that.

comment (string)

A comment (any string) about the extension. Alternatively, the comment can be set by means of the COMMENT command in the script file.

encoding (string)

The character set encoding used by the script file(s). This should be specified if the script files contain any non-ASCII characters. Otherwise the files will be assumed to be in the database encoding.

module_pathname (string)

The value of this parameter will be substituted for each occurrence of MODULE_PATHNAME in the script file(s). If it is not set, no substitution is made. Typically, this is set to $libdir/shared_library_name and then MODULE_PATHNAME is used in CREATE FUNCTION commands for C-language functions, so that the script files do not need to hard-wire the name of the shared library.

requires (string)

A list of names of extensions that this extension depends on, for example requires = 'foo, bar'. Those extensions must be installed before this one can be installed.

superuser (boolean)

If this parameter is true (which is the default), only superusers can create the extension or update it to a new version. If it is set to false, just the privileges required to execute the commands in the installation or update script are required.

relocatable (boolean)

An extension is relocatable if it is possible to move its contained objects into a different schema after initial creation of the extension. The default is false, i.e. the extension is not relocatable. See below for more information.

schema (string)

This parameter can only be set for non-relocatable extensions. It forces the extension to be loaded into exactly the named schema and not any other. See below for more information.

In addition to the primary control file extension.control, an extension can have secondary control files named in the style extension--version.control. If supplied, these must be located in the script file directory. Secondary control files follow the same format as the primary control file. Any parameters set in a secondary control file override the primary control file when installing or updating to that version of the extension. However, the parameters directory and default_version cannot be set in a secondary control file.

An extension's SQL script files can contain any SQL commands, except for transaction control commands (BEGIN, COMMIT, etc) and commands that cannot be executed inside a transaction block (such as VACUUM). This is because the script files are implicitly executed within a transaction block.

An extension's SQL script files can also contain lines beginning with \echo, which will be ignored (treated as comments) by the extension mechanism. This provision is commonly used to throw an error if the script file is fed to psql rather than being loaded via CREATE EXTENSION (see example script below). Without that, users might accidentally load the extension's contents as "loose" objects rather than as an extension, a state of affairs that's a bit tedious to recover from.

While the script files can contain any characters allowed by the specified encoding, control files should contain only plain ASCII, because there is no way for PostgreSQL to know what encoding a control file is in. In practice this is only an issue if you want to use non-ASCII characters in the extension's comment. Recommended practice in that case is to not use the control file comment parameter, but instead use COMMENT ON EXTENSION within a script file to set the comment.

35.15.2. Extension Relocatability

Users often wish to load the objects contained in an extension into a different schema than the extension's author had in mind. There are three supported levels of relocatability:

  • A fully relocatable extension can be moved into another schema at any time, even after it's been loaded into a database. This is done with the ALTER EXTENSION SET SCHEMA command, which automatically renames all the member objects into the new schema. Normally, this is only possible if the extension contains no internal assumptions about what schema any of its objects are in. Also, the extension's objects must all be in one schema to begin with (ignoring objects that do not belong to any schema, such as procedural languages). Mark a fully relocatable extension by setting relocatable = true in its control file.

  • An extension might be relocatable during installation but not afterwards. This is typically the case if the extension's script file needs to reference the target schema explicitly, for example in setting search_path properties for SQL functions. For such an extension, set relocatable = false in its control file, and use @extschema@ to refer to the target schema in the script file. All occurrences of this string will be replaced by the actual target schema's name before the script is executed. The user can set the target schema using the SCHEMA option of CREATE EXTENSION.

  • If the extension does not support relocation at all, set relocatable = false in its control file, and also set schema to the name of the intended target schema. This will prevent use of the SCHEMA option of CREATE EXTENSION, unless it specifies the same schema named in the control file. This choice is typically necessary if the extension contains internal assumptions about schema names that can't be replaced by uses of @extschema@. The @extschema@ substitution mechanism is available in this case too, although it is of limited use since the schema name is determined by the control file.

In all cases, the script file will be executed with search_path initially set to point to the target schema; that is, CREATE EXTENSION does the equivalent of this:

SET LOCAL search_path TO @extschema@;

This allows the objects created by the script file to go into the target schema. The script file can change search_path if it wishes, but that is generally undesirable. search_path is restored to its previous setting upon completion of CREATE EXTENSION.

The target schema is determined by the schema parameter in the control file if that is given, otherwise by the SCHEMA option of CREATE EXTENSION if that is given, otherwise the current default object creation schema (the first one in the caller's search_path). When the control file schema parameter is used, the target schema will be created if it doesn't already exist, but in the other two cases it must already exist.

If any prerequisite extensions are listed in requires in the control file, their target schemas are appended to the initial setting of search_path. This allows their objects to be visible to the new extension's script file.

Although a non-relocatable extension can contain objects spread across multiple schemas, it is usually desirable to place all the objects meant for external use into a single schema, which is considered the extension's target schema. Such an arrangement works conveniently with the default setting of search_path during creation of dependent extensions.

35.15.3. Extension Configuration Tables

Some extensions include configuration tables, which contain data that might be added or changed by the user after installation of the extension. Ordinarily, if a table is part of an extension, neither the table's definition nor its content will be dumped by pg_dump. But that behavior is undesirable for a configuration table; any data changes made by the user need to be included in dumps, or the extension will behave differently after a dump and reload.

To solve this problem, an extension's script file can mark a table it has created as a configuration table, which will cause pg_dump to include the table's contents (not its definition) in dumps. To do that, call the function pg_extension_config_dump(regclass, text) after creating the table, for example

CREATE TABLE my_config (key text, value text);

SELECT pg_catalog.pg_extension_config_dump('my_config', '');

Any number of tables can be marked this way.

When the second argument of pg_extension_config_dump is an empty string, the entire contents of the table are dumped by pg_dump. This is usually only correct if the table is initially empty as created by the extension script. If there is a mixture of initial data and user-provided data in the table, the second argument of pg_extension_config_dump provides a WHERE condition that selects the data to be dumped. For example, you might do

CREATE TABLE my_config (key text, value text, standard_entry boolean);

SELECT pg_catalog.pg_extension_config_dump('my_config', 'WHERE NOT standard_entry');

and then make sure that standard_entry is true only in the rows created by the extension's script.

More complicated situations, such as initially-provided rows that might be modified by users, can be handled by creating triggers on the configuration table to ensure that modified rows are marked correctly.

You can alter the filter condition associated with a configuration table by calling pg_extension_config_dump again. (This would typically be useful in an extension update script.) The only way to mark a table as no longer a configuration table is to dissociate it from the extension with ALTER EXTENSION ... DROP TABLE.

Note that foreign key relationships between these tables will dictate the order in which the tables are dumped out by pg_dump. Specifically, pg_dump will attempt to dump the referenced-by table before the referencing table. As the foreign key relationships are set up at CREATE EXTENSION time (prior to data being loaded into the tables) circular dependencies are not supported. When circular dependencies exist, the data will still be dumped out but the dump will not be able to be restored directly and user intervention will be required.

35.15.4. Extension Updates

One advantage of the extension mechanism is that it provides convenient ways to manage updates to the SQL commands that define an extension's objects. This is done by associating a version name or number with each released version of the extension's installation script. In addition, if you want users to be able to update their databases dynamically from one version to the next, you should provide update scripts that make the necessary changes to go from one version to the next. Update scripts have names following the pattern extension--oldversion--newversion.sql (for example, foo--1.0--1.1.sql contains the commands to modify version 1.0 of extension foo into version 1.1).

Given that a suitable update script is available, the command ALTER EXTENSION UPDATE will update an installed extension to the specified new version. The update script is run in the same environment that CREATE EXTENSION provides for installation scripts: in particular, search_path is set up in the same way, and any new objects created by the script are automatically added to the extension.

If an extension has secondary control files, the control parameters that are used for an update script are those associated with the script's target (new) version.

The update mechanism can be used to solve an important special case: converting a "loose" collection of objects into an extension. Before the extension mechanism was added to PostgreSQL (in 9.1), many people wrote extension modules that simply created assorted unpackaged objects. Given an existing database containing such objects, how can we convert the objects into a properly packaged extension? Dropping them and then doing a plain CREATE EXTENSION is one way, but it's not desirable if the objects have dependencies (for example, if there are table columns of a data type created by the extension). The way to fix this situation is to create an empty extension, then use ALTER EXTENSION ADD to attach each pre-existing object to the extension, then finally create any new objects that are in the current extension version but were not in the unpackaged release. CREATE EXTENSION supports this case with its FROM old_version option, which causes it to not run the normal installation script for the target version, but instead the update script named extension--old_version--target_version.sql. The choice of the dummy version name to use as old_version is up to the extension author, though unpackaged is a common convention. If you have multiple prior versions you need to be able to update into extension style, use multiple dummy version names to identify them.

ALTER EXTENSION is able to execute sequences of update script files to achieve a requested update. For example, if only foo--1.0--1.1.sql and foo--1.1--2.0.sql are available, ALTER EXTENSION will apply them in sequence if an update to version 2.0 is requested when 1.0 is currently installed.

PostgreSQL doesn't assume anything about the properties of version names: for example, it does not know whether 1.1 follows 1.0. It just matches up the available version names and follows the path that requires applying the fewest update scripts. (A version name can actually be any string that doesn't contain -- or leading or trailing -.)

Sometimes it is useful to provide "downgrade" scripts, for example foo--1.1--1.0.sql to allow reverting the changes associated with version 1.1. If you do that, be careful of the possibility that a downgrade script might unexpectedly get applied because it yields a shorter path. The risky case is where there is a "fast path" update script that jumps ahead several versions as well as a downgrade script to the fast path's start point. It might take fewer steps to apply the downgrade and then the fast path than to move ahead one version at a time. If the downgrade script drops any irreplaceable objects, this will yield undesirable results.

To check for unexpected update paths, use this command:

SELECT * FROM pg_extension_update_paths('extension_name');

This shows each pair of distinct known version names for the specified extension, together with the update path sequence that would be taken to get from the source version to the target version, or NULL if there is no available update path. The path is shown in textual form with -- separators. You can use regexp_split_to_array(path,'--') if you prefer an array format.

35.15.5. Extension Example

Here is a complete example of an SQL-only extension, a two-element composite type that can store any type of value in its slots, which are named "k" and "v". Non-text values are automatically coerced to text for storage.

The script file pair--1.0.sql looks like this:

-- complain if script is sourced in psql, rather than via CREATE EXTENSION
\echo Use "CREATE EXTENSION pair" to load this file. \quit

CREATE TYPE pair AS ( k text, v text );

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION pair(anyelement, text)
RETURNS pair LANGUAGE SQL AS 'SELECT ROW($1, $2)::pair';

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION pair(text, anyelement)
RETURNS pair LANGUAGE SQL AS 'SELECT ROW($1, $2)::pair';

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION pair(anyelement, anyelement)
RETURNS pair LANGUAGE SQL AS 'SELECT ROW($1, $2)::pair';

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION pair(text, text)
RETURNS pair LANGUAGE SQL AS 'SELECT ROW($1, $2)::pair;';

CREATE OPERATOR ~> (LEFTARG = text, RIGHTARG = anyelement, PROCEDURE = pair);
CREATE OPERATOR ~> (LEFTARG = anyelement, RIGHTARG = text, PROCEDURE = pair);
CREATE OPERATOR ~> (LEFTARG = anyelement, RIGHTARG = anyelement, PROCEDURE = pair);
CREATE OPERATOR ~> (LEFTARG = text, RIGHTARG = text, PROCEDURE = pair);

The control file pair.control looks like this:

# pair extension
comment = 'A key/value pair data type'
default_version = '1.0'
relocatable = true

While you hardly need a makefile to install these two files into the correct directory, you could use a Makefile containing this:

EXTENSION = pair
DATA = pair--1.0.sql

PG_CONFIG = pg_config
PGXS := $(shell $(PG_CONFIG) --pgxs)
include $(PGXS)

This makefile relies on PGXS, which is described in Section 35.16. The command make install will install the control and script files into the correct directory as reported by pg_config.

Once the files are installed, use the CREATE EXTENSION command to load the objects into any particular database.

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Extension Building Infrastructure

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35.16. Extension Building Infrastructure

If you are thinking about distributing your PostgreSQL extension modules, setting up a portable build system for them can be fairly difficult. Therefore the PostgreSQL installation provides a build infrastructure for extensions, called PGXS, so that simple extension modules can be built simply against an already installed server. PGXS is mainly intended for extensions that include C code, although it can be used for pure-SQL extensions too. Note that PGXS is not intended to be a universal build system framework that can be used to build any software interfacing to PostgreSQL; it simply automates common build rules for simple server extension modules. For more complicated packages, you might need to write your own build system.

To use the PGXS infrastructure for your extension, you must write a simple makefile. In the makefile, you need to set some variables and finally include the global PGXS makefile. Here is an example that builds an extension module named isbn_issn, consisting of a shared library containing some C code, an extension control file, a SQL script, and a documentation text file:

MODULES = isbn_issn
EXTENSION = isbn_issn
DATA = isbn_issn--1.0.sql
DOCS = README.isbn_issn

PG_CONFIG = pg_config
PGXS := $(shell $(PG_CONFIG) --pgxs)
include $(PGXS)

The last three lines should always be the same. Earlier in the file, you assign variables or add custom make rules.

Set one of these three variables to specify what is built:

MODULES

list of shared-library objects to be built from source files with same stem (do not include library suffixes in this list)

MODULE_big

a shared library to build from multiple source files (list object files in OBJS)

PROGRAM

an executable program to build (list object files in OBJS)

The following variables can also be set:

EXTENSION

extension name(s); for each name you must provide an extension.control file, which will be installed into prefix/share/extension

MODULEDIR

subdirectory of prefix/share into which DATA and DOCS files should be installed (if not set, default is extension if EXTENSION is set, or contrib if not)

DATA

random files to install into prefix/share/$MODULEDIR

DATA_built

random files to install into prefix/share/$MODULEDIR, which need to be built first

DATA_TSEARCH

random files to install under prefix/share/tsearch_data

DOCS

random files to install under prefix/doc/$MODULEDIR

SCRIPTS

script files (not binaries) to install into prefix/bin

SCRIPTS_built

script files (not binaries) to install into prefix/bin, which need to be built first

REGRESS

list of regression test cases (without suffix), see below

REGRESS_OPTS

additional switches to pass to pg_regress

EXTRA_CLEAN

extra files to remove in make clean

PG_CPPFLAGS

will be added to CPPFLAGS

PG_LIBS

will be added to PROGRAM link line

SHLIB_LINK

will be added to MODULE_big link line

PG_CONFIG

path to pg_config program for the PostgreSQL installation to build against (typically just pg_config to use the first one in your PATH)

Put this makefile as Makefile in the directory which holds your extension. Then you can do make to compile, and then make install to install your module. By default, the extension is compiled and installed for the PostgreSQL installation that corresponds to the first pg_config program found in your PATH. You can use a different installation by setting PG_CONFIG to point to its pg_config program, either within the makefile or on the make command line.

Caution

Changing PG_CONFIG only works when building against PostgreSQL 8.3 or later. With older releases it does not work to set it to anything except pg_config; you must alter your PATH to select the installation to build against.

The scripts listed in the REGRESS variable are used for regression testing of your module, which can be invoked by make installcheck after doing make install. For this to work you must have a running PostgreSQL server. The script files listed in REGRESS must appear in a subdirectory named sql/ in your extension's directory. These files must have extension .sql, which must not be included in the REGRESS list in the makefile. For each test there should also be a file containing the expected output in a subdirectory named expected/, with the same stem and extension .out. make installcheck executes each test script with psql, and compares the resulting output to the matching expected file. Any differences will be written to the file regression.diffs in diff -c format. Note that trying to run a test that is missing its expected file will be reported as "trouble", so make sure you have all expected files.

Tip: The easiest way to create the expected files is to create empty files, then do a test run (which will of course report differences). Inspect the actual result files found in the results/ directory, then copy them to expected/ if they match what you expect from the test.

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Triggers

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Chapter 36. Triggers

Table of Contents
36.1. Overview of Trigger Behavior
36.2. Visibility of Data Changes
36.3. Writing Trigger Functions in C
36.4. A Complete Trigger Example

This chapter provides general information about writing trigger functions. Trigger functions can be written in most of the available procedural languages, including PL/pgSQL (Chapter 39), PL/Tcl (Chapter 40), PL/Perl (Chapter 41), and PL/Python (Chapter 42). After reading this chapter, you should consult the chapter for your favorite procedural language to find out the language-specific details of writing a trigger in it.

It is also possible to write a trigger function in C, although most people find it easier to use one of the procedural languages. It is not currently possible to write a trigger function in the plain SQL function language.

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Overview of Trigger Behavior

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36.1. Overview of Trigger Behavior

A trigger is a specification that the database should automatically execute a particular function whenever a certain type of operation is performed. Triggers can be attached to both tables and views.

On tables, triggers can be defined to execute either before or after any INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE operation, either once per modified row, or once per SQL statement. UPDATE triggers can moreover be set to fire only if certain columns are mentioned in the SET clause of the UPDATE statement. Triggers can also fire for TRUNCATE statements. If a trigger event occurs, the trigger's function is called at the appropriate time to handle the event.

On views, triggers can be defined to execute instead of INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE operations. INSTEAD OF triggers are fired once for each row that needs to be modified in the view. It is the responsibility of the trigger's function to perform the necessary modifications to the underlying base tables and, where appropriate, return the modified row as it will appear in the view. Triggers on views can also be defined to execute once per SQL statement, before or after INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE operations.

The trigger function must be defined before the trigger itself can be created. The trigger function must be declared as a function taking no arguments and returning type trigger. (The trigger function receives its input through a specially-passed TriggerData structure, not in the form of ordinary function arguments.)

Once a suitable trigger function has been created, the trigger is established with CREATE TRIGGER. The same trigger function can be used for multiple triggers.

PostgreSQL offers both per-row triggers and per-statement triggers. With a per-row trigger, the trigger function is invoked once for each row that is affected by the statement that fired the trigger. In contrast, a per-statement trigger is invoked only once when an appropriate statement is executed, regardless of the number of rows affected by that statement. In particular, a statement that affects zero rows will still result in the execution of any applicable per-statement triggers. These two types of triggers are sometimes called row-level triggers and statement-level triggers, respectively. Triggers on TRUNCATE may only be defined at statement level. On views, triggers that fire before or after may only be defined at statement level, while triggers that fire instead of an INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE may only be defined at row level.

Triggers are also classified according to whether they fire before, after, or instead of the operation. These are referred to as BEFORE triggers, AFTER triggers, and INSTEAD OF triggers respectively. Statement-level BEFORE triggers naturally fire before the statement starts to do anything, while statement-level AFTER triggers fire at the very end of the statement. These types of triggers may be defined on tables or views. Row-level BEFORE triggers fire immediately before a particular row is operated on, while row-level AFTER triggers fire at the end of the statement (but before any statement-level AFTER triggers). These types of triggers may only be defined on tables. Row-level INSTEAD OF triggers may only be defined on views, and fire immediately as each row in the view is identified as needing to be operated on.

Trigger functions invoked by per-statement triggers should always return NULL. Trigger functions invoked by per-row triggers can return a table row (a value of type HeapTuple) to the calling executor, if they choose. A row-level trigger fired before an operation has the following choices:

  • It can return NULL to skip the operation for the current row. This instructs the executor to not perform the row-level operation that invoked the trigger (the insertion, modification, or deletion of a particular table row).

  • For row-level INSERT and UPDATE triggers only, the returned row becomes the row that will be inserted or will replace the row being updated. This allows the trigger function to modify the row being inserted or updated.

A row-level BEFORE trigger that does not intend to cause either of these behaviors must be careful to return as its result the same row that was passed in (that is, the NEW row for INSERT and UPDATE triggers, the OLD row for DELETE triggers).

A row-level INSTEAD OF trigger should either return NULL to indicate that it did not modify any data from the view's underlying base tables, or it should return the view row that was passed in (the NEW row for INSERT and UPDATE operations, or the OLD row for DELETE operations). A nonnull return value is used to signal that the trigger performed the necessary data modifications in the view. This will cause the count of the number of rows affected by the command to be incremented. For INSERT and UPDATE operations, the trigger may modify the NEW row before returning it. This will change the data returned by INSERT RETURNING or UPDATE RETURNING, and is useful when the view will not show exactly the same data that was provided.

The return value is ignored for row-level triggers fired after an operation, and so they can return NULL.

If more than one trigger is defined for the same event on the same relation, the triggers will be fired in alphabetical order by trigger name. In the case of BEFORE and INSTEAD OF triggers, the possibly-modified row returned by each trigger becomes the input to the next trigger. If any BEFORE or INSTEAD OF trigger returns NULL, the operation is abandoned for that row and subsequent triggers are not fired (for that row).

A trigger definition can also specify a Boolean WHEN condition, which will be tested to see whether the trigger should be fired. In row-level triggers the WHEN condition can examine the old and/or new values of columns of the row. (Statement-level triggers can also have WHEN conditions, although the feature is not so useful for them.) In a BEFORE trigger, the WHEN condition is evaluated just before the function is or would be executed, so using WHEN is not materially different from testing the same condition at the beginning of the trigger function. However, in an AFTER trigger, the WHEN condition is evaluated just after the row update occurs, and it determines whether an event is queued to fire the trigger at the end of statement. So when an AFTER trigger's WHEN condition does not return true, it is not necessary to queue an event nor to re-fetch the row at end of statement. This can result in significant speedups in statements that modify many rows, if the trigger only needs to be fired for a few of the rows. INSTEAD OF triggers do not support WHEN conditions.

Typically, row-level BEFORE triggers are used for checking or modifying the data that will be inserted or updated. For example, a BEFORE trigger might be used to insert the current time into a timestamp column, or to check that two elements of the row are consistent. Row-level AFTER triggers are most sensibly used to propagate the updates to other tables, or make consistency checks against other tables. The reason for this division of labor is that an AFTER trigger can be certain it is seeing the final value of the row, while a BEFORE trigger cannot; there might be other BEFORE triggers firing after it. If you have no specific reason to make a trigger BEFORE or AFTER, the BEFORE case is more efficient, since the information about the operation doesn't have to be saved until end of statement.

If a trigger function executes SQL commands then these commands might fire triggers again. This is known as cascading triggers. There is no direct limitation on the number of cascade levels. It is possible for cascades to cause a recursive invocation of the same trigger; for example, an INSERT trigger might execute a command that inserts an additional row into the same table, causing the INSERT trigger to be fired again. It is the trigger programmer's responsibility to avoid infinite recursion in such scenarios.

When a trigger is being defined, arguments can be specified for it. The purpose of including arguments in the trigger definition is to allow different triggers with similar requirements to call the same function. As an example, there could be a generalized trigger function that takes as its arguments two column names and puts the current user in one and the current time stamp in the other. Properly written, this trigger function would be independent of the specific table it is triggering on. So the same function could be used for INSERT events on any table with suitable columns, to automatically track creation of records in a transaction table for example. It could also be used to track last-update events if defined as an UPDATE trigger.

Each programming language that supports triggers has its own method for making the trigger input data available to the trigger function. This input data includes the type of trigger event (e.g., INSERT or UPDATE) as well as any arguments that were listed in CREATE TRIGGER. For a row-level trigger, the input data also includes the NEW row for INSERT and UPDATE triggers, and/or the OLD row for UPDATE and DELETE triggers. Statement-level triggers do not currently have any way to examine the individual row(s) modified by the statement.

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Visibility of Data Changes

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36.2. Visibility of Data Changes

If you execute SQL commands in your trigger function, and these commands access the table that the trigger is for, then you need to be aware of the data visibility rules, because they determine whether these SQL commands will see the data change that the trigger is fired for. Briefly:

  • Statement-level triggers follow simple visibility rules: none of the changes made by a statement are visible to statement-level triggers that are invoked before the statement, whereas all modifications are visible to statement-level AFTER triggers.

  • The data change (insertion, update, or deletion) causing the trigger to fire is naturally not visible to SQL commands executed in a row-level BEFORE trigger, because it hasn't happened yet.

  • However, SQL commands executed in a row-level BEFORE trigger will see the effects of data changes for rows previously processed in the same outer command. This requires caution, since the ordering of these change events is not in general predictable; a SQL command that affects multiple rows can visit the rows in any order.

  • Similarly, a row-level INSTEAD OF trigger will see the effects of data changes made by previous firings of INSTEAD OF triggers in the same outer command.

  • When a row-level AFTER trigger is fired, all data changes made by the outer command are already complete, and are visible to the invoked trigger function.

If your trigger function is written in any of the standard procedural languages, then the above statements apply only if the function is declared VOLATILE. Functions that are declared STABLE or IMMUTABLE will not see changes made by the calling command in any case.

Further information about data visibility rules can be found in Section 43.4. The example in Section 36.4 contains a demonstration of these rules.

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Writing Trigger Functions in C

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36.3. Writing Trigger Functions in C

This section describes the low-level details of the interface to a trigger function. This information is only needed when writing trigger functions in C. If you are using a higher-level language then these details are handled for you. In most cases you should consider using a procedural language before writing your triggers in C. The documentation of each procedural language explains how to write a trigger in that language.

Trigger functions must use the "version 1" function manager interface.

When a function is called by the trigger manager, it is not passed any normal arguments, but it is passed a "context" pointer pointing to a TriggerData structure. C functions can check whether they were called from the trigger manager or not by executing the macro:

CALLED_AS_TRIGGER(fcinfo)

which expands to:

((fcinfo)->context != NULL && IsA((fcinfo)->context, TriggerData))

If this returns true, then it is safe to cast fcinfo->context to type TriggerData * and make use of the pointed-to TriggerData structure. The function must not alter the TriggerData structure or any of the data it points to.

struct TriggerData is defined in commands/trigger.h:

typedef struct TriggerData
{
    NodeTag       type;
    TriggerEvent  tg_event;
    Relation      tg_relation;
    HeapTuple     tg_trigtuple;
    HeapTuple     tg_newtuple;
    Trigger      *tg_trigger;
    Buffer        tg_trigtuplebuf;
    Buffer        tg_newtuplebuf;
} TriggerData;

where the members are defined as follows:

type

Always T_TriggerData.

tg_event

Describes the event for which the function is called. You can use the following macros to examine tg_event:

TRIGGER_FIRED_BEFORE(tg_event)

Returns true if the trigger fired before the operation.

TRIGGER_FIRED_AFTER(tg_event)

Returns true if the trigger fired after the operation.

TRIGGER_FIRED_INSTEAD(tg_event)

Returns true if the trigger fired instead of the operation.

TRIGGER_FIRED_FOR_ROW(tg_event)

Returns true if the trigger fired for a row-level event.

TRIGGER_FIRED_FOR_STATEMENT(tg_event)

Returns true if the trigger fired for a statement-level event.

TRIGGER_FIRED_BY_INSERT(tg_event)

Returns true if the trigger was fired by an INSERT command.

TRIGGER_FIRED_BY_UPDATE(tg_event)

Returns true if the trigger was fired by an UPDATE command.

TRIGGER_FIRED_BY_DELETE(tg_event)

Returns true if the trigger was fired by a DELETE command.

TRIGGER_FIRED_BY_TRUNCATE(tg_event)

Returns true if the trigger was fired by a TRUNCATE command.

tg_relation

A pointer to a structure describing the relation that the trigger fired for. Look at utils/rel.h for details about this structure. The most interesting things are tg_relation->rd_att (descriptor of the relation tuples) and tg_relation->rd_rel->relname (relation name; the type is not char* but NameData; use SPI_getrelname(tg_relation) to get a char* if you need a copy of the name).

tg_trigtuple

A pointer to the row for which the trigger was fired. This is the row being inserted, updated, or deleted. If this trigger was fired for an INSERT or DELETE then this is what you should return from the function if you don't want to replace the row with a different one (in the case of INSERT) or skip the operation.

tg_newtuple

A pointer to the new version of the row, if the trigger was fired for an UPDATE, and NULL if it is for an INSERT or a DELETE. This is what you have to return from the function if the event is an UPDATE and you don't want to replace this row by a different one or skip the operation.

tg_trigger

A pointer to a structure of type Trigger, defined in utils/rel.h:

typedef struct Trigger
{
    Oid         tgoid;
    char       *tgname;
    Oid         tgfoid;
    int16       tgtype;
    char        tgenabled;
    bool        tgisinternal;
    Oid         tgconstrrelid;
    Oid         tgconstrindid;
    Oid         tgconstraint;
    bool        tgdeferrable;
    bool        tginitdeferred;
    int16       tgnargs;
    int16       tgnattr;
    int16      *tgattr;
    char      **tgargs;
    char       *tgqual;
} Trigger;

where tgname is the trigger's name, tgnargs is the number of arguments in tgargs, and tgargs is an array of pointers to the arguments specified in the CREATE TRIGGER statement. The other members are for internal use only.

tg_trigtuplebuf

The buffer containing tg_trigtuple, or InvalidBuffer if there is no such tuple or it is not stored in a disk buffer.

tg_newtuplebuf

The buffer containing tg_newtuple, or InvalidBuffer if there is no such tuple or it is not stored in a disk buffer.

A trigger function must return either a HeapTuple pointer or a NULL pointer (not an SQL null value, that is, do not set isNull true). Be careful to return either tg_trigtuple or tg_newtuple, as appropriate, if you don't want to modify the row being operated on.

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A Complete Trigger Example

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36.4. A Complete Trigger Example

Here is a very simple example of a trigger function written in C. (Examples of triggers written in procedural languages can be found in the documentation of the procedural languages.)

The function trigf reports the number of rows in the table ttest and skips the actual operation if the command attempts to insert a null value into the column x. (So the trigger acts as a not-null constraint but doesn't abort the transaction.)

First, the table definition:

CREATE TABLE ttest (
    x integer
);

This is the source code of the trigger function:

#include "postgres.h"
#include "executor/spi.h"       /* this is what you need to work with SPI */
#include "commands/trigger.h"   /* ... and triggers */

#ifdef PG_MODULE_MAGIC
PG_MODULE_MAGIC;
#endif

extern Datum trigf(PG_FUNCTION_ARGS);

PG_FUNCTION_INFO_V1(trigf);

Datum
trigf(PG_FUNCTION_ARGS)
{
    TriggerData *trigdata = (TriggerData *) fcinfo->context;
    TupleDesc   tupdesc;
    HeapTuple   rettuple;
    char       *when;
    bool        checknull = false;
    bool        isnull;
    int         ret, i;

    /* make sure it's called as a trigger at all */
    if (!CALLED_AS_TRIGGER(fcinfo))
        elog(ERROR, "trigf: not called by trigger manager");

    /* tuple to return to executor */
    if (TRIGGER_FIRED_BY_UPDATE(trigdata->tg_event))
        rettuple = trigdata->tg_newtuple;
    else
        rettuple = trigdata->tg_trigtuple;

    /* check for null values */
    if (!TRIGGER_FIRED_BY_DELETE(trigdata->tg_event)
        && TRIGGER_FIRED_BEFORE(trigdata->tg_event))
        checknull = true;

    if (TRIGGER_FIRED_BEFORE(trigdata->tg_event))
        when = "before";
    else
        when = "after ";

    tupdesc = trigdata->tg_relation->rd_att;

    /* connect to SPI manager */
    if ((ret = SPI_connect()) < 0)
        elog(ERROR, "trigf (fired %s): SPI_connect returned %d", when, ret);

    /* get number of rows in table */
    ret = SPI_exec("SELECT count(*) FROM ttest", 0);

    if (ret < 0)
        elog(ERROR, "trigf (fired %s): SPI_exec returned %d", when, ret);

    /* count(*) returns int8, so be careful to convert */
    i = DatumGetInt64(SPI_getbinval(SPI_tuptable->vals[0],
                                    SPI_tuptable->tupdesc,
                                    1,
                                    &isnull));

    elog (INFO, "trigf (fired %s): there are %d rows in ttest", when, i);

    SPI_finish();

    if (checknull)
    {
        SPI_getbinval(rettuple, tupdesc, 1, &isnull);
        if (isnull)
            rettuple = NULL;
    }

    return PointerGetDatum(rettuple);
}

After you have compiled the source code (see Section 35.9.6), declare the function and the triggers:

CREATE FUNCTION trigf() RETURNS trigger
    AS 'filename'
    LANGUAGE C;

CREATE TRIGGER tbefore BEFORE INSERT OR UPDATE OR DELETE ON ttest
    FOR EACH ROW EXECUTE PROCEDURE trigf();

CREATE TRIGGER tafter AFTER INSERT OR UPDATE OR DELETE ON ttest
    FOR EACH ROW EXECUTE PROCEDURE trigf();

Now you can test the operation of the trigger:

=> INSERT INTO ttest VALUES (NULL);
INFO:  trigf (fired before): there are 0 rows in ttest
INSERT 0 0

-- Insertion skipped and AFTER trigger is not fired

=> SELECT * FROM ttest;
 x
---
(0 rows)

=> INSERT INTO ttest VALUES (1);
INFO:  trigf (fired before): there are 0 rows in ttest
INFO:  trigf (fired after ): there are 1 rows in ttest
                                       ^^^^^^^^
                             remember what we said about visibility.
INSERT 167793 1
vac=> SELECT * FROM ttest;
 x
---
 1
(1 row)

=> INSERT INTO ttest SELECT x * 2 FROM ttest;
INFO:  trigf (fired before): there are 1 rows in ttest
INFO:  trigf (fired after ): there are 2 rows in ttest
                                       ^^^^^^
                             remember what we said about visibility.
INSERT 167794 1
=> SELECT * FROM ttest;
 x
---
 1
 2
(2 rows)

=> UPDATE ttest SET x = NULL WHERE x = 2;
INFO:  trigf (fired before): there are 2 rows in ttest
UPDATE 0
=> UPDATE ttest SET x = 4 WHERE x = 2;
INFO:  trigf (fired before): there are 2 rows in ttest
INFO:  trigf (fired after ): there are 2 rows in ttest
UPDATE 1
vac=> SELECT * FROM ttest;
 x
---
 1
 4
(2 rows)

=> DELETE FROM ttest;
INFO:  trigf (fired before): there are 2 rows in ttest
INFO:  trigf (fired before): there are 1 rows in ttest
INFO:  trigf (fired after ): there are 0 rows in ttest
INFO:  trigf (fired after ): there are 0 rows in ttest
                                       ^^^^^^
                             remember what we said about visibility.
DELETE 2
=> SELECT * FROM ttest;
 x
---
(0 rows)

There are more complex examples in src/test/regress/regress.c and in spi.

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The Rule System

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Chapter 37. The Rule System

Table of Contents
37.1. The Query Tree
37.2. Views and the Rule System
37.2.1. How SELECT Rules Work
37.2.2. View Rules in Non-SELECT Statements
37.2.3. The Power of Views in PostgreSQL
37.2.4. Updating a View
37.3. Rules on INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE
37.3.1. How Update Rules Work
37.3.2. Cooperation with Views
37.4. Rules and Privileges
37.5. Rules and Command Status
37.6. Rules Versus Triggers

This chapter discusses the rule system in PostgreSQL. Production rule systems are conceptually simple, but there are many subtle points involved in actually using them.

Some other database systems define active database rules, which are usually stored procedures and triggers. In PostgreSQL, these can be implemented using functions and triggers as well.

The rule system (more precisely speaking, the query rewrite rule system) is totally different from stored procedures and triggers. It modifies queries to take rules into consideration, and then passes the modified query to the query planner for planning and execution. It is very powerful, and can be used for many things such as query language procedures, views, and versions. The theoretical foundations and the power of this rule system are also discussed in On Rules, Procedures, Caching and Views in Database Systems and A Unified Framework for Version Modeling Using Production Rules in a Database System.

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The Query Tree

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37.1. The Query Tree

To understand how the rule system works it is necessary to know when it is invoked and what its input and results are.

The rule system is located between the parser and the planner. It takes the output of the parser, one query tree, and the user-defined rewrite rules, which are also query trees with some extra information, and creates zero or more query trees as result. So its input and output are always things the parser itself could have produced and thus, anything it sees is basically representable as an SQL statement.

Now what is a query tree? It is an internal representation of an SQL statement where the single parts that it is built from are stored separately. These query trees can be shown in the server log if you set the configuration parameters debug_print_parse, debug_print_rewritten, or debug_print_plan. The rule actions are also stored as query trees, in the system catalog pg_rewrite. They are not formatted like the log output, but they contain exactly the same information.

Reading a raw query tree requires some experience. But since SQL representations of query trees are sufficient to understand the rule system, this chapter will not teach how to read them.

When reading the SQL representations of the query trees in this chapter it is necessary to be able to identify the parts the statement is broken into when it is in the query tree structure. The parts of a query tree are

the command type

This is a simple value telling which command (SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE) produced the query tree.

the range table

The range table is a list of relations that are used in the query. In a SELECT statement these are the relations given after the FROM key word.

Every range table entry identifies a table or view and tells by which name it is called in the other parts of the query. In the query tree, the range table entries are referenced by number rather than by name, so here it doesn't matter if there are duplicate names as it would in an SQL statement. This can happen after the range tables of rules have been merged in. The examples in this chapter will not have this situation.

the result relation

This is an index into the range table that identifies the relation where the results of the query go.

SELECT queries don't have a result relation. (The special case of SELECT INTO is mostly identical to CREATE TABLE followed by INSERT ... SELECT, and is not discussed separately here.)

For INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE commands, the result relation is the table (or view!) where the changes are to take effect.

the target list

The target list is a list of expressions that define the result of the query. In the case of a SELECT, these expressions are the ones that build the final output of the query. They correspond to the expressions between the key words SELECT and FROM. (* is just an abbreviation for all the column names of a relation. It is expanded by the parser into the individual columns, so the rule system never sees it.)

DELETE commands don't need a normal target list because they don't produce any result. Instead, the rule system adds a special CTID entry to the empty target list, to allow the executor to find the row to be deleted. (CTID is added when the result relation is an ordinary table. If it is a view, a whole-row variable is added instead, as described in Section 37.2.4.)

For INSERT commands, the target list describes the new rows that should go into the result relation. It consists of the expressions in the VALUES clause or the ones from the SELECT clause in INSERT ... SELECT. The first step of the rewrite process adds target list entries for any columns that were not assigned to by the original command but have defaults. Any remaining columns (with neither a given value nor a default) will be filled in by the planner with a constant null expression.

For UPDATE commands, the target list describes the new rows that should replace the old ones. In the rule system, it contains just the expressions from the SET column = expression part of the command. The planner will handle missing columns by inserting expressions that copy the values from the old row into the new one. Just as for DELETE, the rule system adds a CTID or whole-row variable so that the executor can identify the old row to be updated.

Every entry in the target list contains an expression that can be a constant value, a variable pointing to a column of one of the relations in the range table, a parameter, or an expression tree made of function calls, constants, variables, operators, etc.

the qualification

The query's qualification is an expression much like one of those contained in the target list entries. The result value of this expression is a Boolean that tells whether the operation (INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, or SELECT) for the final result row should be executed or not. It corresponds to the WHERE clause of an SQL statement.

the join tree

The query's join tree shows the structure of the FROM clause. For a simple query like SELECT ... FROM a, b, c, the join tree is just a list of the FROM items, because we are allowed to join them in any order. But when JOIN expressions, particularly outer joins, are used, we have to join in the order shown by the joins. In that case, the join tree shows the structure of the JOIN expressions. The restrictions associated with particular JOIN clauses (from ON or USING expressions) are stored as qualification expressions attached to those join-tree nodes. It turns out to be convenient to store the top-level WHERE expression as a qualification attached to the top-level join-tree item, too. So really the join tree represents both the FROM and WHERE clauses of a SELECT.

the others

The other parts of the query tree like the ORDER BY clause aren't of interest here. The rule system substitutes some entries there while applying rules, but that doesn't have much to do with the fundamentals of the rule system.

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Views and the Rule System

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37.2. Views and the Rule System

Views in PostgreSQL are implemented using the rule system. In fact, there is essentially no difference between:

CREATE VIEW myview AS SELECT * FROM mytab;

compared against the two commands:

CREATE TABLE myview (same column list as mytab);
CREATE RULE "_RETURN" AS ON SELECT TO myview DO INSTEAD
    SELECT * FROM mytab;

because this is exactly what the CREATE VIEW command does internally. This has some side effects. One of them is that the information about a view in the PostgreSQL system catalogs is exactly the same as it is for a table. So for the parser, there is absolutely no difference between a table and a view. They are the same thing: relations.

37.2.1. How SELECT Rules Work

Rules ON SELECT are applied to all queries as the last step, even if the command given is an INSERT, UPDATE or DELETE. And they have different semantics from rules on the other command types in that they modify the query tree in place instead of creating a new one. So SELECT rules are described first.

Currently, there can be only one action in an ON SELECT rule, and it must be an unconditional SELECT action that is INSTEAD. This restriction was required to make rules safe enough to open them for ordinary users, and it restricts ON SELECT rules to act like views.

The examples for this chapter are two join views that do some calculations and some more views using them in turn. One of the two first views is customized later by adding rules for INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE operations so that the final result will be a view that behaves like a real table with some magic functionality. This is not such a simple example to start from and this makes things harder to get into. But it's better to have one example that covers all the points discussed step by step rather than having many different ones that might mix up in mind.

For the example, we need a little min function that returns the lower of 2 integer values. We create that as:

CREATE FUNCTION min(integer, integer) RETURNS integer AS $$
    SELECT CASE WHEN $1 < $2 THEN $1 ELSE $2 END
$$ LANGUAGE SQL STRICT;

The real tables we need in the first two rule system descriptions are these:

CREATE TABLE shoe_data (
    shoename   text,          -- primary key
    sh_avail   integer,       -- available number of pairs
    slcolor    text,          -- preferred shoelace color
    slminlen   real,          -- minimum shoelace length
    slmaxlen   real,          -- maximum shoelace length
    slunit     text           -- length unit
);

CREATE TABLE shoelace_data (
    sl_name    text,          -- primary key
    sl_avail   integer,       -- available number of pairs
    sl_color   text,          -- shoelace color
    sl_len     real,          -- shoelace length
    sl_unit    text           -- length unit
);

CREATE TABLE unit (
    un_name    text,          -- primary key
    un_fact    real           -- factor to transform to cm
);

As you can see, they represent shoe-store data.

The views are created as:

CREATE VIEW shoe AS
    SELECT sh.shoename,
           sh.sh_avail,
           sh.slcolor,
           sh.slminlen,
           sh.slminlen * un.un_fact AS slminlen_cm,
           sh.slmaxlen,
           sh.slmaxlen * un.un_fact AS slmaxlen_cm,
           sh.slunit
      FROM shoe_data sh, unit un
     WHERE sh.slunit = un.un_name;

CREATE VIEW shoelace AS
    SELECT s.sl_name,
           s.sl_avail,
           s.sl_color,
           s.sl_len,
           s.sl_unit,
           s.sl_len * u.un_fact AS sl_len_cm
      FROM shoelace_data s, unit u
     WHERE s.sl_unit = u.un_name;

CREATE VIEW shoe_ready AS
    SELECT rsh.shoename,
           rsh.sh_avail,
           rsl.sl_name,
           rsl.sl_avail,
           min(rsh.sh_avail, rsl.sl_avail) AS total_avail
      FROM shoe rsh, shoelace rsl
     WHERE rsl.sl_color = rsh.slcolor
       AND rsl.sl_len_cm >= rsh.slminlen_cm
       AND rsl.sl_len_cm <= rsh.slmaxlen_cm;

The CREATE VIEW command for the shoelace view (which is the simplest one we have) will create a relation shoelace and an entry in pg_rewrite that tells that there is a rewrite rule that must be applied whenever the relation shoelace is referenced in a query's range table. The rule has no rule qualification (discussed later, with the non-SELECT rules, since SELECT rules currently cannot have them) and it is INSTEAD. Note that rule qualifications are not the same as query qualifications. The action of our rule has a query qualification. The action of the rule is one query tree that is a copy of the SELECT statement in the view creation command.

Note: The two extra range table entries for NEW and OLD that you can see in the pg_rewrite entry aren't of interest for SELECT rules.

Now we populate unit, shoe_data and shoelace_data and run a simple query on a view:

INSERT INTO unit VALUES ('cm', 1.0);
INSERT INTO unit VALUES ('m', 100.0);
INSERT INTO unit VALUES ('inch', 2.54);

INSERT INTO shoe_data VALUES ('sh1', 2, 'black', 70.0, 90.0, 'cm');
INSERT INTO shoe_data VALUES ('sh2', 0, 'black', 30.0, 40.0, 'inch');
INSERT INTO shoe_data VALUES ('sh3', 4, 'brown', 50.0, 65.0, 'cm');
INSERT INTO shoe_data VALUES ('sh4', 3, 'brown', 40.0, 50.0, 'inch');

INSERT INTO shoelace_data VALUES ('sl1', 5, 'black', 80.0, 'cm');
INSERT INTO shoelace_data VALUES ('sl2', 6, 'black', 100.0, 'cm');
INSERT INTO shoelace_data VALUES ('sl3', 0, 'black', 35.0 , 'inch');
INSERT INTO shoelace_data VALUES ('sl4', 8, 'black', 40.0 , 'inch');
INSERT INTO shoelace_data VALUES ('sl5', 4, 'brown', 1.0 , 'm');
INSERT INTO shoelace_data VALUES ('sl6', 0, 'brown', 0.9 , 'm');
INSERT INTO shoelace_data VALUES ('sl7', 7, 'brown', 60 , 'cm');
INSERT INTO shoelace_data VALUES ('sl8', 1, 'brown', 40 , 'inch');

SELECT * FROM shoelace;

 sl_name   | sl_avail | sl_color | sl_len | sl_unit | sl_len_cm
-----------+----------+----------+--------+---------+-----------
 sl1       |        5 | black    |     80 | cm      |        80
 sl2       |        6 | black    |    100 | cm      |       100
 sl7       |        7 | brown    |     60 | cm      |        60
 sl3       |        0 | black    |     35 | inch    |      88.9
 sl4       |        8 | black    |     40 | inch    |     101.6
 sl8       |        1 | brown    |     40 | inch    |     101.6
 sl5       |        4 | brown    |      1 | m       |       100
 sl6       |        0 | brown    |    0.9 | m       |        90
(8 rows)

This is the simplest SELECT you can do on our views, so we take this opportunity to explain the basics of view rules. The SELECT * FROM shoelace was interpreted by the parser and produced the query tree:

SELECT shoelace.sl_name, shoelace.sl_avail,
       shoelace.sl_color, shoelace.sl_len,
       shoelace.sl_unit, shoelace.sl_len_cm
  FROM shoelace shoelace;

and this is given to the rule system. The rule system walks through the range table and checks if there are rules for any relation. When processing the range table entry for shoelace (the only one up to now) it finds the _RETURN rule with the query tree:

SELECT s.sl_name, s.sl_avail,
       s.sl_color, s.sl_len, s.sl_unit,
       s.sl_len * u.un_fact AS sl_len_cm
  FROM shoelace old, shoelace new,
       shoelace_data s, unit u
 WHERE s.sl_unit = u.un_name;

To expand the view, the rewriter simply creates a subquery range-table entry containing the rule's action query tree, and substitutes this range table entry for the original one that referenced the view. The resulting rewritten query tree is almost the same as if you had typed:

SELECT shoelace.sl_name, shoelace.sl_avail,
       shoelace.sl_color, shoelace.sl_len,
       shoelace.sl_unit, shoelace.sl_len_cm
  FROM (SELECT s.sl_name,
               s.sl_avail,
               s.sl_color,
               s.sl_len,
               s.sl_unit,
               s.sl_len * u.un_fact AS sl_len_cm
          FROM shoelace_data s, unit u
         WHERE s.sl_unit = u.un_name) shoelace;

There is one difference however: the subquery's range table has two extra entries shoelace old and shoelace new. These entries don't participate directly in the query, since they aren't referenced by the subquery's join tree or target list. The rewriter uses them to store the access privilege check information that was originally present in the range-table entry that referenced the view. In this way, the executor will still check that the user has proper privileges to access the view, even though there's no direct use of the view in the rewritten query.

That was the first rule applied. The rule system will continue checking the remaining range-table entries in the top query (in this example there are no more), and it will recursively check the range-table entries in the added subquery to see if any of them reference views. (But it won't expand old or new — otherwise we'd have infinite recursion!) In this example, there are no rewrite rules for shoelace_data or unit, so rewriting is complete and the above is the final result given to the planner.

Now we want to write a query that finds out for which shoes currently in the store we have the matching shoelaces (color and length) and where the total number of exactly matching pairs is greater or equal to two.

SELECT * FROM shoe_ready WHERE total_avail >= 2;

 shoename | sh_avail | sl_name | sl_avail | total_avail
----------+----------+---------+----------+-------------
 sh1      |        2 | sl1     |        5 |           2
 sh3      |        4 | sl7     |        7 |           4
(2 rows)

The output of the parser this time is the query tree:

SELECT shoe_ready.shoename, shoe_ready.sh_avail,
       shoe_ready.sl_name, shoe_ready.sl_avail,
       shoe_ready.total_avail
  FROM shoe_ready shoe_ready
 WHERE shoe_ready.total_avail >= 2;

The first rule applied will be the one for the shoe_ready view and it results in the query tree:

SELECT shoe_ready.shoename, shoe_ready.sh_avail,
       shoe_ready.sl_name, shoe_ready.sl_avail,
       shoe_ready.total_avail
  FROM (SELECT rsh.shoename,
               rsh.sh_avail,
               rsl.sl_name,
               rsl.sl_avail,
               min(rsh.sh_avail, rsl.sl_avail) AS total_avail
          FROM shoe rsh, shoelace rsl
         WHERE rsl.sl_color = rsh.slcolor
           AND rsl.sl_len_cm >= rsh.slminlen_cm
           AND rsl.sl_len_cm <= rsh.slmaxlen_cm) shoe_ready
 WHERE shoe_ready.total_avail >= 2;

Similarly, the rules for shoe and shoelace are substituted into the range table of the subquery, leading to a three-level final query tree:

SELECT shoe_ready.shoename, shoe_ready.sh_avail,
       shoe_ready.sl_name, shoe_ready.sl_avail,
       shoe_ready.total_avail
  FROM (SELECT rsh.shoename,
               rsh.sh_avail,
               rsl.sl_name,
               rsl.sl_avail,
               min(rsh.sh_avail, rsl.sl_avail) AS total_avail
          FROM (SELECT sh.shoename,
                       sh.sh_avail,
                       sh.slcolor,
                       sh.slminlen,
                       sh.slminlen * un.un_fact AS slminlen_cm,
                       sh.slmaxlen,
                       sh.slmaxlen * un.un_fact AS slmaxlen_cm,
                       sh.slunit
                  FROM shoe_data sh, unit un
                 WHERE sh.slunit = un.un_name) rsh,
               (SELECT s.sl_name,
                       s.sl_avail,
                       s.sl_color,
                       s.sl_len,
                       s.sl_unit,
                       s.sl_len * u.un_fact AS sl_len_cm
                  FROM shoelace_data s, unit u
                 WHERE s.sl_unit = u.un_name) rsl
         WHERE rsl.sl_color = rsh.slcolor
           AND rsl.sl_len_cm >= rsh.slminlen_cm
           AND rsl.sl_len_cm <= rsh.slmaxlen_cm) shoe_ready
 WHERE shoe_ready.total_avail > 2;

It turns out that the planner will collapse this tree into a two-level query tree: the bottommost SELECT commands will be "pulled up" into the middle SELECT since there's no need to process them separately. But the middle SELECT will remain separate from the top, because it contains aggregate functions. If we pulled those up it would change the behavior of the topmost SELECT, which we don't want. However, collapsing the query tree is an optimization that the rewrite system doesn't have to concern itself with.

37.2.2. View Rules in Non-SELECT Statements

Two details of the query tree aren't touched in the description of view rules above. These are the command type and the result relation. In fact, the command type is not needed by view rules, but the result relation may affect the way in which the query rewriter works, because special care needs to be taken if the result relation is a view.

There are only a few differences between a query tree for a SELECT and one for any other command. Obviously, they have a different command type and for a command other than a SELECT, the result relation points to the range-table entry where the result should go. Everything else is absolutely the same. So having two tables t1 and t2 with columns a and b, the query trees for the two statements:

SELECT t2.b FROM t1, t2 WHERE t1.a = t2.a;

UPDATE t1 SET b = t2.b FROM t2 WHERE t1.a = t2.a;

are nearly identical. In particular:

  • The range tables contain entries for the tables t1 and t2.

  • The target lists contain one variable that points to column b of the range table entry for table t2.

  • The qualification expressions compare the columns a of both range-table entries for equality.

  • The join trees show a simple join between t1 and t2.

The consequence is, that both query trees result in similar execution plans: They are both joins over the two tables. For the UPDATE the missing columns from t1 are added to the target list by the planner and the final query tree will read as:

UPDATE t1 SET a = t1.a, b = t2.b FROM t2 WHERE t1.a = t2.a;

and thus the executor run over the join will produce exactly the same result set as:

SELECT t1.a, t2.b FROM t1, t2 WHERE t1.a = t2.a;

But there is a little problem in UPDATE: the part of the executor plan that does the join does not care what the results from the join are meant for. It just produces a result set of rows. The fact that one is a SELECT command and the other is an UPDATE is handled higher up in the executor, where it knows that this is an UPDATE, and it knows that this result should go into table t1. But which of the rows that are there has to be replaced by the new row?

To resolve this problem, another entry is added to the target list in UPDATE (and also in DELETE) statements: the current tuple ID (CTID). This is a system column containing the file block number and position in the block for the row. Knowing the table, the CTID can be used to retrieve the original row of t1 to be updated. After adding the CTID to the target list, the query actually looks like:

SELECT t1.a, t2.b, t1.ctid FROM t1, t2 WHERE t1.a = t2.a;

Now another detail of PostgreSQL enters the stage. Old table rows aren't overwritten, and this is why ROLLBACK is fast. In an UPDATE, the new result row is inserted into the table (after stripping the CTID) and in the row header of the old row, which the CTID pointed to, the cmax and xmax entries are set to the current command counter and current transaction ID. Thus the old row is hidden, and after the transaction commits the vacuum cleaner can eventually remove the dead row.

Knowing all that, we can simply apply view rules in absolutely the same way to any command. There is no difference.

37.2.3. The Power of Views in PostgreSQL

The above demonstrates how the rule system incorporates view definitions into the original query tree. In the second example, a simple SELECT from one view created a final query tree that is a join of 4 tables (unit was used twice with different names).

The benefit of implementing views with the rule system is, that the planner has all the information about which tables have to be scanned plus the relationships between these tables plus the restrictive qualifications from the views plus the qualifications from the original query in one single query tree. And this is still the situation when the original query is already a join over views. The planner has to decide which is the best path to execute the query, and the more information the planner has, the better this decision can be. And the rule system as implemented in PostgreSQL ensures, that this is all information available about the query up to that point.

37.2.4. Updating a View

What happens if a view is named as the target relation for an INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE? Simply doing the substitutions described above would give a query tree in which the result relation points at a subquery range-table entry, which will not work. Instead, the rewriter assumes that the operation will be handled by an INSTEAD OF trigger on the view. (If there is no such trigger, the executor will throw an error when execution starts.) Rewriting works slightly differently in this case. For INSERT, the rewriter does nothing at all with the view, leaving it as the result relation for the query. For UPDATE and DELETE, it's still necessary to expand the view query to produce the "old" rows that the command will attempt to update or delete. So the view is expanded as normal, but another unexpanded range-table entry is added to the query to represent the view in its capacity as the result relation.

The problem that now arises is how to identify the rows to be updated in the view. Recall that when the result relation is a table, a special CTID entry is added to the target list to identify the physical locations of the rows to be updated. This does not work if the result relation is a view, because a view does not have any CTID, since its rows do not have actual physical locations. Instead, for an UPDATE or DELETE operation, a special wholerow entry is added to the target list, which expands to include all columns from the view. The executor uses this value to supply the "old" row to the INSTEAD OF trigger. It is up to the trigger to work out what to update based on the old and new row values.

If there are no INSTEAD OF triggers to update the view, the executor will throw an error, because it cannot automatically update a view by itself. To change this, we can define rules that modify the behavior of INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE commands on a view. These rules will rewrite the command, typically into a command that updates one or more tables, rather than views. That is the topic of the next section.

Note that rules are evaluated first, rewriting the original query before it is planned and executed. Therefore, if a view has INSTEAD OF triggers as well as rules on INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE, then the rules will be evaluated first, and depending on the result, the triggers may not be used at all.

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Rules on INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE

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37.3. Rules on INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE

Rules that are defined on INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE are significantly different from the view rules described in the previous section. First, their CREATE RULE command allows more:

  • They are allowed to have no action.

  • They can have multiple actions.

  • They can be INSTEAD or ALSO (the default).

  • The pseudorelations NEW and OLD become useful.

  • They can have rule qualifications.

Second, they don't modify the query tree in place. Instead they create zero or more new query trees and can throw away the original one.

37.3.1. How Update Rules Work

Keep the syntax:

CREATE [ OR REPLACE ] RULE name AS ON event
    TO table [ WHERE condition ]
    DO [ ALSO | INSTEAD ] { NOTHING | command | ( command ; command ... ) }

in mind. In the following, update rules means rules that are defined on INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE.

Update rules get applied by the rule system when the result relation and the command type of a query tree are equal to the object and event given in the CREATE RULE command. For update rules, the rule system creates a list of query trees. Initially the query-tree list is empty. There can be zero (NOTHING key word), one, or multiple actions. To simplify, we will look at a rule with one action. This rule can have a qualification or not and it can be INSTEAD or ALSO (the default).

What is a rule qualification? It is a restriction that tells when the actions of the rule should be done and when not. This qualification can only reference the pseudorelations NEW and/or OLD, which basically represent the relation that was given as object (but with a special meaning).

So we have three cases that produce the following query trees for a one-action rule.

No qualification, with either ALSO or INSTEAD

the query tree from the rule action with the original query tree's qualification added

Qualification given and ALSO

the query tree from the rule action with the rule qualification and the original query tree's qualification added

Qualification given and INSTEAD

the query tree from the rule action with the rule qualification and the original query tree's qualification; and the original query tree with the negated rule qualification added

Finally, if the rule is ALSO, the unchanged original query tree is added to the list. Since only qualified INSTEAD rules already add the original query tree, we end up with either one or two output query trees for a rule with one action.

For ON INSERT rules, the original query (if not suppressed by INSTEAD) is done before any actions added by rules. This allows the actions to see the inserted row(s). But for ON UPDATE and ON DELETE rules, the original query is done after the actions added by rules. This ensures that the actions can see the to-be-updated or to-be-deleted rows; otherwise, the actions might do nothing because they find no rows matching their qualifications.

The query trees generated from rule actions are thrown into the rewrite system again, and maybe more rules get applied resulting in more or less query trees. So a rule's actions must have either a different command type or a different result relation than the rule itself is on, otherwise this recursive process will end up in an infinite loop. (Recursive expansion of a rule will be detected and reported as an error.)

The query trees found in the actions of the pg_rewrite system catalog are only templates. Since they can reference the range-table entries for NEW and OLD, some substitutions have to be made before they can be used. For any reference to NEW, the target list of the original query is searched for a corresponding entry. If found, that entry's expression replaces the reference. Otherwise, NEW means the same as OLD (for an UPDATE) or is replaced by a null value (for an INSERT). Any reference to OLD is replaced by a reference to the range-table entry that is the result relation.

After the system is done applying update rules, it applies view rules to the produced query tree(s). Views cannot insert new update actions so there is no need to apply update rules to the output of view rewriting.

37.3.1.1. A First Rule Step by Step

Say we want to trace changes to the sl_avail column in the shoelace_data relation. So we set up a log table and a rule that conditionally writes a log entry when an UPDATE is performed on shoelace_data.

CREATE TABLE shoelace_log (
    sl_name    text,          -- shoelace changed
    sl_avail   integer,       -- new available value
    log_who    text,          -- who did it
    log_when   timestamp      -- when
);

CREATE RULE log_shoelace AS ON UPDATE TO shoelace_data
    WHERE NEW.sl_avail <> OLD.sl_avail
    DO INSERT INTO shoelace_log VALUES (
                                    NEW.sl_name,
                                    NEW.sl_avail,
                                    current_user,
                                    current_timestamp
                                );

Now someone does:

UPDATE shoelace_data SET sl_avail = 6 WHERE sl_name = 'sl7';

and we look at the log table:

SELECT * FROM shoelace_log;

 sl_name | sl_avail | log_who | log_when
---------+----------+---------+----------------------------------
 sl7     |        6 | Al      | Tue Oct 20 16:14:45 1998 MET DST
(1 row)

That's what we expected. What happened in the background is the following. The parser created the query tree:

UPDATE shoelace_data SET sl_avail = 6
  FROM shoelace_data shoelace_data
 WHERE shoelace_data.sl_name = 'sl7';

There is a rule log_shoelace that is ON UPDATE with the rule qualification expression:

NEW.sl_avail <> OLD.sl_avail

and the action:

INSERT INTO shoelace_log VALUES (
       new.sl_name, new.sl_avail,
       current_user, current_timestamp )
  FROM shoelace_data new, shoelace_data old;

(This looks a little strange since you cannot normally write INSERT ... VALUES ... FROM. The FROM clause here is just to indicate that there are range-table entries in the query tree for new and old. These are needed so that they can be referenced by variables in the INSERT command's query tree.)

The rule is a qualified ALSO rule, so the rule system has to return two query trees: the modified rule action and the original query tree. In step 1, the range table of the original query is incorporated into the rule's action query tree. This results in:

INSERT INTO shoelace_log VALUES (
       new.sl_name, new.sl_avail,
       current_user, current_timestamp )
  FROM shoelace_data new, shoelace_data old,
       shoelace_data shoelace_data;

In step 2, the rule qualification is added to it, so the result set is restricted to rows where sl_avail changes:

INSERT INTO shoelace_log VALUES (
       new.sl_name, new.sl_avail,
       current_user, current_timestamp )
  FROM shoelace_data new, shoelace_data old,
       shoelace_data shoelace_data
 WHERE new.sl_avail <> old.sl_avail;

(This looks even stranger, since INSERT ... VALUES doesn't have a WHERE clause either, but the planner and executor will have no difficulty with it. They need to support this same functionality anyway for INSERT ... SELECT.)

In step 3, the original query tree's qualification is added, restricting the result set further to only the rows that would have been touched by the original query:

INSERT INTO shoelace_log VALUES (
       new.sl_name, new.sl_avail,
       current_user, current_timestamp )
  FROM shoelace_data new, shoelace_data old,
       shoelace_data shoelace_data
 WHERE new.sl_avail <> old.sl_avail
   AND shoelace_data.sl_name = 'sl7';

Step 4 replaces references to NEW by the target list entries from the original query tree or by the matching variable references from the result relation:

INSERT INTO shoelace_log VALUES (
       shoelace_data.sl_name, 6,
       current_user, current_timestamp )
  FROM shoelace_data new, shoelace_data old,
       shoelace_data shoelace_data
 WHERE 6 <> old.sl_avail
   AND shoelace_data.sl_name = 'sl7';

Step 5 changes OLD references into result relation references:

INSERT INTO shoelace_log VALUES (
       shoelace_data.sl_name, 6,
       current_user, current_timestamp )
  FROM shoelace_data new, shoelace_data old,
       shoelace_data shoelace_data
 WHERE 6 <> shoelace_data.sl_avail
   AND shoelace_data.sl_name = 'sl7';

That's it. Since the rule is ALSO, we also output the original query tree. In short, the output from the rule system is a list of two query trees that correspond to these statements:

INSERT INTO shoelace_log VALUES (
       shoelace_data.sl_name, 6,
       current_user, current_timestamp )
  FROM shoelace_data
 WHERE 6 <> shoelace_data.sl_avail
   AND shoelace_data.sl_name = 'sl7';

UPDATE shoelace_data SET sl_avail = 6
 WHERE sl_name = 'sl7';

These are executed in this order, and that is exactly what the rule was meant to do.

The substitutions and the added qualifications ensure that, if the original query would be, say:

UPDATE shoelace_data SET sl_color = 'green'
 WHERE sl_name = 'sl7';

no log entry would get written. In that case, the original query tree does not contain a target list entry for sl_avail, so NEW.sl_avail will get replaced by shoelace_data.sl_avail. Thus, the extra command generated by the rule is:

INSERT INTO shoelace_log VALUES (
       shoelace_data.sl_name, shoelace_data.sl_avail,
       current_user, current_timestamp )
  FROM shoelace_data
 WHERE shoelace_data.sl_avail <> shoelace_data.sl_avail
   AND shoelace_data.sl_name = 'sl7';

and that qualification will never be true.

It will also work if the original query modifies multiple rows. So if someone issued the command:

UPDATE shoelace_data SET sl_avail = 0
 WHERE sl_color = 'black';

four rows in fact get updated (sl1, sl2, sl3, and sl4). But sl3 already has sl_avail = 0. In this case, the original query trees qualification is different and that results in the extra query tree:

INSERT INTO shoelace_log
SELECT shoelace_data.sl_name, 0,
       current_user, current_timestamp
  FROM shoelace_data
 WHERE 0 <> shoelace_data.sl_avail
   AND shoelace_data.sl_color = 'black';

being generated by the rule. This query tree will surely insert three new log entries. And that's absolutely correct.

Here we can see why it is important that the original query tree is executed last. If the UPDATE had been executed first, all the rows would have already been set to zero, so the logging INSERT would not find any row where 0 <> shoelace_data.sl_avail.

37.3.2. Cooperation with Views

A simple way to protect view relations from the mentioned possibility that someone can try to run INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE on them is to let those query trees get thrown away. So we could create the rules:

CREATE RULE shoe_ins_protect AS ON INSERT TO shoe
    DO INSTEAD NOTHING;
CREATE RULE shoe_upd_protect AS ON UPDATE TO shoe
    DO INSTEAD NOTHING;
CREATE RULE shoe_del_protect AS ON DELETE TO shoe
    DO INSTEAD NOTHING;

If someone now tries to do any of these operations on the view relation shoe, the rule system will apply these rules. Since the rules have no actions and are INSTEAD, the resulting list of query trees will be empty and the whole query will become nothing because there is nothing left to be optimized or executed after the rule system is done with it.

A more sophisticated way to use the rule system is to create rules that rewrite the query tree into one that does the right operation on the real tables. To do that on the shoelace view, we create the following rules:

CREATE RULE shoelace_ins AS ON INSERT TO shoelace
    DO INSTEAD
    INSERT INTO shoelace_data VALUES (
           NEW.sl_name,
           NEW.sl_avail,
           NEW.sl_color,
           NEW.sl_len,
           NEW.sl_unit
    );

CREATE RULE shoelace_upd AS ON UPDATE TO shoelace
    DO INSTEAD
    UPDATE shoelace_data
       SET sl_name = NEW.sl_name,
           sl_avail = NEW.sl_avail,
           sl_color = NEW.sl_color,
           sl_len = NEW.sl_len,
           sl_unit = NEW.sl_unit
     WHERE sl_name = OLD.sl_name;

CREATE RULE shoelace_del AS ON DELETE TO shoelace
    DO INSTEAD
    DELETE FROM shoelace_data
     WHERE sl_name = OLD.sl_name;

If you want to support RETURNING queries on the view, you need to make the rules include RETURNING clauses that compute the view rows. This is usually pretty trivial for views on a single table, but it's a bit tedious for join views such as shoelace. An example for the insert case is:

CREATE RULE shoelace_ins AS ON INSERT TO shoelace
    DO INSTEAD
    INSERT INTO shoelace_data VALUES (
           NEW.sl_name,
           NEW.sl_avail,
           NEW.sl_color,
           NEW.sl_len,
           NEW.sl_unit
    )
    RETURNING
           shoelace_data.*,
           (SELECT shoelace_data.sl_len * u.un_fact
            FROM unit u WHERE shoelace_data.sl_unit = u.un_name);

Note that this one rule supports both INSERT and INSERT RETURNING queries on the view — the RETURNING clause is simply ignored for INSERT.

Now assume that once in a while, a pack of shoelaces arrives at the shop and a big parts list along with it. But you don't want to manually update the shoelace view every time. Instead we setup two little tables: one where you can insert the items from the part list, and one with a special trick. The creation commands for these are:

CREATE TABLE shoelace_arrive (
    arr_name    text,
    arr_quant   integer
);

CREATE TABLE shoelace_ok (
    ok_name     text,
    ok_quant    integer
);

CREATE RULE shoelace_ok_ins AS ON INSERT TO shoelace_ok
    DO INSTEAD
    UPDATE shoelace
       SET sl_avail = sl_avail + NEW.ok_quant
     WHERE sl_name = NEW.ok_name;

Now you can fill the table shoelace_arrive with the data from the parts list:

SELECT * FROM shoelace_arrive;

 arr_name | arr_quant
----------+-----------
 sl3      |        10
 sl6      |        20
 sl8      |        20
(3 rows)

Take a quick look at the current data:

SELECT * FROM shoelace;

 sl_name  | sl_avail | sl_color | sl_len | sl_unit | sl_len_cm
----------+----------+----------+--------+---------+-----------
 sl1      |        5 | black    |     80 | cm      |        80
 sl2      |        6 | black    |    100 | cm      |       100
 sl7      |        6 | brown    |     60 | cm      |        60
 sl3      |        0 | black    |     35 | inch    |      88.9
 sl4      |        8 | black    |     40 | inch    |     101.6
 sl8      |        1 | brown    |     40 | inch    |     101.6
 sl5      |        4 | brown    |      1 | m       |       100
 sl6      |        0 | brown    |    0.9 | m       |        90
(8 rows)

Now move the arrived shoelaces in:

INSERT INTO shoelace_ok SELECT * FROM shoelace_arrive;

and check the results:

SELECT * FROM shoelace ORDER BY sl_name;

 sl_name  | sl_avail | sl_color | sl_len | sl_unit | sl_len_cm
----------+----------+----------+--------+---------+-----------
 sl1      |        5 | black    |     80 | cm      |        80
 sl2      |        6 | black    |    100 | cm      |       100
 sl7      |        6 | brown    |     60 | cm      |        60
 sl4      |        8 | black    |     40 | inch    |     101.6
 sl3      |       10 | black    |     35 | inch    |      88.9
 sl8      |       21 | brown    |     40 | inch    |     101.6
 sl5      |        4 | brown    |      1 | m       |       100
 sl6      |       20 | brown    |    0.9 | m       |        90
(8 rows)

SELECT * FROM shoelace_log;

 sl_name | sl_avail | log_who| log_when
---------+----------+--------+----------------------------------
 sl7     |        6 | Al     | Tue Oct 20 19:14:45 1998 MET DST
 sl3     |       10 | Al     | Tue Oct 20 19:25:16 1998 MET DST
 sl6     |       20 | Al     | Tue Oct 20 19:25:16 1998 MET DST
 sl8     |       21 | Al     | Tue Oct 20 19:25:16 1998 MET DST
(4 rows)

It's a long way from the one INSERT ... SELECT to these results. And the description of the query-tree transformation will be the last in this chapter. First, there is the parser's output:

INSERT INTO shoelace_ok
SELECT shoelace_arrive.arr_name, shoelace_arrive.arr_quant
  FROM shoelace_arrive shoelace_arrive, shoelace_ok shoelace_ok;

Now the first rule shoelace_ok_ins is applied and turns this into:

UPDATE shoelace
   SET sl_avail = shoelace.sl_avail + shoelace_arrive.arr_quant
  FROM shoelace_arrive shoelace_arrive, shoelace_ok shoelace_ok,
       shoelace_ok old, shoelace_ok new,
       shoelace shoelace
 WHERE shoelace.sl_name = shoelace_arrive.arr_name;

and throws away the original INSERT on shoelace_ok. This rewritten query is passed to the rule system again, and the second applied rule shoelace_upd produces:

UPDATE shoelace_data
   SET sl_name = shoelace.sl_name,
       sl_avail = shoelace.sl_avail + shoelace_arrive.arr_quant,
       sl_color = shoelace.sl_color,
       sl_len = shoelace.sl_len,
       sl_unit = shoelace.sl_unit
  FROM shoelace_arrive shoelace_arrive, shoelace_ok shoelace_ok,
       shoelace_ok old, shoelace_ok new,
       shoelace shoelace, shoelace old,
       shoelace new, shoelace_data shoelace_data
 WHERE shoelace.sl_name = shoelace_arrive.arr_name
   AND shoelace_data.sl_name = shoelace.sl_name;

Again it's an INSTEAD rule and the previous query tree is trashed. Note that this query still uses the view shoelace. But the rule system isn't finished with this step, so it continues and applies the _RETURN rule on it, and we get:

UPDATE shoelace_data
   SET sl_name = s.sl_name,
       sl_avail = s.sl_avail + shoelace_arrive.arr_quant,
       sl_color = s.sl_color,
       sl_len = s.sl_len,
       sl_unit = s.sl_unit
  FROM shoelace_arrive shoelace_arrive, shoelace_ok shoelace_ok,
       shoelace_ok old, shoelace_ok new,
       shoelace shoelace, shoelace old,
       shoelace new, shoelace_data shoelace_data,
       shoelace old, shoelace new,
       shoelace_data s, unit u
 WHERE s.sl_name = shoelace_arrive.arr_name
   AND shoelace_data.sl_name = s.sl_name;

Finally, the rule log_shoelace gets applied, producing the extra query tree:

INSERT INTO shoelace_log
SELECT s.sl_name,
       s.sl_avail + shoelace_arrive.arr_quant,
       current_user,
       current_timestamp
  FROM shoelace_arrive shoelace_arrive, shoelace_ok shoelace_ok,
       shoelace_ok old, shoelace_ok new,
       shoelace shoelace, shoelace old,
       shoelace new, shoelace_data shoelace_data,
       shoelace old, shoelace new,
       shoelace_data s, unit u,
       shoelace_data old, shoelace_data new
       shoelace_log shoelace_log
 WHERE s.sl_name = shoelace_arrive.arr_name
   AND shoelace_data.sl_name = s.sl_name
   AND (s.sl_avail + shoelace_arrive.arr_quant) <> s.sl_avail;

After that the rule system runs out of rules and returns the generated query trees.

So we end up with two final query trees that are equivalent to the SQL statements:

INSERT INTO shoelace_log
SELECT s.sl_name,
       s.sl_avail + shoelace_arrive.arr_quant,
       current_user,
       current_timestamp
  FROM shoelace_arrive shoelace_arrive, shoelace_data shoelace_data,
       shoelace_data s
 WHERE s.sl_name = shoelace_arrive.arr_name
   AND shoelace_data.sl_name = s.sl_name
   AND s.sl_avail + shoelace_arrive.arr_quant <> s.sl_avail;

UPDATE shoelace_data
   SET sl_avail = shoelace_data.sl_avail + shoelace_arrive.arr_quant
  FROM shoelace_arrive shoelace_arrive,
       shoelace_data shoelace_data,
       shoelace_data s
 WHERE s.sl_name = shoelace_arrive.sl_name
   AND shoelace_data.sl_name = s.sl_name;

The result is that data coming from one relation inserted into another, changed into updates on a third, changed into updating a fourth plus logging that final update in a fifth gets reduced into two queries.

There is a little detail that's a bit ugly. Looking at the two queries, it turns out that the shoelace_data relation appears twice in the range table where it could definitely be reduced to one. The planner does not handle it and so the execution plan for the rule systems output of the INSERT will be

Nested Loop
  ->  Merge Join
        ->  Seq Scan
              ->  Sort
                    ->  Seq Scan on s
        ->  Seq Scan
              ->  Sort
                    ->  Seq Scan on shoelace_arrive
  ->  Seq Scan on shoelace_data

while omitting the extra range table entry would result in a

Merge Join
  ->  Seq Scan
        ->  Sort
              ->  Seq Scan on s
  ->  Seq Scan
        ->  Sort
              ->  Seq Scan on shoelace_arrive

which produces exactly the same entries in the log table. Thus, the rule system caused one extra scan on the table shoelace_data that is absolutely not necessary. And the same redundant scan is done once more in the UPDATE. But it was a really hard job to make that all possible at all.

Now we make a final demonstration of the PostgreSQL rule system and its power. Say you add some shoelaces with extraordinary colors to your database:

INSERT INTO shoelace VALUES ('sl9', 0, 'pink', 35.0, 'inch', 0.0);
INSERT INTO shoelace VALUES ('sl10', 1000, 'magenta', 40.0, 'inch', 0.0);

We would like to make a view to check which shoelace entries do not fit any shoe in color. The view for this is:

CREATE VIEW shoelace_mismatch AS
    SELECT * FROM shoelace WHERE NOT EXISTS
        (SELECT shoename FROM shoe WHERE slcolor = sl_color);

Its output is:

SELECT * FROM shoelace_mismatch;

 sl_name | sl_avail | sl_color | sl_len | sl_unit | sl_len_cm
---------+----------+----------+--------+---------+-----------
 sl9     |        0 | pink     |     35 | inch    |      88.9
 sl10    |     1000 | magenta  |     40 | inch    |     101.6

Now we want to set it up so that mismatching shoelaces that are not in stock are deleted from the database. To make it a little harder for PostgreSQL, we don't delete it directly. Instead we create one more view:

CREATE VIEW shoelace_can_delete AS
    SELECT * FROM shoelace_mismatch WHERE sl_avail = 0;

and do it this way:

DELETE FROM shoelace WHERE EXISTS
    (SELECT * FROM shoelace_can_delete
             WHERE sl_name = shoelace.sl_name);

Voilà:

SELECT * FROM shoelace;

 sl_name | sl_avail | sl_color | sl_len | sl_unit | sl_len_cm
---------+----------+----------+--------+---------+-----------
 sl1     |        5 | black    |     80 | cm      |        80
 sl2     |        6 | black    |    100 | cm      |       100
 sl7     |        6 | brown    |     60 | cm      |        60
 sl4     |        8 | black    |     40 | inch    |     101.6
 sl3     |       10 | black    |     35 | inch    |      88.9
 sl8     |       21 | brown    |     40 | inch    |     101.6
 sl10    |     1000 | magenta  |     40 | inch    |     101.6
 sl5     |        4 | brown    |      1 | m       |       100
 sl6     |       20 | brown    |    0.9 | m       |        90
(9 rows)

A DELETE on a view, with a subquery qualification that in total uses 4 nesting/joined views, where one of them itself has a subquery qualification containing a view and where calculated view columns are used, gets rewritten into one single query tree that deletes the requested data from a real table.

There are probably only a few situations out in the real world where such a construct is necessary. But it makes you feel comfortable that it works.

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Rules and Privileges

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37.4. Rules and Privileges

Due to rewriting of queries by the PostgreSQL rule system, other tables/views than those used in the original query get accessed. When update rules are used, this can include write access to tables.

Rewrite rules don't have a separate owner. The owner of a relation (table or view) is automatically the owner of the rewrite rules that are defined for it. The PostgreSQL rule system changes the behavior of the default access control system. Relations that are used due to rules get checked against the privileges of the rule owner, not the user invoking the rule. This means that a user only needs the required privileges for the tables/views that he names explicitly in his queries.

For example: A user has a list of phone numbers where some of them are private, the others are of interest for the secretary of the office. He can construct the following:

CREATE TABLE phone_data (person text, phone text, private boolean);
CREATE VIEW phone_number AS
    SELECT person, CASE WHEN NOT private THEN phone END AS phone
    FROM phone_data;
GRANT SELECT ON phone_number TO secretary;

Nobody except him (and the database superusers) can access the phone_data table. But because of the GRANT, the secretary can run a SELECT on the phone_number view. The rule system will rewrite the SELECT from phone_number into a SELECT from phone_data. Since the user is the owner of phone_number and therefore the owner of the rule, the read access to phone_data is now checked against his privileges and the query is permitted. The check for accessing phone_number is also performed, but this is done against the invoking user, so nobody but the user and the secretary can use it.

The privileges are checked rule by rule. So the secretary is for now the only one who can see the public phone numbers. But the secretary can setup another view and grant access to that to the public. Then, anyone can see the phone_number data through the secretary's view. What the secretary cannot do is to create a view that directly accesses phone_data. (Actually he can, but it will not work since every access will be denied during the permission checks.) And as soon as the user will notice, that the secretary opened his phone_number view, he can revoke his access. Immediately, any access to the secretary's view would fail.

One might think that this rule-by-rule checking is a security hole, but in fact it isn't. But if it did not work this way, the secretary could set up a table with the same columns as phone_number and copy the data to there once per day. Then it's his own data and he can grant access to everyone he wants. A GRANT command means, "I trust you". If someone you trust does the thing above, it's time to think it over and then use REVOKE.

Note that while views can be used to hide the contents of certain columns using the technique shown above, they cannot be used to reliably conceal the data in unseen rows. For example, the following view is insecure:

CREATE VIEW phone_number AS
    SELECT person, phone FROM phone_data WHERE phone NOT LIKE '412%';

This view might seem secure, since the rule system will rewrite any SELECT from phone_number into a SELECT from phone_data and add the qualification that only entries where phone does not begin with 412 are wanted. But if the user can create his or her own functions, it is not difficult to convince the planner to execute the user-defined function prior to the NOT LIKE expression. For example:

CREATE FUNCTION tricky(text, text) RETURNS bool AS $$
BEGIN
    RAISE NOTICE '% => %', $1, $2;
    RETURN true;
END
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql COST 0.0000000000000000000001;

SELECT * FROM phone_number WHERE tricky(person, phone);

Every person and phone number in the phone_data table will be printed as a NOTICE, because the planner will choose to execute the inexpensive tricky function before the more expensive NOT LIKE. Even if the user is prevented from defining new functions, built-in functions can be used in similar attacks. (For example, most casting functions include their input values in the error messages they produce.)

Similar considerations apply to update rules. In the examples of the previous section, the owner of the tables in the example database could grant the privileges SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE on the shoelace view to someone else, but only SELECT on shoelace_log. The rule action to write log entries will still be executed successfully, and that other user could see the log entries. But he cannot create fake entries, nor could he manipulate or remove existing ones. In this case, there is no possibility of subverting the rules by convincing the planner to alter the order of operations, because the only rule which references shoelace_log is an unqualified INSERT. This might not be true in more complex scenarios.

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Rules and Command Status

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37.5. Rules and Command Status

The PostgreSQL server returns a command status string, such as INSERT 149592 1, for each command it receives. This is simple enough when there are no rules involved, but what happens when the query is rewritten by rules?

Rules affect the command status as follows:

  • If there is no unconditional INSTEAD rule for the query, then the originally given query will be executed, and its command status will be returned as usual. (But note that if there were any conditional INSTEAD rules, the negation of their qualifications will have been added to the original query. This might reduce the number of rows it processes, and if so the reported status will be affected.)

  • If there is any unconditional INSTEAD rule for the query, then the original query will not be executed at all. In this case, the server will return the command status for the last query that was inserted by an INSTEAD rule (conditional or unconditional) and is of the same command type (INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE) as the original query. If no query meeting those requirements is added by any rule, then the returned command status shows the original query type and zeroes for the row-count and OID fields.

(This system was established in PostgreSQL 7.3. In versions before that, the command status might show different results when rules exist.)

The programmer can ensure that any desired INSTEAD rule is the one that sets the command status in the second case, by giving it the alphabetically last rule name among the active rules, so that it gets applied last.

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Rules Versus Triggers

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37.6. Rules Versus Triggers

Many things that can be done using triggers can also be implemented using the PostgreSQL rule system. One of the things that cannot be implemented by rules are some kinds of constraints, especially foreign keys. It is possible to place a qualified rule that rewrites a command to NOTHING if the value of a column does not appear in another table. But then the data is silently thrown away and that's not a good idea. If checks for valid values are required, and in the case of an invalid value an error message should be generated, it must be done by a trigger.

In this chapter, we focused on using rules to update views. All of the update rule examples in this chapter can also be implemented using INSTEAD OF triggers on the views. Writing such triggers is often easier than writing rules, particularly if complex logic is required to perform the update.

For the things that can be implemented by both, which is best depends on the usage of the database. A trigger is fired once for each affected row. A rule modifies the query or generates an additional query. So if many rows are affected in one statement, a rule issuing one extra command is likely to be faster than a trigger that is called for every single row and must re-determine what to do many times. However, the trigger approach is conceptually far simpler than the rule approach, and is easier for novices to get right.

Here we show an example of how the choice of rules versus triggers plays out in one situation. There are two tables:

CREATE TABLE computer (
    hostname        text,    -- indexed
    manufacturer    text     -- indexed
);

CREATE TABLE software (
    software        text,    -- indexed
    hostname        text     -- indexed
);

Both tables have many thousands of rows and the indexes on hostname are unique. The rule or trigger should implement a constraint that deletes rows from software that reference a deleted computer. The trigger would use this command:

DELETE FROM software WHERE hostname = $1;

Since the trigger is called for each individual row deleted from computer, it can prepare and save the plan for this command and pass the hostname value in the parameter. The rule would be written as:

CREATE RULE computer_del AS ON DELETE TO computer
    DO DELETE FROM software WHERE hostname = OLD.hostname;

Now we look at different types of deletes. In the case of a:

DELETE FROM computer WHERE hostname = 'mypc.local.net';

the table computer is scanned by index (fast), and the command issued by the trigger would also use an index scan (also fast). The extra command from the rule would be:

DELETE FROM software WHERE computer.hostname = 'mypc.local.net'
                       AND software.hostname = computer.hostname;

Since there are appropriate indexes setup, the planner will create a plan of

Nestloop
  ->  Index Scan using comp_hostidx on computer
  ->  Index Scan using soft_hostidx on software

So there would be not that much difference in speed between the trigger and the rule implementation.

With the next delete we want to get rid of all the 2000 computers where the hostname starts with old. There are two possible commands to do that. One is:

DELETE FROM computer WHERE hostname >= 'old'
                       AND hostname <  'ole'

The command added by the rule will be:

DELETE FROM software WHERE computer.hostname >= 'old' AND computer.hostname < 'ole'
                       AND software.hostname = computer.hostname;

with the plan

Hash Join
  ->  Seq Scan on software
  ->  Hash
    ->  Index Scan using comp_hostidx on computer

The other possible command is:

DELETE FROM computer WHERE hostname ~ '^old';

which results in the following executing plan for the command added by the rule:

Nestloop
  ->  Index Scan using comp_hostidx on computer
  ->  Index Scan using soft_hostidx on software

This shows, that the planner does not realize that the qualification for hostname in computer could also be used for an index scan on software when there are multiple qualification expressions combined with AND, which is what it does in the regular-expression version of the command. The trigger will get invoked once for each of the 2000 old computers that have to be deleted, and that will result in one index scan over computer and 2000 index scans over software. The rule implementation will do it with two commands that use indexes. And it depends on the overall size of the table software whether the rule will still be faster in the sequential scan situation. 2000 command executions from the trigger over the SPI manager take some time, even if all the index blocks will soon be in the cache.

The last command we look at is:

DELETE FROM computer WHERE manufacturer = 'bim';

Again this could result in many rows to be deleted from computer. So the trigger will again run many commands through the executor. The command generated by the rule will be:

DELETE FROM software WHERE computer.manufacturer = 'bim'
                       AND software.hostname = computer.hostname;

The plan for that command will again be the nested loop over two index scans, only using a different index on computer:

Nestloop
  ->  Index Scan using comp_manufidx on computer
  ->  Index Scan using soft_hostidx on software

In any of these cases, the extra commands from the rule system will be more or less independent from the number of affected rows in a command.

The summary is, rules will only be significantly slower than triggers if their actions result in large and badly qualified joins, a situation where the planner fails.

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Procedural Languages

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Chapter 38. Procedural Languages

PostgreSQL allows user-defined functions to be written in other languages besides SQL and C. These other languages are generically called procedural languages (PLs). For a function written in a procedural language, the database server has no built-in knowledge about how to interpret the function's source text. Instead, the task is passed to a special handler that knows the details of the language. The handler could either do all the work of parsing, syntax analysis, execution, etc. itself, or it could serve as "glue" between PostgreSQL and an existing implementation of a programming language. The handler itself is a C language function compiled into a shared object and loaded on demand, just like any other C function.

There are currently four procedural languages available in the standard PostgreSQL distribution: PL/pgSQL (Chapter 39), PL/Tcl (Chapter 40), PL/Perl (Chapter 41), and PL/Python (Chapter 42). There are additional procedural languages available that are not included in the core distribution. Appendix G has information about finding them. In addition other languages can be defined by users; the basics of developing a new procedural language are covered in Chapter 49.

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PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language

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Chapter 39. PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language

Table of Contents
39.1. Overview
39.1.1. Advantages of Using PL/pgSQL
39.1.2. Supported Argument and Result Data Types
39.2. Structure of PL/pgSQL
39.3. Declarations
39.3.1. Declaring Function Parameters
39.3.2. ALIAS
39.3.3. Copying Types
39.3.4. Row Types
39.3.5. Record Types
39.3.6. Collation of PL/pgSQL Variables
39.4. Expressions
39.5. Basic Statements
39.5.1. Assignment
39.5.2. Executing a Command With No Result
39.5.3. Executing a Query with a Single-row Result
39.5.4. Executing Dynamic Commands
39.5.5. Obtaining the Result Status
39.5.6. Doing Nothing At All
39.6. Control Structures
39.6.1. Returning From a Function
39.6.2. Conditionals
39.6.3. Simple Loops
39.6.4. Looping Through Query Results
39.6.5. Looping Through Arrays
39.6.6. Trapping Errors
39.7. Cursors
39.7.1. Declaring Cursor Variables
39.7.2. Opening Cursors
39.7.3. Using Cursors
39.7.4. Looping Through a Cursor's Result
39.8. Errors and Messages
39.9. Trigger Procedures
39.10. PL/pgSQL Under the Hood
39.10.1. Variable Substitution
39.10.2. Plan Caching
39.11. Tips for Developing in PL/pgSQL
39.12. Porting from Oracle PL/SQL
39.12.1. Porting Examples
39.12.2. Other Things to Watch For
39.12.3. Appendix
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Overview

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39.1. Overview

PL/pgSQL is a loadable procedural language for the PostgreSQL database system. The design goals of PL/pgSQL were to create a loadable procedural language that

  • can be used to create functions and trigger procedures,

  • adds control structures to the SQL language,

  • can perform complex computations,

  • inherits all user-defined types, functions, and operators,

  • can be defined to be trusted by the server,

  • is easy to use.

Functions created with PL/pgSQL can be used anywhere that built-in functions could be used. For example, it is possible to create complex conditional computation functions and later use them to define operators or use them in index expressions.

In PostgreSQL 9.0 and later, PL/pgSQL is installed by default. However it is still a loadable module, so especially security-conscious administrators could choose to remove it.

39.1.1. Advantages of Using PL/pgSQL

SQL is the language PostgreSQL and most other relational databases use as query language. It's portable and easy to learn. But every SQL statement must be executed individually by the database server.

That means that your client application must send each query to the database server, wait for it to be processed, receive and process the results, do some computation, then send further queries to the server. All this incurs interprocess communication and will also incur network overhead if your client is on a different machine than the database server.

With PL/pgSQL you can group a block of computation and a series of queries inside the database server, thus having the power of a procedural language and the ease of use of SQL, but with considerable savings of client/server communication overhead.

  • Extra round trips between client and server are eliminated

  • Intermediate results that the client does not need do not have to be marshaled or transferred between server and client

  • Multiple rounds of query parsing can be avoided

This can result in a considerable performance increase as compared to an application that does not use stored functions.

Also, with PL/pgSQL you can use all the data types, operators and functions of SQL.

39.1.2. Supported Argument and Result Data Types

Functions written in PL/pgSQL can accept as arguments any scalar or array data type supported by the server, and they can return a result of any of these types. They can also accept or return any composite type (row type) specified by name. It is also possible to declare a PL/pgSQL function as returning record, which means that the result is a row type whose columns are determined by specification in the calling query, as discussed in Section 7.2.1.4.

PL/pgSQL functions can be declared to accept a variable number of arguments by using the VARIADIC marker. This works exactly the same way as for SQL functions, as discussed in Section 35.4.5.

PL/pgSQL functions can also be declared to accept and return the polymorphic types anyelement, anyarray, anynonarray, and anyenum. The actual data types handled by a polymorphic function can vary from call to call, as discussed in Section 35.2.5. An example is shown in Section 39.3.1.

PL/pgSQL functions can also be declared to return a "set" (or table) of any data type that can be returned as a single instance. Such a function generates its output by executing RETURN NEXT for each desired element of the result set, or by using RETURN QUERY to output the result of evaluating a query.

Finally, a PL/pgSQL function can be declared to return void if it has no useful return value.

PL/pgSQL functions can also be declared with output parameters in place of an explicit specification of the return type. This does not add any fundamental capability to the language, but it is often convenient, especially for returning multiple values. The RETURNS TABLE notation can also be used in place of RETURNS SETOF.

Specific examples appear in Section 39.3.1 and Section 39.6.1.

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Structure of PL/pgSQL

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39.2. Structure of PL/pgSQL

PL/pgSQL is a block-structured language. The complete text of a function definition must be a block. A block is defined as:

[ <<label>> ]
[ DECLARE
    declarations ]
BEGIN
    statements
END [ label ];

Each declaration and each statement within a block is terminated by a semicolon. A block that appears within another block must have a semicolon after END, as shown above; however the final END that concludes a function body does not require a semicolon.

Tip: A common mistake is to write a semicolon immediately after BEGIN. This is incorrect and will result in a syntax error.

A label is only needed if you want to identify the block for use in an EXIT statement, or to qualify the names of the variables declared in the block. If a label is given after END, it must match the label at the block's beginning.

All key words are case-insensitive. Identifiers are implicitly converted to lower case unless double-quoted, just as they are in ordinary SQL commands.

Comments work the same way in PL/pgSQL code as in ordinary SQL. A double dash (--) starts a comment that extends to the end of the line. A /* starts a block comment that extends to the matching occurrence of */. Block comments nest.

Any statement in the statement section of a block can be a subblock. Subblocks can be used for logical grouping or to localize variables to a small group of statements. Variables declared in a subblock mask any similarly-named variables of outer blocks for the duration of the subblock; but you can access the outer variables anyway if you qualify their names with their block's label. For example:

CREATE FUNCTION somefunc() RETURNS integer AS $$
<< outerblock >>
DECLARE
    quantity integer := 30;
BEGIN
    RAISE NOTICE 'Quantity here is %', quantity;  -- Prints 30
    quantity := 50;
    --
    -- Create a subblock
    --
    DECLARE
        quantity integer := 80;
    BEGIN
        RAISE NOTICE 'Quantity here is %', quantity;  -- Prints 80
        RAISE NOTICE 'Outer quantity here is %', outerblock.quantity;  -- Prints 50
    END;

    RAISE NOTICE 'Quantity here is %', quantity;  -- Prints 50

    RETURN quantity;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

Note: There is actually a hidden "outer block" surrounding the body of any PL/pgSQL function. This block provides the declarations of the function's parameters (if any), as well as some special variables such as FOUND (see Section 39.5.5). The outer block is labeled with the function's name, meaning that parameters and special variables can be qualified with the function's name.

It is important not to confuse the use of BEGIN/END for grouping statements in PL/pgSQL with the similarly-named SQL commands for transaction control. PL/pgSQL's BEGIN/END are only for grouping; they do not start or end a transaction. Functions and trigger procedures are always executed within a transaction established by an outer query — they cannot start or commit that transaction, since there would be no context for them to execute in. However, a block containing an EXCEPTION clause effectively forms a subtransaction that can be rolled back without affecting the outer transaction. For more about that see Section 39.6.6.

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Declarations

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39.3. Declarations

All variables used in a block must be declared in the declarations section of the block. (The only exceptions are that the loop variable of a FOR loop iterating over a range of integer values is automatically declared as an integer variable, and likewise the loop variable of a FOR loop iterating over a cursor's result is automatically declared as a record variable.)

PL/pgSQL variables can have any SQL data type, such as integer, varchar, and char.

Here are some examples of variable declarations:

user_id integer;
quantity numeric(5);
url varchar;
myrow tablename%ROWTYPE;
myfield tablename.columnname%TYPE;
arow RECORD;

The general syntax of a variable declaration is:

name [ CONSTANT ] type [ COLLATE collation_name ] [ NOT NULL ] [ { DEFAULT | := } expression ];

The DEFAULT clause, if given, specifies the initial value assigned to the variable when the block is entered. If the DEFAULT clause is not given then the variable is initialized to the SQL null value. The CONSTANT option prevents the variable from being assigned to after initialization, so that its value will remain constant for the duration of the block. The COLLATE option specifies a collation to use for the variable (see Section 39.3.6). If NOT NULL is specified, an assignment of a null value results in a run-time error. All variables declared as NOT NULL must have a nonnull default value specified.

A variable's default value is evaluated and assigned to the variable each time the block is entered (not just once per function call). So, for example, assigning now() to a variable of type timestamp causes the variable to have the time of the current function call, not the time when the function was precompiled.

Examples:

quantity integer DEFAULT 32;
url varchar := 'http://mysite.com';
user_id CONSTANT integer := 10;

39.3.1. Declaring Function Parameters

Parameters passed to functions are named with the identifiers $1, $2, etc. Optionally, aliases can be declared for $n parameter names for increased readability. Either the alias or the numeric identifier can then be used to refer to the parameter value.

There are two ways to create an alias. The preferred way is to give a name to the parameter in the CREATE FUNCTION command, for example:

CREATE FUNCTION sales_tax(subtotal real) RETURNS real AS $$
BEGIN
    RETURN subtotal * 0.06;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

The other way, which was the only way available before PostgreSQL 8.0, is to explicitly declare an alias, using the declaration syntax

name ALIAS FOR $n;

The same example in this style looks like:

CREATE FUNCTION sales_tax(real) RETURNS real AS $$
DECLARE
    subtotal ALIAS FOR $1;
BEGIN
    RETURN subtotal * 0.06;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

Note: These two examples are not perfectly equivalent. In the first case, subtotal could be referenced as sales_tax.subtotal, but in the second case it could not. (Had we attached a label to the inner block, subtotal could be qualified with that label, instead.)

Some more examples:

CREATE FUNCTION instr(varchar, integer) RETURNS integer AS $$
DECLARE
    v_string ALIAS FOR $1;
    index ALIAS FOR $2;
BEGIN
    -- some computations using v_string and index here
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

CREATE FUNCTION concat_selected_fields(in_t sometablename) RETURNS text AS $$
BEGIN
    RETURN in_t.f1 || in_t.f3 || in_t.f5 || in_t.f7;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

When a PL/pgSQL function is declared with output parameters, the output parameters are given $n names and optional aliases in just the same way as the normal input parameters. An output parameter is effectively a variable that starts out NULL; it should be assigned to during the execution of the function. The final value of the parameter is what is returned. For instance, the sales-tax example could also be done this way:

CREATE FUNCTION sales_tax(subtotal real, OUT tax real) AS $$
BEGIN
    tax := subtotal * 0.06;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

Notice that we omitted RETURNS real — we could have included it, but it would be redundant.

Output parameters are most useful when returning multiple values. A trivial example is:

CREATE FUNCTION sum_n_product(x int, y int, OUT sum int, OUT prod int) AS $$
BEGIN
    sum := x + y;
    prod := x * y;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

As discussed in Section 35.4.4, this effectively creates an anonymous record type for the function's results. If a RETURNS clause is given, it must say RETURNS record.

Another way to declare a PL/pgSQL function is with RETURNS TABLE, for example:

CREATE FUNCTION extended_sales(p_itemno int)
RETURNS TABLE(quantity int, total numeric) AS $$
BEGIN
    RETURN QUERY SELECT s.quantity, s.quantity * s.price FROM sales AS s
                 WHERE s.itemno = p_itemno;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

This is exactly equivalent to declaring one or more OUT parameters and specifying RETURNS SETOF sometype.

When the return type of a PL/pgSQL function is declared as a polymorphic type (anyelement, anyarray, anynonarray, or anyenum), a special parameter $0 is created. Its data type is the actual return type of the function, as deduced from the actual input types (see Section 35.2.5). This allows the function to access its actual return type as shown in Section 39.3.3. $0 is initialized to null and can be modified by the function, so it can be used to hold the return value if desired, though that is not required. $0 can also be given an alias. For example, this function works on any data type that has a + operator:

CREATE FUNCTION add_three_values(v1 anyelement, v2 anyelement, v3 anyelement)
RETURNS anyelement AS $$
DECLARE
    result ALIAS FOR $0;
BEGIN
    result := v1 + v2 + v3;
    RETURN result;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

The same effect can be had by declaring one or more output parameters as polymorphic types. In this case the special $0 parameter is not used; the output parameters themselves serve the same purpose. For example:

CREATE FUNCTION add_three_values(v1 anyelement, v2 anyelement, v3 anyelement,
                                 OUT sum anyelement)
AS $$
BEGIN
    sum := v1 + v2 + v3;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

39.3.2. ALIAS

newname ALIAS FOR oldname;

The ALIAS syntax is more general than is suggested in the previous section: you can declare an alias for any variable, not just function parameters. The main practical use for this is to assign a different name for variables with predetermined names, such as NEW or OLD within a trigger procedure.

Examples:

DECLARE
  prior ALIAS FOR old;
  updated ALIAS FOR new;

Since ALIAS creates two different ways to name the same object, unrestricted use can be confusing. It's best to use it only for the purpose of overriding predetermined names.

39.3.3. Copying Types

variable%TYPE

%TYPE provides the data type of a variable or table column. You can use this to declare variables that will hold database values. For example, let's say you have a column named user_id in your users table. To declare a variable with the same data type as users.user_id you write:

user_id users.user_id%TYPE;

By using %TYPE you don't need to know the data type of the structure you are referencing, and most importantly, if the data type of the referenced item changes in the future (for instance: you change the type of user_id from integer to real), you might not need to change your function definition.

%TYPE is particularly valuable in polymorphic functions, since the data types needed for internal variables can change from one call to the next. Appropriate variables can be created by applying %TYPE to the function's arguments or result placeholders.

39.3.4. Row Types

name table_name%ROWTYPE;
name composite_type_name;

A variable of a composite type is called a row variable (or row-type variable). Such a variable can hold a whole row of a SELECT or FOR query result, so long as that query's column set matches the declared type of the variable. The individual fields of the row value are accessed using the usual dot notation, for example rowvar.field.

A row variable can be declared to have the same type as the rows of an existing table or view, by using the table_name%ROWTYPE notation; or it can be declared by giving a composite type's name. (Since every table has an associated composite type of the same name, it actually does not matter in PostgreSQL whether you write %ROWTYPE or not. But the form with %ROWTYPE is more portable.)

Parameters to a function can be composite types (complete table rows). In that case, the corresponding identifier $n will be a row variable, and fields can be selected from it, for example $1.user_id.

Only the user-defined columns of a table row are accessible in a row-type variable, not the OID or other system columns (because the row could be from a view). The fields of the row type inherit the table's field size or precision for data types such as char(n).

Here is an example of using composite types. table1 and table2 are existing tables having at least the mentioned fields:

CREATE FUNCTION merge_fields(t_row table1) RETURNS text AS $$
DECLARE
    t2_row table2%ROWTYPE;
BEGIN
    SELECT * INTO t2_row FROM table2 WHERE ... ;
    RETURN t_row.f1 || t2_row.f3 || t_row.f5 || t2_row.f7;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

SELECT merge_fields(t.*) FROM table1 t WHERE ... ;

39.3.5. Record Types

name RECORD;

Record variables are similar to row-type variables, but they have no predefined structure. They take on the actual row structure of the row they are assigned during a SELECT or FOR command. The substructure of a record variable can change each time it is assigned to. A consequence of this is that until a record variable is first assigned to, it has no substructure, and any attempt to access a field in it will draw a run-time error.

Note that RECORD is not a true data type, only a placeholder. One should also realize that when a PL/pgSQL function is declared to return type record, this is not quite the same concept as a record variable, even though such a function might use a record variable to hold its result. In both cases the actual row structure is unknown when the function is written, but for a function returning record the actual structure is determined when the calling query is parsed, whereas a record variable can change its row structure on-the-fly.

39.3.6. Collation of PL/pgSQL Variables

When a PL/pgSQL function has one or more parameters of collatable data types, a collation is identified for each function call depending on the collations assigned to the actual arguments, as described in Section 22.2. If a collation is successfully identified (i.e., there are no conflicts of implicit collations among the arguments) then all the collatable parameters are treated as having that collation implicitly. This will affect the behavior of collation-sensitive operations within the function. For example, consider

CREATE FUNCTION less_than(a text, b text) RETURNS boolean AS $$
BEGIN
    RETURN a < b;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

SELECT less_than(text_field_1, text_field_2) FROM table1;
SELECT less_than(text_field_1, text_field_2 COLLATE "C") FROM table1;

The first use of less_than will use the common collation of text_field_1 and text_field_2 for the comparison, while the second use will use C collation.

Furthermore, the identified collation is also assumed as the collation of any local variables that are of collatable types. Thus this function would not work any differently if it were written as

CREATE FUNCTION less_than(a text, b text) RETURNS boolean AS $$
DECLARE
    local_a text := a;
    local_b text := b;
BEGIN
    RETURN local_a < local_b;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

If there are no parameters of collatable data types, or no common collation can be identified for them, then parameters and local variables use the default collation of their data type (which is usually the database's default collation, but could be different for variables of domain types).

A local variable of a collatable data type can have a different collation associated with it by including the COLLATE option in its declaration, for example

DECLARE
    local_a text COLLATE "en_US";

This option overrides the collation that would otherwise be given to the variable according to the rules above.

Also, of course explicit COLLATE clauses can be written inside a function if it is desired to force a particular collation to be used in a particular operation. For example,

CREATE FUNCTION less_than_c(a text, b text) RETURNS boolean AS $$
BEGIN
    RETURN a < b COLLATE "C";
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

This overrides the collations associated with the table columns, parameters, or local variables used in the expression, just as would happen in a plain SQL command.

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Expressions

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39.4. Expressions

All expressions used in PL/pgSQL statements are processed using the server's main SQL executor. For example, when you write a PL/pgSQL statement like

IF expression THEN ...

PL/pgSQL will evaluate the expression by feeding a query like

SELECT expression

to the main SQL engine. While forming the SELECT command, any occurrences of PL/pgSQL variable names are replaced by parameters, as discussed in detail in Section 39.10.1. This allows the query plan for the SELECT to be prepared just once and then reused for subsequent evaluations with different values of the variables. Thus, what really happens on first use of an expression is essentially a PREPARE command. For example, if we have declared two integer variables x and y, and we write

IF x < y THEN ...

what happens behind the scenes is equivalent to

PREPARE statement_name(integer, integer) AS SELECT $1 < $2;

and then this prepared statement is EXECUTEd for each execution of the IF statement, with the current values of the PL/pgSQL variables supplied as parameter values. The query plan prepared in this way is saved for the life of the database connection, as described in Section 39.10.2. Normally these details are not important to a PL/pgSQL user, but they are useful to know when trying to diagnose a problem.

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Basic Statements

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39.5. Basic Statements

In this section and the following ones, we describe all the statement types that are explicitly understood by PL/pgSQL. Anything not recognized as one of these statement types is presumed to be an SQL command and is sent to the main database engine to execute, as described in Section 39.5.2 and Section 39.5.3.

39.5.1. Assignment

An assignment of a value to a PL/pgSQL variable is written as:

variable := expression;

As explained previously, the expression in such a statement is evaluated by means of an SQL SELECT command sent to the main database engine. The expression must yield a single value (possibly a row value, if the variable is a row or record variable). The target variable can be a simple variable (optionally qualified with a block name), a field of a row or record variable, or an element of an array that is a simple variable or field.

If the expression's result data type doesn't match the variable's data type, or the variable has a specific size/precision (like char(20)), the result value will be implicitly converted by the PL/pgSQL interpreter using the result type's output-function and the variable type's input-function. Note that this could potentially result in run-time errors generated by the input function, if the string form of the result value is not acceptable to the input function.

Examples:

tax := subtotal * 0.06;
my_record.user_id := 20;

39.5.2. Executing a Command With No Result

For any SQL command that does not return rows, for example INSERT without a RETURNING clause, you can execute the command within a PL/pgSQL function just by writing the command.

Any PL/pgSQL variable name appearing in the command text is treated as a parameter, and then the current value of the variable is provided as the parameter value at run time. This is exactly like the processing described earlier for expressions; for details see Section 39.10.1.

When executing a SQL command in this way, PL/pgSQL plans the command just once and re-uses the plan on subsequent executions, for the life of the database connection. The implications of this are discussed in detail in Section 39.10.2.

Sometimes it is useful to evaluate an expression or SELECT query but discard the result, for example when calling a function that has side-effects but no useful result value. To do this in PL/pgSQL, use the PERFORM statement:

PERFORM query;

This executes query and discards the result. Write the query the same way you would write an SQL SELECT command, but replace the initial keyword SELECT with PERFORM. For WITH queries, use PERFORM and then place the query in parentheses. (In this case, the query can only return one row.) PL/pgSQL variables will be substituted into the query just as for commands that return no result, and the plan is cached in the same way. Also, the special variable FOUND is set to true if the query produced at least one row, or false if it produced no rows (see Section 39.5.5).

Note: One might expect that writing SELECT directly would accomplish this result, but at present the only accepted way to do it is PERFORM. A SQL command that can return rows, such as SELECT, will be rejected as an error unless it has an INTO clause as discussed in the next section.

An example:

PERFORM create_mv('cs_session_page_requests_mv', my_query);

39.5.3. Executing a Query with a Single-row Result

The result of a SQL command yielding a single row (possibly of multiple columns) can be assigned to a record variable, row-type variable, or list of scalar variables. This is done by writing the base SQL command and adding an INTO clause. For example,

SELECT select_expressions INTO [STRICT] target FROM ...;
INSERT ... RETURNING expressions INTO [STRICT] target;
UPDATE ... RETURNING expressions INTO [STRICT] target;
DELETE ... RETURNING expressions INTO [STRICT] target;

where target can be a record variable, a row variable, or a comma-separated list of simple variables and record/row fields. PL/pgSQL variables will be substituted into the rest of the query, and the plan is cached, just as described above for commands that do not return rows. This works for SELECT, INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE with RETURNING, and utility commands that return row-set results (such as EXPLAIN). Except for the INTO clause, the SQL command is the same as it would be written outside PL/pgSQL.

Tip: Note that this interpretation of SELECT with INTO is quite different from PostgreSQL's regular SELECT INTO command, wherein the INTO target is a newly created table. If you want to create a table from a SELECT result inside a PL/pgSQL function, use the syntax CREATE TABLE ... AS SELECT.

If a row or a variable list is used as target, the query's result columns must exactly match the structure of the target as to number and data types, or else a run-time error occurs. When a record variable is the target, it automatically configures itself to the row type of the query result columns.

The INTO clause can appear almost anywhere in the SQL command. Customarily it is written either just before or just after the list of select_expressions in a SELECT command, or at the end of the command for other command types. It is recommended that you follow this convention in case the PL/pgSQL parser becomes stricter in future versions.

If STRICT is not specified in the INTO clause, then target will be set to the first row returned by the query, or to nulls if the query returned no rows. (Note that "the first row" is not well-defined unless you've used ORDER BY.) Any result rows after the first row are discarded. You can check the special FOUND variable (see Section 39.5.5) to determine whether a row was returned:

SELECT * INTO myrec FROM emp WHERE empname = myname;
IF NOT FOUND THEN
    RAISE EXCEPTION 'employee % not found', myname;
END IF;

If the STRICT option is specified, the query must return exactly one row or a run-time error will be reported, either NO_DATA_FOUND (no rows) or TOO_MANY_ROWS (more than one row). You can use an exception block if you wish to catch the error, for example:

BEGIN
    SELECT * INTO STRICT myrec FROM emp WHERE empname = myname;
    EXCEPTION
        WHEN NO_DATA_FOUND THEN
            RAISE EXCEPTION 'employee % not found', myname;
        WHEN TOO_MANY_ROWS THEN
            RAISE EXCEPTION 'employee % not unique', myname;
END;

Successful execution of a command with STRICT always sets FOUND to true.

For INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE with RETURNING, PL/pgSQL reports an error for more than one returned row, even when STRICT is not specified. This is because there is no option such as ORDER BY with which to determine which affected row should be returned.

Note: The STRICT option matches the behavior of Oracle PL/SQL's SELECT INTO and related statements.

To handle cases where you need to process multiple result rows from a SQL query, see Section 39.6.4.

39.5.4. Executing Dynamic Commands

Oftentimes you will want to generate dynamic commands inside your PL/pgSQL functions, that is, commands that will involve different tables or different data types each time they are executed. PL/pgSQL's normal attempts to cache plans for commands (as discussed in Section 39.10.2) will not work in such scenarios. To handle this sort of problem, the EXECUTE statement is provided:

EXECUTE command-string [ INTO [STRICT] target ] [ USING expression [, ... ] ];

where command-string is an expression yielding a string (of type text) containing the command to be executed. The optional target is a record variable, a row variable, or a comma-separated list of simple variables and record/row fields, into which the results of the command will be stored. The optional USING expressions supply values to be inserted into the command.

No substitution of PL/pgSQL variables is done on the computed command string. Any required variable values must be inserted in the command string as it is constructed; or you can use parameters as described below.

Also, there is no plan caching for commands executed via EXECUTE. Instead, the command is prepared each time the statement is run. Thus the command string can be dynamically created within the function to perform actions on different tables and columns.

The INTO clause specifies where the results of a SQL command returning rows should be assigned. If a row or variable list is provided, it must exactly match the structure of the query's results (when a record variable is used, it will configure itself to match the result structure automatically). If multiple rows are returned, only the first will be assigned to the INTO variable. If no rows are returned, NULL is assigned to the INTO variable(s). If no INTO clause is specified, the query results are discarded.

If the STRICT option is given, an error is reported unless the query produces exactly one row.

The command string can use parameter values, which are referenced in the command as $1, $2, etc. These symbols refer to values supplied in the USING clause. This method is often preferable to inserting data values into the command string as text: it avoids run-time overhead of converting the values to text and back, and it is much less prone to SQL-injection attacks since there is no need for quoting or escaping. An example is:

EXECUTE 'SELECT count(*) FROM mytable WHERE inserted_by = $1 AND inserted <= $2'
   INTO c
   USING checked_user, checked_date;

Note that parameter symbols can only be used for data values — if you want to use dynamically determined table or column names, you must insert them into the command string textually. For example, if the preceding query needed to be done against a dynamically selected table, you could do this:

EXECUTE 'SELECT count(*) FROM '
    || tabname::regclass
    || ' WHERE inserted_by = $1 AND inserted <= $2'
   INTO c
   USING checked_user, checked_date;

Another restriction on parameter symbols is that they only work in SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE commands. In other statement types (generically called utility statements), you must insert values textually even if they are just data values.

An EXECUTE with a simple constant command string and some USING parameters, as in the first example above, is functionally equivalent to just writing the command directly in PL/pgSQL and allowing replacement of PL/pgSQL variables to happen automatically. The important difference is that EXECUTE will re-plan the command on each execution, generating a plan that is specific to the current parameter values; whereas PL/pgSQL normally creates a generic plan and caches it for re-use. In situations where the best plan depends strongly on the parameter values, EXECUTE can be significantly faster; while when the plan is not sensitive to parameter values, re-planning will be a waste.

SELECT INTO is not currently supported within EXECUTE; instead, execute a plain SELECT command and specify INTO as part of the EXECUTE itself.

Note: The PL/pgSQL EXECUTE statement is not related to the EXECUTE SQL statement supported by the PostgreSQL server. The server's EXECUTE statement cannot be used directly within PL/pgSQL functions (and is not needed).

Example 39-1. Quoting Values In Dynamic Queries

When working with dynamic commands you will often have to handle escaping of single quotes. The recommended method for quoting fixed text in your function body is dollar quoting. (If you have legacy code that does not use dollar quoting, please refer to the overview in Section 39.11.1, which can save you some effort when translating said code to a more reasonable scheme.)

Dynamic values that are to be inserted into the constructed query require careful handling since they might themselves contain quote characters. An example (this assumes that you are using dollar quoting for the function as a whole, so the quote marks need not be doubled):

EXECUTE 'UPDATE tbl SET '
        || quote_ident(colname)
        || ' = '
        || quote_literal(newvalue)
        || ' WHERE key = '
        || quote_literal(keyvalue);

This example demonstrates the use of the quote_ident and quote_literal functions (see Section 9.4). For safety, expressions containing column or table identifiers should be passed through quote_ident before insertion in a dynamic query. Expressions containing values that should be literal strings in the constructed command should be passed through quote_literal. These functions take the appropriate steps to return the input text enclosed in double or single quotes respectively, with any embedded special characters properly escaped.

Because quote_literal is labelled STRICT, it will always return null when called with a null argument. In the above example, if newvalue or keyvalue were null, the entire dynamic query string would become null, leading to an error from EXECUTE. You can avoid this problem by using the quote_nullable function, which works the same as quote_literal except that when called with a null argument it returns the string NULL. For example,

EXECUTE 'UPDATE tbl SET '
        || quote_ident(colname)
        || ' = '
        || quote_nullable(newvalue)
        || ' WHERE key = '
        || quote_nullable(keyvalue);

If you are dealing with values that might be null, you should usually use quote_nullable in place of quote_literal.

As always, care must be taken to ensure that null values in a query do not deliver unintended results. For example the WHERE clause

'WHERE key = ' || quote_nullable(keyvalue)

will never succeed if keyvalue is null, because the result of using the equality operator = with a null operand is always null. If you wish null to work like an ordinary key value, you would need to rewrite the above as

'WHERE key IS NOT DISTINCT FROM ' || quote_nullable(keyvalue)

(At present, IS NOT DISTINCT FROM is handled much less efficiently than =, so don't do this unless you must. See Section 9.2 for more information on nulls and IS DISTINCT.)

Note that dollar quoting is only useful for quoting fixed text. It would be a very bad idea to try to write this example as:

EXECUTE 'UPDATE tbl SET '
        || quote_ident(colname)
        || ' = $$'
        || newvalue
        || '$$ WHERE key = '
        || quote_literal(keyvalue);

because it would break if the contents of newvalue happened to contain $$. The same objection would apply to any other dollar-quoting delimiter you might pick. So, to safely quote text that is not known in advance, you must use quote_literal, quote_nullable, or quote_ident, as appropriate.

Dynamic SQL statements can also be safely constructed using the format function (see Section 9.4). For example:

EXECUTE format('UPDATE tbl SET %I = %L WHERE key = %L', colname, newvalue, keyvalue);

The format function can be used in conjunction with the USING clause:

EXECUTE format('UPDATE tbl SET %I = $1 WHERE key = $2', colname)
   USING newvalue, keyvalue;

This form is more efficient, because the parameters newvalue and keyvalue are not converted to text.

A much larger example of a dynamic command and EXECUTE can be seen in Example 39-8, which builds and executes a CREATE FUNCTION command to define a new function.

39.5.5. Obtaining the Result Status

There are several ways to determine the effect of a command. The first method is to use the GET DIAGNOSTICS command, which has the form:

GET DIAGNOSTICS variable = item [ , ... ];

This command allows retrieval of system status indicators. Each item is a key word identifying a state value to be assigned to the specified variable (which should be of the right data type to receive it). The currently available status items are ROW_COUNT, the number of rows processed by the last SQL command sent to the SQL engine, and RESULT_OID, the OID of the last row inserted by the most recent SQL command. Note that RESULT_OID is only useful after an INSERT command into a table containing OIDs.

An example:

GET DIAGNOSTICS integer_var = ROW_COUNT;

The second method to determine the effects of a command is to check the special variable named FOUND, which is of type boolean. FOUND starts out false within each PL/pgSQL function call. It is set by each of the following types of statements:

  • A SELECT INTO statement sets FOUND true if a row is assigned, false if no row is returned.

  • A PERFORM statement sets FOUND true if it produces (and discards) one or more rows, false if no row is produced.

  • UPDATE, INSERT, and DELETE statements set FOUND true if at least one row is affected, false if no row is affected.

  • A FETCH statement sets FOUND true if it returns a row, false if no row is returned.

  • A MOVE statement sets FOUND true if it successfully repositions the cursor, false otherwise.

  • A FOR or FOREACH statement sets FOUND true if it iterates one or more times, else false. FOUND is set this way when the loop exits; inside the execution of the loop, FOUND is not modified by the loop statement, although it might be changed by the execution of other statements within the loop body.

  • RETURN QUERY and RETURN QUERY EXECUTE statements set FOUND true if the query returns at least one row, false if no row is returned.

Other PL/pgSQL statements do not change the state of FOUND. Note in particular that EXECUTE changes the output of GET DIAGNOSTICS, but does not change FOUND.

FOUND is a local variable within each PL/pgSQL function; any changes to it affect only the current function.

39.5.6. Doing Nothing At All

Sometimes a placeholder statement that does nothing is useful. For example, it can indicate that one arm of an if/then/else chain is deliberately empty. For this purpose, use the NULL statement:

NULL;

For example, the following two fragments of code are equivalent:

BEGIN
    y := x / 0;
EXCEPTION
    WHEN division_by_zero THEN
        NULL;  -- ignore the error
END;

BEGIN
    y := x / 0;
EXCEPTION
    WHEN division_by_zero THEN  -- ignore the error
END;

Which is preferable is a matter of taste.

Note: In Oracle's PL/SQL, empty statement lists are not allowed, and so NULL statements are required for situations such as this. PL/pgSQL allows you to just write nothing, instead.

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Control Structures

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39.6. Control Structures

Control structures are probably the most useful (and important) part of PL/pgSQL. With PL/pgSQL's control structures, you can manipulate PostgreSQL data in a very flexible and powerful way.

39.6.1. Returning From a Function

There are two commands available that allow you to return data from a function: RETURN and RETURN NEXT.

39.6.1.1. RETURN

RETURN expression;

RETURN with an expression terminates the function and returns the value of expression to the caller. This form is used for PL/pgSQL functions that do not return a set.

When returning a scalar type, any expression can be used. The expression's result will be automatically cast into the function's return type as described for assignments. To return a composite (row) value, you must write a record or row variable as the expression.

If you declared the function with output parameters, write just RETURN with no expression. The current values of the output parameter variables will be returned.

If you declared the function to return void, a RETURN statement can be used to exit the function early; but do not write an expression following RETURN.

The return value of a function cannot be left undefined. If control reaches the end of the top-level block of the function without hitting a RETURN statement, a run-time error will occur. This restriction does not apply to functions with output parameters and functions returning void, however. In those cases a RETURN statement is automatically executed if the top-level block finishes.

39.6.1.2. RETURN NEXT and RETURN QUERY

RETURN NEXT expression;
RETURN QUERY query;
RETURN QUERY EXECUTE command-string [ USING expression [, ... ] ];

When a PL/pgSQL function is declared to return SETOF sometype, the procedure to follow is slightly different. In that case, the individual items to return are specified by a sequence of RETURN NEXT or RETURN QUERY commands, and then a final RETURN command with no argument is used to indicate that the function has finished executing. RETURN NEXT can be used with both scalar and composite data types; with a composite result type, an entire "table" of results will be returned. RETURN QUERY appends the results of executing a query to the function's result set. RETURN NEXT and RETURN QUERY can be freely intermixed in a single set-returning function, in which case their results will be concatenated.

RETURN NEXT and RETURN QUERY do not actually return from the function — they simply append zero or more rows to the function's result set. Execution then continues with the next statement in the PL/pgSQL function. As successive RETURN NEXT or RETURN QUERY commands are executed, the result set is built up. A final RETURN, which should have no argument, causes control to exit the function (or you can just let control reach the end of the function).

RETURN QUERY has a variant RETURN QUERY EXECUTE, which specifies the query to be executed dynamically. Parameter expressions can be inserted into the computed query string via USING, in just the same way as in the EXECUTE command.

If you declared the function with output parameters, write just RETURN NEXT with no expression. On each execution, the current values of the output parameter variable(s) will be saved for eventual return as a row of the result. Note that you must declare the function as returning SETOF record when there are multiple output parameters, or SETOF sometype when there is just one output parameter of type sometype, in order to create a set-returning function with output parameters.

Here is an example of a function using RETURN NEXT:

CREATE TABLE foo (fooid INT, foosubid INT, fooname TEXT);
INSERT INTO foo VALUES (1, 2, 'three');
INSERT INTO foo VALUES (4, 5, 'six');

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION getAllFoo() RETURNS SETOF foo AS
$BODY$
DECLARE
    r foo%rowtype;
BEGIN
    FOR r IN SELECT * FROM foo
    WHERE fooid > 0
    LOOP
        -- can do some processing here
        RETURN NEXT r; -- return current row of SELECT
    END LOOP;
    RETURN;
END
$BODY$
LANGUAGE 'plpgsql' ;

SELECT * FROM getallfoo();

Note: The current implementation of RETURN NEXT and RETURN QUERY stores the entire result set before returning from the function, as discussed above. That means that if a PL/pgSQL function produces a very large result set, performance might be poor: data will be written to disk to avoid memory exhaustion, but the function itself will not return until the entire result set has been generated. A future version of PL/pgSQL might allow users to define set-returning functions that do not have this limitation. Currently, the point at which data begins being written to disk is controlled by the work_mem configuration variable. Administrators who have sufficient memory to store larger result sets in memory should consider increasing this parameter.

39.6.2. Conditionals

IF and CASE statements let you execute alternative commands based on certain conditions. PL/pgSQL has three forms of IF:

  • IF ... THEN

  • IF ... THEN ... ELSE

  • IF ... THEN ... ELSIF ... THEN ... ELSE

and two forms of CASE:

  • CASE ... WHEN ... THEN ... ELSE ... END CASE

  • CASE WHEN ... THEN ... ELSE ... END CASE

39.6.2.1. IF-THEN

IF boolean-expression THEN
    statements
END IF;

IF-THEN statements are the simplest form of IF. The statements between THEN and END IF will be executed if the condition is true. Otherwise, they are skipped.

Example:

IF v_user_id <> 0 THEN
    UPDATE users SET email = v_email WHERE user_id = v_user_id;
END IF;

39.6.2.2. IF-THEN-ELSE

IF boolean-expression THEN
    statements
ELSE
    statements
END IF;

IF-THEN-ELSE statements add to IF-THEN by letting you specify an alternative set of statements that should be executed if the condition is not true. (Note this includes the case where the condition evaluates to NULL.)

Examples:

IF parentid IS NULL OR parentid = ''
THEN
    RETURN fullname;
ELSE
    RETURN hp_true_filename(parentid) || '/' || fullname;
END IF;

IF v_count > 0 THEN
    INSERT INTO users_count (count) VALUES (v_count);
    RETURN 't';
ELSE
    RETURN 'f';
END IF;

39.6.2.3. IF-THEN-ELSIF

IF boolean-expression THEN
    statements
[ ELSIF boolean-expression THEN
    statements
[ ELSIF boolean-expression THEN
    statements
    ...]]
[ ELSE
    statements ]
END IF;

Sometimes there are more than just two alternatives. IF-THEN-ELSIF provides a convenient method of checking several alternatives in turn. The IF conditions are tested successively until the first one that is true is found. Then the associated statement(s) are executed, after which control passes to the next statement after END IF. (Any subsequent IF conditions are not tested.) If none of the IF conditions is true, then the ELSE block (if any) is executed.

Here is an example:

IF number = 0 THEN
    result := 'zero';
ELSIF number > 0 THEN
    result := 'positive';
ELSIF number < 0 THEN
    result := 'negative';
ELSE
    -- hmm, the only other possibility is that number is null
    result := 'NULL';
END IF;

The key word ELSIF can also be spelled ELSEIF.

An alternative way of accomplishing the same task is to nest IF-THEN-ELSE statements, as in the following example:

IF demo_row.sex = 'm' THEN
    pretty_sex := 'man';
ELSE
    IF demo_row.sex = 'f' THEN
        pretty_sex := 'woman';
    END IF;
END IF;

However, this method requires writing a matching END IF for each IF, so it is much more cumbersome than using ELSIF when there are many alternatives.

39.6.2.4. Simple CASE

CASE search-expression
    WHEN expression [, expression [ ... ]] THEN
      statements
  [ WHEN expression [, expression [ ... ]] THEN
      statements
    ... ]
  [ ELSE
      statements ]
END CASE;

The simple form of CASE provides conditional execution based on equality of operands. The search-expression is evaluated (once) and successively compared to each expression in the WHEN clauses. If a match is found, then the corresponding statements are executed, and then control passes to the next statement after END CASE. (Subsequent WHEN expressions are not evaluated.) If no match is found, the ELSE statements are executed; but if ELSE is not present, then a CASE_NOT_FOUND exception is raised.

Here is a simple example:

CASE x
    WHEN 1, 2 THEN
        msg := 'one or two';
    ELSE
        msg := 'other value than one or two';
END CASE;

39.6.2.5. Searched CASE

CASE
    WHEN boolean-expression THEN
      statements
  [ WHEN boolean-expression THEN
      statements
    ... ]
  [ ELSE
      statements ]
END CASE;

The searched form of CASE provides conditional execution based on truth of Boolean expressions. Each WHEN clause's boolean-expression is evaluated in turn, until one is found that yields true. Then the corresponding statements are executed, and then control passes to the next statement after END CASE. (Subsequent WHEN expressions are not evaluated.) If no true result is found, the ELSE statements are executed; but if ELSE is not present, then a CASE_NOT_FOUND exception is raised.

Here is an example:

CASE
    WHEN x BETWEEN 0 AND 10 THEN
        msg := 'value is between zero and ten';
    WHEN x BETWEEN 11 AND 20 THEN
        msg := 'value is between eleven and twenty';
END CASE;

This form of CASE is entirely equivalent to IF-THEN-ELSIF, except for the rule that reaching an omitted ELSE clause results in an error rather than doing nothing.

39.6.3. Simple Loops

With the LOOP, EXIT, CONTINUE, WHILE, FOR, and FOREACH statements, you can arrange for your PL/pgSQL function to repeat a series of commands.

39.6.3.1. LOOP

[ <<label>> ]
LOOP
    statements
END LOOP [ label ];

LOOP defines an unconditional loop that is repeated indefinitely until terminated by an EXIT or RETURN statement. The optional label can be used by EXIT and CONTINUE statements within nested loops to specify which loop those statements refer to.

39.6.3.2. EXIT

EXIT [ label ] [ WHEN boolean-expression ];

If no label is given, the innermost loop is terminated and the statement following END LOOP is executed next. If label is given, it must be the label of the current or some outer level of nested loop or block. Then the named loop or block is terminated and control continues with the statement after the loop's/block's corresponding END.

If WHEN is specified, the loop exit occurs only if boolean-expression is true. Otherwise, control passes to the statement after EXIT.

EXIT can be used with all types of loops; it is not limited to use with unconditional loops.

When used with a BEGIN block, EXIT passes control to the next statement after the end of the block. Note that a label must be used for this purpose; an unlabelled EXIT is never considered to match a BEGIN block. (This is a change from pre-8.4 releases of PostgreSQL, which would allow an unlabelled EXIT to match a BEGIN block.)

Examples:

LOOP
    -- some computations
    IF count > 0 THEN
        EXIT;  -- exit loop
    END IF;
END LOOP;

LOOP
    -- some computations
    EXIT WHEN count > 0;  -- same result as previous example
END LOOP;

<<ablock>>
BEGIN
    -- some computations
    IF stocks > 100000 THEN
        EXIT ablock;  -- causes exit from the BEGIN block
    END IF;
    -- computations here will be skipped when stocks > 100000
END;

39.6.3.3. CONTINUE

CONTINUE [ label ] [ WHEN boolean-expression ];

If no label is given, the next iteration of the innermost loop is begun. That is, all statements remaining in the loop body are skipped, and control returns to the loop control expression (if any) to determine whether another loop iteration is needed. If label is present, it specifies the label of the loop whose execution will be continued.

If WHEN is specified, the next iteration of the loop is begun only if boolean-expression is true. Otherwise, control passes to the statement after CONTINUE.

CONTINUE can be used with all types of loops; it is not limited to use with unconditional loops.

Examples:

LOOP
    -- some computations
    EXIT WHEN count > 100;
    CONTINUE WHEN count < 50;
    -- some computations for count IN [50 .. 100]
END LOOP;

39.6.3.4. WHILE

[ <<label>> ]
WHILE boolean-expression LOOP
    statements
END LOOP [ label ];

The WHILE statement repeats a sequence of statements so long as the boolean-expression evaluates to true. The expression is checked just before each entry to the loop body.

For example:

WHILE amount_owed > 0 AND gift_certificate_balance > 0 LOOP
    -- some computations here
END LOOP;

WHILE NOT done LOOP
    -- some computations here
END LOOP;

39.6.3.5. FOR (Integer Variant)

[ <<label>> ]
FOR name IN [ REVERSE ] expression .. expression [ BY expression ] LOOP
    statements
END LOOP [ label ];

This form of FOR creates a loop that iterates over a range of integer values. The variable name is automatically defined as type integer and exists only inside the loop (any existing definition of the variable name is ignored within the loop). The two expressions giving the lower and upper bound of the range are evaluated once when entering the loop. If the BY clause isn't specified the iteration step is 1, otherwise it's the value specified in the BY clause, which again is evaluated once on loop entry. If REVERSE is specified then the step value is subtracted, rather than added, after each iteration.

Some examples of integer FOR loops:

FOR i IN 1..10 LOOP
    -- i will take on the values 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 within the loop
END LOOP;

FOR i IN REVERSE 10..1 LOOP
    -- i will take on the values 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1 within the loop
END LOOP;

FOR i IN REVERSE 10..1 BY 2 LOOP
    -- i will take on the values 10,8,6,4,2 within the loop
END LOOP;

If the lower bound is greater than the upper bound (or less than, in the REVERSE case), the loop body is not executed at all. No error is raised.

If a label is attached to the FOR loop then the integer loop variable can be referenced with a qualified name, using that label.

39.6.4. Looping Through Query Results

Using a different type of FOR loop, you can iterate through the results of a query and manipulate that data accordingly. The syntax is:

[ <<label>> ]
FOR target IN query LOOP
    statements
END LOOP [ label ];

The target is a record variable, row variable, or comma-separated list of scalar variables. The target is successively assigned each row resulting from the query and the loop body is executed for each row. Here is an example:

CREATE FUNCTION cs_refresh_mviews() RETURNS integer AS $$
DECLARE
    mviews RECORD;
BEGIN
    RAISE NOTICE 'Refreshing materialized views...';

    FOR mviews IN SELECT * FROM cs_materialized_views ORDER BY sort_key LOOP

        -- Now "mviews" has one record from cs_materialized_views

        RAISE NOTICE 'Refreshing materialized view %s ...', quote_ident(mviews.mv_name);
        EXECUTE 'TRUNCATE TABLE ' || quote_ident(mviews.mv_name);
        EXECUTE 'INSERT INTO '
                   || quote_ident(mviews.mv_name) || ' '
                   || mviews.mv_query;
    END LOOP;

    RAISE NOTICE 'Done refreshing materialized views.';
    RETURN 1;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

If the loop is terminated by an EXIT statement, the last assigned row value is still accessible after the loop.

The query used in this type of FOR statement can be any SQL command that returns rows to the caller: SELECT is the most common case, but you can also use INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE with a RETURNING clause. Some utility commands such as EXPLAIN will work too.

PL/pgSQL variables are substituted into the query text, and the query plan is cached for possible re-use, as discussed in detail in Section 39.10.1 and Section 39.10.2.

The FOR-IN-EXECUTE statement is another way to iterate over rows:

[ <<label>> ]
FOR target IN EXECUTE text_expression [ USING expression [, ... ] ] LOOP
    statements
END LOOP [ label ];

This is like the previous form, except that the source query is specified as a string expression, which is evaluated and replanned on each entry to the FOR loop. This allows the programmer to choose the speed of a preplanned query or the flexibility of a dynamic query, just as with a plain EXECUTE statement. As with EXECUTE, parameter values can be inserted into the dynamic command via USING.

Another way to specify the query whose results should be iterated through is to declare it as a cursor. This is described in Section 39.7.4.

39.6.5. Looping Through Arrays

The FOREACH loop is much like a FOR loop, but instead of iterating through the rows returned by a SQL query, it iterates through the elements of an array value. (In general, FOREACH is meant for looping through components of a composite-valued expression; variants for looping through composites besides arrays may be added in future.) The FOREACH statement to loop over an array is:

[ <<label>> ]
FOREACH target [ SLICE number ] IN ARRAY expression LOOP
    statements
END LOOP [ label ];

Without SLICE, or if SLICE 0 is specified, the loop iterates through individual elements of the array produced by evaluating the expression. The target variable is assigned each element value in sequence, and the loop body is executed for each element. Here is an example of looping through the elements of an integer array:

CREATE FUNCTION sum(int[]) RETURNS int8 AS $$
DECLARE
  s int8 := 0;
  x int;
BEGIN
  FOREACH x IN ARRAY $1
  LOOP
    s := s + x;
  END LOOP;
  RETURN s;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

The elements are visited in storage order, regardless of the number of array dimensions. Although the target is usually just a single variable, it can be a list of variables when looping through an array of composite values (records). In that case, for each array element, the variables are assigned from successive columns of the composite value.

With a positive SLICE value, FOREACH iterates through slices of the array rather than single elements. The SLICE value must be an integer constant not larger than the number of dimensions of the array. The target variable must be an array, and it receives successive slices of the array value, where each slice is of the number of dimensions specified by SLICE. Here is an example of iterating through one-dimensional slices:

CREATE FUNCTION scan_rows(int[]) RETURNS void AS $$
DECLARE
  x int[];
BEGIN
  FOREACH x SLICE 1 IN ARRAY $1
  LOOP
    RAISE NOTICE 'row = %', x;
  END LOOP;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

SELECT scan_rows(ARRAY[[1,2,3],[4,5,6],[7,8,9],[10,11,12]]);

NOTICE:  row = {1,2,3}
NOTICE:  row = {4,5,6}
NOTICE:  row = {7,8,9}
NOTICE:  row = {10,11,12}

39.6.6. Trapping Errors

By default, any error occurring in a PL/pgSQL function aborts execution of the function, and indeed of the surrounding transaction as well. You can trap errors and recover from them by using a BEGIN block with an EXCEPTION clause. The syntax is an extension of the normal syntax for a BEGIN block:

[ <<label>> ]
[ DECLARE
    declarations ]
BEGIN
    statements
EXCEPTION
    WHEN condition [ OR condition ... ] THEN
        handler_statements
    [ WHEN condition [ OR condition ... ] THEN
          handler_statements
      ... ]
END;

If no error occurs, this form of block simply executes all the statements, and then control passes to the next statement after END. But if an error occurs within the statements, further processing of the statements is abandoned, and control passes to the EXCEPTION list. The list is searched for the first condition matching the error that occurred. If a match is found, the corresponding handler_statements are executed, and then control passes to the next statement after END. If no match is found, the error propagates out as though the EXCEPTION clause were not there at all: the error can be caught by an enclosing block with EXCEPTION, or if there is none it aborts processing of the function.

The condition names can be any of those shown in Appendix A. A category name matches any error within its category. The special condition name OTHERS matches every error type except QUERY_CANCELED. (It is possible, but often unwise, to trap QUERY_CANCELED by name.) Condition names are not case-sensitive. Also, an error condition can be specified by SQLSTATE code; for example these are equivalent:

WHEN division_by_zero THEN ...
WHEN SQLSTATE '22012' THEN ...

If a new error occurs within the selected handler_statements, it cannot be caught by this EXCEPTION clause, but is propagated out. A surrounding EXCEPTION clause could catch it.

When an error is caught by an EXCEPTION clause, the local variables of the PL/pgSQL function remain as they were when the error occurred, but all changes to persistent database state within the block are rolled back. As an example, consider this fragment:

INSERT INTO mytab(firstname, lastname) VALUES('Tom', 'Jones');
BEGIN
    UPDATE mytab SET firstname = 'Joe' WHERE lastname = 'Jones';
    x := x + 1;
    y := x / 0;
EXCEPTION
    WHEN division_by_zero THEN
        RAISE NOTICE 'caught division_by_zero';
        RETURN x;
END;

When control reaches the assignment to y, it will fail with a division_by_zero error. This will be caught by the EXCEPTION clause. The value returned in the RETURN statement will be the incremented value of x, but the effects of the UPDATE command will have been rolled back. The INSERT command preceding the block is not rolled back, however, so the end result is that the database contains Tom Jones not Joe Jones.

Tip: A block containing an EXCEPTION clause is significantly more expensive to enter and exit than a block without one. Therefore, don't use EXCEPTION without need.

Within an exception handler, the SQLSTATE variable contains the error code that corresponds to the exception that was raised (refer to Table A-1 for a list of possible error codes). The SQLERRM variable contains the error message associated with the exception. These variables are undefined outside exception handlers.

Example 39-2. Exceptions with UPDATE/INSERT

This example uses exception handling to perform either UPDATE or INSERT, as appropriate:

CREATE TABLE db (a INT PRIMARY KEY, b TEXT);

CREATE FUNCTION merge_db(key INT, data TEXT) RETURNS VOID AS
$$
BEGIN
    LOOP
        -- first try to update the key
        UPDATE db SET b = data WHERE a = key;
        IF found THEN
            RETURN;
        END IF;
        -- not there, so try to insert the key
        -- if someone else inserts the same key concurrently,
        -- we could get a unique-key failure
        BEGIN
            INSERT INTO db(a,b) VALUES (key, data);
            RETURN;
        EXCEPTION WHEN unique_violation THEN
            -- Do nothing, and loop to try the UPDATE again.
        END;
    END LOOP;
END;
$$
LANGUAGE plpgsql;

SELECT merge_db(1, 'david');
SELECT merge_db(1, 'dennis');

This example assumes the unique_violation error is caused by the INSERT, and not by an INSERT trigger function on the table.

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Basic Statements | Up | Cursors


Cursors

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39.7. Cursors

Rather than executing a whole query at once, it is possible to set up a cursor that encapsulates the query, and then read the query result a few rows at a time. One reason for doing this is to avoid memory overrun when the result contains a large number of rows. (However, PL/pgSQL users do not normally need to worry about that, since FOR loops automatically use a cursor internally to avoid memory problems.) A more interesting usage is to return a reference to a cursor that a function has created, allowing the caller to read the rows. This provides an efficient way to return large row sets from functions.

39.7.1. Declaring Cursor Variables

All access to cursors in PL/pgSQL goes through cursor variables, which are always of the special data type refcursor. One way to create a cursor variable is just to declare it as a variable of type refcursor. Another way is to use the cursor declaration syntax, which in general is:

name [ [ NO ] SCROLL ] CURSOR [ ( arguments ) ] FOR query;

(FOR can be replaced by IS for Oracle compatibility.) If SCROLL is specified, the cursor will be capable of scrolling backward; if NO SCROLL is specified, backward fetches will be rejected; if neither specification appears, it is query-dependent whether backward fetches will be allowed. arguments, if specified, is a comma-separated list of pairs name datatype that define names to be replaced by parameter values in the given query. The actual values to substitute for these names will be specified later, when the cursor is opened.

Some examples:

DECLARE
    curs1 refcursor;
    curs2 CURSOR FOR SELECT * FROM tenk1;
    curs3 CURSOR (key integer) IS SELECT * FROM tenk1 WHERE unique1 = key;

All three of these variables have the data type refcursor, but the first can be used with any query, while the second has a fully specified query already bound to it, and the last has a parameterized query bound to it. (key will be replaced by an integer parameter value when the cursor is opened.) The variable curs1 is said to be unbound since it is not bound to any particular query.

39.7.2. Opening Cursors

Before a cursor can be used to retrieve rows, it must be opened. (This is the equivalent action to the SQL command DECLARE CURSOR.) PL/pgSQL has three forms of the OPEN statement, two of which use unbound cursor variables while the third uses a bound cursor variable.

Note: Bound cursor variables can also be used without explicitly opening the cursor, via the FOR statement described in Section 39.7.4.

39.7.2.1. OPEN FOR query

OPEN unbound_cursorvar [ [ NO ] SCROLL ] FOR query;

The cursor variable is opened and given the specified query to execute. The cursor cannot be open already, and it must have been declared as an unbound cursor variable (that is, as a simple refcursor variable). The query must be a SELECT, or something else that returns rows (such as EXPLAIN). The query is treated in the same way as other SQL commands in PL/pgSQL: PL/pgSQL variable names are substituted, and the query plan is cached for possible reuse. When a PL/pgSQL variable is substituted into the cursor query, the value that is substituted is the one it has at the time of the OPEN; subsequent changes to the variable will not affect the cursor's behavior. The SCROLL and NO SCROLL options have the same meanings as for a bound cursor.

An example:

OPEN curs1 FOR SELECT * FROM foo WHERE key = mykey;

39.7.2.2. OPEN FOR EXECUTE

OPEN unbound_cursorvar [ [ NO ] SCROLL ] FOR EXECUTE query_string
                                     [ USING expression [, ... ] ];

The cursor variable is opened and given the specified query to execute. The cursor cannot be open already, and it must have been declared as an unbound cursor variable (that is, as a simple refcursor variable). The query is specified as a string expression, in the same way as in the EXECUTE command. As usual, this gives flexibility so the query plan can vary from one run to the next (see Section 39.10.2), and it also means that variable substitution is not done on the command string. As with EXECUTE, parameter values can be inserted into the dynamic command via USING. The SCROLL and NO SCROLL options have the same meanings as for a bound cursor.

An example:

OPEN curs1 FOR EXECUTE 'SELECT * FROM ' || quote_ident(tabname)
                                        || ' WHERE col1 = $1' USING keyvalue;

In this example, the table name is inserted into the query textually, so use of quote_ident() is recommended to guard against SQL injection. The comparison value for col1 is inserted via a USING parameter, so it needs no quoting.

39.7.2.3. Opening a Bound Cursor

OPEN bound_cursorvar [ ( argument_values ) ];

This form of OPEN is used to open a cursor variable whose query was bound to it when it was declared. The cursor cannot be open already. A list of actual argument value expressions must appear if and only if the cursor was declared to take arguments. These values will be substituted in the query. The query plan for a bound cursor is always considered cacheable; there is no equivalent of EXECUTE in this case. Notice that SCROLL and NO SCROLL cannot be specified, as the cursor's scrolling behavior was already determined.

Note that because variable substitution is done on the bound cursor's query, there are two ways to pass values into the cursor: either with an explicit argument to OPEN, or implicitly by referencing a PL/pgSQL variable in the query. However, only variables declared before the bound cursor was declared will be substituted into it. In either case the value to be passed is determined at the time of the OPEN.

Examples:

OPEN curs2;
OPEN curs3(42);

39.7.3. Using Cursors

Once a cursor has been opened, it can be manipulated with the statements described here.

These manipulations need not occur in the same function that opened the cursor to begin with. You can return a refcursor value out of a function and let the caller operate on the cursor. (Internally, a refcursor value is simply the string name of a so-called portal containing the active query for the cursor. This name can be passed around, assigned to other refcursor variables, and so on, without disturbing the portal.)

All portals are implicitly closed at transaction end. Therefore a refcursor value is usable to reference an open cursor only until the end of the transaction.

39.7.3.1. FETCH

FETCH [ direction { FROM | IN } ] cursor INTO target;

FETCH retrieves the next row from the cursor into a target, which might be a row variable, a record variable, or a comma-separated list of simple variables, just like SELECT INTO. If there is no next row, the target is set to NULL(s). As with SELECT INTO, the special variable FOUND can be checked to see whether a row was obtained or not.

The direction clause can be any of the variants allowed in the SQL FETCH command except the ones that can fetch more than one row; namely, it can be NEXT, PRIOR, FIRST, LAST, ABSOLUTE count, RELATIVE count, FORWARD, or BACKWARD. Omitting direction is the same as specifying NEXT. direction values that require moving backward are likely to fail unless the cursor was declared or opened with the SCROLL option.

cursor must be the name of a refcursor variable that references an open cursor portal.

Examples:

FETCH curs1 INTO rowvar;
FETCH curs2 INTO foo, bar, baz;
FETCH LAST FROM curs3 INTO x, y;
FETCH RELATIVE -2 FROM curs4 INTO x;

39.7.3.2. MOVE

MOVE [ direction { FROM | IN } ] cursor;

MOVE repositions a cursor without retrieving any data. MOVE works exactly like the FETCH command, except it only repositions the cursor and does not return the row moved to. As with SELECT INTO, the special variable FOUND can be checked to see whether there was a next row to move to.

The direction clause can be any of the variants allowed in the SQL FETCH command, namely NEXT, PRIOR, FIRST, LAST, ABSOLUTE count, RELATIVE count, ALL, FORWARD [ count | ALL ], or BACKWARD [ count | ALL ]. Omitting direction is the same as specifying NEXT. direction values that require moving backward are likely to fail unless the cursor was declared or opened with the SCROLL option.

Examples:

MOVE curs1;
MOVE LAST FROM curs3;
MOVE RELATIVE -2 FROM curs4;
MOVE FORWARD 2 FROM curs4;

39.7.3.3. UPDATE/DELETE WHERE CURRENT OF

UPDATE table SET ... WHERE CURRENT OF cursor;
DELETE FROM table WHERE CURRENT OF cursor;

When a cursor is positioned on a table row, that row can be updated or deleted using the cursor to identify the row. There are restrictions on what the cursor's query can be (in particular, no grouping) and it's best to use FOR UPDATE in the cursor. For more information see the DECLARE reference page.

An example:

UPDATE foo SET dataval = myval WHERE CURRENT OF curs1;

39.7.3.4. CLOSE

CLOSE cursor;

CLOSE closes the portal underlying an open cursor. This can be used to release resources earlier than end of transaction, or to free up the cursor variable to be opened again.

An example:

CLOSE curs1;

39.7.3.5. Returning Cursors

PL/pgSQL functions can return cursors to the caller. This is useful to return multiple rows or columns, especially with very large result sets. To do this, the function opens the cursor and returns the cursor name to the caller (or simply opens the cursor using a portal name specified by or otherwise known to the caller). The caller can then fetch rows from the cursor. The cursor can be closed by the caller, or it will be closed automatically when the transaction closes.

The portal name used for a cursor can be specified by the programmer or automatically generated. To specify a portal name, simply assign a string to the refcursor variable before opening it. The string value of the refcursor variable will be used by OPEN as the name of the underlying portal. However, if the refcursor variable is null, OPEN automatically generates a name that does not conflict with any existing portal, and assigns it to the refcursor variable.

Note: A bound cursor variable is initialized to the string value representing its name, so that the portal name is the same as the cursor variable name, unless the programmer overrides it by assignment before opening the cursor. But an unbound cursor variable defaults to the null value initially, so it will receive an automatically-generated unique name, unless overridden.

The following example shows one way a cursor name can be supplied by the caller:

CREATE TABLE test (col text);
INSERT INTO test VALUES ('123');

CREATE FUNCTION reffunc(refcursor) RETURNS refcursor AS '
BEGIN
    OPEN $1 FOR SELECT col FROM test;
    RETURN $1;
END;
' LANGUAGE plpgsql;

BEGIN;
SELECT reffunc('funccursor');
FETCH ALL IN funccursor;
COMMIT;

The following example uses automatic cursor name generation:

CREATE FUNCTION reffunc2() RETURNS refcursor AS '
DECLARE
    ref refcursor;
BEGIN
    OPEN ref FOR SELECT col FROM test;
    RETURN ref;
END;
' LANGUAGE plpgsql;

-- need to be in a transaction to use cursors.
BEGIN;
SELECT reffunc2();

      reffunc2
--------------------
 <unnamed cursor 1>
(1 row)

FETCH ALL IN "<unnamed cursor 1>";
COMMIT;

The following example shows one way to return multiple cursors from a single function:

CREATE FUNCTION myfunc(refcursor, refcursor) RETURNS SETOF refcursor AS $$
BEGIN
    OPEN $1 FOR SELECT * FROM table_1;
    RETURN NEXT $1;
    OPEN $2 FOR SELECT * FROM table_2;
    RETURN NEXT $2;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

-- need to be in a transaction to use cursors.
BEGIN;

SELECT * FROM myfunc('a', 'b');

FETCH ALL FROM a;
FETCH ALL FROM b;
COMMIT;

39.7.4. Looping Through a Cursor's Result

There is a variant of the FOR statement that allows iterating through the rows returned by a cursor. The syntax is:

[ <<label>> ]
FOR recordvar IN bound_cursorvar [ ( argument_values ) ] LOOP
    statements
END LOOP [ label ];

The cursor variable must have been bound to some query when it was declared, and it cannot be open already. The FOR statement automatically opens the cursor, and it closes the cursor again when the loop exits. A list of actual argument value expressions must appear if and only if the cursor was declared to take arguments. These values will be substituted in the query, in just the same way as during an OPEN. The variable recordvar is automatically defined as type record and exists only inside the loop (any existing definition of the variable name is ignored within the loop). Each row returned by the cursor is successively assigned to this record variable and the loop body is executed.

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Control Structures | Up | Errors and Messages


Errors and Messages

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39.8. Errors and Messages

Use the RAISE statement to report messages and raise errors.

RAISE [ level ] 'format' [, expression [, ... ]] [ USING option = expression [, ... ] ];
RAISE [ level ] condition_name [ USING option = expression [, ... ] ];
RAISE [ level ] SQLSTATE 'sqlstate' [ USING option = expression [, ... ] ];
RAISE [ level ] USING option = expression [, ... ];
RAISE ;

The level option specifies the error severity. Allowed levels are DEBUG, LOG, INFO, NOTICE, WARNING, and EXCEPTION, with EXCEPTION being the default. EXCEPTION raises an error (which normally aborts the current transaction); the other levels only generate messages of different priority levels. Whether messages of a particular priority are reported to the client, written to the server log, or both is controlled by the log_min_messages and client_min_messages configuration variables. See Chapter 18 for more information.

After level if any, you can write a format (which must be a simple string literal, not an expression). The format string specifies the error message text to be reported. The format string can be followed by optional argument expressions to be inserted into the message. Inside the format string, % is replaced by the string representation of the next optional argument's value. Write %% to emit a literal %.

In this example, the value of v_job_id will replace the % in the string:

RAISE NOTICE 'Calling cs_create_job(%)', v_job_id;

You can attach additional information to the error report by writing USING followed by option = expression items. The allowed option keywords are MESSAGE, DETAIL, HINT, and ERRCODE, while each expression can be any string-valued expression. MESSAGE sets the error message text (this option can't be used in the form of RAISE that includes a format string before USING). DETAIL supplies an error detail message, while HINT supplies a hint message. ERRCODE specifies the error code (SQLSTATE) to report, either by condition name as shown in Appendix A, or directly as a five-character SQLSTATE code.

This example will abort the transaction with the given error message and hint:

RAISE EXCEPTION 'Nonexistent ID --> %', user_id
      USING HINT = 'Please check your user ID';

These two examples show equivalent ways of setting the SQLSTATE:

RAISE 'Duplicate user ID: %', user_id USING ERRCODE = 'unique_violation';
RAISE 'Duplicate user ID: %', user_id USING ERRCODE = '23505';

There is a second RAISE syntax in which the main argument is the condition name or SQLSTATE to be reported, for example:

RAISE division_by_zero;
RAISE SQLSTATE '22012';

In this syntax, USING can be used to supply a custom error message, detail, or hint. Another way to do the earlier example is

RAISE unique_violation USING MESSAGE = 'Duplicate user ID: ' || user_id;

Still another variant is to write RAISE USING or RAISE level USING and put everything else into the USING list.

The last variant of RAISE has no parameters at all. This form can only be used inside a BEGIN block's EXCEPTION clause; it causes the error currently being handled to be re-thrown.

Note: Before PostgreSQL 9.1, RAISE without parameters was interpreted as re-throwing the error from the block containing the active exception handler. Thus an EXCEPTION clause nested within that handler could not catch it, even if the RAISE was within the nested EXCEPTION clause's block. This was deemed surprising as well as being incompatible with Oracle's PL/SQL.

If no condition name nor SQLSTATE is specified in a RAISE EXCEPTION command, the default is to use RAISE_EXCEPTION (P0001). If no message text is specified, the default is to use the condition name or SQLSTATE as message text.

Note: When specifying an error code by SQLSTATE code, you are not limited to the predefined error codes, but can select any error code consisting of five digits and/or upper-case ASCII letters, other than 00000. It is recommended that you avoid throwing error codes that end in three zeroes, because these are category codes and can only be trapped by trapping the whole category.

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Cursors | Up | Trigger Procedures


Trigger Procedures

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39.9. Trigger Procedures

PL/pgSQL can be used to define trigger procedures. A trigger procedure is created with the CREATE FUNCTION command, declaring it as a function with no arguments and a return type of trigger. Note that the function must be declared with no arguments even if it expects to receive arguments specified in CREATE TRIGGER — trigger arguments are passed via TG_ARGV, as described below.

When a PL/pgSQL function is called as a trigger, several special variables are created automatically in the top-level block. They are:

NEW

Data type RECORD; variable holding the new database row for INSERT/UPDATE operations in row-level triggers. This variable is NULL in statement-level triggers and for DELETE operations.

OLD

Data type RECORD; variable holding the old database row for UPDATE/DELETE operations in row-level triggers. This variable is NULL in statement-level triggers and for INSERT operations.

TG_NAME

Data type name; variable that contains the name of the trigger actually fired.

TG_WHEN

Data type text; a string of BEFORE, AFTER, or INSTEAD OF, depending on the trigger's definition.

TG_LEVEL

Data type text; a string of either ROW or STATEMENT depending on the trigger's definition.

TG_OP

Data type text; a string of INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, or TRUNCATE telling for which operation the trigger was fired.

TG_RELID

Data type oid; the object ID of the table that caused the trigger invocation.

TG_RELNAME

Data type name; the name of the table that caused the trigger invocation. This is now deprecated, and could disappear in a future release. Use TG_TABLE_NAME instead.

TG_TABLE_NAME

Data type name; the name of the table that caused the trigger invocation.

TG_TABLE_SCHEMA

Data type name; the name of the schema of the table that caused the trigger invocation.

TG_NARGS

Data type integer; the number of arguments given to the trigger procedure in the CREATE TRIGGER statement.

TG_ARGV[]

Data type array of text; the arguments from the CREATE TRIGGER statement. The index counts from 0. Invalid indexes (less than 0 or greater than or equal to tg_nargs) result in a null value.

A trigger function must return either NULL or a record/row value having exactly the structure of the table the trigger was fired for.

Row-level triggers fired BEFORE can return null to signal the trigger manager to skip the rest of the operation for this row (i.e., subsequent triggers are not fired, and the INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE does not occur for this row). If a nonnull value is returned then the operation proceeds with that row value. Returning a row value different from the original value of NEW alters the row that will be inserted or updated. Thus, if the trigger function wants the triggering action to succeed normally without altering the row value, NEW (or a value equal thereto) has to be returned. To alter the row to be stored, it is possible to replace single values directly in NEW and return the modified NEW, or to build a complete new record/row to return. In the case of a before-trigger on DELETE, the returned value has no direct effect, but it has to be nonnull to allow the trigger action to proceed. Note that NEW is null in DELETE triggers, so returning that is usually not sensible. The usual idiom in DELETE triggers is to return OLD.

INSTEAD OF triggers (which are always row-level triggers, and may only be used on views) can return null to signal that they did not perform any updates, and that the rest of the operation for this row should be skipped (i.e., subsequent triggers are not fired, and the row is not counted in the rows-affected status for the surrounding INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE). Otherwise a nonnull value should be returned, to signal that the trigger performed the requested operation. For INSERT and UPDATE operations, the return value should be NEW, which the trigger function may modify to support INSERT RETURNING and UPDATE RETURNING (this will also affect the row value passed to any subsequent triggers). For DELETE operations, the return value should be OLD.

The return value of a row-level trigger fired AFTER or a statement-level trigger fired BEFORE or AFTER is always ignored; it might as well be null. However, any of these types of triggers might still abort the entire operation by raising an error.

Example 39-3 shows an example of a trigger procedure in PL/pgSQL.

Example 39-3. A PL/pgSQL Trigger Procedure

This example trigger ensures that any time a row is inserted or updated in the table, the current user name and time are stamped into the row. And it checks that an employee's name is given and that the salary is a positive value.

CREATE TABLE emp (
    empname text,
    salary integer,
    last_date timestamp,
    last_user text
);

CREATE FUNCTION emp_stamp() RETURNS trigger AS $emp_stamp$
    BEGIN
        -- Check that empname and salary are given
        IF NEW.empname IS NULL THEN
            RAISE EXCEPTION 'empname cannot be null';
        END IF;
        IF NEW.salary IS NULL THEN
            RAISE EXCEPTION '% cannot have null salary', NEW.empname;
        END IF;

        -- Who works for us when she must pay for it?
        IF NEW.salary < 0 THEN
            RAISE EXCEPTION '% cannot have a negative salary', NEW.empname;
        END IF;

        -- Remember who changed the payroll when
        NEW.last_date := current_timestamp;
        NEW.last_user := current_user;
        RETURN NEW;
    END;
$emp_stamp$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

CREATE TRIGGER emp_stamp BEFORE INSERT OR UPDATE ON emp
    FOR EACH ROW EXECUTE PROCEDURE emp_stamp();

Another way to log changes to a table involves creating a new table that holds a row for each insert, update, or delete that occurs. This approach can be thought of as auditing changes to a table. Example 39-4 shows an example of an audit trigger procedure in PL/pgSQL.

Example 39-4. A PL/pgSQL Trigger Procedure For Auditing

This example trigger ensures that any insert, update or delete of a row in the emp table is recorded (i.e., audited) in the emp_audit table. The current time and user name are stamped into the row, together with the type of operation performed on it.

CREATE TABLE emp (
    empname           text NOT NULL,
    salary            integer
);

CREATE TABLE emp_audit(
    operation         char(1)   NOT NULL,
    stamp             timestamp NOT NULL,
    userid            text      NOT NULL,
    empname           text      NOT NULL,
    salary integer
);

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION process_emp_audit() RETURNS TRIGGER AS $emp_audit$
    BEGIN
        --
        -- Create a row in emp_audit to reflect the operation performed on emp,
        -- make use of the special variable TG_OP to work out the operation.
        --
        IF (TG_OP = 'DELETE') THEN
            INSERT INTO emp_audit SELECT 'D', now(), user, OLD.*;
            RETURN OLD;
        ELSIF (TG_OP = 'UPDATE') THEN
            INSERT INTO emp_audit SELECT 'U', now(), user, NEW.*;
            RETURN NEW;
        ELSIF (TG_OP = 'INSERT') THEN
            INSERT INTO emp_audit SELECT 'I', now(), user, NEW.*;
            RETURN NEW;
        END IF;
        RETURN NULL; -- result is ignored since this is an AFTER trigger
    END;
$emp_audit$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

CREATE TRIGGER emp_audit
AFTER INSERT OR UPDATE OR DELETE ON emp
    FOR EACH ROW EXECUTE PROCEDURE process_emp_audit();

A variation of the previous example uses a view joining the main table to the audit table, to show when each entry was last modified. This approach still records the full audit trail of changes to the table, but also presents a simplified view of the audit trail, showing just the last modified timestamp derived from the audit trail for each entry. Example 39-5 shows an example of an audit trigger on a view in PL/pgSQL.

Example 39-5. A PL/pgSQL View Trigger Procedure For Auditing

This example uses a trigger on the view to make it updatable, and ensure that any insert, update or delete of a row in the view is recorded (i.e., audited) in the emp_audit table. The current time and user name are recorded, together with the type of operation performed, and the view displays the last modified time of each row.

CREATE TABLE emp (
    empname           text PRIMARY KEY,
    salary            integer
);

CREATE TABLE emp_audit(
    operation         char(1)   NOT NULL,
    userid            text      NOT NULL,
    empname           text      NOT NULL,
    salary            integer,
    stamp             timestamp NOT NULL
);

CREATE VIEW emp_view AS
    SELECT e.empname,
           e.salary,
           max(ea.stamp) AS last_updated
      FROM emp e
      LEFT JOIN emp_audit ea ON ea.empname = e.empname
     GROUP BY 1, 2;

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION update_emp_view() RETURNS TRIGGER AS $$
    BEGIN
        --
        -- Perform the required operation on emp, and create a row in emp_audit
        -- to reflect the change made to emp.
        --
        IF (TG_OP = 'DELETE') THEN
            DELETE FROM emp WHERE empname = OLD.empname;
            IF NOT FOUND THEN RETURN NULL; END IF;

            OLD.last_updated = now();
            INSERT INTO emp_audit VALUES('D', user, OLD.*);
            RETURN OLD;
        ELSIF (TG_OP = 'UPDATE') THEN
            UPDATE emp SET salary = NEW.salary WHERE empname = OLD.empname;
            IF NOT FOUND THEN RETURN NULL; END IF;

            NEW.last_updated = now();
            INSERT INTO emp_audit VALUES('U', user, NEW.*);
            RETURN NEW;
        ELSIF (TG_OP = 'INSERT') THEN
            INSERT INTO emp VALUES(NEW.empname, NEW.salary);

            NEW.last_updated = now();
            INSERT INTO emp_audit VALUES('I', user, NEW.*);
            RETURN NEW;
        END IF;
    END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

CREATE TRIGGER emp_audit
INSTEAD OF INSERT OR UPDATE OR DELETE ON emp_view
    FOR EACH ROW EXECUTE PROCEDURE update_emp_view();

One use of triggers is to maintain a summary table of another table. The resulting summary can be used in place of the original table for certain queries — often with vastly reduced run times. This technique is commonly used in Data Warehousing, where the tables of measured or observed data (called fact tables) might be extremely large. Example 39-6 shows an example of a trigger procedure in PL/pgSQL that maintains a summary table for a fact table in a data warehouse.

Example 39-6. A PL/pgSQL Trigger Procedure For Maintaining A Summary Table

The schema detailed here is partly based on the Grocery Store example from The Data Warehouse Toolkit by Ralph Kimball.

--
-- Main tables - time dimension and sales fact.
--
CREATE TABLE time_dimension (
    time_key                    integer NOT NULL,
    day_of_week                 integer NOT NULL,
    day_of_month                integer NOT NULL,
    month                       integer NOT NULL,
    quarter                     integer NOT NULL,
    year                        integer NOT NULL
);
CREATE UNIQUE INDEX time_dimension_key ON time_dimension(time_key);

CREATE TABLE sales_fact (
    time_key                    integer NOT NULL,
    product_key                 integer NOT NULL,
    store_key                   integer NOT NULL,
    amount_sold                 numeric(12,2) NOT NULL,
    units_sold                  integer NOT NULL,
    amount_cost                 numeric(12,2) NOT NULL
);
CREATE INDEX sales_fact_time ON sales_fact(time_key);

--
-- Summary table - sales by time.
--
CREATE TABLE sales_summary_bytime (
    time_key                    integer NOT NULL,
    amount_sold                 numeric(15,2) NOT NULL,
    units_sold                  numeric(12) NOT NULL,
    amount_cost                 numeric(15,2) NOT NULL
);
CREATE UNIQUE INDEX sales_summary_bytime_key ON sales_summary_bytime(time_key);

--
-- Function and trigger to amend summarized column(s) on UPDATE, INSERT, DELETE.
--
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION maint_sales_summary_bytime() RETURNS TRIGGER
AS $maint_sales_summary_bytime$
    DECLARE
        delta_time_key          integer;
        delta_amount_sold       numeric(15,2);
        delta_units_sold        numeric(12);
        delta_amount_cost       numeric(15,2);
    BEGIN

        -- Work out the increment/decrement amount(s).
        IF (TG_OP = 'DELETE') THEN

            delta_time_key = OLD.time_key;
            delta_amount_sold = -1 * OLD.amount_sold;
            delta_units_sold = -1 * OLD.units_sold;
            delta_amount_cost = -1 * OLD.amount_cost;

        ELSIF (TG_OP = 'UPDATE') THEN

            -- forbid updates that change the time_key -
            -- (probably not too onerous, as DELETE + INSERT is how most
            -- changes will be made).
            IF ( OLD.time_key != NEW.time_key) THEN
                RAISE EXCEPTION 'Update of time_key : % -> % not allowed',
                                                      OLD.time_key, NEW.time_key;
            END IF;

            delta_time_key = OLD.time_key;
            delta_amount_sold = NEW.amount_sold - OLD.amount_sold;
            delta_units_sold = NEW.units_sold - OLD.units_sold;
            delta_amount_cost = NEW.amount_cost - OLD.amount_cost;

        ELSIF (TG_OP = 'INSERT') THEN

            delta_time_key = NEW.time_key;
            delta_amount_sold = NEW.amount_sold;
            delta_units_sold = NEW.units_sold;
            delta_amount_cost = NEW.amount_cost;

        END IF;

        -- Insert or update the summary row with the new values.
        <<insert_update>>
        LOOP
            UPDATE sales_summary_bytime
                SET amount_sold = amount_sold + delta_amount_sold,
                    units_sold = units_sold + delta_units_sold,
                    amount_cost = amount_cost + delta_amount_cost
                WHERE time_key = delta_time_key;

            EXIT insert_update WHEN found;

            BEGIN
                INSERT INTO sales_summary_bytime (
                            time_key,
                            amount_sold,
                            units_sold,
                            amount_cost)
                    VALUES (
                            delta_time_key,
                            delta_amount_sold,
                            delta_units_sold,
                            delta_amount_cost
                           );

                EXIT insert_update;

            EXCEPTION
                WHEN UNIQUE_VIOLATION THEN
                    -- do nothing
            END;
        END LOOP insert_update;

        RETURN NULL;

    END;
$maint_sales_summary_bytime$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

CREATE TRIGGER maint_sales_summary_bytime
AFTER INSERT OR UPDATE OR DELETE ON sales_fact
    FOR EACH ROW EXECUTE PROCEDURE maint_sales_summary_bytime();

INSERT INTO sales_fact VALUES(1,1,1,10,3,15);
INSERT INTO sales_fact VALUES(1,2,1,20,5,35);
INSERT INTO sales_fact VALUES(2,2,1,40,15,135);
INSERT INTO sales_fact VALUES(2,3,1,10,1,13);
SELECT * FROM sales_summary_bytime;
DELETE FROM sales_fact WHERE product_key = 1;
SELECT * FROM sales_summary_bytime;
UPDATE sales_fact SET units_sold = units_sold * 2;
SELECT * FROM sales_summary_bytime;
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PL/pgSQL Under the Hood

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39.10. PL/pgSQL Under the Hood

This section discusses some implementation details that are frequently important for PL/pgSQL users to know.

39.10.1. Variable Substitution

SQL statements and expressions within a PL/pgSQL function can refer to variables and parameters of the function. Behind the scenes, PL/pgSQL substitutes query parameters for such references. Parameters will only be substituted in places where a parameter or column reference is syntactically allowed. As an extreme case, consider this example of poor programming style:

INSERT INTO foo (foo) VALUES (foo);

The first occurrence of foo must syntactically be a table name, so it will not be substituted, even if the function has a variable named foo. The second occurrence must be the name of a column of the table, so it will not be substituted either. Only the third occurrence is a candidate to be a reference to the function's variable.

Note: PostgreSQL versions before 9.0 would try to substitute the variable in all three cases, leading to syntax errors.

Since the names of variables are syntactically no different from the names of table columns, there can be ambiguity in statements that also refer to tables: is a given name meant to refer to a table column, or a variable? Let's change the previous example to

INSERT INTO dest (col) SELECT foo + bar FROM src;

Here, dest and src must be table names, and col must be a column of dest, but foo and bar might reasonably be either variables of the function or columns of src.

By default, PL/pgSQL will report an error if a name in a SQL statement could refer to either a variable or a table column. You can fix such a problem by renaming the variable or column, or by qualifying the ambiguous reference, or by telling PL/pgSQL which interpretation to prefer.

The simplest solution is to rename the variable or column. A common coding rule is to use a different naming convention for PL/pgSQL variables than you use for column names. For example, if you consistently name function variables v_something while none of your column names start with v_, no conflicts will occur.

Alternatively you can qualify ambiguous references to make them clear. In the above example, src.foo would be an unambiguous reference to the table column. To create an unambiguous reference to a variable, declare it in a labeled block and use the block's label (see Section 39.2). For example,

<<block>>
DECLARE
    foo int;
BEGIN
    foo := ...;
    INSERT INTO dest (col) SELECT block.foo + bar FROM src;

Here block.foo means the variable even if there is a column foo in src. Function parameters, as well as special variables such as FOUND, can be qualified by the function's name, because they are implicitly declared in an outer block labeled with the function's name.

Sometimes it is impractical to fix all the ambiguous references in a large body of PL/pgSQL code. In such cases you can specify that PL/pgSQL should resolve ambiguous references as the variable (which is compatible with PL/pgSQL's behavior before PostgreSQL 9.0), or as the table column (which is compatible with some other systems such as Oracle).

To change this behavior on a system-wide basis, set the configuration parameter plpgsql.variable_conflict to one of error, use_variable, or use_column (where error is the factory default). This parameter affects subsequent compilations of statements in PL/pgSQL functions, but not statements already compiled in the current session. To set the parameter before PL/pgSQL has been loaded, it is necessary to have added "plpgsql" to the custom_variable_classes list in postgresql.conf. Because changing this setting can cause unexpected changes in the behavior of PL/pgSQL functions, it can only be changed by a superuser.

You can also set the behavior on a function-by-function basis, by inserting one of these special commands at the start of the function text:

#variable_conflict error
#variable_conflict use_variable
#variable_conflict use_column

These commands affect only the function they are written in, and override the setting of plpgsql.variable_conflict. An example is

CREATE FUNCTION stamp_user(id int, comment text) RETURNS void AS $$
    #variable_conflict use_variable
    DECLARE
        curtime timestamp := now();
    BEGIN
        UPDATE users SET last_modified = curtime, comment = comment
          WHERE users.id = id;
    END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

In the UPDATE command, curtime, comment, and id will refer to the function's variable and parameters whether or not users has columns of those names. Notice that we had to qualify the reference to users.id in the WHERE clause to make it refer to the table column. But we did not have to qualify the reference to comment as a target in the UPDATE list, because syntactically that must be a column of users. We could write the same function without depending on the variable_conflict setting in this way:

CREATE FUNCTION stamp_user(id int, comment text) RETURNS void AS $$
    <<fn>>
    DECLARE
        curtime timestamp := now();
    BEGIN
        UPDATE users SET last_modified = fn.curtime, comment = stamp_user.comment
          WHERE users.id = stamp_user.id;
    END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

Variable substitution does not happen in the command string given to EXECUTE or one of its variants. If you need to insert a varying value into such a command, do so as part of constructing the string value, or use USING, as illustrated in Section 39.5.4.

Variable substitution currently works only in SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE commands, because the main SQL engine allows query parameters only in these commands. To use a non-constant name or value in other statement types (generically called utility statements), you must construct the utility statement as a string and EXECUTE it.

39.10.2. Plan Caching

The PL/pgSQL interpreter parses the function's source text and produces an internal binary instruction tree the first time the function is called (within each session). The instruction tree fully translates the PL/pgSQL statement structure, but individual SQL expressions and SQL commands used in the function are not translated immediately.

As each expression and SQL command is first executed in the function, the PL/pgSQL interpreter creates a prepared execution plan (using the SPI manager's SPI_prepare and SPI_saveplan functions). Subsequent visits to that expression or command reuse the prepared plan. Thus, a function with conditional code that contains many statements for which execution plans might be required will only prepare and save those plans that are really used during the lifetime of the database connection. This can substantially reduce the total amount of time required to parse and generate execution plans for the statements in a PL/pgSQL function. A disadvantage is that errors in a specific expression or command cannot be detected until that part of the function is reached in execution. (Trivial syntax errors will be detected during the initial parsing pass, but anything deeper will not be detected until execution.)

A saved plan will be re-planned automatically if there is any schema change to any table used in the query, or if any user-defined function used in the query is redefined. This makes the re-use of prepared plans transparent in most cases, but there are corner cases where a stale plan might be re-used. An example is that dropping and re-creating a user-defined operator won't affect already-cached plans; they'll continue to call the original operator's underlying function, if that has not been changed. When necessary, the cache can be flushed by starting a fresh database session.

Because PL/pgSQL saves execution plans in this way, SQL commands that appear directly in a PL/pgSQL function must refer to the same tables and columns on every execution; that is, you cannot use a parameter as the name of a table or column in an SQL command. To get around this restriction, you can construct dynamic commands using the PL/pgSQL EXECUTE statement — at the price of constructing a new execution plan on every execution.

Another important point is that the prepared plans are parameterized to allow the values of PL/pgSQL variables to change from one use to the next, as discussed in detail above. Sometimes this means that a plan is less efficient than it would be if generated for a specific variable value. As an example, consider

SELECT * INTO myrec FROM dictionary WHERE word LIKE search_term;

where search_term is a PL/pgSQL variable. The cached plan for this query will never use an index on word, since the planner cannot assume that the LIKE pattern will be left-anchored at run time. To use an index the query must be planned with a specific constant LIKE pattern provided. This is another situation where EXECUTE can be used to force a new plan to be generated for each execution.

The mutable nature of record variables presents another problem in this connection. When fields of a record variable are used in expressions or statements, the data types of the fields must not change from one call of the function to the next, since each expression will be planned using the data type that is present when the expression is first reached. EXECUTE can be used to get around this problem when necessary.

If the same function is used as a trigger for more than one table, PL/pgSQL prepares and caches plans independently for each such table — that is, there is a cache for each trigger function and table combination, not just for each function. This alleviates some of the problems with varying data types; for instance, a trigger function will be able to work successfully with a column named key even if it happens to have different types in different tables.

Likewise, functions having polymorphic argument types have a separate plan cache for each combination of actual argument types they have been invoked for, so that data type differences do not cause unexpected failures.

Plan caching can sometimes have surprising effects on the interpretation of time-sensitive values. For example there is a difference between what these two functions do:

CREATE FUNCTION logfunc1(logtxt text) RETURNS void AS $$
    BEGIN
        INSERT INTO logtable VALUES (logtxt, 'now');
    END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

and:

CREATE FUNCTION logfunc2(logtxt text) RETURNS void AS $$
    DECLARE
        curtime timestamp;
    BEGIN
        curtime := 'now';
        INSERT INTO logtable VALUES (logtxt, curtime);
    END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

In the case of logfunc1, the PostgreSQL main parser knows when preparing the plan for the INSERT that the string 'now' should be interpreted as timestamp, because the target column of logtable is of that type. Thus, 'now' will be converted to a constant when the INSERT is planned, and then used in all invocations of logfunc1 during the lifetime of the session. Needless to say, this isn't what the programmer wanted.

In the case of logfunc2, the PostgreSQL main parser does not know what type 'now' should become and therefore it returns a data value of type text containing the string now. During the ensuing assignment to the local variable curtime, the PL/pgSQL interpreter casts this string to the timestamp type by calling the text_out and timestamp_in functions for the conversion. So, the computed time stamp is updated on each execution as the programmer expects.

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Tips for Developing in PL/pgSQL

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39.11. Tips for Developing in PL/pgSQL

One good way to develop in PL/pgSQL is to use the text editor of your choice to create your functions, and in another window, use psql to load and test those functions. If you are doing it this way, it is a good idea to write the function using CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION. That way you can just reload the file to update the function definition. For example:

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION testfunc(integer) RETURNS integer AS $$
          ....
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

While running psql, you can load or reload such a function definition file with:

\i filename.sql

and then immediately issue SQL commands to test the function.

Another good way to develop in PL/pgSQL is with a GUI database access tool that facilitates development in a procedural language. One example of such a tool is pgAdmin, although others exist. These tools often provide convenient features such as escaping single quotes and making it easier to recreate and debug functions.

39.11.1. Handling of Quotation Marks

The code of a PL/pgSQL function is specified in CREATE FUNCTION as a string literal. If you write the string literal in the ordinary way with surrounding single quotes, then any single quotes inside the function body must be doubled; likewise any backslashes must be doubled (assuming escape string syntax is used). Doubling quotes is at best tedious, and in more complicated cases the code can become downright incomprehensible, because you can easily find yourself needing half a dozen or more adjacent quote marks. It's recommended that you instead write the function body as a "dollar-quoted" string literal (see Section 4.1.2.4). In the dollar-quoting approach, you never double any quote marks, but instead take care to choose a different dollar-quoting delimiter for each level of nesting you need. For example, you might write the CREATE FUNCTION command as:

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION testfunc(integer) RETURNS integer AS $PROC$
          ....
$PROC$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

Within this, you might use quote marks for simple literal strings in SQL commands and $$ to delimit fragments of SQL commands that you are assembling as strings. If you need to quote text that includes $$, you could use $Q$, and so on.

The following chart shows what you have to do when writing quote marks without dollar quoting. It might be useful when translating pre-dollar quoting code into something more comprehensible.

1 quotation mark

To begin and end the function body, for example:

CREATE FUNCTION foo() RETURNS integer AS '
          ....
' LANGUAGE plpgsql;

Anywhere within a single-quoted function body, quote marks must appear in pairs.

2 quotation marks

For string literals inside the function body, for example:

a_output := ''Blah'';
SELECT * FROM users WHERE f_name=''foobar'';

In the dollar-quoting approach, you'd just write:

a_output := 'Blah';
SELECT * FROM users WHERE f_name='foobar';

which is exactly what the PL/pgSQL parser would see in either case.

4 quotation marks

When you need a single quotation mark in a string constant inside the function body, for example:

a_output := a_output || '' AND name LIKE ''''foobar'''' AND xyz''

The value actually appended to a_output would be: AND name LIKE 'foobar' AND xyz.

In the dollar-quoting approach, you'd write:

a_output := a_output || $$ AND name LIKE 'foobar' AND xyz$$

being careful that any dollar-quote delimiters around this are not just $$.

6 quotation marks

When a single quotation mark in a string inside the function body is adjacent to the end of that string constant, for example:

a_output := a_output || '' AND name LIKE ''''foobar''''''

The value appended to a_output would then be: AND name LIKE 'foobar'.

In the dollar-quoting approach, this becomes:

a_output := a_output || $$ AND name LIKE 'foobar'$$

10 quotation marks

When you want two single quotation marks in a string constant (which accounts for 8 quotation marks) and this is adjacent to the end of that string constant (2 more). You will probably only need that if you are writing a function that generates other functions, as in Example 39-8. For example:

a_output := a_output || '' if v_'' ||
    referrer_keys.kind || '' like ''''''''''
    || referrer_keys.key_string || ''''''''''
    then return ''''''  || referrer_keys.referrer_type
    || ''''''; end if;'';

The value of a_output would then be:

if v_... like ''...'' then return ''...''; end if;

In the dollar-quoting approach, this becomes:

a_output := a_output || $$ if v_$$ || referrer_keys.kind || $$ like '$$
    || referrer_keys.key_string || $$'
    then return '$$  || referrer_keys.referrer_type
    || $$'; end if;$$;

where we assume we only need to put single quote marks into a_output, because it will be re-quoted before use.

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Porting from Oracle PL/SQL

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39.12. Porting from Oracle PL/SQL

This section explains differences between PostgreSQL's PL/pgSQL language and Oracle's PL/SQL language, to help developers who port applications from Oracle® to PostgreSQL.

PL/pgSQL is similar to PL/SQL in many aspects. It is a block-structured, imperative language, and all variables have to be declared. Assignments, loops, conditionals are similar. The main differences you should keep in mind when porting from PL/SQL to PL/pgSQL are:

  • If a name used in a SQL command could be either a column name of a table or a reference to a variable of the function, PL/SQL treats it as a column name. This corresponds to PL/pgSQL's plpgsql.variable_conflict = use_column behavior, which is not the default, as explained in Section 39.10.1. It's often best to avoid such ambiguities in the first place, but if you have to port a large amount of code that depends on this behavior, setting variable_conflict may be the best solution.

  • In PostgreSQL the function body must be written as a string literal. Therefore you need to use dollar quoting or escape single quotes in the function body. (See Section 39.11.1.)

  • Instead of packages, use schemas to organize your functions into groups.

  • Since there are no packages, there are no package-level variables either. This is somewhat annoying. You can keep per-session state in temporary tables instead.

  • Integer FOR loops with REVERSE work differently: PL/SQL counts down from the second number to the first, while PL/pgSQL counts down from the first number to the second, requiring the loop bounds to be swapped when porting. This incompatibility is unfortunate but is unlikely to be changed. (See Section 39.6.3.5.)

  • FOR loops over queries (other than cursors) also work differently: the target variable(s) must have been declared, whereas PL/SQL always declares them implicitly. An advantage of this is that the variable values are still accessible after the loop exits.

  • There are various notational differences for the use of cursor variables.

39.12.1. Porting Examples

Example 39-7 shows how to port a simple function from PL/SQL to PL/pgSQL.

Example 39-7. Porting a Simple Function from PL/SQL to PL/pgSQL

Here is an Oracle PL/SQL function:

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION cs_fmt_browser_version(v_name varchar,
                                                  v_version varchar)
RETURN varchar IS
BEGIN
    IF v_version IS NULL THEN
        RETURN v_name;
    END IF;
    RETURN v_name || '/' || v_version;
END;
/
show errors;

Let's go through this function and see the differences compared to PL/pgSQL:

  • The RETURN key word in the function prototype (not the function body) becomes RETURNS in PostgreSQL. Also, IS becomes AS, and you need to add a LANGUAGE clause because PL/pgSQL is not the only possible function language.

  • In PostgreSQL, the function body is considered to be a string literal, so you need to use quote marks or dollar quotes around it. This substitutes for the terminating / in the Oracle approach.

  • The show errors command does not exist in PostgreSQL, and is not needed since errors are reported automatically.

This is how this function would look when ported to PostgreSQL:

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION cs_fmt_browser_version(v_name varchar,
                                                  v_version varchar)
RETURNS varchar AS $$
BEGIN
    IF v_version IS NULL THEN
        RETURN v_name;
    END IF;
    RETURN v_name || '/' || v_version;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

Example 39-8 shows how to port a function that creates another function and how to handle the ensuing quoting problems.

Example 39-8. Porting a Function that Creates Another Function from PL/SQL to PL/pgSQL

The following procedure grabs rows from a SELECT statement and builds a large function with the results in IF statements, for the sake of efficiency.

This is the Oracle version:

CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE cs_update_referrer_type_proc IS
    CURSOR referrer_keys IS
        SELECT * FROM cs_referrer_keys
        ORDER BY try_order;
    func_cmd VARCHAR(4000);
BEGIN
    func_cmd := 'CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION cs_find_referrer_type(v_host IN VARCHAR,
                 v_domain IN VARCHAR, v_url IN VARCHAR) RETURN VARCHAR IS BEGIN';

    FOR referrer_key IN referrer_keys LOOP
        func_cmd := func_cmd ||
          ' IF v_' || referrer_key.kind
          || ' LIKE ''' || referrer_key.key_string
          || ''' THEN RETURN ''' || referrer_key.referrer_type
          || '''; END IF;';
    END LOOP;

    func_cmd := func_cmd || ' RETURN NULL; END;';

    EXECUTE IMMEDIATE func_cmd;
END;
/
show errors;

Here is how this function would end up in PostgreSQL:

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION cs_update_referrer_type_proc() RETURNS void AS $func$
DECLARE
    referrer_keys CURSOR IS
        SELECT * FROM cs_referrer_keys
        ORDER BY try_order;
    func_body text;
    func_cmd text;
BEGIN
    func_body := 'BEGIN';

    FOR referrer_key IN referrer_keys LOOP
        func_body := func_body ||
          ' IF v_' || referrer_key.kind
          || ' LIKE ' || quote_literal(referrer_key.key_string)
          || ' THEN RETURN ' || quote_literal(referrer_key.referrer_type)
          || '; END IF;' ;
    END LOOP;

    func_body := func_body || ' RETURN NULL; END;';

    func_cmd :=
      'CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION cs_find_referrer_type(v_host varchar,
                                                        v_domain varchar,
                                                        v_url varchar)
        RETURNS varchar AS '
      || quote_literal(func_body)
      || ' LANGUAGE plpgsql;' ;

    EXECUTE func_cmd;
END;
$func$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

Notice how the body of the function is built separately and passed through quote_literal to double any quote marks in it. This technique is needed because we cannot safely use dollar quoting for defining the new function: we do not know for sure what strings will be interpolated from the referrer_key.key_string field. (We are assuming here that referrer_key.kind can be trusted to always be host, domain, or url, but referrer_key.key_string might be anything, in particular it might contain dollar signs.) This function is actually an improvement on the Oracle original, because it will not generate broken code when referrer_key.key_string or referrer_key.referrer_type contain quote marks.

Example 39-9 shows how to port a function with OUT parameters and string manipulation. PostgreSQL does not have a built-in instr function, but you can create one using a combination of other functions. In Section 39.12.3 there is a PL/pgSQL implementation of instr that you can use to make your porting easier.

Example 39-9. Porting a Procedure With String Manipulation and OUT Parameters from PL/SQL to PL/pgSQL

The following Oracle PL/SQL procedure is used to parse a URL and return several elements (host, path, and query).

This is the Oracle version:

CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE cs_parse_url(
    v_url IN VARCHAR,
    v_host OUT VARCHAR,  -- This will be passed back
    v_path OUT VARCHAR,  -- This one too
    v_query OUT VARCHAR) -- And this one
IS
    a_pos1 INTEGER;
    a_pos2 INTEGER;
BEGIN
    v_host := NULL;
    v_path := NULL;
    v_query := NULL;
    a_pos1 := instr(v_url, '//');

    IF a_pos1 = 0 THEN
        RETURN;
    END IF;
    a_pos2 := instr(v_url, '/', a_pos1 + 2);
    IF a_pos2 = 0 THEN
        v_host := substr(v_url, a_pos1 + 2);
        v_path := '/';
        RETURN;
    END IF;

    v_host := substr(v_url, a_pos1 + 2, a_pos2 - a_pos1 - 2);
    a_pos1 := instr(v_url, '?', a_pos2 + 1);

    IF a_pos1 = 0 THEN
        v_path := substr(v_url, a_pos2);
        RETURN;
    END IF;

    v_path := substr(v_url, a_pos2, a_pos1 - a_pos2);
    v_query := substr(v_url, a_pos1 + 1);
END;
/
show errors;

Here is a possible translation into PL/pgSQL:

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION cs_parse_url(
    v_url IN VARCHAR,
    v_host OUT VARCHAR,  -- This will be passed back
    v_path OUT VARCHAR,  -- This one too
    v_query OUT VARCHAR) -- And this one
AS $$
DECLARE
    a_pos1 INTEGER;
    a_pos2 INTEGER;
BEGIN
    v_host := NULL;
    v_path := NULL;
    v_query := NULL;
    a_pos1 := instr(v_url, '//');

    IF a_pos1 = 0 THEN
        RETURN;
    END IF;
    a_pos2 := instr(v_url, '/', a_pos1 + 2);
    IF a_pos2 = 0 THEN
        v_host := substr(v_url, a_pos1 + 2);
        v_path := '/';
        RETURN;
    END IF;

    v_host := substr(v_url, a_pos1 + 2, a_pos2 - a_pos1 - 2);
    a_pos1 := instr(v_url, '?', a_pos2 + 1);

    IF a_pos1 = 0 THEN
        v_path := substr(v_url, a_pos2);
        RETURN;
    END IF;

    v_path := substr(v_url, a_pos2, a_pos1 - a_pos2);
    v_query := substr(v_url, a_pos1 + 1);
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

This function could be used like this:

SELECT * FROM cs_parse_url('http://foobar.com/query.cgi?baz');

Example 39-10 shows how to port a procedure that uses numerous features that are specific to Oracle.

Example 39-10. Porting a Procedure from PL/SQL to PL/pgSQL

The Oracle version:

CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE cs_create_job(v_job_id IN INTEGER) IS
    a_running_job_count INTEGER;
    PRAGMA AUTONOMOUS_TRANSACTION;(1)
BEGIN
    LOCK TABLE cs_jobs IN EXCLUSIVE MODE;(2)

    SELECT count(*) INTO a_running_job_count FROM cs_jobs WHERE end_stamp IS NULL;

    IF a_running_job_count > 0 THEN
        COMMIT; -- free lock(3)
        raise_application_error(-20000,
                 'Unable to create a new job: a job is currently running.');
    END IF;

    DELETE FROM cs_active_job;
    INSERT INTO cs_active_job(job_id) VALUES (v_job_id);

    BEGIN
        INSERT INTO cs_jobs (job_id, start_stamp) VALUES (v_job_id, sysdate);
    EXCEPTION
        WHEN dup_val_on_index THEN NULL; -- don't worry if it already exists
    END;
    COMMIT;
END;
/
show errors

Procedures like this can easily be converted into PostgreSQL functions returning void. This procedure in particular is interesting because it can teach us some things:

(1)
There is no PRAGMA statement in PostgreSQL.
(2)
If you do a LOCK TABLE in PL/pgSQL, the lock will not be released until the calling transaction is finished.
(3)
You cannot issue COMMIT in a PL/pgSQL function. The function is running within some outer transaction and so COMMIT would imply terminating the function's execution. However, in this particular case it is not necessary anyway, because the lock obtained by the LOCK TABLE will be released when we raise an error.

This is how we could port this procedure to PL/pgSQL:

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION cs_create_job(v_job_id integer) RETURNS void AS $$
DECLARE
    a_running_job_count integer;
BEGIN
    LOCK TABLE cs_jobs IN EXCLUSIVE MODE;

    SELECT count(*) INTO a_running_job_count FROM cs_jobs WHERE end_stamp IS NULL;

    IF a_running_job_count > 0 THEN
        RAISE EXCEPTION 'Unable to create a new job: a job is currently running';(1)
    END IF;

    DELETE FROM cs_active_job;
    INSERT INTO cs_active_job(job_id) VALUES (v_job_id);

    BEGIN
        INSERT INTO cs_jobs (job_id, start_stamp) VALUES (v_job_id, now());
    EXCEPTION
        WHEN unique_violation THEN (2)
            -- don't worry if it already exists
    END;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

(1)
The syntax of RAISE is considerably different from Oracle's statement, although the basic case RAISE exception_name works similarly.
(2)
The exception names supported by PL/pgSQL are different from Oracle's. The set of built-in exception names is much larger (see Appendix A). There is not currently a way to declare user-defined exception names, although you can throw user-chosen SQLSTATE values instead.
The main functional difference between this procedure and the Oracle equivalent is that the exclusive lock on the cs_jobs table will be held until the calling transaction completes. Also, if the caller later aborts (for example due to an error), the effects of this procedure will be rolled back.

39.12.2. Other Things to Watch For

This section explains a few other things to watch for when porting Oracle PL/SQL functions to PostgreSQL.

39.12.2.1. Implicit Rollback after Exceptions

In PL/pgSQL, when an exception is caught by an EXCEPTION clause, all database changes since the block's BEGIN are automatically rolled back. That is, the behavior is equivalent to what you'd get in Oracle with:

BEGIN
    SAVEPOINT s1;
    ... code here ...
EXCEPTION
    WHEN ... THEN
        ROLLBACK TO s1;
        ... code here ...
    WHEN ... THEN
        ROLLBACK TO s1;
        ... code here ...
END;

If you are translating an Oracle procedure that uses SAVEPOINT and ROLLBACK TO in this style, your task is easy: just omit the SAVEPOINT and ROLLBACK TO. If you have a procedure that uses SAVEPOINT and ROLLBACK TO in a different way then some actual thought will be required.

39.12.2.2. EXECUTE

The PL/pgSQL version of EXECUTE works similarly to the PL/SQL version, but you have to remember to use quote_literal and quote_ident as described in Section 39.5.4. Constructs of the type EXECUTE 'SELECT * FROM $1'; will not work reliably unless you use these functions.

39.12.2.3. Optimizing PL/pgSQL Functions

PostgreSQL gives you two function creation modifiers to optimize execution: "volatility" (whether the function always returns the same result when given the same arguments) and "strictness" (whether the function returns null if any argument is null). Consult the CREATE FUNCTION reference page for details.

When making use of these optimization attributes, your CREATE FUNCTION statement might look something like this:

CREATE FUNCTION foo(...) RETURNS integer AS $$
...
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql STRICT IMMUTABLE;

39.12.3. Appendix

This section contains the code for a set of Oracle-compatible instr functions that you can use to simplify your porting efforts.

--
-- instr functions that mimic Oracle's counterpart
-- Syntax: instr(string1, string2, [n], [m]) where [] denotes optional parameters.
--
-- Searches string1 beginning at the nth character for the mth occurrence
-- of string2.  If n is negative, search backwards.  If m is not passed,
-- assume 1 (search starts at first character).
--

CREATE FUNCTION instr(varchar, varchar) RETURNS integer AS $$
DECLARE
    pos integer;
BEGIN
    pos:= instr($1, $2, 1);
    RETURN pos;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql STRICT IMMUTABLE;

CREATE FUNCTION instr(string varchar, string_to_search varchar, beg_index integer)
RETURNS integer AS $$
DECLARE
    pos integer NOT NULL DEFAULT 0;
    temp_str varchar;
    beg integer;
    length integer;
    ss_length integer;
BEGIN
    IF beg_index > 0 THEN
        temp_str := substring(string FROM beg_index);
        pos := position(string_to_search IN temp_str);

        IF pos = 0 THEN
            RETURN 0;
        ELSE
            RETURN pos + beg_index - 1;
        END IF;
    ELSE
        ss_length := char_length(string_to_search);
        length := char_length(string);
        beg := length + beg_index - ss_length + 2;

        WHILE beg > 0 LOOP
            temp_str := substring(string FROM beg FOR ss_length);
            pos := position(string_to_search IN temp_str);

            IF pos > 0 THEN
                RETURN beg;
            END IF;

            beg := beg - 1;
        END LOOP;

        RETURN 0;
    END IF;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql STRICT IMMUTABLE;

CREATE FUNCTION instr(string varchar, string_to_search varchar,
                      beg_index integer, occur_index integer)
RETURNS integer AS $$
DECLARE
    pos integer NOT NULL DEFAULT 0;
    occur_number integer NOT NULL DEFAULT 0;
    temp_str varchar;
    beg integer;
    i integer;
    length integer;
    ss_length integer;
BEGIN
    IF beg_index > 0 THEN
        beg := beg_index;
        temp_str := substring(string FROM beg_index);

        FOR i IN 1..occur_index LOOP
            pos := position(string_to_search IN temp_str);

            IF i = 1 THEN
                beg := beg + pos - 1;
            ELSE
                beg := beg + pos;
            END IF;

            temp_str := substring(string FROM beg + 1);
        END LOOP;

        IF pos = 0 THEN
            RETURN 0;
        ELSE
            RETURN beg;
        END IF;
    ELSE
        ss_length := char_length(string_to_search);
        length := char_length(string);
        beg := length + beg_index - ss_length + 2;

        WHILE beg > 0 LOOP
            temp_str := substring(string FROM beg FOR ss_length);
            pos := position(string_to_search IN temp_str);

            IF pos > 0 THEN
                occur_number := occur_number + 1;

                IF occur_number = occur_index THEN
                    RETURN beg;
                END IF;
            END IF;

            beg := beg - 1;
        END LOOP;

        RETURN 0;
    END IF;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql STRICT IMMUTABLE;
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PL/Tcl - Tcl Procedural Language

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Chapter 40. PL/Tcl - Tcl Procedural Language

Table of Contents
40.1. Overview
40.2. PL/Tcl Functions and Arguments
40.3. Data Values in PL/Tcl
40.4. Global Data in PL/Tcl
40.5. Database Access from PL/Tcl
40.6. Trigger Procedures in PL/Tcl
40.7. Modules and the unknown Command
40.8. Tcl Procedure Names

PL/Tcl is a loadable procedural language for the PostgreSQL database system that enables the Tcl language to be used to write functions and trigger procedures.

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Overview

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40.1. Overview

PL/Tcl offers most of the capabilities a function writer has in the C language, with a few restrictions, and with the addition of the powerful string processing libraries that are available for Tcl.

One compelling good restriction is that everything is executed from within the safety of the context of a Tcl interpreter. In addition to the limited command set of safe Tcl, only a few commands are available to access the database via SPI and to raise messages via elog(). PL/Tcl provides no way to access internals of the database server or to gain OS-level access under the permissions of the PostgreSQL server process, as a C function can do. Thus, unprivileged database users can be trusted to use this language; it does not give them unlimited authority.

The other notable implementation restriction is that Tcl functions cannot be used to create input/output functions for new data types.

Sometimes it is desirable to write Tcl functions that are not restricted to safe Tcl. For example, one might want a Tcl function that sends email. To handle these cases, there is a variant of PL/Tcl called PL/TclU (for untrusted Tcl). This is exactly the same language except that a full Tcl interpreter is used. If PL/TclU is used, it must be installed as an untrusted procedural language so that only database superusers can create functions in it. The writer of a PL/TclU function must take care that the function cannot be used to do anything unwanted, since it will be able to do anything that could be done by a user logged in as the database administrator.

The shared object code for the PL/Tcl and PL/TclU call handlers is automatically built and installed in the PostgreSQL library directory if Tcl support is specified in the configuration step of the installation procedure. To install PL/Tcl and/or PL/TclU in a particular database, use the CREATE EXTENSION command or the createlang program, for example createlang pltcl dbname or createlang pltclu dbname.

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PL/Tcl Functions and Arguments

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40.2. PL/Tcl Functions and Arguments

To create a function in the PL/Tcl language, use the standard CREATE FUNCTION syntax:

CREATE FUNCTION funcname (argument-types) RETURNS return-type AS $$
    # PL/Tcl function body
$$ LANGUAGE pltcl;

PL/TclU is the same, except that the language has to be specified as pltclu.

The body of the function is simply a piece of Tcl script. When the function is called, the argument values are passed as variables $1 ... $n to the Tcl script. The result is returned from the Tcl code in the usual way, with a return statement.

For example, a function returning the greater of two integer values could be defined as:

CREATE FUNCTION tcl_max(integer, integer) RETURNS integer AS $$
    if {$1 > $2} {return $1}
    return $2
$$ LANGUAGE pltcl STRICT;

Note the clause STRICT, which saves us from having to think about null input values: if a null value is passed, the function will not be called at all, but will just return a null result automatically.

In a nonstrict function, if the actual value of an argument is null, the corresponding $n variable will be set to an empty string. To detect whether a particular argument is null, use the function argisnull. For example, suppose that we wanted tcl_max with one null and one nonnull argument to return the nonnull argument, rather than null:

CREATE FUNCTION tcl_max(integer, integer) RETURNS integer AS $$
    if {[argisnull 1]} {
        if {[argisnull 2]} { return_null }
        return $2
    }
    if {[argisnull 2]} { return $1 }
    if {$1 > $2} {return $1}
    return $2
$$ LANGUAGE pltcl;

As shown above, to return a null value from a PL/Tcl function, execute return_null. This can be done whether the function is strict or not.

Composite-type arguments are passed to the function as Tcl arrays. The element names of the array are the attribute names of the composite type. If an attribute in the passed row has the null value, it will not appear in the array. Here is an example:

CREATE TABLE employee (
    name text,
    salary integer,
    age integer
);

CREATE FUNCTION overpaid(employee) RETURNS boolean AS $$
    if {200000.0 < $1(salary)} {
        return "t"
    }
    if {$1(age) < 30 && 100000.0 < $1(salary)} {
        return "t"
    }
    return "f"
$$ LANGUAGE pltcl;

There is currently no support for returning a composite-type result value, nor for returning sets.

PL/Tcl does not currently have full support for domain types: it treats a domain the same as the underlying scalar type. This means that constraints associated with the domain will not be enforced. This is not an issue for function arguments, but it is a hazard if you declare a PL/Tcl function as returning a domain type.

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Data Values in PL/Tcl

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40.3. Data Values in PL/Tcl

The argument values supplied to a PL/Tcl function's code are simply the input arguments converted to text form (just as if they had been displayed by a SELECT statement). Conversely, the return command will accept any string that is acceptable input format for the function's declared return type. So, within the PL/Tcl function, all values are just text strings.

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Global Data in PL/Tcl

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40.4. Global Data in PL/Tcl

Sometimes it is useful to have some global data that is held between two calls to a function or is shared between different functions. This is easily done in PL/Tcl, but there are some restrictions that must be understood.

For security reasons, PL/Tcl executes functions called by any one SQL role in a separate Tcl interpreter for that role. This prevents accidental or malicious interference by one user with the behavior of another user's PL/Tcl functions. Each such interpreter will have its own values for any "global" Tcl variables. Thus, two PL/Tcl functions will share the same global variables if and only if they are executed by the same SQL role. In an application wherein a single session executes code under multiple SQL roles (via SECURITY DEFINER functions, use of SET ROLE, etc) you may need to take explicit steps to ensure that PL/Tcl functions can share data. To do that, make sure that functions that should communicate are owned by the same user, and mark them SECURITY DEFINER. You must of course take care that such functions can't be used to do anything unintended.

All PL/TclU functions used in a session execute in the same Tcl interpreter, which of course is distinct from the interpreter(s) used for PL/Tcl functions. So global data is automatically shared between PL/TclU functions. This is not considered a security risk because all PL/TclU functions execute at the same trust level, namely that of a database superuser.

To help protect PL/Tcl functions from unintentionally interfering with each other, a global array is made available to each function via the upvar command. The global name of this variable is the function's internal name, and the local name is GD. It is recommended that GD be used for persistent private data of a function. Use regular Tcl global variables only for values that you specifically intend to be shared among multiple functions. (Note that the GD arrays are only global within a particular interpreter, so they do not bypass the security restrictions mentioned above.)

An example of using GD appears in the spi_execp example below.

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Database Access from PL/Tcl

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40.5. Database Access from PL/Tcl

The following commands are available to access the database from the body of a PL/Tcl function:

spi_exec ?-count n? ?-array name? command ?loop-body?

Executes an SQL command given as a string. An error in the command causes an error to be raised. Otherwise, the return value of spi_exec is the number of rows processed (selected, inserted, updated, or deleted) by the command, or zero if the command is a utility statement. In addition, if the command is a SELECT statement, the values of the selected columns are placed in Tcl variables as described below.

The optional -count value tells spi_exec the maximum number of rows to process in the command. The effect of this is comparable to setting up a query as a cursor and then saying FETCH n.

If the command is a SELECT statement, the values of the result columns are placed into Tcl variables named after the columns. If the -array option is given, the column values are instead stored into the named associative array, with the column names used as array indexes.

If the command is a SELECT statement and no loop-body script is given, then only the first row of results are stored into Tcl variables; remaining rows, if any, are ignored. No storing occurs if the query returns no rows. (This case can be detected by checking the result of spi_exec.) For example:

spi_exec "SELECT count(*) AS cnt FROM pg_proc"

will set the Tcl variable $cnt to the number of rows in the pg_proc system catalog.

If the optional loop-body argument is given, it is a piece of Tcl script that is executed once for each row in the query result. (loop-body is ignored if the given command is not a SELECT.) The values of the current row's columns are stored into Tcl variables before each iteration. For example:

spi_exec -array C "SELECT * FROM pg_class" {
    elog DEBUG "have table $C(relname)"
}

will print a log message for every row of pg_class. This feature works similarly to other Tcl looping constructs; in particular continue and break work in the usual way inside the loop body.

If a column of a query result is null, the target variable for it is "unset" rather than being set.

spi_prepare query typelist

Prepares and saves a query plan for later execution. The saved plan will be retained for the life of the current session.

The query can use parameters, that is, placeholders for values to be supplied whenever the plan is actually executed. In the query string, refer to parameters by the symbols $1 ... $n. If the query uses parameters, the names of the parameter types must be given as a Tcl list. (Write an empty list for typelist if no parameters are used.)

The return value from spi_prepare is a query ID to be used in subsequent calls to spi_execp. See spi_execp for an example.

spi_execp ?-count n? ?-array name? ?-nulls string? queryid ?value-list? ?loop-body?

Executes a query previously prepared with spi_prepare. queryid is the ID returned by spi_prepare. If the query references parameters, a value-list must be supplied. This is a Tcl list of actual values for the parameters. The list must be the same length as the parameter type list previously given to spi_prepare. Omit value-list if the query has no parameters.

The optional value for -nulls is a string of spaces and 'n' characters telling spi_execp which of the parameters are null values. If given, it must have exactly the same length as the value-list. If it is not given, all the parameter values are nonnull.

Except for the way in which the query and its parameters are specified, spi_execp works just like spi_exec. The -count, -array, and loop-body options are the same, and so is the result value.

Here's an example of a PL/Tcl function using a prepared plan:

CREATE FUNCTION t1_count(integer, integer) RETURNS integer AS $$
    if {![ info exists GD(plan) ]} {
        # prepare the saved plan on the first call
        set GD(plan) [ spi_prepare \
                "SELECT count(*) AS cnt FROM t1 WHERE num >= \$1 AND num <= \$2" \
                [ list int4 int4 ] ]
    }
    spi_execp -count 1 $GD(plan) [ list $1 $2 ]
    return $cnt
$$ LANGUAGE pltcl;

We need backslashes inside the query string given to spi_prepare to ensure that the $n markers will be passed through to spi_prepare as-is, and not replaced by Tcl variable substitution.

spi_lastoid

Returns the OID of the row inserted by the last spi_exec or spi_execp, if the command was a single-row INSERT and the modified table contained OIDs. (If not, you get zero.)

quote string

Doubles all occurrences of single quote and backslash characters in the given string. This can be used to safely quote strings that are to be inserted into SQL commands given to spi_exec or spi_prepare. For example, think about an SQL command string like:

"SELECT '$val' AS ret"

where the Tcl variable val actually contains doesn't. This would result in the final command string:

SELECT 'doesn't' AS ret

which would cause a parse error during spi_exec or spi_prepare. To work properly, the submitted command should contain:

SELECT 'doesn''t' AS ret

which can be formed in PL/Tcl using:

"SELECT '[ quote $val ]' AS ret"

One advantage of spi_execp is that you don't have to quote parameter values like this, since the parameters are never parsed as part of an SQL command string.

elog level msg

Emits a log or error message. Possible levels are DEBUG, LOG, INFO, NOTICE, WARNING, ERROR, and FATAL. ERROR raises an error condition; if this is not trapped by the surrounding Tcl code, the error propagates out to the calling query, causing the current transaction or subtransaction to be aborted. This is effectively the same as the Tcl error command. FATAL aborts the transaction and causes the current session to shut down. (There is probably no good reason to use this error level in PL/Tcl functions, but it's provided for completeness.) The other levels only generate messages of different priority levels. Whether messages of a particular priority are reported to the client, written to the server log, or both is controlled by the log_min_messages and client_min_messages configuration variables. See Chapter 18 for more information.

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Trigger Procedures in PL/Tcl

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40.6. Trigger Procedures in PL/Tcl

Trigger procedures can be written in PL/Tcl. PostgreSQL requires that a procedure that is to be called as a trigger must be declared as a function with no arguments and a return type of trigger.

The information from the trigger manager is passed to the procedure body in the following variables:

$TG_name

The name of the trigger from the CREATE TRIGGER statement.

$TG_relid

The object ID of the table that caused the trigger procedure to be invoked.

$TG_table_name

The name of the table that caused the trigger procedure to be invoked.

$TG_table_schema

The schema of the table that caused the trigger procedure to be invoked.

$TG_relatts

A Tcl list of the table column names, prefixed with an empty list element. So looking up a column name in the list with Tcl's lsearch command returns the element's number starting with 1 for the first column, the same way the columns are customarily numbered in PostgreSQL. (Empty list elements also appear in the positions of columns that have been dropped, so that the attribute numbering is correct for columns to their right.)

$TG_when

The string BEFORE, AFTER, or INSTEAD OF, depending on the type of trigger event.

$TG_level

The string ROW or STATEMENT depending on the type of trigger event.

$TG_op

The string INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, or TRUNCATE depending on the type of trigger event.

$NEW

An associative array containing the values of the new table row for INSERT or UPDATE actions, or empty for DELETE. The array is indexed by column name. Columns that are null will not appear in the array. This is not set for statement-level triggers.

$OLD

An associative array containing the values of the old table row for UPDATE or DELETE actions, or empty for INSERT. The array is indexed by column name. Columns that are null will not appear in the array. This is not set for statement-level triggers.

$args

A Tcl list of the arguments to the procedure as given in the CREATE TRIGGER statement. These arguments are also accessible as $1 ... $n in the procedure body.

The return value from a trigger procedure can be one of the strings OK or SKIP, or a list as returned by the array get Tcl command. If the return value is OK, the operation (INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE) that fired the trigger will proceed normally. SKIP tells the trigger manager to silently suppress the operation for this row. If a list is returned, it tells PL/Tcl to return a modified row to the trigger manager. This is only meaningful for row-level BEFORE INSERT or UPDATE triggers for which the modified row will be inserted instead of the one given in $NEW; or for row-level INSTEAD OF INSERT or UPDATE triggers where the returned row is used to support INSERT RETURNING and UPDATE RETURNING commands. The return value is ignored for other types of triggers.

Here's a little example trigger procedure that forces an integer value in a table to keep track of the number of updates that are performed on the row. For new rows inserted, the value is initialized to 0 and then incremented on every update operation.

CREATE FUNCTION trigfunc_modcount() RETURNS trigger AS $$
    switch $TG_op {
        INSERT {
            set NEW($1) 0
        }
        UPDATE {
            set NEW($1) $OLD($1)
            incr NEW($1)
        }
        default {
            return OK
        }
    }
    return [array get NEW]
$$ LANGUAGE pltcl;

CREATE TABLE mytab (num integer, description text, modcnt integer);

CREATE TRIGGER trig_mytab_modcount BEFORE INSERT OR UPDATE ON mytab
    FOR EACH ROW EXECUTE PROCEDURE trigfunc_modcount('modcnt');

Notice that the trigger procedure itself does not know the column name; that's supplied from the trigger arguments. This lets the trigger procedure be reused with different tables.

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Modules and the unknown Command

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40.7. Modules and the unknown Command

PL/Tcl has support for autoloading Tcl code when used. It recognizes a special table, pltcl_modules, which is presumed to contain modules of Tcl code. If this table exists, the module unknown is fetched from the table and loaded into the Tcl interpreter immediately before the first execution of a PL/Tcl function in a database session. (This happens separately for each Tcl interpreter, if more than one is used in a session; see Section 40.4.)

While the unknown module could actually contain any initialization script you need, it normally defines a Tcl unknown procedure that is invoked whenever Tcl does not recognize an invoked procedure name. PL/Tcl's standard version of this procedure tries to find a module in pltcl_modules that will define the required procedure. If one is found, it is loaded into the interpreter, and then execution is allowed to proceed with the originally attempted procedure call. A secondary table pltcl_modfuncs provides an index of which functions are defined by which modules, so that the lookup is reasonably quick.

The PostgreSQL distribution includes support scripts to maintain these tables: pltcl_loadmod, pltcl_listmod, pltcl_delmod, as well as source for the standard unknown module in share/unknown.pltcl. This module must be loaded into each database initially to support the autoloading mechanism.

The tables pltcl_modules and pltcl_modfuncs must be readable by all, but it is wise to make them owned and writable only by the database administrator. As a security precaution, PL/Tcl will ignore pltcl_modules (and thus, not attempt to load the unknown module) unless it is owned by a superuser. But update privileges on this table can be granted to other users, if you trust them sufficiently.

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Tcl Procedure Names

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40.8. Tcl Procedure Names

In PostgreSQL, the same function name can be used for different function definitions as long as the number of arguments or their types differ. Tcl, however, requires all procedure names to be distinct. PL/Tcl deals with this by making the internal Tcl procedure names contain the object ID of the function from the system table pg_proc as part of their name. Thus, PostgreSQL functions with the same name and different argument types will be different Tcl procedures, too. This is not normally a concern for a PL/Tcl programmer, but it might be visible when debugging.

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PL/Perl - Perl Procedural Language

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Chapter 41. PL/Perl - Perl Procedural Language

Table of Contents
41.1. PL/Perl Functions and Arguments
41.2. Data Values in PL/Perl
41.3. Built-in Functions
41.3.1. Database Access from PL/Perl
41.3.2. Utility Functions in PL/Perl
41.4. Global Values in PL/Perl
41.5. Trusted and Untrusted PL/Perl
41.6. PL/Perl Triggers
41.7. PL/Perl Under the Hood
41.7.1. Configuration
41.7.2. Limitations and Missing Features

PL/Perl is a loadable procedural language that enables you to write PostgreSQL functions in the Perl programming language.

The main advantage to using PL/Perl is that this allows use, within stored functions, of the manyfold "string munging" operators and functions available for Perl. Parsing complex strings might be easier using Perl than it is with the string functions and control structures provided in PL/pgSQL.

To install PL/Perl in a particular database, use CREATE EXTENSION plperl, or from the shell command line use createlang plperl dbname.

Tip: If a language is installed into template1, all subsequently created databases will have the language installed automatically.

Note: Users of source packages must specially enable the build of PL/Perl during the installation process. (Refer to Chapter 15 for more information.) Users of binary packages might find PL/Perl in a separate subpackage.

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PL/Perl Functions and Arguments

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41.1. PL/Perl Functions and Arguments

To create a function in the PL/Perl language, use the standard CREATE FUNCTION syntax:

CREATE FUNCTION funcname (argument-types) RETURNS return-type AS $$
    # PL/Perl function body
$$ LANGUAGE plperl;

The body of the function is ordinary Perl code. In fact, the PL/Perl glue code wraps it inside a Perl subroutine. A PL/Perl function is called in a scalar context, so it can't return a list. You can return non-scalar values (arrays, records, and sets) by returning a reference, as discussed below.

PL/Perl also supports anonymous code blocks called with the DO statement:

DO $$
    # PL/Perl code
$$ LANGUAGE plperl;

An anonymous code block receives no arguments, and whatever value it might return is discarded. Otherwise it behaves just like a function.

Note: The use of named nested subroutines is dangerous in Perl, especially if they refer to lexical variables in the enclosing scope. Because a PL/Perl function is wrapped in a subroutine, any named subroutine you place inside one will be nested. In general, it is far safer to create anonymous subroutines which you call via a coderef. For more information, see the entries for Variable "%s" will not stay shared and Variable "%s" is not available in the perldiag man page, or search the Internet for "perl nested named subroutine".

The syntax of the CREATE FUNCTION command requires the function body to be written as a string constant. It is usually most convenient to use dollar quoting (see Section 4.1.2.4) for the string constant. If you choose to use escape string syntax E'', you must double any single quote marks (') and backslashes (\) used in the body of the function (see Section 4.1.2.1).

Arguments and results are handled as in any other Perl subroutine: arguments are passed in @_, and a result value is returned with return or as the last expression evaluated in the function.

For example, a function returning the greater of two integer values could be defined as:

CREATE FUNCTION perl_max (integer, integer) RETURNS integer AS $$
    if ($_[0] > $_[1]) { return $_[0]; }
    return $_[1];
$$ LANGUAGE plperl;

Note: Arguments will be converted from the database's encoding to UTF-8 for use inside PL/Perl, and then converted from UTF-8 back to the database encoding upon return.

If an SQL null value is passed to a function, the argument value will appear as "undefined" in Perl. The above function definition will not behave very nicely with null inputs (in fact, it will act as though they are zeroes). We could add STRICT to the function definition to make PostgreSQL do something more reasonable: if a null value is passed, the function will not be called at all, but will just return a null result automatically. Alternatively, we could check for undefined inputs in the function body. For example, suppose that we wanted perl_max with one null and one nonnull argument to return the nonnull argument, rather than a null value:

CREATE FUNCTION perl_max (integer, integer) RETURNS integer AS $$
    my ($x, $y) = @_;
    if (not defined $x) {
        return undef if not defined $y;
        return $y;
    }
    return $x if not defined $y;
    return $x if $x > $y;
    return $y;
$$ LANGUAGE plperl;

As shown above, to return an SQL null value from a PL/Perl function, return an undefined value. This can be done whether the function is strict or not.

Anything in a function argument that is not a reference is a string, which is in the standard PostgreSQL external text representation for the relevant data type. In the case of ordinary numeric or text types, Perl will just do the right thing and the programmer will normally not have to worry about it. However, in other cases the argument will need to be converted into a form that is more usable in Perl. For example, the decode_bytea function can be used to convert an argument of type bytea into unescaped binary.

Similarly, values passed back to PostgreSQL must be in the external text representation format. For example, the encode_bytea function can be used to escape binary data for a return value of type bytea.

Perl can return PostgreSQL arrays as references to Perl arrays. Here is an example:

CREATE OR REPLACE function returns_array()
RETURNS text[][] AS $$
    return [['a"b','c,d'],['e\\f','g']];
$$ LANGUAGE plperl;

select returns_array();

Perl passes PostgreSQL arrays as a blessed PostgreSQL::InServer::ARRAY object. This object may be treated as an array reference or a string, allowing for backward compatibility with Perl code written for PostgreSQL versions below 9.1 to run. For example:

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION concat_array_elements(text[]) RETURNS TEXT AS $$
    my $arg = shift;
    my $result = "";
    return undef if (!defined $arg);

    # as an array reference
    for (@$arg) {
        $result .= $_;
    }

    # also works as a string
    $result .= $arg;

    return $result;
$$ LANGUAGE plperl;

SELECT concat_array_elements(ARRAY['PL','/','Perl']);

Note: Multi-dimensional arrays are represented as references to lower-dimensional arrays of references in a way common to every Perl programmer.

Composite-type arguments are passed to the function as references to hashes. The keys of the hash are the attribute names of the composite type. Here is an example:

CREATE TABLE employee (
    name text,
    basesalary integer,
    bonus integer
);

CREATE FUNCTION empcomp(employee) RETURNS integer AS $$
    my ($emp) = @_;
    return $emp->{basesalary} + $emp->{bonus};
$$ LANGUAGE plperl;

SELECT name, empcomp(employee.*) FROM employee;

A PL/Perl function can return a composite-type result using the same approach: return a reference to a hash that has the required attributes. For example:

CREATE TYPE testrowperl AS (f1 integer, f2 text, f3 text);

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION perl_row() RETURNS testrowperl AS $$
    return {f2 => 'hello', f1 => 1, f3 => 'world'};
$$ LANGUAGE plperl;

SELECT * FROM perl_row();

Any columns in the declared result data type that are not present in the hash will be returned as null values.

PL/Perl functions can also return sets of either scalar or composite types. Usually you'll want to return rows one at a time, both to speed up startup time and to keep from queueing up the entire result set in memory. You can do this with return_next as illustrated below. Note that after the last return_next, you must put either return or (better) return undef.

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION perl_set_int(int)
RETURNS SETOF INTEGER AS $$
    foreach (0..$_[0]) {
        return_next($_);
    }
    return undef;
$$ LANGUAGE plperl;

SELECT * FROM perl_set_int(5);

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION perl_set()
RETURNS SETOF testrowperl AS $$
    return_next({ f1 => 1, f2 => 'Hello', f3 => 'World' });
    return_next({ f1 => 2, f2 => 'Hello', f3 => 'PostgreSQL' });
    return_next({ f1 => 3, f2 => 'Hello', f3 => 'PL/Perl' });
    return undef;
$$ LANGUAGE plperl;

For small result sets, you can return a reference to an array that contains either scalars, references to arrays, or references to hashes for simple types, array types, and composite types, respectively. Here are some simple examples of returning the entire result set as an array reference:

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION perl_set_int(int) RETURNS SETOF INTEGER AS $$
    return [0..$_[0]];
$$ LANGUAGE plperl;

SELECT * FROM perl_set_int(5);

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION perl_set() RETURNS SETOF testrowperl AS $$
    return [
        { f1 => 1, f2 => 'Hello', f3 => 'World' },
        { f1 => 2, f2 => 'Hello', f3 => 'PostgreSQL' },
        { f1 => 3, f2 => 'Hello', f3 => 'PL/Perl' }
    ];
$$ LANGUAGE plperl;

SELECT * FROM perl_set();

If you wish to use the strict pragma with your code you have a few options. For temporary global use you can SET plperl.use_strict to true. This will affect subsequent compilations of PL/Perl functions, but not functions already compiled in the current session. For permanent global use you can set plperl.use_strict to true in the postgresql.conf file.

For permanent use in specific functions you can simply put:

use strict;

at the top of the function body.

The feature pragma is also available to use if your Perl is version 5.10.0 or higher.

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Data Values in PL/Perl

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41.2. Data Values in PL/Perl

The argument values supplied to a PL/Perl function's code are simply the input arguments converted to text form (just as if they had been displayed by a SELECT statement). Conversely, the return and return_next commands will accept any string that is acceptable input format for the function's declared return type.

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Built-in Functions

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41.3. Built-in Functions

41.3.1. Database Access from PL/Perl

Access to the database itself from your Perl function can be done via the following functions:

spi_exec_query(query [, max-rows])

spi_exec_query executes an SQL command and returns the entire row set as a reference to an array of hash references. You should only use this command when you know that the result set will be relatively small. Here is an example of a query (SELECT command) with the optional maximum number of rows:

$rv = spi_exec_query('SELECT * FROM my_table', 5);

This returns up to 5 rows from the table my_table. If my_table has a column my_column, you can get that value from row $i of the result like this:

$foo = $rv->{rows}[$i]->{my_column};

The total number of rows returned from a SELECT query can be accessed like this:

$nrows = $rv->{processed}

Here is an example using a different command type:

$query = "INSERT INTO my_table VALUES (1, 'test')";
$rv = spi_exec_query($query);

You can then access the command status (e.g., SPI_OK_INSERT) like this:

$res = $rv->{status};

To get the number of rows affected, do:

$nrows = $rv->{processed};

Here is a complete example:

CREATE TABLE test (
    i int,
    v varchar
);

INSERT INTO test (i, v) VALUES (1, 'first line');
INSERT INTO test (i, v) VALUES (2, 'second line');
INSERT INTO test (i, v) VALUES (3, 'third line');
INSERT INTO test (i, v) VALUES (4, 'immortal');

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION test_munge() RETURNS SETOF test AS $$
    my $rv = spi_exec_query('select i, v from test;');
    my $status = $rv->{status};
    my $nrows = $rv->{processed};
    foreach my $rn (0 .. $nrows - 1) {
        my $row = $rv->{rows}[$rn];
        $row->{i} += 200 if defined($row->{i});
        $row->{v} =~ tr/A-Za-z/a-zA-Z/ if (defined($row->{v}));
        return_next($row);
    }
    return undef;
$$ LANGUAGE plperl;

SELECT * FROM test_munge();

spi_query(command)
spi_fetchrow(cursor)
spi_cursor_close(cursor)

spi_query and spi_fetchrow work together as a pair for row sets which might be large, or for cases where you wish to return rows as they arrive. spi_fetchrow works only with spi_query. The following example illustrates how you use them together:

CREATE TYPE foo_type AS (the_num INTEGER, the_text TEXT);

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION lotsa_md5 (INTEGER) RETURNS SETOF foo_type AS $$
    use Digest::MD5 qw(md5_hex);
    my $file = '/usr/share/dict/words';
    my $t = localtime;
    elog(NOTICE, "opening file $file at $t" );
    open my $fh, '<', $file # ooh, it's a file access!
        or elog(ERROR, "cannot open $file for reading: $!");
    my @words = <$fh>;
    close $fh;
    $t = localtime;
    elog(NOTICE, "closed file $file at $t");
    chomp(@words);
    my $row;
    my $sth = spi_query("SELECT * FROM generate_series(1,$_[0]) AS b(a)");
    while (defined ($row = spi_fetchrow($sth))) {
        return_next({
            the_num => $row->{a},
            the_text => md5_hex($words[rand @words])
        });
    }
    return;
$$ LANGUAGE plperlu;

SELECT * from lotsa_md5(500);

Normally, spi_fetchrow should be repeated until it returns undef, indicating that there are no more rows to read. The cursor returned by spi_query is automatically freed when spi_fetchrow returns undef. If you do not wish to read all the rows, instead call spi_cursor_close to free the cursor. Failure to do so will result in memory leaks.

spi_prepare(command, argument types)
spi_query_prepared(plan, arguments)
spi_exec_prepared(plan [, attributes], arguments)
spi_freeplan(plan)

spi_prepare, spi_query_prepared, spi_exec_prepared, and spi_freeplan implement the same functionality but for prepared queries. spi_prepare accepts a query string with numbered argument placeholders ($1, $2, etc) and a string list of argument types:

$plan = spi_prepare('SELECT * FROM test WHERE id > $1 AND name = $2',
                                                     'INTEGER', 'TEXT');

Once a query plan is prepared by a call to spi_prepare, the plan can be used instead of the string query, either in spi_exec_prepared, where the result is the same as returned by spi_exec_query, or in spi_query_prepared which returns a cursor exactly as spi_query does, which can be later passed to spi_fetchrow. The optional second parameter to spi_exec_prepared is a hash reference of attributes; the only attribute currently supported is limit, which sets the maximum number of rows returned by a query.

The advantage of prepared queries is that is it possible to use one prepared plan for more than one query execution. After the plan is not needed anymore, it can be freed with spi_freeplan:

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION init() RETURNS VOID AS $$
        $_SHARED{my_plan} = spi_prepare('SELECT (now() + $1)::date AS now',
                                        'INTERVAL');
$$ LANGUAGE plperl;

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION add_time( INTERVAL ) RETURNS TEXT AS $$
        return spi_exec_prepared(
                $_SHARED{my_plan},
                $_[0]
        )->{rows}->[0]->{now};
$$ LANGUAGE plperl;

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION done() RETURNS VOID AS $$
        spi_freeplan( $_SHARED{my_plan});
        undef $_SHARED{my_plan};
$$ LANGUAGE plperl;

SELECT init();
SELECT add_time('1 day'), add_time('2 days'), add_time('3 days');
SELECT done();

  add_time  |  add_time  |  add_time
------------+------------+------------
 2005-12-10 | 2005-12-11 | 2005-12-12

Note that the parameter subscript in spi_prepare is defined via $1, $2, $3, etc, so avoid declaring query strings in double quotes that might easily lead to hard-to-catch bugs.

Another example illustrates usage of an optional parameter in spi_exec_prepared:

CREATE TABLE hosts AS SELECT id, ('192.168.1.'||id)::inet AS address
                      FROM generate_series(1,3) AS id;

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION init_hosts_query() RETURNS VOID AS $$
        $_SHARED{plan} = spi_prepare('SELECT * FROM hosts
                                      WHERE address << $1', 'inet');
$$ LANGUAGE plperl;

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION query_hosts(inet) RETURNS SETOF hosts AS $$
        return spi_exec_prepared(
                $_SHARED{plan},
                {limit => 2},
                $_[0]
        )->{rows};
$$ LANGUAGE plperl;

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION release_hosts_query() RETURNS VOID AS $$
        spi_freeplan($_SHARED{plan});
        undef $_SHARED{plan};
$$ LANGUAGE plperl;

SELECT init_hosts_query();
SELECT query_hosts('192.168.1.0/30');
SELECT release_hosts_query();

    query_hosts
-----------------
 (1,192.168.1.1)
 (2,192.168.1.2)
(2 rows)

41.3.2. Utility Functions in PL/Perl

elog(level, msg)

Emit a log or error message. Possible levels are DEBUG, LOG, INFO, NOTICE, WARNING, and ERROR. ERROR raises an error condition; if this is not trapped by the surrounding Perl code, the error propagates out to the calling query, causing the current transaction or subtransaction to be aborted. This is effectively the same as the Perl die command. The other levels only generate messages of different priority levels. Whether messages of a particular priority are reported to the client, written to the server log, or both is controlled by the log_min_messages and client_min_messages configuration variables. See Chapter 18 for more information.

quote_literal(string)

Return the given string suitably quoted to be used as a string literal in an SQL statement string. Embedded single-quotes and backslashes are properly doubled. Note that quote_literal returns undef on undef input; if the argument might be undef, quote_nullable is often more suitable.

quote_nullable(string)

Return the given string suitably quoted to be used as a string literal in an SQL statement string; or, if the argument is undef, return the unquoted string "NULL". Embedded single-quotes and backslashes are properly doubled.

quote_ident(string)

Return the given string suitably quoted to be used as an identifier in an SQL statement string. Quotes are added only if necessary (i.e., if the string contains non-identifier characters or would be case-folded). Embedded quotes are properly doubled.

decode_bytea(string)

Return the unescaped binary data represented by the contents of the given string, which should be bytea encoded.

encode_bytea(string)

Return the bytea encoded form of the binary data contents of the given string.

encode_array_literal(array)
encode_array_literal(array, delimiter)

Returns the contents of the referenced array as a string in array literal format (see Section 8.14.2). Returns the argument value unaltered if it's not a reference to an array. The delimiter used between elements of the array literal defaults to ", " if a delimiter is not specified or is undef.

encode_typed_literal(value, typename)

Converts a Perl variable to the value of the data type passed as a second argument and returns a string representation of this value. Correctly handles nested arrays and values of composite types.

encode_array_constructor(array)

Returns the contents of the referenced array as a string in array constructor format (see Section 4.2.12). Individual values are quoted using quote_nullable. Returns the argument value, quoted using quote_nullable, if it's not a reference to an array.

looks_like_number(string)

Returns a true value if the content of the given string looks like a number, according to Perl, returns false otherwise. Returns undef if the argument is undef. Leading and trailing space is ignored. Inf and Infinity are regarded as numbers.

is_array_ref(argument)

Returns a true value if the given argument may be treated as an array reference, that is, if ref of the argument is ARRAY or PostgreSQL::InServer::ARRAY. Returns false otherwise.

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Global Values in PL/Perl

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41.4. Global Values in PL/Perl

You can use the global hash %_SHARED to store data, including code references, between function calls for the lifetime of the current session.

Here is a simple example for shared data:

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION set_var(name text, val text) RETURNS text AS $$
    if ($_SHARED{$_[0]} = $_[1]) {
        return 'ok';
    } else {
        return "cannot set shared variable $_[0] to $_[1]";
    }
$$ LANGUAGE plperl;

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION get_var(name text) RETURNS text AS $$
    return $_SHARED{$_[0]};
$$ LANGUAGE plperl;

SELECT set_var('sample', 'Hello, PL/Perl!  How''s tricks?');
SELECT get_var('sample');

Here is a slightly more complicated example using a code reference:

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION myfuncs() RETURNS void AS $$
    $_SHARED{myquote} = sub {
        my $arg = shift;
        $arg =~ s/(['\\])/\\$1/g;
        return "'$arg'";
    };
$$ LANGUAGE plperl;

SELECT myfuncs(); /* initializes the function */

/* Set up a function that uses the quote function */

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION use_quote(TEXT) RETURNS text AS $$
    my $text_to_quote = shift;
    my $qfunc = $_SHARED{myquote};
    return &$qfunc($text_to_quote);
$$ LANGUAGE plperl;

(You could have replaced the above with the one-liner return $_SHARED{myquote}->($_[0]); at the expense of readability.)

For security reasons, PL/Perl executes functions called by any one SQL role in a separate Perl interpreter for that role. This prevents accidental or malicious interference by one user with the behavior of another user's PL/Perl functions. Each such interpreter has its own value of the %_SHARED variable and other global state. Thus, two PL/Perl functions will share the same value of %_SHARED if and only if they are executed by the same SQL role. In an application wherein a single session executes code under multiple SQL roles (via SECURITY DEFINER functions, use of SET ROLE, etc) you may need to take explicit steps to ensure that PL/Perl functions can share data via %_SHARED. To do that, make sure that functions that should communicate are owned by the same user, and mark them SECURITY DEFINER. You must of course take care that such functions can't be used to do anything unintended.

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Trusted and Untrusted PL/Perl

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41.5. Trusted and Untrusted PL/Perl

Normally, PL/Perl is installed as a "trusted" programming language named plperl. In this setup, certain Perl operations are disabled to preserve security. In general, the operations that are restricted are those that interact with the environment. This includes file handle operations, require, and use (for external modules). There is no way to access internals of the database server process or to gain OS-level access with the permissions of the server process, as a C function can do. Thus, any unprivileged database user can be permitted to use this language.

Here is an example of a function that will not work because file system operations are not allowed for security reasons:

CREATE FUNCTION badfunc() RETURNS integer AS $$
    my $tmpfile = "/tmp/badfile";
    open my $fh, '>', $tmpfile
        or elog(ERROR, qq{could not open the file "$tmpfile": $!});
    print $fh "Testing writing to a file\n";
    close $fh or elog(ERROR, qq{could not close the file "$tmpfile": $!});
    return 1;
$$ LANGUAGE plperl;

The creation of this function will fail as its use of a forbidden operation will be caught by the validator.

Sometimes it is desirable to write Perl functions that are not restricted. For example, one might want a Perl function that sends mail. To handle these cases, PL/Perl can also be installed as an "untrusted" language (usually called PL/PerlU). In this case the full Perl language is available. When installing the language, the language name plperlu will select the untrusted PL/Perl variant.

The writer of a PL/PerlU function must take care that the function cannot be used to do anything unwanted, since it will be able to do anything that could be done by a user logged in as the database administrator. Note that the database system allows only database superusers to create functions in untrusted languages.

If the above function was created by a superuser using the language plperlu, execution would succeed.

In the same way, anonymous code blocks written in Perl can use restricted operations if the language is specified as plperlu rather than plperl, but the caller must be a superuser.

Note: While PL/Perl functions run in a separate Perl interpreter for each SQL role, all PL/PerlU functions executed in a given session run in a single Perl interpreter (which is not any of the ones used for PL/Perl functions). This allows PL/PerlU functions to share data freely, but no communication can occur between PL/Perl and PL/PerlU functions.

Note: Perl cannot support multiple interpreters within one process unless it was built with the appropriate flags, namely either usemultiplicity or useithreads. (usemultiplicity is preferred unless you actually need to use threads. For more details, see the perlembed man page.) If PL/Perl is used with a copy of Perl that was not built this way, then it is only possible to have one Perl interpreter per session, and so any one session can only execute either PL/PerlU functions, or PL/Perl functions that are all called by the same SQL role.

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PL/Perl Triggers

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41.6. PL/Perl Triggers

PL/Perl can be used to write trigger functions. In a trigger function, the hash reference $_TD contains information about the current trigger event. $_TD is a global variable, which gets a separate local value for each invocation of the trigger. The fields of the $_TD hash reference are:

$_TD->{new}{foo}

NEW value of column foo

$_TD->{old}{foo}

OLD value of column foo

$_TD->{name}

Name of the trigger being called

$_TD->{event}

Trigger event: INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, TRUNCATE, or UNKNOWN

$_TD->{when}

When the trigger was called: BEFORE, AFTER, INSTEAD OF, or UNKNOWN

$_TD->{level}

The trigger level: ROW, STATEMENT, or UNKNOWN

$_TD->{relid}

OID of the table on which the trigger fired

$_TD->{table_name}

Name of the table on which the trigger fired

$_TD->{relname}

Name of the table on which the trigger fired. This has been deprecated, and could be removed in a future release. Please use $_TD->{table_name} instead.

$_TD->{table_schema}

Name of the schema in which the table on which the trigger fired, is

$_TD->{argc}

Number of arguments of the trigger function

@{$_TD->{args}}

Arguments of the trigger function. Does not exist if $_TD->{argc} is 0.

Row-level triggers can return one of the following:

return;

Execute the operation

"SKIP"

Don't execute the operation

"MODIFY"

Indicates that the NEW row was modified by the trigger function

Here is an example of a trigger function, illustrating some of the above:

CREATE TABLE test (
    i int,
    v varchar
);

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION valid_id() RETURNS trigger AS $$
    if (($_TD->{new}{i} >= 100) || ($_TD->{new}{i} <= 0)) {
        return "SKIP";    # skip INSERT/UPDATE command
    } elsif ($_TD->{new}{v} ne "immortal") {
        $_TD->{new}{v} .= "(modified by trigger)";
        return "MODIFY";  # modify row and execute INSERT/UPDATE command
    } else {
        return;           # execute INSERT/UPDATE command
    }
$$ LANGUAGE plperl;

CREATE TRIGGER test_valid_id_trig
    BEFORE INSERT OR UPDATE ON test
    FOR EACH ROW EXECUTE PROCEDURE valid_id();

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PL/Perl Under the Hood

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41.7. PL/Perl Under the Hood

41.7.1. Configuration

This section lists configuration parameters that affect PL/Perl. To set any of these parameters before PL/Perl has been loaded, it is necessary to have added "plperl" to the custom_variable_classes list in postgresql.conf.

plperl.on_init (string)

Specifies Perl code to be executed when a Perl interpreter is first initialized, before it is specialized for use by plperl or plperlu. The SPI functions are not available when this code is executed. If the code fails with an error it will abort the initialization of the interpreter and propagate out to the calling query, causing the current transaction or subtransaction to be aborted.

The Perl code is limited to a single string. Longer code can be placed into a module and loaded by the on_init string. Examples:

plperl.on_init = 'require "plperlinit.pl"'
plperl.on_init = 'use lib "/my/app"; use MyApp::PgInit;'

Any modules loaded by plperl.on_init, either directly or indirectly, will be available for use by plperl. This may create a security risk. To see what modules have been loaded you can use:

DO 'elog(WARNING, join ", ", sort keys %INC)' language plperl;

Initialization will happen in the postmaster if the plperl library is included in shared_preload_libraries, in which case extra consideration should be given to the risk of destabilizing the postmaster. The principal reason for making use of this feature is that Perl modules loaded by plperl.on_init need be loaded only at postmaster start, and will be instantly available without loading overhead in individual database sessions. However, keep in mind that the overhead is avoided only for the first Perl interpreter used by a database session — either PL/PerlU, or PL/Perl for the first SQL role that calls a PL/Perl function. Any additional Perl interpreters created in a database session will have to execute plperl.on_init afresh. Also, on Windows there will be no savings whatsoever from preloading, since the Perl interpreter created in the postmaster process does not propagate to child processes.

This parameter can only be set in the postgresql.conf file or on the server command line.

plperl.on_plperl_init (string)
plperl.on_plperlu_init (string)

These parameters specify Perl code to be executed when a Perl interpreter is specialized for plperl or plperlu respectively. This will happen when a PL/Perl or PL/PerlU function is first executed in a database session, or when an additional interpreter has to be created because the other language is called or a PL/Perl function is called by a new SQL role. This follows any initialization done by plperl.on_init. The SPI functions are not available when this code is executed. The Perl code in plperl.on_plperl_init is executed after "locking down" the interpreter, and thus it can only perform trusted operations.

If the code fails with an error it will abort the initialization and propagate out to the calling query, causing the current transaction or subtransaction to be aborted. Any actions already done within Perl won't be undone; however, that interpreter won't be used again. If the language is used again the initialization will be attempted again within a fresh Perl interpreter.

Only superusers can change these settings. Although these settings can be changed within a session, such changes will not affect Perl interpreters that have already been used to execute functions.

plperl.use_strict (boolean)

When set true subsequent compilations of PL/Perl functions will have the strict pragma enabled. This parameter does not affect functions already compiled in the current session.

41.7.2. Limitations and Missing Features

The following features are currently missing from PL/Perl, but they would make welcome contributions.

  • PL/Perl functions cannot call each other directly.

  • SPI is not yet fully implemented.

  • If you are fetching very large data sets using spi_exec_query, you should be aware that these will all go into memory. You can avoid this by using spi_query/spi_fetchrow as illustrated earlier.

    A similar problem occurs if a set-returning function passes a large set of rows back to PostgreSQL via return. You can avoid this problem too by instead using return_next for each row returned, as shown previously.

  • When a session ends normally, not due to a fatal error, any END blocks that have been defined are executed. Currently no other actions are performed. Specifically, file handles are not automatically flushed and objects are not automatically destroyed.

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PL/Python - Python Procedural Language

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Chapter 42. PL/Python - Python Procedural Language

Table of Contents
42.1. Python 2 vs. Python 3
42.2. PL/Python Functions
42.3. Data Values
42.3.1. Data Type Mapping
42.3.2. Null, None
42.3.3. Arrays, Lists
42.3.4. Composite Types
42.3.5. Set-returning Functions
42.4. Sharing Data
42.5. Anonymous Code Blocks
42.6. Trigger Functions
42.7. Database Access
42.7.1. Database Access Functions
42.7.2. Trapping Errors
42.8. Explicit Subtransactions
42.8.1. Subtransaction Context Managers
42.8.2. Older Python Versions
42.9. Utility Functions
42.10. Environment Variables

The PL/Python procedural language allows PostgreSQL functions to be written in the Python language.

To install PL/Python in a particular database, use CREATE EXTENSION plpythonu, or from the shell command line use createlang plpythonu dbname (but see also Section 42.1).

Tip: If a language is installed into template1, all subsequently created databases will have the language installed automatically.

As of PostgreSQL 7.4, PL/Python is only available as an "untrusted" language, meaning it does not offer any way of restricting what users can do in it. It has therefore been renamed to plpythonu. The trusted variant plpython might become available again in future, if a new secure execution mechanism is developed in Python. The writer of a function in untrusted PL/Python must take care that the function cannot be used to do anything unwanted, since it will be able to do anything that could be done by a user logged in as the database administrator. Only superusers can create functions in untrusted languages such as plpythonu.

Note: Users of source packages must specially enable the build of PL/Python during the installation process. (Refer to the installation instructions for more information.) Users of binary packages might find PL/Python in a separate subpackage.

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Python 2 vs. Python 3

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42.1. Python 2 vs. Python 3

PL/Python supports both the Python 2 and Python 3 language variants. (The PostgreSQL installation instructions might contain more precise information about the exact supported minor versions of Python.) Because the Python 2 and Python 3 language variants are incompatible in some important aspects, the following naming and transitioning scheme is used by PL/Python to avoid mixing them:

  • The PostgreSQL language named plpython2u implements PL/Python based on the Python 2 language variant.

  • The PostgreSQL language named plpython3u implements PL/Python based on the Python 3 language variant.

  • The language named plpythonu implements PL/Python based on the default Python language variant, which is currently Python 2. (This default is independent of what any local Python installations might consider to be their "default", for example, what /usr/bin/python might be.) The default will probably be changed to Python 3 in a distant future release of PostgreSQL, depending on the progress of the migration to Python 3 in the Python community.

It depends on the build configuration or the installed packages whether PL/Python for Python 2 or Python 3 or both are available.

Tip: The built variant depends on which Python version was found during the installation or which version was explicitly set using the PYTHON environment variable; see Section 15.4. To make both variants of PL/Python available in one installation, the source tree has to be configured and built twice.

This results in the following usage and migration strategy:

  • Existing users and users who are currently not interested in Python 3 use the language name plpythonu and don't have to change anything for the foreseeable future. It is recommended to gradually "future-proof" the code via migration to Python 2.6/2.7 to simplify the eventual migration to Python 3.

    In practice, many PL/Python functions will migrate to Python 3 with few or no changes.

  • Users who know that they have heavily Python 2 dependent code and don't plan to ever change it can make use of the plpython2u language name. This will continue to work into the very distant future, until Python 2 support might be completely dropped by PostgreSQL.

  • Users who want to dive into Python 3 can use the plpython3u language name, which will keep working forever by today's standards. In the distant future, when Python 3 might become the default, they might like to remove the "3" for aesthetic reasons.

  • Daredevils, who want to build a Python-3-only operating system environment, can change the contents of pg_pltemplate to make plpythonu be equivalent to plpython3u, keeping in mind that this would make their installation incompatible with most of the rest of the world.

See also the document What's New In Python 3.0 for more information about porting to Python 3.

It is not allowed to use PL/Python based on Python 2 and PL/Python based on Python 3 in the same session, because the symbols in the dynamic modules would clash, which could result in crashes of the PostgreSQL server process. There is a check that prevents mixing Python major versions in a session, which will abort the session if a mismatch is detected. It is possible, however, to use both PL/Python variants in the same database, from separate sessions.

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PL/Python Functions

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42.2. PL/Python Functions

Functions in PL/Python are declared via the standard CREATE FUNCTION syntax:

CREATE FUNCTION funcname (argument-list)
  RETURNS return-type
AS $$
  # PL/Python function body
$$ LANGUAGE plpythonu;

The body of a function is simply a Python script. When the function is called, its arguments are passed as elements of the list args; named arguments are also passed as ordinary variables to the Python script. Use of named arguments is usually more readable. The result is returned from the Python code in the usual way, with return or yield (in case of a result-set statement). If you do not provide a return value, Python returns the default None. PL/Python translates Python's None into the SQL null value.

For example, a function to return the greater of two integers can be defined as:

CREATE FUNCTION pymax (a integer, b integer)
  RETURNS integer
AS $$
  if a > b:
    return a
  return b
$$ LANGUAGE plpythonu;

The Python code that is given as the body of the function definition is transformed into a Python function. For example, the above results in:

def __plpython_procedure_pymax_23456():
  if a > b:
    return a
  return b

assuming that 23456 is the OID assigned to the function by PostgreSQL.

The arguments are set as global variables. Because of the scoping rules of Python, this has the subtle consequence that an argument variable cannot be reassigned inside the function to the value of an expression that involves the variable name itself, unless the variable is redeclared as global in the block. For example, the following won't work:

CREATE FUNCTION pystrip(x text)
  RETURNS text
AS $$
  x = x.strip()  # error
  return x
$$ LANGUAGE plpythonu;

because assigning to x makes x a local variable for the entire block, and so the x on the right-hand side of the assignment refers to a not-yet-assigned local variable x, not the PL/Python function parameter. Using the global statement, this can be made to work:

CREATE FUNCTION pystrip(x text)
  RETURNS text
AS $$
  global x
  x = x.strip()  # ok now
  return x
$$ LANGUAGE plpythonu;

But it is advisable not to rely on this implementation detail of PL/Python. It is better to treat the function parameters as read-only.

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Data Values

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42.3. Data Values

Generally speaking, the aim of PL/Python is to provide a "natural" mapping between the PostgreSQL and the Python worlds. This informs the data mapping rules described below.

42.3.1. Data Type Mapping

Function arguments are converted from their PostgreSQL type to a corresponding Python type:

  • PostgreSQL boolean is converted to Python bool.

  • PostgreSQL smallint and int are converted to Python int. PostgreSQL bigint is converted to long in Python 2 and to int in Python 3.

  • PostgreSQL real, double, and numeric are converted to Python float. Note that for the numeric this loses information and can lead to incorrect results. This might be fixed in a future release.

  • PostgreSQL bytea is converted to Python str in Python 2 and to bytes in Python 3. In Python 2, the string should be treated as a byte sequence without any character encoding.

  • All other data types, including the PostgreSQL character string types, are converted to a Python str. In Python 2, this string will be in the PostgreSQL server encoding; in Python 3, it will be a Unicode string like all strings.

  • For nonscalar data types, see below.

Function return values are converted to the declared PostgreSQL return data type as follows:

  • When the PostgreSQL return type is boolean, the return value will be evaluated for truth according to the Python rules. That is, 0 and empty string are false, but notably 'f' is true.

  • When the PostgreSQL return type is bytea, the return value will be converted to a string (Python 2) or bytes (Python 3) using the respective Python built-ins, with the result being converted bytea.

  • For all other PostgreSQL return types, the returned Python value is converted to a string using the Python built-in str, and the result is passed to the input function of the PostgreSQL data type.

    Strings in Python 2 are required to be in the PostgreSQL server encoding when they are passed to PostgreSQL. Strings that are not valid in the current server encoding will raise an error, but not all encoding mismatches can be detected, so garbage data can still result when this is not done correctly. Unicode strings are converted to the correct encoding automatically, so it can be safer and more convenient to use those. In Python 3, all strings are Unicode strings.

  • For nonscalar data types, see below.

Note that logical mismatches between the declared PostgreSQL return type and the Python data type of the actual return object are not flagged; the value will be converted in any case.

42.3.2. Null, None

If an SQL null value is passed to a function, the argument value will appear as None in Python. For example, the function definition of pymax shown in Section 42.2 will return the wrong answer for null inputs. We could add STRICT to the function definition to make PostgreSQL do something more reasonable: if a null value is passed, the function will not be called at all, but will just return a null result automatically. Alternatively, we could check for null inputs in the function body:

CREATE FUNCTION pymax (a integer, b integer)
  RETURNS integer
AS $$
  if (a is None) or (b is None):
    return None
  if a > b:
    return a
  return b
$$ LANGUAGE plpythonu;

As shown above, to return an SQL null value from a PL/Python function, return the value None. This can be done whether the function is strict or not.

42.3.3. Arrays, Lists

SQL array values are passed into PL/Python as a Python list. To return an SQL array value out of a PL/Python function, return a Python sequence, for example a list or tuple:

CREATE FUNCTION return_arr()
  RETURNS int[]
AS $$
return (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
$$ LANGUAGE plpythonu;

SELECT return_arr();
 return_arr
-------------
 {1,2,3,4,5}
(1 row)

Note that in Python, strings are sequences, which can have undesirable effects that might be familiar to Python programmers:

CREATE FUNCTION return_str_arr()
  RETURNS varchar[]
AS $$
return "hello"
$$ LANGUAGE plpythonu;

SELECT return_str_arr();
 return_str_arr
----------------
 {h,e,l,l,o}
(1 row)

42.3.4. Composite Types

Composite-type arguments are passed to the function as Python mappings. The element names of the mapping are the attribute names of the composite type. If an attribute in the passed row has the null value, it has the value None in the mapping. Here is an example:

CREATE TABLE employee (
  name text,
  salary integer,
  age integer
);

CREATE FUNCTION overpaid (e employee)
  RETURNS boolean
AS $$
  if e["salary"] > 200000:
    return True
  if (e["age"] < 30) and (e["salary"] > 100000):
    return True
  return False
$$ LANGUAGE plpythonu;

There are multiple ways to return row or composite types from a Python function. The following examples assume we have:

CREATE TYPE named_value AS (
  name   text,
  value  integer
);

A composite result can be returned as a:

Sequence type (a tuple or list, but not a set because it is not indexable)

Returned sequence objects must have the same number of items as the composite result type has fields. The item with index 0 is assigned to the first field of the composite type, 1 to the second and so on. For example:

CREATE FUNCTION make_pair (name text, value integer)
  RETURNS named_value
AS $$
  return [ name, value ]
  # or alternatively, as tuple: return ( name, value )
$$ LANGUAGE plpythonu;

To return a SQL null for any column, insert None at the corresponding position.

Mapping (dictionary)

The value for each result type column is retrieved from the mapping with the column name as key. Example:

CREATE FUNCTION make_pair (name text, value integer)
  RETURNS named_value
AS $$
  return { "name": name, "value": value }
$$ LANGUAGE plpythonu;

Any extra dictionary key/value pairs are ignored. Missing keys are treated as errors. To return a SQL null value for any column, insert None with the corresponding column name as the key.

Object (any object providing method __getattr__)

This works the same as a mapping. Example:

CREATE FUNCTION make_pair (name text, value integer)
  RETURNS named_value
AS $$
  class named_value:
    def __init__ (self, n, v):
      self.name = n
      self.value = v
  return named_value(name, value)

  # or simply
  class nv: pass
  nv.name = name
  nv.value = value
  return nv
$$ LANGUAGE plpythonu;

Functions with OUT parameters are also supported. For example:

CREATE FUNCTION multiout_simple(OUT i integer, OUT j integer) AS $$
return (1, 2)
$$ LANGUAGE plpythonu;

SELECT * FROM multiout_simple();

42.3.5. Set-returning Functions

A PL/Python function can also return sets of scalar or composite types. There are several ways to achieve this because the returned object is internally turned into an iterator. The following examples assume we have composite type:

CREATE TYPE greeting AS (
  how text,
  who text
);

A set result can be returned from a:

Sequence type (tuple, list, set)

CREATE FUNCTION greet (how text)
  RETURNS SETOF greeting
AS $$
  # return tuple containing lists as composite types
  # all other combinations work also
  return ( [ how, "World" ], [ how, "PostgreSQL" ], [ how, "PL/Python" ] )
$$ LANGUAGE plpythonu;

Iterator (any object providing __iter__ and next methods)

CREATE FUNCTION greet (how text)
  RETURNS SETOF greeting
AS $$
  class producer:
    def __init__ (self, how, who):
      self.how = how
      self.who = who
      self.ndx = -1

    def __iter__ (self):
      return self

    def next (self):
      self.ndx += 1
      if self.ndx == len(self.who):
        raise StopIteration
      return ( self.how, self.who[self.ndx] )

  return producer(how, [ "World", "PostgreSQL", "PL/Python" ])
$$ LANGUAGE plpythonu;

Generator (yield)

CREATE FUNCTION greet (how text)
  RETURNS SETOF greeting
AS $$
  for who in [ "World", "PostgreSQL", "PL/Python" ]:
    yield ( how, who )
$$ LANGUAGE plpythonu;

Warning

Due to Python bug #1483133, some debug versions of Python 2.4 (configured and compiled with option --with-pydebug) are known to crash the PostgreSQL server when using an iterator to return a set result. Unpatched versions of Fedora 4 contain this bug. It does not happen in production versions of Python or on patched versions of Fedora 4.

Set-returning functions with OUT parameters (using RETURNS SETOF record) are also supported. For example:

CREATE FUNCTION multiout_simple_setof(n integer, OUT integer, OUT integer) RETURNS SETOF record AS $$
return [(1, 2)] * n
$$ LANGUAGE plpythonu;

SELECT * FROM multiout_simple_setof(3);

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Sharing Data

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42.4. Sharing Data

The global dictionary SD is available to store data between function calls. This variable is private static data. The global dictionary GD is public data, available to all Python functions within a session. Use with care.

Each function gets its own execution environment in the Python interpreter, so that global data and function arguments from myfunc are not available to myfunc2. The exception is the data in the GD dictionary, as mentioned above.

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Anonymous Code Blocks

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42.5. Anonymous Code Blocks

PL/Python also supports anonymous code blocks called with the DO statement:

DO $$
    # PL/Python code
$$ LANGUAGE plpythonu;

An anonymous code block receives no arguments, and whatever value it might return is discarded. Otherwise it behaves just like a function.

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Trigger Functions

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42.6. Trigger Functions

When a function is used as a trigger, the dictionary TD contains trigger-related values:

TD["event"]

contains the event as a string: INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, or TRUNCATE.

TD["when"]

contains one of BEFORE, AFTER, or INSTEAD OF.

TD["level"]

contains ROW or STATEMENT.

TD["new"]
TD["old"]

For a row-level trigger, one or both of these fields contain the respective trigger rows, depending on the trigger event.

TD["name"]

contains the trigger name.

TD["table_name"]

contains the name of the table on which the trigger occurred.

TD["table_schema"]

contains the schema of the table on which the trigger occurred.

TD["relid"]

contains the OID of the table on which the trigger occurred.

TD["args"]

If the CREATE TRIGGER command included arguments, they are available in TD["args"][0] to TD["args"][n-1].

If TD["when"] is BEFORE or INSTEAD OF and TD["level"] is ROW, you can return None or "OK" from the Python function to indicate the row is unmodified, "SKIP" to abort the event, or if TD["event"] is INSERT or UPDATE you can return "MODIFY" to indicate you've modified the new row. Otherwise the return value is ignored.

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Anonymous Code Blocks | Up | Database Access


Database Access

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42.7. Database Access

The PL/Python language module automatically imports a Python module called plpy. The functions and constants in this module are available to you in the Python code as plpy.foo.

42.7.1. Database Access Functions

The plpy module provides two functions called execute and prepare. Calling plpy.execute with a query string and an optional limit argument causes that query to be run and the result to be returned in a result object. The result object emulates a list or dictionary object. The result object can be accessed by row number and column name. It has these additional methods: nrows which returns the number of rows returned by the query, and status which is the SPI_execute() return value. The result object can be modified.

For example:

rv = plpy.execute("SELECT * FROM my_table", 5)

returns up to 5 rows from my_table. If my_table has a column my_column, it would be accessed as:

foo = rv[i]["my_column"]

The second function, plpy.prepare, prepares the execution plan for a query. It is called with a query string and a list of parameter types, if you have parameter references in the query. For example:

plan = plpy.prepare("SELECT last_name FROM my_users WHERE first_name = $1", [ "text" ])

text is the type of the variable you will be passing for $1. After preparing a statement, you use the function plpy.execute to run it:

rv = plpy.execute(plan, [ "name" ], 5)

The third argument is the limit and is optional.

Query parameters and result row fields are converted between PostgreSQL and Python data types as described in Section 42.3. The exception is that composite types are currently not supported: They will be rejected as query parameters and are converted to strings when appearing in a query result. As a workaround for the latter problem, the query can sometimes be rewritten so that the composite type result appears as a result row rather than as a field of the result row. Alternatively, the resulting string could be parsed apart by hand, but this approach is not recommended because it is not future-proof.

When you prepare a plan using the PL/Python module it is automatically saved. Read the SPI documentation (Chapter 43) for a description of what this means. In order to make effective use of this across function calls one needs to use one of the persistent storage dictionaries SD or GD (see Section 42.4). For example:

CREATE FUNCTION usesavedplan() RETURNS trigger AS $$
    if SD.has_key("plan"):
        plan = SD["plan"]
    else:
        plan = plpy.prepare("SELECT 1")
        SD["plan"] = plan
    # rest of function
$$ LANGUAGE plpythonu;

42.7.2. Trapping Errors

Functions accessing the database might encounter errors, which will cause them to abort and raise an exception. Both plpy.execute and plpy.prepare can raise an instance of a subclass of plpy.SPIError, which by default will terminate the function. This error can be handled just like any other Python exception, by using the try/except construct. For example:

CREATE FUNCTION try_adding_joe() RETURNS text AS $$
    try:
        plpy.execute("INSERT INTO users(username) VALUES ('joe')")
    except plpy.SPIError:
        return "something went wrong"
    else:
        return "Joe added"
$$ LANGUAGE plpythonu;

The actual class of the exception being raised corresponds to the specific condition that caused the error. Refer to Table A-1 for a list of possible conditions. The module plpy.spiexceptions defines an exception class for each PostgreSQL condition, deriving their names from the condition name. For instance, division_by_zero becomes DivisionByZero, unique_violation becomes UniqueViolation, fdw_error becomes FdwError, and so on. Each of these exception classes inherits from SPIError. This separation makes it easier to handle specific errors, for instance:

CREATE FUNCTION insert_fraction(numerator int, denominator int) RETURNS text AS $$
from plpy import spiexceptions
try:
    plan = plpy.prepare("INSERT INTO fractions (frac) VALUES ($1 / $2)", ["int", "int"])
    plpy.execute(plan, [numerator, denominator])
except spiexceptions.DivisionByZero:
    return "denominator cannot equal zero"
except spiexceptions.UniqueViolation:
    return "already have that fraction"
except plpy.SPIError, e:
    return "other error, SQLSTATE %s" % e.sqlstate
else:
    return "fraction inserted"
$$ LANGUAGE plpythonu;

Note that because all exceptions from the plpy.spiexceptions module inherit from SPIError, an except clause handling it will catch any database access error.

As an alternative way of handling different error conditions, you can catch the SPIError exception and determine the specific error condition inside the except block by looking at the sqlstate attribute of the exception object. This attribute is a string value containing the "SQLSTATE" error code. This approach provides approximately the same functionality

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Trigger Functions | Up | Explicit Subtransactions


Explicit Subtransactions

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42.8. Explicit Subtransactions

Recovering from errors caused by database access as described in Section 42.7.2 can lead to an undesirable situation where some operations succeed before one of them fails, and after recovering from that error the data is left in an inconsistent state. PL/Python offers a solution to this problem in the form of explicit subtransactions.

42.8.1. Subtransaction Context Managers

Consider a function that implements a transfer between two accounts:

CREATE FUNCTION transfer_funds() RETURNS void AS $$
try:
    plpy.execute("UPDATE accounts SET balance = balance - 100 WHERE account_name = 'joe'")
    plpy.execute("UPDATE accounts SET balance = balance + 100 WHERE account_name = 'mary'")
except plpy.SPIError, e:
    result = "error transferring funds: %s" % e.args
else:
    result = "funds transferred correctly"
plan = plpy.prepare("INSERT INTO operations (result) VALUES ($1)", ["text"])
plpy.execute(plan, [result])
$$ LANGUAGE plpythonu;

If the second UPDATE statement results in an exception being raised, this function will report the error, but the result of the first UPDATE will nevertheless be committed. In other words, the funds will be withdrawn from Joe's account, but will not be transferred to Mary's account.

To avoid such issues, you can wrap your plpy.execute calls in an explicit subtransaction. The plpy module provides a helper object to manage explicit subtransactions that gets created with the plpy.subtransaction() function. Objects created by this function implement the context manager interface. Using explicit subtransactions we can rewrite our function as:

CREATE FUNCTION transfer_funds2() RETURNS void AS $$
try:
    with plpy.subtransaction():
        plpy.execute("UPDATE accounts SET balance = balance - 100 WHERE account_name = 'joe'")
        plpy.execute("UPDATE accounts SET balance = balance + 100 WHERE account_name = 'mary'")
except plpy.SPIError, e:
    result = "error transferring funds: %s" % e.args
else:
    result = "funds transferred correctly"
plan = plpy.prepare("INSERT INTO operations (result) VALUES ($1)", ["text"])
plpy.execute(plan, [result])
$$ LANGUAGE plpythonu;

Note that the use of try/catch is still required. Otherwise the exception would propagate to the top of the Python stack and would cause the whole function to abort with a PostgreSQL error, so that the operations table would not have any row inserted into it. The subtransaction context manager does not trap errors, it only assures that all database operations executed inside its scope will be atomically committed or rolled back. A rollback of the subtransaction block occurs on any kind of exception exit, not only ones caused by errors originating from database access. A regular Python exception raised inside an explicit subtransaction block would also cause the subtransaction to be rolled back.

42.8.2. Older Python Versions

Context managers syntax using the with keyword is available by default in Python 2.6. If using PL/Python with an older Python version, it is still possible to use explicit subtransactions, although not as transparently. You can call the subtransaction manager's __enter__ and __exit__ functions using the enter and exit convenience aliases. The example function that transfers funds could be written as:

CREATE FUNCTION transfer_funds_old() RETURNS void AS $$
try:
    subxact = plpy.subtransaction()
    subxact.enter()
    try:
        plpy.execute("UPDATE accounts SET balance = balance - 100 WHERE account_name = 'joe'")
        plpy.execute("UPDATE accounts SET balance = balance + 100 WHERE account_name = 'mary'")
    except:
        import sys
        subxact.exit(*sys.exc_info())
        raise
    else:
        subxact.exit(None, None, None)
except plpy.SPIError, e:
    result = "error transferring funds: %s" % e.args
else:
    result = "funds transferred correctly"

plan = plpy.prepare("INSERT INTO operations (result) VALUES ($1)", ["text"])
plpy.execute(plan, [result])
$$ LANGUAGE plpythonu;

Note: Although context managers were implemented in Python 2.5, to use the with syntax in that version you need to use a future statement. Because of implementation details, however, you cannot use future statements in PL/Python functions.

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Database Access | Up | Utility Functions


Utility Functions

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42.9. Utility Functions

The plpy module also provides the functions plpy.debug(msg), plpy.log(msg), plpy.info(msg), plpy.notice(msg), plpy.warning(msg), plpy.error(msg), and plpy.fatal(msg). plpy.error and plpy.fatal actually raise a Python exception which, if uncaught, propagates out to the calling query, causing the current transaction or subtransaction to be aborted. raise plpy.Error(msg) and raise plpy.Fatal(msg) are equivalent to calling plpy.error and plpy.fatal, respectively. The other functions only generate messages of different priority levels. Whether messages of a particular priority are reported to the client, written to the server log, or both is controlled by the log_min_messages and client_min_messages configuration variables. See Chapter 18 for more information.

Another set of utility functions are plpy.quote_literal(string), plpy.quote_nullable(string), and plpy.quote_ident(string). They are equivalent to the built-in quoting functions described in Section 9.4. They are useful when constructing ad-hoc queries. A PL/Python equivalent of dynamic SQL from Example 39-1 would be:

plpy.execute("UPDATE tbl SET %s = %s WHERE key = %s" % (
    plpy.quote_ident(colname),
    plpy.quote_nullable(newvalue),
    plpy.quote_literal(keyvalue)))

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Environment Variables

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42.10. Environment Variables

Some of the environment variables that are accepted by the Python interpreter can also be used to affect PL/Python behavior. They would need to be set in the environment of the main PostgreSQL server process, for example in a start script. The available environment variables depend on the version of Python; see the Python documentation for details. At the time of this writing, the following environment variables have an affect on PL/Python, assuming an adequate Python version:

  • PYTHONHOME

  • PYTHONPATH

  • PYTHONY2K

  • PYTHONOPTIMIZE

  • PYTHONDEBUG

  • PYTHONVERBOSE

  • PYTHONCASEOK

  • PYTHONDONTWRITEBYTECODE

  • PYTHONIOENCODING

  • PYTHONUSERBASE

(It appears to be a Python implementation detail beyond the control of PL/Python that some of the environment variables listed on the python man page are only effective in a command-line interpreter and not an embedded Python interpreter.)

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Server Programming Interface

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Chapter 43. Server Programming Interface

Table of Contents
43.1. Interface Functions
SPI_connect -- connect a procedure to the SPI manager
SPI_finish -- disconnect a procedure from the SPI manager
SPI_push -- push SPI stack to allow recursive SPI usage
SPI_pop -- pop SPI stack to return from recursive SPI usage
SPI_execute -- execute a command
SPI_exec -- execute a read/write command
SPI_execute_with_args -- execute a command with out-of-line parameters
SPI_prepare -- prepare a plan for a command, without executing it yet
SPI_prepare_cursor -- prepare a plan for a command, without executing it yet
SPI_prepare_params -- prepare a plan for a command, without executing it yet
SPI_getargcount -- return the number of arguments needed by a plan prepared by SPI_prepare
SPI_getargtypeid -- return the data type OID for an argument of a plan prepared by SPI_prepare
SPI_is_cursor_plan -- return true if a plan prepared by SPI_prepare can be used with SPI_cursor_open
SPI_execute_plan -- execute a plan prepared by SPI_prepare
SPI_execute_plan_with_paramlist -- execute a plan prepared by SPI_prepare
SPI_execp -- execute a plan in read/write mode
SPI_cursor_open -- set up a cursor using a plan created with SPI_prepare
SPI_cursor_open_with_args -- set up a cursor using a query and parameters
SPI_cursor_open_with_paramlist -- set up a cursor using parameters
SPI_cursor_find -- find an existing cursor by name
SPI_cursor_fetch -- fetch some rows from a cursor
SPI_cursor_move -- move a cursor
SPI_scroll_cursor_fetch -- fetch some rows from a cursor
SPI_scroll_cursor_move -- move a cursor
SPI_cursor_close -- close a cursor
SPI_saveplan -- save a plan
43.2. Interface Support Functions
SPI_fname -- determine the column name for the specified column number
SPI_fnumber -- determine the column number for the specified column name
SPI_getvalue -- return the string value of the specified column
SPI_getbinval -- return the binary value of the specified column
SPI_gettype -- return the data type name of the specified column
SPI_gettypeid -- return the data type OID of the specified column
SPI_getrelname -- return the name of the specified relation
SPI_getnspname -- return the namespace of the specified relation
43.3. Memory Management
SPI_palloc -- allocate memory in the upper executor context
SPI_repalloc -- reallocate memory in the upper executor context
SPI_pfree -- free memory in the upper executor context
SPI_copytuple -- make a copy of a row in the upper executor context
SPI_returntuple -- prepare to return a tuple as a Datum
SPI_modifytuple -- create a row by replacing selected fields of a given row
SPI_freetuple -- free a row allocated in the upper executor context
SPI_freetuptable -- free a row set created by SPI_execute or a similar function
SPI_freeplan -- free a previously saved plan
43.4. Visibility of Data Changes
43.5. Examples

The Server Programming Interface (SPI) gives writers of user-defined C functions the ability to run SQL commands inside their functions. SPI is a set of interface functions to simplify access to the parser, planner, and executor. SPI also does some memory management.

Note: The available procedural languages provide various means to execute SQL commands from procedures. Most of these facilities are based on SPI, so this documentation might be of use for users of those languages as well.

To avoid misunderstanding we'll use the term "function" when we speak of SPI interface functions and "procedure" for a user-defined C-function that is using SPI.

Note that if a command invoked via SPI fails, then control will not be returned to your procedure. Rather, the transaction or subtransaction in which your procedure executes will be rolled back. (This might seem surprising given that the SPI functions mostly have documented error-return conventions. Those conventions only apply for errors detected within the SPI functions themselves, however.) It is possible to recover control after an error by establishing your own subtransaction surrounding SPI calls that might fail. This is not currently documented because the mechanisms required are still in flux.

SPI functions return a nonnegative result on success (either via a returned integer value or in the global variable SPI_result, as described below). On error, a negative result or NULL will be returned.

Source code files that use SPI must include the header file executor/spi.h.

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Environment Variables | Up | Interface Functions


Interface Functions

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43.1. Interface Functions

Table of Contents
SPI_connect -- connect a procedure to the SPI manager
SPI_finish -- disconnect a procedure from the SPI manager
SPI_push -- push SPI stack to allow recursive SPI usage
SPI_pop -- pop SPI stack to return from recursive SPI usage
SPI_execute -- execute a command
SPI_exec -- execute a read/write command
SPI_execute_with_args -- execute a command with out-of-line parameters
SPI_prepare -- prepare a plan for a command, without executing it yet
SPI_prepare_cursor -- prepare a plan for a command, without executing it yet
SPI_prepare_params -- prepare a plan for a command, without executing it yet
SPI_getargcount -- return the number of arguments needed by a plan prepared by SPI_prepare
SPI_getargtypeid -- return the data type OID for an argument of a plan prepared by SPI_prepare
SPI_is_cursor_plan -- return true if a plan prepared by SPI_prepare can be used with SPI_cursor_open
SPI_execute_plan -- execute a plan prepared by SPI_prepare
SPI_execute_plan_with_paramlist -- execute a plan prepared by SPI_prepare
SPI_execp -- execute a plan in read/write mode
SPI_cursor_open -- set up a cursor using a plan created with SPI_prepare
SPI_cursor_open_with_args -- set up a cursor using a query and parameters
SPI_cursor_open_with_paramlist -- set up a cursor using parameters
SPI_cursor_find -- find an existing cursor by name
SPI_cursor_fetch -- fetch some rows from a cursor
SPI_cursor_move -- move a cursor
SPI_scroll_cursor_fetch -- fetch some rows from a cursor
SPI_scroll_cursor_move -- move a cursor
SPI_cursor_close -- close a cursor
SPI_saveplan -- save a plan
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SPI_connect

Name

SPI_connect -- connect a procedure to the SPI manager

Synopsis

int SPI_connect(void)

Description

SPI_connect opens a connection from a procedure invocation to the SPI manager. You must call this function if you want to execute commands through SPI. Some utility SPI functions can be called from unconnected procedures.

If your procedure is already connected, SPI_connect will return the error code SPI_ERROR_CONNECT. This could happen if a procedure that has called SPI_connect directly calls another procedure that calls SPI_connect. While recursive calls to the SPI manager are permitted when an SQL command called through SPI invokes another function that uses SPI, directly nested calls to SPI_connect and SPI_finish are forbidden. (But see SPI_push and SPI_pop.)

Return Value

SPI_OK_CONNECT

on success

SPI_ERROR_CONNECT

on error

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SPI_finish

Name

SPI_finish -- disconnect a procedure from the SPI manager

Synopsis

int SPI_finish(void)

Description

SPI_finish closes an existing connection to the SPI manager. You must call this function after completing the SPI operations needed during your procedure's current invocation. You do not need to worry about making this happen, however, if you abort the transaction via elog(ERROR). In that case SPI will clean itself up automatically.

If SPI_finish is called without having a valid connection, it will return SPI_ERROR_UNCONNECTED. There is no fundamental problem with this; it means that the SPI manager has nothing to do.

Return Value

SPI_OK_FINISH

if properly disconnected

SPI_ERROR_UNCONNECTED

if called from an unconnected procedure

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SPI_push

Name

SPI_push -- push SPI stack to allow recursive SPI usage

Synopsis

void SPI_push(void)

Description

SPI_push should be called before executing another procedure that might itself wish to use SPI. After SPI_push, SPI is no longer in a "connected" state, and SPI function calls will be rejected unless a fresh SPI_connect is done. This ensures a clean separation between your procedure's SPI state and that of another procedure you call. After the other procedure returns, call SPI_pop to restore access to your own SPI state.

Note that SPI_execute and related functions automatically do the equivalent of SPI_push before passing control back to the SQL execution engine, so it is not necessary for you to worry about this when using those functions. Only when you are directly calling arbitrary code that might contain SPI_connect calls do you need to issue SPI_push and SPI_pop.

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SPI_finish | Up | SPI_pop


SPI_pop

Name

SPI_pop -- pop SPI stack to return from recursive SPI usage

Synopsis

void SPI_pop(void)

Description

SPI_pop pops the previous environment from the SPI call stack. See SPI_push.

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SPI_push | Up | SPI_execute


SPI_execute

Name

SPI_execute -- execute a command

Synopsis

int SPI_execute(const char * command, bool read_only, long count)

Description

SPI_execute executes the specified SQL command for count rows. If read_only is true, the command must be read-only, and execution overhead is somewhat reduced.

This function can only be called from a connected procedure.

If count is zero then the command is executed for all rows that it applies to. If count is greater than zero, then no more than count rows will be retrieved; execution stops when the count is reached, much like adding a LIMIT clause to the query. For example,

SPI_execute("SELECT * FROM foo", true, 5);

will retrieve at most 5 rows from the table. Note that such a limit is only effective when the command actually returns rows. For example,

SPI_execute("INSERT INTO foo SELECT * FROM bar", false, 5);

inserts all rows from bar, ignoring the count parameter. However, with

SPI_execute("INSERT INTO foo SELECT * FROM bar RETURNING *", false, 5);

at most 5 rows would be inserted, since execution would stop after the fifth RETURNING result row is retrieved.

You can pass multiple commands in one string, but later commands cannot depend on the creation of objects earlier in the string, because the whole string will be parsed and planned before execution begins. SPI_execute returns the result for the command executed last. The count limit applies to each command separately (even though only the last result will actually be returned). The limit is not applied to any hidden commands generated by rules.

When read_only is false, SPI_execute increments the command counter and computes a new snapshot before executing each command in the string. The snapshot does not actually change if the current transaction isolation level is SERIALIZABLE or REPEATABLE READ, but in READ COMMITTED mode the snapshot update allows each command to see the results of newly committed transactions from other sessions. This is essential for consistent behavior when the commands are modifying the database.

When read_only is true, SPI_execute does not update either the snapshot or the command counter, and it allows only plain SELECT commands to appear in the command string. The commands are executed using the snapshot previously established for the surrounding query. This execution mode is somewhat faster than the read/write mode due to eliminating per-command overhead. It also allows genuinely stable functions to be built: since successive executions will all use the same snapshot, there will be no change in the results.

It is generally unwise to mix read-only and read-write commands within a single function using SPI; that could result in very confusing behavior, since the read-only queries would not see the results of any database updates done by the read-write queries.

The actual number of rows for which the (last) command was executed is returned in the global variable SPI_processed. If the return value of the function is SPI_OK_SELECT, SPI_OK_INSERT_RETURNING, SPI_OK_DELETE_RETURNING, or SPI_OK_UPDATE_RETURNING, then you can use the global pointer SPITupleTable *SPI_tuptable to access the result rows. Some utility commands (such as EXPLAIN) also return row sets, and SPI_tuptable will contain the result in these cases too.

The structure SPITupleTable is defined thus:

typedef struct
{
    MemoryContext tuptabcxt;    /* memory context of result table */
    uint32      alloced;        /* number of alloced vals */
    uint32      free;           /* number of free vals */
    TupleDesc   tupdesc;        /* row descriptor */
    HeapTuple  *vals;           /* rows */
} SPITupleTable;

vals is an array of pointers to rows. (The number of valid entries is given by SPI_processed.) tupdesc is a row descriptor which you can pass to SPI functions dealing with rows. tuptabcxt, alloced, and free are internal fields not intended for use by SPI callers.

SPI_finish frees all SPITupleTables allocated during the current procedure. You can free a particular result table earlier, if you are done with it, by calling SPI_freetuptable.

Arguments

const char * command

string containing command to execute

bool read_only

true for read-only execution

long count

maximum number of rows to return, or 0 for no limit

Return Value

If the execution of the command was successful then one of the following (nonnegative) values will be returned:

SPI_OK_SELECT

if a SELECT (but not SELECT INTO) was executed

SPI_OK_SELINTO

if a SELECT INTO was executed

SPI_OK_INSERT

if an INSERT was executed

SPI_OK_DELETE

if a DELETE was executed

SPI_OK_UPDATE

if an UPDATE was executed

SPI_OK_INSERT_RETURNING

if an INSERT RETURNING was executed

SPI_OK_DELETE_RETURNING

if a DELETE RETURNING was executed

SPI_OK_UPDATE_RETURNING

if an UPDATE RETURNING was executed

SPI_OK_UTILITY

if a utility command (e.g., CREATE TABLE) was executed

SPI_OK_REWRITTEN

if the command was rewritten into another kind of command (e.g., UPDATE became an INSERT) by a rule.

On error, one of the following negative values is returned:

SPI_ERROR_ARGUMENT

if command is NULL or count is less than 0

SPI_ERROR_COPY

if COPY TO stdout or COPY FROM stdin was attempted

SPI_ERROR_TRANSACTION

if a transaction manipulation command was attempted (BEGIN, COMMIT, ROLLBACK, SAVEPOINT, PREPARE TRANSACTION, COMMIT PREPARED, ROLLBACK PREPARED, or any variant thereof)

SPI_ERROR_OPUNKNOWN

if the command type is unknown (shouldn't happen)

SPI_ERROR_UNCONNECTED

if called from an unconnected procedure

Notes

All SPI query-execution functions set both SPI_processed and SPI_tuptable (just the pointer, not the contents of the structure). Save these two global variables into local procedure variables if you need to access the result table of SPI_execute or another query-execution function across later calls.

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SPI_exec

Name

SPI_exec -- execute a read/write command

Synopsis

int SPI_exec(const char * command, long count)

Description

SPI_exec is the same as SPI_execute, with the latter's read_only parameter always taken as false.

Arguments

const char * command

string containing command to execute

long count

maximum number of rows to return, or 0 for no limit

Return Value

See SPI_execute.

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SPI_execute | Up | SPI_execute_with_args


SPI_execute_with_args

Name

SPI_execute_with_args -- execute a command with out-of-line parameters

Synopsis

int SPI_execute_with_args(const char *command,
                          int nargs, Oid *argtypes,
                          Datum *values, const char *nulls,
                          bool read_only, long count)

Description

SPI_execute_with_args executes a command that might include references to externally supplied parameters. The command text refers to a parameter as $n, and the call specifies data types and values for each such symbol. read_only and count have the same interpretation as in SPI_execute.

The main advantage of this routine compared to SPI_execute is that data values can be inserted into the command without tedious quoting/escaping, and thus with much less risk of SQL-injection attacks.

Similar results can be achieved with SPI_prepare followed by SPI_execute_plan; however, when using this function the query plan is customized to the specific parameter values provided. For one-time query execution, this function should be preferred. If the same command is to be executed with many different parameters, either method might be faster, depending on the cost of re-planning versus the benefit of custom plans.

Arguments

const char * command

command string

int nargs

number of input parameters ($1, $2, etc.)

Oid * argtypes

an array containing the OIDs of the data types of the parameters

Datum * values

an array of actual parameter values

const char * nulls

an array describing which parameters are null

If nulls is NULL then SPI_execute_with_args assumes that no parameters are null.

bool read_only

true for read-only execution

long count

maximum number of rows to return, or 0 for no limit

Return Value

The return value is the same as for SPI_execute.

SPI_processed and SPI_tuptable are set as in SPI_execute if successful.

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SPI_exec | Up | SPI_prepare


SPI_prepare

Name

SPI_prepare -- prepare a plan for a command, without executing it yet

Synopsis

SPIPlanPtr SPI_prepare(const char * command, int nargs, Oid * argtypes)

Description

SPI_prepare creates and returns an execution plan for the specified command, but doesn't execute the command. This function should only be called from a connected procedure.

When the same or a similar command is to be executed repeatedly, it might be advantageous to perform the planning only once. SPI_prepare converts a command string into an execution plan that can be executed repeatedly using SPI_execute_plan.

A prepared command can be generalized by writing parameters ($1, $2, etc.) in place of what would be constants in a normal command. The actual values of the parameters are then specified when SPI_execute_plan is called. This allows the prepared command to be used over a wider range of situations than would be possible without parameters.

The plan returned by SPI_prepare can be used only in the current invocation of the procedure, since SPI_finish frees memory allocated for a plan. But a plan can be saved for longer using the function SPI_saveplan.

Arguments

const char * command

command string

int nargs

number of input parameters ($1, $2, etc.)

Oid * argtypes

pointer to an array containing the OIDs of the data types of the parameters

Return Value

SPI_prepare returns a non-null pointer to an execution plan. On error, NULL will be returned, and SPI_result will be set to one of the same error codes used by SPI_execute, except that it is set to SPI_ERROR_ARGUMENT if command is NULL, or if nargs is less than 0, or if nargs is greater than 0 and argtypes is NULL.

Notes

SPIPlanPtr is declared as a pointer to an opaque struct type in spi.h. It is unwise to try to access its contents directly, as that makes your code much more likely to break in future revisions of PostgreSQL.

There is a disadvantage to using parameters: since the planner does not know the values that will be supplied for the parameters, it might make worse planning choices than it would make for a normal command with all constants visible.

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SPI_execute_with_args | Up | SPI_prepare_cursor


SPI_prepare_cursor

Name

SPI_prepare_cursor -- prepare a plan for a command, without executing it yet

Synopsis

SPIPlanPtr SPI_prepare_cursor(const char * command, int nargs,
                              Oid * argtypes, int cursorOptions)

Description

SPI_prepare_cursor is identical to SPI_prepare, except that it also allows specification of the planner's "cursor options" parameter. This is a bit mask having the values shown in nodes/parsenodes.h for the options field of DeclareCursorStmt. SPI_prepare always takes the cursor options as zero.

Arguments

const char * command

command string

int nargs

number of input parameters ($1, $2, etc.)

Oid * argtypes

pointer to an array containing the OIDs of the data types of the parameters

int cursorOptions

integer bit mask of cursor options; zero produces default behavior

Return Value

SPI_prepare_cursor has the same return conventions as SPI_prepare.

Notes

Useful bits to set in cursorOptions include CURSOR_OPT_SCROLL, CURSOR_OPT_NO_SCROLL, and CURSOR_OPT_FAST_PLAN. Note in particular that CURSOR_OPT_HOLD is ignored.

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SPI_prepare | Up | SPI_prepare_params


SPI_prepare_params

Name

SPI_prepare_params -- prepare a plan for a command, without executing it yet

Synopsis

SPIPlanPtr SPI_prepare_params(const char * command,
                              ParserSetupHook parserSetup,
                              void * parserSetupArg,
                              int cursorOptions)

Description

SPI_prepare_params creates and returns an execution plan for the specified command, but doesn't execute the command. This function is equivalent to SPI_prepare_cursor, with the addition that the caller can specify parser hook functions to control the parsing of external parameter references.

Arguments

const char * command

command string

ParserSetupHook parserSetup

Parser hook setup function

void * parserSetupArg

passthrough argument for parserSetup

int cursorOptions

integer bit mask of cursor options; zero produces default behavior

Return Value

SPI_prepare_params has the same return conventions as SPI_prepare.

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SPI_prepare_cursor | Up | SPI_getargcount


SPI_getargcount

Name

SPI_getargcount -- return the number of arguments needed by a plan prepared by SPI_prepare

Synopsis

int SPI_getargcount(SPIPlanPtr plan)

Description

SPI_getargcount returns the number of arguments needed to execute a plan prepared by SPI_prepare.

Arguments

SPIPlanPtr plan

execution plan (returned by SPI_prepare)

Return Value

The count of expected arguments for the plan. If the plan is NULL or invalid, SPI_result is set to SPI_ERROR_ARGUMENT and -1 is returned.

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SPI_prepare_params | Up | SPI_getargtypeid


SPI_getargtypeid

Name

SPI_getargtypeid -- return the data type OID for an argument of a plan prepared by SPI_prepare

Synopsis

Oid SPI_getargtypeid(SPIPlanPtr plan, int argIndex)

Description

SPI_getargtypeid returns the OID representing the type for the argIndex'th argument of a plan prepared by SPI_prepare. First argument is at index zero.

Arguments

SPIPlanPtr plan

execution plan (returned by SPI_prepare)

int argIndex

zero based index of the argument

Return Value

The type OID of the argument at the given index. If the plan is NULL or invalid, or argIndex is less than 0 or not less than the number of arguments declared for the plan, SPI_result is set to SPI_ERROR_ARGUMENT and InvalidOid is returned.

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SPI_getargcount | Up | SPI_is_cursor_plan


SPI_is_cursor_plan

Name

SPI_is_cursor_plan -- return true if a plan prepared by SPI_prepare can be used with SPI_cursor_open

Synopsis

bool SPI_is_cursor_plan(SPIPlanPtr plan)

Description

SPI_is_cursor_plan returns true if a plan prepared by SPI_prepare can be passed as an argument to SPI_cursor_open, or false if that is not the case. The criteria are that the plan represents one single command and that this command returns tuples to the caller; for example, SELECT is allowed unless it contains an INTO clause, and UPDATE is allowed only if it contains a RETURNING clause.

Arguments

SPIPlanPtr plan

execution plan (returned by SPI_prepare)

Return Value

true or false to indicate if the plan can produce a cursor or not, with SPI_result set to zero. If it is not possible to determine the answer (for example, if the plan is NULL or invalid, or if called when not connected to SPI), then SPI_result is set to a suitable error code and false is returned.

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SPI_getargtypeid | Up | SPI_execute_plan


SPI_execute_plan

Name

SPI_execute_plan -- execute a plan prepared by SPI_prepare

Synopsis

int SPI_execute_plan(SPIPlanPtr plan, Datum * values, const char * nulls,
                     bool read_only, long count)

Description

SPI_execute_plan executes a plan prepared by SPI_prepare. read_only and count have the same interpretation as in SPI_execute.

Arguments

SPIPlanPtr plan

execution plan (returned by SPI_prepare)

Datum * values

An array of actual parameter values. Must have same length as the plan's number of arguments.

const char * nulls

An array describing which parameters are null. Must have same length as the plan's number of arguments. n indicates a null value (entry in values will be ignored); a space indicates a nonnull value (entry in values is valid).

If nulls is NULL then SPI_execute_plan assumes that no parameters are null.

bool read_only

true for read-only execution

long count

maximum number of rows to return, or 0 for no limit

Return Value

The return value is the same as for SPI_execute, with the following additional possible error (negative) results:

SPI_ERROR_ARGUMENT

if plan is NULL or invalid, or count is less than 0

SPI_ERROR_PARAM

if values is NULL and plan was prepared with some parameters

SPI_processed and SPI_tuptable are set as in SPI_execute if successful.

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SPI_is_cursor_plan | Up | SPI_execute_plan_with_paramlist


SPI_execute_plan_with_paramlist

Name

SPI_execute_plan_with_paramlist -- execute a plan prepared by SPI_prepare

Synopsis

int SPI_execute_plan_with_paramlist(SPIPlanPtr plan,
                                    ParamListInfo params,
                                    bool read_only,
                                    long count)

Description

SPI_execute_plan_with_paramlist executes a plan prepared by SPI_prepare. This function is equivalent to SPI_execute_plan except that information about the parameter values to be passed to the query is presented differently. The ParamListInfo representation can be convenient for passing down values that are already available in that format. It also supports use of dynamic parameter sets via hook functions specified in ParamListInfo.

Arguments

SPIPlanPtr plan

execution plan (returned by SPI_prepare)

ParamListInfo params

data structure containing parameter types and values; NULL if none

bool read_only

true for read-only execution

long count

maximum number of rows to return, or 0 for no limit

Return Value

The return value is the same as for SPI_execute_plan.

SPI_processed and SPI_tuptable are set as in SPI_execute_plan if successful.

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SPI_execute_plan | Up | SPI_execp


SPI_execp

Name

SPI_execp -- execute a plan in read/write mode

Synopsis

int SPI_execp(SPIPlanPtr plan, Datum * values, const char * nulls, long count)

Description

SPI_execp is the same as SPI_execute_plan, with the latter's read_only parameter always taken as false.

Arguments

SPIPlanPtr plan

execution plan (returned by SPI_prepare)

Datum * values

An array of actual parameter values. Must have same length as the plan's number of arguments.

const char * nulls

An array describing which parameters are null. Must have same length as the plan's number of arguments. n indicates a null value (entry in values will be ignored); a space indicates a nonnull value (entry in values is valid).

If nulls is NULL then SPI_execp assumes that no parameters are null.

long count

maximum number of rows to return, or 0 for no limit

Return Value

See SPI_execute_plan.

SPI_processed and SPI_tuptable are set as in SPI_execute if successful.

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SPI_execute_plan_with_paramlist | Up | SPI_cursor_open


SPI_cursor_open

Name

SPI_cursor_open -- set up a cursor using a plan created with SPI_prepare

Synopsis

Portal SPI_cursor_open(const char * name, SPIPlanPtr plan,
                       Datum * values, const char * nulls,
                       bool read_only)

Description

SPI_cursor_open sets up a cursor (internally, a portal) that will execute a plan prepared by SPI_prepare. The parameters have the same meanings as the corresponding parameters to SPI_execute_plan.

Using a cursor instead of executing the plan directly has two benefits. First, the result rows can be retrieved a few at a time, avoiding memory overrun for queries that return many rows. Second, a portal can outlive the current procedure (it can, in fact, live to the end of the current transaction). Returning the portal name to the procedure's caller provides a way of returning a row set as result.

The passed-in parameter data will be copied into the cursor's portal, so it can be freed while the cursor still exists.

Arguments

const char * name

name for portal, or NULL to let the system select a name

SPIPlanPtr plan

execution plan (returned by SPI_prepare)

Datum * values

An array of actual parameter values. Must have same length as the plan's number of arguments.

const char * nulls

An array describing which parameters are null. Must have same length as the plan's number of arguments. n indicates a null value (entry in values will be ignored); a space indicates a nonnull value (entry in values is valid).

If nulls is NULL then SPI_cursor_open assumes that no parameters are null.

bool read_only

true for read-only execution

Return Value

Pointer to portal containing the cursor. Note there is no error return convention; any error will be reported via elog.

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SPI_execp | Up | SPI_cursor_open_with_args


SPI_cursor_open_with_args

Name

SPI_cursor_open_with_args -- set up a cursor using a query and parameters

Synopsis

Portal SPI_cursor_open_with_args(const char *name,
                                 const char *command,
                                 int nargs, Oid *argtypes,
                                 Datum *values, const char *nulls,
                                 bool read_only, int cursorOptions)

Description

SPI_cursor_open_with_args sets up a cursor (internally, a portal) that will execute the specified query. Most of the parameters have the same meanings as the corresponding parameters to SPI_prepare_cursor and SPI_cursor_open.

For one-time query execution, this function should be preferred over SPI_prepare_cursor followed by SPI_cursor_open. If the same command is to be executed with many different parameters, either method might be faster, depending on the cost of re-planning versus the benefit of custom plans.

The passed-in parameter data will be copied into the cursor's portal, so it can be freed while the cursor still exists.

Arguments

const char * name

name for portal, or NULL to let the system select a name

const char * command

command string

int nargs

number of input parameters ($1, $2, etc.)

Oid * argtypes

an array containing the OIDs of the data types of the parameters

Datum * values

an array of actual parameter values

const char * nulls

an array describing which parameters are null

If nulls is NULL then SPI_cursor_open_with_args assumes that no parameters are null.

bool read_only

true for read-only execution

int cursorOptions

integer bit mask of cursor options; zero produces default behavior

Return Value

Pointer to portal containing the cursor. Note there is no error return convention; any error will be reported via elog.

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SPI_cursor_open | Up | SPI_cursor_open_with_paramlist


SPI_cursor_open_with_paramlist

Name

SPI_cursor_open_with_paramlist -- set up a cursor using parameters

Synopsis

Portal SPI_cursor_open_with_paramlist(const char *name,
                                      SPIPlanPtr plan,
                                      ParamListInfo params,
                                      bool read_only)

Description

SPI_cursor_open_with_paramlist sets up a cursor (internally, a portal) that will execute a plan prepared by SPI_prepare. This function is equivalent to SPI_cursor_open except that information about the parameter values to be passed to the query is presented differently. The ParamListInfo representation can be convenient for passing down values that are already available in that format. It also supports use of dynamic parameter sets via hook functions specified in ParamListInfo.

The passed-in parameter data will be copied into the cursor's portal, so it can be freed while the cursor still exists.

Arguments

const char * name

name for portal, or NULL to let the system select a name

SPIPlanPtr plan

execution plan (returned by SPI_prepare)

ParamListInfo params

data structure containing parameter types and values; NULL if none

bool read_only

true for read-only execution

Return Value

Pointer to portal containing the cursor. Note there is no error return convention; any error will be reported via elog.

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SPI_cursor_open_with_args | Up | SPI_cursor_find


SPI_cursor_find

Name

SPI_cursor_find -- find an existing cursor by name

Synopsis

Portal SPI_cursor_find(const char * name)

Description

SPI_cursor_find finds an existing portal by name. This is primarily useful to resolve a cursor name returned as text by some other function.

Arguments

const char * name

name of the portal

Return Value

pointer to the portal with the specified name, or NULL if none was found

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SPI_cursor_open_with_paramlist | Up | SPI_cursor_fetch


SPI_cursor_fetch

Name

SPI_cursor_fetch -- fetch some rows from a cursor

Synopsis

void SPI_cursor_fetch(Portal portal, bool forward, long count)

Description

SPI_cursor_fetch fetches some rows from a cursor. This is equivalent to a subset of the SQL command FETCH (see SPI_scroll_cursor_fetch for more functionality).

Arguments

Portal portal

portal containing the cursor

bool forward

true for fetch forward, false for fetch backward

long count

maximum number of rows to fetch

Return Value

SPI_processed and SPI_tuptable are set as in SPI_execute if successful.

Notes

Fetching backward may fail if the cursor's plan was not created with the CURSOR_OPT_SCROLL option.

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SPI_cursor_find | Up | SPI_cursor_move


SPI_cursor_move

Name

SPI_cursor_move -- move a cursor

Synopsis

void SPI_cursor_move(Portal portal, bool forward, long count)

Description

SPI_cursor_move skips over some number of rows in a cursor. This is equivalent to a subset of the SQL command MOVE (see SPI_scroll_cursor_move for more functionality).

Arguments

Portal portal

portal containing the cursor

bool forward

true for move forward, false for move backward

long count

maximum number of rows to move

Notes

Moving backward may fail if the cursor's plan was not created with the CURSOR_OPT_SCROLL option.

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SPI_cursor_fetch | Up | SPI_scroll_cursor_fetch


SPI_scroll_cursor_fetch

Name

SPI_scroll_cursor_fetch -- fetch some rows from a cursor

Synopsis

void SPI_scroll_cursor_fetch(Portal portal, FetchDirection direction,
                             long count)

Description

SPI_scroll_cursor_fetch fetches some rows from a cursor. This is equivalent to the SQL command FETCH.

Arguments

Portal portal

portal containing the cursor

FetchDirection direction

one of FETCH_FORWARD, FETCH_BACKWARD, FETCH_ABSOLUTE or FETCH_RELATIVE

long count

number of rows to fetch for FETCH_FORWARD or FETCH_BACKWARD; absolute row number to fetch for FETCH_ABSOLUTE; or relative row number to fetch for FETCH_RELATIVE

Return Value

SPI_processed and SPI_tuptable are set as in SPI_execute if successful.

Notes

See the SQL FETCH command for details of the interpretation of the direction and count parameters.

Direction values other than FETCH_FORWARD may fail if the cursor's plan was not created with the CURSOR_OPT_SCROLL option.

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SPI_cursor_move | Up | SPI_scroll_cursor_move


SPI_scroll_cursor_move

Name

SPI_scroll_cursor_move -- move a cursor

Synopsis

void SPI_scroll_cursor_move(Portal portal, FetchDirection direction,
                            long count)

Description

SPI_scroll_cursor_move skips over some number of rows in a cursor. This is equivalent to the SQL command MOVE.

Arguments

Portal portal

portal containing the cursor

FetchDirection direction

one of FETCH_FORWARD, FETCH_BACKWARD, FETCH_ABSOLUTE or FETCH_RELATIVE

long count

number of rows to move for FETCH_FORWARD or FETCH_BACKWARD; absolute row number to move to for FETCH_ABSOLUTE; or relative row number to move to for FETCH_RELATIVE

Return Value

SPI_processed is set as in SPI_execute if successful. SPI_tuptable is set to NULL, since no rows are returned by this function.

Notes

See the SQL FETCH command for details of the interpretation of the direction and count parameters.

Direction values other than FETCH_FORWARD may fail if the cursor's plan was not created with the CURSOR_OPT_SCROLL option.

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SPI_scroll_cursor_fetch | Up | SPI_cursor_close


SPI_cursor_close

Name

SPI_cursor_close -- close a cursor

Synopsis

void SPI_cursor_close(Portal portal)

Description

SPI_cursor_close closes a previously created cursor and releases its portal storage.

All open cursors are closed automatically at the end of a transaction. SPI_cursor_close need only be invoked if it is desirable to release resources sooner.

Arguments

Portal portal

portal containing the cursor

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SPI_scroll_cursor_move | Up | SPI_saveplan


SPI_saveplan

Name

SPI_saveplan -- save a plan

Synopsis

SPIPlanPtr SPI_saveplan(SPIPlanPtr plan)

Description

SPI_saveplan saves a passed plan (prepared by SPI_prepare) in memory that will not be freed by SPI_finish nor by the transaction manager, and returns a pointer to the saved plan. This gives you the ability to reuse prepared plans in the subsequent invocations of your procedure in the current session.

Arguments

SPIPlanPtr plan

the plan to be saved

Return Value

Pointer to the saved plan; NULL if unsuccessful. On error, SPI_result is set thus:

SPI_ERROR_ARGUMENT

if plan is NULL or invalid

SPI_ERROR_UNCONNECTED

if called from an unconnected procedure

Notes

The passed-in plan is not freed, so you might wish to do SPI_freeplan on it to avoid leaking memory until SPI_finish.

If one of the objects (a table, function, etc.) referenced by the prepared plan is dropped or redefined, then future executions of SPI_execute_plan may fail or return different results than the plan initially indicates.

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SPI_cursor_close | Up | Interface Support Functions


Interface Support Functions

Prev Up Chapter 43. Server Programming Interface Next

43.2. Interface Support Functions

Table of Contents
SPI_fname -- determine the column name for the specified column number
SPI_fnumber -- determine the column number for the specified column name
SPI_getvalue -- return the string value of the specified column
SPI_getbinval -- return the binary value of the specified column
SPI_gettype -- return the data type name of the specified column
SPI_gettypeid -- return the data type OID of the specified column
SPI_getrelname -- return the name of the specified relation
SPI_getnspname -- return the namespace of the specified relation

The functions described here provide an interface for extracting information from result sets returned by SPI_execute and other SPI functions.

All functions described in this section can be used by both connected and unconnected procedures.

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SPI_saveplan | Up | SPI_fname


SPI_fname

Name

SPI_fname -- determine the column name for the specified column number

Synopsis

char * SPI_fname(TupleDesc rowdesc, int colnumber)

Description

SPI_fname returns a copy of the column name of the specified column. (You can use pfree to release the copy of the name when you don't need it anymore.)

Arguments

TupleDesc rowdesc

input row description

int colnumber

column number (count starts at 1)

Return Value

The column name; NULL if colnumber is out of range. SPI_result set to SPI_ERROR_NOATTRIBUTE on error.

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Interface Support Functions | Up | SPI_fnumber


SPI_fnumber

Name

SPI_fnumber -- determine the column number for the specified column name

Synopsis

int SPI_fnumber(TupleDesc rowdesc, const char * colname)

Description

SPI_fnumber returns the column number for the column with the specified name.

If colname refers to a system column (e.g., oid) then the appropriate negative column number will be returned. The caller should be careful to test the return value for exact equality to SPI_ERROR_NOATTRIBUTE to detect an error; testing the result for less than or equal to 0 is not correct unless system columns should be rejected.

Arguments

TupleDesc rowdesc

input row description

const char * colname

column name

Return Value

Column number (count starts at 1), or SPI_ERROR_NOATTRIBUTE if the named column was not found.

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SPI_fname | Up | SPI_getvalue


SPI_getvalue

Name

SPI_getvalue -- return the string value of the specified column

Synopsis

char * SPI_getvalue(HeapTuple row, TupleDesc rowdesc, int colnumber)

Description

SPI_getvalue returns the string representation of the value of the specified column.

The result is returned in memory allocated using palloc. (You can use pfree to release the memory when you don't need it anymore.)

Arguments

HeapTuple row

input row to be examined

TupleDesc rowdesc

input row description

int colnumber

column number (count starts at 1)

Return Value

Column value, or NULL if the column is null, colnumber is out of range (SPI_result is set to SPI_ERROR_NOATTRIBUTE), or no output function is available (SPI_result is set to SPI_ERROR_NOOUTFUNC).

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SPI_fnumber | Up | SPI_getbinval


SPI_getbinval

Name

SPI_getbinval -- return the binary value of the specified column

Synopsis

Datum SPI_getbinval(HeapTuple row, TupleDesc rowdesc, int colnumber,
                    bool * isnull)

Description

SPI_getbinval returns the value of the specified column in the internal form (as type Datum).

This function does not allocate new space for the datum. In the case of a pass-by-reference data type, the return value will be a pointer into the passed row.

Arguments

HeapTuple row

input row to be examined

TupleDesc rowdesc

input row description

int colnumber

column number (count starts at 1)

bool * isnull

flag for a null value in the column

Return Value

The binary value of the column is returned. The variable pointed to by isnull is set to true if the column is null, else to false.

SPI_result is set to SPI_ERROR_NOATTRIBUTE on error.

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SPI_getvalue | Up | SPI_gettype


SPI_gettype

Name

SPI_gettype -- return the data type name of the specified column

Synopsis

char * SPI_gettype(TupleDesc rowdesc, int colnumber)

Description

SPI_gettype returns a copy of the data type name of the specified column. (You can use pfree to release the copy of the name when you don't need it anymore.)

Arguments

TupleDesc rowdesc

input row description

int colnumber

column number (count starts at 1)

Return Value

The data type name of the specified column, or NULL on error. SPI_result is set to SPI_ERROR_NOATTRIBUTE on error.

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SPI_getbinval | Up | SPI_gettypeid


SPI_gettypeid

Name

SPI_gettypeid -- return the data type OID of the specified column

Synopsis

Oid SPI_gettypeid(TupleDesc rowdesc, int colnumber)

Description

SPI_gettypeid returns the OID of the data type of the specified column.

Arguments

TupleDesc rowdesc

input row description

int colnumber

column number (count starts at 1)

Return Value

The OID of the data type of the specified column or InvalidOid on error. On error, SPI_result is set to SPI_ERROR_NOATTRIBUTE.

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SPI_gettype | Up | SPI_getrelname


SPI_getrelname

Name

SPI_getrelname -- return the name of the specified relation

Synopsis

char * SPI_getrelname(Relation rel)

Description

SPI_getrelname returns a copy of the name of the specified relation. (You can use pfree to release the copy of the name when you don't need it anymore.)

Arguments

Relation rel

input relation

Return Value

The name of the specified relation.

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SPI_gettypeid | Up | SPI_getnspname


SPI_getnspname

Name

SPI_getnspname -- return the namespace of the specified relation

Synopsis

char * SPI_getnspname(Relation rel)

Description

SPI_getnspname returns a copy of the name of the namespace that the specified Relation belongs to. This is equivalent to the relation's schema. You should pfree the return value of this function when you are finished with it.

Arguments

Relation rel

input relation

Return Value

The name of the specified relation's namespace.

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SPI_getrelname | Up | Memory Management


Memory Management

Prev Up Chapter 43. Server Programming Interface Next

43.3. Memory Management

Table of Contents
SPI_palloc -- allocate memory in the upper executor context
SPI_repalloc -- reallocate memory in the upper executor context
SPI_pfree -- free memory in the upper executor context
SPI_copytuple -- make a copy of a row in the upper executor context
SPI_returntuple -- prepare to return a tuple as a Datum
SPI_modifytuple -- create a row by replacing selected fields of a given row
SPI_freetuple -- free a row allocated in the upper executor context
SPI_freetuptable -- free a row set created by SPI_execute or a similar function
SPI_freeplan -- free a previously saved plan

PostgreSQL allocates memory within memory contexts, which provide a convenient method of managing allocations made in many different places that need to live for differing amounts of time. Destroying a context releases all the memory that was allocated in it. Thus, it is not necessary to keep track of individual objects to avoid memory leaks; instead only a relatively small number of contexts have to be managed. palloc and related functions allocate memory from the "current" context.

SPI_connect creates a new memory context and makes it current. SPI_finish restores the previous current memory context and destroys the context created by SPI_connect. These actions ensure that transient memory allocations made inside your procedure are reclaimed at procedure exit, avoiding memory leakage.

However, if your procedure needs to return an object in allocated memory (such as a value of a pass-by-reference data type), you cannot allocate that memory using palloc, at least not while you are connected to SPI. If you try, the object will be deallocated by SPI_finish, and your procedure will not work reliably. To solve this problem, use SPI_palloc to allocate memory for your return object. SPI_palloc allocates memory in the "upper executor context", that is, the memory context that was current when SPI_connect was called, which is precisely the right context for a value returned from your procedure.

If SPI_palloc is called while the procedure is not connected to SPI, then it acts the same as a normal palloc. Before a procedure connects to the SPI manager, the current memory context is the upper executor context, so all allocations made by the procedure via palloc or by SPI utility functions are made in this context.

When SPI_connect is called, the private context of the procedure, which is created by SPI_connect, is made the current context. All allocations made by palloc, repalloc, or SPI utility functions (except for SPI_copytuple, SPI_returntuple, SPI_modifytuple, and SPI_palloc) are made in this context. When a procedure disconnects from the SPI manager (via SPI_finish) the current context is restored to the upper executor context, and all allocations made in the procedure memory context are freed and cannot be used any more.

All functions described in this section can be used by both connected and unconnected procedures. In an unconnected procedure, they act the same as the underlying ordinary server functions (palloc, etc.).

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SPI_getnspname | Up | SPI_palloc


SPI_palloc

Name

SPI_palloc -- allocate memory in the upper executor context

Synopsis

void * SPI_palloc(Size size)

Description

SPI_palloc allocates memory in the upper executor context.

Arguments

Size size

size in bytes of storage to allocate

Return Value

pointer to new storage space of the specified size

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Memory Management | Up | SPI_repalloc


SPI_repalloc

Name

SPI_repalloc -- reallocate memory in the upper executor context

Synopsis

void * SPI_repalloc(void * pointer, Size size)

Description

SPI_repalloc changes the size of a memory segment previously allocated using SPI_palloc.

This function is no longer different from plain repalloc. It's kept just for backward compatibility of existing code.

Arguments

void * pointer

pointer to existing storage to change

Size size

size in bytes of storage to allocate

Return Value

pointer to new storage space of specified size with the contents copied from the existing area

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SPI_palloc | Up | SPI_pfree


SPI_pfree

Name

SPI_pfree -- free memory in the upper executor context

Synopsis

void SPI_pfree(void * pointer)

Description

SPI_pfree frees memory previously allocated using SPI_palloc or SPI_repalloc.

This function is no longer different from plain pfree. It's kept just for backward compatibility of existing code.

Arguments

void * pointer

pointer to existing storage to free

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SPI_repalloc | Up | SPI_copytuple


SPI_copytuple

Name

SPI_copytuple -- make a copy of a row in the upper executor context

Synopsis

HeapTuple SPI_copytuple(HeapTuple row)

Description

SPI_copytuple makes a copy of a row in the upper executor context. This is normally used to return a modified row from a trigger. In a function declared to return a composite type, use SPI_returntuple instead.

Arguments

HeapTuple row

row to be copied

Return Value

the copied row; NULL only if tuple is NULL

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SPI_pfree | Up | SPI_returntuple


SPI_returntuple

Name

SPI_returntuple -- prepare to return a tuple as a Datum

Synopsis

HeapTupleHeader SPI_returntuple(HeapTuple row, TupleDesc rowdesc)

Description

SPI_returntuple makes a copy of a row in the upper executor context, returning it in the form of a row type Datum. The returned pointer need only be converted to Datum via PointerGetDatum before returning.

Note that this should be used for functions that are declared to return composite types. It is not used for triggers; use SPI_copytuple for returning a modified row in a trigger.

Arguments

HeapTuple row

row to be copied

TupleDesc rowdesc

descriptor for row (pass the same descriptor each time for most effective caching)

Return Value

HeapTupleHeader pointing to copied row; NULL only if row or rowdesc is NULL

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SPI_copytuple | Up | SPI_modifytuple


SPI_modifytuple

Name

SPI_modifytuple -- create a row by replacing selected fields of a given row

Synopsis

HeapTuple SPI_modifytuple(Relation rel, HeapTuple row, int ncols,
                          int * colnum, Datum * values, const char * nulls)

Description

SPI_modifytuple creates a new row by substituting new values for selected columns, copying the original row's columns at other positions. The input row is not modified.

Arguments

Relation rel

Used only as the source of the row descriptor for the row. (Passing a relation rather than a row descriptor is a misfeature.)

HeapTuple row

row to be modified

int ncols

number of column numbers in the array colnum

int * colnum

array of the numbers of the columns that are to be changed (column numbers start at 1)

Datum * values

new values for the specified columns

const char * Nulls

which new values are null, if any (see SPI_execute_plan for the format)

Return Value

new row with modifications, allocated in the upper executor context; NULL only if row is NULL

On error, SPI_result is set as follows:

SPI_ERROR_ARGUMENT

if rel is NULL, or if row is NULL, or if ncols is less than or equal to 0, or if colnum is NULL, or if values is NULL.

SPI_ERROR_NOATTRIBUTE

if colnum contains an invalid column number (less than or equal to 0 or greater than the number of column in row)

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SPI_returntuple | Up | SPI_freetuple


SPI_freetuple

Name

SPI_freetuple -- free a row allocated in the upper executor context

Synopsis

void SPI_freetuple(HeapTuple row)

Description

SPI_freetuple frees a row previously allocated in the upper executor context.

This function is no longer different from plain heap_freetuple. It's kept just for backward compatibility of existing code.

Arguments

HeapTuple row

row to free

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SPI_modifytuple | Up | SPI_freetuptable


SPI_freetuptable

Name

SPI_freetuptable -- free a row set created by SPI_execute or a similar function

Synopsis

void SPI_freetuptable(SPITupleTable * tuptable)

Description

SPI_freetuptable frees a row set created by a prior SPI command execution function, such as SPI_execute. Therefore, this function is usually called with the global variable SPI_tupletable as argument.

This function is useful if a SPI procedure needs to execute multiple commands and does not want to keep the results of earlier commands around until it ends. Note that any unfreed row sets will be freed anyway at SPI_finish.

Arguments

SPITupleTable * tuptable

pointer to row set to free

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SPI_freetuple | Up | SPI_freeplan


SPI_freeplan

Name

SPI_freeplan -- free a previously saved plan

Synopsis

int SPI_freeplan(SPIPlanPtr plan)

Description

SPI_freeplan releases a command execution plan previously returned by SPI_prepare or saved by SPI_saveplan.

Arguments

SPIPlanPtr plan

pointer to plan to free

Return Value

SPI_ERROR_ARGUMENT if plan is NULL or invalid

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SPI_freetuptable | Up | Visibility of Data Changes


Visibility of Data Changes

Prev Up Chapter 43. Server Programming Interface Next

43.4. Visibility of Data Changes

The following rules govern the visibility of data changes in functions that use SPI (or any other C function):

  • During the execution of an SQL command, any data changes made by the command are invisible to the command itself. For example, in:

    INSERT INTO a SELECT * FROM a;

    the inserted rows are invisible to the SELECT part.

  • Changes made by a command C are visible to all commands that are started after C, no matter whether they are started inside C (during the execution of C) or after C is done.

  • Commands executed via SPI inside a function called by an SQL command (either an ordinary function or a trigger) follow one or the other of the above rules depending on the read/write flag passed to SPI. Commands executed in read-only mode follow the first rule: they cannot see changes of the calling command. Commands executed in read-write mode follow the second rule: they can see all changes made so far.

  • All standard procedural languages set the SPI read-write mode depending on the volatility attribute of the function. Commands of STABLE and IMMUTABLE functions are done in read-only mode, while commands of VOLATILE functions are done in read-write mode. While authors of C functions are able to violate this convention, it's unlikely to be a good idea to do so.

The next section contains an example that illustrates the application of these rules.

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SPI_freeplan | Up | Examples


Examples

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43.5. Examples

This section contains a very simple example of SPI usage. The procedure execq takes an SQL command as its first argument and a row count as its second, executes the command using SPI_exec and returns the number of rows that were processed by the command. You can find more complex examples for SPI in the source tree in src/test/regress/regress.c and in the spi module.

#include "postgres.h"

#include "executor/spi.h"
#include "utils/builtins.h"

#ifdef PG_MODULE_MAGIC
PG_MODULE_MAGIC;
#endif

int execq(text *sql, int cnt);

int
execq(text *sql, int cnt)
{
    char *command;
    int ret;
    int proc;

    /* Convert given text object to a C string */
    command = text_to_cstring(sql);

    SPI_connect();

    ret = SPI_exec(command, cnt);

    proc = SPI_processed;
    /*
     * If some rows were fetched, print them via elog(INFO).
     */
    if (ret > 0 && SPI_tuptable != NULL)
    {
        TupleDesc tupdesc = SPI_tuptable->tupdesc;
        SPITupleTable *tuptable = SPI_tuptable;
        char buf[8192];
        int i, j;

        for (j = 0; j < proc; j++)
        {
            HeapTuple tuple = tuptable->vals[j];

            for (i = 1, buf[0] = 0; i <= tupdesc->natts; i++)
                snprintf(buf + strlen (buf), sizeof(buf) - strlen(buf), " %s%s",
                        SPI_getvalue(tuple, tupdesc, i),
                        (i == tupdesc->natts) ? " " : " |");
            elog(INFO, "EXECQ: %s", buf);
        }
    }

    SPI_finish();
    pfree(command);

    return (proc);
}

(This function uses call convention version 0, to make the example easier to understand. In real applications you should use the new version 1 interface.)

This is how you declare the function after having compiled it into a shared library (details are in Section 35.9.6.):

CREATE FUNCTION execq(text, integer) RETURNS integer
    AS 'filename'
    LANGUAGE C;

Here is a sample session:

=> SELECT execq('CREATE TABLE a (x integer)', 0);
 execq
-------
     0
(1 row)

=> INSERT INTO a VALUES (execq('INSERT INTO a VALUES (0)', 0));
INSERT 0 1
=> SELECT execq('SELECT * FROM a', 0);
INFO:  EXECQ:  0    -- inserted by execq
INFO:  EXECQ:  1    -- returned by execq and inserted by upper INSERT

 execq
-------
     2
(1 row)

=> SELECT execq('INSERT INTO a SELECT x + 2 FROM a', 1);
 execq
-------
     1
(1 row)

=> SELECT execq('SELECT * FROM a', 10);
INFO:  EXECQ:  0
INFO:  EXECQ:  1
INFO:  EXECQ:  2    -- 0 + 2, only one row inserted - as specified

 execq
-------
     3              -- 10 is the max value only, 3 is the real number of rows
(1 row)

=> DELETE FROM a;
DELETE 3
=> INSERT INTO a VALUES (execq('SELECT * FROM a', 0) + 1);
INSERT 0 1
=> SELECT * FROM a;
 x
---
 1                  -- no rows in a (0) + 1
(1 row)

=> INSERT INTO a VALUES (execq('SELECT * FROM a', 0) + 1);
INFO:  EXECQ:  1
INSERT 0 1
=> SELECT * FROM a;
 x
---
 1
 2                  -- there was one row in a + 1
(2 rows)

-- This demonstrates the data changes visibility rule:

=> INSERT INTO a SELECT execq('SELECT * FROM a', 0) * x FROM a;
INFO:  EXECQ:  1
INFO:  EXECQ:  2
INFO:  EXECQ:  1
INFO:  EXECQ:  2
INFO:  EXECQ:  2
INSERT 0 2
=> SELECT * FROM a;
 x
---
 1
 2
 2                  -- 2 rows * 1 (x in first row)
 6                  -- 3 rows (2 + 1 just inserted) * 2 (x in second row)
(4 rows)               ^^^^^^
                       rows visible to execq() in different invocations

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Visibility of Data Changes | Up | Reference


Reference

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VI. Reference

The entries in this Reference are meant to provide in reasonable length an authoritative, complete, and formal summary about their respective subjects. More information about the use of PostgreSQL, in narrative, tutorial, or example form, can be found in other parts of this book. See the cross-references listed on each reference page.

The reference entries are also available as traditional "man" pages.

Table of Contents
I. SQL Commands
ABORT -- abort the current transaction
ALTER AGGREGATE -- change the definition of an aggregate function
ALTER COLLATION -- change the definition of a collation
ALTER CONVERSION -- change the definition of a conversion
ALTER DATABASE -- change a database
ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES -- define default access privileges
ALTER DOMAIN -- change the definition of a domain
ALTER EXTENSION -- change the definition of an extension
ALTER FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER -- change the definition of a foreign-data wrapper
ALTER FOREIGN TABLE -- change the definition of a foreign table
ALTER FUNCTION -- change the definition of a function
ALTER GROUP -- change role name or membership
ALTER INDEX -- change the definition of an index
ALTER LANGUAGE -- change the definition of a procedural language
ALTER LARGE OBJECT -- change the definition of a large object
ALTER OPERATOR -- change the definition of an operator
ALTER OPERATOR CLASS -- change the definition of an operator class
ALTER OPERATOR FAMILY -- change the definition of an operator family
ALTER ROLE -- change a database role
ALTER SCHEMA -- change the definition of a schema
ALTER SEQUENCE -- change the definition of a sequence generator
ALTER SERVER -- change the definition of a foreign server
ALTER TABLE -- change the definition of a table
ALTER TABLESPACE -- change the definition of a tablespace
ALTER TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION -- change the definition of a text search configuration
ALTER TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY -- change the definition of a text search dictionary
ALTER TEXT SEARCH PARSER -- change the definition of a text search parser
ALTER TEXT SEARCH TEMPLATE -- change the definition of a text search template
ALTER TRIGGER -- change the definition of a trigger
ALTER TYPE -- change the definition of a type
ALTER USER -- change a database role
ALTER USER MAPPING -- change the definition of a user mapping
ALTER VIEW -- change the definition of a view
ANALYZE -- collect statistics about a database
BEGIN -- start a transaction block
CHECKPOINT -- force a transaction log checkpoint
CLOSE -- close a cursor
CLUSTER -- cluster a table according to an index
COMMENT -- define or change the comment of an object
COMMIT -- commit the current transaction
COMMIT PREPARED -- commit a transaction that was earlier prepared for two-phase commit
COPY -- copy data between a file and a table
CREATE AGGREGATE -- define a new aggregate function
CREATE CAST -- define a new cast
CREATE COLLATION -- define a new collation
CREATE CONVERSION -- define a new encoding conversion
CREATE DATABASE -- create a new database
CREATE DOMAIN -- define a new domain
CREATE EXTENSION -- install an extension
CREATE FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER -- define a new foreign-data wrapper
CREATE FOREIGN TABLE -- define a new foreign table
CREATE FUNCTION -- define a new function
CREATE GROUP -- define a new database role
CREATE INDEX -- define a new index
CREATE LANGUAGE -- define a new procedural language
CREATE OPERATOR -- define a new operator
CREATE OPERATOR CLASS -- define a new operator class
CREATE OPERATOR FAMILY -- define a new operator family
CREATE ROLE -- define a new database role
CREATE RULE -- define a new rewrite rule
CREATE SCHEMA -- define a new schema
CREATE SEQUENCE -- define a new sequence generator
CREATE SERVER -- define a new foreign server
CREATE TABLE -- define a new table
CREATE TABLE AS -- define a new table from the results of a query
CREATE TABLESPACE -- define a new tablespace
CREATE TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION -- define a new text search configuration
CREATE TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY -- define a new text search dictionary
CREATE TEXT SEARCH PARSER -- define a new text search parser
CREATE TEXT SEARCH TEMPLATE -- define a new text search template
CREATE TRIGGER -- define a new trigger
CREATE TYPE -- define a new data type
CREATE USER -- define a new database role
CREATE USER MAPPING -- define a new mapping of a user to a foreign server
CREATE VIEW -- define a new view
DEALLOCATE -- deallocate a prepared statement
DECLARE -- define a cursor
DELETE -- delete rows of a table
DISCARD -- discard session state
DO -- execute an anonymous code block
DROP AGGREGATE -- remove an aggregate function
DROP CAST -- remove a cast
DROP COLLATION -- remove a collation
DROP CONVERSION -- remove a conversion
DROP DATABASE -- remove a database
DROP DOMAIN -- remove a domain
DROP EXTENSION -- remove an extension
DROP FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER -- remove a foreign-data wrapper
DROP FOREIGN TABLE -- remove a foreign table
DROP FUNCTION -- remove a function
DROP GROUP -- remove a database role
DROP INDEX -- remove an index
DROP LANGUAGE -- remove a procedural language
DROP OPERATOR -- remove an operator
DROP OPERATOR CLASS -- remove an operator class
DROP OPERATOR FAMILY -- remove an operator family
DROP OWNED -- remove database objects owned by a database role
DROP ROLE -- remove a database role
DROP RULE -- remove a rewrite rule
DROP SCHEMA -- remove a schema
DROP SEQUENCE -- remove a sequence
DROP SERVER -- remove a foreign server descriptor
DROP TABLE -- remove a table
DROP TABLESPACE -- remove a tablespace
DROP TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION -- remove a text search configuration
DROP TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY -- remove a text search dictionary
DROP TEXT SEARCH PARSER -- remove a text search parser
DROP TEXT SEARCH TEMPLATE -- remove a text search template
DROP TRIGGER -- remove a trigger
DROP TYPE -- remove a data type
DROP USER -- remove a database role
DROP USER MAPPING -- remove a user mapping for a foreign server
DROP VIEW -- remove a view
END -- commit the current transaction
EXECUTE -- execute a prepared statement
EXPLAIN -- show the execution plan of a statement
FETCH -- retrieve rows from a query using a cursor
GRANT -- define access privileges
INSERT -- create new rows in a table
LISTEN -- listen for a notification
LOAD -- load a shared library file
LOCK -- lock a table
MOVE -- position a cursor
NOTIFY -- generate a notification
PREPARE -- prepare a statement for execution
PREPARE TRANSACTION -- prepare the current transaction for two-phase commit
REASSIGN OWNED -- change the ownership of database objects owned by a database role
REINDEX -- rebuild indexes
RELEASE SAVEPOINT -- destroy a previously defined savepoint
RESET -- restore the value of a run-time parameter to the default value
REVOKE -- remove access privileges
ROLLBACK -- abort the current transaction
ROLLBACK PREPARED -- cancel a transaction that was earlier prepared for two-phase commit
ROLLBACK TO SAVEPOINT -- roll back to a savepoint
SAVEPOINT -- define a new savepoint within the current transaction
SECURITY LABEL -- define or change a security label applied to an object
SELECT -- retrieve rows from a table or view
SELECT INTO -- define a new table from the results of a query
SET -- change a run-time parameter
SET CONSTRAINTS -- set constraint check timing for the current transaction
SET ROLE -- set the current user identifier of the current session
SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION -- set the session user identifier and the current user identifier of the current session
SET TRANSACTION -- set the characteristics of the current transaction
SHOW -- show the value of a run-time parameter
START TRANSACTION -- start a transaction block
TRUNCATE -- empty a table or set of tables
UNLISTEN -- stop listening for a notification
UPDATE -- update rows of a table
VACUUM -- garbage-collect and optionally analyze a database
VALUES -- compute a set of rows
II. PostgreSQL Client Applications
clusterdb -- cluster a PostgreSQL database
createdb -- create a new PostgreSQL database
createlang -- install a PostgreSQL procedural language
createuser -- define a new PostgreSQL user account
dropdb -- remove a PostgreSQL database
droplang -- remove a PostgreSQL procedural language
dropuser -- remove a PostgreSQL user account
ecpg -- embedded SQL C preprocessor
pg_basebackup -- take a base backup of a PostgreSQL cluster
pg_config -- retrieve information about the installed version of PostgreSQL
pg_dump -- extract a PostgreSQL database into a script file or other archive file
pg_dumpall -- extract a PostgreSQL database cluster into a script file
pg_restore -- restore a PostgreSQL database from an archive file created by pg_dump
psql -- PostgreSQL interactive terminal
reindexdb -- reindex a PostgreSQL database
vacuumdb -- garbage-collect and analyze a PostgreSQL database
III. PostgreSQL Server Applications
initdb -- create a new PostgreSQL database cluster
pg_controldata -- display control information of a PostgreSQL database cluster
pg_ctl -- initialize, start, stop, or control a PostgreSQL server
pg_resetxlog -- reset the write-ahead log and other control information of a PostgreSQL database cluster
postgres -- PostgreSQL database server
postmaster -- PostgreSQL database server
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Examples |  | SQL Commands


SQL Commands

Prev Up Next

I. SQL Commands

This part contains reference information for the SQL commands supported by PostgreSQL. By "SQL" the language in general is meant; information about the standards conformance and compatibility of each command can be found on the respective reference page.

Table of Contents
ABORT -- abort the current transaction
ALTER AGGREGATE -- change the definition of an aggregate function
ALTER COLLATION -- change the definition of a collation
ALTER CONVERSION -- change the definition of a conversion
ALTER DATABASE -- change a database
ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES -- define default access privileges
ALTER DOMAIN -- change the definition of a domain
ALTER EXTENSION -- change the definition of an extension
ALTER FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER -- change the definition of a foreign-data wrapper
ALTER FOREIGN TABLE -- change the definition of a foreign table
ALTER FUNCTION -- change the definition of a function
ALTER GROUP -- change role name or membership
ALTER INDEX -- change the definition of an index
ALTER LANGUAGE -- change the definition of a procedural language
ALTER LARGE OBJECT -- change the definition of a large object
ALTER OPERATOR -- change the definition of an operator
ALTER OPERATOR CLASS -- change the definition of an operator class
ALTER OPERATOR FAMILY -- change the definition of an operator family
ALTER ROLE -- change a database role
ALTER SCHEMA -- change the definition of a schema
ALTER SEQUENCE -- change the definition of a sequence generator
ALTER SERVER -- change the definition of a foreign server
ALTER TABLE -- change the definition of a table
ALTER TABLESPACE -- change the definition of a tablespace
ALTER TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION -- change the definition of a text search configuration
ALTER TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY -- change the definition of a text search dictionary
ALTER TEXT SEARCH PARSER -- change the definition of a text search parser
ALTER TEXT SEARCH TEMPLATE -- change the definition of a text search template
ALTER TRIGGER -- change the definition of a trigger
ALTER TYPE -- change the definition of a type
ALTER USER -- change a database role
ALTER USER MAPPING -- change the definition of a user mapping
ALTER VIEW -- change the definition of a view
ANALYZE -- collect statistics about a database
BEGIN -- start a transaction block
CHECKPOINT -- force a transaction log checkpoint
CLOSE -- close a cursor
CLUSTER -- cluster a table according to an index
COMMENT -- define or change the comment of an object
COMMIT -- commit the current transaction
COMMIT PREPARED -- commit a transaction that was earlier prepared for two-phase commit
COPY -- copy data between a file and a table
CREATE AGGREGATE -- define a new aggregate function
CREATE CAST -- define a new cast
CREATE COLLATION -- define a new collation
CREATE CONVERSION -- define a new encoding conversion
CREATE DATABASE -- create a new database
CREATE DOMAIN -- define a new domain
CREATE EXTENSION -- install an extension
CREATE FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER -- define a new foreign-data wrapper
CREATE FOREIGN TABLE -- define a new foreign table
CREATE FUNCTION -- define a new function
CREATE GROUP -- define a new database role
CREATE INDEX -- define a new index
CREATE LANGUAGE -- define a new procedural language
CREATE OPERATOR -- define a new operator
CREATE OPERATOR CLASS -- define a new operator class
CREATE OPERATOR FAMILY -- define a new operator family
CREATE ROLE -- define a new database role
CREATE RULE -- define a new rewrite rule
CREATE SCHEMA -- define a new schema
CREATE SEQUENCE -- define a new sequence generator
CREATE SERVER -- define a new foreign server
CREATE TABLE -- define a new table
CREATE TABLE AS -- define a new table from the results of a query
CREATE TABLESPACE -- define a new tablespace
CREATE TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION -- define a new text search configuration
CREATE TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY -- define a new text search dictionary
CREATE TEXT SEARCH PARSER -- define a new text search parser
CREATE TEXT SEARCH TEMPLATE -- define a new text search template
CREATE TRIGGER -- define a new trigger
CREATE TYPE -- define a new data type
CREATE USER -- define a new database role
CREATE USER MAPPING -- define a new mapping of a user to a foreign server
CREATE VIEW -- define a new view
DEALLOCATE -- deallocate a prepared statement
DECLARE -- define a cursor
DELETE -- delete rows of a table
DISCARD -- discard session state
DO -- execute an anonymous code block
DROP AGGREGATE -- remove an aggregate function
DROP CAST -- remove a cast
DROP COLLATION -- remove a collation
DROP CONVERSION -- remove a conversion
DROP DATABASE -- remove a database
DROP DOMAIN -- remove a domain
DROP EXTENSION -- remove an extension
DROP FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER -- remove a foreign-data wrapper
DROP FOREIGN TABLE -- remove a foreign table
DROP FUNCTION -- remove a function
DROP GROUP -- remove a database role
DROP INDEX -- remove an index
DROP LANGUAGE -- remove a procedural language
DROP OPERATOR -- remove an operator
DROP OPERATOR CLASS -- remove an operator class
DROP OPERATOR FAMILY -- remove an operator family
DROP OWNED -- remove database objects owned by a database role
DROP ROLE -- remove a database role
DROP RULE -- remove a rewrite rule
DROP SCHEMA -- remove a schema
DROP SEQUENCE -- remove a sequence
DROP SERVER -- remove a foreign server descriptor
DROP TABLE -- remove a table
DROP TABLESPACE -- remove a tablespace
DROP TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION -- remove a text search configuration
DROP TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY -- remove a text search dictionary
DROP TEXT SEARCH PARSER -- remove a text search parser
DROP TEXT SEARCH TEMPLATE -- remove a text search template
DROP TRIGGER -- remove a trigger
DROP TYPE -- remove a data type
DROP USER -- remove a database role
DROP USER MAPPING -- remove a user mapping for a foreign server
DROP VIEW -- remove a view
END -- commit the current transaction
EXECUTE -- execute a prepared statement
EXPLAIN -- show the execution plan of a statement
FETCH -- retrieve rows from a query using a cursor
GRANT -- define access privileges
INSERT -- create new rows in a table
LISTEN -- listen for a notification
LOAD -- load a shared library file
LOCK -- lock a table
MOVE -- position a cursor
NOTIFY -- generate a notification
PREPARE -- prepare a statement for execution
PREPARE TRANSACTION -- prepare the current transaction for two-phase commit
REASSIGN OWNED -- change the ownership of database objects owned by a database role
REINDEX -- rebuild indexes
RELEASE SAVEPOINT -- destroy a previously defined savepoint
RESET -- restore the value of a run-time parameter to the default value
REVOKE -- remove access privileges
ROLLBACK -- abort the current transaction
ROLLBACK PREPARED -- cancel a transaction that was earlier prepared for two-phase commit
ROLLBACK TO SAVEPOINT -- roll back to a savepoint
SAVEPOINT -- define a new savepoint within the current transaction
SECURITY LABEL -- define or change a security label applied to an object
SELECT -- retrieve rows from a table or view
SELECT INTO -- define a new table from the results of a query
SET -- change a run-time parameter
SET CONSTRAINTS -- set constraint check timing for the current transaction
SET ROLE -- set the current user identifier of the current session
SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION -- set the session user identifier and the current user identifier of the current session
SET TRANSACTION -- set the characteristics of the current transaction
SHOW -- show the value of a run-time parameter
START TRANSACTION -- start a transaction block
TRUNCATE -- empty a table or set of tables
UNLISTEN -- stop listening for a notification
UPDATE -- update rows of a table
VACUUM -- garbage-collect and optionally analyze a database
VALUES -- compute a set of rows
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Reference | Up | ABORT


ABORT

Name

ABORT -- abort the current transaction

Synopsis

ABORT [ WORK | TRANSACTION ]

Description

ABORT rolls back the current transaction and causes all the updates made by the transaction to be discarded. This command is identical in behavior to the standard SQL command ROLLBACK, and is present only for historical reasons.

Parameters

WORK
TRANSACTION

Optional key words. They have no effect.

Notes

Use COMMIT to successfully terminate a transaction.

Issuing ABORT when not inside a transaction does no harm, but it will provoke a warning message.

Examples

To abort all changes:

ABORT;

Compatibility

This command is a PostgreSQL extension present for historical reasons. ROLLBACK is the equivalent standard SQL command.

See Also

BEGIN, COMMIT, ROLLBACK
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SQL Commands | Up | ALTER AGGREGATE


ALTER AGGREGATE

Name

ALTER AGGREGATE -- change the definition of an aggregate function

Synopsis

ALTER AGGREGATE name ( type [ , ... ] ) RENAME TO new_name
ALTER AGGREGATE name ( type [ , ... ] ) OWNER TO new_owner
ALTER AGGREGATE name ( type [ , ... ] ) SET SCHEMA new_schema

Description

ALTER AGGREGATE changes the definition of an aggregate function.

You must own the aggregate function to use ALTER AGGREGATE. To change the schema of an aggregate function, you must also have CREATE privilege on the new schema. To alter the owner, you must also be a direct or indirect member of the new owning role, and that role must have CREATE privilege on the aggregate function's schema. (These restrictions enforce that altering the owner doesn't do anything you couldn't do by dropping and recreating the aggregate function. However, a superuser can alter ownership of any aggregate function anyway.)

Parameters

name

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of an existing aggregate function.

type

An input data type on which the aggregate function operates. To reference a zero-argument aggregate function, write * in place of the list of input data types.

new_name

The new name of the aggregate function.

new_owner

The new owner of the aggregate function.

new_schema

The new schema for the aggregate function.

Examples

To rename the aggregate function myavg for type integer to my_average:

ALTER AGGREGATE myavg(integer) RENAME TO my_average;

To change the owner of the aggregate function myavg for type integer to joe:

ALTER AGGREGATE myavg(integer) OWNER TO joe;

To move the aggregate function myavg for type integer into schema myschema:

ALTER AGGREGATE myavg(integer) SET SCHEMA myschema;

Compatibility

There is no ALTER AGGREGATE statement in the SQL standard.

See Also

CREATE AGGREGATE, DROP AGGREGATE
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ABORT | Up | ALTER COLLATION


ALTER COLLATION

Name

ALTER COLLATION -- change the definition of a collation

Synopsis

ALTER COLLATION name RENAME TO new_name
ALTER COLLATION name OWNER TO new_owner
ALTER COLLATION name SET SCHEMA new_schema

Description

ALTER COLLATION changes the definition of a collation.

You must own the collation to use ALTER COLLATION. To alter the owner, you must also be a direct or indirect member of the new owning role, and that role must have CREATE privilege on the collation's schema. (These restrictions enforce that altering the owner doesn't do anything you couldn't do by dropping and recreating the collation. However, a superuser can alter ownership of any collation anyway.)

Parameters

name

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of an existing collation.

new_name

The new name of the collation.

new_owner

The new owner of the collation.

new_schema

The new schema for the collation.

Examples

To rename the collation de_DE to german:

ALTER COLLATION "de_DE" RENAME TO german;

To change the owner of the collation en_US to joe:

ALTER COLLATION "en_US" OWNER TO joe;

Compatibility

There is no ALTER COLLATION statement in the SQL standard.

See Also

CREATE COLLATION, DROP COLLATION
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ALTER AGGREGATE | Up | ALTER CONVERSION


ALTER CONVERSION

Name

ALTER CONVERSION -- change the definition of a conversion

Synopsis

ALTER CONVERSION name RENAME TO new_name
ALTER CONVERSION name OWNER TO new_owner
ALTER CONVERSION name SET SCHEMA new_schema

Description

ALTER CONVERSION changes the definition of a conversion.

You must own the conversion to use ALTER CONVERSION. To alter the owner, you must also be a direct or indirect member of the new owning role, and that role must have CREATE privilege on the conversion's schema. (These restrictions enforce that altering the owner doesn't do anything you couldn't do by dropping and recreating the conversion. However, a superuser can alter ownership of any conversion anyway.)

Parameters

name

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of an existing conversion.

new_name

The new name of the conversion.

new_owner

The new owner of the conversion.

new_schema

The new schema for the conversion.

Examples

To rename the conversion iso_8859_1_to_utf8 to latin1_to_unicode:

ALTER CONVERSION iso_8859_1_to_utf8 RENAME TO latin1_to_unicode;

To change the owner of the conversion iso_8859_1_to_utf8 to joe:

ALTER CONVERSION iso_8859_1_to_utf8 OWNER TO joe;

Compatibility

There is no ALTER CONVERSION statement in the SQL standard.

See Also

CREATE CONVERSION, DROP CONVERSION
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ALTER COLLATION | Up | ALTER DATABASE


ALTER DATABASE

Name

ALTER DATABASE -- change a database

Synopsis

ALTER DATABASE name [ [ WITH ] option [ ... ] ]

where option can be:

    CONNECTION LIMIT connlimit

ALTER DATABASE name RENAME TO new_name

ALTER DATABASE name OWNER TO new_owner

ALTER DATABASE name SET TABLESPACE new_tablespace

ALTER DATABASE name SET configuration_parameter { TO | = } { value | DEFAULT }
ALTER DATABASE name SET configuration_parameter FROM CURRENT
ALTER DATABASE name RESET configuration_parameter
ALTER DATABASE name RESET ALL

Description

ALTER DATABASE changes the attributes of a database.

The first form changes certain per-database settings. (See below for details.) Only the database owner or a superuser can change these settings.

The second form changes the name of the database. Only the database owner or a superuser can rename a database; non-superuser owners must also have the CREATEDB privilege. The current database cannot be renamed. (Connect to a different database if you need to do that.)

The third form changes the owner of the database. To alter the owner, you must own the database and also be a direct or indirect member of the new owning role, and you must have the CREATEDB privilege. (Note that superusers have all these privileges automatically.)

The fourth form changes the default tablespace of the database. Only the database owner or a superuser can do this; you must also have create privilege for the new tablespace. This command physically moves any tables or indexes in the database's old default tablespace to the new tablespace. Note that tables and indexes in non-default tablespaces are not affected.

The remaining forms change the session default for a run-time configuration variable for a PostgreSQL database. Whenever a new session is subsequently started in that database, the specified value becomes the session default value. The database-specific default overrides whatever setting is present in postgresql.conf or has been received from the postgres command line. Only the database owner or a superuser can change the session defaults for a database. Certain variables cannot be set this way, or can only be set by a superuser.

Parameters

name

The name of the database whose attributes are to be altered.

connlimit

How many concurrent connections can be made to this database. -1 means no limit.

new_name

The new name of the database.

new_owner

The new owner of the database.

new_tablespace

The new default tablespace of the database.

configuration_parameter
value

Set this database's session default for the specified configuration parameter to the given value. If value is DEFAULT or, equivalently, RESET is used, the database-specific setting is removed, so the system-wide default setting will be inherited in new sessions. Use RESET ALL to clear all database-specific settings. SET FROM CURRENT saves the session's current value of the parameter as the database-specific value.

See SET and Chapter 18 for more information about allowed parameter names and values.

Notes

It is also possible to tie a session default to a specific role rather than to a database; see ALTER ROLE. Role-specific settings override database-specific ones if there is a conflict.

Examples

To disable index scans by default in the database test:

ALTER DATABASE test SET enable_indexscan TO off;

Compatibility

The ALTER DATABASE statement is a PostgreSQL extension.

See Also

CREATE DATABASE, DROP DATABASE, SET, CREATE TABLESPACE
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ALTER CONVERSION | Up | ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES


ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES

Name

ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES -- define default access privileges

Synopsis

ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES
    [ FOR { ROLE | USER } target_role [, ...] ]
    [ IN SCHEMA schema_name [, ...] ]
    abbreviated_grant_or_revoke

where abbreviated_grant_or_revoke is one of:

GRANT { { SELECT | INSERT | UPDATE | DELETE | TRUNCATE | REFERENCES | TRIGGER }
    [, ...] | ALL [ PRIVILEGES ] }
    ON TABLES
    TO { [ GROUP ] role_name | PUBLIC } [, ...] [ WITH GRANT OPTION ]

GRANT { { USAGE | SELECT | UPDATE }
    [, ...] | ALL [ PRIVILEGES ] }
    ON SEQUENCES
    TO { [ GROUP ] role_name | PUBLIC } [, ...] [ WITH GRANT OPTION ]

GRANT { EXECUTE | ALL [ PRIVILEGES ] }
    ON FUNCTIONS
    TO { [ GROUP ] role_name | PUBLIC } [, ...] [ WITH GRANT OPTION ]

REVOKE [ GRANT OPTION FOR ]
    { { SELECT | INSERT | UPDATE | DELETE | TRUNCATE | REFERENCES | TRIGGER }
    [, ...] | ALL [ PRIVILEGES ] }
    ON TABLES
    FROM { [ GROUP ] role_name | PUBLIC } [, ...]
    [ CASCADE | RESTRICT ]

REVOKE [ GRANT OPTION FOR ]
    { { USAGE | SELECT | UPDATE }
    [, ...] | ALL [ PRIVILEGES ] }
    ON SEQUENCES
    FROM { [ GROUP ] role_name | PUBLIC } [, ...]
    [ CASCADE | RESTRICT ]

REVOKE [ GRANT OPTION FOR ]
    { EXECUTE | ALL [ PRIVILEGES ] }
    ON FUNCTIONS
    FROM { [ GROUP ] role_name | PUBLIC } [, ...]
    [ CASCADE | RESTRICT ]

Description

ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES allows you to set the privileges that will be applied to objects created in the future. (It does not affect privileges assigned to already-existing objects.) Currently, only the privileges for tables (including views and foreign tables), sequences, and functions can be altered.

You can change default privileges only for objects that will be created by yourself or by roles that you are a member of. The privileges can be set globally (i.e., for all objects created in the current database), or just for objects created in specified schemas. Default privileges that are specified per-schema are added to whatever the global default privileges are for the particular object type.

As explained under GRANT, the default privileges for any object type normally grant all grantable permissions to the object owner, and may grant some privileges to PUBLIC as well. However, this behavior can be changed by altering the global default privileges with ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES.

Parameters

target_role

The name of an existing role of which the current role is a member. If FOR ROLE is omitted, the current role is assumed.

schema_name

The name of an existing schema. If specified, the default privileges are altered for objects later created in that schema. If IN SCHEMA is omitted, the global default privileges are altered.

role_name

The name of an existing role to grant or revoke privileges for. This parameter, and all the other parameters in abbreviated_grant_or_revoke, act as described under GRANT or REVOKE, except that one is setting permissions for a whole class of objects rather than specific named objects.

Notes

Use psql's \ddp command to obtain information about existing assignments of default privileges. The meaning of the privilege values is the same as explained for \dp under GRANT.

If you wish to drop a role for which the default privileges have been altered, it is necessary to reverse the changes in its default privileges or use DROP OWNED BY to get rid of the default privileges entry for the role.

Examples

Grant SELECT privilege to everyone for all tables (and views) you subsequently create in schema myschema, and allow role webuser to INSERT into them too:

ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES IN SCHEMA myschema GRANT SELECT ON TABLES TO PUBLIC;
ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES IN SCHEMA myschema GRANT INSERT ON TABLES TO webuser;

Undo the above, so that subsequently-created tables won't have any more permissions than normal:

ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES IN SCHEMA myschema REVOKE SELECT ON TABLES FROM PUBLIC;
ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES IN SCHEMA myschema REVOKE INSERT ON TABLES FROM webuser;

Remove the public EXECUTE permission that is normally granted on functions, for all functions subsequently created by role admin:

ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES FOR ROLE admin REVOKE EXECUTE ON FUNCTIONS FROM PUBLIC;

Compatibility

There is no ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES statement in the SQL standard.

See Also

GRANT, REVOKE
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ALTER DATABASE | Up | ALTER DOMAIN


ALTER DOMAIN

Name

ALTER DOMAIN -- change the definition of a domain

Synopsis

ALTER DOMAIN name
    { SET DEFAULT expression | DROP DEFAULT }
ALTER DOMAIN name
    { SET | DROP } NOT NULL
ALTER DOMAIN name
    ADD domain_constraint
ALTER DOMAIN name
    DROP CONSTRAINT constraint_name [ RESTRICT | CASCADE ]
ALTER DOMAIN name
    OWNER TO new_owner
ALTER DOMAIN name
    SET SCHEMA new_schema

Description

ALTER DOMAIN changes the definition of an existing domain. There are several sub-forms:

SET/DROP DEFAULT

These forms set or remove the default value for a domain. Note that defaults only apply to subsequent INSERT commands; they do not affect rows already in a table using the domain.

SET/DROP NOT NULL

These forms change whether a domain is marked to allow NULL values or to reject NULL values. You can only SET NOT NULL when the columns using the domain contain no null values.

ADD domain_constraint

This form adds a new constraint to a domain using the same syntax as CREATE DOMAIN. This will only succeed if all columns using the domain satisfy the new constraint.

DROP CONSTRAINT

This form drops constraints on a domain.

OWNER

This form changes the owner of the domain to the specified user.

SET SCHEMA

This form changes the schema of the domain. Any constraints associated with the domain are moved into the new schema as well.

You must own the domain to use ALTER DOMAIN. To change the schema of a domain, you must also have CREATE privilege on the new schema. To alter the owner, you must also be a direct or indirect member of the new owning role, and that role must have CREATE privilege on the domain's schema. (These restrictions enforce that altering the owner doesn't do anything you couldn't do by dropping and recreating the domain. However, a superuser can alter ownership of any domain anyway.)

Parameters

name

The name (possibly schema-qualified) of an existing domain to alter.

domain_constraint

New domain constraint for the domain.

constraint_name

Name of an existing constraint to drop.

CASCADE

Automatically drop objects that depend on the constraint.

RESTRICT

Refuse to drop the constraint if there are any dependent objects. This is the default behavior.

new_owner

The user name of the new owner of the domain.

new_schema

The new schema for the domain.

Notes

Currently, ALTER DOMAIN ADD CONSTRAINT and ALTER DOMAIN SET NOT NULL will fail if the named domain or any derived domain is used within a composite-type column of any table in the database. They should eventually be improved to be able to verify the new constraint for such nested columns.

Examples

To add a NOT NULL constraint to a domain:

ALTER DOMAIN zipcode SET NOT NULL;

To remove a NOT NULL constraint from a domain:

ALTER DOMAIN zipcode DROP NOT NULL;

To add a check constraint to a domain:

ALTER DOMAIN zipcode ADD CONSTRAINT zipchk CHECK (char_length(VALUE) = 5);

To remove a check constraint from a domain:

ALTER DOMAIN zipcode DROP CONSTRAINT zipchk;

To move the domain into a different schema:

ALTER DOMAIN zipcode SET SCHEMA customers;

Compatibility

ALTER DOMAIN conforms to the SQL standard, except for the OWNER and SET SCHEMA variants, which are PostgreSQL extensions.

See Also

CREATE DOMAIN, DROP DOMAIN
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ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES | Up | ALTER EXTENSION


ALTER EXTENSION

Name

ALTER EXTENSION -- change the definition of an extension

Synopsis

ALTER EXTENSION extension_name UPDATE [ TO new_version ]
ALTER EXTENSION extension_name SET SCHEMA new_schema
ALTER EXTENSION extension_name ADD member_object
ALTER EXTENSION extension_name DROP member_object

where member_object is:

  AGGREGATE agg_name (agg_type [, ...] ) |
  CAST (source_type AS target_type) |
  COLLATION object_name |
  CONVERSION object_name |
  DOMAIN object_name |
  FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER object_name |
  FOREIGN TABLE object_name |
  FUNCTION function_name ( [ [ argmode ] [ argname ] argtype [, ...] ] ) |
  OPERATOR operator_name (left_type, right_type) |
  OPERATOR CLASS object_name USING index_method |
  OPERATOR FAMILY object_name USING index_method |
  [ PROCEDURAL ] LANGUAGE object_name |
  SCHEMA object_name |
  SEQUENCE object_name |
  SERVER object_name |
  TABLE object_name |
  TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION object_name |
  TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY object_name |
  TEXT SEARCH PARSER object_name |
  TEXT SEARCH TEMPLATE object_name |
  TYPE object_name |
  VIEW object_name

Description

ALTER EXTENSION changes the definition of an installed extension. There are several subforms:

UPDATE

This form updates the extension to a newer version. The extension must supply a suitable update script (or series of scripts) that can modify the currently-installed version into the requested version.

SET SCHEMA

This form moves the extension's objects into another schema. The extension has to be relocatable for this command to succeed.

ADD member_object

This form adds an existing object to the extension. This is mainly useful in extension update scripts. The object will subsequently be treated as a member of the extension; notably, it can only be dropped by dropping the extension.

DROP member_object

This form removes a member object from the extension. This is mainly useful in extension update scripts. The object is not dropped, only disassociated from the extension.

See Section 35.15 for more information about these operations.

You must own the extension to use ALTER EXTENSION. The ADD/DROP forms require ownership of the added/dropped object as well.

Parameters

extension_name

The name of an installed extension.

new_version

The desired new version of the extension. This can be written as either an identifier or a string literal. If not specified, ALTER EXTENSION UPDATE attempts to update to whatever is shown as the default version in the extension's control file.

new_schema

The new schema for the extension.

object_name
agg_name
function_name
operator_name

The name of an object to be added to or removed from the extension. Names of tables, aggregates, domains, foreign tables, functions, operators, operator classes, operator families, sequences, text search objects, types, and views can be schema-qualified.

agg_type

An input data type on which the aggregate function operates. To reference a zero-argument aggregate function, write * in place of the list of input data types.

source_type

The name of the source data type of the cast.

target_type

The name of the target data type of the cast.

argmode

The mode of a function argument: IN, OUT, INOUT, or VARIADIC. If omitted, the default is IN. Note that ALTER EXTENSION does not actually pay any attention to OUT arguments, since only the input arguments are needed to determine the function's identity. So it is sufficient to list the IN, INOUT, and VARIADIC arguments.

argname

The name of a function argument. Note that ALTER EXTENSION does not actually pay any attention to argument names, since only the argument data types are needed to determine the function's identity.

argtype

The data type(s) of the function's arguments (optionally schema-qualified), if any.

left_type
right_type

The data type(s) of the operator's arguments (optionally schema-qualified). Write NONE for the missing argument of a prefix or postfix operator.

PROCEDURAL

This is a noise word.

Examples

To update the hstore extension to version 2.0:

ALTER EXTENSION hstore UPDATE TO '2.0';

To change the schema of the hstore extension to utils:

ALTER EXTENSION hstore SET SCHEMA utils;

To add an existing function to the hstore extension:

ALTER EXTENSION hstore ADD FUNCTION populate_record(anyelement, hstore);

Compatibility

ALTER EXTENSION is a PostgreSQL extension.

See Also

CREATE EXTENSION, DROP EXTENSION
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ALTER DOMAIN | Up | ALTER FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER


ALTER FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER

Name

ALTER FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER -- change the definition of a foreign-data wrapper

Synopsis

ALTER FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER name
    [ HANDLER handler_function | NO HANDLER ]
    [ VALIDATOR validator_function | NO VALIDATOR ]
    [ OPTIONS ( [ ADD | SET | DROP ] option ['value'] [, ... ]) ]
ALTER FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER name OWNER TO new_owner

Description

ALTER FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER changes the definition of a foreign-data wrapper. The first form of the command changes the support functions or the generic options of the foreign-data wrapper (at least one clause is required). The second form changes the owner of the foreign-data wrapper.

Only superusers can alter foreign-data wrappers. Additionally, only superusers can own foreign-data wrappers.

Parameters

name

The name of an existing foreign-data wrapper.

HANDLER handler_function

Specifies a new handler function for the foreign-data wrapper.

NO HANDLER

This is used to specify that the foreign-data wrapper should no longer have a handler function.

Note that foreign tables that use a foreign-data wrapper with no handler cannot be accessed.

VALIDATOR validator_function

Specifies a new validator function for the foreign-data wrapper.

Note that it is possible that after changing the validator the options to the foreign-data wrapper, servers, and user mappings have become invalid. It is up to the user to make sure that these options are correct before using the foreign-data wrapper.

NO VALIDATOR

This is used to specify that the foreign-data wrapper should no longer have a validator function.

OPTIONS ( [ ADD | SET | DROP ] option ['value'] [, ... ] )

Change options for the foreign-data wrapper. ADD, SET, and DROP specify the action to be performed. ADD is assumed if no operation is explicitly specified. Option names must be unique; names and values are also validated using the foreign data wrapper's validator function, if any.

Examples

Change a foreign-data wrapper dbi, add option foo, drop bar:

ALTER FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER dbi OPTIONS (ADD foo '1', DROP 'bar');

Change the foreign-data wrapper dbi validator to bob.myvalidator:

ALTER FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER dbi VALIDATOR bob.myvalidator;

Compatibility

ALTER FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER conforms to ISO/IEC 9075-9 (SQL/MED), except that the HANDLER, VALIDATOR and OWNER TO clauses are extensions.

See Also

CREATE FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER, DROP FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER
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ALTER EXTENSION | Up | ALTER FOREIGN TABLE


ALTER FOREIGN TABLE

Name

ALTER FOREIGN TABLE -- change the definition of a foreign table

Synopsis

ALTER FOREIGN TABLE name
    action [, ... ]
ALTER FOREIGN TABLE name
    RENAME [ COLUMN ] column TO new_column
ALTER FOREIGN TABLE name
    RENAME TO new_name
ALTER FOREIGN TABLE name
    SET SCHEMA new_schema

where action is one of:

    ADD [ COLUMN ] column type [ NULL | NOT NULL ]
    DROP [ COLUMN ] [ IF EXISTS ] column [ RESTRICT | CASCADE ]
    ALTER [ COLUMN ] column [ SET DATA ] TYPE type
    ALTER [ COLUMN ] column { SET | DROP } NOT NULL
    OWNER TO new_owner
    OPTIONS ( [ ADD | SET | DROP ] option ['value'] [, ... ])

Description

ALTER FOREIGN TABLE changes the definition of an existing foreign table. There are several subforms:

ADD COLUMN

This form adds a new column to the foreign table, using the same syntax as CREATE FOREIGN TABLE.

DROP COLUMN [ IF EXISTS ]

This form drops a column from a foreign table. You will need to say CASCADE if anything outside the table depends on the column; for example, views. If IF EXISTS is specified and the column does not exist, no error is thrown. In this case a notice is issued instead.

SET DATA TYPE

This form changes the type of a column of a foreign table.

SET/DROP NOT NULL

Mark a column as allowing, or not allowing, null values.

OWNER

This form changes the owner of the foreign table to the specified user.

RENAME

The RENAME forms change the name of a foreign table or the name of an individual column in a foreign table.

SET SCHEMA

This form moves the foreign table into another schema.

OPTIONS ( [ ADD | SET | DROP ] option ['value'] [, ... ] )

Change options for the foreign table. ADD, SET, and DROP specify the action to be performed. ADD is assumed if no operation is explicitly specified. Option names must be unique; names and values are also validated using the foreign data wrapper library.

All the actions except RENAME and SET SCHEMA can be combined into a list of multiple alterations to apply in parallel. For example, it is possible to add several columns and/or alter the type of several columns in a single command.

You must own the table to use ALTER FOREIGN TABLE. To change the schema of a foreign table, you must also have CREATE privilege on the new schema. To alter the owner, you must also be a direct or indirect member of the new owning role, and that role must have CREATE privilege on the table's schema. (These restrictions enforce that altering the owner doesn't do anything you couldn't do by dropping and recreating the table. However, a superuser can alter ownership of any table anyway.)

Parameters

name

The name (possibly schema-qualified) of an existing foreign table to alter.

column

Name of a new or existing column.

new_column

New name for an existing column.

new_name

New name for the table.

type

Data type of the new column, or new data type for an existing column.

CASCADE

Automatically drop objects that depend on the dropped column (for example, views referencing the column).

RESTRICT

Refuse to drop the column if there are any dependent objects. This is the default behavior.

new_owner

The user name of the new owner of the table.

new_schema

The name of the schema to which the table will be moved.

Notes

The key word COLUMN is noise and can be omitted.

Consistency with the foreign server is not checked when a column is added or removed with ADD COLUMN or DROP COLUMN, a NOT NULL constraint is added, or a column type is changed with SET DATA TYPE. It is the user's responsibility to ensure that the table definition matches the remote side.

Refer to CREATE FOREIGN TABLE for a further description of valid parameters.

Examples

To mark a column as not-null:

ALTER FOREIGN TABLE distributors ALTER COLUMN street SET NOT NULL;

To change options of a foreign table:

ALTER FOREIGN TABLE myschema.distributors OPTIONS (ADD opt1 'value', SET opt2, 'value2', DROP opt3 'value3');

Compatibility

The forms ADD, DROP, and SET DATA TYPE conform with the SQL standard. The other forms are PostgreSQL extensions of the SQL standard. Also, the ability to specify more than one manipulation in a single ALTER FOREIGN TABLE command is an extension.

ALTER FOREIGN TABLE DROP COLUMN can be used to drop the only column of a foreign table, leaving a zero-column table. This is an extension of SQL, which disallows zero-column foreign tables.

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ALTER FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER | Up | ALTER FUNCTION


ALTER FUNCTION

Name

ALTER FUNCTION -- change the definition of a function

Synopsis

ALTER FUNCTION name ( [ [ argmode ] [ argname ] argtype [, ...] ] )
    action [ ... ] [ RESTRICT ]
ALTER FUNCTION name ( [ [ argmode ] [ argname ] argtype [, ...] ] )
    RENAME TO new_name
ALTER FUNCTION name ( [ [ argmode ] [ argname ] argtype [, ...] ] )
    OWNER TO new_owner
ALTER FUNCTION name ( [ [ argmode ] [ argname ] argtype [, ...] ] )
    SET SCHEMA new_schema

where action is one of:

    CALLED ON NULL INPUT | RETURNS NULL ON NULL INPUT | STRICT
    IMMUTABLE | STABLE | VOLATILE
    [ EXTERNAL ] SECURITY INVOKER | [ EXTERNAL ] SECURITY DEFINER
    COST execution_cost
    ROWS result_rows
    SET configuration_parameter { TO | = } { value | DEFAULT }
    SET configuration_parameter FROM CURRENT
    RESET configuration_parameter
    RESET ALL

Description

ALTER FUNCTION changes the definition of a function.

You must own the function to use ALTER FUNCTION. To change a function's schema, you must also have CREATE privilege on the new schema. To alter the owner, you must also be a direct or indirect member of the new owning role, and that role must have CREATE privilege on the function's schema. (These restrictions enforce that altering the owner doesn't do anything you couldn't do by dropping and recreating the function. However, a superuser can alter ownership of any function anyway.)

Parameters

name

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of an existing function.

argmode

The mode of an argument: IN, OUT, INOUT, or VARIADIC. If omitted, the default is IN. Note that ALTER FUNCTION does not actually pay any attention to OUT arguments, since only the input arguments are needed to determine the function's identity. So it is sufficient to list the IN, INOUT, and VARIADIC arguments.

argname

The name of an argument. Note that ALTER FUNCTION does not actually pay any attention to argument names, since only the argument data types are needed to determine the function's identity.

argtype

The data type(s) of the function's arguments (optionally schema-qualified), if any.

new_name

The new name of the function.

new_owner

The new owner of the function. Note that if the function is marked SECURITY DEFINER, it will subsequently execute as the new owner.

new_schema

The new schema for the function.

CALLED ON NULL INPUT
RETURNS NULL ON NULL INPUT
STRICT

CALLED ON NULL INPUT changes the function so that it will be invoked when some or all of its arguments are null. RETURNS NULL ON NULL INPUT or STRICT changes the function so that it is not invoked if any of its arguments are null; instead, a null result is assumed automatically. See CREATE FUNCTION for more information.

IMMUTABLE
STABLE
VOLATILE

Change the volatility of the function to the specified setting. See CREATE FUNCTION for details.

[ EXTERNAL ] SECURITY INVOKER
[ EXTERNAL ] SECURITY DEFINER

Change whether the function is a security definer or not. The key word EXTERNAL is ignored for SQL conformance. See CREATE FUNCTION for more information about this capability.

COST execution_cost

Change the estimated execution cost of the function. See CREATE FUNCTION for more information.

ROWS result_rows

Change the estimated number of rows returned by a set-returning function. See CREATE FUNCTION for more information.

configuration_parameter
value

Add or change the assignment to be made to a configuration parameter when the function is called. If value is DEFAULT or, equivalently, RESET is used, the function-local setting is removed, so that the function executes with the value present in its environment. Use RESET ALL to clear all function-local settings. SET FROM CURRENT saves the session's current value of the parameter as the value to be applied when the function is entered.

See SET and Chapter 18 for more information about allowed parameter names and values.

RESTRICT

Ignored for conformance with the SQL standard.

Examples

To rename the function sqrt for type integer to square_root:

ALTER FUNCTION sqrt(integer) RENAME TO square_root;

To change the owner of the function sqrt for type integer to joe:

ALTER FUNCTION sqrt(integer) OWNER TO joe;

To change the schema of the function sqrt for type integer to maths:

ALTER FUNCTION sqrt(integer) SET SCHEMA maths;

To adjust the search path that is automatically set for a function:

ALTER FUNCTION check_password(text) SET search_path = admin, pg_temp;

To disable automatic setting of search_path for a function:

ALTER FUNCTION check_password(text) RESET search_path;

The function will now execute with whatever search path is used by its caller.

Compatibility

This statement is partially compatible with the ALTER FUNCTION statement in the SQL standard. The standard allows more properties of a function to be modified, but does not provide the ability to rename a function, make a function a security definer, attach configuration parameter values to a function, or change the owner, schema, or volatility of a function. The standard also requires the RESTRICT key word, which is optional in PostgreSQL.

See Also

CREATE FUNCTION, DROP FUNCTION
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ALTER FOREIGN TABLE | Up | ALTER GROUP


ALTER GROUP

Name

ALTER GROUP -- change role name or membership

Synopsis

ALTER GROUP group_name ADD USER user_name [, ... ]
ALTER GROUP group_name DROP USER user_name [, ... ]

ALTER GROUP group_name RENAME TO new_name

Description

ALTER GROUP changes the attributes of a user group. This is an obsolete command, though still accepted for backwards compatibility, because groups (and users too) have been superseded by the more general concept of roles.

The first two variants add users to a group or remove them from a group. (Any role can play the part of either a "user" or a "group" for this purpose.) These variants are effectively equivalent to granting or revoking membership in the role named as the "group"; so the preferred way to do this is to use GRANT or REVOKE.

The third variant changes the name of the group. This is exactly equivalent to renaming the role with ALTER ROLE.

Parameters

group_name

The name of the group (role) to modify.

user_name

Users (roles) that are to be added to or removed from the group. The users must already exist; ALTER GROUP does not create or drop users.

new_name

The new name of the group.

Examples

Add users to a group:

ALTER GROUP staff ADD USER karl, john;

Remove a user from a group:

ALTER GROUP workers DROP USER beth;

Compatibility

There is no ALTER GROUP statement in the SQL standard.

See Also

GRANT, REVOKE, ALTER ROLE
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ALTER FUNCTION | Up | ALTER INDEX


ALTER INDEX

Name

ALTER INDEX -- change the definition of an index

Synopsis

ALTER INDEX name RENAME TO new_name
ALTER INDEX name SET TABLESPACE tablespace_name
ALTER INDEX name SET ( storage_parameter = value [, ... ] )
ALTER INDEX name RESET ( storage_parameter [, ... ] )

Description

ALTER INDEX changes the definition of an existing index. There are several subforms:

RENAME

The RENAME form changes the name of the index. There is no effect on the stored data.

SET TABLESPACE

This form changes the index's tablespace to the specified tablespace and moves the data file(s) associated with the index to the new tablespace. See also CREATE TABLESPACE.

SET ( storage_parameter = value [, ... ] )

This form changes one or more index-method-specific storage parameters for the index. See CREATE INDEX for details on the available parameters. Note that the index contents will not be modified immediately by this command; depending on the parameter you might need to rebuild the index with REINDEX to get the desired effects.

RESET ( storage_parameter [, ... ] )

This form resets one or more index-method-specific storage parameters to their defaults. As with SET, a REINDEX might be needed to update the index entirely.

Parameters

name

The name (possibly schema-qualified) of an existing index to alter.

new_name

The new name for the index.

tablespace_name

The tablespace to which the index will be moved.

storage_parameter

The name of an index-method-specific storage parameter.

value

The new value for an index-method-specific storage parameter. This might be a number or a word depending on the parameter.

Notes

These operations are also possible using ALTER TABLE. ALTER INDEX is in fact just an alias for the forms of ALTER TABLE that apply to indexes.

There was formerly an ALTER INDEX OWNER variant, but this is now ignored (with a warning). An index cannot have an owner different from its table's owner. Changing the table's owner automatically changes the index as well.

Changing any part of a system catalog index is not permitted.

Examples

To rename an existing index:

ALTER INDEX distributors RENAME TO suppliers;

To move an index to a different tablespace:

ALTER INDEX distributors SET TABLESPACE fasttablespace;

To change an index's fill factor (assuming that the index method supports it):

ALTER INDEX distributors SET (fillfactor = 75);
REINDEX INDEX distributors;

Compatibility

ALTER INDEX is a PostgreSQL extension.

See Also

CREATE INDEX, REINDEX
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ALTER GROUP | Up | ALTER LANGUAGE


ALTER LANGUAGE

Name

ALTER LANGUAGE -- change the definition of a procedural language

Synopsis

ALTER [ PROCEDURAL ] LANGUAGE name RENAME TO new_name
ALTER [ PROCEDURAL ] LANGUAGE name OWNER TO new_owner

Description

ALTER LANGUAGE changes the definition of a procedural language. The only functionality is to rename the language or assign a new owner. You must be superuser or owner of the language to use ALTER LANGUAGE.

Parameters

name

Name of a language

new_name

The new name of the language

new_owner

The new owner of the language

Compatibility

There is no ALTER LANGUAGE statement in the SQL standard.

See Also

CREATE LANGUAGE, DROP LANGUAGE
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ALTER INDEX | Up | ALTER LARGE OBJECT


ALTER LARGE OBJECT

Name

ALTER LARGE OBJECT -- change the definition of a large object

Synopsis

ALTER LARGE OBJECT large_object_oid OWNER TO new_owner

Description

ALTER LARGE OBJECT changes the definition of a large object. The only functionality is to assign a new owner. You must be superuser or owner of the large object to use ALTER LARGE OBJECT.

Parameters

large_object_oid

OID of the large object to be altered

new_owner

The new owner of the large object

Compatibility

There is no ALTER LARGE OBJECT statement in the SQL standard.

See Also

Chapter 32
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ALTER LANGUAGE | Up | ALTER OPERATOR


ALTER OPERATOR

Name

ALTER OPERATOR -- change the definition of an operator

Synopsis

ALTER OPERATOR name ( { left_type | NONE } , { right_type | NONE } ) OWNER TO new_owner
ALTER OPERATOR name ( { left_type | NONE } , { right_type | NONE } ) SET SCHEMA new_schema

Description

ALTER OPERATOR changes the definition of an operator. The only currently available functionality is to change the owner of the operator.

You must own the operator to use ALTER OPERATOR. To alter the owner, you must also be a direct or indirect member of the new owning role, and that role must have CREATE privilege on the operator's schema. (These restrictions enforce that altering the owner doesn't do anything you couldn't do by dropping and recreating the operator. However, a superuser can alter ownership of any operator anyway.)

Parameters

name

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of an existing operator.

left_type

The data type of the operator's left operand; write NONE if the operator has no left operand.

right_type

The data type of the operator's right operand; write NONE if the operator has no right operand.

new_owner

The new owner of the operator.

new_schema

The new schema for the operator.

Examples

Change the owner of a custom operator a @@ b for type text:

ALTER OPERATOR @@ (text, text) OWNER TO joe;

Compatibility

There is no ALTER OPERATOR statement in the SQL standard.

See Also

CREATE OPERATOR, DROP OPERATOR
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ALTER LARGE OBJECT | Up | ALTER OPERATOR CLASS


ALTER OPERATOR CLASS

Name

ALTER OPERATOR CLASS -- change the definition of an operator class

Synopsis

ALTER OPERATOR CLASS name USING index_method RENAME TO new_name
ALTER OPERATOR CLASS name USING index_method OWNER TO new_owner
ALTER OPERATOR CLASS name USING index_method SET SCHEMA new_schema

Description

ALTER OPERATOR CLASS changes the definition of an operator class.

You must own the operator class to use ALTER OPERATOR CLASS. To alter the owner, you must also be a direct or indirect member of the new owning role, and that role must have CREATE privilege on the operator class's schema. (These restrictions enforce that altering the owner doesn't do anything you couldn't do by dropping and recreating the operator class. However, a superuser can alter ownership of any operator class anyway.)

Parameters

name

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of an existing operator class.

index_method

The name of the index method this operator class is for.

new_name

The new name of the operator class.

new_owner

The new owner of the operator class.

new_schema

The new schema for the operator class.

Compatibility

There is no ALTER OPERATOR CLASS statement in the SQL standard.

See Also

CREATE OPERATOR CLASS, DROP OPERATOR CLASS, ALTER OPERATOR FAMILY
Prev | Home | Next
ALTER OPERATOR | Up | ALTER OPERATOR FAMILY


ALTER OPERATOR FAMILY

Name

ALTER OPERATOR FAMILY -- change the definition of an operator family

Synopsis

ALTER OPERATOR FAMILY name USING index_method ADD
  {  OPERATOR strategy_number operator_name ( op_type, op_type ) [ FOR SEARCH | FOR ORDER BY sort_family_name ]
   | FUNCTION support_number [ ( op_type [ , op_type ] ) ] function_name ( argument_type [, ...] )
  } [, ... ]
ALTER OPERATOR FAMILY name USING index_method DROP
  {  OPERATOR strategy_number ( op_type [ , op_type ] )
   | FUNCTION support_number ( op_type [ , op_type ] )
  } [, ... ]
ALTER OPERATOR FAMILY name USING index_method RENAME TO new_name
ALTER OPERATOR FAMILY name USING index_method OWNER TO new_owner
ALTER OPERATOR FAMILY name USING index_method SET SCHEMA new_schema

Description

ALTER OPERATOR FAMILY changes the definition of an operator family. You can add operators and support functions to the family, remove them from the family, or change the family's name or owner.

When operators and support functions are added to a family with ALTER OPERATOR FAMILY, they are not part of any specific operator class within the family, but are just "loose" within the family. This indicates that these operators and functions are compatible with the family's semantics, but are not required for correct functioning of any specific index. (Operators and functions that are so required should be declared as part of an operator class, instead; see CREATE OPERATOR CLASS.) PostgreSQL will allow loose members of a family to be dropped from the family at any time, but members of an operator class cannot be dropped without dropping the whole class and any indexes that depend on it. Typically, single-data-type operators and functions are part of operator classes because they are needed to support an index on that specific data type, while cross-data-type operators and functions are made loose members of the family.

You must be a superuser to use ALTER OPERATOR FAMILY. (This restriction is made because an erroneous operator family definition could confuse or even crash the server.)

ALTER OPERATOR FAMILY does not presently check whether the operator family definition includes all the operators and functions required by the index method, nor whether the operators and functions form a self-consistent set. It is the user's responsibility to define a valid operator family.

Refer to Section 35.14 for further information.

Parameters

name

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of an existing operator family.

index_method

The name of the index method this operator family is for.

strategy_number

The index method's strategy number for an operator associated with the operator family.

operator_name

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of an operator associated with the operator family.

op_type

In an OPERATOR clause, the operand data type(s) of the operator, or NONE to signify a left-unary or right-unary operator. Unlike the comparable syntax in CREATE OPERATOR CLASS, the operand data types must always be specified.

In an ADD FUNCTION clause, the operand data type(s) the function is intended to support, if different from the input data type(s) of the function. For B-tree and hash indexes it is not necessary to specify op_type since the function's input data type(s) are always the correct ones to use. For GIN and GiST indexes it is necessary to specify the input data type the function is to be used with.

In a DROP FUNCTION clause, the operand data type(s) the function is intended to support must be specified.

sort_family_name

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of an existing btree operator family that describes the sort ordering associated with an ordering operator.

If neither FOR SEARCH nor FOR ORDER BY is specified, FOR SEARCH is the default.

support_number

The index method's support procedure number for a function associated with the operator family.

function_name

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of a function that is an index method support procedure for the operator family.

argument_type

The parameter data type(s) of the function.

new_name

The new name of the operator family.

new_owner

The new owner of the operator family.

new_schema

The new schema for the operator family.

The OPERATOR and FUNCTION clauses can appear in any order.

Notes

Notice that the DROP syntax only specifies the "slot" in the operator family, by strategy or support number and input data type(s). The name of the operator or function occupying the slot is not mentioned. Also, for DROP FUNCTION the type(s) to specify are the input data type(s) the function is intended to support; for GIN and GiST indexes this might have nothing to do with the actual input argument types of the function.

Because the index machinery does not check access permissions on functions before using them, including a function or operator in an operator family is tantamount to granting public execute permission on it. This is usually not an issue for the sorts of functions that are useful in an operator family.

The operators should not be defined by SQL functions. A SQL function is likely to be inlined into the calling query, which will prevent the optimizer from recognizing that the query matches an index.

Before PostgreSQL 8.4, the OPERATOR clause could include a RECHECK option. This is no longer supported because whether an index operator is "lossy" is now determined on-the-fly at run time. This allows efficient handling of cases where an operator might or might not be lossy.

Examples

The following example command adds cross-data-type operators and support functions to an operator family that already contains B-tree operator classes for data types int4 and int2.

ALTER OPERATOR FAMILY integer_ops USING btree ADD

  -- int4 vs int2
  OPERATOR 1 < (int4, int2) ,
  OPERATOR 2 <= (int4, int2) ,
  OPERATOR 3 = (int4, int2) ,
  OPERATOR 4 >= (int4, int2) ,
  OPERATOR 5 > (int4, int2) ,
  FUNCTION 1 btint42cmp(int4, int2) ,

  -- int2 vs int4
  OPERATOR 1 < (int2, int4) ,
  OPERATOR 2 <= (int2, int4) ,
  OPERATOR 3 = (int2, int4) ,
  OPERATOR 4 >= (int2, int4) ,
  OPERATOR 5 > (int2, int4) ,
  FUNCTION 1 btint24cmp(int2, int4) ;

To remove these entries again:

ALTER OPERATOR FAMILY integer_ops USING btree DROP

  -- int4 vs int2
  OPERATOR 1 (int4, int2) ,
  OPERATOR 2 (int4, int2) ,
  OPERATOR 3 (int4, int2) ,
  OPERATOR 4 (int4, int2) ,
  OPERATOR 5 (int4, int2) ,
  FUNCTION 1 (int4, int2) ,

  -- int2 vs int4
  OPERATOR 1 (int2, int4) ,
  OPERATOR 2 (int2, int4) ,
  OPERATOR 3 (int2, int4) ,
  OPERATOR 4 (int2, int4) ,
  OPERATOR 5 (int2, int4) ,
  FUNCTION 1 (int2, int4) ;

Compatibility

There is no ALTER OPERATOR FAMILY statement in the SQL standard.

See Also

CREATE OPERATOR FAMILY, DROP OPERATOR FAMILY, CREATE OPERATOR CLASS, ALTER OPERATOR CLASS, DROP OPERATOR CLASS
Prev | Home | Next
ALTER OPERATOR CLASS | Up | ALTER ROLE


ALTER ROLE

Name

ALTER ROLE -- change a database role

Synopsis

ALTER ROLE name [ [ WITH ] option [ ... ] ]

where option can be:

      SUPERUSER | NOSUPERUSER
    | CREATEDB | NOCREATEDB
    | CREATEROLE | NOCREATEROLE
    | CREATEUSER | NOCREATEUSER
    | INHERIT | NOINHERIT
    | LOGIN | NOLOGIN
    | REPLICATION | NOREPLICATION
    | CONNECTION LIMIT connlimit
    | [ ENCRYPTED | UNENCRYPTED ] PASSWORD 'password'
    | VALID UNTIL 'timestamp'

ALTER ROLE name RENAME TO new_name

ALTER ROLE name [ IN DATABASE database_name ] SET configuration_parameter { TO | = } { value | DEFAULT }
ALTER ROLE name [ IN DATABASE database_name ] SET configuration_parameter FROM CURRENT
ALTER ROLE name [ IN DATABASE database_name ] RESET configuration_parameter
ALTER ROLE name [ IN DATABASE database_name ] RESET ALL

Description

ALTER ROLE changes the attributes of a PostgreSQL role.

The first variant of this command listed in the synopsis can change many of the role attributes that can be specified in CREATE ROLE. (All the possible attributes are covered, except that there are no options for adding or removing memberships; use GRANT and REVOKE for that.) Attributes not mentioned in the command retain their previous settings. Database superusers can change any of these settings for any role. Roles having CREATEROLE privilege can change any of these settings, but only for non-superuser and non-replication roles. Ordinary roles can only change their own password.

The second variant changes the name of the role. Database superusers can rename any role. Roles having CREATEROLE privilege can rename non-superuser roles. The current session user cannot be renamed. (Connect as a different user if you need to do that.) Because MD5-encrypted passwords use the role name as cryptographic salt, renaming a role clears its password if the password is MD5-encrypted.

The remaining variants change a role's session default for a configuration variable, either for all databases or, when the IN DATABASE clause is specified, only for sessions in the named database. Whenever the role subsequently starts a new session, the specified value becomes the session default, overriding whatever setting is present in postgresql.conf or has been received from the postgres command line. This only happens at login time; executing SET ROLE or SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION does not cause new configuration values to be set. Settings set for all databases are overridden by database-specific settings attached to a role. Superusers can change anyone's session defaults. Roles having CREATEROLE privilege can change defaults for non-superuser roles. Ordinary roles can only set defaults for themselves. Certain configuration variables cannot be set this way, or can only be set if a superuser issues the command.

Parameters

name

The name of the role whose attributes are to be altered.

SUPERUSER
NOSUPERUSER
CREATEDB
NOCREATEDB
CREATEROLE
NOCREATEROLE
CREATEUSER
NOCREATEUSER
INHERIT
NOINHERIT
LOGIN
NOLOGIN
REPLICATION
NOREPLICATION
CONNECTION LIMIT connlimit
PASSWORD password
ENCRYPTED
UNENCRYPTED
VALID UNTIL 'timestamp'

These clauses alter attributes originally set by CREATE ROLE. For more information, see the CREATE ROLE reference page.

new_name

The new name of the role.

database_name

The name of the database the configuration variable should be set in.

configuration_parameter
value

Set this role's session default for the specified configuration parameter to the given value. If value is DEFAULT or, equivalently, RESET is used, the role-specific variable setting is removed, so the role will inherit the system-wide default setting in new sessions. Use RESET ALL to clear all role-specific settings. SET FROM CURRENT saves the session's current value of the parameter as the role-specific value. If IN DATABASE is specified, the configuration parameter is set or removed for the given role and database only.

Role-specific variable settings take effect only at login; SET ROLE and SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION do not process role-specific variable settings.

See SET and Chapter 18 for more information about allowed parameter names and values.

Notes

Use CREATE ROLE to add new roles, and DROP ROLE to remove a role.

ALTER ROLE cannot change a role's memberships. Use GRANT and REVOKE to do that.

Caution must be exercised when specifying an unencrypted password with this command. The password will be transmitted to the server in cleartext, and it might also be logged in the client's command history or the server log. psql contains a command \password that can be used to change a role's password without exposing the cleartext password.

It is also possible to tie a session default to a specific database rather than to a role; see ALTER DATABASE. If there is a conflict, database-role-specific settings override role-specific ones, which in turn override database-specific ones.

Examples

Change a role's password:

ALTER ROLE davide WITH PASSWORD 'hu8jmn3';

Remove a role's password:

ALTER ROLE davide WITH PASSWORD NULL;

Change a password expiration date, specifying that the password should expire at midday on 4th May 2015 using the time zone which is one hour ahead of UTC:

ALTER ROLE chris VALID UNTIL 'May 4 12:00:00 2015 +1';

Make a password valid forever:

ALTER ROLE fred VALID UNTIL 'infinity';

Give a role the ability to create other roles and new databases:

ALTER ROLE miriam CREATEROLE CREATEDB;

Give a role a non-default setting of the maintenance_work_mem parameter:

ALTER ROLE worker_bee SET maintenance_work_mem = 100000;

Give a role a non-default, database-specific setting of the client_min_messages parameter:

ALTER ROLE fred IN DATABASE devel SET client_min_messages = DEBUG;

Compatibility

The ALTER ROLE statement is a PostgreSQL extension.

See Also

CREATE ROLE, DROP ROLE, SET
Prev | Home | Next
ALTER OPERATOR FAMILY | Up | ALTER SCHEMA


ALTER SCHEMA

Name

ALTER SCHEMA -- change the definition of a schema

Synopsis

ALTER SCHEMA name RENAME TO new_name
ALTER SCHEMA name OWNER TO new_owner

Description

ALTER SCHEMA changes the definition of a schema.

You must own the schema to use ALTER SCHEMA. To rename a schema you must also have the CREATE privilege for the database. To alter the owner, you must also be a direct or indirect member of the new owning role, and you must have the CREATE privilege for the database. (Note that superusers have all these privileges automatically.)

Parameters

name

The name of an existing schema.

new_name

The new name of the schema. The new name cannot begin with pg_, as such names are reserved for system schemas.

new_owner

The new owner of the schema.

Compatibility

There is no ALTER SCHEMA statement in the SQL standard.

See Also

CREATE SCHEMA, DROP SCHEMA
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ALTER ROLE | Up | ALTER SEQUENCE


ALTER SEQUENCE

Name

ALTER SEQUENCE -- change the definition of a sequence generator

Synopsis

ALTER SEQUENCE name [ INCREMENT [ BY ] increment ]
    [ MINVALUE minvalue | NO MINVALUE ] [ MAXVALUE maxvalue | NO MAXVALUE ]
    [ START [ WITH ] start ]
    [ RESTART [ [ WITH ] restart ] ]
    [ CACHE cache ] [ [ NO ] CYCLE ]
    [ OWNED BY { table.column | NONE } ]
ALTER SEQUENCE name OWNER TO new_owner
ALTER SEQUENCE name RENAME TO new_name
ALTER SEQUENCE name SET SCHEMA new_schema

Description

ALTER SEQUENCE changes the parameters of an existing sequence generator. Any parameters not specifically set in the ALTER SEQUENCE command retain their prior settings.

You must own the sequence to use ALTER SEQUENCE. To change a sequence's schema, you must also have CREATE privilege on the new schema. To alter the owner, you must also be a direct or indirect member of the new owning role, and that role must have CREATE privilege on the sequence's schema. (These restrictions enforce that altering the owner doesn't do anything you couldn't do by dropping and recreating the sequence. However, a superuser can alter ownership of any sequence anyway.)

Parameters

name

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of a sequence to be altered.

increment

The clause INCREMENT BY increment is optional. A positive value will make an ascending sequence, a negative one a descending sequence. If unspecified, the old increment value will be maintained.

minvalue
NO MINVALUE

The optional clause MINVALUE minvalue determines the minimum value a sequence can generate. If NO MINVALUE is specified, the defaults of 1 and -263-1 for ascending and descending sequences, respectively, will be used. If neither option is specified, the current minimum value will be maintained.

maxvalue
NO MAXVALUE

The optional clause MAXVALUE maxvalue determines the maximum value for the sequence. If NO MAXVALUE is specified, the defaults are 263-1 and -1 for ascending and descending sequences, respectively, will be used. If neither option is specified, the current maximum value will be maintained.

start

The optional clause START WITH start changes the recorded start value of the sequence. This has no effect on the current sequence value; it simply sets the value that future ALTER SEQUENCE RESTART commands will use.

restart

The optional clause RESTART [ WITH restart ] changes the current value of the sequence. This is equivalent to calling the setval function with is_called = false: the specified value will be returned by the next call of nextval. Writing RESTART with no restart value is equivalent to supplying the start value that was recorded by CREATE SEQUENCE or last set by ALTER SEQUENCE START WITH.

cache

The clause CACHE cache enables sequence numbers to be preallocated and stored in memory for faster access. The minimum value is 1 (only one value can be generated at a time, i.e., no cache). If unspecified, the old cache value will be maintained.

CYCLE

The optional CYCLE key word can be used to enable the sequence to wrap around when the maxvalue or minvalue has been reached by an ascending or descending sequence respectively. If the limit is reached, the next number generated will be the minvalue or maxvalue, respectively.

NO CYCLE

If the optional NO CYCLE key word is specified, any calls to nextval after the sequence has reached its maximum value will return an error. If neither CYCLE or NO CYCLE are specified, the old cycle behavior will be maintained.

OWNED BY table.column
OWNED BY NONE

The OWNED BY option causes the sequence to be associated with a specific table column, such that if that column (or its whole table) is dropped, the sequence will be automatically dropped as well. If specified, this association replaces any previously specified association for the sequence. The specified table must have the same owner and be in the same schema as the sequence. Specifying OWNED BY NONE removes any existing association, making the sequence "free-standing".

new_owner

The user name of the new owner of the sequence.

new_name

The new name for the sequence.

new_schema

The new schema for the sequence.

Notes

To avoid blocking of concurrent transactions that obtain numbers from the same sequence, ALTER SEQUENCE's effects on the sequence generation parameters are never rolled back; those changes take effect immediately and are not reversible. However, the OWNED BY, OWNER TO, RENAME TO, and SET SCHEMA clauses cause ordinary catalog updates that can be rolled back.

ALTER SEQUENCE will not immediately affect nextval results in backends, other than the current one, that have preallocated (cached) sequence values. They will use up all cached values prior to noticing the changed sequence generation parameters. The current backend will be affected immediately.

ALTER SEQUENCE does not affect the currval status for the sequence. (Before PostgreSQL 8.3, it sometimes did.)

For historical reasons, ALTER TABLE can be used with sequences too; but the only variants of ALTER TABLE that are allowed with sequences are equivalent to the forms shown above.

Examples

Restart a sequence called serial, at 105:

ALTER SEQUENCE serial RESTART WITH 105;

Compatibility

ALTER SEQUENCE conforms to the SQL standard, except for the START WITH, OWNED BY, OWNER TO, RENAME TO, and SET SCHEMA clauses, which are PostgreSQL extensions.

See Also

CREATE SEQUENCE, DROP SEQUENCE
Prev | Home | Next
ALTER SCHEMA | Up | ALTER SERVER


ALTER SERVER

Name

ALTER SERVER -- change the definition of a foreign server

Synopsis

ALTER SERVER server_name [ VERSION 'new_version' ]
    [ OPTIONS ( [ ADD | SET | DROP ] option ['value'] [, ... ] ) ]
ALTER SERVER server_name OWNER TO new_owner

Description

ALTER SERVER changes the definition of a foreign server. The first form changes the server version string or the generic options of the server (at least one clause is required). The second form changes the owner of the server.

To alter the server you must be the owner of the server. Additionally to alter the owner, you must own the server and also be a direct or indirect member of the new owning role, and you must have USAGE privilege on the server's foreign-data wrapper. (Note that superusers satisfy all these criteria automatically.)

Parameters

server_name

The name of an existing server.

new_version

New server version.

OPTIONS ( [ ADD | SET | DROP ] option ['value'] [, ... ] )

Change options for the server. ADD, SET, and DROP specify the action to be performed. ADD is assumed if no operation is explicitly specified. Option names must be unique; names and values are also validated using the server's foreign-data wrapper library.

Examples

Alter server foo, add connection options:

ALTER SERVER foo OPTIONS (host 'foo', dbname 'foodb');

Alter server foo, change version, change host option:

ALTER SERVER foo VERSION '8.4' OPTIONS (SET host 'baz');

Compatibility

ALTER SERVER conforms to ISO/IEC 9075-9 (SQL/MED).

See Also

CREATE SERVER, DROP SERVER
Prev | Home | Next
ALTER SEQUENCE | Up | ALTER TABLE


ALTER TABLE

Name

ALTER TABLE -- change the definition of a table

Synopsis

ALTER TABLE [ ONLY ] name [ * ]
    action [, ... ]
ALTER TABLE [ ONLY ] name [ * ]
    RENAME [ COLUMN ] column TO new_column
ALTER TABLE name
    RENAME TO new_name
ALTER TABLE name
    SET SCHEMA new_schema

where action is one of:

    ADD [ COLUMN ] column data_type [ COLLATE collation ] [ column_constraint [ ... ] ]
    DROP [ COLUMN ] [ IF EXISTS ] column [ RESTRICT | CASCADE ]
    ALTER [ COLUMN ] column [ SET DATA ] TYPE data_type [ COLLATE collation ] [ USING expression ]
    ALTER [ COLUMN ] column SET DEFAULT expression
    ALTER [ COLUMN ] column DROP DEFAULT
    ALTER [ COLUMN ] column { SET | DROP } NOT NULL
    ALTER [ COLUMN ] column SET STATISTICS integer
    ALTER [ COLUMN ] column SET ( attribute_option = value [, ... ] )
    ALTER [ COLUMN ] column RESET ( attribute_option [, ... ] )
    ALTER [ COLUMN ] column SET STORAGE { PLAIN | EXTERNAL | EXTENDED | MAIN }
    ADD table_constraint [ NOT VALID ]
    ADD table_constraint_using_index
    VALIDATE CONSTRAINT constraint_name
    DROP CONSTRAINT [ IF EXISTS ]  constraint_name [ RESTRICT | CASCADE ]
    DISABLE TRIGGER [ trigger_name | ALL | USER ]
    ENABLE TRIGGER [ trigger_name | ALL | USER ]
    ENABLE REPLICA TRIGGER trigger_name
    ENABLE ALWAYS TRIGGER trigger_name
    DISABLE RULE rewrite_rule_name
    ENABLE RULE rewrite_rule_name
    ENABLE REPLICA RULE rewrite_rule_name
    ENABLE ALWAYS RULE rewrite_rule_name
    CLUSTER ON index_name
    SET WITHOUT CLUSTER
    SET WITH OIDS
    SET WITHOUT OIDS
    SET ( storage_parameter = value [, ... ] )
    RESET ( storage_parameter [, ... ] )
    INHERIT parent_table
    NO INHERIT parent_table
    OF type_name
    NOT OF
    OWNER TO new_owner
    SET TABLESPACE new_tablespace

and table_constraint_using_index is:

    [ CONSTRAINT constraint_name ]
    { UNIQUE | PRIMARY KEY } USING INDEX index_name
    [ DEFERRABLE | NOT DEFERRABLE ] [ INITIALLY DEFERRED | INITIALLY IMMEDIATE ]

Description

ALTER TABLE changes the definition of an existing table. There are several subforms:

ADD COLUMN

This form adds a new column to the table, using the same syntax as CREATE TABLE.

DROP COLUMN [ IF EXISTS ]

This form drops a column from a table. Indexes and table constraints involving the column will be automatically dropped as well. You will need to say CASCADE if anything outside the table depends on the column, for example, foreign key references or views. If IF EXISTS is specified and the column does not exist, no error is thrown. In this case a notice is issued instead.

SET DATA TYPE

This form changes the type of a column of a table. Indexes and simple table constraints involving the column will be automatically converted to use the new column type by reparsing the originally supplied expression. The optional COLLATE clause specifies a collation for the new column; if omitted, the collation is the default for the new column type. The optional USING clause specifies how to compute the new column value from the old; if omitted, the default conversion is the same as an assignment cast from old data type to new. A USING clause must be provided if there is no implicit or assignment cast from old to new type.

SET/DROP DEFAULT

These forms set or remove the default value for a column. The default values only apply to subsequent INSERT commands; they do not cause rows already in the table to change. Defaults can also be created for views, in which case they are inserted into INSERT statements on the view before the view's ON INSERT rule is applied.

SET/DROP NOT NULL

These forms change whether a column is marked to allow null values or to reject null values. You can only use SET NOT NULL when the column contains no null values.

SET STATISTICS

This form sets the per-column statistics-gathering target for subsequent ANALYZE operations. The target can be set in the range 0 to 10000; alternatively, set it to -1 to revert to using the system default statistics target (default_statistics_target). For more information on the use of statistics by the PostgreSQL query planner, refer to Section 14.2.

SET ( attribute_option = value [, ... ] )
RESET ( attribute_option [, ... ] )

This form sets or resets per-attribute options. Currently, the only defined per-attribute options are n_distinct and n_distinct_inherited, which override the number-of-distinct-values estimates made by subsequent ANALYZE operations. n_distinct affects the statistics for the table itself, while n_distinct_inherited affects the statistics gathered for the table plus its inheritance children. When set to a positive value, ANALYZE will assume that the column contains exactly the specified number of distinct nonnull values. When set to a negative value, which must be greater than or equal to -1, ANALYZE will assume that the number of distinct nonnull values in the column is linear in the size of the table; the exact count is to be computed by multiplying the estimated table size by the absolute value of the given number. For example, a value of -1 implies that all values in the column are distinct, while a value of -0.5 implies that each value appears twice on the average. This can be useful when the size of the table changes over time, since the multiplication by the number of rows in the table is not performed until query planning time. Specify a value of 0 to revert to estimating the number of distinct values normally. For more information on the use of statistics by the PostgreSQL query planner, refer to Section 14.2.

SET STORAGE

This form sets the storage mode for a column. This controls whether this column is held inline or in a secondary TOAST table, and whether the data should be compressed or not. PLAIN must be used for fixed-length values such as integer and is inline, uncompressed. MAIN is for inline, compressible data. EXTERNAL is for external, uncompressed data, and EXTENDED is for external, compressed data. EXTENDED is the default for most data types that support non-PLAIN storage. Use of EXTERNAL will make substring operations on very large text and bytea values run faster, at the penalty of increased storage space. Note that SET STORAGE doesn't itself change anything in the table, it just sets the strategy to be pursued during future table updates. See Section 55.2 for more information.

ADD table_constraint [ NOT VALID ]

This form adds a new constraint to a table using the same syntax as CREATE TABLE, plus the option NOT VALID, which is currently only allowed for foreign key constraints. If the constraint is marked NOT VALID, the potentially-lengthy initial check to verify that all rows in the table satisfy the constraint is skipped. The constraint will still be enforced against subsequent inserts or updates (that is, they'll fail unless there is a matching row in the referenced table). But the database will not assume that the constraint holds for all rows in the table, until it is validated by using the VALIDATE CONSTRAINT option.

ADD table_constraint_using_index

This form adds a new PRIMARY KEY or UNIQUE constraint to a table based on an existing unique index. All the columns of the index will be included in the constraint.

The index cannot have expression columns nor be a partial index. Also, it must be a b-tree index with default sort ordering. These restrictions ensure that the index is equivalent to one that would be built by a regular ADD PRIMARY KEY or ADD UNIQUE command.

If PRIMARY KEY is specified, and the index's columns are not already marked NOT NULL, then this command will attempt to do ALTER COLUMN SET NOT NULL against each such column. That requires a full table scan to verify the column(s) contain no nulls. In all other cases, this is a fast operation.

If a constraint name is provided then the index will be renamed to match the constraint name. Otherwise the constraint will be named the same as the index.

After this command is executed, the index is "owned" by the constraint, in the same way as if the index had been built by a regular ADD PRIMARY KEY or ADD UNIQUE command. In particular, dropping the constraint will make the index disappear too.

Note: Adding a constraint using an existing index can be helpful in situations where a new constraint needs to be added without blocking table updates for a long time. To do that, create the index using CREATE INDEX CONCURRENTLY, and then install it as an official constraint using this syntax. See the example below.

VALIDATE CONSTRAINT

This form validates a foreign key constraint that was previously created as NOT VALID, by scanning the table to ensure there are no unmatched rows. Nothing happens if the constraint is already marked valid.

Validation can be a long process on larger tables and currently requires an ACCESS EXCLUSIVE lock. The value of separating validation from initial creation is that you can defer validation to less busy times, or can be used to give additional time to correct pre-existing errors while preventing new errors.

DROP CONSTRAINT [ IF EXISTS ]

This form drops the specified constraint on a table. If IF EXISTS is specified and the constraint does not exist, no error is thrown. In this case a notice is issued instead.

DISABLE/ENABLE [ REPLICA | ALWAYS ] TRIGGER

These forms configure the firing of trigger(s) belonging to the table. A disabled trigger is still known to the system, but is not executed when its triggering event occurs. For a deferred trigger, the enable status is checked when the event occurs, not when the trigger function is actually executed. One can disable or enable a single trigger specified by name, or all triggers on the table, or only user triggers (this option excludes internally generated constraint triggers such as those that are used to implement foreign key constraints or deferrable uniqueness and exclusion constraints). Disabling or enabling internally generated constraint triggers requires superuser privileges; it should be done with caution since of course the integrity of the constraint cannot be guaranteed if the triggers are not executed. The trigger firing mechanism is also affected by the configuration variable session_replication_role. Simply enabled triggers will fire when the replication role is "origin" (the default) or "local". Triggers configured as ENABLE REPLICA will only fire if the session is in "replica" mode, and triggers configured as ENABLE ALWAYS will fire regardless of the current replication mode.

DISABLE/ENABLE [ REPLICA | ALWAYS ] RULE

These forms configure the firing of rewrite rules belonging to the table. A disabled rule is still known to the system, but is not applied during query rewriting. The semantics are as for disabled/enabled triggers. This configuration is ignored for ON SELECT rules, which are always applied in order to keep views working even if the current session is in a non-default replication role.

CLUSTER

This form selects the default index for future CLUSTER operations. It does not actually re-cluster the table.

SET WITHOUT CLUSTER

This form removes the most recently used CLUSTER index specification from the table. This affects future cluster operations that don't specify an index.

SET WITH OIDS

This form adds an oid system column to the table (see Section 5.4). It does nothing if the table already has OIDs.

Note that this is not equivalent to ADD COLUMN oid oid; that would add a normal column that happened to be named oid, not a system column.

SET WITHOUT OIDS

This form removes the oid system column from the table. This is exactly equivalent to DROP COLUMN oid RESTRICT, except that it will not complain if there is already no oid column.

SET ( storage_parameter = value [, ... ] )

This form changes one or more storage parameters for the table. See Storage Parameters for details on the available parameters. Note that the table contents will not be modified immediately by this command; depending on the parameter you might need to rewrite the table to get the desired effects. That can be done with VACUUM FULL, CLUSTER or one of the forms of ALTER TABLE that forces a table rewrite.

Note: While CREATE TABLE allows OIDS to be specified in the WITH (storage_parameter) syntax, ALTER TABLE does not treat OIDS as a storage parameter. Instead use the SET WITH OIDS and SET WITHOUT OIDS forms to change OID status.

RESET ( storage_parameter [, ... ] )

This form resets one or more storage parameters to their defaults. As with SET, a table rewrite might be needed to update the table entirely.

INHERIT parent_table

This form adds the target table as a new child of the specified parent table. Subsequently, queries against the parent will include records of the target table. To be added as a child, the target table must already contain all the same columns as the parent (it could have additional columns, too). The columns must have matching data types, and if they have NOT NULL constraints in the parent then they must also have NOT NULL constraints in the child.

There must also be matching child-table constraints for all CHECK constraints of the parent. Currently UNIQUE, PRIMARY KEY, and FOREIGN KEY constraints are not considered, but this might change in the future.

NO INHERIT parent_table

This form removes the target table from the list of children of the specified parent table. Queries against the parent table will no longer include records drawn from the target table.

OF type_name

This form links the table to a composite type as though CREATE TABLE OF had formed it. The table's list of column names and types must precisely match that of the composite type; the presence of an oid system column is permitted to differ. The table must not inherit from any other table. These restrictions ensure that CREATE TABLE OF would permit an equivalent table definition.

NOT OF

This form dissociates a typed table from its type.

OWNER

This form changes the owner of the table, sequence, or view to the specified user.

SET TABLESPACE

This form changes the table's tablespace to the specified tablespace and moves the data file(s) associated with the table to the new tablespace. Indexes on the table, if any, are not moved; but they can be moved separately with additional SET TABLESPACE commands. See also CREATE TABLESPACE.

RENAME

The RENAME forms change the name of a table (or an index, sequence, or view) or the name of an individual column in a table. There is no effect on the stored data.

SET SCHEMA

This form moves the table into another schema. Associated indexes, constraints, and sequences owned by table columns are moved as well.

All the actions except RENAME and SET SCHEMA can be combined into a list of multiple alterations to apply in parallel. For example, it is possible to add several columns and/or alter the type of several columns in a single command. This is particularly useful with large tables, since only one pass over the table need be made.

You must own the table to use ALTER TABLE. To change the schema of a table, you must also have CREATE privilege on the new schema. To add the table as a new child of a parent table, you must own the parent table as well. To alter the owner, you must also be a direct or indirect member of the new owning role, and that role must have CREATE privilege on the table's schema. (These restrictions enforce that altering the owner doesn't do anything you couldn't do by dropping and recreating the table. However, a superuser can alter ownership of any table anyway.)

Parameters

name

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of an existing table to alter. If ONLY is specified before the table name, only that table is altered. If ONLY is not specified, the table and all its descendant tables (if any) are altered. Optionally, * can be specified after the table name to explicitly indicate that descendant tables are included.

column

Name of a new or existing column.

new_column

New name for an existing column.

new_name

New name for the table.

type

Data type of the new column, or new data type for an existing column.

table_constraint

New table constraint for the table.

constraint_name

Name of an existing constraint to drop.

CASCADE

Automatically drop objects that depend on the dropped column or constraint (for example, views referencing the column).

RESTRICT

Refuse to drop the column or constraint if there are any dependent objects. This is the default behavior.

trigger_name

Name of a single trigger to disable or enable.

ALL

Disable or enable all triggers belonging to the table. (This requires superuser privilege if any of the triggers are internally generated constraint triggers such as those that are used to implement foreign key constraints or deferrable uniqueness and exclusion constraints.)

USER

Disable or enable all triggers belonging to the table except for internally generated constraint triggers such as those that are used to implement foreign key constraints or deferrable uniqueness and exclusion constraints.

index_name

The index name on which the table should be marked for clustering.

storage_parameter

The name of a table storage parameter.

value

The new value for a table storage parameter. This might be a number or a word depending on the parameter.

parent_table

A parent table to associate or de-associate with this table.

new_owner

The user name of the new owner of the table.

new_tablespace

The name of the tablespace to which the table will be moved.

new_schema

The name of the schema to which the table will be moved.

Notes

The key word COLUMN is noise and can be omitted.

When a column is added with ADD COLUMN, all existing rows in the table are initialized with the column's default value (NULL if no DEFAULT clause is specified).

Adding a column with a non-null default or changing the type of an existing column will require the entire table and indexes to be rewritten. As an exception, if the USING clause does not change the column contents and the old type is either binary coercible to the new type or an unconstrained domain over the new type, a table rewrite is not needed, but any indexes on the affected columns must still be rebuilt. Adding or removing a system oid column also requires rewriting the entire table. Table and/or index rebuilds may take a significant amount of time for a large table; and will temporarily require as much as double the disk space.

Adding a CHECK or NOT NULL constraint requires scanning the table to verify that existing rows meet the constraint, but does not require a table rewrite.

The main reason for providing the option to specify multiple changes in a single ALTER TABLE is that multiple table scans or rewrites can thereby be combined into a single pass over the table.

The DROP COLUMN form does not physically remove the column, but simply makes it invisible to SQL operations. Subsequent insert and update operations in the table will store a null value for the column. Thus, dropping a column is quick but it will not immediately reduce the on-disk size of your table, as the space occupied by the dropped column is not reclaimed. The space will be reclaimed over time as existing rows are updated. (These statements do not apply when dropping the system oid column; that is done with an immediate rewrite.)

To force immediate reclamation of space occupied by a dropped column, you can execute one of the forms of ALTER TABLE that performs a rewrite of the whole table. This results in reconstructing each row with the dropped column replaced by a null value.

The rewriting forms of ALTER TABLE are not MVCC-safe. After a table rewrite, the table will appear empty to concurrent transactions, if they are using a snapshot taken before the rewrite occurred. See Section 13.5 for more details.

The USING option of SET DATA TYPE can actually specify any expression involving the old values of the row; that is, it can refer to other columns as well as the one being converted. This allows very general conversions to be done with the SET DATA TYPE syntax. Because of this flexibility, the USING expression is not applied to the column's default value (if any); the result might not be a constant expression as required for a default. This means that when there is no implicit or assignment cast from old to new type, SET DATA TYPE might fail to convert the default even though a USING clause is supplied. In such cases, drop the default with DROP DEFAULT, perform the ALTER TYPE, and then use SET DEFAULT to add a suitable new default. Similar considerations apply to indexes and constraints involving the column.

If a table has any descendant tables, it is not permitted to add, rename, or change the type of a column in the parent table without doing the same to the descendants. That is, ALTER TABLE ONLY will be rejected. This ensures that the descendants always have columns matching the parent.

A recursive DROP COLUMN operation will remove a descendant table's column only if the descendant does not inherit that column from any other parents and never had an independent definition of the column. A nonrecursive DROP COLUMN (i.e., ALTER TABLE ONLY ... DROP COLUMN) never removes any descendant columns, but instead marks them as independently defined rather than inherited.

The TRIGGER, CLUSTER, OWNER, and TABLESPACE actions never recurse to descendant tables; that is, they always act as though ONLY were specified. Adding a constraint can recurse only for CHECK constraints, and is required to do so for such constraints.

Changing any part of a system catalog table is not permitted.

Refer to CREATE TABLE for a further description of valid parameters. Chapter 5 has further information on inheritance.

Examples

To add a column of type varchar to a table:

ALTER TABLE distributors ADD COLUMN address varchar(30);

To drop a column from a table:

ALTER TABLE distributors DROP COLUMN address RESTRICT;

To change the types of two existing columns in one operation:

ALTER TABLE distributors
    ALTER COLUMN address TYPE varchar(80),
    ALTER COLUMN name TYPE varchar(100);

To change an integer column containing UNIX timestamps to timestamp with time zone via a USING clause:

ALTER TABLE foo
    ALTER COLUMN foo_timestamp SET DATA TYPE timestamp with time zone
    USING
        timestamp with time zone 'epoch' + foo_timestamp * interval '1 second';

The same, when the column has a default expression that won't automatically cast to the new data type:

ALTER TABLE foo
    ALTER COLUMN foo_timestamp DROP DEFAULT,
    ALTER COLUMN foo_timestamp TYPE timestamp with time zone
    USING
        timestamp with time zone 'epoch' + foo_timestamp * interval '1 second',
    ALTER COLUMN foo_timestamp SET DEFAULT now();

To rename an existing column:

ALTER TABLE distributors RENAME COLUMN address TO city;

To rename an existing table:

ALTER TABLE distributors RENAME TO suppliers;

To add a not-null constraint to a column:

ALTER TABLE distributors ALTER COLUMN street SET NOT NULL;

To remove a not-null constraint from a column:

ALTER TABLE distributors ALTER COLUMN street DROP NOT NULL;

To add a check constraint to a table and all its children:

ALTER TABLE distributors ADD CONSTRAINT zipchk CHECK (char_length(zipcode) = 5);

To remove a check constraint from a table and all its children:

ALTER TABLE distributors DROP CONSTRAINT zipchk;

To remove a check constraint from one table only:

ALTER TABLE ONLY distributors DROP CONSTRAINT zipchk;

(The check constraint remains in place for any child tables.)

To add a foreign key constraint to a table:

ALTER TABLE distributors ADD CONSTRAINT distfk FOREIGN KEY (address) REFERENCES addresses (address) MATCH FULL;

To add a (multicolumn) unique constraint to a table:

ALTER TABLE distributors ADD CONSTRAINT dist_id_zipcode_key UNIQUE (dist_id, zipcode);

To add an automatically named primary key constraint to a table, noting that a table can only ever have one primary key:

ALTER TABLE distributors ADD PRIMARY KEY (dist_id);

To move a table to a different tablespace:

ALTER TABLE distributors SET TABLESPACE fasttablespace;

To move a table to a different schema:

ALTER TABLE myschema.distributors SET SCHEMA yourschema;

To recreate a primary key constraint, without blocking updates while the index is rebuilt:

CREATE UNIQUE INDEX CONCURRENTLY dist_id_temp_idx ON distributors (dist_id);
ALTER TABLE distributors DROP CONSTRAINT distributors_pkey,
    ADD CONSTRAINT distributors_pkey PRIMARY KEY USING INDEX dist_id_temp_idx;

Compatibility

The forms ADD (without USING INDEX), DROP, SET DEFAULT, and SET DATA TYPE (without USING) conform with the SQL standard. The other forms are PostgreSQL extensions of the SQL standard. Also, the ability to specify more than one manipulation in a single ALTER TABLE command is an extension.

ALTER TABLE DROP COLUMN can be used to drop the only column of a table, leaving a zero-column table. This is an extension of SQL, which disallows zero-column tables.

See Also

CREATE TABLE
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ALTER SERVER | Up | ALTER TABLESPACE


ALTER TABLESPACE

Name

ALTER TABLESPACE -- change the definition of a tablespace

Synopsis

ALTER TABLESPACE name RENAME TO new_name
ALTER TABLESPACE name OWNER TO new_owner
ALTER TABLESPACE name SET ( tablespace_option = value [, ... ] )
ALTER TABLESPACE name RESET ( tablespace_option [, ... ] )

Description

ALTER TABLESPACE changes the definition of a tablespace.

You must own the tablespace to use ALTER TABLESPACE. To alter the owner, you must also be a direct or indirect member of the new owning role. (Note that superusers have these privileges automatically.)

Parameters

name

The name of an existing tablespace.

new_name

The new name of the tablespace. The new name cannot begin with pg_, as such names are reserved for system tablespaces.

new_owner

The new owner of the tablespace.

tablespace_parameter

A tablespace parameter to be set or reset. Currently, the only available parameters are seq_page_cost and random_page_cost. Setting either value for a particular tablespace will override the planner's usual estimate of the cost of reading pages from tables in that tablespace, as established by the configuration parameters of the same name (see seq_page_cost, random_page_cost). This may be useful if one tablespace is located on a disk which is faster or slower than the remainder of the I/O subsystem.

Examples

Rename tablespace index_space to fast_raid:

ALTER TABLESPACE index_space RENAME TO fast_raid;

Change the owner of tablespace index_space:

ALTER TABLESPACE index_space OWNER TO mary;

Compatibility

There is no ALTER TABLESPACE statement in the SQL standard.

See Also

CREATE TABLESPACE, DROP TABLESPACE
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ALTER TABLE | Up | ALTER TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION


ALTER TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION

Name

ALTER TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION -- change the definition of a text search configuration

Synopsis

ALTER TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION name
    ADD MAPPING FOR token_type [, ... ] WITH dictionary_name [, ... ]
ALTER TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION name
    ALTER MAPPING FOR token_type [, ... ] WITH dictionary_name [, ... ]
ALTER TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION name
    ALTER MAPPING REPLACE old_dictionary WITH new_dictionary
ALTER TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION name
    ALTER MAPPING FOR token_type [, ... ] REPLACE old_dictionary WITH new_dictionary
ALTER TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION name
    DROP MAPPING [ IF EXISTS ] FOR token_type [, ... ]
ALTER TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION name RENAME TO new_name
ALTER TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION name OWNER TO new_owner
ALTER TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION name SET SCHEMA new_schema

Description

ALTER TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION changes the definition of a text search configuration. You can modify its mappings from token types to dictionaries, or change the configuration's name or owner.

You must be the owner of the configuration to use ALTER TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION.

Parameters

name

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of an existing text search configuration.

token_type

The name of a token type that is emitted by the configuration's parser.

dictionary_name

The name of a text search dictionary to be consulted for the specified token type(s). If multiple dictionaries are listed, they are consulted in the specified order.

old_dictionary

The name of a text search dictionary to be replaced in the mapping.

new_dictionary

The name of a text search dictionary to be substituted for old_dictionary.

new_name

The new name of the text search configuration.

new_owner

The new owner of the text search configuration.

new_schema

The new schema for the text search configuration.

The ADD MAPPING FOR form installs a list of dictionaries to be consulted for the specified token type(s); it is an error if there is already a mapping for any of the token types. The ALTER MAPPING FOR form does the same, but first removing any existing mapping for those token types. The ALTER MAPPING REPLACE forms substitute new_dictionary for old_dictionary anywhere the latter appears. This is done for only the specified token types when FOR appears, or for all mappings of the configuration when it doesn't. The DROP MAPPING form removes all dictionaries for the specified token type(s), causing tokens of those types to be ignored by the text search configuration. It is an error if there is no mapping for the token types, unless IF EXISTS appears.

Examples

The following example replaces the english dictionary with the swedish dictionary anywhere that english is used within my_config.

ALTER TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION my_config
  ALTER MAPPING REPLACE english WITH swedish;

Compatibility

There is no ALTER TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION statement in the SQL standard.

See Also

CREATE TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION, DROP TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION
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ALTER TABLESPACE | Up | ALTER TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY


ALTER TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY

Name

ALTER TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY -- change the definition of a text search dictionary

Synopsis

ALTER TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY name (
    option [ = value ] [, ... ]
)
ALTER TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY name RENAME TO new_name
ALTER TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY name OWNER TO new_owner
ALTER TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY name SET SCHEMA new_schema

Description

ALTER TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY changes the definition of a text search dictionary. You can change the dictionary's template-specific options, or change the dictionary's name or owner.

You must be the owner of the dictionary to use ALTER TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY.

Parameters

name

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of an existing text search dictionary.

option

The name of a template-specific option to be set for this dictionary.

value

The new value to use for a template-specific option. If the equal sign and value are omitted, then any previous setting for the option is removed from the dictionary, allowing the default to be used.

new_name

The new name of the text search dictionary.

new_owner

The new owner of the text search dictionary.

new_schema

The new schema for the text search dictionary.

Template-specific options can appear in any order.

Examples

The following example command changes the stopword list for a Snowball-based dictionary. Other parameters remain unchanged.

ALTER TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY my_dict ( StopWords = newrussian );

The following example command changes the language option to dutch, and removes the stopword option entirely.

ALTER TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY my_dict ( language = dutch, StopWords );

The following example command "updates" the dictionary's definition without actually changing anything.

ALTER TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY my_dict ( dummy );

(The reason this works is that the option removal code doesn't complain if there is no such option.) This trick is useful when changing configuration files for the dictionary: the ALTER will force existing database sessions to re-read the configuration files, which otherwise they would never do if they had read them earlier.

Compatibility

There is no ALTER TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY statement in the SQL standard.

See Also

CREATE TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY, DROP TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY
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ALTER TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION | Up | ALTER TEXT SEARCH PARSER


ALTER TEXT SEARCH PARSER

Name

ALTER TEXT SEARCH PARSER -- change the definition of a text search parser

Synopsis

ALTER TEXT SEARCH PARSER name RENAME TO new_name
ALTER TEXT SEARCH PARSER name SET SCHEMA new_schema

Description

ALTER TEXT SEARCH PARSER changes the definition of a text search parser. Currently, the only supported functionality is to change the parser's name.

You must be a superuser to use ALTER TEXT SEARCH PARSER.

Parameters

name

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of an existing text search parser.

new_name

The new name of the text search parser.

new_schema

The new schema for the text search parser.

Compatibility

There is no ALTER TEXT SEARCH PARSER statement in the SQL standard.

See Also

CREATE TEXT SEARCH PARSER, DROP TEXT SEARCH PARSER
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ALTER TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY | Up | ALTER TEXT SEARCH TEMPLATE


ALTER TEXT SEARCH TEMPLATE

Name

ALTER TEXT SEARCH TEMPLATE -- change the definition of a text search template

Synopsis

ALTER TEXT SEARCH TEMPLATE name RENAME TO new_name
ALTER TEXT SEARCH TEMPLATE name SET SCHEMA new_schema

Description

ALTER TEXT SEARCH TEMPLATE changes the definition of a text search template. Currently, the only supported functionality is to change the template's name.

You must be a superuser to use ALTER TEXT SEARCH TEMPLATE.

Parameters

name

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of an existing text search template.

new_name

The new name of the text search template.

new_schema

The new schema for the text search template.

Compatibility

There is no ALTER TEXT SEARCH TEMPLATE statement in the SQL standard.

See Also

CREATE TEXT SEARCH TEMPLATE, DROP TEXT SEARCH TEMPLATE
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ALTER TEXT SEARCH PARSER | Up | ALTER TRIGGER


ALTER TRIGGER

Name

ALTER TRIGGER -- change the definition of a trigger

Synopsis

ALTER TRIGGER name ON table RENAME TO new_name

Description

ALTER TRIGGER changes properties of an existing trigger. The RENAME clause changes the name of the given trigger without otherwise changing the trigger definition.

You must own the table on which the trigger acts to be allowed to change its properties.

Parameters

name

The name of an existing trigger to alter.

table

The name of the table on which this trigger acts.

new_name

The new name for the trigger.

Notes

The ability to temporarily enable or disable a trigger is provided by ALTER TABLE, not by ALTER TRIGGER, because ALTER TRIGGER has no convenient way to express the option of enabling or disabling all of a table's triggers at once.

Examples

To rename an existing trigger:

ALTER TRIGGER emp_stamp ON emp RENAME TO emp_track_chgs;

Compatibility

ALTER TRIGGER is a PostgreSQL extension of the SQL standard.

See Also

ALTER TABLE
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ALTER TEXT SEARCH TEMPLATE | Up | ALTER TYPE


ALTER TYPE

Name

ALTER TYPE -- change the definition of a type

Synopsis

ALTER TYPE name action [, ... ]
ALTER TYPE name OWNER TO new_owner
ALTER TYPE name RENAME ATTRIBUTE attribute_name TO new_attribute_name [ CASCADE | RESTRICT ]
ALTER TYPE name RENAME TO new_name
ALTER TYPE name SET SCHEMA new_schema
ALTER TYPE name ADD VALUE new_enum_value [ { BEFORE | AFTER } existing_enum_value ]

where action is one of:

    ADD ATTRIBUTE attribute_name data_type [ COLLATE collation ] [ CASCADE | RESTRICT ]
    DROP ATTRIBUTE [ IF EXISTS ] attribute_name [ CASCADE | RESTRICT ]
    ALTER ATTRIBUTE attribute_name [ SET DATA ] TYPE data_type [ COLLATE collation ] [ CASCADE | RESTRICT ]

Description

ALTER TYPE changes the definition of an existing type. There are several subforms:

ADD ATTRIBUTE

This form adds a new attribute to a composite type, using the same syntax as CREATE TYPE.

DROP ATTRIBUTE [ IF EXISTS ]

This form drops an attribute from a composite type. If IF EXISTS is specified and the attribute does not exist, no error is thrown. In this case a notice is issued instead.

SET DATA TYPE

This form changes the type of an attribute of a composite type.

OWNER

This form changes the owner of the type.

RENAME

This form changes the name of the type or the name of an individual attribute of a composite type.

SET SCHEMA

This form moves the type into another schema.

ADD VALUE [ BEFORE | AFTER ]

This form adds a new value to an enum type. If the new value's place in the enum's ordering is not specified using BEFORE or AFTER, then the new item is placed at the end of the list of values.

CASCADE

Automatically propagate the operation to typed tables of the type being altered, and their descendants.

RESTRICT

Refuse the operation if the type being altered is the type of a typed table. This is the default.

The ADD ATTRIBUTE, DROP ATTRIBUTE, and ALTER ATTRIBUTE actions can be combined into a list of multiple alterations to apply in parallel. For example, it is possible to add several attributes and/or alter the type of several attributes in a single command.

You must own the type to use ALTER TYPE. To change the schema of a type, you must also have CREATE privilege on the new schema. To alter the owner, you must also be a direct or indirect member of the new owning role, and that role must have CREATE privilege on the type's schema. (These restrictions enforce that altering the owner doesn't do anything you couldn't do by dropping and recreating the type. However, a superuser can alter ownership of any type anyway.)

Parameters

name

The name (possibly schema-qualified) of an existing type to alter.

new_name

The new name for the type.

new_owner

The user name of the new owner of the type.

new_schema

The new schema for the type.

attribute_name

The name of the attribute to add, alter, or drop.

new_attribute_name

The new name of the attribute to be renamed.

data_type

The data type of the attribute to add, or the new type of the attribute to alter.

new_enum_value

The new value to be added to an enum type's list of values. Like all enum literals, it needs to be quoted.

existing_enum_value

The existing enum value that the new value should be added immediately before or after in the enum type's sort ordering. Like all enum literals, it needs to be quoted.

Notes

ALTER TYPE ... ADD VALUE (the form that adds a new value to an enum type) cannot be executed inside a transaction block.

Comparisons involving an added enum value will sometimes be slower than comparisons involving only original members of the enum type. This will usually only occur if BEFORE or AFTER is used to set the new value's sort position somewhere other than at the end of the list. However, sometimes it will happen even though the new value is added at the end (this occurs if the OID counter "wrapped around" since the original creation of the enum type). The slowdown is usually insignificant; but if it matters, optimal performance can be regained by dropping and recreating the enum type, or by dumping and reloading the database.

Examples

To rename a data type:

ALTER TYPE electronic_mail RENAME TO email;

To change the owner of the type email to joe:

ALTER TYPE email OWNER TO joe;

To change the schema of the type email to customers:

ALTER TYPE email SET SCHEMA customers;

To add a new attribute to a type:

ALTER TYPE compfoo ADD ATTRIBUTE f3 int;

To add a new value to an enum type in a particular sort position:

ALTER TYPE colors ADD VALUE 'orange' AFTER 'red';

Compatibility

The variants to add and drop attributes are part of the SQL standard; the other variants are PostgreSQL extensions.

See Also

CREATE TYPE, DROP TYPE
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ALTER TRIGGER | Up | ALTER USER


ALTER USER

Name

ALTER USER -- change a database role

Synopsis

ALTER USER name [ [ WITH ] option [ ... ] ]

where option can be:

      SUPERUSER | NOSUPERUSER
    | CREATEDB | NOCREATEDB
    | CREATEROLE | NOCREATEROLE
    | CREATEUSER | NOCREATEUSER
    | INHERIT | NOINHERIT
    | LOGIN | NOLOGIN
    | REPLICATION | NOREPLICATION
    | CONNECTION LIMIT connlimit
    | [ ENCRYPTED | UNENCRYPTED ] PASSWORD 'password'
    | VALID UNTIL 'timestamp'

ALTER USER name RENAME TO new_name

ALTER USER name SET configuration_parameter { TO | = } { value | DEFAULT }
ALTER USER name SET configuration_parameter FROM CURRENT
ALTER USER name RESET configuration_parameter
ALTER USER name RESET ALL

Description

ALTER USER is now an alias for ALTER ROLE.

Compatibility

The ALTER USER statement is a PostgreSQL extension. The SQL standard leaves the definition of users to the implementation.

See Also

ALTER ROLE
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ALTER TYPE | Up | ALTER USER MAPPING


ALTER USER MAPPING

Name

ALTER USER MAPPING -- change the definition of a user mapping

Synopsis

ALTER USER MAPPING FOR { user_name | USER | CURRENT_USER | PUBLIC }
    SERVER server_name
    OPTIONS ( [ ADD | SET | DROP ] option ['value'] [, ... ] )

Description

ALTER USER MAPPING changes the definition of a user mapping.

The owner of a foreign server can alter user mappings for that server for any user. Also, a user can alter a user mapping for his own user name if USAGE privilege on the server has been granted to the user.

Parameters

user_name

User name of the mapping. CURRENT_USER and USER match the name of the current user. PUBLIC is used to match all present and future user names in the system.

server_name

Server name of the user mapping.

OPTIONS ( [ ADD | SET | DROP ] option ['value'] [, ... ] )

Change options for the user mapping. The new options override any previously specified options. ADD, SET, and DROP specify the action to be performed. ADD is assumed if no operation is explicitly specified. Option names must be unique; options are also validated by the server's foreign-data wrapper.

Examples

Change the password for user mapping bob, server foo:

ALTER USER MAPPING FOR bob SERVER foo OPTIONS (user 'bob', password 'public');

Compatibility

ALTER USER MAPPING conforms to ISO/IEC 9075-9 (SQL/MED). There is a subtle syntax issue: The standard omits the FOR key word. Since both CREATE USER MAPPING and DROP USER MAPPING use FOR in analogous positions, and IBM DB2 (being the other major SQL/MED implementation) also requires it for ALTER USER MAPPING, PostgreSQL diverges from the standard here in the interest of consistency and interoperability.

See Also

CREATE USER MAPPING, DROP USER MAPPING
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ALTER USER | Up | ALTER VIEW


ALTER VIEW

Name

ALTER VIEW -- change the definition of a view

Synopsis

ALTER VIEW name ALTER [ COLUMN ] column SET DEFAULT expression
ALTER VIEW name ALTER [ COLUMN ] column DROP DEFAULT
ALTER VIEW name OWNER TO new_owner
ALTER VIEW name RENAME TO new_name
ALTER VIEW name SET SCHEMA new_schema

Description

ALTER VIEW changes various auxiliary properties of a view. (If you want to modify the view's defining query, use CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW.)

You must own the view to use ALTER VIEW. To change a view's schema, you must also have CREATE privilege on the new schema. To alter the owner, you must also be a direct or indirect member of the new owning role, and that role must have CREATE privilege on the view's schema. (These restrictions enforce that altering the owner doesn't do anything you couldn't do by dropping and recreating the view. However, a superuser can alter ownership of any view anyway.)

Parameters

name

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of an existing view.

SET/DROP DEFAULT

These forms set or remove the default value for a column. A default value associated with a view column is inserted into INSERT statements on the view before the view's ON INSERT rule is applied, if the INSERT does not specify a value for the column.

new_owner

The user name of the new owner of the view.

new_name

The new name for the view.

new_schema

The new schema for the view.

Notes

For historical reasons, ALTER TABLE can be used with views too; but the only variants of ALTER TABLE that are allowed with views are equivalent to the ones shown above.

Examples

To rename the view foo to bar:

ALTER VIEW foo RENAME TO bar;

Compatibility

ALTER VIEW is a PostgreSQL extension of the SQL standard.

See Also

CREATE VIEW, DROP VIEW
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ALTER USER MAPPING | Up | ANALYZE


ANALYZE

Name

ANALYZE -- collect statistics about a database

Synopsis

ANALYZE [ VERBOSE ] [ table [ ( column [, ...] ) ] ]

Description

ANALYZE collects statistics about the contents of tables in the database, and stores the results in the pg_statistic system catalog. Subsequently, the query planner uses these statistics to help determine the most efficient execution plans for queries.

With no parameter, ANALYZE examines every table in the current database. With a parameter, ANALYZE examines only that table. It is further possible to give a list of column names, in which case only the statistics for those columns are collected.

Parameters

VERBOSE

Enables display of progress messages.

table

The name (possibly schema-qualified) of a specific table to analyze. Defaults to all tables in the current database.

column

The name of a specific column to analyze. Defaults to all columns.

Outputs

When VERBOSE is specified, ANALYZE emits progress messages to indicate which table is currently being processed. Various statistics about the tables are printed as well.

Notes

In the default PostgreSQL configuration, the autovacuum daemon (see Section 23.1.5) takes care of automatic analyzing of tables when they are first loaded with data, and as they change throughout regular operation. When autovacuum is disabled, it is a good idea to run ANALYZE periodically, or just after making major changes in the contents of a table. Accurate statistics will help the planner to choose the most appropriate query plan, and thereby improve the speed of query processing. A common strategy is to run VACUUM and ANALYZE once a day during a low-usage time of day.

ANALYZE requires only a read lock on the target table, so it can run in parallel with other activity on the table.

The statistics collected by ANALYZE usually include a list of some of the most common values in each column and a histogram showing the approximate data distribution in each column. One or both of these can be omitted if ANALYZE deems them uninteresting (for example, in a unique-key column, there are no common values) or if the column data type does not support the appropriate operators. There is more information about the statistics in Chapter 23.

For large tables, ANALYZE takes a random sample of the table contents, rather than examining every row. This allows even very large tables to be analyzed in a small amount of time. Note, however, that the statistics are only approximate, and will change slightly each time ANALYZE is run, even if the actual table contents did not change. This might result in small changes in the planner's estimated costs shown by EXPLAIN. In rare situations, this non-determinism will cause the planner's choices of query plans to change after ANALYZE is run. To avoid this, raise the amount of statistics collected by ANALYZE, as described below.

The extent of analysis can be controlled by adjusting the default_statistics_target configuration variable, or on a column-by-column basis by setting the per-column statistics target with ALTER TABLE ... ALTER COLUMN ... SET STATISTICS (see ALTER TABLE). The target value sets the maximum number of entries in the most-common-value list and the maximum number of bins in the histogram. The default target value is 100, but this can be adjusted up or down to trade off accuracy of planner estimates against the time taken for ANALYZE and the amount of space occupied in pg_statistic. In particular, setting the statistics target to zero disables collection of statistics for that column. It might be useful to do that for columns that are never used as part of the WHERE, GROUP BY, or ORDER BY clauses of queries, since the planner will have no use for statistics on such columns.

The largest statistics target among the columns being analyzed determines the number of table rows sampled to prepare the statistics. Increasing the target causes a proportional increase in the time and space needed to do ANALYZE.

One of the values estimated by ANALYZE is the number of distinct values that appear in each column. Because only a subset of the rows are examined, this estimate can sometimes be quite inaccurate, even with the largest possible statistics target. If this inaccuracy leads to bad query plans, a more accurate value can be determined manually and then installed with ALTER TABLE ... ALTER COLUMN ... SET (n_distinct = ...) (see ALTER TABLE).

If the table being analyzed has one or more children, ANALYZE will gather statistics twice: once on the rows of the parent table only, and a second time on the rows of the parent table with all of its children. The autovacuum daemon, however, will only consider inserts or updates on the parent table when deciding whether to trigger an automatic analyze. If that table is rarely inserted into or updated, the inheritance statistics will not be up to date unless you run ANALYZE manually.

Compatibility

There is no ANALYZE statement in the SQL standard.

See Also

VACUUM, vacuumdb, Section 18.4.3, Section 23.1.5
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ALTER VIEW | Up | BEGIN


BEGIN

Name

BEGIN -- start a transaction block

Synopsis

BEGIN [ WORK | TRANSACTION ] [ transaction_mode [, ...] ]

where transaction_mode is one of:

    ISOLATION LEVEL { SERIALIZABLE | REPEATABLE READ | READ COMMITTED | READ UNCOMMITTED }
    READ WRITE | READ ONLY
    [ NOT ] DEFERRABLE

Description

BEGIN initiates a transaction block, that is, all statements after a BEGIN command will be executed in a single transaction until an explicit COMMIT or ROLLBACK is given. By default (without BEGIN), PostgreSQL executes transactions in "autocommit" mode, that is, each statement is executed in its own transaction and a commit is implicitly performed at the end of the statement (if execution was successful, otherwise a rollback is done).

Statements are executed more quickly in a transaction block, because transaction start/commit requires significant CPU and disk activity. Execution of multiple statements inside a transaction is also useful to ensure consistency when making several related changes: other sessions will be unable to see the intermediate states wherein not all the related updates have been done.

If the isolation level, read/write mode, or deferrable mode is specified, the new transaction has those characteristics, as if SET TRANSACTION was executed.

Parameters

WORK
TRANSACTION

Optional key words. They have no effect.

Refer to SET TRANSACTION for information on the meaning of the other parameters to this statement.

Notes

START TRANSACTION has the same functionality as BEGIN.

Use COMMIT or ROLLBACK to terminate a transaction block.

Issuing BEGIN when already inside a transaction block will provoke a warning message. The state of the transaction is not affected. To nest transactions within a transaction block, use savepoints (see SAVEPOINT).

For reasons of backwards compatibility, the commas between successive transaction_modes can be omitted.

Examples

To begin a transaction block:

BEGIN;

Compatibility

BEGIN is a PostgreSQL language extension. It is equivalent to the SQL-standard command START TRANSACTION, whose reference page contains additional compatibility information.

The DEFERRABLE transaction_mode is a PostgreSQL language extension.

Incidentally, the BEGIN key word is used for a different purpose in embedded SQL. You are advised to be careful about the transaction semantics when porting database applications.

See Also

COMMIT, ROLLBACK, START TRANSACTION, SAVEPOINT
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ANALYZE | Up | CHECKPOINT


CHECKPOINT

Name

CHECKPOINT -- force a transaction log checkpoint

Synopsis

CHECKPOINT

Description

Write-Ahead Logging (WAL) puts a checkpoint in the transaction log every so often. (To adjust the automatic checkpoint interval, see the run-time configuration options checkpoint_segments and checkpoint_timeout.) The CHECKPOINT command forces an immediate checkpoint when the command is issued, without waiting for a scheduled checkpoint.

A checkpoint is a point in the transaction log sequence at which all data files have been updated to reflect the information in the log. All data files will be flushed to disk. Refer to Chapter 29 for more information about the WAL system.

If executed during recovery, the CHECKPOINT command will force a restartpoint rather than writing a new checkpoint.

Only superusers can call CHECKPOINT. The command is not intended for use during normal operation.

Compatibility

The CHECKPOINT command is a PostgreSQL language extension.

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BEGIN | Up | CLOSE


CLOSE

Name

CLOSE -- close a cursor

Synopsis

CLOSE { name | ALL }

Description

CLOSE frees the resources associated with an open cursor. After the cursor is closed, no subsequent operations are allowed on it. A cursor should be closed when it is no longer needed.

Every non-holdable open cursor is implicitly closed when a transaction is terminated by COMMIT or ROLLBACK. A holdable cursor is implicitly closed if the transaction that created it aborts via ROLLBACK. If the creating transaction successfully commits, the holdable cursor remains open until an explicit CLOSE is executed, or the client disconnects.

Parameters

name

The name of an open cursor to close.

ALL

Close all open cursors.

Notes

PostgreSQL does not have an explicit OPEN cursor statement; a cursor is considered open when it is declared. Use the DECLARE statement to declare a cursor.

You can see all available cursors by querying the pg_cursors system view.

If a cursor is closed after a savepoint which is later rolled back, the CLOSE is not rolled back; that is, the cursor remains closed.

Examples

Close the cursor liahona:

CLOSE liahona;

Compatibility

CLOSE is fully conforming with the SQL standard. CLOSE ALL is a PostgreSQL extension.

See Also

DECLARE, FETCH, MOVE
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CHECKPOINT | Up | CLUSTER


CLUSTER

Name

CLUSTER -- cluster a table according to an index

Synopsis

CLUSTER [VERBOSE] table_name [ USING index_name ]
CLUSTER [VERBOSE]

Description

CLUSTER instructs PostgreSQL to cluster the table specified by table_name based on the index specified by index_name. The index must already have been defined on table_name.

When a table is clustered, it is physically reordered based on the index information. Clustering is a one-time operation: when the table is subsequently updated, the changes are not clustered. That is, no attempt is made to store new or updated rows according to their index order. (If one wishes, one can periodically recluster by issuing the command again. Also, setting the table's FILLFACTOR storage parameter to less than 100% can aid in preserving cluster ordering during updates, since updated rows are kept on the same page if enough space is available there.)

When a table is clustered, PostgreSQL remembers which index it was clustered by. The form CLUSTER table_name reclusters the table using the same index as before. You can also use the CLUSTER or SET WITHOUT CLUSTER forms of ALTER TABLE to set the index to be used for future cluster operations, or to clear any previous setting.

CLUSTER without any parameter reclusters all the previously-clustered tables in the current database that the calling user owns, or all such tables if called by a superuser. This form of CLUSTER cannot be executed inside a transaction block.

When a table is being clustered, an ACCESS EXCLUSIVE lock is acquired on it. This prevents any other database operations (both reads and writes) from operating on the table until the CLUSTER is finished.

Parameters

table_name

The name (possibly schema-qualified) of a table.

index_name

The name of an index.

VERBOSE

Prints a progress report as each table is clustered.

Notes

In cases where you are accessing single rows randomly within a table, the actual order of the data in the table is unimportant. However, if you tend to access some data more than others, and there is an index that groups them together, you will benefit from using CLUSTER. If you are requesting a range of indexed values from a table, or a single indexed value that has multiple rows that match, CLUSTER will help because once the index identifies the table page for the first row that matches, all other rows that match are probably already on the same table page, and so you save disk accesses and speed up the query.

CLUSTER can re-sort the table using either an index scan on the specified index, or (if the index is a b-tree) a sequential scan followed by sorting. It will attempt to choose the method that will be faster, based on planner cost parameters and available statistical information.

When an index scan is used, a temporary copy of the table is created that contains the table data in the index order. Temporary copies of each index on the table are created as well. Therefore, you need free space on disk at least equal to the sum of the table size and the index sizes.

When a sequential scan and sort is used, a temporary sort file is also created, so that the peak temporary space requirement is as much as double the table size, plus the index sizes. This method is often faster than the index scan method, but if the disk space requirement is intolerable, you can disable this choice by temporarily setting enable_sort to off.

It is advisable to set maintenance_work_mem to a reasonably large value (but not more than the amount of RAM you can dedicate to the CLUSTER operation) before clustering.

Because the planner records statistics about the ordering of tables, it is advisable to run ANALYZE on the newly clustered table. Otherwise, the planner might make poor choices of query plans.

Because CLUSTER remembers which indexes are clustered, one can cluster the tables one wants clustered manually the first time, then set up a periodic maintenance script that executes CLUSTER without any parameters, so that the desired tables are periodically reclustered.

Examples

Cluster the table employees on the basis of its index employees_ind:

CLUSTER employees USING employees_ind;

Cluster the employees table using the same index that was used before:

CLUSTER employees;

Cluster all tables in the database that have previously been clustered:

CLUSTER;

Compatibility

There is no CLUSTER statement in the SQL standard.

The syntax

CLUSTER index_name ON table_name

is also supported for compatibility with pre-8.3 PostgreSQL versions.

See Also

clusterdb
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CLOSE | Up | COMMENT


COMMENT

Name

COMMENT -- define or change the comment of an object

Synopsis

COMMENT ON
{
  AGGREGATE agg_name (agg_type [, ...] ) |
  CAST (source_type AS target_type) |
  COLLATION object_name |
  COLUMN relation_name.column_name |
  CONSTRAINT constraint_name ON table_name |
  CONVERSION object_name |
  DATABASE object_name |
  DOMAIN object_name |
  EXTENSION object_name |
  FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER object_name |
  FOREIGN TABLE object_name |
  FUNCTION function_name ( [ [ argmode ] [ argname ] argtype [, ...] ] ) |
  INDEX object_name |
  LARGE OBJECT large_object_oid |
  OPERATOR operator_name (left_type, right_type) |
  OPERATOR CLASS object_name USING index_method |
  OPERATOR FAMILY object_name USING index_method |
  [ PROCEDURAL ] LANGUAGE object_name |
  ROLE object_name |
  RULE rule_name ON table_name |
  SCHEMA object_name |
  SEQUENCE object_name |
  SERVER object_name |
  TABLE object_name |
  TABLESPACE object_name |
  TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION object_name |
  TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY object_name |
  TEXT SEARCH PARSER object_name |
  TEXT SEARCH TEMPLATE object_name |
  TRIGGER trigger_name ON table_name |
  TYPE object_name |
  VIEW object_name
} IS 'text'

Description

COMMENT stores a comment about a database object.

Only one comment string is stored for each object, so to modify a comment, issue a new COMMENT command for the same object. To remove a comment, write NULL in place of the text string. Comments are automatically dropped when their object is dropped.

For most kinds of object, only the object's owner can set the comment. Roles don't have owners, so the rule for COMMENT ON ROLE is that you must be superuser to comment on a superuser role, or have the CREATEROLE privilege to comment on non-superuser roles. Of course, a superuser can comment on anything.

Comments can be viewed using psql's \d family of commands. Other user interfaces to retrieve comments can be built atop the same built-in functions that psql uses, namely obj_description, col_description, and shobj_description (see Table 9-52).

Parameters

object_name
relation_name.column_name
agg_name
constraint_name
function_name
operator_name
rule_name
trigger_name

The name of the object to be commented. Names of tables, aggregates, collations, conversions, domains, foreign tables, functions, indexes, operators, operator classes, operator families, sequences, text search objects, types, and views can be schema-qualified. When commenting on a column, relation_name must refer to a table, view, composite type, or foreign table.

agg_type

An input data type on which the aggregate function operates. To reference a zero-argument aggregate function, write * in place of the list of input data types.

source_type

The name of the source data type of the cast.

target_type

The name of the target data type of the cast.

argmode

The mode of a function argument: IN, OUT, INOUT, or VARIADIC. If omitted, the default is IN. Note that COMMENT ON FUNCTION does not actually pay any attention to OUT arguments, since only the input arguments are needed to determine the function's identity. So it is sufficient to list the IN, INOUT, and VARIADIC arguments.

argname

The name of a function argument. Note that COMMENT ON FUNCTION does not actually pay any attention to argument names, since only the argument data types are needed to determine the function's identity.

argtype

The data type(s) of the function's arguments (optionally schema-qualified), if any.

large_object_oid

The OID of the large object.

left_type
right_type

The data type(s) of the operator's arguments (optionally schema-qualified). Write NONE for the missing argument of a prefix or postfix operator.

PROCEDURAL

This is a noise word.

text

The new comment, written as a string literal; or NULL to drop the comment.

Notes

There is presently no security mechanism for viewing comments: any user connected to a database can see all the comments for objects in that database. For shared objects such as databases, roles, and tablespaces, comments are stored globally so any user connected to any database in the cluster can see all the comments for shared objects. Therefore, don't put security-critical information in comments.

Examples

Attach a comment to the table mytable:

COMMENT ON TABLE mytable IS 'This is my table.';

Remove it again:

COMMENT ON TABLE mytable IS NULL;

Some more examples:

COMMENT ON AGGREGATE my_aggregate (double precision) IS 'Computes sample variance';
COMMENT ON CAST (text AS int4) IS 'Allow casts from text to int4';
COMMENT ON COLLATION "fr_CA" IS 'Canadian French';
COMMENT ON COLUMN my_table.my_column IS 'Employee ID number';
COMMENT ON CONVERSION my_conv IS 'Conversion to UTF8';
COMMENT ON CONSTRAINT bar_col_cons ON bar IS 'Constrains column col';
COMMENT ON DATABASE my_database IS 'Development Database';
COMMENT ON DOMAIN my_domain IS 'Email Address Domain';
COMMENT ON EXTENSION hstore IS 'implements the hstore data type';
COMMENT ON FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER mywrapper IS 'my foreign data wrapper';
COMMENT ON FOREIGN TABLE my_foreign_table IS 'Employee Information in other database';
COMMENT ON FUNCTION my_function (timestamp) IS 'Returns Roman Numeral';
COMMENT ON INDEX my_index IS 'Enforces uniqueness on employee ID';
COMMENT ON LANGUAGE plpython IS 'Python support for stored procedures';
COMMENT ON LARGE OBJECT 346344 IS 'Planning document';
COMMENT ON OPERATOR ^ (text, text) IS 'Performs intersection of two texts';
COMMENT ON OPERATOR - (NONE, integer) IS 'Unary minus';
COMMENT ON OPERATOR CLASS int4ops USING btree IS '4 byte integer operators for btrees';
COMMENT ON OPERATOR FAMILY integer_ops USING btree IS 'all integer operators for btrees';
COMMENT ON ROLE my_role IS 'Administration group for finance tables';
COMMENT ON RULE my_rule ON my_table IS 'Logs updates of employee records';
COMMENT ON SCHEMA my_schema IS 'Departmental data';
COMMENT ON SEQUENCE my_sequence IS 'Used to generate primary keys';
COMMENT ON SERVER myserver IS 'my foreign server';
COMMENT ON TABLE my_schema.my_table IS 'Employee Information';
COMMENT ON TABLESPACE my_tablespace IS 'Tablespace for indexes';
COMMENT ON TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION my_config IS 'Special word filtering';
COMMENT ON TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY swedish IS 'Snowball stemmer for Swedish language';
COMMENT ON TEXT SEARCH PARSER my_parser IS 'Splits text into words';
COMMENT ON TEXT SEARCH TEMPLATE snowball IS 'Snowball stemmer';
COMMENT ON TRIGGER my_trigger ON my_table IS 'Used for RI';
COMMENT ON TYPE complex IS 'Complex number data type';
COMMENT ON VIEW my_view IS 'View of departmental costs';

Compatibility

There is no COMMENT command in the SQL standard.

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CLUSTER | Up | COMMIT


COMMIT

Name

COMMIT -- commit the current transaction

Synopsis

COMMIT [ WORK | TRANSACTION ]

Description

COMMIT commits the current transaction. All changes made by the transaction become visible to others and are guaranteed to be durable if a crash occurs.

Parameters

WORK
TRANSACTION

Optional key words. They have no effect.

Notes

Use ROLLBACK to abort a transaction.

Issuing COMMIT when not inside a transaction does no harm, but it will provoke a warning message.

Examples

To commit the current transaction and make all changes permanent:

COMMIT;

Compatibility

The SQL standard only specifies the two forms COMMIT and COMMIT WORK. Otherwise, this command is fully conforming.

See Also

BEGIN, ROLLBACK
Prev | Home | Next
COMMENT | Up | COMMIT PREPARED


COMMIT PREPARED

Name

COMMIT PREPARED -- commit a transaction that was earlier prepared for two-phase commit

Synopsis

COMMIT PREPARED transaction_id

Description

COMMIT PREPARED commits a transaction that is in prepared state.

Parameters

transaction_id

The transaction identifier of the transaction that is to be committed.

Notes

To commit a prepared transaction, you must be either the same user that executed the transaction originally, or a superuser. But you do not have to be in the same session that executed the transaction.

This command cannot be executed inside a transaction block. The prepared transaction is committed immediately.

All currently available prepared transactions are listed in the pg_prepared_xacts system view.

Examples

Commit the transaction identified by the transaction identifier foobar:

COMMIT PREPARED 'foobar';

See Also

PREPARE TRANSACTION, ROLLBACK PREPARED
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COMMIT | Up | COPY


COPY

Name

COPY -- copy data between a file and a table

Synopsis

COPY table_name [ ( column [, ...] ) ]
    FROM { 'filename' | STDIN }
    [ [ WITH ] ( option [, ...] ) ]

COPY { table_name [ ( column [, ...] ) ] | ( query ) }
    TO { 'filename' | STDOUT }
    [ [ WITH ] ( option [, ...] ) ]

where option can be one of:

    FORMAT format_name
    OIDS [ boolean ]
    DELIMITER 'delimiter_character'
    NULL 'null_string'
    HEADER [ boolean ]
    QUOTE 'quote_character'
    ESCAPE 'escape_character'
    FORCE_QUOTE { ( column [, ...] ) | * }
    FORCE_NOT_NULL ( column [, ...] )
    ENCODING 'encoding_name'

Description

COPY moves data between PostgreSQL tables and standard file-system files. COPY TO copies the contents of a table to a file, while COPY FROM copies data from a file to a table (appending the data to whatever is in the table already). COPY TO can also copy the results of a SELECT query.

If a list of columns is specified, COPY will only copy the data in the specified columns to or from the file. If there are any columns in the table that are not in the column list, COPY FROM will insert the default values for those columns.

COPY with a file name instructs the PostgreSQL server to directly read from or write to a file. The file must be accessible to the server and the name must be specified from the viewpoint of the server. When STDIN or STDOUT is specified, data is transmitted via the connection between the client and the server.

Parameters

table_name

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of an existing table.

column

An optional list of columns to be copied. If no column list is specified, all columns of the table will be copied.

query

A SELECT or VALUES command whose results are to be copied. Note that parentheses are required around the query.

filename

The absolute path name of the input or output file. Windows users might need to use an E'' string and double any backslashes used in the path name.

STDIN

Specifies that input comes from the client application.

STDOUT

Specifies that output goes to the client application.

boolean

Specifies whether the selected option should be turned on or off. You can write TRUE, ON, or 1 to enable the option, and FALSE, OFF, or 0 to disable it. The boolean value can also be omitted, in which case TRUE is assumed.

FORMAT

Selects the data format to be read or written: text, csv (Comma Separated Values), or binary. The default is text.

OIDS

Specifies copying the OID for each row. (An error is raised if OIDS is specified for a table that does not have OIDs, or in the case of copying a query.)

DELIMITER

Specifies the character that separates columns within each row (line) of the file. The default is a tab character in text format, a comma in CSV format. This must be a single one-byte character. This option is not allowed when using binary format.

NULL

Specifies the string that represents a null value. The default is \N (backslash-N) in text format, and an unquoted empty string in CSV format. You might prefer an empty string even in text format for cases where you don't want to distinguish nulls from empty strings. This option is not allowed when using binary format.

Note: When using COPY FROM, any data item that matches this string will be stored as a null value, so you should make sure that you use the same string as you used with COPY TO.

HEADER

Specifies that the file contains a header line with the names of each column in the file. On output, the first line contains the column names from the table, and on input, the first line is ignored. This option is allowed only when using CSV format.

QUOTE

Specifies the quoting character to be used when a data value is quoted. The default is double-quote. This must be a single one-byte character. This option is allowed only when using CSV format.

ESCAPE

Specifies the character that should appear before a data character that matches the QUOTE value. The default is the same as the QUOTE value (so that the quoting character is doubled if it appears in the data). This must be a single one-byte character. This option is allowed only when using CSV format.

FORCE_QUOTE

Forces quoting to be used for all non-NULL values in each specified column. NULL output is never quoted. If * is specified, non-NULL values will be quoted in all columns. This option is allowed only in COPY TO, and only when using CSV format.

FORCE_NOT_NULL

Do not match the specified columns' values against the null string. In the default case where the null string is empty, this means that empty values will be read as zero-length strings rather than nulls, even when they are not quoted. This option is allowed only in COPY FROM, and only when using CSV format.

ENCODING

Specifies that the file is encoded in the encoding_name. If this option is omitted, the current client encoding is used. See the Notes below for more details.

Outputs

On successful completion, a COPY command returns a command tag of the form

COPY count

The count is the number of rows copied.

Notes

COPY can only be used with plain tables, not with views. However, you can write COPY (SELECT * FROM viewname) TO ....

COPY only deals with the specific table named; it does not copy data to or from child tables. Thus for example COPY table TO shows the same data as SELECT * FROM ONLY table. But COPY (SELECT * FROM table) TO ... can be used to dump all of the data in an inheritance hierarchy.

You must have select privilege on the table whose values are read by COPY TO, and insert privilege on the table into which values are inserted by COPY FROM. It is sufficient to have column privileges on the column(s) listed in the command.

Files named in a COPY command are read or written directly by the server, not by the client application. Therefore, they must reside on or be accessible to the database server machine, not the client. They must be accessible to and readable or writable by the PostgreSQL user (the user ID the server runs as), not the client. COPY naming a file is only allowed to database superusers, since it allows reading or writing any file that the server has privileges to access.

Do not confuse COPY with the psql instruction \copy. \copy invokes COPY FROM STDIN or COPY TO STDOUT, and then fetches/stores the data in a file accessible to the psql client. Thus, file accessibility and access rights depend on the client rather than the server when \copy is used.

It is recommended that the file name used in COPY always be specified as an absolute path. This is enforced by the server in the case of COPY TO, but for COPY FROM you do have the option of reading from a file specified by a relative path. The path will be interpreted relative to the working directory of the server process (normally the cluster's data directory), not the client's working directory.

COPY FROM will invoke any triggers and check constraints on the destination table. However, it will not invoke rules.

COPY input and output is affected by DateStyle. To ensure portability to other PostgreSQL installations that might use non-default DateStyle settings, DateStyle should be set to ISO before using COPY TO. It is also a good idea to avoid dumping data with IntervalStyle set to sql_standard, because negative interval values might be misinterpreted by a server that has a different setting for IntervalStyle.

Input data is interpreted according to ENCODING option or the current client encoding, and output data is encoded in ENCODING or the current client encoding, even if the data does not pass through the client but is read from or written to a file directly by the server.

COPY stops operation at the first error. This should not lead to problems in the event of a COPY TO, but the target table will already have received earlier rows in a COPY FROM. These rows will not be visible or accessible, but they still occupy disk space. This might amount to a considerable amount of wasted disk space if the failure happened well into a large copy operation. You might wish to invoke VACUUM to recover the wasted space.

File Formats

Text Format

When the text format is used, the data read or written is a text file with one line per table row. Columns in a row are separated by the delimiter character. The column values themselves are strings generated by the output function, or acceptable to the input function, of each attribute's data type. The specified null string is used in place of columns that are null. COPY FROM will raise an error if any line of the input file contains more or fewer columns than are expected. If OIDS is specified, the OID is read or written as the first column, preceding the user data columns.

End of data can be represented by a single line containing just backslash-period (\.). An end-of-data marker is not necessary when reading from a file, since the end of file serves perfectly well; it is needed only when copying data to or from client applications using pre-3.0 client protocol.

Backslash characters (\) can be used in the COPY data to quote data characters that might otherwise be taken as row or column delimiters. In particular, the following characters must be preceded by a backslash if they appear as part of a column value: backslash itself, newline, carriage return, and the current delimiter character.

The specified null string is sent by COPY TO without adding any backslashes; conversely, COPY FROM matches the input against the null string before removing backslashes. Therefore, a null string such as \N cannot be confused with the actual data value \N (which would be represented as \\N).

The following special backslash sequences are recognized by COPY FROM:

Sequence | Represents
\b | Backspace (ASCII 8)
\f | Form feed (ASCII 12)
\n | Newline (ASCII 10)
\r | Carriage return (ASCII 13)
\t | Tab (ASCII 9)
\v | Vertical tab (ASCII 11)
\digits | Backslash followed by one to three octal digits specifies the character with that numeric code
\xdigits | Backslash x followed by one or two hex digits specifies the character with that numeric code

Presently, COPY TO will never emit an octal or hex-digits backslash sequence, but it does use the other sequences listed above for those control characters.

Any other backslashed character that is not mentioned in the above table will be taken to represent itself. However, beware of adding backslashes unnecessarily, since that might accidentally produce a string matching the end-of-data marker (\.) or the null string (\N by default). These strings will be recognized before any other backslash processing is done.

It is strongly recommended that applications generating COPY data convert data newlines and carriage returns to the \n and \r sequences respectively. At present it is possible to represent a data carriage return by a backslash and carriage return, and to represent a data newline by a backslash and newline. However, these representations might not be accepted in future releases. They are also highly vulnerable to corruption if the COPY file is transferred across different machines (for example, from Unix to Windows or vice versa).

COPY TO will terminate each row with a Unix-style newline ("\n"). Servers running on Microsoft Windows instead output carriage return/newline ("\r\n"), but only for COPY to a server file; for consistency across platforms, COPY TO STDOUT always sends "\n" regardless of server platform. COPY FROM can handle lines ending with newlines, carriage returns, or carriage return/newlines. To reduce the risk of error due to un-backslashed newlines or carriage returns that were meant as data, COPY FROM will complain if the line endings in the input are not all alike.

CSV Format

This format option is used for importing and exporting the Comma Separated Value (CSV) file format used by many other programs, such as spreadsheets. Instead of the escaping rules used by PostgreSQL's standard text format, it produces and recognizes the common CSV escaping mechanism.

The values in each record are separated by the DELIMITER character. If the value contains the delimiter character, the QUOTE character, the NULL string, a carriage return, or line feed character, then the whole value is prefixed and suffixed by the QUOTE character, and any occurrence within the value of a QUOTE character or the ESCAPE character is preceded by the escape character. You can also use FORCE_QUOTE to force quotes when outputting non-NULL values in specific columns.

The CSV format has no standard way to distinguish a NULL value from an empty string. PostgreSQL's COPY handles this by quoting. A NULL is output as the NULL parameter string and is not quoted, while a non-NULL value matching the NULL parameter string is quoted. For example, with the default settings, a NULL is written as an unquoted empty string, while an empty string data value is written with double quotes (""). Reading values follows similar rules. You can use FORCE_NOT_NULL to prevent NULL input comparisons for specific columns.

Because backslash is not a special character in the CSV format, \., the end-of-data marker, could also appear as a data value. To avoid any misinterpretation, a \. data value appearing as a lone entry on a line is automatically quoted on output, and on input, if quoted, is not interpreted as the end-of-data marker. If you are loading a file created by another application that has a single unquoted column and might have a value of \., you might need to quote that value in the input file.

Note: In CSV format, all characters are significant. A quoted value surrounded by white space, or any characters other than DELIMITER, will include those characters. This can cause errors if you import data from a system that pads CSV lines with white space out to some fixed width. If such a situation arises you might need to preprocess the CSV file to remove the trailing white space, before importing the data into PostgreSQL.

Note: CSV format will both recognize and produce CSV files with quoted values containing embedded carriage returns and line feeds. Thus the files are not strictly one line per table row like text-format files.

Note: Many programs produce strange and occasionally perverse CSV files, so the file format is more a convention than a standard. Thus you might encounter some files that cannot be imported using this mechanism, and COPY might produce files that other programs cannot process.

Binary Format

The binary format option causes all data to be stored/read as binary format rather than as text. It is somewhat faster than the text and CSV formats, but a binary-format file is less portable across machine architectures and PostgreSQL versions. Also, the binary format is very data type specific; for example it will not work to output binary data from a smallint column and read it into an integer column, even though that would work fine in text format.

The binary file format consists of a file header, zero or more tuples containing the row data, and a file trailer. Headers and data are in network byte order.

Note: PostgreSQL releases before 7.4 used a different binary file format.

File Header

The file header consists of 15 bytes of fixed fields, followed by a variable-length header extension area. The fixed fields are:

Signature

11-byte sequence PGCOPY\n\377\r\n\0 — note that the zero byte is a required part of the signature. (The signature is designed to allow easy identification of files that have been munged by a non-8-bit-clean transfer. This signature will be changed by end-of-line-translation filters, dropped zero bytes, dropped high bits, or parity changes.)

Flags field

32-bit integer bit mask to denote important aspects of the file format. Bits are numbered from 0 (LSB) to 31 (MSB). Note that this field is stored in network byte order (most significant byte first), as are all the integer fields used in the file format. Bits 16-31 are reserved to denote critical file format issues; a reader should abort if it finds an unexpected bit set in this range. Bits 0-15 are reserved to signal backwards-compatible format issues; a reader should simply ignore any unexpected bits set in this range. Currently only one flag bit is defined, and the rest must be zero:

Bit 16

if 1, OIDs are included in the data; if 0, not

Header extension area length

32-bit integer, length in bytes of remainder of header, not including self. Currently, this is zero, and the first tuple follows immediately. Future changes to the format might allow additional data to be present in the header. A reader should silently skip over any header extension data it does not know what to do with.

The header extension area is envisioned to contain a sequence of self-identifying chunks. The flags field is not intended to tell readers what is in the extension area. Specific design of header extension contents is left for a later release.

This design allows for both backwards-compatible header additions (add header extension chunks, or set low-order flag bits) and non-backwards-compatible changes (set high-order flag bits to signal such changes, and add supporting data to the extension area if needed).

Tuples

Each tuple begins with a 16-bit integer count of the number of fields in the tuple. (Presently, all tuples in a table will have the same count, but that might not always be true.) Then, repeated for each field in the tuple, there is a 32-bit length word followed by that many bytes of field data. (The length word does not include itself, and can be zero.) As a special case, -1 indicates a NULL field value. No value bytes follow in the NULL case.

There is no alignment padding or any other extra data between fields.

Presently, all data values in a binary-format file are assumed to be in binary format (format code one). It is anticipated that a future extension might add a header field that allows per-column format codes to be specified.

To determine the appropriate binary format for the actual tuple data you should consult the PostgreSQL source, in particular the *send and *recv functions for each column's data type (typically these functions are found in the src/backend/utils/adt/ directory of the source distribution).

If OIDs are included in the file, the OID field immediately follows the field-count word. It is a normal field except that it's not included in the field-count. In particular it has a length word — this will allow handling of 4-byte vs. 8-byte OIDs without too much pain, and will allow OIDs to be shown as null if that ever proves desirable.

File Trailer

The file trailer consists of a 16-bit integer word containing -1. This is easily distinguished from a tuple's field-count word.

A reader should report an error if a field-count word is neither -1 nor the expected number of columns. This provides an extra check against somehow getting out of sync with the data.

Examples

The following example copies a table to the client using the vertical bar (|) as the field delimiter:

COPY country TO STDOUT (DELIMITER '|');

To copy data from a file into the country table:

COPY country FROM '/usr1/proj/bray/sql/country_data';

To copy into a file just the countries whose names start with 'A':

COPY (SELECT * FROM country WHERE country_name LIKE 'A%') TO '/usr1/proj/bray/sql/a_list_countries.copy';

Here is a sample of data suitable for copying into a table from STDIN:

AF      AFGHANISTAN
AL      ALBANIA
DZ      ALGERIA
ZM      ZAMBIA
ZW      ZIMBABWE

Note that the white space on each line is actually a tab character.

The following is the same data, output in binary format. The data is shown after filtering through the Unix utility od -c. The table has three columns; the first has type char(2), the second has type text, and the third has type integer. All the rows have a null value in the third column.

0000000   P   G   C   O   P   Y  \n 377  \r  \n  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0  \0
0000020  \0  \0  \0  \0 003  \0  \0  \0 002   A   F  \0  \0  \0 013   A
0000040   F   G   H   A   N   I   S   T   A   N 377 377 377 377  \0 003
0000060  \0  \0  \0 002   A   L  \0  \0  \0 007   A   L   B   A   N   I
0000100   A 377 377 377 377  \0 003  \0  \0  \0 002   D   Z  \0  \0  \0
0000120 007   A   L   G   E   R   I   A 377 377 377 377  \0 003  \0  \0
0000140  \0 002   Z   M  \0  \0  \0 006   Z   A   M   B   I   A 377 377
0000160 377 377  \0 003  \0  \0  \0 002   Z   W  \0  \0  \0  \b   Z   I
0000200   M   B   A   B   W   E 377 377 377 377 377 377

Compatibility

There is no COPY statement in the SQL standard.

The following syntax was used before PostgreSQL version 9.0 and is still supported:

COPY table_name [ ( column [, ...] ) ]
    FROM { 'filename' | STDIN }
    [ [ WITH ]
          [ BINARY ]
          [ OIDS ]
          [ DELIMITER [ AS ] 'delimiter' ]
          [ NULL [ AS ] 'null string' ]
          [ CSV [ HEADER ]
                [ QUOTE [ AS ] 'quote' ]
                [ ESCAPE [ AS ] 'escape' ]
                [ FORCE NOT NULL column [, ...] ] ] ]

COPY { table_name [ ( column [, ...] ) ] | ( query ) }
    TO { 'filename' | STDOUT }
    [ [ WITH ]
          [ BINARY ]
          [ OIDS ]
          [ DELIMITER [ AS ] 'delimiter' ]
          [ NULL [ AS ] 'null string' ]
          [ CSV [ HEADER ]
                [ QUOTE [ AS ] 'quote' ]
                [ ESCAPE [ AS ] 'escape' ]
                [ FORCE QUOTE { column [, ...] | * } ] ] ]

Note that in this syntax, BINARY and CSV are treated as independent keywords, not as arguments of a FORMAT option.

The following syntax was used before PostgreSQL version 7.3 and is still supported:

COPY [ BINARY ] table_name [ WITH OIDS ]
    FROM { 'filename' | STDIN }
    [ [USING] DELIMITERS 'delimiter' ]
    [ WITH NULL AS 'null string' ]

COPY [ BINARY ] table_name [ WITH OIDS ]
    TO { 'filename' | STDOUT }
    [ [USING] DELIMITERS 'delimiter' ]
    [ WITH NULL AS 'null string' ]

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COMMIT PREPARED | Up | CREATE AGGREGATE


CREATE AGGREGATE

Name

CREATE AGGREGATE -- define a new aggregate function

Synopsis

CREATE AGGREGATE name ( input_data_type [ , ... ] ) (
    SFUNC = sfunc,
    STYPE = state_data_type
    [ , FINALFUNC = ffunc ]
    [ , INITCOND = initial_condition ]
    [ , SORTOP = sort_operator ]
)

or the old syntax

CREATE AGGREGATE name (
    BASETYPE = base_type,
    SFUNC = sfunc,
    STYPE = state_data_type
    [ , FINALFUNC = ffunc ]
    [ , INITCOND = initial_condition ]
    [ , SORTOP = sort_operator ]
)

Description

CREATE AGGREGATE defines a new aggregate function. Some basic and commonly-used aggregate functions are included with the distribution; they are documented in Section 9.18. If one defines new types or needs an aggregate function not already provided, then CREATE AGGREGATE can be used to provide the desired features.

If a schema name is given (for example, CREATE AGGREGATE myschema.myagg ...) then the aggregate function is created in the specified schema. Otherwise it is created in the current schema.

An aggregate function is identified by its name and input data type(s). Two aggregates in the same schema can have the same name if they operate on different input types. The name and input data type(s) of an aggregate must also be distinct from the name and input data type(s) of every ordinary function in the same schema.

An aggregate function is made from one or two ordinary functions: a state transition function sfunc, and an optional final calculation function ffunc. These are used as follows:

sfunc( internal-state, next-data-values ) ---> next-internal-state
ffunc( internal-state ) ---> aggregate-value

PostgreSQL creates a temporary variable of data type stype to hold the current internal state of the aggregate. At each input row, the aggregate argument value(s) are calculated and the state transition function is invoked with the current state value and the new argument value(s) to calculate a new internal state value. After all the rows have been processed, the final function is invoked once to calculate the aggregate's return value. If there is no final function then the ending state value is returned as-is.

An aggregate function can provide an initial condition, that is, an initial value for the internal state value. This is specified and stored in the database as a value of type text, but it must be a valid external representation of a constant of the state value data type. If it is not supplied then the state value starts out null.

If the state transition function is declared "strict", then it cannot be called with null inputs. With such a transition function, aggregate execution behaves as follows. Rows with any null input values are ignored (the function is not called and the previous state value is retained). If the initial state value is null, then at the first row with all-nonnull input values, the first argument value replaces the state value, and the transition function is invoked at subsequent rows with all-nonnull input values. This is handy for implementing aggregates like max. Note that this behavior is only available when state_data_type is the same as the first input_data_type. When these types are different, you must supply a nonnull initial condition or use a nonstrict transition function.

If the state transition function is not strict, then it will be called unconditionally at each input row, and must deal with null inputs and null transition values for itself. This allows the aggregate author to have full control over the aggregate's handling of null values.

If the final function is declared "strict", then it will not be called when the ending state value is null; instead a null result will be returned automatically. (Of course this is just the normal behavior of strict functions.) In any case the final function has the option of returning a null value. For example, the final function for avg returns null when it sees there were zero input rows.

Aggregates that behave like MIN or MAX can sometimes be optimized by looking into an index instead of scanning every input row. If this aggregate can be so optimized, indicate it by specifying a sort operator. The basic requirement is that the aggregate must yield the first element in the sort ordering induced by the operator; in other words:

SELECT agg(col) FROM tab;

must be equivalent to:

SELECT col FROM tab ORDER BY col USING sortop LIMIT 1;

Further assumptions are that the aggregate ignores null inputs, and that it delivers a null result if and only if there were no non-null inputs. Ordinarily, a data type's < operator is the proper sort operator for MIN, and > is the proper sort operator for MAX. Note that the optimization will never actually take effect unless the specified operator is the "less than" or "greater than" strategy member of a B-tree index operator class.

Parameters

name

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of the aggregate function to create.

input_data_type

An input data type on which this aggregate function operates. To create a zero-argument aggregate function, write * in place of the list of input data types. (An example of such an aggregate is count(*).)

base_type

In the old syntax for CREATE AGGREGATE, the input data type is specified by a basetype parameter rather than being written next to the aggregate name. Note that this syntax allows only one input parameter. To define a zero-argument aggregate function, specify the basetype as "ANY" (not *).

sfunc

The name of the state transition function to be called for each input row. For an N-argument aggregate function, the sfunc must take N+1 arguments, the first being of type state_data_type and the rest matching the declared input data type(s) of the aggregate. The function must return a value of type state_data_type. This function takes the current state value and the current input data value(s), and returns the next state value.

state_data_type

The data type for the aggregate's state value.

ffunc

The name of the final function called to compute the aggregate's result after all input rows have been traversed. The function must take a single argument of type state_data_type. The return data type of the aggregate is defined as the return type of this function. If ffunc is not specified, then the ending state value is used as the aggregate's result, and the return type is state_data_type.

initial_condition

The initial setting for the state value. This must be a string constant in the form accepted for the data type state_data_type. If not specified, the state value starts out null.

sort_operator

The associated sort operator for a MIN- or MAX-like aggregate. This is just an operator name (possibly schema-qualified). The operator is assumed to have the same input data types as the aggregate (which must be a single-argument aggregate).

The parameters of CREATE AGGREGATE can be written in any order, not just the order illustrated above.

Examples

See Section 35.10.

Compatibility

CREATE AGGREGATE is a PostgreSQL language extension. The SQL standard does not provide for user-defined aggregate functions.

See Also

ALTER AGGREGATE, DROP AGGREGATE
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COPY | Up | CREATE CAST


CREATE CAST

Name

CREATE CAST -- define a new cast

Synopsis

CREATE CAST (source_type AS target_type)
    WITH FUNCTION function_name (argument_type [, ...])
    [ AS ASSIGNMENT | AS IMPLICIT ]

CREATE CAST (source_type AS target_type)
    WITHOUT FUNCTION
    [ AS ASSIGNMENT | AS IMPLICIT ]

CREATE CAST (source_type AS target_type)
    WITH INOUT
    [ AS ASSIGNMENT | AS IMPLICIT ]

Description

CREATE CAST defines a new cast. A cast specifies how to perform a conversion between two data types. For example,

SELECT CAST(42 AS float8);

converts the integer constant 42 to type float8 by invoking a previously specified function, in this case float8(int4). (If no suitable cast has been defined, the conversion fails.)

Two types can be binary coercible, which means that the conversion can be performed "for free" without invoking any function. This requires that corresponding values use the same internal representation. For instance, the types text and varchar are binary coercible both ways. Binary coercibility is not necessarily a symmetric relationship. For example, the cast from xml to text can be performed for free in the present implementation, but the reverse direction requires a function that performs at least a syntax check. (Two types that are binary coercible both ways are also referred to as binary compatible.)

You can define a cast as an I/O conversion cast by using the WITH INOUT syntax. An I/O conversion cast is performed by invoking the output function of the source data type, and passing the resulting string to the input function of the target data type. In many common cases, this feature avoids the need to write a separate cast function for conversion. An I/O conversion cast acts the same as a regular function-based cast; only the implementation is different.

By default, a cast can be invoked only by an explicit cast request, that is an explicit CAST(x AS typename) or x::typename construct.

If the cast is marked AS ASSIGNMENT then it can be invoked implicitly when assigning a value to a column of the target data type. For example, supposing that foo.f1 is a column of type text, then:

INSERT INTO foo (f1) VALUES (42);

will be allowed if the cast from type integer to type text is marked AS ASSIGNMENT, otherwise not. (We generally use the term assignment cast to describe this kind of cast.)

If the cast is marked AS IMPLICIT then it can be invoked implicitly in any context, whether assignment or internally in an expression. (We generally use the term implicit cast to describe this kind of cast.) For example, consider this query:

SELECT 2 + 4.0;

The parser initially marks the constants as being of type integer and numeric respectively. There is no integer + numeric operator in the system catalogs, but there is a numeric + numeric operator. The query will therefore succeed if a cast from integer to numeric is available and is marked AS IMPLICIT — which in fact it is. The parser will apply the implicit cast and resolve the query as if it had been written

SELECT CAST ( 2 AS numeric ) + 4.0;

Now, the catalogs also provide a cast from numeric to integer. If that cast were marked AS IMPLICIT — which it is not — then the parser would be faced with choosing between the above interpretation and the alternative of casting the numeric constant to integer and applying the integer + integer operator. Lacking any knowledge of which choice to prefer, it would give up and declare the query ambiguous. The fact that only one of the two casts is implicit is the way in which we teach the parser to prefer resolution of a mixed numeric-and-integer expression as numeric; there is no built-in knowledge about that.

It is wise to be conservative about marking casts as implicit. An overabundance of implicit casting paths can cause PostgreSQL to choose surprising interpretations of commands, or to be unable to resolve commands at all because there are multiple possible interpretations. A good rule of thumb is to make a cast implicitly invokable only for information-preserving transformations between types in the same general type category. For example, the cast from int2 to int4 can reasonably be implicit, but the cast from float8 to int4 should probably be assignment-only. Cross-type-category casts, such as text to int4, are best made explicit-only.

Note: Sometimes it is necessary for usability or standards-compliance reasons to provide multiple implicit casts among a set of types, resulting in ambiguity that cannot be avoided as above. The parser has a fallback heuristic based on type categories and preferred types that can help to provide desired behavior in such cases. See CREATE TYPE for more information.

To be able to create a cast, you must own the source or the target data type. To create a binary-coercible cast, you must be superuser. (This restriction is made because an erroneous binary-coercible cast conversion can easily crash the server.)

Parameters

source_type

The name of the source data type of the cast.

target_type

The name of the target data type of the cast.

function_name(argument_type [, ...])

The function used to perform the cast. The function name can be schema-qualified. If it is not, the function will be looked up in the schema search path. The function's result data type must match the target type of the cast. Its arguments are discussed below.

WITHOUT FUNCTION

Indicates that the source type is binary-coercible to the target type, so no function is required to perform the cast.

WITH INOUT

Indicates that the cast is an I/O conversion cast, performed by invoking the output function of the source data type, and passing the resulting string to the input function of the target data type.

AS ASSIGNMENT

Indicates that the cast can be invoked implicitly in assignment contexts.

AS IMPLICIT

Indicates that the cast can be invoked implicitly in any context.

Cast implementation functions can have one to three arguments. The first argument type must be identical to or binary-coercible from the cast's source type. The second argument, if present, must be type integer; it receives the type modifier associated with the destination type, or -1 if there is none. The third argument, if present, must be type boolean; it receives true if the cast is an explicit cast, false otherwise. (Bizarrely, the SQL standard demands different behaviors for explicit and implicit casts in some cases. This argument is supplied for functions that must implement such casts. It is not recommended that you design your own data types so that this matters.)

The return type of a cast function must be identical to or binary-coercible to the cast's target type.

Ordinarily a cast must have different source and target data types. However, it is allowed to declare a cast with identical source and target types if it has a cast implementation function with more than one argument. This is used to represent type-specific length coercion functions in the system catalogs. The named function is used to coerce a value of the type to the type modifier value given by its second argument.

When a cast has different source and target types and a function that takes more than one argument, it supports converting from one type to another and applying a length coercion in a single step. When no such entry is available, coercion to a type that uses a type modifier involves two cast steps, one to convert between data types and a second to apply the modifier.

Notes

Use DROP CAST to remove user-defined casts.

Remember that if you want to be able to convert types both ways you need to declare casts both ways explicitly.

It is normally not necessary to create casts between user-defined types and the standard string types (text, varchar, and char(n), as well as user-defined types that are defined to be in the string category). PostgreSQL provides automatic I/O conversion casts for that. The automatic casts to string types are treated as assignment casts, while the automatic casts from string types are explicit-only. You can override this behavior by declaring your own cast to replace an automatic cast, but usually the only reason to do so is if you want the conversion to be more easily invokable than the standard assignment-only or explicit-only setting. Another possible reason is that you want the conversion to behave differently from the type's I/O function; but that is sufficiently surprising that you should think twice about whether it's a good idea. (A small number of the built-in types do indeed have different behaviors for conversions, mostly because of requirements of the SQL standard.)

Prior to PostgreSQL 7.3, every function that had the same name as a data type, returned that data type, and took one argument of a different type was automatically a cast function. This convention has been abandoned in face of the introduction of schemas and to be able to represent binary-coercible casts in the system catalogs. The built-in cast functions still follow this naming scheme, but they have to be shown as casts in the system catalog pg_cast as well.

While not required, it is recommended that you continue to follow this old convention of naming cast implementation functions after the target data type. Many users are used to being able to cast data types using a function-style notation, that is typename(x). This notation is in fact nothing more nor less than a call of the cast implementation function; it is not specially treated as a cast. If your conversion functions are not named to support this convention then you will have surprised users. Since PostgreSQL allows overloading of the same function name with different argument types, there is no difficulty in having multiple conversion functions from different types that all use the target type's name.

Note: Actually the preceding paragraph is an oversimplification: there are two cases in which a function-call construct will be treated as a cast request without having matched it to an actual function. If a function call name(x) does not exactly match any existing function, but name is the name of a data type and pg_cast provides a binary-coercible cast to this type from the type of x, then the call will be construed as a binary-coercible cast. This exception is made so that binary-coercible casts can be invoked using functional syntax, even though they lack any function. Likewise, if there is no pg_cast entry but the cast would be to or from a string type, the call will be construed as an I/O conversion cast. This exception allows I/O conversion casts to be invoked using functional syntax.

Note: There is also an exception to the exception: I/O conversion casts from composite types to string types cannot be invoked using functional syntax, but must be written in explicit cast syntax (either CAST or :: notation). This exception was added because after the introduction of automatically-provided I/O conversion casts, it was found too easy to accidentally invoke such a cast when a function or column reference was intended.

Examples

To create an assignment cast from type bigint to type int4 using the function int4(bigint):

CREATE CAST (bigint AS int4) WITH FUNCTION int4(bigint) AS ASSIGNMENT;

(This cast is already predefined in the system.)

Compatibility

The CREATE CAST command conforms to the SQL standard, except that SQL does not make provisions for binary-coercible types or extra arguments to implementation functions. AS IMPLICIT is a PostgreSQL extension, too.

See Also

CREATE FUNCTION, CREATE TYPE, DROP CAST

Prev | Home | Next
CREATE AGGREGATE | Up | CREATE COLLATION


CREATE COLLATION

Name

CREATE COLLATION -- define a new collation

Synopsis

CREATE COLLATION name (
    [ LOCALE = locale, ]
    [ LC_COLLATE = lc_collate, ]
    [ LC_CTYPE = lc_ctype ]
)
CREATE COLLATION name FROM existing_collation

Description

CREATE COLLATION defines a new collation using the specified operating system locale settings, or by copying an existing collation.

To be able to create a collation, you must have CREATE privilege on the destination schema.

Parameters

name

The name of the collation. The collation name can be schema-qualified. If it is not, the collation is defined in the current schema. The collation name must be unique within that schema. (The system catalogs can contain collations with the same name for other encodings, but these are ignored if the database encoding does not match.)

locale

This is a shortcut for setting LC_COLLATE and LC_CTYPE at once. If you specify this, you cannot specify either of those parameters.

lc_collate

Use the specified operating system locale for the LC_COLLATE locale category. The locale must be applicable to the current database encoding. (See CREATE DATABASE for the precise rules.)

lc_ctype

Use the specified operating system locale for the LC_CTYPE locale category. The locale must be applicable to the current database encoding. (See CREATE DATABASE for the precise rules.)

existing_collation

The name of an existing collation to copy. The new collation will have the same properties as the existing one, but it will be an independent object.

Notes

Use DROP COLLATION to remove user-defined collations.

See Section 22.2 for more information about collation support in PostgreSQL.

Examples

To create a collation from the operating system locale fr_FR.utf8 (assuming the current database encoding is UTF8):

CREATE COLLATION french (LOCALE = 'fr_FR.utf8');

To create a collation from an existing collation:

CREATE COLLATION german FROM "de_DE";

This can be convenient to be able to use operating-system-independent collation names in applications.

Compatibility

There is a CREATE COLLATION statement in the SQL standard, but it is limited to copying an existing collation. The syntax to create a new collation is a PostgreSQL extension.

See Also

ALTER COLLATION, DROP COLLATION
Prev | Home | Next
CREATE CAST | Up | CREATE CONVERSION


CREATE CONVERSION

Name

CREATE CONVERSION -- define a new encoding conversion

Synopsis

CREATE [ DEFAULT ] CONVERSION name
    FOR source_encoding TO dest_encoding FROM function_name

Description

CREATE CONVERSION defines a new conversion between character set encodings. Also, conversions that are marked DEFAULT can be used for automatic encoding conversion between client and server. For this purpose, two conversions, from encoding A to B and from encoding B to A, must be defined.

To be able to create a conversion, you must have EXECUTE privilege on the function and CREATE privilege on the destination schema.

Parameters

DEFAULT

The DEFAULT clause indicates that this conversion is the default for this particular source to destination encoding. There should be only one default encoding in a schema for the encoding pair.

name

The name of the conversion. The conversion name can be schema-qualified. If it is not, the conversion is defined in the current schema. The conversion name must be unique within a schema.

source_encoding

The source encoding name.

dest_encoding

The destination encoding name.

function_name

The function used to perform the conversion. The function name can be schema-qualified. If it is not, the function will be looked up in the path.

The function must have the following signature:

conv_proc(
    integer,  -- source encoding ID
    integer,  -- destination encoding ID
    cstring,  -- source string (null terminated C string)
    internal, -- destination (fill with a null terminated C string)
    integer   -- source string length
) RETURNS void;

Notes

Use DROP CONVERSION to remove user-defined conversions.

The privileges required to create a conversion might be changed in a future release.

Examples

To create a conversion from encoding UTF8 to LATIN1 using myfunc:

CREATE CONVERSION myconv FOR 'UTF8' TO 'LATIN1' FROM myfunc;

Compatibility

CREATE CONVERSION is a PostgreSQL extension. There is no CREATE CONVERSION statement in the SQL standard, but a CREATE TRANSLATION statement that is very similar in purpose and syntax.

See Also

ALTER CONVERSION, CREATE FUNCTION, DROP CONVERSION
Prev | Home | Next
CREATE COLLATION | Up | CREATE DATABASE


CREATE DATABASE

Name

CREATE DATABASE -- create a new database

Synopsis

CREATE DATABASE name
    [ [ WITH ] [ OWNER [=] user_name ]
           [ TEMPLATE [=] template ]
           [ ENCODING [=] encoding ]
           [ LC_COLLATE [=] lc_collate ]
           [ LC_CTYPE [=] lc_ctype ]
           [ TABLESPACE [=] tablespace ]
           [ CONNECTION LIMIT [=] connlimit ] ]

Description

CREATE DATABASE creates a new PostgreSQL database.

To create a database, you must be a superuser or have the special CREATEDB privilege. See CREATE USER.

By default, the new database will be created by cloning the standard system database template1. A different template can be specified by writing TEMPLATE name. In particular, by writing TEMPLATE template0, you can create a virgin database containing only the standard objects predefined by your version of PostgreSQL. This is useful if you wish to avoid copying any installation-local objects that might have been added to template1.

Parameters

name

The name of a database to create.

user_name

The role name of the user who will own the new database, or DEFAULT to use the default (namely, the user executing the command). To create a database owned by another role, you must be a direct or indirect member of that role, or be a superuser.

template

The name of the template from which to create the new database, or DEFAULT to use the default template (template1).

encoding

Character set encoding to use in the new database. Specify a string constant (e.g., 'SQL_ASCII'), or an integer encoding number, or DEFAULT to use the default encoding (namely, the encoding of the template database). The character sets supported by the PostgreSQL server are described in Section 22.3.1. See below for additional restrictions.

lc_collate

Collation order (LC_COLLATE) to use in the new database. This affects the sort order applied to strings, e.g. in queries with ORDER BY, as well as the order used in indexes on text columns. The default is to use the collation order of the template database. See below for additional restrictions.

lc_ctype

Character classification (LC_CTYPE) to use in the new database. This affects the categorization of characters, e.g. lower, upper and digit. The default is to use the character classification of the template database. See below for additional restrictions.

tablespace

The name of the tablespace that will be associated with the new database, or DEFAULT to use the template database's tablespace. This tablespace will be the default tablespace used for objects created in this database. See CREATE TABLESPACE for more information.

connlimit

How many concurrent connections can be made to this database. -1 (the default) means no limit.

Optional parameters can be written in any order, not only the order illustrated above.

Notes

CREATE DATABASE cannot be executed inside a transaction block.

Errors along the line of "could not initialize database directory" are most likely related to insufficient permissions on the data directory, a full disk, or other file system problems.

Use DROP DATABASE to remove a database.

The program createdb is a wrapper program around this command, provided for convenience.

Although it is possible to copy a database other than template1 by specifying its name as the template, this is not (yet) intended as a general-purpose "COPY DATABASE" facility. The principal limitation is that no other sessions can be connected to the template database while it is being copied. CREATE DATABASE will fail if any other connection exists when it starts; otherwise, new connections to the template database are locked out until CREATE DATABASE completes. See Section 21.3 for more information.

The character set encoding specified for the new database must be compatible with the chosen locale settings (LC_COLLATE and LC_CTYPE). If the locale is C (or equivalently POSIX), then all encodings are allowed, but for other locale settings there is only one encoding that will work properly. (On Windows, however, UTF-8 encoding can be used with any locale.) CREATE DATABASE will allow superusers to specify SQL_ASCII encoding regardless of the locale settings, but this choice is deprecated and may result in misbehavior of character-string functions if data that is not encoding-compatible with the locale is stored in the database.

The encoding and locale settings must match those of the template database, except when template0 is used as template. This is because other databases might contain data that does not match the specified encoding, or might contain indexes whose sort ordering is affected by LC_COLLATE and LC_CTYPE. Copying such data would result in a database that is corrupt according to the new settings. template0, however, is known to not contain any data or indexes that would be affected.

The CONNECTION LIMIT option is only enforced approximately; if two new sessions start at about the same time when just one connection "slot" remains for the database, it is possible that both will fail. Also, the limit is not enforced against superusers.

Examples

To create a new database:

CREATE DATABASE lusiadas;

To create a database sales owned by user salesapp with a default tablespace of salesspace:

CREATE DATABASE sales OWNER salesapp TABLESPACE salesspace;

To create a database music which supports the ISO-8859-1 character set:

CREATE DATABASE music ENCODING 'LATIN1' TEMPLATE template0;

In this example, the TEMPLATE template0 clause would only be required if template1's encoding is not ISO-8859-1. Note that changing encoding might require selecting new LC_COLLATE and LC_CTYPE settings as well.

Compatibility

There is no CREATE DATABASE statement in the SQL standard. Databases are equivalent to catalogs, whose creation is implementation-defined.

See Also

ALTER DATABASE, DROP DATABASE
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CREATE CONVERSION | Up | CREATE DOMAIN


CREATE DOMAIN

Name

CREATE DOMAIN -- define a new domain

Synopsis

CREATE DOMAIN name [ AS ] data_type
    [ COLLATE collation ]
    [ DEFAULT expression ]
    [ constraint [ ... ] ]

where constraint is:

[ CONSTRAINT constraint_name ]
{ NOT NULL | NULL | CHECK (expression) }

Description

CREATE DOMAIN creates a new domain. A domain is essentially a data type with optional constraints (restrictions on the allowed set of values). The user who defines a domain becomes its owner.

If a schema name is given (for example, CREATE DOMAIN myschema.mydomain ...) then the domain is created in the specified schema. Otherwise it is created in the current schema. The domain name must be unique among the types and domains existing in its schema.

Domains are useful for abstracting common constraints on fields into a single location for maintenance. For example, several tables might contain email address columns, all requiring the same CHECK constraint to verify the address syntax. Define a domain rather than setting up each table's constraint individually.

Parameters

name

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of a domain to be created.

data_type

The underlying data type of the domain. This can include array specifiers.

collation

An optional collation for the domain. If no collation is specified, the underlying data type's default collation is used. The underlying type must be collatable if COLLATE is specified.

DEFAULT expression

The DEFAULT clause specifies a default value for columns of the domain data type. The value is any variable-free expression (but subqueries are not allowed). The data type of the default expression must match the data type of the domain. If no default value is specified, then the default value is the null value.

The default expression will be used in any insert operation that does not specify a value for the column. If a default value is defined for a particular column, it overrides any default associated with the domain. In turn, the domain default overrides any default value associated with the underlying data type.

CONSTRAINT constraint_name

An optional name for a constraint. If not specified, the system generates a name.

NOT NULL

Values of this domain are normally prevented from being null. However, it is still possible for a domain with this constraint to take a null value if it is assigned a matching domain type that has become null, e.g. via a LEFT OUTER JOIN, or INSERT INTO tab (domcol) VALUES ((SELECT domcol FROM tab WHERE false)).

NULL

Values of this domain are allowed to be null. This is the default.

This clause is only intended for compatibility with nonstandard SQL databases. Its use is discouraged in new applications.

CHECK (expression)

CHECK clauses specify integrity constraints or tests which values of the domain must satisfy. Each constraint must be an expression producing a Boolean result. It should use the key word VALUE to refer to the value being tested.

Currently, CHECK expressions cannot contain subqueries nor refer to variables other than VALUE.

Examples

This example creates the us_postal_code data type and then uses the type in a table definition. A regular expression test is used to verify that the value looks like a valid US postal code:

CREATE DOMAIN us_postal_code AS TEXT
CHECK(
   VALUE ~ '^\d{5}$'
OR VALUE ~ '^\d{5}-\d{4}$'
);

CREATE TABLE us_snail_addy (
  address_id SERIAL PRIMARY KEY,
  street1 TEXT NOT NULL,
  street2 TEXT,
  street3 TEXT,
  city TEXT NOT NULL,
  postal us_postal_code NOT NULL
);

Compatibility

The command CREATE DOMAIN conforms to the SQL standard.

See Also

ALTER DOMAIN, DROP DOMAIN
Prev | Home | Next
CREATE DATABASE | Up | CREATE EXTENSION


CREATE EXTENSION

Name

CREATE EXTENSION -- install an extension

Synopsis

CREATE EXTENSION [ IF NOT EXISTS ] extension_name
    [ WITH ] [ SCHEMA schema_name ]
             [ VERSION version ]
             [ FROM old_version ]

Description

CREATE EXTENSION loads a new extension into the current database. There must not be an extension of the same name already loaded.

Loading an extension essentially amounts to running the extension's script file. The script will typically create new SQL objects such as functions, data types, operators and index support methods. CREATE EXTENSION additionally records the identities of all the created objects, so that they can be dropped again if DROP EXTENSION is issued.

Loading an extension requires the same privileges that would be required to create its component objects. For most extensions this means superuser or database owner privileges are needed. The user who runs CREATE EXTENSION becomes the owner of the extension for purposes of later privilege checks, as well as the owner of any objects created by the extension's script.

Parameters

IF NOT EXISTS

Do not throw an error if an extension with the same name already exists. A notice is issued in this case. Note that there is no guarantee that the existing extension is anything like the one that would have been created from the currently-available script file.

extension_name

The name of the extension to be installed. PostgreSQL will create the extension using details from the file SHAREDIR/extension/extension_name.control.

schema_name

The name of the schema in which to install the extension's objects, given that the extension allows its contents to be relocated. The named schema must already exist. If not specified, and the extension's control file does not specify a schema either, the current default object creation schema is used.

Remember that the extension itself is not considered to be within any schema: extensions have unqualified names that must be unique database-wide. But objects belonging to the extension can be within schemas.

version

The version of the extension to install. This can be written as either an identifier or a string literal. The default version is whatever is specified in the extension's control file.

old_version

FROM old_version must be specified when, and only when, you are attempting to install an extension that replaces an "old style" module that is just a collection of objects not packaged into an extension. This option causes CREATE EXTENSION to run an alternative installation script that absorbs the existing objects into the extension, instead of creating new objects. Be careful that SCHEMA specifies the schema containing these pre-existing objects.

The value to use for old_version is determined by the extension's author, and might vary if there is more than one version of the old-style module that can be upgraded into an extension. For the standard additional modules supplied with pre-9.1 PostgreSQL, use unpackaged for old_version when updating a module to extension style.

Notes

Before you can use CREATE EXTENSION to load an extension into a database, the extension's supporting files must be installed. Information about installing the extensions supplied with PostgreSQL can be found in Additional Supplied Modules.

The extensions currently available for loading can be identified from the pg_available_extensions or pg_available_extension_versions system views.

For information about writing new extensions, see Section 35.15.

Examples

Install the hstore extension into the current database:

CREATE EXTENSION hstore;

Update a pre-9.1 installation of hstore into extension style:

CREATE EXTENSION hstore SCHEMA public FROM unpackaged;

Be careful to specify the schema in which you installed the existing hstore objects.

Compatibility

CREATE EXTENSION is a PostgreSQL extension.

See Also

ALTER EXTENSION, DROP EXTENSION
Prev | Home | Next
CREATE DOMAIN | Up | CREATE FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER


CREATE FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER

Name

CREATE FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER -- define a new foreign-data wrapper

Synopsis

CREATE FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER name
    [ HANDLER handler_function | NO HANDLER ]
    [ VALIDATOR validator_function | NO VALIDATOR ]
    [ OPTIONS ( option 'value' [, ... ] ) ]

Description

CREATE FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER creates a new foreign-data wrapper. The user who defines a foreign-data wrapper becomes its owner.

The foreign-data wrapper name must be unique within the database.

Only superusers can create foreign-data wrappers.

Parameters

name

The name of the foreign-data wrapper to be created.

HANDLER handler_function

handler_function is the name of a previously registered function that will be called to retrieve the execution functions for foreign tables. The handler function must take no arguments, and its return type must be fdw_handler.

It is possible to create a foreign-data wrapper with no handler function, but foreign tables using such a wrapper can only be declared, not accessed.

VALIDATOR validator_function

validator_function is the name of a previously registered function that will be called to check the generic options given to the foreign-data wrapper, as well as options for foreign servers and user mappings using the foreign-data wrapper. If no validator function or NO VALIDATOR is specified, then options will not be checked at creation time. (Foreign-data wrappers will possibly ignore or reject invalid option specifications at run time, depending on the implementation.) The validator function must take two arguments: one of type text[], which will contain the array of options as stored in the system catalogs, and one of type oid, which will be the OID of the system catalog containing the options. The return type is ignored; the function should report invalid options using the ereport(ERROR) function.

OPTIONS ( option 'value' [, ... ] )

This clause specifies options for the new foreign-data wrapper. The allowed option names and values are specific to each foreign data wrapper and are validated using the foreign-data wrapper's validator function. Option names must be unique.

Notes

At the moment, the foreign-data wrapper functionality is rudimentary. There is no support for updating a foreign table, and optimization of queries is primitive (and mostly left to the wrapper, too).

There is one built-in foreign-data wrapper validator function provided: postgresql_fdw_validator, which accepts options corresponding to libpq connection parameters.

Examples

Create a useless foreign-data wrapper dummy:

CREATE FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER dummy;

Create a foreign-data wrapper file with handler function file_fdw_handler:

CREATE FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER file HANDLER file_fdw_handler;

Create a foreign-data wrapper mywrapper with some options:

CREATE FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER mywrapper
    OPTIONS (debug 'true');

Compatibility

CREATE FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER conforms to ISO/IEC 9075-9 (SQL/MED), with the exception that the HANDLER and VALIDATOR clauses are extensions and the standard clauses LIBRARY and LANGUAGE are not implemented in PostgreSQL.

Note, however, that the SQL/MED functionality as a whole is not yet conforming.

See Also

ALTER FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER, DROP FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER, CREATE SERVER, CREATE USER MAPPING
Prev | Home | Next
CREATE EXTENSION | Up | CREATE FOREIGN TABLE


CREATE FOREIGN TABLE

Name

CREATE FOREIGN TABLE -- define a new foreign table

Synopsis

CREATE FOREIGN TABLE [ IF NOT EXISTS ] table_name ( [
  { column_name data_type [ NULL | NOT NULL ] }
    [, ... ]
] )
  SERVER server_name
[ OPTIONS ( option 'value' [, ... ] ) ]

Description

CREATE FOREIGN TABLE will create a new foreign table in the current database. The table will be owned by the user issuing the command.

If a schema name is given (for example, CREATE FOREIGN TABLE myschema.mytable ...) then the table is created in the specified schema. Otherwise it is created in the current schema. The name of the foreign table must be distinct from the name of any other foreign table, table, sequence, index, or view in the same schema.

CREATE FOREIGN TABLE also automatically creates a data type that represents the composite type corresponding to one row of the foreign table. Therefore, foreign tables cannot have the same name as any existing data type in the same schema.

Parameters

IF NOT EXISTS

Do not throw an error if a relation with the same name already exists. A notice is issued in this case. Note that there is no guarantee that the existing relation is anything like the one that would have been created.

table_name

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of the table to be created.

column_name

The name of a column to be created in the new table.

data_type

The data type of the column. This can include array specifiers. For more information on the data types supported by PostgreSQL, refer to Chapter 8.

NOT NULL

The column is not allowed to contain null values.

NULL

The column is allowed to contain null values. This is the default.

This clause is only provided for compatibility with non-standard SQL databases. Its use is discouraged in new applications.

server_name

The name of an existing server for the foreign table.

OPTIONS ( option 'value' [, ...] )

Options to be associated with the new foreign table. The allowed option names and values are specific to each foreign data wrapper and are validated using the foreign-data wrapper's validator function. Option names must be unique.

Examples

Create foreign table films with film_server:

CREATE FOREIGN TABLE films (
    code        char(5) NOT NULL,
    title       varchar(40) NOT NULL,
    did         integer NOT NULL,
    date_prod   date,
    kind        varchar(10),
    len         interval hour to minute
)
SERVER film_server;

Compatibility

The CREATE FOREIGN TABLE command largely conforms to the SQL standard; however, much as with CREATE TABLE, NULL constraints and zero-column foreign tables are permitted.

See Also

ALTER FOREIGN TABLE, DROP FOREIGN TABLE, CREATE TABLE, CREATE SERVER
Prev | Home | Next
CREATE FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER | Up | CREATE FUNCTION


CREATE FUNCTION

Name

CREATE FUNCTION -- define a new function

Synopsis

CREATE [ OR REPLACE ] FUNCTION
    name ( [ [ argmode ] [ argname ] argtype [ { DEFAULT | = } default_expr ] [, ...] ] )
    [ RETURNS rettype
      | RETURNS TABLE ( column_name column_type [, ...] ) ]
  { LANGUAGE lang_name
    | WINDOW
    | IMMUTABLE | STABLE | VOLATILE
    | CALLED ON NULL INPUT | RETURNS NULL ON NULL INPUT | STRICT
    | [ EXTERNAL ] SECURITY INVOKER | [ EXTERNAL ] SECURITY DEFINER
    | COST execution_cost
    | ROWS result_rows
    | SET configuration_parameter { TO value | = value | FROM CURRENT }
    | AS 'definition'
    | AS 'obj_file', 'link_symbol'
  } ...
    [ WITH ( attribute [, ...] ) ]

Description

CREATE FUNCTION defines a new function. CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION will either create a new function, or replace an existing definition. To be able to define a function, the user must have the USAGE privilege on the language.

If a schema name is included, then the function is created in the specified schema. Otherwise it is created in the current schema. The name of the new function must not match any existing function with the same input argument types in the same schema. However, functions of different argument types can share a name (this is called overloading).

To replace the current definition of an existing function, use CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION. It is not possible to change the name or argument types of a function this way (if you tried, you would actually be creating a new, distinct function). Also, CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION will not let you change the return type of an existing function. To do that, you must drop and recreate the function. (When using OUT parameters, that means you cannot change the types of any OUT parameters except by dropping the function.)

When CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION is used to replace an existing function, the ownership and permissions of the function do not change. All other function properties are assigned the values specified or implied in the command. You must own the function to replace it (this includes being a member of the owning role).

If you drop and then recreate a function, the new function is not the same entity as the old; you will have to drop existing rules, views, triggers, etc. that refer to the old function. Use CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION to change a function definition without breaking objects that refer to the function. Also, ALTER FUNCTION can be used to change most of the auxiliary properties of an existing function.

The user that creates the function becomes the owner of the function.

Parameters

name

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of the function to create.

argmode

The mode of an argument: IN, OUT, INOUT, or VARIADIC. If omitted, the default is IN. Only OUT arguments can follow a VARIADIC one. Also, OUT and INOUT arguments cannot be used together with the RETURNS TABLE notation.

argname

The name of an argument. Some languages (including PL/pgSQL, but currently not SQL) let you use the name in the function body. For other languages the name of an input argument is just extra documentation, so far as the function itself is concerned; but you can use input argument names when calling a function to improve readability (see Section 4.3). In any case, the name of an output argument is significant, because it defines the column name in the result row type. (If you omit the name for an output argument, the system will choose a default column name.)

argtype

The data type(s) of the function's arguments (optionally schema-qualified), if any. The argument types can be base, composite, or domain types, or can reference the type of a table column.

Depending on the implementation language it might also be allowed to specify "pseudotypes" such as cstring. Pseudotypes indicate that the actual argument type is either incompletely specified, or outside the set of ordinary SQL data types.

The type of a column is referenced by writing table_name.column_name%TYPE. Using this feature can sometimes help make a function independent of changes to the definition of a table.

default_expr

An expression to be used as default value if the parameter is not specified. The expression has to be coercible to the argument type of the parameter. Only input (including INOUT) parameters can have a default value. All input parameters following a parameter with a default value must have default values as well.

rettype

The return data type (optionally schema-qualified). The return type can be a base, composite, or domain type, or can reference the type of a table column. Depending on the implementation language it might also be allowed to specify "pseudotypes" such as cstring. If the function is not supposed to return a value, specify void as the return type.

When there are OUT or INOUT parameters, the RETURNS clause can be omitted. If present, it must agree with the result type implied by the output parameters: RECORD if there are multiple output parameters, or the same type as the single output parameter.

The SETOF modifier indicates that the function will return a set of items, rather than a single item.

The type of a column is referenced by writing table_name.column_name%TYPE.

column_name

The name of an output column in the RETURNS TABLE syntax. This is effectively another way of declaring a named OUT parameter, except that RETURNS TABLE also implies RETURNS SETOF.

column_type

The data type of an output column in the RETURNS TABLE syntax.

lang_name

The name of the language that the function is implemented in. Can be SQL, C, internal, or the name of a user-defined procedural language. For backward compatibility, the name can be enclosed by single quotes.

WINDOW

WINDOW indicates that the function is a window function rather than a plain function. This is currently only useful for functions written in C. The WINDOW attribute cannot be changed when replacing an existing function definition.

IMMUTABLE
STABLE
VOLATILE

These attributes inform the query optimizer about the behavior of the function. At most one choice can be specified. If none of these appear, VOLATILE is the default assumption.

IMMUTABLE indicates that the function cannot modify the database and always returns the same result when given the same argument values; that is, it does not do database lookups or otherwise use information not directly present in its argument list. If this option is given, any call of the function with all-constant arguments can be immediately replaced with the function value.

STABLE indicates that the function cannot modify the database, and that within a single table scan it will consistently return the same result for the same argument values, but that its result could change across SQL statements. This is the appropriate selection for functions whose results depend on database lookups, parameter variables (such as the current time zone), etc. (It is inappropriate for AFTER triggers that wish to query rows modified by the current command.) Also note that the current_timestamp family of functions qualify as stable, since their values do not change within a transaction.

VOLATILE indicates that the function value can change even within a single table scan, so no optimizations can be made. Relatively few database functions are volatile in this sense; some examples are random(), currval(), timeofday(). But note that any function that has side-effects must be classified volatile, even if its result is quite predictable, to prevent calls from being optimized away; an example is setval().

For additional details see Section 35.6.

CALLED ON NULL INPUT
RETURNS NULL ON NULL INPUT
STRICT

CALLED ON NULL INPUT (the default) indicates that the function will be called normally when some of its arguments are null. It is then the function author's responsibility to check for null values if necessary and respond appropriately.

RETURNS NULL ON NULL INPUT or STRICT indicates that the function always returns null whenever any of its arguments are null. If this parameter is specified, the function is not executed when there are null arguments; instead a null result is assumed automatically.

[EXTERNAL] SECURITY INVOKER
[EXTERNAL] SECURITY DEFINER

SECURITY INVOKER indicates that the function is to be executed with the privileges of the user that calls it. That is the default. SECURITY DEFINER specifies that the function is to be executed with the privileges of the user that created it.

The key word EXTERNAL is allowed for SQL conformance, but it is optional since, unlike in SQL, this feature applies to all functions not only external ones.

execution_cost

A positive number giving the estimated execution cost for the function, in units of cpu_operator_cost. If the function returns a set, this is the cost per returned row. If the cost is not specified, 1 unit is assumed for C-language and internal functions, and 100 units for functions in all other languages. Larger values cause the planner to try to avoid evaluating the function more often than necessary.

result_rows

A positive number giving the estimated number of rows that the planner should expect the function to return. This is only allowed when the function is declared to return a set. The default assumption is 1000 rows.

configuration_parameter
value

The SET clause causes the specified configuration parameter to be set to the specified value when the function is entered, and then restored to its prior value when the function exits. SET FROM CURRENT saves the session's current value of the parameter as the value to be applied when the function is entered.

If a SET clause is attached to a function, then the effects of a SET LOCAL command executed inside the function for the same variable are restricted to the function: the configuration parameter's prior value is still restored at function exit. However, an ordinary SET command (without LOCAL) overrides the SET clause, much as it would do for a previous SET LOCAL command: the effects of such a command will persist after function exit, unless the current transaction is rolled back.

See SET and Chapter 18 for more information about allowed parameter names and values.

definition

A string constant defining the function; the meaning depends on the language. It can be an internal function name, the path to an object file, an SQL command, or text in a procedural language.

It is often helpful to use dollar quoting (see Section 4.1.2.4) to write the function definition string, rather than the normal single quote syntax. Without dollar quoting, any single quotes or backslashes in the function definition must be escaped by doubling them.

obj_file, link_symbol

This form of the AS clause is used for dynamically loadable C language functions when the function name in the C language source code is not the same as the name of the SQL function. The string obj_file is the name of the file containing the dynamically loadable object, and link_symbol is the function's link symbol, that is, the name of the function in the C language source code. If the link symbol is omitted, it is assumed to be the same as the name of the SQL function being defined.

When repeated CREATE FUNCTION calls refer to the same object file, the file is only loaded once per session. To unload and reload the file (perhaps during development), start a new session.

attribute

The historical way to specify optional pieces of information about the function. The following attributes can appear here:

isStrict

Equivalent to STRICT or RETURNS NULL ON NULL INPUT.

isCachable

isCachable is an obsolete equivalent of IMMUTABLE; it's still accepted for backwards-compatibility reasons.

Attribute names are not case-sensitive.

Refer to Section 35.3 for further information on writing functions.

Overloading

PostgreSQL allows function overloading; that is, the same name can be used for several different functions so long as they have distinct input argument types. However, the C names of all functions must be different, so you must give overloaded C functions different C names (for example, use the argument types as part of the C names).

Two functions are considered the same if they have the same names and input argument types, ignoring any OUT parameters. Thus for example these declarations conflict:

CREATE FUNCTION foo(int) ...
CREATE FUNCTION foo(int, out text) ...

Functions that have different argument type lists will not be considered to conflict at creation time, but if defaults are provided they might conflict in use. For example, consider

CREATE FUNCTION foo(int) ...
CREATE FUNCTION foo(int, int default 42) ...

A call foo(10) will fail due to the ambiguity about which function should be called.

Notes

The full SQL type syntax is allowed for declaring a function's arguments and return value. However, parenthesized type modifiers (e.g., the precision field for type numeric) are discarded by CREATE FUNCTION. Thus for example CREATE FUNCTION foo (varchar(10)) ... is exactly the same as CREATE FUNCTION foo (varchar) ....

When replacing an existing function with CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION, there are restrictions on changing parameter names. You cannot change the name already assigned to any input parameter (although you can add names to parameters that had none before). If there is more than one output parameter, you cannot change the names of the output parameters, because that would change the column names of the anonymous composite type that describes the function's result. These restrictions are made to ensure that existing calls of the function do not stop working when it is replaced.

If a function is declared STRICT with a VARIADIC argument, the strictness check tests that the variadic array as a whole is non-null. The function will still be called if the array has null elements.

Examples

Here are some trivial examples to help you get started. For more information and examples, see Section 35.3.

CREATE FUNCTION add(integer, integer) RETURNS integer
    AS 'select $1 + $2;'
    LANGUAGE SQL
    IMMUTABLE
    RETURNS NULL ON NULL INPUT;

Increment an integer, making use of an argument name, in PL/pgSQL:

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION increment(i integer) RETURNS integer AS $$
        BEGIN
                RETURN i + 1;
        END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

Return a record containing multiple output parameters:

CREATE FUNCTION dup(in int, out f1 int, out f2 text)
    AS $$ SELECT $1, CAST($1 AS text) || ' is text' $$
    LANGUAGE SQL;

SELECT * FROM dup(42);

You can do the same thing more verbosely with an explicitly named composite type:

CREATE TYPE dup_result AS (f1 int, f2 text);

CREATE FUNCTION dup(int) RETURNS dup_result
    AS $$ SELECT $1, CAST($1 AS text) || ' is text' $$
    LANGUAGE SQL;

SELECT * FROM dup(42);

Another way to return multiple columns is to use a TABLE function:

CREATE FUNCTION dup(int) RETURNS TABLE(f1 int, f2 text)
    AS $$ SELECT $1, CAST($1 AS text) || ' is text' $$
    LANGUAGE SQL;

SELECT * FROM dup(42);

However, a TABLE function is different from the preceding examples, because it actually returns a set of records, not just one record.

Writing SECURITY DEFINER Functions Safely

Because a SECURITY DEFINER function is executed with the privileges of the user that created it, care is needed to ensure that the function cannot be misused. For security, search_path should be set to exclude any schemas writable by untrusted users. This prevents malicious users from creating objects that mask objects used by the function. Particularly important in this regard is the temporary-table schema, which is searched first by default, and is normally writable by anyone. A secure arrangement can be had by forcing the temporary schema to be searched last. To do this, write pg_temp as the last entry in search_path. This function illustrates safe usage:

CREATE FUNCTION check_password(uname TEXT, pass TEXT)
RETURNS BOOLEAN AS $$
DECLARE passed BOOLEAN;
BEGIN
        SELECT  (pwd = $2) INTO passed
        FROM    pwds
        WHERE   username = $1;

        RETURN passed;
END;
$$  LANGUAGE plpgsql
    SECURITY DEFINER
    -- Set a secure search_path: trusted schema(s), then 'pg_temp'.
    SET search_path = admin, pg_temp;

Before PostgreSQL version 8.3, the SET option was not available, and so older functions may contain rather complicated logic to save, set, and restore search_path. The SET option is far easier to use for this purpose.

Another point to keep in mind is that by default, execute privilege is granted to PUBLIC for newly created functions (see GRANT for more information). Frequently you will wish to restrict use of a security definer function to only some users. To do that, you must revoke the default PUBLIC privileges and then grant execute privilege selectively. To avoid having a window where the new function is accessible to all, create it and set the privileges within a single transaction. For example:

BEGIN;
CREATE FUNCTION check_password(uname TEXT, pass TEXT) ... SECURITY DEFINER;
REVOKE ALL ON FUNCTION check_password(uname TEXT, pass TEXT) FROM PUBLIC;
GRANT EXECUTE ON FUNCTION check_password(uname TEXT, pass TEXT) TO admins;
COMMIT;

Compatibility

A CREATE FUNCTION command is defined in SQL:1999 and later. The PostgreSQL version is similar but not fully compatible. The attributes are not portable, neither are the different available languages.

For compatibility with some other database systems, argmode can be written either before or after argname. But only the first way is standard-compliant.

The SQL standard does not specify parameter defaults. The syntax with the DEFAULT key word is from Oracle, and it is somewhat in the spirit of the standard: SQL/PSM uses it for variable default values. The syntax with = is used in T-SQL and Firebird.

See Also

ALTER FUNCTION, DROP FUNCTION, GRANT, LOAD, REVOKE, createlang
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CREATE FOREIGN TABLE | Up | CREATE GROUP


CREATE GROUP

Name

CREATE GROUP -- define a new database role

Synopsis

CREATE GROUP name [ [ WITH ] option [ ... ] ]

where option can be:

      SUPERUSER | NOSUPERUSER
    | CREATEDB | NOCREATEDB
    | CREATEROLE | NOCREATEROLE
    | CREATEUSER | NOCREATEUSER
    | INHERIT | NOINHERIT
    | LOGIN | NOLOGIN
    | [ ENCRYPTED | UNENCRYPTED ] PASSWORD 'password'
    | VALID UNTIL 'timestamp'
    | IN ROLE role_name [, ...]
    | IN GROUP role_name [, ...]
    | ROLE role_name [, ...]
    | ADMIN role_name [, ...]
    | USER role_name [, ...]
    | SYSID uid

Description

CREATE GROUP is now an alias for CREATE ROLE.

Compatibility

There is no CREATE GROUP statement in the SQL standard.

See Also

CREATE ROLE
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CREATE FUNCTION | Up | CREATE INDEX


CREATE INDEX

Name

CREATE INDEX -- define a new index

Synopsis

CREATE [ UNIQUE ] INDEX [ CONCURRENTLY ] [ name ] ON table [ USING method ]
    ( { column | ( expression ) } [ COLLATE collation ] [ opclass ] [ ASC | DESC ] [ NULLS { FIRST | LAST } ] [, ...] )
    [ WITH ( storage_parameter = value [, ... ] ) ]
    [ TABLESPACE tablespace ]
    [ WHERE predicate ]

Description

CREATE INDEX constructs an index on the specified column(s) of the specified table. Indexes are primarily used to enhance database performance (though inappropriate use can result in slower performance).

The key field(s) for the index are specified as column names, or alternatively as expressions written in parentheses. Multiple fields can be specified if the index method supports multicolumn indexes.

An index field can be an expression computed from the values of one or more columns of the table row. This feature can be used to obtain fast access to data based on some transformation of the basic data. For example, an index computed on upper(col) would allow the clause WHERE upper(col) = 'JIM' to use an index.

PostgreSQL provides the index methods B-tree, hash, GiST, and GIN. Users can also define their own index methods, but that is fairly complicated.

When the WHERE clause is present, a partial index is created. A partial index is an index that contains entries for only a portion of a table, usually a portion that is more useful for indexing than the rest of the table. For example, if you have a table that contains both billed and unbilled orders where the unbilled orders take up a small fraction of the total table and yet that is an often used section, you can improve performance by creating an index on just that portion. Another possible application is to use WHERE with UNIQUE to enforce uniqueness over a subset of a table. See Section 11.8 for more discussion.

The expression used in the WHERE clause can refer only to columns of the underlying table, but it can use all columns, not just the ones being indexed. Presently, subqueries and aggregate expressions are also forbidden in WHERE. The same restrictions apply to index fields that are expressions.

All functions and operators used in an index definition must be "immutable", that is, their results must depend only on their arguments and never on any outside influence (such as the contents of another table or the current time). This restriction ensures that the behavior of the index is well-defined. To use a user-defined function in an index expression or WHERE clause, remember to mark the function immutable when you create it.

Parameters

UNIQUE

Causes the system to check for duplicate values in the table when the index is created (if data already exist) and each time data is added. Attempts to insert or update data which would result in duplicate entries will generate an error.

CONCURRENTLY

When this option is used, PostgreSQL will build the index without taking any locks that prevent concurrent inserts, updates, or deletes on the table; whereas a standard index build locks out writes (but not reads) on the table until it's done. There are several caveats to be aware of when using this option — see Building Indexes Concurrently.

name

The name of the index to be created. No schema name can be included here; the index is always created in the same schema as its parent table. If the name is omitted, PostgreSQL chooses a suitable name based on the parent table's name and the indexed column name(s).

table

The name (possibly schema-qualified) of the table to be indexed.

method

The name of the index method to be used. Choices are btree, hash, gist, and gin. The default method is btree.

column

The name of a column of the table.

expression

An expression based on one or more columns of the table. The expression usually must be written with surrounding parentheses, as shown in the syntax. However, the parentheses can be omitted if the expression has the form of a function call.

collation

The name of the collation to use for the index. By default, the index uses the collation declared for the column to be indexed or the result collation of the expression to be indexed. Indexes with non-default collations can be useful for queries that involve expressions using non-default collations.

opclass

The name of an operator class. See below for details.

ASC

Specifies ascending sort order (which is the default).

DESC

Specifies descending sort order.

NULLS FIRST

Specifies that nulls sort before non-nulls. This is the default when DESC is specified.

NULLS LAST

Specifies that nulls sort after non-nulls. This is the default when DESC is not specified.

storage_parameter

The name of an index-method-specific storage parameter. See Index Storage Parameters for details.

tablespace

The tablespace in which to create the index. If not specified, default_tablespace is consulted, or temp_tablespaces for indexes on temporary tables.

predicate

The constraint expression for a partial index.

Index Storage Parameters

The optional WITH clause specifies storage parameters for the index. Each index method has its own set of allowed storage parameters. The B-tree, hash and GiST index methods all accept a single parameter:

FILLFACTOR

The fillfactor for an index is a percentage that determines how full the index method will try to pack index pages. For B-trees, leaf pages are filled to this percentage during initial index build, and also when extending the index at the right (adding new largest key values). If pages subsequently become completely full, they will be split, leading to gradual degradation in the index's efficiency. B-trees use a default fillfactor of 90, but any integer value from 10 to 100 can be selected. If the table is static then fillfactor 100 is best to minimize the index's physical size, but for heavily updated tables a smaller fillfactor is better to minimize the need for page splits. The other index methods use fillfactor in different but roughly analogous ways; the default fillfactor varies between methods.

GIN indexes accept a different parameter:

FASTUPDATE

This setting controls usage of the fast update technique described in Section 54.3.1. It is a Boolean parameter: ON enables fast update, OFF disables it. (Alternative spellings of ON and OFF are allowed as described in Section 18.1.) The default is ON.

Note: Turning FASTUPDATE off via ALTER INDEX prevents future insertions from going into the list of pending index entries, but does not in itself flush previous entries. You might want to VACUUM the table afterward to ensure the pending list is emptied.

Building Indexes Concurrently

Creating an index can interfere with regular operation of a database. Normally PostgreSQL locks the table to be indexed against writes and performs the entire index build with a single scan of the table. Other transactions can still read the table, but if they try to insert, update, or delete rows in the table they will block until the index build is finished. This could have a severe effect if the system is a live production database. Very large tables can take many hours to be indexed, and even for smaller tables, an index build can lock out writers for periods that are unacceptably long for a production system.

PostgreSQL supports building indexes without locking out writes. This method is invoked by specifying the CONCURRENTLY option of CREATE INDEX. When this option is used, PostgreSQL must perform two scans of the table, and in addition it must wait for all existing transactions that could potentially use the index to terminate. Thus this method requires more total work than a standard index build and takes significantly longer to complete. However, since it allows normal operations to continue while the index is built, this method is useful for adding new indexes in a production environment. Of course, the extra CPU and I/O load imposed by the index creation might slow other operations.

In a concurrent index build, the index is actually entered into the system catalogs in one transaction, then two table scans occur in two more transactions. Any transaction active when the second table scan starts can block concurrent index creation until it completes, even transactions that only reference the table after the second table scan starts. Concurrent index creation serially waits for each old transaction to complete using the method outlined in section Section 45.56.

If a problem arises while scanning the table, such as a uniqueness violation in a unique index, the CREATE INDEX command will fail but leave behind an "invalid" index. This index will be ignored for querying purposes because it might be incomplete; however it will still consume update overhead. The psql \d command will report such an index as INVALID:

postgres=# \d tab
       Table "public.tab"
 Column |  Type   | Modifiers
--------+---------+-----------
 col    | integer |
Indexes:
    "idx" btree (col) INVALID

The recommended recovery method in such cases is to drop the index and try again to perform CREATE INDEX CONCURRENTLY. (Another possibility is to rebuild the index with REINDEX. However, since REINDEX does not support concurrent builds, this option is unlikely to seem attractive.)

Another caveat when building a unique index concurrently is that the uniqueness constraint is already being enforced against other transactions when the second table scan begins. This means that constraint violations could be reported in other queries prior to the index becoming available for use, or even in cases where the index build eventually fails. Also, if a failure does occur in the second scan, the "invalid" index continues to enforce its uniqueness constraint afterwards.

Concurrent builds of expression indexes and partial indexes are supported. Errors occurring in the evaluation of these expressions could cause behavior similar to that described above for unique constraint violations.

Regular index builds permit other regular index builds on the same table to occur in parallel, but only one concurrent index build can occur on a table at a time. In both cases, no other types of schema modification on the table are allowed meanwhile. Another difference is that a regular CREATE INDEX command can be performed within a transaction block, but CREATE INDEX CONCURRENTLY cannot.

Notes

See Chapter 11 for information about when indexes can be used, when they are not used, and in which particular situations they can be useful.

Caution

Hash index operations are not presently WAL-logged, so hash indexes might need to be rebuilt with REINDEX after a database crash if there were unwritten changes. Also, changes to hash indexes are not replicated over streaming or file-based replication after the initial base backup, so they give wrong answers to queries that subsequently use them. For these reasons, hash index use is presently discouraged.

Currently, only the B-tree, GiST and GIN index methods support multicolumn indexes. Up to 32 fields can be specified by default. (This limit can be altered when building PostgreSQL.) Only B-tree currently supports unique indexes.

An operator class can be specified for each column of an index. The operator class identifies the operators to be used by the index for that column. For example, a B-tree index on four-byte integers would use the int4_ops class; this operator class includes comparison functions for four-byte integers. In practice the default operator class for the column's data type is usually sufficient. The main point of having operator classes is that for some data types, there could be more than one meaningful ordering. For example, we might want to sort a complex-number data type either by absolute value or by real part. We could do this by defining two operator classes for the data type and then selecting the proper class when making an index. More information about operator classes is in Section 11.9 and in Section 35.14.

For index methods that support ordered scans (currently, only B-tree), the optional clauses ASC, DESC, NULLS FIRST, and/or NULLS LAST can be specified to modify the sort ordering of the index. Since an ordered index can be scanned either forward or backward, it is not normally useful to create a single-column DESC index — that sort ordering is already available with a regular index. The value of these options is that multicolumn indexes can be created that match the sort ordering requested by a mixed-ordering query, such as SELECT ... ORDER BY x ASC, y DESC. The NULLS options are useful if you need to support "nulls sort low" behavior, rather than the default "nulls sort high", in queries that depend on indexes to avoid sorting steps.

For most index methods, the speed of creating an index is dependent on the setting of maintenance_work_mem. Larger values will reduce the time needed for index creation, so long as you don't make it larger than the amount of memory really available, which would drive the machine into swapping. For hash indexes, the value of effective_cache_size is also relevant to index creation time: PostgreSQL will use one of two different hash index creation methods depending on whether the estimated index size is more or less than effective_cache_size. For best results, make sure that this parameter is also set to something reflective of available memory, and be careful that the sum of maintenance_work_mem and effective_cache_size is less than the machine's RAM less whatever space is needed by other programs.

Use DROP INDEX to remove an index.

Prior releases of PostgreSQL also had an R-tree index method. This method has been removed because it had no significant advantages over the GiST method. If USING rtree is specified, CREATE INDEX will interpret it as USING gist, to simplify conversion of old databases to GiST.

Examples

To create a B-tree index on the column title in the table films:

CREATE UNIQUE INDEX title_idx ON films (title);

To create an index on the expression lower(title), allowing efficient case-insensitive searches:

CREATE INDEX ON films ((lower(title)));

(In this example we have chosen to omit the index name, so the system will choose a name, typically films_lower_idx.)

To create an index with non-default collation:

CREATE INDEX title_idx_german ON films (title COLLATE "de_DE");

To create an index with non-default sort ordering of nulls:

CREATE INDEX title_idx_nulls_low ON films (title NULLS FIRST);

To create an index with non-default fill factor:

CREATE UNIQUE INDEX title_idx ON films (title) WITH (fillfactor = 70);

To create a GIN index with fast updates disabled:

CREATE INDEX gin_idx ON documents_table USING gin (locations) WITH (fastupdate = off);

To create an index on the column code in the table films and have the index reside in the tablespace indexspace:

CREATE INDEX code_idx ON films (code) TABLESPACE indexspace;

To create a GiST index on a point attribute so that we can efficiently use box operators on the result of the conversion function:

CREATE INDEX pointloc
    ON points USING gist (box(location,location));
SELECT * FROM points
    WHERE box(location,location) && '(0,0),(1,1)'::box;

To create an index without locking out writes to the table:

CREATE INDEX CONCURRENTLY sales_quantity_index ON sales_table (quantity);

Compatibility

CREATE INDEX is a PostgreSQL language extension. There are no provisions for indexes in the SQL standard.

See Also

ALTER INDEX, DROP INDEX
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CREATE GROUP | Up | CREATE LANGUAGE


CREATE LANGUAGE

Name

CREATE LANGUAGE -- define a new procedural language

Synopsis

CREATE [ OR REPLACE ] [ PROCEDURAL ] LANGUAGE name
CREATE [ OR REPLACE ] [ TRUSTED ] [ PROCEDURAL ] LANGUAGE name
    HANDLER call_handler [ INLINE inline_handler ] [ VALIDATOR valfunction ]

Description

CREATE LANGUAGE registers a new procedural language with a PostgreSQL database. Subsequently, functions and trigger procedures can be defined in this new language.

Note: As of PostgreSQL 9.1, most procedural languages have been made into "extensions", and should therefore be installed with CREATE EXTENSION not CREATE LANGUAGE. Direct use of CREATE LANGUAGE should now be confined to extension installation scripts. If you have a "bare" language in your database, perhaps as a result of an upgrade, you can convert it to an extension using CREATE EXTENSION langname FROM unpackaged.

CREATE LANGUAGE effectively associates the language name with handler function(s) that are responsible for executing functions written in the language. Refer to Chapter 49 for more information about language handlers.

There are two forms of the CREATE LANGUAGE command. In the first form, the user supplies just the name of the desired language, and the PostgreSQL server consults the pg_pltemplate system catalog to determine the correct parameters. In the second form, the user supplies the language parameters along with the language name. The second form can be used to create a language that is not defined in pg_pltemplate, but this approach is considered obsolescent.

When the server finds an entry in the pg_pltemplate catalog for the given language name, it will use the catalog data even if the command includes language parameters. This behavior simplifies loading of old dump files, which are likely to contain out-of-date information about language support functions.

Ordinarily, the user must have the PostgreSQL superuser privilege to register a new language. However, the owner of a database can register a new language within that database if the language is listed in the pg_pltemplate catalog and is marked as allowed to be created by database owners (tmpldbacreate is true). The default is that trusted languages can be created by database owners, but this can be adjusted by superusers by modifying the contents of pg_pltemplate. The creator of a language becomes its owner and can later drop it, rename it, or assign it to a new owner.

CREATE OR REPLACE LANGUAGE will either create a new language, or replace an existing definition. If the language already exists, its parameters are updated according to the values specified or taken from pg_pltemplate, but the language's ownership and permissions settings do not change, and any existing functions written in the language are assumed to still be valid. In addition to the normal privilege requirements for creating a language, the user must be superuser or owner of the existing language. The REPLACE case is mainly meant to be used to ensure that the language exists. If the language has a pg_pltemplate entry then REPLACE will not actually change anything about an existing definition, except in the unusual case where the pg_pltemplate entry has been modified since the language was created.

Parameters

TRUSTED

TRUSTED specifies that the language does not grant access to data that the user would not otherwise have. If this key word is omitted when registering the language, only users with the PostgreSQL superuser privilege can use this language to create new functions.

PROCEDURAL

This is a noise word.

name

The name of the new procedural language. The language name is case insensitive. The name must be unique among the languages in the database.

For backward compatibility, the name can be enclosed by single quotes.

HANDLER call_handler

call_handler is the name of a previously registered function that will be called to execute the procedural language's functions. The call handler for a procedural language must be written in a compiled language such as C with version 1 call convention and registered with PostgreSQL as a function taking no arguments and returning the language_handler type, a placeholder type that is simply used to identify the function as a call handler.

INLINE inline_handler

inline_handler is the name of a previously registered function that will be called to execute an anonymous code block (DO command) in this language. If no inline_handler function is specified, the language does not support anonymous code blocks. The handler function must take one argument of type internal, which will be the DO command's internal representation, and it will typically return void. The return value of the handler is ignored.

VALIDATOR valfunction

valfunction is the name of a previously registered function that will be called when a new function in the language is created, to validate the new function. If no validator function is specified, then a new function will not be checked when it is created. The validator function must take one argument of type oid, which will be the OID of the to-be-created function, and will typically return void.

A validator function would typically inspect the function body for syntactical correctness, but it can also look at other properties of the function, for example if the language cannot handle certain argument types. To signal an error, the validator function should use the ereport() function. The return value of the function is ignored.

The TRUSTED option and the support function name(s) are ignored if the server has an entry for the specified language name in pg_pltemplate.

Notes

The createlang program is a simple wrapper around the CREATE LANGUAGE command. It eases installation of procedural languages from the shell command line.

Use DROP LANGUAGE, or better yet the droplang program, to drop procedural languages.

The system catalog pg_language (see Section 45.27) records information about the currently installed languages. Also, createlang has an option to list the installed languages.

To create functions in a procedural language, a user must have the USAGE privilege for the language. By default, USAGE is granted to PUBLIC (i.e., everyone) for trusted languages. This can be revoked if desired.

Procedural languages are local to individual databases. However, a language can be installed into the template1 database, which will cause it to be available automatically in all subsequently-created databases.

The call handler function, the inline handler function (if any), and the validator function (if any) must already exist if the server does not have an entry for the language in pg_pltemplate. But when there is an entry, the functions need not already exist; they will be automatically defined if not present in the database. (This might result in CREATE LANGUAGE failing, if the shared library that implements the language is not available in the installation.)

In PostgreSQL versions before 7.3, it was necessary to declare handler functions as returning the placeholder type opaque, rather than language_handler. To support loading of old dump files, CREATE LANGUAGE will accept a function declared as returning opaque, but it will issue a notice and change the function's declared return type to language_handler.

Examples

The preferred way of creating any of the standard procedural languages is just:

CREATE LANGUAGE plperl;

For a language not known in the pg_pltemplate catalog, a sequence such as this is needed:

CREATE FUNCTION plsample_call_handler() RETURNS language_handler
    AS '$libdir/plsample'
    LANGUAGE C;
CREATE LANGUAGE plsample
    HANDLER plsample_call_handler;

Compatibility

CREATE LANGUAGE is a PostgreSQL extension.

See Also

ALTER LANGUAGE, CREATE FUNCTION, DROP LANGUAGE, GRANT, REVOKE, createlang, droplang
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CREATE INDEX | Up | CREATE OPERATOR


CREATE OPERATOR

Name

CREATE OPERATOR -- define a new operator

Synopsis

CREATE OPERATOR name (
    PROCEDURE = function_name
    [, LEFTARG = left_type ] [, RIGHTARG = right_type ]
    [, COMMUTATOR = com_op ] [, NEGATOR = neg_op ]
    [, RESTRICT = res_proc ] [, JOIN = join_proc ]
    [, HASHES ] [, MERGES ]
)

Description

CREATE OPERATOR defines a new operator, name. The user who defines an operator becomes its owner. If a schema name is given then the operator is created in the specified schema. Otherwise it is created in the current schema.

The operator name is a sequence of up to NAMEDATALEN-1 (63 by default) characters from the following list:

+ - * / < > = ~ ! @ # % ^ & | ` ?

There are a few restrictions on your choice of name:

  • -- and /* cannot appear anywhere in an operator name, since they will be taken as the start of a comment.

  • A multicharacter operator name cannot end in + or -, unless the name also contains at least one of these characters:

    ~ ! @ # % ^ & | ` ?

    For example, @- is an allowed operator name, but *- is not. This restriction allows PostgreSQL to parse SQL-compliant commands without requiring spaces between tokens.

  • The use of => as an operator name is deprecated. It may be disallowed altogether in a future release.

The operator != is mapped to <> on input, so these two names are always equivalent.

At least one of LEFTARG and RIGHTARG must be defined. For binary operators, both must be defined. For right unary operators, only LEFTARG should be defined, while for left unary operators only RIGHTARG should be defined.

The function_name procedure must have been previously defined using CREATE FUNCTION and must be defined to accept the correct number of arguments (either one or two) of the indicated types.

The other clauses specify optional operator optimization clauses. Their meaning is detailed in Section 35.13.

Parameters

name

The name of the operator to be defined. See above for allowable characters. The name can be schema-qualified, for example CREATE OPERATOR myschema.+ (...). If not, then the operator is created in the current schema. Two operators in the same schema can have the same name if they operate on different data types. This is called overloading.

function_name

The function used to implement this operator.

left_type

The data type of the operator's left operand, if any. This option would be omitted for a left-unary operator.

right_type

The data type of the operator's right operand, if any. This option would be omitted for a right-unary operator.

com_op

The commutator of this operator.

neg_op

The negator of this operator.

res_proc

The restriction selectivity estimator function for this operator.

join_proc

The join selectivity estimator function for this operator.

HASHES

Indicates this operator can support a hash join.

MERGES

Indicates this operator can support a merge join.

To give a schema-qualified operator name in com_op or the other optional arguments, use the OPERATOR() syntax, for example:

COMMUTATOR = OPERATOR(myschema.===) ,

Notes

Refer to Section 35.12 for further information.

It is not possible to specify an operator's lexical precedence in CREATE OPERATOR, because the parser's precedence behavior is hard-wired. See Section 4.1.6 for precedence details.

The obsolete options SORT1, SORT2, LTCMP, and GTCMP were formerly used to specify the names of sort operators associated with a merge-joinable operator. This is no longer necessary, since information about associated operators is found by looking at B-tree operator families instead. If one of these options is given, it is ignored except for implicitly setting MERGES true.

Use DROP OPERATOR to delete user-defined operators from a database. Use ALTER OPERATOR to modify operators in a database.

Examples

The following command defines a new operator, area-equality, for the data type box:

CREATE OPERATOR === (
    LEFTARG = box,
    RIGHTARG = box,
    PROCEDURE = area_equal_procedure,
    COMMUTATOR = ===,
    NEGATOR = !==,
    RESTRICT = area_restriction_procedure,
    JOIN = area_join_procedure,
    HASHES, MERGES
);

Compatibility

CREATE OPERATOR is a PostgreSQL extension. There are no provisions for user-defined operators in the SQL standard.

See Also

ALTER OPERATOR, CREATE OPERATOR CLASS, DROP OPERATOR
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CREATE LANGUAGE | Up | CREATE OPERATOR CLASS


CREATE OPERATOR CLASS

Name

CREATE OPERATOR CLASS -- define a new operator class

Synopsis

CREATE OPERATOR CLASS name [ DEFAULT ] FOR TYPE data_type
  USING index_method [ FAMILY family_name ] AS
  {  OPERATOR strategy_number operator_name [ ( op_type, op_type ) ] [ FOR SEARCH | FOR ORDER BY sort_family_name ]
   | FUNCTION support_number [ ( op_type [ , op_type ] ) ] function_name ( argument_type [, ...] )
   | STORAGE storage_type
  } [, ... ]

Description

CREATE OPERATOR CLASS creates a new operator class. An operator class defines how a particular data type can be used with an index. The operator class specifies that certain operators will fill particular roles or "strategies" for this data type and this index method. The operator class also specifies the support procedures to be used by the index method when the operator class is selected for an index column. All the operators and functions used by an operator class must be defined before the operator class can be created.

If a schema name is given then the operator class is created in the specified schema. Otherwise it is created in the current schema. Two operator classes in the same schema can have the same name only if they are for different index methods.

The user who defines an operator class becomes its owner. Presently, the creating user must be a superuser. (This restriction is made because an erroneous operator class definition could confuse or even crash the server.)

CREATE OPERATOR CLASS does not presently check whether the operator class definition includes all the operators and functions required by the index method, nor whether the operators and functions form a self-consistent set. It is the user's responsibility to define a valid operator class.

Related operator classes can be grouped into operator families. To add a new operator class to an existing family, specify the FAMILY option in CREATE OPERATOR CLASS. Without this option, the new class is placed into a family named the same as the new class (creating that family if it doesn't already exist).

Refer to Section 35.14 for further information.

Parameters

name

The name of the operator class to be created. The name can be schema-qualified.

DEFAULT

If present, the operator class will become the default operator class for its data type. At most one operator class can be the default for a specific data type and index method.

data_type

The column data type that this operator class is for.

index_method

The name of the index method this operator class is for.

family_name

The name of the existing operator family to add this operator class to. If not specified, a family named the same as the operator class is used (creating it, if it doesn't already exist).

strategy_number

The index method's strategy number for an operator associated with the operator class.

operator_name

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of an operator associated with the operator class.

op_type

In an OPERATOR clause, the operand data type(s) of the operator, or NONE to signify a left-unary or right-unary operator. The operand data types can be omitted in the normal case where they are the same as the operator class's data type.

In a FUNCTION clause, the operand data type(s) the function is intended to support, if different from the input data type(s) of the function (for B-tree and hash indexes) or the class's data type (for GIN and GiST indexes). These defaults are always correct, so there is no point in specifying op_type in a FUNCTION clause in CREATE OPERATOR CLASS, but the option is provided for consistency with the comparable syntax in ALTER OPERATOR FAMILY.

sort_family_name

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of an existing btree operator family that describes the sort ordering associated with an ordering operator.

If neither FOR SEARCH nor FOR ORDER BY is specified, FOR SEARCH is the default.

support_number

The index method's support procedure number for a function associated with the operator class.

function_name

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of a function that is an index method support procedure for the operator class.

argument_type

The parameter data type(s) of the function.

storage_type

The data type actually stored in the index. Normally this is the same as the column data type, but some index methods (currently GIN and GiST) allow it to be different. The STORAGE clause must be omitted unless the index method allows a different type to be used.

The OPERATOR, FUNCTION, and STORAGE clauses can appear in any order.

Notes

Because the index machinery does not check access permissions on functions before using them, including a function or operator in an operator class is tantamount to granting public execute permission on it. This is usually not an issue for the sorts of functions that are useful in an operator class.

The operators should not be defined by SQL functions. A SQL function is likely to be inlined into the calling query, which will prevent the optimizer from recognizing that the query matches an index.

Before PostgreSQL 8.4, the OPERATOR clause could include a RECHECK option. This is no longer supported because whether an index operator is "lossy" is now determined on-the-fly at run time. This allows efficient handling of cases where an operator might or might not be lossy.

Examples

The following example command defines a GiST index operator class for the data type _int4 (array of int4). See the intarray module for the complete example.

CREATE OPERATOR CLASS gist__int_ops
    DEFAULT FOR TYPE _int4 USING gist AS
        OPERATOR        3       &&,
        OPERATOR        6       = (anyarray, anyarray),
        OPERATOR        7       @>,
        OPERATOR        8       <@,
        OPERATOR        20      @@ (_int4, query_int),
        FUNCTION        1       g_int_consistent (internal, _int4, int, oid, internal),
        FUNCTION        2       g_int_union (internal, internal),
        FUNCTION        3       g_int_compress (internal),
        FUNCTION        4       g_int_decompress (internal),
        FUNCTION        5       g_int_penalty (internal, internal, internal),
        FUNCTION        6       g_int_picksplit (internal, internal),
        FUNCTION        7       g_int_same (_int4, _int4, internal);

Compatibility

CREATE OPERATOR CLASS is a PostgreSQL extension. There is no CREATE OPERATOR CLASS statement in the SQL standard.

See Also

ALTER OPERATOR CLASS, DROP OPERATOR CLASS, CREATE OPERATOR FAMILY, ALTER OPERATOR FAMILY
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CREATE OPERATOR | Up | CREATE OPERATOR FAMILY


CREATE OPERATOR FAMILY

Name

CREATE OPERATOR FAMILY -- define a new operator family

Synopsis

CREATE OPERATOR FAMILY name USING index_method

Description

CREATE OPERATOR FAMILY creates a new operator family. An operator family defines a collection of related operator classes, and perhaps some additional operators and support functions that are compatible with these operator classes but not essential for the functioning of any individual index. (Operators and functions that are essential to indexes should be grouped within the relevant operator class, rather than being "loose" in the operator family. Typically, single-data-type operators are bound to operator classes, while cross-data-type operators can be loose in an operator family containing operator classes for both data types.)

The new operator family is initially empty. It should be populated by issuing subsequent CREATE OPERATOR CLASS commands to add contained operator classes, and optionally ALTER OPERATOR FAMILY commands to add "loose" operators and their corresponding support functions.

If a schema name is given then the operator family is created in the specified schema. Otherwise it is created in the current schema. Two operator families in the same schema can have the same name only if they are for different index methods.

The user who defines an operator family becomes its owner. Presently, the creating user must be a superuser. (This restriction is made because an erroneous operator family definition could confuse or even crash the server.)

Refer to Section 35.14 for further information.

Parameters

name

The name of the operator family to be created. The name can be schema-qualified.

index_method

The name of the index method this operator family is for.

Compatibility

CREATE OPERATOR FAMILY is a PostgreSQL extension. There is no CREATE OPERATOR FAMILY statement in the SQL standard.

See Also

ALTER OPERATOR FAMILY, DROP OPERATOR FAMILY, CREATE OPERATOR CLASS, ALTER OPERATOR CLASS, DROP OPERATOR CLASS
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CREATE OPERATOR CLASS | Up | CREATE ROLE


CREATE ROLE

Name

CREATE ROLE -- define a new database role

Synopsis

CREATE ROLE name [ [ WITH ] option [ ... ] ]

where option can be:

      SUPERUSER | NOSUPERUSER
    | CREATEDB | NOCREATEDB
    | CREATEROLE | NOCREATEROLE
    | CREATEUSER | NOCREATEUSER
    | INHERIT | NOINHERIT
    | LOGIN | NOLOGIN
    | REPLICATION | NOREPLICATION
    | CONNECTION LIMIT connlimit
    | [ ENCRYPTED | UNENCRYPTED ] PASSWORD 'password'
    | VALID UNTIL 'timestamp'
    | IN ROLE role_name [, ...]
    | IN GROUP role_name [, ...]
    | ROLE role_name [, ...]
    | ADMIN role_name [, ...]
    | USER role_name [, ...]
    | SYSID uid

Description

CREATE ROLE adds a new role to a PostgreSQL database cluster. A role is an entity that can own database objects and have database privileges; a role can be considered a "user", a "group", or both depending on how it is used. Refer to Chapter 20 and Chapter 19 for information about managing users and authentication. You must have CREATEROLE privilege or be a database superuser to use this command.

Note that roles are defined at the database cluster level, and so are valid in all databases in the cluster.

Parameters

name

The name of the new role.

SUPERUSER
NOSUPERUSER

These clauses determine whether the new role is a "superuser", who can override all access restrictions within the database. Superuser status is dangerous and should be used only when really needed. You must yourself be a superuser to create a new superuser. If not specified, NOSUPERUSER is the default.

CREATEDB
NOCREATEDB

These clauses define a role's ability to create databases. If CREATEDB is specified, the role being defined will be allowed to create new databases. Specifying NOCREATEDB will deny a role the ability to create databases. If not specified, NOCREATEDB is the default.

CREATEROLE
NOCREATEROLE

These clauses determine whether a role will be permitted to create new roles (that is, execute CREATE ROLE). A role with CREATEROLE privilege can also alter and drop other roles. If not specified, NOCREATEROLE is the default.

CREATEUSER
NOCREATEUSER

These clauses are an obsolete, but still accepted, spelling of SUPERUSER and NOSUPERUSER. Note that they are not equivalent to CREATEROLE as one might naively expect!

INHERIT
NOINHERIT

These clauses determine whether a role "inherits" the privileges of roles it is a member of. A role with the INHERIT attribute can automatically use whatever database privileges have been granted to all roles it is directly or indirectly a member of. Without INHERIT, membership in another role only grants the ability to SET ROLE to that other role; the privileges of the other role are only available after having done so. If not specified, INHERIT is the default.

LOGIN
NOLOGIN

These clauses determine whether a role is allowed to log in; that is, whether the role can be given as the initial session authorization name during client connection. A role having the LOGIN attribute can be thought of as a user. Roles without this attribute are useful for managing database privileges, but are not users in the usual sense of the word. If not specified, NOLOGIN is the default, except when CREATE ROLE is invoked through its alternative spelling CREATE USER.

REPLICATION
NOREPLICATION

These clauses determine whether a role is allowed to initiate streaming replication or put the system in and out of backup mode. A role having the REPLICATION attribute is a very highly privileged role, and should only be used on roles actually used for replication. If not specified, NOREPLICATION is the default for all roles except superusers.

CONNECTION LIMIT connlimit

If role can log in, this specifies how many concurrent connections the role can make. -1 (the default) means no limit.

PASSWORD password

Sets the role's password. (A password is only of use for roles having the LOGIN attribute, but you can nonetheless define one for roles without it.) If you do not plan to use password authentication you can omit this option. If no password is specified, the password will be set to null and password authentication will always fail for that user. A null password can optionally be written explicitly as PASSWORD NULL.

ENCRYPTED
UNENCRYPTED

These key words control whether the password is stored encrypted in the system catalogs. (If neither is specified, the default behavior is determined by the configuration parameter password_encryption.) If the presented password string is already in MD5-encrypted format, then it is stored encrypted as-is, regardless of whether ENCRYPTED or UNENCRYPTED is specified (since the system cannot decrypt the specified encrypted password string). This allows reloading of encrypted passwords during dump/restore.

Note that older clients might lack support for the MD5 authentication mechanism that is needed to work with passwords that are stored encrypted.

VALID UNTIL 'timestamp'

The VALID UNTIL clause sets a date and time after which the role's password is no longer valid. If this clause is omitted the password will be valid for all time.

IN ROLE role_name

The IN ROLE clause lists one or more existing roles to which the new role will be immediately added as a new member. (Note that there is no option to add the new role as an administrator; use a separate GRANT command to do that.)

IN GROUP role_name

IN GROUP is an obsolete spelling of IN ROLE.

ROLE role_name

The ROLE clause lists one or more existing roles which are automatically added as members of the new role. (This in effect makes the new role a "group".)

ADMIN role_name

The ADMIN clause is like ROLE, but the named roles are added to the new role WITH ADMIN OPTION, giving them the right to grant membership in this role to others.

USER role_name

The USER clause is an obsolete spelling of the ROLE clause.

SYSID uid

The SYSID clause is ignored, but is accepted for backwards compatibility.

Notes

Use ALTER ROLE to change the attributes of a role, and DROP ROLE to remove a role. All the attributes specified by CREATE ROLE can be modified by later ALTER ROLE commands.

The preferred way to add and remove members of roles that are being used as groups is to use GRANT and REVOKE.

The VALID UNTIL clause defines an expiration time for a password only, not for the role per se. In particular, the expiration time is not enforced when logging in using a non-password-based authentication method.

The INHERIT attribute governs inheritance of grantable privileges (that is, access privileges for database objects and role memberships). It does not apply to the special role attributes set by CREATE ROLE and ALTER ROLE. For example, being a member of a role with CREATEDB privilege does not immediately grant the ability to create databases, even if INHERIT is set; it would be necessary to become that role via SET ROLE before creating a database.

The INHERIT attribute is the default for reasons of backwards compatibility: in prior releases of PostgreSQL, users always had access to all privileges of groups they were members of. However, NOINHERIT provides a closer match to the semantics specified in the SQL standard.

Be careful with the CREATEROLE privilege. There is no concept of inheritance for the privileges of a CREATEROLE-role. That means that even if a role does not have a certain privilege but is allowed to create other roles, it can easily create another role with different privileges than its own (except for creating roles with superuser privileges). For example, if the role "user" has the CREATEROLE privilege but not the CREATEDB privilege, nonetheless it can create a new role with the CREATEDB privilege. Therefore, regard roles that have the CREATEROLE privilege as almost-superuser-roles.

PostgreSQL includes a program createuser that has the same functionality as CREATE ROLE (in fact, it calls this command) but can be run from the command shell.

The CONNECTION LIMIT option is only enforced approximately; if two new sessions start at about the same time when just one connection "slot" remains for the role, it is possible that both will fail. Also, the limit is never enforced for superusers.

Caution must be exercised when specifying an unencrypted password with this command. The password will be transmitted to the server in cleartext, and it might also be logged in the client's command history or the server log. The command createuser, however, transmits the password encrypted. Also, psql contains a command \password that can be used to safely change the password later.

Examples

Create a role that can log in, but don't give it a password:

CREATE ROLE jonathan LOGIN;

Create a role with a password:

CREATE USER davide WITH PASSWORD 'jw8s0F4';

(CREATE USER is the same as CREATE ROLE except that it implies LOGIN.)

Create a role with a password that is valid until the end of 2004. After one second has ticked in 2005, the password is no longer valid.

CREATE ROLE miriam WITH LOGIN PASSWORD 'jw8s0F4' VALID UNTIL '2005-01-01';

Create a role that can create databases and manage roles:

CREATE ROLE admin WITH CREATEDB CREATEROLE;

Compatibility

The CREATE ROLE statement is in the SQL standard, but the standard only requires the syntax

CREATE ROLE name [ WITH ADMIN role_name ]

Multiple initial administrators, and all the other options of CREATE ROLE, are PostgreSQL extensions.

The SQL standard defines the concepts of users and roles, but it regards them as distinct concepts and leaves all commands defining users to be specified by each database implementation. In PostgreSQL we have chosen to unify users and roles into a single kind of entity. Roles therefore have many more optional attributes than they do in the standard.

The behavior specified by the SQL standard is most closely approximated by giving users the NOINHERIT attribute, while roles are given the INHERIT attribute.

See Also

SET ROLE, ALTER ROLE, DROP ROLE, GRANT, REVOKE, createuser
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CREATE OPERATOR FAMILY | Up | CREATE RULE


CREATE RULE

Name

CREATE RULE -- define a new rewrite rule

Synopsis

CREATE [ OR REPLACE ] RULE name AS ON event
    TO table [ WHERE condition ]
    DO [ ALSO | INSTEAD ] { NOTHING | command | ( command ; command ... ) }

Description

CREATE RULE defines a new rule applying to a specified table or view. CREATE OR REPLACE RULE will either create a new rule, or replace an existing rule of the same name for the same table.

The PostgreSQL rule system allows one to define an alternative action to be performed on insertions, updates, or deletions in database tables. Roughly speaking, a rule causes additional commands to be executed when a given command on a given table is executed. Alternatively, an INSTEAD rule can replace a given command by another, or cause a command not to be executed at all. Rules are used to implement table views as well. It is important to realize that a rule is really a command transformation mechanism, or command macro. The transformation happens before the execution of the commands starts. If you actually want an operation that fires independently for each physical row, you probably want to use a trigger, not a rule. More information about the rules system is in Chapter 37.

Presently, ON SELECT rules must be unconditional INSTEAD rules and must have actions that consist of a single SELECT command. Thus, an ON SELECT rule effectively turns the table into a view, whose visible contents are the rows returned by the rule's SELECT command rather than whatever had been stored in the table (if anything). It is considered better style to write a CREATE VIEW command than to create a real table and define an ON SELECT rule for it.

You can create the illusion of an updatable view by defining ON INSERT, ON UPDATE, and ON DELETE rules (or any subset of those that's sufficient for your purposes) to replace update actions on the view with appropriate updates on other tables. If you want to support INSERT RETURNING and so on, then be sure to put a suitable RETURNING clause into each of these rules. Alternatively, an updatable view can be implemented using INSTEAD OF triggers (see CREATE TRIGGER).

There is a catch if you try to use conditional rules for view updates: there must be an unconditional INSTEAD rule for each action you wish to allow on the view. If the rule is conditional, or is not INSTEAD, then the system will still reject attempts to perform the update action, because it thinks it might end up trying to perform the action on the dummy table of the view in some cases. If you want to handle all the useful cases in conditional rules, add an unconditional DO INSTEAD NOTHING rule to ensure that the system understands it will never be called on to update the dummy table. Then make the conditional rules non-INSTEAD; in the cases where they are applied, they add to the default INSTEAD NOTHING action. (This method does not currently work to support RETURNING queries, however.)

Parameters

name

The name of a rule to create. This must be distinct from the name of any other rule for the same table. Multiple rules on the same table and same event type are applied in alphabetical name order.

event

The event is one of SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE.

table

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of the table or view the rule applies to.

condition

Any SQL conditional expression (returning boolean). The condition expression cannot refer to any tables except NEW and OLD, and cannot contain aggregate functions.

INSTEAD

INSTEAD indicates that the commands should be executed instead of the original command.

ALSO

ALSO indicates that the commands should be executed in addition to the original command.

If neither ALSO nor INSTEAD is specified, ALSO is the default.

command

The command or commands that make up the rule action. Valid commands are SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, or NOTIFY.

Within condition and command, the special table names NEW and OLD can be used to refer to values in the referenced table. NEW is valid in ON INSERT and ON UPDATE rules to refer to the new row being inserted or updated. OLD is valid in ON UPDATE and ON DELETE rules to refer to the existing row being updated or deleted.

Notes

You must be the owner of a table to create or change rules for it.

In a rule for INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE on a view, you can add a RETURNING clause that emits the view's columns. This clause will be used to compute the outputs if the rule is triggered by an INSERT RETURNING, UPDATE RETURNING, or DELETE RETURNING command respectively. When the rule is triggered by a command without RETURNING, the rule's RETURNING clause will be ignored. The current implementation allows only unconditional INSTEAD rules to contain RETURNING; furthermore there can be at most one RETURNING clause among all the rules for the same event. (This ensures that there is only one candidate RETURNING clause to be used to compute the results.) RETURNING queries on the view will be rejected if there is no RETURNING clause in any available rule.

It is very important to take care to avoid circular rules. For example, though each of the following two rule definitions are accepted by PostgreSQL, the SELECT command would cause PostgreSQL to report an error because of recursive expansion of a rule:

CREATE RULE "_RETURN" AS
    ON SELECT TO t1
    DO INSTEAD
        SELECT * FROM t2;

CREATE RULE "_RETURN" AS
    ON SELECT TO t2
    DO INSTEAD
        SELECT * FROM t1;

SELECT * FROM t1;

Presently, if a rule action contains a NOTIFY command, the NOTIFY command will be executed unconditionally, that is, the NOTIFY will be issued even if there are not any rows that the rule should apply to. For example, in:

CREATE RULE notify_me AS ON UPDATE TO mytable DO ALSO NOTIFY mytable;

UPDATE mytable SET name = 'foo' WHERE id = 42;

one NOTIFY event will be sent during the UPDATE, whether or not there are any rows that match the condition id = 42. This is an implementation restriction that might be fixed in future releases.

Compatibility

CREATE RULE is a PostgreSQL language extension, as is the entire query rewrite system.

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CREATE ROLE | Up | CREATE SCHEMA


CREATE SCHEMA

Name

CREATE SCHEMA -- define a new schema

Synopsis

CREATE SCHEMA schema_name [ AUTHORIZATION user_name ] [ schema_element [ ... ] ]
CREATE SCHEMA AUTHORIZATION user_name [ schema_element [ ... ] ]

Description

CREATE SCHEMA enters a new schema into the current database. The schema name must be distinct from the name of any existing schema in the current database.

A schema is essentially a namespace: it contains named objects (tables, data types, functions, and operators) whose names can duplicate those of other objects existing in other schemas. Named objects are accessed either by "qualifying" their names with the schema name as a prefix, or by setting a search path that includes the desired schema(s). A CREATE command specifying an unqualified object name creates the object in the current schema (the one at the front of the search path, which can be determined with the function current_schema).

Optionally, CREATE SCHEMA can include subcommands to create objects within the new schema. The subcommands are treated essentially the same as separate commands issued after creating the schema, except that if the AUTHORIZATION clause is used, all the created objects will be owned by that user.

Parameters

schema_name

The name of a schema to be created. If this is omitted, the user_name is used as the schema name. The name cannot begin with pg_, as such names are reserved for system schemas.

user_name

The role name of the user who will own the new schema. If omitted, defaults to the user executing the command. To create a schema owned by another role, you must be a direct or indirect member of that role, or be a superuser.

schema_element

An SQL statement defining an object to be created within the schema. Currently, only CREATE TABLE, CREATE VIEW, CREATE INDEX, CREATE SEQUENCE, CREATE TRIGGER and GRANT are accepted as clauses within CREATE SCHEMA. Other kinds of objects may be created in separate commands after the schema is created.

Notes

To create a schema, the invoking user must have the CREATE privilege for the current database. (Of course, superusers bypass this check.)

Examples

Create a schema:

CREATE SCHEMA myschema;

Create a schema for user joe; the schema will also be named joe:

CREATE SCHEMA AUTHORIZATION joe;

Create a schema and create a table and view within it:

CREATE SCHEMA hollywood
    CREATE TABLE films (title text, release date, awards text[])
    CREATE VIEW winners AS
        SELECT title, release FROM films WHERE awards IS NOT NULL;

Notice that the individual subcommands do not end with semicolons.

The following is an equivalent way of accomplishing the same result:

CREATE SCHEMA hollywood;
CREATE TABLE hollywood.films (title text, release date, awards text[]);
CREATE VIEW hollywood.winners AS
    SELECT title, release FROM hollywood.films WHERE awards IS NOT NULL;

Compatibility

The SQL standard allows a DEFAULT CHARACTER SET clause in CREATE SCHEMA, as well as more subcommand types than are presently accepted by PostgreSQL.

The SQL standard specifies that the subcommands in CREATE SCHEMA can appear in any order. The present PostgreSQL implementation does not handle all cases of forward references in subcommands; it might sometimes be necessary to reorder the subcommands in order to avoid forward references.

According to the SQL standard, the owner of a schema always owns all objects within it. PostgreSQL allows schemas to contain objects owned by users other than the schema owner. This can happen only if the schema owner grants the CREATE privilege on his schema to someone else, or a superuser chooses to create objects in it.

See Also

ALTER SCHEMA, DROP SCHEMA
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CREATE RULE | Up | CREATE SEQUENCE


CREATE SEQUENCE

Name

CREATE SEQUENCE -- define a new sequence generator

Synopsis

CREATE [ TEMPORARY | TEMP ] SEQUENCE name [ INCREMENT [ BY ] increment ]
    [ MINVALUE minvalue | NO MINVALUE ] [ MAXVALUE maxvalue | NO MAXVALUE ]
    [ START [ WITH ] start ] [ CACHE cache ] [ [ NO ] CYCLE ]
    [ OWNED BY { table.column | NONE } ]

Description

CREATE SEQUENCE creates a new sequence number generator. This involves creating and initializing a new special single-row table with the name name. The generator will be owned by the user issuing the command.

If a schema name is given then the sequence is created in the specified schema. Otherwise it is created in the current schema. Temporary sequences exist in a special schema, so a schema name cannot be given when creating a temporary sequence. The sequence name must be distinct from the name of any other sequence, table, index, view, or foreign table in the same schema.

After a sequence is created, you use the functions nextval, currval, and setval to operate on the sequence. These functions are documented in Section 9.15.

Although you cannot update a sequence directly, you can use a query like:

SELECT * FROM name;

to examine the parameters and current state of a sequence. In particular, the last_value field of the sequence shows the last value allocated by any session. (Of course, this value might be obsolete by the time it's printed, if other sessions are actively doing nextval calls.)

Parameters

TEMPORARY or TEMP

If specified, the sequence object is created only for this session, and is automatically dropped on session exit. Existing permanent sequences with the same name are not visible (in this session) while the temporary sequence exists, unless they are referenced with schema-qualified names.

name

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of the sequence to be created.

increment

The optional clause INCREMENT BY increment specifies which value is added to the current sequence value to create a new value. A positive value will make an ascending sequence, a negative one a descending sequence. The default value is 1.

minvalue
NO MINVALUE

The optional clause MINVALUE minvalue determines the minimum value a sequence can generate. If this clause is not supplied or NO MINVALUE is specified, then defaults will be used. The defaults are 1 and -263-1 for ascending and descending sequences, respectively.

maxvalue
NO MAXVALUE

The optional clause MAXVALUE maxvalue determines the maximum value for the sequence. If this clause is not supplied or NO MAXVALUE is specified, then default values will be used. The defaults are 263-1 and -1 for ascending and descending sequences, respectively.

start

The optional clause START WITH start allows the sequence to begin anywhere. The default starting value is minvalue for ascending sequences and maxvalue for descending ones.

cache

The optional clause CACHE cache specifies how many sequence numbers are to be preallocated and stored in memory for faster access. The minimum value is 1 (only one value can be generated at a time, i.e., no cache), and this is also the default.

CYCLE
NO CYCLE

The CYCLE option allows the sequence to wrap around when the maxvalue or minvalue has been reached by an ascending or descending sequence respectively. If the limit is reached, the next number generated will be the minvalue or maxvalue, respectively.

If NO CYCLE is specified, any calls to nextval after the sequence has reached its maximum value will return an error. If neither CYCLE or NO CYCLE are specified, NO CYCLE is the default.

OWNED BY table.column
OWNED BY NONE

The OWNED BY option causes the sequence to be associated with a specific table column, such that if that column (or its whole table) is dropped, the sequence will be automatically dropped as well. The specified table must have the same owner and be in the same schema as the sequence. OWNED BY NONE, the default, specifies that there is no such association.

Notes

Use DROP SEQUENCE to remove a sequence.

Sequences are based on bigint arithmetic, so the range cannot exceed the range of an eight-byte integer (-9223372036854775808 to 9223372036854775807).

Unexpected results might be obtained if a cache setting greater than one is used for a sequence object that will be used concurrently by multiple sessions. Each session will allocate and cache successive sequence values during one access to the sequence object and increase the sequence object's last_value accordingly. Then, the next cache-1 uses of nextval within that session simply return the preallocated values without touching the sequence object. So, any numbers allocated but not used within a session will be lost when that session ends, resulting in "holes" in the sequence.

Furthermore, although multiple sessions are guaranteed to allocate distinct sequence values, the values might be generated out of sequence when all the sessions are considered. For example, with a cache setting of 10, session A might reserve values 1..10 and return nextval=1, then session B might reserve values 11..20 and return nextval=11 before session A has generated nextval=2. Thus, with a cache setting of one it is safe to assume that nextval values are generated sequentially; with a cache setting greater than one you should only assume that the nextval values are all distinct, not that they are generated purely sequentially. Also, last_value will reflect the latest value reserved by any session, whether or not it has yet been returned by nextval.

Another consideration is that a setval executed on such a sequence will not be noticed by other sessions until they have used up any preallocated values they have cached.

Examples

Create an ascending sequence called serial, starting at 101:

CREATE SEQUENCE serial START 101;

Select the next number from this sequence:

SELECT nextval('serial');

 nextval
---------
     101

Select the next number from this sequence:

SELECT nextval('serial');

 nextval
---------
     102

Use this sequence in an INSERT command:

INSERT INTO distributors VALUES (nextval('serial'), 'nothing');

Update the sequence value after a COPY FROM:

BEGIN;
COPY distributors FROM 'input_file';
SELECT setval('serial', max(id)) FROM distributors;
END;

Compatibility

CREATE SEQUENCE conforms to the SQL standard, with the following exceptions:

  • The standard's AS <data type> expression is not supported.

  • Obtaining the next value is done using the nextval() function instead of the standard's NEXT VALUE FOR expression.

  • The OWNED BY clause is a PostgreSQL extension.

See Also

ALTER SEQUENCE, DROP SEQUENCE
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CREATE SCHEMA | Up | CREATE SERVER


CREATE SERVER

Name

CREATE SERVER -- define a new foreign server

Synopsis

CREATE SERVER server_name [ TYPE 'server_type' ] [ VERSION 'server_version' ]
    FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER fdw_name
    [ OPTIONS ( option 'value' [, ... ] ) ]

Description

CREATE SERVER defines a new foreign server. The user who defines the server becomes its owner.

A foreign server typically encapsulates connection information that a foreign-data wrapper uses to access an external data resource. Additional user-specific connection information may be specified by means of user mappings.

The server name must be unique within the database.

Creating a server requires USAGE privilege on the foreign-data wrapper being used.

Parameters

server_name

The name of the foreign server to be created.

server_type

Optional server type.

server_version

Optional server version.

fdw_name

The name of the foreign-data wrapper that manages the server.

OPTIONS ( option 'value' [, ... ] )

This clause specifies the options for the server. The options typically define the connection details of the server, but the actual names and values are dependent on the server's foreign-data wrapper.

Notes

When using the dblink module (see dblink), the foreign server name can be used as an argument of the dblink_connect function to indicate the connection parameters. See also there for more examples. It is necessary to have the USAGE privilege on the foreign server to be able to use it in this way.

Examples

Create a server foo that uses the built-in foreign-data wrapper default:

CREATE SERVER foo FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER "default";

Create a server myserver that uses the foreign-data wrapper pgsql:

CREATE SERVER myserver FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER pgsql OPTIONS (host 'foo', dbname 'foodb', port '5432');

Compatibility

CREATE SERVER conforms to ISO/IEC 9075-9 (SQL/MED).

See Also

ALTER SERVER, DROP SERVER, CREATE FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER, CREATE USER MAPPING
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CREATE SEQUENCE | Up | CREATE TABLE


CREATE TABLE

Name

CREATE TABLE -- define a new table

Synopsis

CREATE [ [ GLOBAL | LOCAL ] { TEMPORARY | TEMP } | UNLOGGED ] TABLE [ IF NOT EXISTS ] table_name ( [
  { column_name data_type [ COLLATE collation ] [ column_constraint [ ... ] ]
    | table_constraint
    | LIKE parent_table [ like_option ... ] }
    [, ... ]
] )
[ INHERITS ( parent_table [, ... ] ) ]
[ WITH ( storage_parameter [= value] [, ... ] ) | WITH OIDS | WITHOUT OIDS ]
[ ON COMMIT { PRESERVE ROWS | DELETE ROWS | DROP } ]
[ TABLESPACE tablespace ]

CREATE [ [ GLOBAL | LOCAL ] { TEMPORARY | TEMP } | UNLOGGED ] TABLE [ IF NOT EXISTS ] table_name
    OF type_name [ (
  { column_name WITH OPTIONS [ column_constraint [ ... ] ]
    | table_constraint }
    [, ... ]
) ]
[ WITH ( storage_parameter [= value] [, ... ] ) | WITH OIDS | WITHOUT OIDS ]
[ ON COMMIT { PRESERVE ROWS | DELETE ROWS | DROP } ]
[ TABLESPACE tablespace ]

where column_constraint is:

[ CONSTRAINT constraint_name ]
{ NOT NULL |
  NULL |
  CHECK ( expression ) |
  DEFAULT default_expr |
  UNIQUE index_parameters |
  PRIMARY KEY index_parameters |
  REFERENCES reftable [ ( refcolumn ) ] [ MATCH FULL | MATCH PARTIAL | MATCH SIMPLE ]
    [ ON DELETE action ] [ ON UPDATE action ] }
[ DEFERRABLE | NOT DEFERRABLE ] [ INITIALLY DEFERRED | INITIALLY IMMEDIATE ]

and table_constraint is:

[ CONSTRAINT constraint_name ]
{ CHECK ( expression ) |
  UNIQUE ( column_name [, ... ] ) index_parameters |
  PRIMARY KEY ( column_name [, ... ] ) index_parameters |
  EXCLUDE [ USING index_method ] ( exclude_element WITH operator [, ... ] ) index_parameters [ WHERE ( predicate ) ] |
  FOREIGN KEY ( column_name [, ... ] ) REFERENCES reftable [ ( refcolumn [, ... ] ) ]
    [ MATCH FULL | MATCH PARTIAL | MATCH SIMPLE ] [ ON DELETE action ] [ ON UPDATE action ] }
[ DEFERRABLE | NOT DEFERRABLE ] [ INITIALLY DEFERRED | INITIALLY IMMEDIATE ]

and like_option is:

{ INCLUDING | EXCLUDING } { DEFAULTS | CONSTRAINTS | INDEXES | STORAGE | COMMENTS | ALL }

index_parameters in UNIQUE, PRIMARY KEY, and EXCLUDE constraints are:

[ WITH ( storage_parameter [= value] [, ... ] ) ]
[ USING INDEX TABLESPACE tablespace ]

exclude_element in an EXCLUDE constraint is:

{ column | ( expression ) } [ opclass ] [ ASC | DESC ] [ NULLS { FIRST | LAST } ]

Description

CREATE TABLE will create a new, initially empty table in the current database. The table will be owned by the user issuing the command.

If a schema name is given (for example, CREATE TABLE myschema.mytable ...) then the table is created in the specified schema. Otherwise it is created in the current schema. Temporary tables exist in a special schema, so a schema name cannot be given when creating a temporary table. The name of the table must be distinct from the name of any other table, sequence, index, view, or foreign table in the same schema.

CREATE TABLE also automatically creates a data type that represents the composite type corresponding to one row of the table. Therefore, tables cannot have the same name as any existing data type in the same schema.

The optional constraint clauses specify constraints (tests) that new or updated rows must satisfy for an insert or update operation to succeed. A constraint is an SQL object that helps define the set of valid values in the table in various ways.

There are two ways to define constraints: table constraints and column constraints. A column constraint is defined as part of a column definition. A table constraint definition is not tied to a particular column, and it can encompass more than one column. Every column constraint can also be written as a table constraint; a column constraint is only a notational convenience for use when the constraint only affects one column.

Parameters

TEMPORARY or TEMP

If specified, the table is created as a temporary table. Temporary tables are automatically dropped at the end of a session, or optionally at the end of the current transaction (see ON COMMIT below). Existing permanent tables with the same name are not visible to the current session while the temporary table exists, unless they are referenced with schema-qualified names. Any indexes created on a temporary table are automatically temporary as well.

The autovacuum daemon cannot access and therefore cannot vacuum or analyze temporary tables. For this reason, appropriate vacuum and analyze operations should be performed via session SQL commands. For example, if a temporary table is going to be used in complex queries, it is wise to run ANALYZE on the temporary table after it is populated.

Optionally, GLOBAL or LOCAL can be written before TEMPORARY or TEMP. This makes no difference in PostgreSQL, but see Compatibility.

UNLOGGED

If specified, the table is created as an unlogged table. Data written to unlogged tables is not written to the write-ahead log (see Chapter 29), which makes them considerably faster than ordinary tables. However, they are not crash-safe: an unlogged table is automatically truncated after a crash or unclean shutdown. The contents of an unlogged table are also not replicated to standby servers. Any indexes created on an unlogged table are automatically unlogged as well; however, unlogged GiST indexes are currently not supported and cannot be created on an unlogged table.

IF NOT EXISTS

Do not throw an error if a relation with the same name already exists. A notice is issued in this case. Note that there is no guarantee that the existing relation is anything like the one that would have been created.

table_name

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of the table to be created.

OF type_name

Creates a typed table, which takes its structure from the specified composite type (name optionally schema-qualified). A typed table is tied to its type; for example the table will be dropped if the type is dropped (with DROP TYPE ... CASCADE).

When a typed table is created, then the data types of the columns are determined by the underlying composite type and are not specified by the CREATE TABLE command. But the CREATE TABLE command can add defaults and constraints to the table and can specify storage parameters.

column_name

The name of a column to be created in the new table.

data_type

The data type of the column. This can include array specifiers. For more information on the data types supported by PostgreSQL, refer to Chapter 8.

COLLATE collation

The COLLATE clause assigns a collation to the column (which must be of a collatable data type). If not specified, the column data type's default collation is used.

INHERITS ( parent_table [, ... ] )

The optional INHERITS clause specifies a list of tables from which the new table automatically inherits all columns.

Use of INHERITS creates a persistent relationship between the new child table and its parent table(s). Schema modifications to the parent(s) normally propagate to children as well, and by default the data of the child table is included in scans of the parent(s).

If the same column name exists in more than one parent table, an error is reported unless the data types of the columns match in each of the parent tables. If there is no conflict, then the duplicate columns are merged to form a single column in the new table. If the column name list of the new table contains a column name that is also inherited, the data type must likewise match the inherited column(s), and the column definitions are merged into one. If the new table explicitly specifies a default value for the column, this default overrides any defaults from inherited declarations of the column. Otherwise, any parents that specify default values for the column must all specify the same default, or an error will be reported.

CHECK constraints are merged in essentially the same way as columns: if multiple parent tables and/or the new table definition contain identically-named CHECK constraints, these constraints must all have the same check expression, or an error will be reported. Constraints having the same name and expression will be merged into one copy. Notice that an unnamed CHECK constraint in the new table will never be merged, since a unique name will always be chosen for it.

Column STORAGE settings are also copied from parent tables.

LIKE parent_table [ like_option ... ]

The LIKE clause specifies a table from which the new table automatically copies all column names, their data types, and their not-null constraints.

Unlike INHERITS, the new table and original table are completely decoupled after creation is complete. Changes to the original table will not be applied to the new table, and it is not possible to include data of the new table in scans of the original table.

Default expressions for the copied column definitions will only be copied if INCLUDING DEFAULTS is specified. The default behavior is to exclude default expressions, resulting in the copied columns in the new table having null defaults.

Not-null constraints are always copied to the new table. CHECK constraints will only be copied if INCLUDING CONSTRAINTS is specified; other types of constraints will never be copied. Also, no distinction is made between column constraints and table constraints — when constraints are requested, all check constraints are copied.

Any indexes on the original table will not be created on the new table, unless the INCLUDING INDEXES clause is specified.

STORAGE settings for the copied column definitions will only be copied if INCLUDING STORAGE is specified. The default behavior is to exclude STORAGE settings, resulting in the copied columns in the new table having type-specific default settings. For more on STORAGE settings, see Section 55.2.

Comments for the copied columns, constraints, and indexes will only be copied if INCLUDING COMMENTS is specified. The default behavior is to exclude comments, resulting in the copied columns and constraints in the new table having no comments.

INCLUDING ALL is an abbreviated form of INCLUDING DEFAULTS INCLUDING CONSTRAINTS INCLUDING INDEXES INCLUDING STORAGE INCLUDING COMMENTS.

Note also that unlike INHERITS, columns and constraints copied by LIKE are not merged with similarly named columns and constraints. If the same name is specified explicitly or in another LIKE clause, an error is signalled.

CONSTRAINT constraint_name

An optional name for a column or table constraint. If the constraint is violated, the constraint name is present in error messages, so constraint names like col must be positive can be used to communicate helpful constraint information to client applications. (Double-quotes are needed to specify constraint names that contain spaces.) If a constraint name is not specified, the system generates a name.

NOT NULL

The column is not allowed to contain null values.

NULL

The column is allowed to contain null values. This is the default.

This clause is only provided for compatibility with non-standard SQL databases. Its use is discouraged in new applications.

CHECK ( expression )

The CHECK clause specifies an expression producing a Boolean result which new or updated rows must satisfy for an insert or update operation to succeed. Expressions evaluating to TRUE or UNKNOWN succeed. Should any row of an insert or update operation produce a FALSE result an error exception is raised and the insert or update does not alter the database. A check constraint specified as a column constraint should reference that column's value only, while an expression appearing in a table constraint can reference multiple columns.

Currently, CHECK expressions cannot contain subqueries nor refer to variables other than columns of the current row.

DEFAULT default_expr

The DEFAULT clause assigns a default data value for the column whose column definition it appears within. The value is any variable-free expression (subqueries and cross-references to other columns in the current table are not allowed). The data type of the default expression must match the data type of the column.

The default expression will be used in any insert operation that does not specify a value for the column. If there is no default for a column, then the default is null.

UNIQUE (column constraint)
UNIQUE ( column_name [, ... ] ) (table constraint)

The UNIQUE constraint specifies that a group of one or more columns of a table can contain only unique values. The behavior of the unique table constraint is the same as that for column constraints, with the additional capability to span multiple columns.

For the purpose of a unique constraint, null values are not considered equal.

Each unique table constraint must name a set of columns that is different from the set of columns named by any other unique or primary key constraint defined for the table. (Otherwise it would just be the same constraint listed twice.)

PRIMARY KEY (column constraint)
PRIMARY KEY ( column_name [, ... ] ) (table constraint)

The primary key constraint specifies that a column or columns of a table can contain only unique (non-duplicate), nonnull values. Technically, PRIMARY KEY is merely a combination of UNIQUE and NOT NULL, but identifying a set of columns as primary key also provides metadata about the design of the schema, as a primary key implies that other tables can rely on this set of columns as a unique identifier for rows.

Only one primary key can be specified for a table, whether as a column constraint or a table constraint.

The primary key constraint should name a set of columns that is different from other sets of columns named by any unique constraint defined for the same table.

EXCLUDE [ USING index_method ] ( exclude_element WITH operator [, ... ] ) index_parameters [ WHERE ( predicate ) ]

The EXCLUDE clause defines an exclusion constraint, which guarantees that if any two rows are compared on the specified column(s) or expression(s) using the specified operator(s), not all of these comparisons will return TRUE. If all of the specified operators test for equality, this is equivalent to a UNIQUE constraint, although an ordinary unique constraint will be faster. However, exclusion constraints can specify constraints that are more general than simple equality. For example, you can specify a constraint that no two rows in the table contain overlapping circles (see Section 8.8) by using the && operator.

Exclusion constraints are implemented using an index, so each specified operator must be associated with an appropriate operator class (see Section 11.9) for the index access method index_method. The operators are required to be commutative. Each exclude_element can optionally specify an operator class and/or ordering options; these are described fully under CREATE INDEX.

The access method must support amgettuple (see Chapter 52); at present this means GIN cannot be used. Although it's allowed, there is little point in using B-tree or hash indexes with an exclusion constraint, because this does nothing that an ordinary unique constraint doesn't do better. So in practice the access method will always be GiST.

The predicate allows you to specify an exclusion constraint on a subset of the table; internally this creates a partial index. Note that parentheses are required around the predicate.

REFERENCES reftable [ ( refcolumn ) ] [ MATCH matchtype ] [ ON DELETE action ] [ ON UPDATE action ] (column constraint)
FOREIGN KEY ( column [, ... ] ) REFERENCES reftable [ ( refcolumn [, ... ] ) ] [ MATCH matchtype ] [ ON DELETE action ] [ ON UPDATE action ] (table constraint)

These clauses specify a foreign key constraint, which requires that a group of one or more columns of the new table must only contain values that match values in the referenced column(s) of some row of the referenced table. If refcolumn is omitted, the primary key of the reftable is used. The referenced columns must be the columns of a non-deferrable unique or primary key constraint in the referenced table. Note that foreign key constraints cannot be defined between temporary tables and permanent tables.

A value inserted into the referencing column(s) is matched against the values of the referenced table and referenced columns using the given match type. There are three match types: MATCH FULL, MATCH PARTIAL, and MATCH SIMPLE, which is also the default. MATCH FULL will not allow one column of a multicolumn foreign key to be null unless all foreign key columns are null. MATCH SIMPLE allows some foreign key columns to be null while other parts of the foreign key are not null. MATCH PARTIAL is not yet implemented.

In addition, when the data in the referenced columns is changed, certain actions are performed on the data in this table's columns. The ON DELETE clause specifies the action to perform when a referenced row in the referenced table is being deleted. Likewise, the ON UPDATE clause specifies the action to perform when a referenced column in the referenced table is being updated to a new value. If the row is updated, but the referenced column is not actually changed, no action is done. Referential actions other than the NO ACTION check cannot be deferred, even if the constraint is declared deferrable. There are the following possible actions for each clause:

NO ACTION

Produce an error indicating that the deletion or update would create a foreign key constraint violation. If the constraint is deferred, this error will be produced at constraint check time if there still exist any referencing rows. This is the default action.

RESTRICT

Produce an error indicating that the deletion or update would create a foreign key constraint violation. This is the same as NO ACTION except that the check is not deferrable.

CASCADE

Delete any rows referencing the deleted row, or update the value of the referencing column to the new value of the referenced column, respectively.

SET NULL

Set the referencing column(s) to null.

SET DEFAULT

Set the referencing column(s) to their default values.

If the referenced column(s) are changed frequently, it might be wise to add an index to the foreign key column so that referential actions associated with the foreign key column can be performed more efficiently.

DEFERRABLE
NOT DEFERRABLE

This controls whether the constraint can be deferred. A constraint that is not deferrable will be checked immediately after every command. Checking of constraints that are deferrable can be postponed until the end of the transaction (using the SET CONSTRAINTS command). NOT DEFERRABLE is the default. Currently, only UNIQUE, PRIMARY KEY, EXCLUDE, and REFERENCES (foreign key) constraints accept this clause. NOT NULL and CHECK constraints are not deferrable.

INITIALLY IMMEDIATE
INITIALLY DEFERRED

If a constraint is deferrable, this clause specifies the default time to check the constraint. If the constraint is INITIALLY IMMEDIATE, it is checked after each statement. This is the default. If the constraint is INITIALLY DEFERRED, it is checked only at the end of the transaction. The constraint check time can be altered with the SET CONSTRAINTS command.

WITH ( storage_parameter [= value] [, ... ] )

This clause specifies optional storage parameters for a table or index; see Storage Parameters for more information. The WITH clause for a table can also include OIDS=TRUE (or just OIDS) to specify that rows of the new table should have OIDs (object identifiers) assigned to them, or OIDS=FALSE to specify that the rows should not have OIDs. If OIDS is not specified, the default setting depends upon the default_with_oids configuration parameter. (If the new table inherits from any tables that have OIDs, then OIDS=TRUE is forced even if the command says OIDS=FALSE.)

If OIDS=FALSE is specified or implied, the new table does not store OIDs and no OID will be assigned for a row inserted into it. This is generally considered worthwhile, since it will reduce OID consumption and thereby postpone the wraparound of the 32-bit OID counter. Once the counter wraps around, OIDs can no longer be assumed to be unique, which makes them considerably less useful. In addition, excluding OIDs from a table reduces the space required to store the table on disk by 4 bytes per row (on most machines), slightly improving performance.

To remove OIDs from a table after it has been created, use ALTER TABLE.

WITH OIDS
WITHOUT OIDS

These are obsolescent syntaxes equivalent to WITH (OIDS) and WITH (OIDS=FALSE), respectively. If you wish to give both an OIDS setting and storage parameters, you must use the WITH ( ... ) syntax; see above.

ON COMMIT

The behavior of temporary tables at the end of a transaction block can be controlled using ON COMMIT. The three options are:

PRESERVE ROWS

No special action is taken at the ends of transactions. This is the default behavior.

DELETE ROWS

All rows in the temporary table will be deleted at the end of each transaction block. Essentially, an automatic TRUNCATE is done at each commit.

DROP

The temporary table will be dropped at the end of the current transaction block.

TABLESPACE tablespace

The tablespace is the name of the tablespace in which the new table is to be created. If not specified, default_tablespace is consulted, or temp_tablespaces if the table is temporary.

USING INDEX TABLESPACE tablespace

This clause allows selection of the tablespace in which the index associated with a UNIQUE, PRIMARY KEY, or EXCLUDE constraint will be created. If not specified, default_tablespace is consulted, or temp_tablespaces if the table is temporary.

Storage Parameters

The WITH clause can specify storage parameters for tables, and for indexes associated with a UNIQUE, PRIMARY KEY, or EXCLUDE constraint. Storage parameters for indexes are documented in CREATE INDEX. The storage parameters currently available for tables are listed below. For each parameter, unless noted, there is an additional parameter with the same name prefixed with toast., which can be used to control the behavior of the table's secondary TOAST table, if any (see Section 55.2 for more information about TOAST). Note that the TOAST table inherits the autovacuum_* values from its parent table, if there are no toast.autovacuum_* settings set.

fillfactor (integer)

The fillfactor for a table is a percentage between 10 and 100. 100 (complete packing) is the default. When a smaller fillfactor is specified, INSERT operations pack table pages only to the indicated percentage; the remaining space on each page is reserved for updating rows on that page. This gives UPDATE a chance to place the updated copy of a row on the same page as the original, which is more efficient than placing it on a different page. For a table whose entries are never updated, complete packing is the best choice, but in heavily updated tables smaller fillfactors are appropriate. This parameter cannot be set for TOAST tables.

autovacuum_enabled, toast.autovacuum_enabled (boolean)

Enables or disables the autovacuum daemon on a particular table. If true, the autovacuum daemon will initiate a VACUUM operation on a particular table when the number of updated or deleted tuples exceeds autovacuum_vacuum_threshold plus autovacuum_vacuum_scale_factor times the number of live tuples currently estimated to be in the relation. Similarly, it will initiate an ANALYZE operation when the number of inserted, updated or deleted tuples exceeds autovacuum_analyze_threshold plus autovacuum_analyze_scale_factor times the number of live tuples currently estimated to be in the relation. If false, this table will not be autovacuumed, except to prevent transaction Id wraparound. See Section 23.1.4 for more about wraparound prevention. Observe that this variable inherits its value from the autovacuum setting.

autovacuum_vacuum_threshold, toast.autovacuum_vacuum_threshold (integer)

Minimum number of updated or deleted tuples before initiate a VACUUM operation on a particular table.

autovacuum_vacuum_scale_factor, toast.autovacuum_vacuum_scale_factor (float4)

Multiplier for reltuples to add to autovacuum_vacuum_threshold.

autovacuum_analyze_threshold (integer)

Minimum number of inserted, updated, or deleted tuples before initiate an ANALYZE operation on a particular table.

autovacuum_analyze_scale_factor (float4)

Multiplier for reltuples to add to autovacuum_analyze_threshold.

autovacuum_vacuum_cost_delay, toast.autovacuum_vacuum_cost_delay (integer)

Custom autovacuum_vacuum_cost_delay parameter.

autovacuum_vacuum_cost_limit, toast.autovacuum_vacuum_cost_limit (integer)

Custom autovacuum_vacuum_cost_limit parameter.

autovacuum_freeze_min_age, toast.autovacuum_freeze_min_age (integer)

Custom vacuum_freeze_min_age parameter. Note that autovacuum will ignore attempts to set a per-table autovacuum_freeze_min_age larger than the half system-wide autovacuum_freeze_max_age setting.

autovacuum_freeze_max_age, toast.autovacuum_freeze_max_age (integer)

Custom autovacuum_freeze_max_age parameter. Note that autovacuum will ignore attempts to set a per-table autovacuum_freeze_max_age larger than the system-wide setting (it can only be set smaller).

autovacuum_freeze_table_age, toast.autovacuum_freeze_table_age (integer)

Custom vacuum_freeze_table_age parameter.

Notes

Using OIDs in new applications is not recommended: where possible, using a SERIAL or other sequence generator as the table's primary key is preferred. However, if your application does make use of OIDs to identify specific rows of a table, it is recommended to create a unique constraint on the oid column of that table, to ensure that OIDs in the table will indeed uniquely identify rows even after counter wraparound. Avoid assuming that OIDs are unique across tables; if you need a database-wide unique identifier, use the combination of tableoid and row OID for the purpose.

Tip: The use of OIDS=FALSE is not recommended for tables with no primary key, since without either an OID or a unique data key, it is difficult to identify specific rows.

PostgreSQL automatically creates an index for each unique constraint and primary key constraint to enforce uniqueness. Thus, it is not necessary to create an index explicitly for primary key columns. (See CREATE INDEX for more information.)

Unique constraints and primary keys are not inherited in the current implementation. This makes the combination of inheritance and unique constraints rather dysfunctional.

A table cannot have more than 1600 columns. (In practice, the effective limit is usually lower because of tuple-length constraints.)

Examples

Create table films and table distributors:

CREATE TABLE films (
    code        char(5) CONSTRAINT firstkey PRIMARY KEY,
    title       varchar(40) NOT NULL,
    did         integer NOT NULL,
    date_prod   date,
    kind        varchar(10),
    len         interval hour to minute
);

CREATE TABLE distributors (
     did    integer PRIMARY KEY DEFAULT nextval('serial'),
     name   varchar(40) NOT NULL CHECK (name <> '')
);

Create a table with a 2-dimensional array:

CREATE TABLE array_int (
    vector  int[][]
);

Define a unique table constraint for the table films. Unique table constraints can be defined on one or more columns of the table:

CREATE TABLE films (
    code        char(5),
    title       varchar(40),
    did         integer,
    date_prod   date,
    kind        varchar(10),
    len         interval hour to minute,
    CONSTRAINT production UNIQUE(date_prod)
);

Define a check column constraint:

CREATE TABLE distributors (
    did     integer CHECK (did > 100),
    name    varchar(40)
);

Define a check table constraint:

CREATE TABLE distributors (
    did     integer,
    name    varchar(40)
    CONSTRAINT con1 CHECK (did > 100 AND name <> '')
);

Define a primary key table constraint for the table films:

CREATE TABLE films (
    code        char(5),
    title       varchar(40),
    did         integer,
    date_prod   date,
    kind        varchar(10),
    len         interval hour to minute,
    CONSTRAINT code_title PRIMARY KEY(code,title)
);

Define a primary key constraint for table distributors. The following two examples are equivalent, the first using the table constraint syntax, the second the column constraint syntax:

CREATE TABLE distributors (
    did     integer,
    name    varchar(40),
    PRIMARY KEY(did)
);

CREATE TABLE distributors (
    did     integer PRIMARY KEY,
    name    varchar(40)
);

Assign a literal constant default value for the column name, arrange for the default value of column did to be generated by selecting the next value of a sequence object, and make the default value of modtime be the time at which the row is inserted:

CREATE TABLE distributors (
    name      varchar(40) DEFAULT 'Luso Films',
    did       integer DEFAULT nextval('distributors_serial'),
    modtime   timestamp DEFAULT current_timestamp
);

Define two NOT NULL column constraints on the table distributors, one of which is explicitly given a name:

CREATE TABLE distributors (
    did     integer CONSTRAINT no_null NOT NULL,
    name    varchar(40) NOT NULL
);

Define a unique constraint for the name column:

CREATE TABLE distributors (
    did     integer,
    name    varchar(40) UNIQUE
);

The same, specified as a table constraint:

CREATE TABLE distributors (
    did     integer,
    name    varchar(40),
    UNIQUE(name)
);

Create the same table, specifying 70% fill factor for both the table and its unique index:

CREATE TABLE distributors (
    did     integer,
    name    varchar(40),
    UNIQUE(name) WITH (fillfactor=70)
)
WITH (fillfactor=70);

Create table circles with an exclusion constraint that prevents any two circles from overlapping:

CREATE TABLE circles (
    c circle,
    EXCLUDE USING gist (c WITH &&)
);

Create table cinemas in tablespace diskvol1:

CREATE TABLE cinemas (
        id serial,
        name text,
        location text
) TABLESPACE diskvol1;

Create a composite type and a typed table:

CREATE TYPE employee_type AS (name text, salary numeric);

CREATE TABLE employees OF employee_type (
    PRIMARY KEY (name),
    salary WITH OPTIONS DEFAULT 1000
);

Compatibility

The CREATE TABLE command conforms to the SQL standard, with exceptions listed below.

Temporary Tables

Although the syntax of CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE resembles that of the SQL standard, the effect is not the same. In the standard, temporary tables are defined just once and automatically exist (starting with empty contents) in every session that needs them. PostgreSQL instead requires each session to issue its own CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE command for each temporary table to be used. This allows different sessions to use the same temporary table name for different purposes, whereas the standard's approach constrains all instances of a given temporary table name to have the same table structure.

The standard's definition of the behavior of temporary tables is widely ignored. PostgreSQL's behavior on this point is similar to that of several other SQL databases.

The standard's distinction between global and local temporary tables is not in PostgreSQL, since that distinction depends on the concept of modules, which PostgreSQL does not have. For compatibility's sake, PostgreSQL will accept the GLOBAL and LOCAL keywords in a temporary table declaration, but they have no effect.

The ON COMMIT clause for temporary tables also resembles the SQL standard, but has some differences. If the ON COMMIT clause is omitted, SQL specifies that the default behavior is ON COMMIT DELETE ROWS. However, the default behavior in PostgreSQL is ON COMMIT PRESERVE ROWS. The ON COMMIT DROP option does not exist in SQL.

Non-deferred Uniqueness Constraints

When a UNIQUE or PRIMARY KEY constraint is not deferrable, PostgreSQL checks for uniqueness immediately whenever a row is inserted or modified. The SQL standard says that uniqueness should be enforced only at the end of the statement; this makes a difference when, for example, a single command updates multiple key values. To obtain standard-compliant behavior, declare the constraint as DEFERRABLE but not deferred (i.e., INITIALLY IMMEDIATE). Be aware that this can be significantly slower than immediate uniqueness checking.

Column Check Constraints

The SQL standard says that CHECK column constraints can only refer to the column they apply to; only CHECK table constraints can refer to multiple columns. PostgreSQL does not enforce this restriction; it treats column and table check constraints alike.

EXCLUDE Constraint

The EXCLUDE constraint type is a PostgreSQL extension.

NULL "Constraint"

The NULL "constraint" (actually a non-constraint) is a PostgreSQL extension to the SQL standard that is included for compatibility with some other database systems (and for symmetry with the NOT NULL constraint). Since it is the default for any column, its presence is simply noise.

Inheritance

Multiple inheritance via the INHERITS clause is a PostgreSQL language extension. SQL:1999 and later define single inheritance using a different syntax and different semantics. SQL:1999-style inheritance is not yet supported by PostgreSQL.

Zero-column Tables

PostgreSQL allows a table of no columns to be created (for example, CREATE TABLE foo();). This is an extension from the SQL standard, which does not allow zero-column tables. Zero-column tables are not in themselves very useful, but disallowing them creates odd special cases for ALTER TABLE DROP COLUMN, so it seems cleaner to ignore this spec restriction.

WITH Clause

The WITH clause is a PostgreSQL extension; neither storage parameters nor OIDs are in the standard.

Tablespaces

The PostgreSQL concept of tablespaces is not part of the standard. Hence, the clauses TABLESPACE and USING INDEX TABLESPACE are extensions.

Typed Tables

Typed tables implement a subset of the SQL standard. According to the standard, a typed table has columns corresponding to the underlying composite type as well as one other column that is the "self-referencing column". PostgreSQL does not support these self-referencing columns explicitly, but the same effect can be had using the OID feature.

See Also

ALTER TABLE, DROP TABLE, CREATE TABLESPACE, CREATE TYPE
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CREATE SERVER | Up | CREATE TABLE AS


CREATE TABLE AS

Name

CREATE TABLE AS -- define a new table from the results of a query

Synopsis

CREATE [ [ GLOBAL | LOCAL ] { TEMPORARY | TEMP } | UNLOGGED ] TABLE table_name
    [ (column_name [, ...] ) ]
    [ WITH ( storage_parameter [= value] [, ... ] ) | WITH OIDS | WITHOUT OIDS ]
    [ ON COMMIT { PRESERVE ROWS | DELETE ROWS | DROP } ]
    [ TABLESPACE tablespace ]
    AS query
    [ WITH [ NO ] DATA ]

Description

CREATE TABLE AS creates a table and fills it with data computed by a SELECT command. The table columns have the names and data types associated with the output columns of the SELECT (except that you can override the column names by giving an explicit list of new column names).

CREATE TABLE AS bears some resemblance to creating a view, but it is really quite different: it creates a new table and evaluates the query just once to fill the new table initially. The new table will not track subsequent changes to the source tables of the query. In contrast, a view re-evaluates its defining SELECT statement whenever it is queried.

Parameters

GLOBAL or LOCAL

Ignored for compatibility. Refer to CREATE TABLE for details.

TEMPORARY or TEMP

If specified, the table is created as a temporary table. Refer to CREATE TABLE for details.

UNLOGGED

If specified, the table is created as an unlogged table. Refer to CREATE TABLE for details.

table_name

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of the table to be created.

column_name

The name of a column in the new table. If column names are not provided, they are taken from the output column names of the query. If the table is created from an EXECUTE command, a column name list cannot be specified.

WITH ( storage_parameter [= value] [, ... ] )

This clause specifies optional storage parameters for the new table; see Storage Parameters for more information. The WITH clause can also include OIDS=TRUE (or just OIDS) to specify that rows of the new table should have OIDs (object identifiers) assigned to them, or OIDS=FALSE to specify that the rows should not have OIDs. See CREATE TABLE for more information.

WITH OIDS
WITHOUT OIDS

These are obsolescent syntaxes equivalent to WITH (OIDS) and WITH (OIDS=FALSE), respectively. If you wish to give both an OIDS setting and storage parameters, you must use the WITH ( ... ) syntax; see above.

ON COMMIT

The behavior of temporary tables at the end of a transaction block can be controlled using ON COMMIT. The three options are:

PRESERVE ROWS

No special action is taken at the ends of transactions. This is the default behavior.

DELETE ROWS

All rows in the temporary table will be deleted at the end of each transaction block. Essentially, an automatic TRUNCATE is done at each commit.

DROP

The temporary table will be dropped at the end of the current transaction block.

TABLESPACE tablespace

The tablespace is the name of the tablespace in which the new table is to be created. If not specified, default_tablespace is consulted, or temp_tablespaces if the table is temporary.

query

A SELECT, TABLE, or VALUES command, or an EXECUTE command that runs a prepared SELECT, TABLE, or VALUES query.

WITH [ NO ] DATA

This clause specifies whether or not the data produced by the query should be copied into the new table. If not, only the table structure is copied. The default is to copy the data.

Notes

This command is functionally similar to SELECT INTO, but it is preferred since it is less likely to be confused with other uses of the SELECT INTO syntax. Furthermore, CREATE TABLE AS offers a superset of the functionality offered by SELECT INTO.

Prior to PostgreSQL 8.0, CREATE TABLE AS always included OIDs in the table it created. As of PostgreSQL 8.0, the CREATE TABLE AS command allows the user to explicitly specify whether OIDs should be included. If the presence of OIDs is not explicitly specified, the default_with_oids configuration variable is used. As of PostgreSQL 8.1, this variable is false by default, so the default behavior is not identical to pre-8.0 releases. Applications that require OIDs in the table created by CREATE TABLE AS should explicitly specify WITH (OIDS) to ensure proper behavior.

Examples

Create a new table films_recent consisting of only recent entries from the table films:

CREATE TABLE films_recent AS
  SELECT * FROM films WHERE date_prod >= '2002-01-01';

To copy a table completely, the short form using the TABLE command can also be used:

CREATE TABLE films2 AS
  TABLE films;

Create a new temporary table films_recent, consisting of only recent entries from the table films, using a prepared statement. The new table has OIDs and will be dropped at commit:

PREPARE recentfilms(date) AS
  SELECT * FROM films WHERE date_prod > $1;
CREATE TEMP TABLE films_recent WITH (OIDS) ON COMMIT DROP AS
  EXECUTE recentfilms('2002-01-01');

Compatibility

CREATE TABLE AS conforms to the SQL standard. The following are nonstandard extensions:

  • The standard requires parentheses around the subquery clause; in PostgreSQL, these parentheses are optional.

  • In the standard, the WITH [ NO ] DATA clause is required; in PostgreSQL it is optional.

  • PostgreSQL handles temporary tables in a way rather different from the standard; see CREATE TABLE for details.

  • The WITH clause is a PostgreSQL extension; neither storage parameters nor OIDs are in the standard.

  • The PostgreSQL concept of tablespaces is not part of the standard. Hence, the clause TABLESPACE is an extension.

See Also

CREATE TABLE, EXECUTE, SELECT, SELECT INTO, VALUES
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CREATE TABLE | Up | CREATE TABLESPACE


CREATE TABLESPACE

Name

CREATE TABLESPACE -- define a new tablespace

Synopsis

CREATE TABLESPACE tablespace_name [ OWNER user_name ] LOCATION 'directory'

Description

CREATE TABLESPACE registers a new cluster-wide tablespace. The tablespace name must be distinct from the name of any existing tablespace in the database cluster.

A tablespace allows superusers to define an alternative location on the file system where the data files containing database objects (such as tables and indexes) can reside.

A user with appropriate privileges can pass tablespace_name to CREATE DATABASE, CREATE TABLE, CREATE INDEX or ADD CONSTRAINT to have the data files for these objects stored within the specified tablespace.

Parameters

tablespace_name

The name of a tablespace to be created. The name cannot begin with pg_, as such names are reserved for system tablespaces.

user_name

The name of the user who will own the tablespace. If omitted, defaults to the user executing the command. Only superusers can create tablespaces, but they can assign ownership of tablespaces to non-superusers.

directory

The directory that will be used for the tablespace. The directory should be empty and must be owned by the PostgreSQL system user. The directory must be specified by an absolute path name.

Notes

Tablespaces are only supported on systems that support symbolic links.

CREATE TABLESPACE cannot be executed inside a transaction block.

Examples

Create a tablespace dbspace at /data/dbs:

CREATE TABLESPACE dbspace LOCATION '/data/dbs';

Create a tablespace indexspace at /data/indexes owned by user genevieve:

CREATE TABLESPACE indexspace OWNER genevieve LOCATION '/data/indexes';

Compatibility

CREATE TABLESPACE is a PostgreSQL extension.

See Also

CREATE DATABASE, CREATE TABLE, CREATE INDEX, DROP TABLESPACE, ALTER TABLESPACE
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CREATE TABLE AS | Up | CREATE TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION


CREATE TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION

Name

CREATE TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION -- define a new text search configuration

Synopsis

CREATE TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION name (
    PARSER = parser_name |
    COPY = source_config
)

Description

CREATE TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION creates a new text search configuration. A text search configuration specifies a text search parser that can divide a string into tokens, plus dictionaries that can be used to determine which tokens are of interest for searching.

If only the parser is specified, then the new text search configuration initially has no mappings from token types to dictionaries, and therefore will ignore all words. Subsequent ALTER TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION commands must be used to create mappings to make the configuration useful. Alternatively, an existing text search configuration can be copied.

If a schema name is given then the text search configuration is created in the specified schema. Otherwise it is created in the current schema.

The user who defines a text search configuration becomes its owner.

Refer to Chapter 12 for further information.

Parameters

name

The name of the text search configuration to be created. The name can be schema-qualified.

parser_name

The name of the text search parser to use for this configuration.

source_config

The name of an existing text search configuration to copy.

Notes

The PARSER and COPY options are mutually exclusive, because when an existing configuration is copied, its parser selection is copied too.

Compatibility

There is no CREATE TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION statement in the SQL standard.

See Also

ALTER TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION, DROP TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION
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CREATE TABLESPACE | Up | CREATE TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY


CREATE TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY

Name

CREATE TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY -- define a new text search dictionary

Synopsis

CREATE TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY name (
    TEMPLATE = template
    [, option = value [, ... ]]
)

Description

CREATE TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY creates a new text search dictionary. A text search dictionary specifies a way of recognizing interesting or uninteresting words for searching. A dictionary depends on a text search template, which specifies the functions that actually perform the work. Typically the dictionary provides some options that control the detailed behavior of the template's functions.

If a schema name is given then the text search dictionary is created in the specified schema. Otherwise it is created in the current schema.

The user who defines a text search dictionary becomes its owner.

Refer to Chapter 12 for further information.

Parameters

name

The name of the text search dictionary to be created. The name can be schema-qualified.

template

The name of the text search template that will define the basic behavior of this dictionary.

option

The name of a template-specific option to be set for this dictionary.

value

The value to use for a template-specific option. If the value is not a simple identifier or number, it must be quoted (but you can always quote it, if you wish).

The options can appear in any order.

Examples

The following example command creates a Snowball-based dictionary with a nonstandard list of stop words.

CREATE TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY my_russian (
    template = snowball,
    language = russian,
    stopwords = myrussian
);

Compatibility

There is no CREATE TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY statement in the SQL standard.

See Also

ALTER TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY, DROP TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY
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CREATE TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION | Up | CREATE TEXT SEARCH PARSER


CREATE TEXT SEARCH PARSER

Name

CREATE TEXT SEARCH PARSER -- define a new text search parser

Synopsis

CREATE TEXT SEARCH PARSER name (
    START = start_function ,
    GETTOKEN = gettoken_function ,
    END = end_function ,
    LEXTYPES = lextypes_function
    [, HEADLINE = headline_function ]
)

Description

CREATE TEXT SEARCH PARSER creates a new text search parser. A text search parser defines a method for splitting a text string into tokens and assigning types (categories) to the tokens. A parser is not particularly useful by itself, but must be bound into a text search configuration along with some text search dictionaries to be used for searching.

If a schema name is given then the text search parser is created in the specified schema. Otherwise it is created in the current schema.

You must be a superuser to use CREATE TEXT SEARCH PARSER. (This restriction is made because an erroneous text search parser definition could confuse or even crash the server.)

Refer to Chapter 12 for further information.

Parameters

name

The name of the text search parser to be created. The name can be schema-qualified.

start_function

The name of the start function for the parser.

gettoken_function

The name of the get-next-token function for the parser.

end_function

The name of the end function for the parser.

lextypes_function

The name of the lextypes function for the parser (a function that returns information about the set of token types it produces).

headline_function

The name of the headline function for the parser (a function that summarizes a set of tokens).

The function names can be schema-qualified if necessary. Argument types are not given, since the argument list for each type of function is predetermined. All except the headline function are required.

The arguments can appear in any order, not only the one shown above.

Compatibility

There is no CREATE TEXT SEARCH PARSER statement in the SQL standard.

See Also

ALTER TEXT SEARCH PARSER, DROP TEXT SEARCH PARSER
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CREATE TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY | Up | CREATE TEXT SEARCH TEMPLATE


CREATE TEXT SEARCH TEMPLATE

Name

CREATE TEXT SEARCH TEMPLATE -- define a new text search template

Synopsis

CREATE TEXT SEARCH TEMPLATE name (
    [ INIT = init_function , ]
    LEXIZE = lexize_function
)

Description

CREATE TEXT SEARCH TEMPLATE creates a new text search template. Text search templates define the functions that implement text search dictionaries. A template is not useful by itself, but must be instantiated as a dictionary to be used. The dictionary typically specifies parameters to be given to the template functions.

If a schema name is given then the text search template is created in the specified schema. Otherwise it is created in the current schema.

You must be a superuser to use CREATE TEXT SEARCH TEMPLATE. This restriction is made because an erroneous text search template definition could confuse or even crash the server. The reason for separating templates from dictionaries is that a template encapsulates the "unsafe" aspects of defining a dictionary. The parameters that can be set when defining a dictionary are safe for unprivileged users to set, and so creating a dictionary need not be a privileged operation.

Refer to Chapter 12 for further information.

Parameters

name

The name of the text search template to be created. The name can be schema-qualified.

init_function

The name of the init function for the template.

lexize_function

The name of the lexize function for the template.

The function names can be schema-qualified if necessary. Argument types are not given, since the argument list for each type of function is predetermined. The lexize function is required, but the init function is optional.

The arguments can appear in any order, not only the one shown above.

Compatibility

There is no CREATE TEXT SEARCH TEMPLATE statement in the SQL standard.

See Also

ALTER TEXT SEARCH TEMPLATE, DROP TEXT SEARCH TEMPLATE
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CREATE TEXT SEARCH PARSER | Up | CREATE TRIGGER


CREATE TRIGGER

Name

CREATE TRIGGER -- define a new trigger

Synopsis

CREATE [ CONSTRAINT ] TRIGGER name { BEFORE | AFTER | INSTEAD OF } { event [ OR ... ] }
    ON table
    [ FROM referenced_table_name ]
    [ NOT DEFERRABLE | [ DEFERRABLE ] { INITIALLY IMMEDIATE | INITIALLY DEFERRED } ]
    [ FOR [ EACH ] { ROW | STATEMENT } ]
    [ WHEN ( condition ) ]
    EXECUTE PROCEDURE function_name ( arguments )

where event can be one of:

    INSERT
    UPDATE [ OF column_name [, ... ] ]
    DELETE
    TRUNCATE

Description

CREATE TRIGGER creates a new trigger. The trigger will be associated with the specified table or view and will execute the specified function function_name when certain events occur.

The trigger can be specified to fire before the operation is attempted on a row (before constraints are checked and the INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE is attempted); or after the operation has completed (after constraints are checked and the INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE has completed); or instead of the operation (in the case of inserts, updates or deletes on a view). If the trigger fires before or instead of the event, the trigger can skip the operation for the current row, or change the row being inserted (for INSERT and UPDATE operations only). If the trigger fires after the event, all changes, including the effects of other triggers, are "visible" to the trigger.

A trigger that is marked FOR EACH ROW is called once for every row that the operation modifies. For example, a DELETE that affects 10 rows will cause any ON DELETE triggers on the target relation to be called 10 separate times, once for each deleted row. In contrast, a trigger that is marked FOR EACH STATEMENT only executes once for any given operation, regardless of how many rows it modifies (in particular, an operation that modifies zero rows will still result in the execution of any applicable FOR EACH STATEMENT triggers).

Triggers that are specified to fire INSTEAD OF the trigger event must be marked FOR EACH ROW, and can only be defined on views. BEFORE and AFTER triggers on a view must be marked as FOR EACH STATEMENT.

In addition, triggers may be defined to fire for TRUNCATE, though only FOR EACH STATEMENT.

The following table summarizes which types of triggers may be used on tables and views:

When | Event | Row-level | Statement-level
BEFORE | INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE | Tables | Tables and views
 | TRUNCATE | — | Tables
AFTER | INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE | Tables | Tables and views
 | TRUNCATE | — | Tables
INSTEAD OF | INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE | Views | —
 | TRUNCATE | — | —

Also, a trigger definition can specify a Boolean WHEN condition, which will be tested to see whether the trigger should be fired. In row-level triggers the WHEN condition can examine the old and/or new values of columns of the row. Statement-level triggers can also have WHEN conditions, although the feature is not so useful for them since the condition cannot refer to any values in the table.

If multiple triggers of the same kind are defined for the same event, they will be fired in alphabetical order by name.

When the CONSTRAINT option is specified, this command creates a constraint trigger. This is the same as a regular trigger except that the timing of the trigger firing can be adjusted using SET CONSTRAINTS. Constraint triggers must be AFTER ROW triggers. They can be fired either at the end of the statement causing the triggering event, or at the end of the containing transaction; in the latter case they are said to be deferred. A pending deferred-trigger firing can also be forced to happen immediately by using SET CONSTRAINTS. Constraint triggers are expected to raise an exception when the constraints they implement are violated.

SELECT does not modify any rows so you cannot create SELECT triggers. Rules and views are more appropriate in such cases.

Refer to Chapter 36 for more information about triggers.

Parameters

name

The name to give the new trigger. This must be distinct from the name of any other trigger for the same table. The name cannot be schema-qualified — the trigger inherits the schema of its table. For a constraint trigger, this is also the name to use when modifying the trigger's behavior using SET CONSTRAINTS.

BEFORE
AFTER
INSTEAD OF

Determines whether the function is called before, after, or instead of the event. A constraint trigger can only be specified as AFTER.

event

One of INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, or TRUNCATE; this specifies the event that will fire the trigger. Multiple events can be specified using OR.

For UPDATE events, it is possible to specify a list of columns using this syntax:

UPDATE OF column_name1 [, column_name2 ... ]

The trigger will only fire if at least one of the listed columns is mentioned as a target of the UPDATE command.

INSTEAD OF UPDATE events do not support lists of columns.

table

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of the table or view the trigger is for.

referenced_table_name

The (possibly schema-qualified) name of another table referenced by the constraint. This option is used for foreign-key constraints and is not recommended for general use. This can only be specified for constraint triggers.

DEFERRABLE
NOT DEFERRABLE
INITIALLY IMMEDIATE
INITIALLY DEFERRED

The default timing of the trigger. See the CREATE TABLE documentation for details of these constraint options. This can only be specified for constraint triggers.

FOR EACH ROW
FOR EACH STATEMENT

This specifies whether the trigger procedure should be fired once for every row affected by the trigger event, or just once per SQL statement. If neither is specified, FOR EACH STATEMENT is the default. Constraint triggers can only be specified FOR EACH ROW.

condition

A Boolean expression that determines whether the trigger function will actually be executed. If WHEN is specified, the function will only be called if the condition returns true. In FOR EACH ROW triggers, the WHEN condition can refer to columns of the old and/or new row values by writing OLD.column_name or NEW.column_name respectively. Of course, INSERT triggers cannot refer to OLD and DELETE triggers cannot refer to NEW.

INSTEAD OF triggers do not support WHEN conditions.

Currently, WHEN expressions cannot contain subqueries.

Note that for constraint triggers, evaluation of the WHEN condition is not deferred, but occurs immediately after the row update operation is performed. If the condition does not evaluate to true then the trigger is not queued for deferred execution.

function_name

A user-supplied function that is declared as taking no arguments and returning type trigger, which is executed when the trigger fires.

arguments

An optional comma-separated list of arguments to be provided to the function when the trigger is executed. The arguments are literal string constants. Simple names and numeric constants can be written here, too, but they will all be converted to strings. Please check the description of the implementation language of the trigger function to find out how these arguments can be accessed within the function; it might be different from normal function arguments.

Notes

To create a trigger on a table, the user must have the TRIGGER privilege on the table. The user must also have EXECUTE privilege on the trigger function.

Use DROP TRIGGER to remove a trigger.

A column-specific trigger (one defined using the UPDATE OF column_name syntax) will fire when any of its columns are listed as targets in the UPDATE command's SET list. It is possible for a column's value to change even when the trigger is not fired, because changes made to the row's contents by BEFORE UPDATE triggers are not considered. Conversely, a command such as UPDATE ... SET x = x ... will fire a trigger on column x, even though the column's value did not change.

In a BEFORE trigger, the WHEN condition is evaluated just before the function is or would be executed, so using WHEN is not materially different from testing the same condition at the beginning of the trigger function. Note in particular that the NEW row seen by the condition is the current value, as possibly modified by earlier triggers. Also, a BEFORE trigger's WHEN condition is not allowed to examine the system columns of the NEW row (such as oid), because those won't have been set yet.

In an AFTER trigger, the WHEN condition is evaluated just after the row update occurs, and it determines whether an event is queued to fire the trigger at the end of statement. So when an AFTER trigger's WHEN condition does not return true, it is not necessary to queue an event nor to re-fetch the row at end of statement. This can result in significant speedups in statements that modify many rows, if the trigger only needs to be fired for a few of the rows.

In PostgreSQL versions before 7.3, it was necessary to declare trigger functions as returning the placeholder type opaque, rather than trigger. To support loading of old dump files, CREATE TRIGGER will accept a function declared as returning opaque, but it will issue a notice and change the function's declared return type to trigger.

Examples

Execute the function check_account_update whenever a row of the table accounts is about to be updated:

CREATE TRIGGER check_update
    BEFORE UPDATE ON accounts
    FOR EACH ROW
    EXECUTE PROCEDURE check_account_update();

The same, but only execute the function if column balance is specified as a target in the UPDATE command:

CREATE TRIGGER check_update
    BEFORE UPDATE OF balance ON accounts
    FOR EACH ROW
    EXECUTE PROCEDURE check_account_update();

This form only executes the function if column balance has in fact changed value:

CREATE TRIGGER check_update
    BEFORE UPDATE ON accounts
    FOR EACH ROW
    WHEN (OLD.balance IS DISTINCT FROM NEW.balance)
    EXECUTE PROCEDURE check_account_update();

Call a function to log updates of accounts, but only if something changed:

CREATE TRIGGER log_update
    AFTER UPDATE ON accounts
    FOR EACH ROW
    WHEN (OLD.* IS DISTINCT FROM NEW.*)
    EXECUTE PROCEDURE log_account_update();

Execute the function view_insert_row for each row to insert rows into the tables underlying a view:

CREATE TRIGGER view_insert
    INSTEAD OF INSERT ON my_view
    FOR EACH ROW
    EXECUTE PROCEDURE view_insert_row();

Section 36.4 contains a complete example of a trigger function written in C.

Compatibility

The CREATE TRIGGER statement in PostgreSQL implements a subset of the SQL standard. The following functionality is currently missing:

  • SQL allows you to define aliases for the "old" and "new" rows or tables for use in the definition of the triggered action (e.g., CREATE TRIGGER ... ON tablename REFERENCING OLD ROW AS somename NEW ROW AS othername ...). Since PostgreSQL allows trigger procedures to be written in any number of user-defined languages, access to the data is handled in a language-specific way.

  • PostgreSQL only allows the execution of a user-defined function for the triggered action. The standard allows the execution of a number of other SQL commands, such as CREATE TABLE, as the triggered action. This limitation is not hard to work around by creating a user-defined function that executes the desired commands.

SQL specifies that multiple triggers should be fired in time-of-creation order. PostgreSQL uses name order, which was judged to be more convenient.

SQL specifies that BEFORE DELETE triggers on cascaded deletes fire after the cascaded DELETE completes. The PostgreSQL behavior is for BEFORE DELETE to always fire before the delete action, even a cascading one. This is considered more consistent. There is also nonstandard behavior if BEFORE triggers modify rows or prevent updates during an update that is caused by a referential action. This can lead to constraint violations or stored data that does not honor the referential constraint.

The ability to specify multiple actions for a single trigger using OR is a PostgreSQL extension of the SQL standard.

The ability to fire triggers for TRUNCATE is a PostgreSQL extension of the SQL standard, as is the ability to define statement-level triggers on views.

CREATE CONSTRAINT TRIGGER is a PostgreSQL extension of the SQL standard.

See Also

CREATE FUNCTION, ALTER TRIGGER, DROP TRIGGER, SET CONSTRAINTS
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CREATE TEXT SEARCH TEMPLATE | Up | CREATE TYPE


CREATE TYPE

Name

CREATE TYPE -- define a new data type

Synopsis

CREATE TYPE name AS
    ( [ attribute_name data_type [ COLLATE collation ] [, ... ] ] )

CREATE TYPE name AS ENUM
    ( [ 'label' [, ... ] ] )

CREATE TYPE name (
    INPUT = input_function,
    OUTPUT = output_function
    [ , RECEIVE = receive_function ]
    [ , SEND = send_function ]
    [ , TYPMOD_IN = type_modifier_input_function ]
    [ , TYPMOD_OUT = type_modifier_output_function ]
    [ , ANALYZE = analyze_function ]
    [ , INTERNALLENGTH = { internallength | VARIABLE } ]
    [ , PASSEDBYVALUE ]
    [ , ALIGNMENT = alignment ]
    [ , STORAGE = storage ]
    [ , LIKE = like_type ]
    [ , CATEGORY = category ]
    [ , PREFERRED = preferred ]
    [ , DEFAULT = default ]
    [ , ELEMENT = element ]
    [ , DELIMITER = delimiter ]
    [ , COLLATABLE = collatable ]
)

CREATE TYPE name

Description

CREATE TYPE registers a new data type for use in the current database. The user who defines a type becomes its owner.

If a schema name is given then the type is created in the specified schema. Otherwise it is created in the current schema. The type name must be distinct from the name of any existing type or domain in the same schema. (Because tables have associated data types, the type name must also be distinct from the name of any existing table in the same schema.)

Composite Types

The first form of CREATE TYPE creates a composite type. The composite type is specified by a list of attribute names and data types. An attribute's collation can be specified too, if its data type is collatable. A composite type is essentially the same as the row type of a table, but using CREATE TYPE avoids the need to create an actual table when all that is wanted is to define a type. A stand-alone composite type is useful, for example, as the argument or return type of a function.

Enumerated Types

The second form of CREATE TYPE creates an enumerated (enum) type, as described in Section 8.7. Enum types take a list of one or more quoted labels, each of which must be less than NAMEDATALEN bytes long (64 in a standard PostgreSQL build).

Base Types

The third form of CREATE TYPE creates a new base type (scalar type). To create a new base type, you must be a superuser. (This restriction is made because an erroneous type definition could confuse or even crash the server.)

The parameters can appear in any order, not only that illustrated above, and most are optional. You must register two or more functions (using CREATE FUNCTION) before defining the type. The support functions input_function and output_function are required, while the functions receive_function, send_function, type_modifier_input_function, type_modifier_output_function and analyze_function are optional. Generally these functions have to be coded in C or another low-level language.

The input_function converts the type's external textual representation to the internal representation used by the operators and functions defined for the type. output_function performs the reverse transformation. The input function can be declared as taking one argument of type cstring, or as taking three arguments of types cstring, oid, integer. The first argument is the input text as a C string, the second argument is the type's own OID (except for array types, which instead receive their element type's OID), and the third is the typmod of the destination column, if known (-1 will be passed if not). The input function must return a value of the data type itself. Usually, an input function should be declared STRICT; if it is not, it will be called with a NULL first parameter when reading a NULL input value. The function must still return NULL in this case, unless it raises an error. (This case is mainly meant to support domain input functions, which might need to reject NULL inputs.) The output function must be declared as taking one argument of the new data type. The output function must return type cstring. Output functions are not invoked for NULL values.

The optional receive_function converts the type's external binary representation to the internal representation. If this function is not supplied, the type cannot participate in binary input. The binary representation should be chosen to be cheap to convert to internal form, while being reasonably portable. (For example, the standard integer data types use network byte order as the external binary representation, while the internal representation is in the machine's native byte order.) The receive function should perform adequate checking to ensure that the value is valid. The receive function can be declared as taking one argument of type internal, or as taking three arguments of types internal, oid, integer. The first argument is a pointer to a StringInfo buffer holding the received byte string; the optional arguments are the same as for the text input function. The receive function must return a value of the data type itself. Usually, a receive function should be declared STRICT; if it is not, it will be called with a NULL first parameter when reading a NULL input value. The function must still return NULL in this case, unless it raises an error. (This case is mainly meant to support domain receive functions, which might need to reject NULL inputs.) Similarly, the optional send_function converts from the internal representation to the external binary representation. If this function is not supplied, the type cannot participate in binary output. The send function must be declared as taking one argument of the new data type. The send function must return type bytea. Send functions are not invoked for NULL values.

You should at this point be wondering how the input and output functions can be declared to have results or arguments of the new type, when they have to be created before the new type can be created. The answer is that the type should first be defined as a shell type, which is a placeholder type that has no properties except a name and an owner. This is done by issuing the command CREATE TYPE name, with no additional parameters. Then the I/O functions can be defined referencing the shell type. Finally, CREATE TYPE with a full definition replaces the shell entry with a complete, valid type definition, after which the new type can be used normally.

The optional type_modifier_input_function and type_modifier_output_function are needed if the type supports modifiers, that is optional constraints attached to a type declaration, such as char(5) or numeric(30,2). PostgreSQL allows user-defined types to take one or more simple constants or identifiers as modifiers. However, this information must be capable of being packed into a single non-negative integer value for storage in the system catalogs. The type_modifier_input_function is passed the declared modifier(s) in the form of a cstring array. It must check the values for validity (throwing an error if they are wrong), and if they are correct, return a single non-negative integer value that will be stored as the column "typmod". Type modifiers will be rejected if the type does not have a type_modifier_input_function. The type_modifier_output_function converts the internal integer typmod value back to the correct form for user display. It must return a cstring value that is the exact string to append to the type name; for example numeric's function might return (30,2). It is allowed to omit the type_modifier_output_function, in which case the default display format is just the stored typmod integer value enclosed in parentheses.

The optional analyze_function performs type-specific statistics collection for columns of the data type. By default, ANALYZE will attempt to gather statistics using the type's "equals" and "less-than" operators, if there is a default b-tree operator class for the type. For non-scalar types this behavior is likely to be unsuitable, so it can be overridden by specifying a custom analysis function. The analysis function must be declared to take a single argument of type internal, and return a boolean result. The detailed API for analysis functions appears in src/include/commands/vacuum.h.

While the details of the new type's internal representation are only known to the I/O functions and other functions you create to work with the type, there are several properties of the internal representation that must be declared to PostgreSQL. Foremost of these is internallength. Base data types can be fixed-length, in which case internallength is a positive integer, or variable length, indicated by setting internallength to VARIABLE. (Internally, this is represented by setting typlen to -1.) The internal representation of all variable-length types must start with a 4-byte integer giving the total length of this value of the type.

The optional flag PASSEDBYVALUE indicates that values of this data type are passed by value, rather than by reference. You cannot pass by value types whose internal representation is larger than the size of the Datum type (4 bytes on most machines, 8 bytes on a few).

The alignment parameter specifies the storage alignment required for the data type. The allowed values equate to alignment on 1, 2, 4, or 8 byte boundaries. Note that variable-length types must have an alignment of at least 4, since they necessarily contain an int4 as their first component.

The storage parameter allows selection of storage strategies for variable-length data types. (Only plain is allowed for fixed-length types.) plain specifies that data of the type will always be stored in-line and not compressed. extended specifies that the system will first try to compress a long data value, and will move the value out of the main table row if it's still too long. external allows the value to be moved out of the main table, but the system will not try to compress it. main allows compression, but discourages moving the value out of the main table. (Data items with this storage strategy might still be moved out of the main table if there is no other way to make a row fit, but they will be kept in the main table preferentially over extended and external items.)

The like_type parameter provides an alternative method for specifying the basic representation properties of a data type: copy them from some existing type. The values of internallength, passedbyvalue, alignment, and storage are copied from the named type. (It is possible, though usually undesirable, to override some of these values by specifying them along with the LIKE clause.) Specifying representation this way is especially useful when the low-level implementation of the new type "piggybacks" on an existing type in some fashion.

The category and preferred parameters can be used to help control which implicit cast will be applied in ambiguous situations. Each data type belongs to a category named by a single ASCII character, and each type is either "preferred" or not within its category. The parser will prefer casting to preferred types (but only from other types within the same category) when this rule is helpful in resolving overloaded functions or operators. For more details see Chapter 10. For types that have no implicit casts to or from any other types, it is sufficient to leave these settings at the defaults. However, for a group of related types that have implicit casts, it is often helpful to mark them all as belonging to a category and select one or two of the "most general" types as being preferred within the category. The category parameter is especially useful when adding a user-defined type to an existing built-in category, such as the numeric or string types. However, it is also possible to create new entirely-user-defined type categories. Select any ASCII character other than an upper-case letter to name such a category.

A default value can be specified, in case a user wants columns of the data type to default to something other than the null value. Specify the default with the DEFAULT key word. (Such a default can be overridden by an explicit DEFAULT clause attached to a particular column.)

To indicate that a type is an array, specify the type of the array elements using the ELEMENT key word. For example, to define an array of 4-byte integers (int4), specify ELEMENT = int4. More details about array types appear below.

To indicate the delimiter to be used between values in the external representation of arrays of this type, delimiter can be set to a specific character. The default delimiter is the comma (,). Note that the delimiter is associated with the array element type, not the array type itself.

If the optional Boolean parameter collatable is true, column definitions and expressions of the type may carry collation information through use of the COLLATE clause. It is up to the implementations of the functions operating on the type to actually make use of the collation information; this does not happen automatically merely by marking the type collatable.

Array Types

Whenever a user-defined type is created, PostgreSQL automatically creates an associated array type, whose name consists of the base type's name prepended with an underscore, and truncated if necessary to keep it less than NAMEDATALEN bytes long. (If the name so generated collides with an existing type name, the process is repeated until a non-colliding name is found.) This implicitly-created array type is variable length and uses the built-in input and output functions array_in and array_out. The array type tracks any changes in its element type's owner or schema, and is dropped if the element type is.

You might reasonably ask why there is an ELEMENT option, if the system makes the correct array type automatically. The only case where it's useful to use ELEMENT is when you are making a fixed-length type that happens to be internally an array of a number of identical things, and you want to allow these things to be accessed directly by subscripting, in addition to whatever operations you plan to provide for the type as a whole. For example, type point is represented as just two floating-point numbers, which it allows to be accessed as point[0] and point[1]. Note that this facility only works for fixed-length types whose internal form is exactly a sequence of identical fixed-length fields. A subscriptable variable-length type must have the generalized internal representation used by array_in and array_out. For historical reasons (i.e., this is clearly wrong but it's far too late to change it), subscripting of fixed-length array types starts from zero, rather than from one as for variable-length arrays.

Parameters

name

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of a type to be created.

attribute_name

The name of an attribute (column) for the composite type.

data_type

The name of an existing data type to become a column of the composite type.

label

A string literal representing the textual label associated with one value of an enum type.

input_function

The name of a function that converts data from the type's external textual form to its internal form.

output_function

The name of a function that converts data from the type's internal form to its external textual form.

receive_function

The name of a function that converts data from the type's external binary form to its internal form.

send_function

The name of a function that converts data from the type's internal form to its external binary form.

type_modifier_input_function

The name of a function that converts an array of modifier(s) for the type into internal form.

type_modifier_output_function

The name of a function that converts the internal form of the type's modifier(s) to external textual form.

analyze_function

The name of a function that performs statistical analysis for the data type.

internallength

A numeric constant that specifies the length in bytes of the new type's internal representation. The default assumption is that it is variable-length.

alignment

The storage alignment requirement of the data type. If specified, it must be char, int2, int4, or double; the default is int4.

storage

The storage strategy for the data type. If specified, must be plain, external, extended, or main; the default is plain.

like_type

The name of an existing data type that the new type will have the same representation as. The values of internallength, passedbyvalue, alignment, and storage are copied from that type, unless overridden by explicit specification elsewhere in this CREATE TYPE command.

category

The category code (a single ASCII character) for this type. The default is 'U' for "user-defined type". Other standard category codes can be found in Table 45-49. You may also choose other ASCII characters in order to create custom categories.

preferred

True if this type is a preferred type within its type category, else false. The default is false. Be very careful about creating a new preferred type within an existing type category, as this could cause surprising changes in behavior.

default

The default value for the data type. If this is omitted, the default is null.

element

The type being created is an array; this specifies the type of the array elements.

delimiter

The delimiter character to be used between values in arrays made of this type.

collatable

True if this type's operations can use collation information. The default is false.

Notes

Because there are no restrictions on use of a data type once it's been created, creating a base type is tantamount to granting public execute permission on the functions mentioned in the type definition. This is usually not an issue for the sorts of functions that are useful in a type definition. But you might want to think twice before designing a type in a way that would require "secret" information to be used while converting it to or from external form.

Before PostgreSQL version 8.3, the name of a generated array type was always exactly the element type's name with one underscore character (_) prepended. (Type names were therefore restricted in length to one less character than other names.) While this is still usually the case, the array type name may vary from this in case of maximum-length names or collisions with user type names that begin with underscore. Writing code that depends on this convention is therefore deprecated. Instead, use pg_type.typarray to locate the array type associated with a given type.

It may be advisable to avoid using type and table names that begin with underscore. While the server will change generated array type names to avoid collisions with user-given names, there is still risk of confusion, particularly with old client software that may assume that type names beginning with underscores always represent arrays.

Before PostgreSQL version 8.2, the syntax CREATE TYPE name did not exist. The way to create a new base type was to create its input function first. In this approach, PostgreSQL will first see the name of the new data type as the return type of the input function. The shell type is implicitly created in this situation, and then it can be referenced in the definitions of the remaining I/O functions. This approach still works, but is deprecated and might be disallowed in some future release. Also, to avoid accidentally cluttering the catalogs with shell types as a result of simple typos in function definitions, a shell type will only be made this way when the input function is written in C.

In PostgreSQL versions before 7.3, it was customary to avoid creating a shell type at all, by replacing the functions' forward references to the type name with the placeholder pseudotype opaque. The cstring arguments and results also had to be declared as opaque before 7.3. To support loading of old dump files, CREATE TYPE will accept I/O functions declared using opaque, but it will issue a notice and change the function declarations to use the correct types.

Examples

This example creates a composite type and uses it in a function definition:

CREATE TYPE compfoo AS (f1 int, f2 text);

CREATE FUNCTION getfoo() RETURNS SETOF compfoo AS $$
    SELECT fooid, fooname FROM foo
$$ LANGUAGE SQL;

This example creates an enumerated type and uses it in a table definition:

CREATE TYPE bug_status AS ENUM ('new', 'open', 'closed');

CREATE TABLE bug (
    id serial,
    description text,
    status bug_status
);

This example creates the base data type box and then uses the type in a table definition:

CREATE TYPE box;

CREATE FUNCTION my_box_in_function(cstring) RETURNS box AS ... ;
CREATE FUNCTION my_box_out_function(box) RETURNS cstring AS ... ;

CREATE TYPE box (
    INTERNALLENGTH = 16,
    INPUT = my_box_in_function,
    OUTPUT = my_box_out_function
);

CREATE TABLE myboxes (
    id integer,
    description box
);

If the internal structure of box were an array of four float4 elements, we might instead use:

CREATE TYPE box (
    INTERNALLENGTH = 16,
    INPUT = my_box_in_function,
    OUTPUT = my_box_out_function,
    ELEMENT = float4
);

which would allow a box value's component numbers to be accessed by subscripting. Otherwise the type behaves the same as before.

This example creates a large object type and uses it in a table definition:

CREATE TYPE bigobj (
    INPUT = lo_filein, OUTPUT = lo_fileout,
    INTERNALLENGTH = VARIABLE
);
CREATE TABLE big_objs (
    id integer,
    obj bigobj
);

More examples, including suitable input and output functions, are in Section 35.11.

Compatibility

The first form of the CREATE TYPE command, which creates a composite type, conforms to the SQL standard. The other forms are PostgreSQL extensions. The CREATE TYPE statement in the SQL standard also defines other forms that are not implemented in PostgreSQL.

The ability to create a composite type with zero attributes is a PostgreSQL-specific deviation from the standard (analogous to CREATE TABLE).

See Also

ALTER TYPE, CREATE DOMAIN, CREATE FUNCTION, DROP TYPE
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CREATE TRIGGER | Up | CREATE USER


CREATE USER

Name

CREATE USER -- define a new database role

Synopsis

CREATE USER name [ [ WITH ] option [ ... ] ]

where option can be:

      SUPERUSER | NOSUPERUSER
    | CREATEDB | NOCREATEDB
    | CREATEROLE | NOCREATEROLE
    | CREATEUSER | NOCREATEUSER
    | INHERIT | NOINHERIT
    | LOGIN | NOLOGIN
    | REPLICATION | NOREPLICATION
    | CONNECTION LIMIT connlimit
    | [ ENCRYPTED | UNENCRYPTED ] PASSWORD 'password'
    | VALID UNTIL 'timestamp'
    | IN ROLE role_name [, ...]
    | IN GROUP role_name [, ...]
    | ROLE role_name [, ...]
    | ADMIN role_name [, ...]
    | USER role_name [, ...]
    | SYSID uid

Description

CREATE USER is now an alias for CREATE ROLE. The only difference is that when the command is spelled CREATE USER, LOGIN is assumed by default, whereas NOLOGIN is assumed when the command is spelled CREATE ROLE.

Compatibility

The CREATE USER statement is a PostgreSQL extension. The SQL standard leaves the definition of users to the implementation.

See Also

CREATE ROLE
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CREATE TYPE | Up | CREATE USER MAPPING


CREATE USER MAPPING

Name

CREATE USER MAPPING -- define a new mapping of a user to a foreign server

Synopsis

CREATE USER MAPPING FOR { user_name | USER | CURRENT_USER | PUBLIC }
    SERVER server_name
    [ OPTIONS ( option 'value' [ , ... ] ) ]

Description

CREATE USER MAPPING defines a mapping of a user to a foreign server. A user mapping typically encapsulates connection information that a foreign-data wrapper uses together with the information encapsulated by a foreign server to access an external data resource.

The owner of a foreign server can create user mappings for that server for any user. Also, a user can create a user mapping for his own user name if USAGE privilege on the server has been granted to the user.

Parameters

user_name

The name of an existing user that is mapped to foreign server. CURRENT_USER and USER match the name of the current user. When PUBLIC is specified, a so-called public mapping is created that is used when no user-specific mapping is applicable.

server_name

The name of an existing server for which the user mapping is to be created.

OPTIONS ( option 'value' [, ... ] )

This clause specifies the options of the user mapping. The options typically define the actual user name and password of the mapping. Option names must be unique. The allowed option names and values are specific to the server's foreign-data wrapper.

Examples

Create a user mapping for user bob, server foo:

CREATE USER MAPPING FOR bob SERVER foo OPTIONS (user 'bob', password 'secret');

Compatibility

CREATE USER MAPPING conforms to ISO/IEC 9075-9 (SQL/MED).

See Also

ALTER USER MAPPING, DROP USER MAPPING, CREATE FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER, CREATE SERVER
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CREATE USER | Up | CREATE VIEW


CREATE VIEW

Name

CREATE VIEW -- define a new view

Synopsis

CREATE [ OR REPLACE ] [ TEMP | TEMPORARY ] VIEW name [ ( column_name [, ...] ) ]
    AS query

Description

CREATE VIEW defines a view of a query. The view is not physically materialized. Instead, the query is run every time the view is referenced in a query.

CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW is similar, but if a view of the same name already exists, it is replaced. The new query must generate the same columns that were generated by the existing view query (that is, the same column names in the same order and with the same data types), but it may add additional columns to the end of the list. The calculations giving rise to the output columns may be completely different.

If a schema name is given (for example, CREATE VIEW myschema.myview ...) then the view is created in the specified schema. Otherwise it is created in the current schema. Temporary views exist in a special schema, so a schema name cannot be given when creating a temporary view. The name of the view must be distinct from the name of any other view, table, sequence, index or foreign table in the same schema.

Parameters

TEMPORARY or TEMP

If specified, the view is created as a temporary view. Temporary views are automatically dropped at the end of the current session. Existing permanent relations with the same name are not visible to the current session while the temporary view exists, unless they are referenced with schema-qualified names.

If any of the tables referenced by the view are temporary, the view is created as a temporary view (whether TEMPORARY is specified or not).

name

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of a view to be created.

column_name

An optional list of names to be used for columns of the view. If not given, the column names are deduced from the query.

query

A SELECT or VALUES command which will provide the columns and rows of the view.

Notes

Currently, views are read only: the system will not allow an insert, update, or delete on a view. You can get the effect of an updatable view by creating INSTEAD triggers on the view, which must convert attempted inserts, etc. on the view into appropriate actions on other tables. For more information see CREATE TRIGGER. Another possibility is to create rules (see CREATE RULE), but in practice triggers are easier to understand and use correctly.

Use the DROP VIEW statement to drop views.

Be careful that the names and types of the view's columns will be assigned the way you want. For example:

CREATE VIEW vista AS SELECT 'Hello World';

is bad form in two ways: the column name defaults to ?column?, and the column data type defaults to unknown. If you want a string literal in a view's result, use something like:

CREATE VIEW vista AS SELECT text 'Hello World' AS hello;

Access to tables referenced in the view is determined by permissions of the view owner. In some cases, this can be used to provide secure but restricted access to the underlying tables. However, not all views are secure against tampering; see Section 37.4 for details. Functions called in the view are treated the same as if they had been called directly from the query using the view. Therefore the user of a view must have permissions to call all functions used by the view.

When CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW is used on an existing view, only the view's defining SELECT rule is changed. Other view properties, including ownership, permissions, and non-SELECT rules, remain unchanged. You must own the view to replace it (this includes being a member of the owning role).

Examples

Create a view consisting of all comedy films:

CREATE VIEW comedies AS
    SELECT *
    FROM films
    WHERE kind = 'Comedy';

This will create a view containing the columns that are in the film table at the time of view creation. Though * was used to create the view, columns added later to the table will not be part of the view.

Compatibility

The SQL standard specifies some additional capabilities for the CREATE VIEW statement:

CREATE VIEW name [ ( column_name [, ...] ) ]
    AS query
    [ WITH [ CASCADED | LOCAL ] CHECK OPTION ]

The optional clauses for the full SQL command are:

CHECK OPTION

This option has to do with updatable views. All INSERT and UPDATE commands on the view will be checked to ensure data satisfy the view-defining condition (that is, the new data would be visible through the view). If they do not, the update will be rejected.

LOCAL

Check for integrity on this view.

CASCADED

Check for integrity on this view and on any dependent view. CASCADED is assumed if neither CASCADED nor LOCAL is specified.

CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW is a PostgreSQL language extension. So is the concept of a temporary view.

See Also

ALTER VIEW, DROP VIEW
Prev | Home | Next
CREATE USER MAPPING | Up | DEALLOCATE


DEALLOCATE

Name

DEALLOCATE -- deallocate a prepared statement

Synopsis

DEALLOCATE [ PREPARE ] { name | ALL }

Description

DEALLOCATE is used to deallocate a previously prepared SQL statement. If you do not explicitly deallocate a prepared statement, it is deallocated when the session ends.

For more information on prepared statements, see PREPARE.

Parameters

PREPARE

This key word is ignored.

name

The name of the prepared statement to deallocate.

ALL

Deallocate all prepared statements.

Compatibility

The SQL standard includes a DEALLOCATE statement, but it is only for use in embedded SQL.

See Also

EXECUTE, PREPARE
Prev | Home | Next
CREATE VIEW | Up | DECLARE


DECLARE

Name

DECLARE -- define a cursor

Synopsis

DECLARE name [ BINARY ] [ INSENSITIVE ] [ [ NO ] SCROLL ]
    CURSOR [ { WITH | WITHOUT } HOLD ] FOR query

Description

DECLARE allows a user to create cursors, which can be used to retrieve a small number of rows at a time out of a larger query. After the cursor is created, rows are fetched from it using FETCH.

Note: This page describes usage of cursors at the SQL command level. If you are trying to use cursors inside a PL/pgSQL function, the rules are different — see Section 39.7.

Parameters

name

The name of the cursor to be created.

BINARY

Causes the cursor to return data in binary rather than in text format.

INSENSITIVE

Indicates that data retrieved from the cursor should be unaffected by updates to the table(s) underlying the cursor that occur after the cursor is created. In PostgreSQL, this is the default behavior; so this key word has no effect and is only accepted for compatibility with the SQL standard.

SCROLL
NO SCROLL

SCROLL specifies that the cursor can be used to retrieve rows in a nonsequential fashion (e.g., backward). Depending upon the complexity of the query's execution plan, specifying SCROLL might impose a performance penalty on the query's execution time. NO SCROLL specifies that the cursor cannot be used to retrieve rows in a nonsequential fashion. The default is to allow scrolling in some cases; this is not the same as specifying SCROLL. See Notes for details.

WITH HOLD
WITHOUT HOLD

WITH HOLD specifies that the cursor can continue to be used after the transaction that created it successfully commits. WITHOUT HOLD specifies that the cursor cannot be used outside of the transaction that created it. If neither WITHOUT HOLD nor WITH HOLD is specified, WITHOUT HOLD is the default.

query

A SELECT or VALUES command which will provide the rows to be returned by the cursor.

The key words BINARY, INSENSITIVE, and SCROLL can appear in any order.

Notes

Normal cursors return data in text format, the same as a SELECT would produce. The BINARY option specifies that the cursor should return data in binary format. This reduces conversion effort for both the server and client, at the cost of more programmer effort to deal with platform-dependent binary data formats. As an example, if a query returns a value of one from an integer column, you would get a string of 1 with a default cursor, whereas with a binary cursor you would get a 4-byte field containing the internal representation of the value (in big-endian byte order).

Binary cursors should be used carefully. Many applications, including psql, are not prepared to handle binary cursors and expect data to come back in the text format.

Note: When the client application uses the "extended query" protocol to issue a FETCH command, the Bind protocol message specifies whether data is to be retrieved in text or binary format. This choice overrides the way that the cursor is defined. The concept of a binary cursor as such is thus obsolete when using extended query protocol — any cursor can be treated as either text or binary.

Unless WITH HOLD is specified, the cursor created by this command can only be used within the current transaction. Thus, DECLARE without WITH HOLD is useless outside a transaction block: the cursor would survive only to the completion of the statement. Therefore PostgreSQL reports an error if such a command is used outside a transaction block. Use BEGIN and COMMIT (or ROLLBACK) to define a transaction block.

If WITH HOLD is specified and the transaction that created the cursor successfully commits, the cursor can continue to be accessed by subsequent transactions in the same session. (But if the creating transaction is aborted, the cursor is removed.) A cursor created with WITH HOLD is closed when an explicit CLOSE command is issued on it, or the session ends. In the current implementation, the rows represented by a held cursor are copied into a temporary file or memory area so that they remain available for subsequent transactions.

WITH HOLD may not be specified when the query includes FOR UPDATE or FOR SHARE.

The SCROLL option should be specified when defining a cursor that will be used to fetch backwards. This is required by the SQL standard. However, for compatibility with earlier versions, PostgreSQL will allow backward fetches without SCROLL, if the cursor's query plan is simple enough that no extra overhead is needed to support it. However, application developers are advised not to rely on using backward fetches from a cursor that has not been created with SCROLL. If NO SCROLL is specified, then backward fetches are disallowed in any case.

Backward fetches are also disallowed when the query includes FOR UPDATE or FOR SHARE; therefore SCROLL may not be specified in this case.

Caution

Scrollable and WITH HOLD cursors may give unexpected results if they invoke any volatile functions (see Section 35.6). When a previously fetched row is re-fetched, the functions might be re-executed, perhaps leading to results different from the first time. One workaround for such cases is to declare the cursor WITH HOLD and commit the transaction before reading any rows from it. This will force the entire output of the cursor to be materialized in temporary storage, so that volatile functions are executed exactly once for each row.

If the cursor's query includes FOR UPDATE or FOR SHARE, then returned rows are locked at the time they are first fetched, in the same way as for a regular SELECT command with these options. In addition, the returned rows will be the most up-to-date versions; therefore these options provide the equivalent of what the SQL standard calls a "sensitive cursor". (Specifying INSENSITIVE together with FOR UPDATE or FOR SHARE is an error.)

Caution

It is generally recommended to use FOR UPDATE if the cursor is intended to be used with UPDATE ... WHERE CURRENT OF or DELETE ... WHERE CURRENT OF. Using FOR UPDATE prevents other sessions from changing the rows between the time they are fetched and the time they are updated. Without FOR UPDATE, a subsequent WHERE CURRENT OF command will have no effect if the row was changed since the cursor was created.

Another reason to use FOR UPDATE is that without it, a subsequent WHERE CURRENT OF might fail if the cursor query does not meet the SQL standard's rules for being "simply updatable" (in particular, the cursor must reference just one table and not use grouping or ORDER BY). Cursors that are not simply updatable might work, or might not, depending on plan choice details; so in the worst case, an application might work in testing and then fail in production.

The main reason not to use FOR UPDATE with WHERE CURRENT OF is if you need the cursor to be scrollable, or to be insensitive to the subsequent updates (that is, continue to show the old data). If this is a requirement, pay close heed to the caveats shown above.

The SQL standard only makes provisions for cursors in embedded SQL. The PostgreSQL server does not implement an OPEN statement for cursors; a cursor is considered to be open when it is declared. However, ECPG, the embedded SQL preprocessor for PostgreSQL, supports the standard SQL cursor conventions, including those involving DECLARE and OPEN statements.

You can see all available cursors by querying the pg_cursors system view.

Examples

To declare a cursor:

DECLARE liahona CURSOR FOR SELECT * FROM films;

See FETCH for more examples of cursor usage.

Compatibility

The SQL standard says that it is implementation-dependent whether cursors are sensitive to concurrent updates of the underlying data by default. In PostgreSQL, cursors are insensitive by default, and can be made sensitive by specifying FOR UPDATE. Other products may work differently.

The SQL standard allows cursors only in embedded SQL and in modules. PostgreSQL permits cursors to be used interactively.

Binary cursors are a PostgreSQL extension.

See Also

CLOSE, FETCH, MOVE
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DEALLOCATE | Up | DELETE


DELETE

Name

DELETE -- delete rows of a table

Synopsis

[ WITH [ RECURSIVE ] with_query [, ...] ]
DELETE FROM [ ONLY ] table [ * ] [ [ AS ] alias ]
    [ USING using_list ]
    [ WHERE condition | WHERE CURRENT OF cursor_name ]
    [ RETURNING * | output_expression [ [ AS ] output_name ] [, ...] ]

Description

DELETE deletes rows that satisfy the WHERE clause from the specified table. If the WHERE clause is absent, the effect is to delete all rows in the table. The result is a valid, but empty table.

Tip: TRUNCATE is a PostgreSQL extension that provides a faster mechanism to remove all rows from a table.

There are two ways to delete rows in a table using information contained in other tables in the database: using sub-selects, or specifying additional tables in the USING clause. Which technique is more appropriate depends on the specific circumstances.

The optional RETURNING clause causes DELETE to compute and return value(s) based on each row actually deleted. Any expression using the table's columns, and/or columns of other tables mentioned in USING, can be computed. The syntax of the RETURNING list is identical to that of the output list of SELECT.

You must have the DELETE privilege on the table to delete from it, as well as the SELECT privilege for any table in the USING clause or whose values are read in the condition.

Parameters

with_query

The WITH clause allows you to specify one or more subqueries that can be referenced by name in the DELETE query. See Section 7.8 and SELECT for details.

table

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of the table to delete rows from. If ONLY is specified before the table name, matching rows are deleted from the named table only. If ONLY is not specified, matching rows are also deleted from any tables inheriting from the named table. Optionally, * can be specified after the table name to explicitly indicate that descendant tables are included.

alias

A substitute name for the target table. When an alias is provided, it completely hides the actual name of the table. For example, given DELETE FROM foo AS f, the remainder of the DELETE statement must refer to this table as f not foo.

using_list

A list of table expressions, allowing columns from other tables to appear in the WHERE condition. This is similar to the list of tables that can be specified in the FROM Clause of a SELECT statement; for example, an alias for the table name can be specified. Do not repeat the target table in the using_list, unless you wish to set up a self-join.

condition

An expression that returns a value of type boolean. Only rows for which this expression returns true will be deleted.

cursor_name

The name of the cursor to use in a WHERE CURRENT OF condition. The row to be deleted is the one most recently fetched from this cursor. The cursor must be a non-grouping query on the DELETE's target table. Note that WHERE CURRENT OF cannot be specified together with a Boolean condition. See DECLARE for more information about using cursors with WHERE CURRENT OF.

output_expression

An expression to be computed and returned by the DELETE command after each row is deleted. The expression can use any column names of the table or table(s) listed in USING. Write * to return all columns.

output_name

A name to use for a returned column.

Outputs

On successful completion, a DELETE command returns a command tag of the form

DELETE count

The count is the number of rows deleted. If count is 0, no rows matched the condition (this is not considered an error).

If the DELETE command contains a RETURNING clause, the result will be similar to that of a SELECT statement containing the columns and values defined in the RETURNING list, computed over the row(s) deleted by the command.

Notes

PostgreSQL lets you reference columns of other tables in the WHERE condition by specifying the other tables in the USING clause. For example, to delete all films produced by a given producer, one can do:

DELETE FROM films USING producers
  WHERE producer_id = producers.id AND producers.name = 'foo';

What is essentially happening here is a join between films and producers, with all successfully joined films rows being marked for deletion. This syntax is not standard. A more standard way to do it is:

DELETE FROM films
  WHERE producer_id IN (SELECT id FROM producers WHERE name = 'foo');

In some cases the join style is easier to write or faster to execute than the sub-select style.

Examples

Delete all films but musicals:

DELETE FROM films WHERE kind <> 'Musical';

Clear the table films:

DELETE FROM films;

Delete completed tasks, returning full details of the deleted rows:

DELETE FROM tasks WHERE status = 'DONE' RETURNING *;

Delete the row of tasks on which the cursor c_tasks is currently positioned:

DELETE FROM tasks WHERE CURRENT OF c_tasks;

Compatibility

This command conforms to the SQL standard, except that the USING and RETURNING clauses are PostgreSQL extensions, as is the ability to use WITH with DELETE.

Prev | Home | Next
DECLARE | Up | DISCARD


DISCARD

Name

DISCARD -- discard session state

Synopsis

DISCARD { ALL | PLANS | TEMPORARY | TEMP }

Description

DISCARD releases internal resources associated with a database session. These resources are normally released at the end of the session.

DISCARD TEMP drops all temporary tables created in the current session. DISCARD PLANS releases all internally cached query plans. DISCARD ALL resets a session to its original state, discarding temporary resources and resetting session-local configuration changes.

Parameters

TEMPORARY or TEMP

Drops all temporary tables created in the current session.

PLANS

Releases all cached query plans.

ALL

Releases all temporary resources associated with the current session and resets the session to its initial state. Currently, this has the same effect as executing the following sequence of statements:

SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION DEFAULT;
RESET ALL;
DEALLOCATE ALL;
CLOSE ALL;
UNLISTEN *;
SELECT pg_advisory_unlock_all();
DISCARD PLANS;
DISCARD TEMP;

Notes

DISCARD ALL cannot be executed inside a transaction block.

Compatibility

DISCARD is a PostgreSQL extension.

Prev | Home | Next
DELETE | Up | DO


DO

Name

DO -- execute an anonymous code block

Synopsis

DO [ LANGUAGE lang_name ] code

Description

DO executes an anonymous code block, or in other words a transient anonymous function in a procedural language.

The code block is treated as though it were the body of a function with no parameters, returning void. It is parsed and executed a single time.

The optional LANGUAGE clause can be written either before or after the code block.

Parameters

code

The procedural language code to be executed. This must be specified as a string literal, just as in CREATE FUNCTION. Use of a dollar-quoted literal is recommended.

lang_name

The name of the procedural language the code is written in. If omitted, the default is plpgsql.

Notes

The procedural language to be used must already have been installed into the current database by means of CREATE LANGUAGE. plpgsql is installed by default, but other languages are not.

The user must have USAGE privilege for the procedural language, or must be a superuser if the language is untrusted. This is the same privilege requirement as for creating a function in the language.

Examples

Grant all privileges on all views in schema public to role webuser:

DO $$DECLARE r record;
BEGIN
    FOR r IN SELECT table_schema, table_name FROM information_schema.tables
             WHERE table_type = 'VIEW' AND table_schema = 'public'
    LOOP
        EXECUTE 'GRANT ALL ON ' || quote_ident(r.table_schema) || '.' || quote_ident(r.table_name) || ' TO webuser';
    END LOOP;
END$$;

Compatibility

There is no DO statement in the SQL standard.

See Also

CREATE LANGUAGE
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DISCARD | Up | DROP AGGREGATE


DROP AGGREGATE

Name

DROP AGGREGATE -- remove an aggregate function

Synopsis

DROP AGGREGATE [ IF EXISTS ] name ( type [ , ... ] ) [ CASCADE | RESTRICT ]

Description

DROP AGGREGATE removes an existing aggregate function. To execute this command the current user must be the owner of the aggregate function.

Parameters

IF EXISTS

Do not throw an error if the aggregate does not exist. A notice is issued in this case.

name

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of an existing aggregate function.

type

An input data type on which the aggregate function operates. To reference a zero-argument aggregate function, write * in place of the list of input data types.

CASCADE

Automatically drop objects that depend on the aggregate function.

RESTRICT

Refuse to drop the aggregate function if any objects depend on it. This is the default.

Examples

To remove the aggregate function myavg for type integer:

DROP AGGREGATE myavg(integer);

Compatibility

There is no DROP AGGREGATE statement in the SQL standard.

See Also

ALTER AGGREGATE, CREATE AGGREGATE
Prev | Home | Next
DO | Up | DROP CAST


DROP CAST

Name

DROP CAST -- remove a cast

Synopsis

DROP CAST [ IF EXISTS ] (source_type AS target_type) [ CASCADE | RESTRICT ]

Description

DROP CAST removes a previously defined cast.

To be able to drop a cast, you must own the source or the target data type. These are the same privileges that are required to create a cast.

Parameters

IF EXISTS

Do not throw an error if the cast does not exist. A notice is issued in this case.

source_type

The name of the source data type of the cast.

target_type

The name of the target data type of the cast.

CASCADE
RESTRICT

These key words do not have any effect, since there are no dependencies on casts.

Examples

To drop the cast from type text to type int:

DROP CAST (text AS int);

Compatibility

The DROP CAST command conforms to the SQL standard.

See Also

CREATE CAST
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DROP AGGREGATE | Up | DROP COLLATION


DROP COLLATION

Name

DROP COLLATION -- remove a collation

Synopsis

DROP COLLATION [ IF EXISTS ] name [ CASCADE | RESTRICT ]

Description

DROP COLLATION removes a previously defined collation. To be able to drop a collation, you must own the collation.

Parameters

IF EXISTS

Do not throw an error if the collation does not exist. A notice is issued in this case.

name

The name of the collation. The collation name can be schema-qualified.

CASCADE

Automatically drop objects that depend on the collation.

RESTRICT

Refuse to drop the collation if any objects depend on it. This is the default.

Examples

To drop the collation named german:

DROP COLLATION german;

Compatibility

The DROP COLLATION command conforms to the SQL standard, apart from the IF EXISTS option, which is a PostgreSQL extension.

See Also

ALTER COLLATION, CREATE COLLATION
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DROP CAST | Up | DROP CONVERSION


DROP CONVERSION

Name

DROP CONVERSION -- remove a conversion

Synopsis

DROP CONVERSION [ IF EXISTS ] name [ CASCADE | RESTRICT ]

Description

DROP CONVERSION removes a previously defined conversion. To be able to drop a conversion, you must own the conversion.

Parameters

IF EXISTS

Do not throw an error if the conversion does not exist. A notice is issued in this case.

name

The name of the conversion. The conversion name can be schema-qualified.

CASCADE
RESTRICT

These key words do not have any effect, since there are no dependencies on conversions.

Examples

To drop the conversion named myname:

DROP CONVERSION myname;

Compatibility

There is no DROP CONVERSION statement in the SQL standard, but a DROP TRANSLATION statement that goes along with the CREATE TRANSLATION statement that is similar to the CREATE CONVERSION statement in PostgreSQL.

See Also

ALTER CONVERSION, CREATE CONVERSION
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DROP COLLATION | Up | DROP DATABASE


DROP DATABASE

Name

DROP DATABASE -- remove a database

Synopsis

DROP DATABASE [ IF EXISTS ] name

Description

DROP DATABASE drops a database. It removes the catalog entries for the database and deletes the directory containing the data. It can only be executed by the database owner. Also, it cannot be executed while you or anyone else are connected to the target database. (Connect to postgres or any other database to issue this command.)

DROP DATABASE cannot be undone. Use it with care!

Parameters

IF EXISTS

Do not throw an error if the database does not exist. A notice is issued in this case.

name

The name of the database to remove.

Notes

DROP DATABASE cannot be executed inside a transaction block.

This command cannot be executed while connected to the target database. Thus, it might be more convenient to use the program dropdb instead, which is a wrapper around this command.

Compatibility

There is no DROP DATABASE statement in the SQL standard.

See Also

CREATE DATABASE
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DROP CONVERSION | Up | DROP DOMAIN


DROP DOMAIN

Name

DROP DOMAIN -- remove a domain

Synopsis

DROP DOMAIN [ IF EXISTS ] name [, ...] [ CASCADE | RESTRICT ]

Description

DROP DOMAIN removes a domain. Only the owner of a domain can remove it.

Parameters

IF EXISTS

Do not throw an error if the domain does not exist. A notice is issued in this case.

name

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of an existing domain.

CASCADE

Automatically drop objects that depend on the domain (such as table columns).

RESTRICT

Refuse to drop the domain if any objects depend on it. This is the default.

Examples

To remove the domain box:

DROP DOMAIN box;

Compatibility

This command conforms to the SQL standard, except for the IF EXISTS option, which is a PostgreSQL extension.

See Also

CREATE DOMAIN, ALTER DOMAIN
Prev | Home | Next
DROP DATABASE | Up | DROP EXTENSION


DROP EXTENSION

Name

DROP EXTENSION -- remove an extension

Synopsis

DROP EXTENSION [ IF EXISTS ] extension_name [, ...] [ CASCADE | RESTRICT ]

Description

DROP EXTENSION removes extensions from the database. Dropping an extension causes its component objects to be dropped as well.

You must own the extension to use DROP EXTENSION.

Parameters

IF EXISTS

Do not throw an error if the extension does not exist. A notice is issued in this case.

extension_name

The name of an installed extension.

CASCADE

Automatically drop objects that depend on the extension.

RESTRICT

Refuse to drop the extension if any objects depend on it (other than its own member objects and other extensions listed in the same DROP command). This is the default.

Examples

To remove the extension hstore from the current database:

DROP EXTENSION hstore;

This command will fail if any of hstore's objects are in use in the database, for example if any tables have columns of the hstore type. Add the CASCADE option to forcibly remove those dependent objects as well.

Compatibility

DROP EXTENSION is a PostgreSQL extension.

See Also

CREATE EXTENSION, ALTER EXTENSION
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DROP DOMAIN | Up | DROP FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER


DROP FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER

Name

DROP FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER -- remove a foreign-data wrapper

Synopsis

DROP FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER [ IF EXISTS ] name [ CASCADE | RESTRICT ]

Description

DROP FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER removes an existing foreign-data wrapper. To execute this command, the current user must be the owner of the foreign-data wrapper.

Parameters

IF EXISTS

Do not throw an error if the foreign-data wrapper does not exist. A notice is issued in this case.

name

The name of an existing foreign-data wrapper.

CASCADE

Automatically drop objects that depend on the foreign-data wrapper (such as servers).

RESTRICT

Refuse to drop the foreign-data wrappers if any objects depend on it. This is the default.

Examples

Drop the foreign-data wrapper dbi:

DROP FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER dbi;

Compatibility

DROP FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER conforms to ISO/IEC 9075-9 (SQL/MED). The IF EXISTS clause is a PostgreSQL extension.

See Also

CREATE FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER, ALTER FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER
Prev | Home | Next
DROP EXTENSION | Up | DROP FOREIGN TABLE


DROP FOREIGN TABLE

Name

DROP FOREIGN TABLE -- remove a foreign table

Synopsis

DROP FOREIGN TABLE [ IF EXISTS ] name [, ...] [ CASCADE | RESTRICT ]

Description

DROP FOREIGN TABLE removes a foreign table. Only the owner of a foreign table can remove it.

Parameters

IF EXISTS

Do not throw an error if the foreign table does not exist. A notice is issued in this case.

name

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of the foreign table to drop.

CASCADE

Automatically drop objects that depend on the foreign table (such as views).

RESTRICT

Refuse to drop the foreign table if any objects depend on it. This is the default.

Examples

To destroy two foreign tables, films and distributors:

DROP FOREIGN TABLE films, distributors;

Compatibility

This command conforms to the ISO/IEC 9075-9 (SQL/MED), except that the standard only allows one foreign table to be dropped per command, and apart from the IF EXISTS option, which is a PostgreSQL extension.

See Also

ALTER FOREIGN TABLE, CREATE FOREIGN TABLE
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DROP FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER | Up | DROP FUNCTION


DROP FUNCTION

Name

DROP FUNCTION -- remove a function

Synopsis

DROP FUNCTION [ IF EXISTS ] name ( [ [ argmode ] [ argname ] argtype [, ...] ] )
    [ CASCADE | RESTRICT ]

Description

DROP FUNCTION removes the definition of an existing function. To execute this command the user must be the owner of the function. The argument types to the function must be specified, since several different functions can exist with the same name and different argument lists.

Parameters

IF EXISTS

Do not throw an error if the function does not exist. A notice is issued in this case.

name

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of an existing function.

argmode

The mode of an argument: IN, OUT, INOUT, or VARIADIC. If omitted, the default is IN. Note that DROP FUNCTION does not actually pay any attention to OUT arguments, since only the input arguments are needed to determine the function's identity. So it is sufficient to list the IN, INOUT, and VARIADIC arguments.

argname

The name of an argument. Note that DROP FUNCTION does not actually pay any attention to argument names, since only the argument data types are needed to determine the function's identity.

argtype

The data type(s) of the function's arguments (optionally schema-qualified), if any.

CASCADE

Automatically drop objects that depend on the function (such as operators or triggers).

RESTRICT

Refuse to drop the function if any objects depend on it. This is the default.

Examples

This command removes the square root function:

DROP FUNCTION sqrt(integer);

Compatibility

A DROP FUNCTION statement is defined in the SQL standard, but it is not compatible with this command.

See Also

CREATE FUNCTION, ALTER FUNCTION
Prev | Home | Next
DROP FOREIGN TABLE | Up | DROP GROUP


DROP GROUP

Name

DROP GROUP -- remove a database role

Synopsis

DROP GROUP [ IF EXISTS ] name [, ...]

Description

DROP GROUP is now an alias for DROP ROLE.

Compatibility

There is no DROP GROUP statement in the SQL standard.

See Also

DROP ROLE
Prev | Home | Next
DROP FUNCTION | Up | DROP INDEX


DROP INDEX

Name

DROP INDEX -- remove an index

Synopsis

DROP INDEX [ IF EXISTS ] name [, ...] [ CASCADE | RESTRICT ]

Description

DROP INDEX drops an existing index from the database system. To execute this command you must be the owner of the index.

Parameters

IF EXISTS

Do not throw an error if the index does not exist. A notice is issued in this case.

name

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of an index to remove.

CASCADE

Automatically drop objects that depend on the index.

RESTRICT

Refuse to drop the index if any objects depend on it. This is the default.

Examples

This command will remove the index title_idx:

DROP INDEX title_idx;

Compatibility

DROP INDEX is a PostgreSQL language extension. There are no provisions for indexes in the SQL standard.

See Also

CREATE INDEX
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DROP GROUP | Up | DROP LANGUAGE


DROP LANGUAGE

Name

DROP LANGUAGE -- remove a procedural language

Synopsis

DROP [ PROCEDURAL ] LANGUAGE [ IF EXISTS ] name [ CASCADE | RESTRICT ]

Description

DROP LANGUAGE removes the definition of a previously registered procedural language. You must be a superuser or the owner of the language to use DROP LANGUAGE.

Note: As of PostgreSQL 9.1, most procedural languages have been made into "extensions", and should therefore be removed with DROP EXTENSION not DROP LANGUAGE.

Parameters

IF EXISTS

Do not throw an error if the language does not exist. A notice is issued in this case.

name

The name of an existing procedural language. For backward compatibility, the name can be enclosed by single quotes.

CASCADE

Automatically drop objects that depend on the language (such as functions in the language).

RESTRICT

Refuse to drop the language if any objects depend on it. This is the default.

Examples

This command removes the procedural language plsample:

DROP LANGUAGE plsample;

Compatibility

There is no DROP LANGUAGE statement in the SQL standard.

See Also

ALTER LANGUAGE, CREATE LANGUAGE, droplang
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DROP INDEX | Up | DROP OPERATOR


DROP OPERATOR

Name

DROP OPERATOR -- remove an operator

Synopsis

DROP OPERATOR [ IF EXISTS ] name ( { left_type | NONE } , { right_type | NONE } ) [ CASCADE | RESTRICT ]

Description

DROP OPERATOR drops an existing operator from the database system. To execute this command you must be the owner of the operator.

Parameters

IF EXISTS

Do not throw an error if the operator does not exist. A notice is issued in this case.

name

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of an existing operator.

left_type

The data type of the operator's left operand; write NONE if the operator has no left operand.

right_type

The data type of the operator's right operand; write NONE if the operator has no right operand.

CASCADE

Automatically drop objects that depend on the operator.

RESTRICT

Refuse to drop the operator if any objects depend on it. This is the default.

Examples

Remove the power operator a^b for type integer:

DROP OPERATOR ^ (integer, integer);

Remove the left unary bitwise complement operator ~b for type bit:

DROP OPERATOR ~ (none, bit);

Remove the right unary factorial operator x! for type bigint:

DROP OPERATOR ! (bigint, none);

Compatibility

There is no DROP OPERATOR statement in the SQL standard.

See Also

CREATE OPERATOR, ALTER OPERATOR
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DROP LANGUAGE | Up | DROP OPERATOR CLASS


DROP OPERATOR CLASS

Name

DROP OPERATOR CLASS -- remove an operator class

Synopsis

DROP OPERATOR CLASS [ IF EXISTS ] name USING index_method [ CASCADE | RESTRICT ]

Description

DROP OPERATOR CLASS drops an existing operator class. To execute this command you must be the owner of the operator class.

DROP OPERATOR CLASS does not drop any of the operators or functions referenced by the class. If there are any indexes depending on the operator class, you will need to specify CASCADE for the drop to complete.

Parameters

IF EXISTS

Do not throw an error if the operator class does not exist. A notice is issued in this case.

name

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of an existing operator class.

index_method

The name of the index access method the operator class is for.

CASCADE

Automatically drop objects that depend on the operator class.

RESTRICT

Refuse to drop the operator class if any objects depend on it. This is the default.

Notes

DROP OPERATOR CLASS will not drop the operator family containing the class, even if there is nothing else left in the family (in particular, in the case where the family was implicitly created by CREATE OPERATOR CLASS). An empty operator family is harmless, but for the sake of tidiness you might wish to remove the family with DROP OPERATOR FAMILY; or perhaps better, use DROP OPERATOR FAMILY in the first place.

Examples

Remove the B-tree operator class widget_ops:

DROP OPERATOR CLASS widget_ops USING btree;

This command will not succeed if there are any existing indexes that use the operator class. Add CASCADE to drop such indexes along with the operator class.

Compatibility

There is no DROP OPERATOR CLASS statement in the SQL standard.

See Also

ALTER OPERATOR CLASS, CREATE OPERATOR CLASS, DROP OPERATOR FAMILY
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DROP OPERATOR | Up | DROP OPERATOR FAMILY


DROP OPERATOR FAMILY

Name

DROP OPERATOR FAMILY -- remove an operator family

Synopsis

DROP OPERATOR FAMILY [ IF EXISTS ] name USING index_method [ CASCADE | RESTRICT ]

Description

DROP OPERATOR FAMILY drops an existing operator family. To execute this command you must be the owner of the operator family.

DROP OPERATOR FAMILY includes dropping any operator classes contained in the family, but it does not drop any of the operators or functions referenced by the family. If there are any indexes depending on operator classes within the family, you will need to specify CASCADE for the drop to complete.

Parameters

IF EXISTS

Do not throw an error if the operator family does not exist. A notice is issued in this case.

name

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of an existing operator family.

index_method

The name of the index access method the operator family is for.

CASCADE

Automatically drop objects that depend on the operator family.

RESTRICT

Refuse to drop the operator family if any objects depend on it. This is the default.

Examples

Remove the B-tree operator family float_ops:

DROP OPERATOR FAMILY float_ops USING btree;

This command will not succeed if there are any existing indexes that use operator classes within the family. Add CASCADE to drop such indexes along with the operator family.

Compatibility

There is no DROP OPERATOR FAMILY statement in the SQL standard.

See Also

ALTER OPERATOR FAMILY, CREATE OPERATOR FAMILY, ALTER OPERATOR CLASS, CREATE OPERATOR CLASS, DROP OPERATOR CLASS
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DROP OPERATOR CLASS | Up | DROP OWNED


DROP OWNED

Name

DROP OWNED -- remove database objects owned by a database role

Synopsis

DROP OWNED BY name [, ...] [ CASCADE | RESTRICT ]

Description

DROP OWNED drops all the objects within the current database that are owned by one of the specified roles. Any privileges granted to the given roles on objects in the current database and on shared objects (databases, tablespaces) will also be revoked.

Parameters

name

The name of a role whose objects will be dropped, and whose privileges will be revoked.

CASCADE

Automatically drop objects that depend on the affected objects.

RESTRICT

Refuse to drop the objects owned by a role if any other database objects depend on one of the affected objects. This is the default.

Notes

DROP OWNED is often used to prepare for the removal of one or more roles. Because DROP OWNED only affects the objects in the current database, it is usually necessary to execute this command in each database that contains objects owned by a role that is to be removed.

Using the CASCADE option might make the command recurse to objects owned by other users.

The REASSIGN OWNED command is an alternative that reassigns the ownership of all the database objects owned by one or more roles.

Databases and tablespaces owned by the role(s) will not be removed.

Compatibility

The DROP OWNED statement is a PostgreSQL extension.

See Also

REASSIGN OWNED, DROP ROLE
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DROP OPERATOR FAMILY | Up | DROP ROLE


DROP ROLE

Name

DROP ROLE -- remove a database role

Synopsis

DROP ROLE [ IF EXISTS ] name [, ...]

Description

DROP ROLE removes the specified role(s). To drop a superuser role, you must be a superuser yourself; to drop non-superuser roles, you must have CREATEROLE privilege.

A role cannot be removed if it is still referenced in any database of the cluster; an error will be raised if so. Before dropping the role, you must drop all the objects it owns (or reassign their ownership) and revoke any privileges the role has been granted. The REASSIGN OWNED and DROP OWNED commands can be useful for this purpose.

However, it is not necessary to remove role memberships involving the role; DROP ROLE automatically revokes any memberships of the target role in other roles, and of other roles in the target role. The other roles are not dropped nor otherwise affected.

Parameters

IF EXISTS

Do not throw an error if the role does not exist. A notice is issued in this case.

name

The name of the role to remove.

Notes

PostgreSQL includes a program dropuser that has the same functionality as this command (in fact, it calls this command) but can be run from the command shell.

Examples

To drop a role:

DROP ROLE jonathan;

Compatibility

The SQL standard defines DROP ROLE, but it allows only one role to be dropped at a time, and it specifies different privilege requirements than PostgreSQL uses.

See Also

CREATE ROLE, ALTER ROLE, SET ROLE
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DROP OWNED | Up | DROP RULE


DROP RULE

Name

DROP RULE -- remove a rewrite rule

Synopsis

DROP RULE [ IF EXISTS ] name ON table [ CASCADE | RESTRICT ]

Description

DROP RULE drops a rewrite rule.

Parameters

IF EXISTS

Do not throw an error if the rule does not exist. A notice is issued in this case.

name

The name of the rule to drop.

table

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of the table or view that the rule applies to.

CASCADE

Automatically drop objects that depend on the rule.

RESTRICT

Refuse to drop the rule if any objects depend on it. This is the default.

Examples

To drop the rewrite rule newrule:

DROP RULE newrule ON mytable;

Compatibility

There is no DROP RULE statement in the SQL standard.

See Also

CREATE RULE
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DROP ROLE | Up | DROP SCHEMA


DROP SCHEMA

Name

DROP SCHEMA -- remove a schema

Synopsis

DROP SCHEMA [ IF EXISTS ] name [, ...] [ CASCADE | RESTRICT ]

Description

DROP SCHEMA removes schemas from the database.

A schema can only be dropped by its owner or a superuser. Note that the owner can drop the schema (and thereby all contained objects) even if he does not own some of the objects within the schema.

Parameters

IF EXISTS

Do not throw an error if the schema does not exist. A notice is issued in this case.

name

The name of a schema.

CASCADE

Automatically drop objects (tables, functions, etc.) that are contained in the schema.

RESTRICT

Refuse to drop the schema if it contains any objects. This is the default.

Examples

To remove schema mystuff from the database, along with everything it contains:

DROP SCHEMA mystuff CASCADE;

Compatibility

DROP SCHEMA is fully conforming with the SQL standard, except that the standard only allows one schema to be dropped per command, and apart from the IF EXISTS option, which is a PostgreSQL extension.

See Also

ALTER SCHEMA, CREATE SCHEMA
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DROP RULE | Up | DROP SEQUENCE


DROP SEQUENCE

Name

DROP SEQUENCE -- remove a sequence

Synopsis

DROP SEQUENCE [ IF EXISTS ] name [, ...] [ CASCADE | RESTRICT ]

Description

DROP SEQUENCE removes sequence number generators. A sequence can only be dropped by its owner or a superuser.

Parameters

IF EXISTS

Do not throw an error if the sequence does not exist. A notice is issued in this case.

name

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of a sequence.

CASCADE

Automatically drop objects that depend on the sequence.

RESTRICT

Refuse to drop the sequence if any objects depend on it. This is the default.

Examples

To remove the sequence serial:

DROP SEQUENCE serial;

Compatibility

DROP SEQUENCE conforms to the SQL standard, except that the standard only allows one sequence to be dropped per command, and apart from the IF EXISTS option, which is a PostgreSQL extension.

See Also

CREATE SEQUENCE, ALTER SEQUENCE
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DROP SCHEMA | Up | DROP SERVER


DROP SERVER

Name

DROP SERVER -- remove a foreign server descriptor

Synopsis

DROP SERVER [ IF EXISTS ] server_name [ CASCADE | RESTRICT ]

Description

DROP SERVER removes an existing foreign server descriptor. To execute this command, the current user must be the owner of the server.

Parameters

IF EXISTS

Do not throw an error if the server does not exist. A notice is issued in this case.

server_name

The name of an existing server.

CASCADE

Automatically drop objects that depend on the server (such as user mappings).

RESTRICT

Refuse to drop the server if any objects depend on it. This is the default.

Examples

Drop a server foo if it exists:

DROP SERVER IF EXISTS foo;

Compatibility

DROP SERVER conforms to ISO/IEC 9075-9 (SQL/MED). The IF EXISTS clause is a PostgreSQL extension.

See Also

CREATE SERVER, ALTER SERVER
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DROP SEQUENCE | Up | DROP TABLE


DROP TABLE

Name

DROP TABLE -- remove a table

Synopsis

DROP TABLE [ IF EXISTS ] name [, ...] [ CASCADE | RESTRICT ]

Description

DROP TABLE removes tables from the database. Only its owner can drop a table. To empty a table of rows without destroying the table, use DELETE or TRUNCATE.

DROP TABLE always removes any indexes, rules, triggers, and constraints that exist for the target table. However, to drop a table that is referenced by a view or a foreign-key constraint of another table, CASCADE must be specified. (CASCADE will remove a dependent view entirely, but in the foreign-key case it will only remove the foreign-key constraint, not the other table entirely.)

Parameters

IF EXISTS

Do not throw an error if the table does not exist. A notice is issued in this case.

name

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of the table to drop.

CASCADE

Automatically drop objects that depend on the table (such as views).

RESTRICT

Refuse to drop the table if any objects depend on it. This is the default.

Examples

To destroy two tables, films and distributors:

DROP TABLE films, distributors;

Compatibility

This command conforms to the SQL standard, except that the standard only allows one table to be dropped per command, and apart from the IF EXISTS option, which is a PostgreSQL extension.

See Also

ALTER TABLE, CREATE TABLE
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DROP SERVER | Up | DROP TABLESPACE


DROP TABLESPACE

Name

DROP TABLESPACE -- remove a tablespace

Synopsis

DROP TABLESPACE [ IF EXISTS ] tablespace_name

Description

DROP TABLESPACE removes a tablespace from the system.

A tablespace can only be dropped by its owner or a superuser. The tablespace must be empty of all database objects before it can be dropped. It is possible that objects in other databases might still reside in the tablespace even if no objects in the current database are using the tablespace. Also, if the tablespace is listed in the temp_tablespaces setting of any active session, the DROP might fail due to temporary files residing in the tablespace.

Parameters

IF EXISTS

Do not throw an error if the tablespace does not exist. A notice is issued in this case.

tablespace_name

The name of a tablespace.

Notes

DROP TABLESPACE cannot be executed inside a transaction block.

Examples

To remove tablespace mystuff from the system:

DROP TABLESPACE mystuff;

Compatibility

DROP TABLESPACE is a PostgreSQL extension.

See Also

CREATE TABLESPACE, ALTER TABLESPACE
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DROP TABLE | Up | DROP TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION


DROP TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION

Name

DROP TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION -- remove a text search configuration

Synopsis

DROP TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION [ IF EXISTS ] name [ CASCADE | RESTRICT ]

Description

DROP TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION drops an existing text search configuration. To execute this command you must be the owner of the configuration.

Parameters

IF EXISTS

Do not throw an error if the text search configuration does not exist. A notice is issued in this case.

name

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of an existing text search configuration.

CASCADE

Automatically drop objects that depend on the text search configuration.

RESTRICT

Refuse to drop the text search configuration if any objects depend on it. This is the default.

Examples

Remove the text search configuration my_english:

DROP TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION my_english;

This command will not succeed if there are any existing indexes that reference the configuration in to_tsvector calls. Add CASCADE to drop such indexes along with the text search configuration.

Compatibility

There is no DROP TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION statement in the SQL standard.

See Also

ALTER TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION, CREATE TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION
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DROP TABLESPACE | Up | DROP TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY


DROP TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY

Name

DROP TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY -- remove a text search dictionary

Synopsis

DROP TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY [ IF EXISTS ] name [ CASCADE | RESTRICT ]

Description

DROP TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY drops an existing text search dictionary. To execute this command you must be the owner of the dictionary.

Parameters

IF EXISTS

Do not throw an error if the text search dictionary does not exist. A notice is issued in this case.

name

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of an existing text search dictionary.

CASCADE

Automatically drop objects that depend on the text search dictionary.

RESTRICT

Refuse to drop the text search dictionary if any objects depend on it. This is the default.

Examples

Remove the text search dictionary english:

DROP TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY english;

This command will not succeed if there are any existing text search configurations that use the dictionary. Add CASCADE to drop such configurations along with the dictionary.

Compatibility

There is no DROP TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY statement in the SQL standard.

See Also

ALTER TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY, CREATE TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY
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DROP TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION | Up | DROP TEXT SEARCH PARSER


DROP TEXT SEARCH PARSER

Name

DROP TEXT SEARCH PARSER -- remove a text search parser

Synopsis

DROP TEXT SEARCH PARSER [ IF EXISTS ] name [ CASCADE | RESTRICT ]

Description

DROP TEXT SEARCH PARSER drops an existing text search parser. You must be a superuser to use this command.

Parameters

IF EXISTS

Do not throw an error if the text search parser does not exist. A notice is issued in this case.

name

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of an existing text search parser.

CASCADE

Automatically drop objects that depend on the text search parser.

RESTRICT

Refuse to drop the text search parser if any objects depend on it. This is the default.

Examples

Remove the text search parser my_parser:

DROP TEXT SEARCH PARSER my_parser;

This command will not succeed if there are any existing text search configurations that use the parser. Add CASCADE to drop such configurations along with the parser.

Compatibility

There is no DROP TEXT SEARCH PARSER statement in the SQL standard.

See Also

ALTER TEXT SEARCH PARSER, CREATE TEXT SEARCH PARSER
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DROP TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY | Up | DROP TEXT SEARCH TEMPLATE


DROP TEXT SEARCH TEMPLATE

Name

DROP TEXT SEARCH TEMPLATE -- remove a text search template

Synopsis

DROP TEXT SEARCH TEMPLATE [ IF EXISTS ] name [ CASCADE | RESTRICT ]

Description

DROP TEXT SEARCH TEMPLATE drops an existing text search template. You must be a superuser to use this command.

Parameters

IF EXISTS

Do not throw an error if the text search template does not exist. A notice is issued in this case.

name

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of an existing text search template.

CASCADE

Automatically drop objects that depend on the text search template.

RESTRICT

Refuse to drop the text search template if any objects depend on it. This is the default.

Examples

Remove the text search template thesaurus:

DROP TEXT SEARCH TEMPLATE thesaurus;

This command will not succeed if there are any existing text search dictionaries that use the template. Add CASCADE to drop such dictionaries along with the template.

Compatibility

There is no DROP TEXT SEARCH TEMPLATE statement in the SQL standard.

See Also

ALTER TEXT SEARCH TEMPLATE, CREATE TEXT SEARCH TEMPLATE
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DROP TEXT SEARCH PARSER | Up | DROP TRIGGER


DROP TRIGGER

Name

DROP TRIGGER -- remove a trigger

Synopsis

DROP TRIGGER [ IF EXISTS ] name ON table [ CASCADE | RESTRICT ]

Description

DROP TRIGGER removes an existing trigger definition. To execute this command, the current user must be the owner of the table for which the trigger is defined.

Parameters

IF EXISTS

Do not throw an error if the trigger does not exist. A notice is issued in this case.

name

The name of the trigger to remove.

table

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of the table for which the trigger is defined.

CASCADE

Automatically drop objects that depend on the trigger.

RESTRICT

Refuse to drop the trigger if any objects depend on it. This is the default.

Examples

Destroy the trigger if_dist_exists on the table films:

DROP TRIGGER if_dist_exists ON films;

Compatibility

The DROP TRIGGER statement in PostgreSQL is incompatible with the SQL standard. In the SQL standard, trigger names are not local to tables, so the command is simply DROP TRIGGER name.

See Also

CREATE TRIGGER
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DROP TEXT SEARCH TEMPLATE | Up | DROP TYPE


DROP TYPE

Name

DROP TYPE -- remove a data type

Synopsis

DROP TYPE [ IF EXISTS ] name [, ...] [ CASCADE | RESTRICT ]

Description

DROP TYPE removes a user-defined data type. Only the owner of a type can remove it.

Parameters

IF EXISTS

Do not throw an error if the type does not exist. A notice is issued in this case.

name

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of the data type to remove.

CASCADE

Automatically drop objects that depend on the type (such as table columns, functions, operators).

RESTRICT

Refuse to drop the type if any objects depend on it. This is the default.

Examples

To remove the data type box:

DROP TYPE box;

Compatibility

This command is similar to the corresponding command in the SQL standard, apart from the IF EXISTS option, which is a PostgreSQL extension. But note that much of the CREATE TYPE command and the data type extension mechanisms in PostgreSQL differ from the SQL standard.

See Also

ALTER TYPE, CREATE TYPE
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DROP TRIGGER | Up | DROP USER


DROP USER

Name

DROP USER -- remove a database role

Synopsis

DROP USER [ IF EXISTS ] name [, ...]

Description

DROP USER is now an alias for DROP ROLE.

Compatibility

The DROP USER statement is a PostgreSQL extension. The SQL standard leaves the definition of users to the implementation.

See Also

DROP ROLE
Prev | Home | Next
DROP TYPE | Up | DROP USER MAPPING


DROP USER MAPPING

Name

DROP USER MAPPING -- remove a user mapping for a foreign server

Synopsis

DROP USER MAPPING [ IF EXISTS ] FOR { user_name | USER | CURRENT_USER | PUBLIC } SERVER server_name

Description

DROP USER MAPPING removes an existing user mapping from foreign server.

The owner of a foreign server can drop user mappings for that server for any user. Also, a user can drop a user mapping for his own user name if USAGE privilege on the server has been granted to the user.

Parameters

IF EXISTS

Do not throw an error if the user mapping does not exist. A notice is issued in this case.

user_name

User name of the mapping. CURRENT_USER and USER match the name of the current user. PUBLIC is used to match all present and future user names in the system.

server_name

Server name of the user mapping.

Examples

Drop a user mapping bob, server foo if it exists:

DROP USER MAPPING IF EXISTS FOR bob SERVER foo;

Compatibility

DROP USER MAPPING conforms to ISO/IEC 9075-9 (SQL/MED). The IF EXISTS clause is a PostgreSQL extension.

See Also

CREATE USER MAPPING, ALTER USER MAPPING
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DROP USER | Up | DROP VIEW


DROP VIEW

Name

DROP VIEW -- remove a view

Synopsis

DROP VIEW [ IF EXISTS ] name [, ...] [ CASCADE | RESTRICT ]

Description

DROP VIEW drops an existing view. To execute this command you must be the owner of the view.

Parameters

IF EXISTS

Do not throw an error if the view does not exist. A notice is issued in this case.

name

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of the view to remove.

CASCADE

Automatically drop objects that depend on the view (such as other views).

RESTRICT

Refuse to drop the view if any objects depend on it. This is the default.

Examples

This command will remove the view called kinds:

DROP VIEW kinds;

Compatibility

This command conforms to the SQL standard, except that the standard only allows one view to be dropped per command, and apart from the IF EXISTS option, which is a PostgreSQL extension.

See Also

ALTER VIEW, CREATE VIEW
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DROP USER MAPPING | Up | END


END

Name

END -- commit the current transaction

Synopsis

END [ WORK | TRANSACTION ]

Description

END commits the current transaction. All changes made by the transaction become visible to others and are guaranteed to be durable if a crash occurs. This command is a PostgreSQL extension that is equivalent to COMMIT.

Parameters

WORK
TRANSACTION

Optional key words. They have no effect.

Notes

Use ROLLBACK to abort a transaction.

Issuing END when not inside a transaction does no harm, but it will provoke a warning message.

Examples

To commit the current transaction and make all changes permanent:

END;

Compatibility

END is a PostgreSQL extension that provides functionality equivalent to COMMIT, which is specified in the SQL standard.

See Also

BEGIN, COMMIT, ROLLBACK
Prev | Home | Next
DROP VIEW | Up | EXECUTE


EXECUTE

Name

EXECUTE -- execute a prepared statement

Synopsis

EXECUTE name [ ( parameter [, ...] ) ]

Description

EXECUTE is used to execute a previously prepared statement. Since prepared statements only exist for the duration of a session, the prepared statement must have been created by a PREPARE statement executed earlier in the current session.

If the PREPARE statement that created the statement specified some parameters, a compatible set of parameters must be passed to the EXECUTE statement, or else an error is raised. Note that (unlike functions) prepared statements are not overloaded based on the type or number of their parameters; the name of a prepared statement must be unique within a database session.

For more information on the creation and usage of prepared statements, see PREPARE.

Parameters

name

The name of the prepared statement to execute.

parameter

The actual value of a parameter to the prepared statement. This must be an expression yielding a value that is compatible with the data type of this parameter, as was determined when the prepared statement was created.

Outputs

The command tag returned by EXECUTE is that of the prepared statement, and not EXECUTE.

Examples

Examples are given in the Examples section of the PREPARE documentation.

Compatibility

The SQL standard includes an EXECUTE statement, but it is only for use in embedded SQL. This version of the EXECUTE statement also uses a somewhat different syntax.

See Also

DEALLOCATE, PREPARE
Prev | Home | Next
END | Up | EXPLAIN


EXPLAIN

Name

EXPLAIN -- show the execution plan of a statement

Synopsis

EXPLAIN [ ( option [, ...] ) ] statement
EXPLAIN [ ANALYZE ] [ VERBOSE ] statement

where option can be one of:

    ANALYZE [ boolean ]
    VERBOSE [ boolean ]
    COSTS [ boolean ]
    BUFFERS [ boolean ]
    FORMAT { TEXT | XML | JSON | YAML }

Description

This command displays the execution plan that the PostgreSQL planner generates for the supplied statement. The execution plan shows how the table(s) referenced by the statement will be scanned — by plain sequential scan, index scan, etc. — and if multiple tables are referenced, what join algorithms will be used to bring together the required rows from each input table.

The most critical part of the display is the estimated statement execution cost, which is the planner's guess at how long it will take to run the statement (measured in units of disk page fetches). Actually two numbers are shown: the start-up time before the first row can be returned, and the total time to return all the rows. For most queries the total time is what matters, but in contexts such as a subquery in EXISTS, the planner will choose the smallest start-up time instead of the smallest total time (since the executor will stop after getting one row, anyway). Also, if you limit the number of rows to return with a LIMIT clause, the planner makes an appropriate interpolation between the endpoint costs to estimate which plan is really the cheapest.

The ANALYZE option causes the statement to be actually executed, not only planned. The total elapsed time expended within each plan node (in milliseconds) and total number of rows it actually returned are added to the display. This is useful for seeing whether the planner's estimates are close to reality.

Important: Keep in mind that the statement is actually executed when the ANALYZE option is used. Although EXPLAIN will discard any output that a SELECT would return, other side effects of the statement will happen as usual. If you wish to use EXPLAIN ANALYZE on an INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, CREATE TABLE AS, or EXECUTE statement without letting the command affect your data, use this approach:

BEGIN;
EXPLAIN ANALYZE ...;
ROLLBACK;

Only the ANALYZE and VERBOSE options can be specified, and only in that order, without surrounding the option list in parentheses. Prior to PostgreSQL 9.0, the unparenthesized syntax was the only one supported. It is expected that all new options will be supported only in the parenthesized syntax.

Parameters

ANALYZE

Carry out the command and show the actual run times. This parameter defaults to FALSE.

VERBOSE

Display additional information regarding the plan. Specifically, include the output column list for each node in the plan tree, schema-qualify table and function names, always label variables in expressions with their range table alias, and always print the name of each trigger for which statistics are displayed. This parameter defaults to FALSE.

COSTS

Include information on the estimated startup and total cost of each plan node, as well as the estimated number of rows and the estimated width of each row. This parameter defaults to TRUE.

BUFFERS

Include information on buffer usage. Specifically, include the number of shared blocks hits, reads, and writes, the number of local blocks hits, reads, and writes, and the number of temp blocks reads and writes. Shared blocks, local blocks, and temp blocks contain tables and indexes, temporary tables and temporary indexes, and disk blocks used in sort and materialized plans, respectively. The number of blocks shown for an upper-level node includes those used by all its child nodes. In text format, only non-zero values are printed. This parameter may only be used with the ANALYZE parameter. It defaults to FALSE.

FORMAT

Specify the output format, which can be TEXT, XML, JSON, or YAML. Non-text output contains the same information as the text output format, but is easier for programs to parse. This parameter defaults to TEXT.

boolean

Specifies whether the selected option should be turned on or off. You can write TRUE, ON, or 1 to enable the option, and FALSE, OFF, or 0 to disable it. The boolean value can also be omitted, in which case TRUE is assumed.

statement

Any SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, VALUES, EXECUTE, DECLARE, or CREATE TABLE AS statement, whose execution plan you wish to see.

Notes

There is only sparse documentation on the optimizer's use of cost information in PostgreSQL. Refer to Section 14.1 for more information.

In order to allow the PostgreSQL query planner to make reasonably informed decisions when optimizing queries, the ANALYZE statement should be run to record statistics about the distribution of data within the table. If you have not done this (or if the statistical distribution of the data in the table has changed significantly since the last time ANALYZE was run), the estimated costs are unlikely to conform to the real properties of the query, and consequently an inferior query plan might be chosen.

In order to measure the run-time cost of each node in the execution plan, the current implementation of EXPLAIN ANALYZE can add considerable profiling overhead to query execution. As a result, running EXPLAIN ANALYZE on a query can sometimes take significantly longer than executing the query normally. The amount of overhead depends on the nature of the query.

Examples

To show the plan for a simple query on a table with a single integer column and 10000 rows:

EXPLAIN SELECT * FROM foo;

                       QUERY PLAN
---------------------------------------------------------
 Seq Scan on foo  (cost=0.00..155.00 rows=10000 width=4)
(1 row)

Here is the same query, with JSON formatting:

EXPLAIN (FORMAT JSON) SELECT * FROM foo;
           QUERY PLAN
--------------------------------
 [                             +
   {                           +
     "Plan": {                 +
       "Node Type": "Seq Scan",+
       "Relation Name": "foo", +
       "Alias": "foo",         +
       "Startup Cost": 0.00,   +
       "Total Cost": 155.00,   +
       "Plan Rows": 10000,     +
       "Plan Width": 4         +
     }                         +
   }                           +
 ]
(1 row)

If there is an index and we use a query with an indexable WHERE condition, EXPLAIN might show a different plan:

EXPLAIN SELECT * FROM foo WHERE i = 4;

                         QUERY PLAN
--------------------------------------------------------------
 Index Scan using fi on foo  (cost=0.00..5.98 rows=1 width=4)
   Index Cond: (i = 4)
(2 rows)

Here is the same query, but in YAML output:

EXPLAIN (FORMAT YAML) SELECT * FROM foo WHERE i='4';
          QUERY PLAN
-------------------------------
 - Plan:                      +
     Node Type: "Index Scan"  +
     Scan Direction: "Forward"+
     Index Name: "fi"         +
     Relation Name: "foo"     +
     Alias: "foo"             +
     Startup Cost: 0.00       +
     Total Cost: 5.98         +
     Plan Rows: 1             +
     Plan Width: 4            +
     Index Cond: "(i = 4)"
(1 row)

XML output is left as an exercise to the reader.

Here is the same plan with costs suppressed:

EXPLAIN (COSTS FALSE) SELECT * FROM foo WHERE i = 4;

        QUERY PLAN
----------------------------
 Index Scan using fi on foo
   Index Cond: (i = 4)
(2 rows)

Here is an example of a query plan for a query using an aggregate function:

EXPLAIN SELECT sum(i) FROM foo WHERE i < 10;

                             QUERY PLAN
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 Aggregate  (cost=23.93..23.93 rows=1 width=4)
   ->  Index Scan using fi on foo  (cost=0.00..23.92 rows=6 width=4)
         Index Cond: (i < 10)
(3 rows)

Here is an example of using EXPLAIN EXECUTE to display the execution plan for a prepared query:

PREPARE query(int, int) AS SELECT sum(bar) FROM test
    WHERE id > $1 AND id < $2
    GROUP BY foo;

EXPLAIN ANALYZE EXECUTE query(100, 200);

                                                       QUERY PLAN
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 HashAggregate  (cost=39.53..39.53 rows=1 width=8) (actual time=0.661..0.672 rows=7 loops=1)
   ->  Index Scan using test_pkey on test  (cost=0.00..32.97 rows=1311 width=8) (actual time=0.050..0.395 rows=99 loops=1)
         Index Cond: ((id > $1) AND (id < $2))
 Total runtime: 0.851 ms
(4 rows)

Of course, the specific numbers shown here depend on the actual contents of the tables involved. Also note that the numbers, and even the selected query strategy, might vary between PostgreSQL releases due to planner improvements. In addition, the ANALYZE command uses random sampling to estimate data statistics; therefore, it is possible for cost estimates to change after a fresh run of ANALYZE, even if the actual distribution of data in the table has not changed.

Compatibility

There is no EXPLAIN statement defined in the SQL standard.

See Also

ANALYZE
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EXECUTE | Up | FETCH


FETCH

Name

FETCH -- retrieve rows from a query using a cursor

Synopsis

FETCH [ direction [ FROM | IN ] ] cursor_name

where direction can be empty or one of:

    NEXT
    PRIOR
    FIRST
    LAST
    ABSOLUTE count
    RELATIVE count
    count
    ALL
    FORWARD
    FORWARD count
    FORWARD ALL
    BACKWARD
    BACKWARD count
    BACKWARD ALL

Description

FETCH retrieves rows using a previously-created cursor.

A cursor has an associated position, which is used by FETCH. The cursor position can be before the first row of the query result, on any particular row of the result, or after the last row of the result. When created, a cursor is positioned before the first row. After fetching some rows, the cursor is positioned on the row most recently retrieved. If FETCH runs off the end of the available rows then the cursor is left positioned after the last row, or before the first row if fetching backward. FETCH ALL or FETCH BACKWARD ALL will always leave the cursor positioned after the last row or before the first row.

The forms NEXT, PRIOR, FIRST, LAST, ABSOLUTE, RELATIVE fetch a single row after moving the cursor appropriately. If there is no such row, an empty result is returned, and the cursor is left positioned before the first row or after the last row as appropriate.

The forms using FORWARD and BACKWARD retrieve the indicated number of rows moving in the forward or backward direction, leaving the cursor positioned on the last-returned row (or after/before all rows, if the count exceeds the number of rows available).

RELATIVE 0, FORWARD 0, and BACKWARD 0 all request fetching the current row without moving the cursor, that is, re-fetching the most recently fetched row. This will succeed unless the cursor is positioned before the first row or after the last row; in which case, no row is returned.

Note: This page describes usage of cursors at the SQL command level. If you are trying to use cursors inside a PL/pgSQL function, the rules are different — see Section 39.7.

Parameters

direction

direction defines the fetch direction and number of rows to fetch. It can be one of the following:

NEXT

Fetch the next row. This is the default if direction is omitted.

PRIOR

Fetch the prior row.

FIRST

Fetch the first row of the query (same as ABSOLUTE 1).

LAST

Fetch the last row of the query (same as ABSOLUTE -1).

ABSOLUTE count

Fetch the count'th row of the query, or the abs(count)'th row from the end if count is negative. Position before first row or after last row if count is out of range; in particular, ABSOLUTE 0 positions before the first row.

RELATIVE count

Fetch the count'th succeeding row, or the abs(count)'th prior row if count is negative. RELATIVE 0 re-fetches the current row, if any.

count

Fetch the next count rows (same as FORWARD count).

ALL

Fetch all remaining rows (same as FORWARD ALL).

FORWARD

Fetch the next row (same as NEXT).

FORWARD count

Fetch the next count rows. FORWARD 0 re-fetches the current row.

FORWARD ALL

Fetch all remaining rows.

BACKWARD

Fetch the prior row (same as PRIOR).

BACKWARD count

Fetch the prior count rows (scanning backwards). BACKWARD 0 re-fetches the current row.

BACKWARD ALL

Fetch all prior rows (scanning backwards).

count

count is a possibly-signed integer constant, determining the location or number of rows to fetch. For FORWARD and BACKWARD cases, specifying a negative count is equivalent to changing the sense of FORWARD and BACKWARD.

cursor_name

An open cursor's name.

Outputs

On successful completion, a FETCH command returns a command tag of the form

FETCH count

The count is the number of rows fetched (possibly zero). Note that in psql, the command tag will not actually be displayed, since psql displays the fetched rows instead.

Notes

The cursor should be declared with the SCROLL option if one intends to use any variants of FETCH other than FETCH NEXT or FETCH FORWARD with a positive count. For simple queries PostgreSQL will allow backwards fetch from cursors not declared with SCROLL, but this behavior is best not relied on. If the cursor is declared with NO SCROLL, no backward fetches are allowed.

ABSOLUTE fetches are not any faster than navigating to the desired row with a relative move: the underlying implementation must traverse all the intermediate rows anyway. Negative absolute fetches are even worse: the query must be read to the end to find the last row, and then traversed backward from there. However, rewinding to the start of the query (as with FETCH ABSOLUTE 0) is fast.

DECLARE is used to define a cursor. Use MOVE to change cursor position without retrieving data.

Examples

The following example traverses a table using a cursor:

BEGIN WORK;

-- Set up a cursor:
DECLARE liahona SCROLL CURSOR FOR SELECT * FROM films;

-- Fetch the first 5 rows in the cursor liahona:
FETCH FORWARD 5 FROM liahona;

 code  |          title          | did | date_prod  |   kind   |  len
-------+-------------------------+-----+------------+----------+-------
 BL101 | The Third Man           | 101 | 1949-12-23 | Drama    | 01:44
 BL102 | The African Queen       | 101 | 1951-08-11 | Romantic | 01:43
 JL201 | Une Femme est une Femme | 102 | 1961-03-12 | Romantic | 01:25
 P_301 | Vertigo                 | 103 | 1958-11-14 | Action   | 02:08
 P_302 | Becket                  | 103 | 1964-02-03 | Drama    | 02:28

-- Fetch the previous row:
FETCH PRIOR FROM liahona;

 code  |  title  | did | date_prod  |  kind  |  len
-------+---------+-----+------------+--------+-------
 P_301 | Vertigo | 103 | 1958-11-14 | Action | 02:08

-- Close the cursor and end the transaction:
CLOSE liahona;
COMMIT WORK;

Compatibility

The SQL standard defines FETCH for use in embedded SQL only. The variant of FETCH described here returns the data as if it were a SELECT result rather than placing it in host variables. Other than this point, FETCH is fully upward-compatible with the SQL standard.

The FETCH forms involving FORWARD and BACKWARD, as well as the forms FETCH count and FETCH ALL, in which FORWARD is implicit, are PostgreSQL extensions.

The SQL standard allows only FROM preceding the cursor name; the option to use IN, or to leave them out altogether, is an extension.

See Also

CLOSE, DECLARE, MOVE
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EXPLAIN | Up | GRANT


GRANT

Name

GRANT -- define access privileges

Synopsis

GRANT { { SELECT | INSERT | UPDATE | DELETE | TRUNCATE | REFERENCES | TRIGGER }
    [, ...] | ALL [ PRIVILEGES ] }
    ON { [ TABLE ] table_name [, ...]
         | ALL TABLES IN SCHEMA schema_name [, ...] }
    TO { [ GROUP ] role_name | PUBLIC } [, ...] [ WITH GRANT OPTION ]

GRANT { { SELECT | INSERT | UPDATE | REFERENCES } ( column [, ...] )
    [, ...] | ALL [ PRIVILEGES ] ( column [, ...] ) }
    ON [ TABLE ] table_name [, ...]
    TO { [ GROUP ] role_name | PUBLIC } [, ...] [ WITH GRANT OPTION ]

GRANT { { USAGE | SELECT | UPDATE }
    [, ...] | ALL [ PRIVILEGES ] }
    ON { SEQUENCE sequence_name [, ...]
         | ALL SEQUENCES IN SCHEMA schema_name [, ...] }
    TO { [ GROUP ] role_name | PUBLIC } [, ...] [ WITH GRANT OPTION ]

GRANT { { CREATE | CONNECT | TEMPORARY | TEMP } [, ...] | ALL [ PRIVILEGES ] }
    ON DATABASE database_name [, ...]
    TO { [ GROUP ] role_name | PUBLIC } [, ...] [ WITH GRANT OPTION ]

GRANT { USAGE | ALL [ PRIVILEGES ] }
    ON FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER fdw_name [, ...]
    TO { [ GROUP ] role_name | PUBLIC } [, ...] [ WITH GRANT OPTION ]

GRANT { USAGE | ALL [ PRIVILEGES ] }
    ON FOREIGN SERVER server_name [, ...]
    TO { [ GROUP ] role_name | PUBLIC } [, ...] [ WITH GRANT OPTION ]

GRANT { EXECUTE | ALL [ PRIVILEGES ] }
    ON { FUNCTION function_name ( [ [ argmode ] [ arg_name ] arg_type [, ...] ] ) [, ...]
         | ALL FUNCTIONS IN SCHEMA schema_name [, ...] }
    TO { [ GROUP ] role_name | PUBLIC } [, ...] [ WITH GRANT OPTION ]

GRANT { USAGE | ALL [ PRIVILEGES ] }
    ON LANGUAGE lang_name [, ...]
    TO { [ GROUP ] role_name | PUBLIC } [, ...] [ WITH GRANT OPTION ]

GRANT { { SELECT | UPDATE } [, ...] | ALL [ PRIVILEGES ] }
    ON LARGE OBJECT loid [, ...]
    TO { [ GROUP ] role_name | PUBLIC } [, ...] [ WITH GRANT OPTION ]

GRANT { { CREATE | USAGE } [, ...] | ALL [ PRIVILEGES ] }
    ON SCHEMA schema_name [, ...]
    TO { [ GROUP ] role_name | PUBLIC } [, ...] [ WITH GRANT OPTION ]

GRANT { CREATE | ALL [ PRIVILEGES ] }
    ON TABLESPACE tablespace_name [, ...]
    TO { [ GROUP ] role_name | PUBLIC } [, ...] [ WITH GRANT OPTION ]

GRANT role_name [, ...] TO role_name [, ...] [ WITH ADMIN OPTION ]

Description

The GRANT command has two basic variants: one that grants privileges on a database object (table, column, view, foreign table, sequence, database, foreign-data wrapper, foreign server, function, procedural language, schema, or tablespace), and one that grants membership in a role. These variants are similar in many ways, but they are different enough to be described separately.

GRANT on Database Objects

This variant of the GRANT command gives specific privileges on a database object to one or more roles. These privileges are added to those already granted, if any.

There is also an option to grant privileges on all objects of the same type within one or more schemas. This functionality is currently supported only for tables, sequences, and functions (but note that ALL TABLES is considered to include views and foreign tables).

The key word PUBLIC indicates that the privileges are to be granted to all roles, including those that might be created later. PUBLIC can be thought of as an implicitly defined group that always includes all roles. Any particular role will have the sum of privileges granted directly to it, privileges granted to any role it is presently a member of, and privileges granted to PUBLIC.

If WITH GRANT OPTION is specified, the recipient of the privilege can in turn grant it to others. Without a grant option, the recipient cannot do that. Grant options cannot be granted to PUBLIC.

There is no need to grant privileges to the owner of an object (usually the user that created it), as the owner has all privileges by default. (The owner could, however, choose to revoke some of his own privileges for safety.)

The right to drop an object, or to alter its definition in any way, is not treated as a grantable privilege; it is inherent in the owner, and cannot be granted or revoked. (However, a similar effect can be obtained by granting or revoking membership in the role that owns the object; see below.) The owner implicitly has all grant options for the object, too.

Depending on the type of object, the initial default privileges might include granting some privileges to PUBLIC. The default is no public access for tables, columns, schemas, and tablespaces; CONNECT privilege and TEMP table creation privilege for databases; EXECUTE privilege for functions; and USAGE privilege for languages. The object owner can of course revoke these privileges. (For maximum security, issue the REVOKE in the same transaction that creates the object; then there is no window in which another user can use the object.) Also, these initial default privilege settings can be changed using the ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES command.

The possible privileges are:

SELECT

Allows SELECT from any column, or the specific columns listed, of the specified table, view, or sequence. Also allows the use of COPY TO. This privilege is also needed to reference existing column values in UPDATE or DELETE. For sequences, this privilege also allows the use of the currval function. For large objects, this privilege allows the object to be read.

INSERT

Allows INSERT of a new row into the specified table. If specific columns are listed, only those columns may be assigned to in the INSERT command (other columns will therefore receive default values). Also allows COPY FROM.

UPDATE

Allows UPDATE of any column, or the specific columns listed, of the specified table. (In practice, any nontrivial UPDATE command will require SELECT privilege as well, since it must reference table columns to determine which rows to update, and/or to compute new values for columns.) SELECT ... FOR UPDATE and SELECT ... FOR SHARE also require this privilege on at least one column, in addition to the SELECT privilege. For sequences, this privilege allows the use of the nextval and setval functions. For large objects, this privilege allows writing or truncating the object.

DELETE

Allows DELETE of a row from the specified table. (In practice, any nontrivial DELETE command will require SELECT privilege as well, since it must reference table columns to determine which rows to delete.)

TRUNCATE

Allows TRUNCATE on the specified table.

REFERENCES

To create a foreign key constraint, it is necessary to have this privilege on both the referencing and referenced columns. The privilege may be granted for all columns of a table, or just specific columns.

TRIGGER

Allows the creation of a trigger on the specified table. (See the CREATE TRIGGER statement.)

CREATE

For databases, allows new schemas to be created within the database.

For schemas, allows new objects to be created within the schema. To rename an existing object, you must own the object and have this privilege for the containing schema.

For tablespaces, allows tables, indexes, and temporary files to be created within the tablespace, and allows databases to be created that have the tablespace as their default tablespace. (Note that revoking this privilege will not alter the placement of existing objects.)

CONNECT

Allows the user to connect to the specified database. This privilege is checked at connection startup (in addition to checking any restrictions imposed by pg_hba.conf).

TEMPORARY
TEMP

Allows temporary tables to be created while using the specified database.

EXECUTE

Allows the use of the specified function and the use of any operators that are implemented on top of the function. This is the only type of privilege that is applicable to functions. (This syntax works for aggregate functions, as well.)

USAGE

For procedural languages, allows the use of the specified language for the creation of functions in that language. This is the only type of privilege that is applicable to procedural languages.

For schemas, allows access to objects contained in the specified schema (assuming that the objects' own privilege requirements are also met). Essentially this allows the grantee to "look up" objects within the schema. Without this permission, it is still possible to see the object names, e.g. by querying the system tables. Also, after revoking this permission, existing backends might have statements that have previously performed this lookup, so this is not a completely secure way to prevent object access.

For sequences, this privilege allows the use of the currval and nextval functions.

For foreign-data wrappers, this privilege enables the grantee to create new servers using that foreign-data wrapper.

For servers, this privilege enables the grantee to create, alter, and drop his own user's user mappings associated with that server. Also, it enables the grantee to query the options of the server and associated user mappings.

ALL PRIVILEGES

Grant all of the available privileges at once. The PRIVILEGES key word is optional in PostgreSQL, though it is required by strict SQL.

The privileges required by other commands are listed on the reference page of the respective command.

GRANT on Roles

This variant of the GRANT command grants membership in a role to one or more other roles. Membership in a role is significant because it conveys the privileges granted to a role to each of its members.

If WITH ADMIN OPTION is specified, the member can in turn grant membership in the role to others, and revoke membership in the role as well. Without the admin option, ordinary users cannot do that. A role is not considered to hold WITH ADMIN OPTION on itself, but it may grant or revoke membership in itself from a database session where the session user matches the role. Database superusers can grant or revoke membership in any role to anyone. Roles having CREATEROLE privilege can grant or revoke membership in any role that is not a superuser.

Unlike the case with privileges, membership in a role cannot be granted to PUBLIC. Note also that this form of the command does not allow the noise word GROUP.

Notes

The REVOKE command is used to revoke access privileges.

Since PostgreSQL 8.1, the concepts of users and groups have been unified into a single kind of entity called a role. It is therefore no longer necessary to use the keyword GROUP to identify whether a grantee is a user or a group. GROUP is still allowed in the command, but it is a noise word.

A user may perform SELECT, INSERT, etc. on a column if he holds that privilege for either the specific column or its whole table. Granting the privilege at the table level and then revoking it for one column will not do what you might wish: the table-level grant is unaffected by a column-level operation.

When a non-owner of an object attempts to GRANT privileges on the object, the command will fail outright if the user has no privileges whatsoever on the object. As long as some privilege is available, the command will proceed, but it will grant only those privileges for which the user has grant options. The GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES forms will issue a warning message if no grant options are held, while the other forms will issue a warning if grant options for any of the privileges specifically named in the command are not held. (In principle these statements apply to the object owner as well, but since the owner is always treated as holding all grant options, the cases can never occur.)

It should be noted that database superusers can access all objects regardless of object privilege settings. This is comparable to the rights of root in a Unix system. As with root, it's unwise to operate as a superuser except when absolutely necessary.

If a superuser chooses to issue a GRANT or REVOKE command, the command is performed as though it were issued by the owner of the affected object. In particular, privileges granted via such a command will appear to have been granted by the object owner. (For role membership, the membership appears to have been granted by the containing role itself.)

GRANT and REVOKE can also be done by a role that is not the owner of the affected object, but is a member of the role that owns the object, or is a member of a role that holds privileges WITH GRANT OPTION on the object. In this case the privileges will be recorded as having been granted by the role that actually owns the object or holds the privileges WITH GRANT OPTION. For example, if table t1 is owned by role g1, of which role u1 is a member, then u1 can grant privileges on t1 to u2, but those privileges will appear to have been granted directly by g1. Any other member of role g1 could revoke them later.

If the role executing GRANT holds the required privileges indirectly via more than one role membership path, it is unspecified which containing role will be recorded as having done the grant. In such cases it is best practice to use SET ROLE to become the specific role you want to do the GRANT as.

Granting permission on a table does not automatically extend permissions to any sequences used by the table, including sequences tied to SERIAL columns. Permissions on sequences must be set separately.

Use psql's \dp command to obtain information about existing privileges for tables and columns. For example:

=> \dp mytable
                              Access privileges
 Schema |  Name   | Type  |   Access privileges   | Column access privileges
--------+---------+-------+-----------------------+--------------------------
 public | mytable | table | miriam=arwdDxt/miriam | col1:
                          : =r/miriam             :   miriam_rw=rw/miriam
                          : admin=arw/miriam
(1 row)

The entries shown by \dp are interpreted thus:

rolename=xxxx -- privileges granted to a role
        =xxxx -- privileges granted to PUBLIC

            r -- SELECT ("read")
            w -- UPDATE ("write")
            a -- INSERT ("append")
            d -- DELETE
            D -- TRUNCATE
            x -- REFERENCES
            t -- TRIGGER
            X -- EXECUTE
            U -- USAGE
            C -- CREATE
            c -- CONNECT
            T -- TEMPORARY
      arwdDxt -- ALL PRIVILEGES (for tables, varies for other objects)
            * -- grant option for preceding privilege

        /yyyy -- role that granted this privilege

The above example display would be seen by user miriam after creating table mytable and doing:

GRANT SELECT ON mytable TO PUBLIC;
GRANT SELECT, UPDATE, INSERT ON mytable TO admin;
GRANT SELECT (col1), UPDATE (col1) ON mytable TO miriam_rw;

For non-table objects there are other \d commands that can display their privileges.

If the "Access privileges" column is empty for a given object, it means the object has default privileges (that is, its privileges column is null). Default privileges always include all privileges for the owner, and can include some privileges for PUBLIC depending on the object type, as explained above. The first GRANT or REVOKE on an object will instantiate the default privileges (producing, for example, {miriam=arwdDxt/miriam}) and then modify them per the specified request. Similarly, entries are shown in "Column access privileges" only for columns with nondefault privileges. (Note: for this purpose, "default privileges" always means the built-in default privileges for the object's type. An object whose privileges have been affected by an ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES command will always be shown with an explicit privilege entry that includes the effects of the ALTER.)

Notice that the owner's implicit grant options are not marked in the access privileges display. A * will appear only when grant options have been explicitly granted to someone.

Examples

Grant insert privilege to all users on table films:

GRANT INSERT ON films TO PUBLIC;

Grant all available privileges to user manuel on view kinds:

GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON kinds TO manuel;

Note that while the above will indeed grant all privileges if executed by a superuser or the owner of kinds, when executed by someone else it will only grant those permissions for which the someone else has grant options.

Grant membership in role admins to user joe:

GRANT admins TO joe;

Compatibility

According to the SQL standard, the PRIVILEGES key word in ALL PRIVILEGES is required. The SQL standard does not support setting the privileges on more than one object per command.

PostgreSQL allows an object owner to revoke his own ordinary privileges: for example, a table owner can make the table read-only to himself by revoking his own INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, and TRUNCATE privileges. This is not possible according to the SQL standard. The reason is that PostgreSQL treats the owner's privileges as having been granted by the owner to himself; therefore he can revoke them too. In the SQL standard, the owner's privileges are granted by an assumed entity "_SYSTEM". Not being "_SYSTEM", the owner cannot revoke these rights.

The SQL standard provides for a USAGE privilege on other kinds of objects: character sets, collations, translations, domains.

Privileges on databases, tablespaces, schemas, and languages are PostgreSQL extensions.

See Also

REVOKE, ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES
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FETCH | Up | INSERT


INSERT

Name

INSERT -- create new rows in a table

Synopsis

[ WITH [ RECURSIVE ] with_query [, ...] ]
INSERT INTO table [ ( column [, ...] ) ]
    { DEFAULT VALUES | VALUES ( { expression | DEFAULT } [, ...] ) [, ...] | query }
    [ RETURNING * | output_expression [ [ AS ] output_name ] [, ...] ]

Description

INSERT inserts new rows into a table. One can insert one or more rows specified by value expressions, or zero or more rows resulting from a query.

The target column names can be listed in any order. If no list of column names is given at all, the default is all the columns of the table in their declared order; or the first N column names, if there are only N columns supplied by the VALUES clause or query. The values supplied by the VALUES clause or query are associated with the explicit or implicit column list left-to-right.

Each column not present in the explicit or implicit column list will be filled with a default value, either its declared default value or null if there is none.

If the expression for any column is not of the correct data type, automatic type conversion will be attempted.

The optional RETURNING clause causes INSERT to compute and return value(s) based on each row actually inserted. This is primarily useful for obtaining values that were supplied by defaults, such as a serial sequence number. However, any expression using the table's columns is allowed. The syntax of the RETURNING list is identical to that of the output list of SELECT.

You must have INSERT privilege on a table in order to insert into it. If a column list is specified, you only need INSERT privilege on the listed columns. Use of the RETURNING clause requires SELECT privilege on all columns mentioned in RETURNING. If you use the query clause to insert rows from a query, you of course need to have SELECT privilege on any table or column used in the query.

Parameters

with_query

The WITH clause allows you to specify one or more subqueries that can be referenced by name in the INSERT query. See Section 7.8 and SELECT for details.

It is possible for the query (SELECT statement) to also contain a WITH clause. In such a case both sets of with_query can be referenced within the query, but the second one takes precedence since it is more closely nested.

table

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of an existing table.

column

The name of a column in table. The column name can be qualified with a subfield name or array subscript, if needed. (Inserting into only some fields of a composite column leaves the other fields null.)

DEFAULT VALUES

All columns will be filled with their default values.

expression

An expression or value to assign to the corresponding column.

DEFAULT

The corresponding column will be filled with its default value.

query

A query (SELECT statement) that supplies the rows to be inserted. Refer to the SELECT statement for a description of the syntax.

output_expression

An expression to be computed and returned by the INSERT command after each row is inserted. The expression can use any column names of the table. Write * to return all columns of the inserted row(s).

output_name

A name to use for a returned column.

Outputs

On successful completion, an INSERT command returns a command tag of the form

INSERT oid count

The count is the number of rows inserted. If count is exactly one, and the target table has OIDs, then oid is the OID assigned to the inserted row. Otherwise oid is zero.

If the INSERT command contains a RETURNING clause, the result will be similar to that of a SELECT statement containing the columns and values defined in the RETURNING list, computed over the row(s) inserted by the command.

Examples

Insert a single row into table films:

INSERT INTO films VALUES
    ('UA502', 'Bananas', 105, '1971-07-13', 'Comedy', '82 minutes');

In this example, the len column is omitted and therefore it will have the default value:

INSERT INTO films (code, title, did, date_prod, kind)
    VALUES ('T_601', 'Yojimbo', 106, '1961-06-16', 'Drama');

This example uses the DEFAULT clause for the date columns rather than specifying a value:

INSERT INTO films VALUES
    ('UA502', 'Bananas', 105, DEFAULT, 'Comedy', '82 minutes');
INSERT INTO films (code, title, did, date_prod, kind)
    VALUES ('T_601', 'Yojimbo', 106, DEFAULT, 'Drama');

To insert a row consisting entirely of default values:

INSERT INTO films DEFAULT VALUES;

To insert multiple rows using the multirow VALUES syntax:

INSERT INTO films (code, title, did, date_prod, kind) VALUES
    ('B6717', 'Tampopo', 110, '1985-02-10', 'Comedy'),
    ('HG120', 'The Dinner Game', 140, DEFAULT, 'Comedy');

This example inserts some rows into table films from a table tmp_films with the same column layout as films:

INSERT INTO films SELECT * FROM tmp_films WHERE date_prod < '2004-05-07';

This example inserts into array columns:

-- Create an empty 3x3 gameboard for noughts-and-crosses
INSERT INTO tictactoe (game, board[1:3][1:3])
    VALUES (1, '{{" "," "," "},{" "," "," "},{" "," "," "}}');
-- The subscripts in the above example aren't really needed
INSERT INTO tictactoe (game, board)
    VALUES (2, '{{X," "," "},{" ",O," "},{" ",X," "}}');

Insert a single row into table distributors, returning the sequence number generated by the DEFAULT clause:

INSERT INTO distributors (did, dname) VALUES (DEFAULT, 'XYZ Widgets')
   RETURNING did;

Increment the sales count of the salesperson who manages the account for Acme Corporation, and record the whole updated row along with current time in a log table:

WITH upd AS (
  UPDATE employees SET sales_count = sales_count + 1 WHERE id =
    (SELECT sales_person FROM accounts WHERE name = 'Acme Corporation')
    RETURNING *
)
INSERT INTO employees_log SELECT *, current_timestamp FROM upd;

Compatibility

INSERT conforms to the SQL standard, except that the RETURNING clause is a PostgreSQL extension, as is the ability to use WITH with INSERT. Also, the case in which a column name list is omitted, but not all the columns are filled from the VALUES clause or query, is disallowed by the standard.

Possible limitations of the query clause are documented under SELECT.

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GRANT | Up | LISTEN


LISTEN

Name

LISTEN -- listen for a notification

Synopsis

LISTEN channel

Description

LISTEN registers the current session as a listener on the notification channel named channel. If the current session is already registered as a listener for this notification channel, nothing is done.

Whenever the command NOTIFY channel is invoked, either by this session or another one connected to the same database, all the sessions currently listening on that notification channel are notified, and each will in turn notify its connected client application.

A session can be unregistered for a given notification channel with the UNLISTEN command. A session's listen registrations are automatically cleared when the session ends.

The method a client application must use to detect notification events depends on which PostgreSQL application programming interface it uses. With the libpq library, the application issues LISTEN as an ordinary SQL command, and then must periodically call the function PQnotifies to find out whether any notification events have been received. Other interfaces such as libpgtcl provide higher-level methods for handling notify events; indeed, with libpgtcl the application programmer should not even issue LISTEN or UNLISTEN directly. See the documentation for the interface you are using for more details.

NOTIFY contains a more extensive discussion of the use of LISTEN and NOTIFY.

Parameters

channel

Name of a notification channel (any identifier).

Notes

LISTEN takes effect at transaction commit. If LISTEN or UNLISTEN is executed within a transaction that later rolls back, the set of notification channels being listened to is unchanged.

A transaction that has executed LISTEN cannot be prepared for two-phase commit.

Examples

Configure and execute a listen/notify sequence from psql:

LISTEN virtual;
NOTIFY virtual;
Asynchronous notification "virtual" received from server process with PID 8448.

Compatibility

There is no LISTEN statement in the SQL standard.

See Also

NOTIFY, UNLISTEN
Prev | Home | Next
INSERT | Up | LOAD


LOAD

Name

LOAD -- load a shared library file

Synopsis

LOAD 'filename'

Description

This command loads a shared library file into the PostgreSQL server's address space. If the file has been loaded already, the command does nothing. Shared library files that contain C functions are automatically loaded whenever one of their functions is called. Therefore, an explicit LOAD is usually only needed to load a library that modifies the server's behavior through "hooks" rather than providing a set of functions.

The file name is specified in the same way as for shared library names in CREATE FUNCTION; in particular, one can rely on a search path and automatic addition of the system's standard shared library file name extension. See Section 35.9 for more information on this topic.

Non-superusers can only apply LOAD to library files located in $libdir/plugins/ — the specified filename must begin with exactly that string. (It is the database administrator's responsibility to ensure that only "safe" libraries are installed there.)

Compatibility

LOAD is a PostgreSQL extension.

See Also

CREATE FUNCTION

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LISTEN | Up | LOCK


LOCK

Name

LOCK -- lock a table

Synopsis

LOCK [ TABLE ] [ ONLY ] name [ * ] [, ...] [ IN lockmode MODE ] [ NOWAIT ]

where lockmode is one of:

    ACCESS SHARE | ROW SHARE | ROW EXCLUSIVE | SHARE UPDATE EXCLUSIVE
    | SHARE | SHARE ROW EXCLUSIVE | EXCLUSIVE | ACCESS EXCLUSIVE

Description

LOCK TABLE obtains a table-level lock, waiting if necessary for any conflicting locks to be released. If NOWAIT is specified, LOCK TABLE does not wait to acquire the desired lock: if it cannot be acquired immediately, the command is aborted and an error is emitted. Once obtained, the lock is held for the remainder of the current transaction. (There is no UNLOCK TABLE command; locks are always released at transaction end.)

When acquiring locks automatically for commands that reference tables, PostgreSQL always uses the least restrictive lock mode possible. LOCK TABLE provides for cases when you might need more restrictive locking. For example, suppose an application runs a transaction at the Read Committed isolation level and needs to ensure that data in a table remains stable for the duration of the transaction. To achieve this you could obtain SHARE lock mode over the table before querying. This will prevent concurrent data changes and ensure subsequent reads of the table see a stable view of committed data, because SHARE lock mode conflicts with the ROW EXCLUSIVE lock acquired by writers, and your LOCK TABLE name IN SHARE MODE statement will wait until any concurrent holders of ROW EXCLUSIVE mode locks commit or roll back. Thus, once you obtain the lock, there are no uncommitted writes outstanding; furthermore none can begin until you release the lock.

To achieve a similar effect when running a transaction at the REPEATABLE READ or SERIALIZABLE isolation level, you have to execute the LOCK TABLE statement before executing any SELECT or data modification statement. A REPEATABLE READ or SERIALIZABLE transaction's view of data will be frozen when its first SELECT or data modification statement begins. A LOCK TABLE later in the transaction will still prevent concurrent writes — but it won't ensure that what the transaction reads corresponds to the latest committed values.

If a transaction of this sort is going to change the data in the table, then it should use SHARE ROW EXCLUSIVE lock mode instead of SHARE mode. This ensures that only one transaction of this type runs at a time. Without this, a deadlock is possible: two transactions might both acquire SHARE mode, and then be unable to also acquire ROW EXCLUSIVE mode to actually perform their updates. (Note that a transaction's own locks never conflict, so a transaction can acquire ROW EXCLUSIVE mode when it holds SHARE mode — but not if anyone else holds SHARE mode.) To avoid deadlocks, make sure all transactions acquire locks on the same objects in the same order, and if multiple lock modes are involved for a single object, then transactions should always acquire the most restrictive mode first.

More information about the lock modes and locking strategies can be found in Section 13.3.

Parameters

name

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of an existing table to lock. If ONLY is specified before the table name, only that table is locked. If ONLY is not specified, the table and all its descendant tables (if any) are locked. Optionally, * can be specified after the table name to explicitly indicate that descendant tables are included.

The command LOCK TABLE a, b; is equivalent to LOCK TABLE a; LOCK TABLE b;. The tables are locked one-by-one in the order specified in the LOCK TABLE command.

lockmode

The lock mode specifies which locks this lock conflicts with. Lock modes are described in Section 13.3.

If no lock mode is specified, then ACCESS EXCLUSIVE, the most restrictive mode, is used.

NOWAIT

Specifies that LOCK TABLE should not wait for any conflicting locks to be released: if the specified lock(s) cannot be acquired immediately without waiting, the transaction is aborted.

Notes

LOCK TABLE ... IN ACCESS SHARE MODE requires SELECT privileges on the target table. All other forms of LOCK require table-level UPDATE, DELETE, or TRUNCATE privileges.

LOCK TABLE is useless outside a transaction block: the lock would remain held only to the completion of the statement. Therefore PostgreSQL reports an error if LOCK is used outside a transaction block. Use BEGIN and COMMIT (or ROLLBACK) to define a transaction block.

LOCK TABLE only deals with table-level locks, and so the mode names involving ROW are all misnomers. These mode names should generally be read as indicating the intention of the user to acquire row-level locks within the locked table. Also, ROW EXCLUSIVE mode is a sharable table lock. Keep in mind that all the lock modes have identical semantics so far as LOCK TABLE is concerned, differing only in the rules about which modes conflict with which. For information on how to acquire an actual row-level lock, see Section 13.3.2 and the FOR UPDATE/FOR SHARE Clause in the SELECT reference documentation.

Examples

Obtain a SHARE lock on a primary key table when going to perform inserts into a foreign key table:

BEGIN WORK;
LOCK TABLE films IN SHARE MODE;
SELECT id FROM films
    WHERE name = 'Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace';
-- Do ROLLBACK if record was not returned
INSERT INTO films_user_comments VALUES
    (_id_, 'GREAT! I was waiting for it for so long!');
COMMIT WORK;

Take a SHARE ROW EXCLUSIVE lock on a primary key table when going to perform a delete operation:

BEGIN WORK;
LOCK TABLE films IN SHARE ROW EXCLUSIVE MODE;
DELETE FROM films_user_comments WHERE id IN
    (SELECT id FROM films WHERE rating < 5);
DELETE FROM films WHERE rating < 5;
COMMIT WORK;

Compatibility

There is no LOCK TABLE in the SQL standard, which instead uses SET TRANSACTION to specify concurrency levels on transactions. PostgreSQL supports that too; see SET TRANSACTION for details.

Except for ACCESS SHARE, ACCESS EXCLUSIVE, and SHARE UPDATE EXCLUSIVE lock modes, the PostgreSQL lock modes and the LOCK TABLE syntax are compatible with those present in Oracle.

Prev | Home | Next
LOAD | Up | MOVE


MOVE

Name

MOVE -- position a cursor

Synopsis

MOVE [ direction [ FROM | IN ] ] cursor_name

where direction can be empty or one of:

    NEXT
    PRIOR
    FIRST
    LAST
    ABSOLUTE count
    RELATIVE count
    count
    ALL
    FORWARD
    FORWARD count
    FORWARD ALL
    BACKWARD
    BACKWARD count
    BACKWARD ALL

Description

MOVE repositions a cursor without retrieving any data. MOVE works exactly like the FETCH command, except it only positions the cursor and does not return rows.

The parameters for the MOVE command are identical to those of the FETCH command; refer to FETCH for details on syntax and usage.

Outputs

On successful completion, a MOVE command returns a command tag of the form

MOVE count

The count is the number of rows that a FETCH command with the same parameters would have returned (possibly zero).

Examples

BEGIN WORK;
DECLARE liahona CURSOR FOR SELECT * FROM films;

-- Skip the first 5 rows:
MOVE FORWARD 5 IN liahona;
MOVE 5

-- Fetch the 6th row from the cursor liahona:
FETCH 1 FROM liahona;
 code  | title  | did | date_prod  |  kind  |  len
-------+--------+-----+------------+--------+-------
 P_303 | 48 Hrs | 103 | 1982-10-22 | Action | 01:37
(1 row)

-- Close the cursor liahona and end the transaction:
CLOSE liahona;
COMMIT WORK;

Compatibility

There is no MOVE statement in the SQL standard.

See Also

CLOSE, DECLARE, FETCH
Prev | Home | Next
LOCK | Up | NOTIFY


NOTIFY

Name

NOTIFY -- generate a notification

Synopsis

NOTIFY channel [ , payload ]

Description

The NOTIFY command sends a notification event together with an optional "payload" string to each client application that has previously executed LISTEN channel for the specified channel name in the current database.

NOTIFY provides a simple interprocess communication mechanism for a collection of processes accessing the same PostgreSQL database. A payload string can be sent along with the notification, and higher-level mechanisms for passing structured data can be built by using tables in the database to pass additional data from notifier to listener(s).

The information passed to the client for a notification event includes the notification channel name, the notifying session's server process PID, and the payload string, which is an empty string if it has not been specified.

It is up to the database designer to define the channel names that will be used in a given database and what each one means. Commonly, the channel name is the same as the name of some table in the database, and the notify event essentially means, "I changed this table, take a look at it to see what's new". But no such association is enforced by the NOTIFY and LISTEN commands. For example, a database designer could use several different channel names to signal different sorts of changes to a single table. Alternatively, the payload string could be used to differentiate various cases.

When NOTIFY is used to signal the occurrence of changes to a particular table, a useful programming technique is to put the NOTIFY in a rule that is triggered by table updates. In this way, notification happens automatically when the table is changed, and the application programmer cannot accidentally forget to do it.

NOTIFY interacts with SQL transactions in some important ways. Firstly, if a NOTIFY is executed inside a transaction, the notify events are not delivered until and unless the transaction is committed. This is appropriate, since if the transaction is aborted, all the commands within it have had no effect, including NOTIFY. But it can be disconcerting if one is expecting the notification events to be delivered immediately. Secondly, if a listening session receives a notification signal while it is within a transaction, the notification event will not be delivered to its connected client until just after the transaction is completed (either committed or aborted). Again, the reasoning is that if a notification were delivered within a transaction that was later aborted, one would want the notification to be undone somehow — but the server cannot "take back" a notification once it has sent it to the client. So notification events are only delivered between transactions. The upshot of this is that applications using NOTIFY for real-time signaling should try to keep their transactions short.

If the same channel name is signaled multiple times from the same transaction with identical payload strings, the database server can decide to deliver a single notification only. On the other hand, notifications with distinct payload strings will always be delivered as distinct notifications. Similarly, notifications from different transactions will never get folded into one notification. Except for dropping later instances of duplicate notifications, NOTIFY guarantees that notifications from the same transaction get delivered in the order they were sent. It is also guaranteed that messages from different transactions are delivered in the order in which the transactions committed.

It is common for a client that executes NOTIFY to be listening on the same notification channel itself. In that case it will get back a notification event, just like all the other listening sessions. Depending on the application logic, this could result in useless work, for example, reading a database table to find the same updates that that session just wrote out. It is possible to avoid such extra work by noticing whether the notifying session's server process PID (supplied in the notification event message) is the same as one's own session's PID (available from libpq). When they are the same, the notification event is one's own work bouncing back, and can be ignored.

Parameters

channel

Name of the notification channel to be signaled (any identifier).

payload

The "payload" string to be communicated along with the notification. This must be specified as a simple string literal. In the default configuration it must be shorter than 8000 bytes. (If binary data or large amounts of information need to be communicated, it's best to put it in a database table and send the key of the record.)

Notes

There is a queue that holds notifications that have been sent but not yet processed by all listening sessions. If this queue becomes full, transactions calling NOTIFY will fail at commit. The queue is quite large (8GB in a standard installation) and should be sufficiently sized for almost every use case. However, no cleanup can take place if a session executes LISTEN and then enters a transaction for a very long time. Once the queue is half full you will see warnings in the log file pointing you to the session that is preventing cleanup. In this case you should make sure that this session ends its current transaction so that cleanup can proceed.

A transaction that has executed NOTIFY cannot be prepared for two-phase commit.

pg_notify

To send a notification you can also use the function pg_notify(text, text). The function takes the channel name as the first argument and the payload as the second. The function is much easier to use than the NOTIFY command if you need to work with non-constant channel names and payloads.

Examples

Configure and execute a listen/notify sequence from psql:

LISTEN virtual;
NOTIFY virtual;
Asynchronous notification "virtual" received from server process with PID 8448.
NOTIFY virtual, 'This is the payload';
Asynchronous notification "virtual" with payload "This is the payload" received from server process with PID 8448.

LISTEN foo;
SELECT pg_notify('fo' || 'o', 'pay' || 'load');
Asynchronous notification "foo" with payload "payload" received from server process with PID 14728.

Compatibility

There is no NOTIFY statement in the SQL standard.

See Also

LISTEN, UNLISTEN
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MOVE | Up | PREPARE


PREPARE

Name

PREPARE -- prepare a statement for execution

Synopsis

PREPARE name [ ( data_type [, ...] ) ] AS statement

Description

PREPARE creates a prepared statement. A prepared statement is a server-side object that can be used to optimize performance. When the PREPARE statement is executed, the specified statement is parsed, rewritten, and planned. When an EXECUTE command is subsequently issued, the prepared statement need only be executed. Thus, the parsing, rewriting, and planning stages are only performed once, instead of every time the statement is executed.

Prepared statements can take parameters: values that are substituted into the statement when it is executed. When creating the prepared statement, refer to parameters by position, using $1, $2, etc. A corresponding list of parameter data types can optionally be specified. When a parameter's data type is not specified or is declared as unknown, the type is inferred from the context in which the parameter is used (if possible). When executing the statement, specify the actual values for these parameters in the EXECUTE statement. Refer to EXECUTE for more information about that.

Prepared statements only last for the duration of the current database session. When the session ends, the prepared statement is forgotten, so it must be recreated before being used again. This also means that a single prepared statement cannot be used by multiple simultaneous database clients; however, each client can create their own prepared statement to use. The prepared statement can be manually cleaned up using the DEALLOCATE command.

Prepared statements have the largest performance advantage when a single session is being used to execute a large number of similar statements. The performance difference will be particularly significant if the statements are complex to plan or rewrite, for example, if the query involves a join of many tables or requires the application of several rules. If the statement is relatively simple to plan and rewrite but relatively expensive to execute, the performance advantage of prepared statements will be less noticeable.

Parameters

name

An arbitrary name given to this particular prepared statement. It must be unique within a single session and is subsequently used to execute or deallocate a previously prepared statement.

data_type

The data type of a parameter to the prepared statement. If the data type of a particular parameter is unspecified or is specified as unknown, it will be inferred from the context in which the parameter is used. To refer to the parameters in the prepared statement itself, use $1, $2, etc.

statement

Any SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, or VALUES statement.

Notes

In some situations, the query plan produced for a prepared statement will be inferior to the query plan that would have been chosen if the statement had been submitted and executed normally. This is because when the statement is planned and the planner attempts to determine the optimal query plan, the actual values of any parameters specified in the statement are unavailable. PostgreSQL collects statistics on the distribution of data in the table, and can use constant values in a statement to make guesses about the likely result of executing the statement. Since this data is unavailable when planning prepared statements with parameters, the chosen plan might be suboptimal. To examine the query plan PostgreSQL has chosen for a prepared statement, use EXPLAIN.

For more information on query planning and the statistics collected by PostgreSQL for that purpose, see the ANALYZE documentation.

You can see all available prepared statements of a session by querying the pg_prepared_statements system view.

Examples

Create a prepared statement for an INSERT statement, and then execute it:

PREPARE fooplan (int, text, bool, numeric) AS
    INSERT INTO foo VALUES($1, $2, $3, $4);
EXECUTE fooplan(1, 'Hunter Valley', 't', 200.00);

Create a prepared statement for a SELECT statement, and then execute it:

PREPARE usrrptplan (int) AS
    SELECT * FROM users u, logs l WHERE u.usrid=$1 AND u.usrid=l.usrid
    AND l.date = $2;
EXECUTE usrrptplan(1, current_date);

Note that the data type of the second parameter is not specified, so it is inferred from the context in which $2 is used.

Compatibility

The SQL standard includes a PREPARE statement, but it is only for use in embedded SQL. This version of the PREPARE statement also uses a somewhat different syntax.

See Also

DEALLOCATE, EXECUTE
Prev | Home | Next
NOTIFY | Up | PREPARE TRANSACTION


PREPARE TRANSACTION

Name

PREPARE TRANSACTION -- prepare the current transaction for two-phase commit

Synopsis

PREPARE TRANSACTION transaction_id

Description

PREPARE TRANSACTION prepares the current transaction for two-phase commit. After this command, the transaction is no longer associated with the current session; instead, its state is fully stored on disk, and there is a very high probability that it can be committed successfully, even if a database crash occurs before the commit is requested.

Once prepared, a transaction can later be committed or rolled back with COMMIT PREPARED or ROLLBACK PREPARED, respectively. Those commands can be issued from any session, not only the one that executed the original transaction.

From the point of view of the issuing session, PREPARE TRANSACTION is not unlike a ROLLBACK command: after executing it, there is no active current transaction, and the effects of the prepared transaction are no longer visible. (The effects will become visible again if the transaction is committed.)

If the PREPARE TRANSACTION command fails for any reason, it becomes a ROLLBACK: the current transaction is canceled.

Parameters

transaction_id

An arbitrary identifier that later identifies this transaction for COMMIT PREPARED or ROLLBACK PREPARED. The identifier must be written as a string literal, and must be less than 200 bytes long. It must not be the same as the identifier used for any currently prepared transaction.

Notes

PREPARE TRANSACTION is not intended for use in applications or interactive sessions. Its purpose is to allow an external transaction manager to perform atomic global transactions across multiple databases or other transactional resources. Unless you're writing a transaction manager, you probably shouldn't be using PREPARE TRANSACTION.

This command must be used inside a transaction block. Use BEGIN to start one.

It is not currently allowed to PREPARE a transaction that has executed any operations involving temporary tables, created any cursors WITH HOLD, or executed LISTEN or UNLISTEN. Those features are too tightly tied to the current session to be useful in a transaction to be prepared.

If the transaction modified any run-time parameters with SET (without the LOCAL option), those effects persist after PREPARE TRANSACTION, and will not be affected by any later COMMIT PREPARED or ROLLBACK PREPARED. Thus, in this one respect PREPARE TRANSACTION acts more like COMMIT than ROLLBACK.

All currently available prepared transactions are listed in the pg_prepared_xacts system view.

Caution

It is unwise to leave transactions in the prepared state for a long time. This will interfere with the ability of VACUUM to reclaim storage, and in extreme cases could cause the database to shut down to prevent transaction ID wraparound (see Section 23.1.4). Keep in mind also that the transaction continues to hold whatever locks it held. The intended usage of the feature is that a prepared transaction will normally be committed or rolled back as soon as an external transaction manager has verified that other databases are also prepared to commit.

If you have not set up an external transaction manager to track prepared transactions and ensure they get closed out promptly, it is best to keep the prepared-transaction feature disabled by setting max_prepared_transactions to zero. This will prevent accidental creation of prepared transactions that might then be forgotten and eventually cause problems.

Examples

Prepare the current transaction for two-phase commit, using foobar as the transaction identifier:

PREPARE TRANSACTION 'foobar';

See Also

COMMIT PREPARED, ROLLBACK PREPARED
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PREPARE | Up | REASSIGN OWNED


REASSIGN OWNED

Name

REASSIGN OWNED -- change the ownership of database objects owned by a database role

Synopsis

REASSIGN OWNED BY old_role [, ...] TO new_role

Description

REASSIGN OWNED instructs the system to change the ownership of the database objects owned by one of the old_roles, to new_role.

Parameters

old_role

The name of a role. The ownership of all the objects in the current database owned by this role will be reassigned to new_role.

new_role

The name of the role that will be made the new owner of the affected objects.

Notes

REASSIGN OWNED is often used to prepare for the removal of one or more roles. Because REASSIGN OWNED only affects the objects in the current database, it is usually necessary to execute this command in each database that contains objects owned by a role that is to be removed.

REASSIGN OWNED requires privileges on both the source role(s) and the target role.

The DROP OWNED command is an alternative that drops all the database objects owned by one or more roles. Note also that DROP OWNED requires privileges only on the source role(s).

The REASSIGN OWNED command does not affect the privileges granted to the old_roles in objects that are not owned by them. Use DROP OWNED to revoke those privileges.

The REASSIGN OWNED command does not affect the ownership of any databases owned by the role. Use ALTER DATABASE to reassign that ownership.

Compatibility

The REASSIGN OWNED statement is a PostgreSQL extension.

See Also

DROP OWNED, DROP ROLE, ALTER DATABASE
Prev | Home | Next
PREPARE TRANSACTION | Up | REINDEX


REINDEX

Name

REINDEX -- rebuild indexes

Synopsis

REINDEX { INDEX | TABLE | DATABASE | SYSTEM } name [ FORCE ]

Description

REINDEX rebuilds an index using the data stored in the index's table, replacing the old copy of the index. There are several scenarios in which to use REINDEX:

  • An index has become corrupted, and no longer contains valid data. Although in theory this should never happen, in practice indexes can become corrupted due to software bugs or hardware failures. REINDEX provides a recovery method.

  • An index has become "bloated", that is it contains many empty or nearly-empty pages. This can occur with B-tree indexes in PostgreSQL under certain uncommon access patterns. REINDEX provides a way to reduce the space consumption of the index by writing a new version of the index without the dead pages. See Section 23.2 for more information.

  • You have altered a storage parameter (such as fillfactor) for an index, and wish to ensure that the change has taken full effect.

  • An index build with the CONCURRENTLY option failed, leaving an "invalid" index. Such indexes are useless but it can be convenient to use REINDEX to rebuild them. Note that REINDEX will not perform a concurrent build. To build the index without interfering with production you should drop the index and reissue the CREATE INDEX CONCURRENTLY command.

Parameters

INDEX

Recreate the specified index.

TABLE

Recreate all indexes of the specified table. If the table has a secondary "TOAST" table, that is reindexed as well.

DATABASE

Recreate all indexes within the current database. Indexes on shared system catalogs are also processed. This form of REINDEX cannot be executed inside a transaction block.

SYSTEM

Recreate all indexes on system catalogs within the current database. Indexes on shared system catalogs are included. Indexes on user tables are not processed. This form of REINDEX cannot be executed inside a transaction block.

name

The name of the specific index, table, or database to be reindexed. Index and table names can be schema-qualified. Presently, REINDEX DATABASE and REINDEX SYSTEM can only reindex the current database, so their parameter must match the current database's name.

FORCE

This is an obsolete option; it is ignored if specified.

Notes

If you suspect corruption of an index on a user table, you can simply rebuild that index, or all indexes on the table, using REINDEX INDEX or REINDEX TABLE.

Things are more difficult if you need to recover from corruption of an index on a system table. In this case it's important for the system to not have used any of the suspect indexes itself. (Indeed, in this sort of scenario you might find that server processes are crashing immediately at start-up, due to reliance on the corrupted indexes.) To recover safely, the server must be started with the -P option, which prevents it from using indexes for system catalog lookups.

One way to do this is to shut down the server and start a single-user PostgreSQL server with the -P option included on its command line. Then, REINDEX DATABASE, REINDEX SYSTEM, REINDEX TABLE, or REINDEX INDEX can be issued, depending on how much you want to reconstruct. If in doubt, use REINDEX SYSTEM to select reconstruction of all system indexes in the database. Then quit the single-user server session and restart the regular server. See the postgres reference page for more information about how to interact with the single-user server interface.

Alternatively, a regular server session can be started with -P included in its command line options. The method for doing this varies across clients, but in all libpq-based clients, it is possible to set the PGOPTIONS environment variable to -P before starting the client. Note that while this method does not require locking out other clients, it might still be wise to prevent other users from connecting to the damaged database until repairs have been completed.

REINDEX is similar to a drop and recreate of the index in that the index contents are rebuilt from scratch. However, the locking considerations are rather different. REINDEX locks out writes but not reads of the index's parent table. It also takes an exclusive lock on the specific index being processed, which will block reads that attempt to use that index. In contrast, DROP INDEX momentarily takes an exclusive lock on the parent table, blocking both writes and reads. The subsequent CREATE INDEX locks out writes but not reads; since the index is not there, no read will attempt to use it, meaning that there will be no blocking but reads might be forced into expensive sequential scans.

Reindexing a single index or table requires being the owner of that index or table. Reindexing a database requires being the owner of the database (note that the owner can therefore rebuild indexes of tables owned by other users). Of course, superusers can always reindex anything.

Prior to PostgreSQL 8.1, REINDEX DATABASE processed only system indexes, not all indexes as one would expect from the name. This has been changed to reduce the surprise factor. The old behavior is available as REINDEX SYSTEM.

Prior to PostgreSQL 7.4, REINDEX TABLE did not automatically process TOAST tables, and so those had to be reindexed by separate commands. This is still possible, but redundant.

Examples

Rebuild a single index:

REINDEX INDEX my_index;

Rebuild all the indexes on the table my_table:

REINDEX TABLE my_table;

Rebuild all indexes in a particular database, without trusting the system indexes to be valid already:

$ export PGOPTIONS="-P"
$ psql broken_db
...
broken_db=> REINDEX DATABASE broken_db;
broken_db=> \q

Compatibility

There is no REINDEX command in the SQL standard.

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REASSIGN OWNED | Up | RELEASE SAVEPOINT


RELEASE SAVEPOINT

Name

RELEASE SAVEPOINT -- destroy a previously defined savepoint

Synopsis

RELEASE [ SAVEPOINT ] savepoint_name

Description

RELEASE SAVEPOINT destroys a savepoint previously defined in the current transaction.

Destroying a savepoint makes it unavailable as a rollback point, but it has no other user visible behavior. It does not undo the effects of commands executed after the savepoint was established. (To do that, see ROLLBACK TO SAVEPOINT.) Destroying a savepoint when it is no longer needed allows the system to reclaim some resources earlier than transaction end.

RELEASE SAVEPOINT also destroys all savepoints that were established after the named savepoint was established.

Parameters

savepoint_name

The name of the savepoint to destroy.

Notes

Specifying a savepoint name that was not previously defined is an error.

It is not possible to release a savepoint when the transaction is in an aborted state.

If multiple savepoints have the same name, only the one that was most recently defined is released.

Examples

To establish and later destroy a savepoint:

BEGIN;
    INSERT INTO table1 VALUES (3);
    SAVEPOINT my_savepoint;
    INSERT INTO table1 VALUES (4);
    RELEASE SAVEPOINT my_savepoint;
COMMIT;

The above transaction will insert both 3 and 4.

Compatibility

This command conforms to the SQL standard. The standard specifies that the key word SAVEPOINT is mandatory, but PostgreSQL allows it to be omitted.

See Also

BEGIN, COMMIT, ROLLBACK, ROLLBACK TO SAVEPOINT, SAVEPOINT
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REINDEX | Up | RESET


RESET

Name

RESET -- restore the value of a run-time parameter to the default value

Synopsis

RESET configuration_parameter
RESET ALL

Description

RESET restores run-time parameters to their default values. RESET is an alternative spelling for

SET configuration_parameter TO DEFAULT

Refer to SET for details.

The default value is defined as the value that the parameter would have had, if no SET had ever been issued for it in the current session. The actual source of this value might be a compiled-in default, the configuration file, command-line options, or per-database or per-user default settings. This is subtly different from defining it as "the value that the parameter had at session start", because if the value came from the configuration file, it will be reset to whatever is specified by the configuration file now. See Chapter 18 for details.

The transactional behavior of RESET is the same as SET: its effects will be undone by transaction rollback.

Parameters

configuration_parameter

Name of a settable run-time parameter. Available parameters are documented in Chapter 18 and on the SET reference page.

ALL

Resets all settable run-time parameters to default values.

Examples

Set the timezone configuration variable to its default value:

RESET timezone;

Compatibility

RESET is a PostgreSQL extension.

See Also

SET, SHOW
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RELEASE SAVEPOINT | Up | REVOKE


REVOKE

Name

REVOKE -- remove access privileges

Synopsis

REVOKE [ GRANT OPTION FOR ]
    { { SELECT | INSERT | UPDATE | DELETE | TRUNCATE | REFERENCES | TRIGGER }
    [, ...] | ALL [ PRIVILEGES ] }
    ON { [ TABLE ] table_name [, ...]
         | ALL TABLES IN SCHEMA schema_name [, ...] }
    FROM { [ GROUP ] role_name | PUBLIC } [, ...]
    [ CASCADE | RESTRICT ]

REVOKE [ GRANT OPTION FOR ]
    { { SELECT | INSERT | UPDATE | REFERENCES } ( column [, ...] )
    [, ...] | ALL [ PRIVILEGES ] ( column [, ...] ) }
    ON [ TABLE ] table_name [, ...]
    FROM { [ GROUP ] role_name | PUBLIC } [, ...]
    [ CASCADE | RESTRICT ]

REVOKE [ GRANT OPTION FOR ]
    { { USAGE | SELECT | UPDATE }
    [, ...] | ALL [ PRIVILEGES ] }
    ON { SEQUENCE sequence_name [, ...]
         | ALL SEQUENCES IN SCHEMA schema_name [, ...] }
    FROM { [ GROUP ] role_name | PUBLIC } [, ...]
    [ CASCADE | RESTRICT ]

REVOKE [ GRANT OPTION FOR ]
    { { CREATE | CONNECT | TEMPORARY | TEMP } [, ...] | ALL [ PRIVILEGES ] }
    ON DATABASE database_name [, ...]
    FROM { [ GROUP ] role_name | PUBLIC } [, ...]
    [ CASCADE | RESTRICT ]

REVOKE [ GRANT OPTION FOR ]
    { USAGE | ALL [ PRIVILEGES ] }
    ON FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER fdw_name [, ...]
    FROM { [ GROUP ] role_name | PUBLIC } [, ...]
    [ CASCADE | RESTRICT ]

REVOKE [ GRANT OPTION FOR ]
    { USAGE | ALL [ PRIVILEGES ] }
    ON FOREIGN SERVER server_name [, ...]
    FROM { [ GROUP ] role_name | PUBLIC } [, ...]
    [ CASCADE | RESTRICT ]

REVOKE [ GRANT OPTION FOR ]
    { EXECUTE | ALL [ PRIVILEGES ] }
    ON { FUNCTION function_name ( [ [ argmode ] [ arg_name ] arg_type [, ...] ] ) [, ...]
         | ALL FUNCTIONS IN SCHEMA schema_name [, ...] }
    FROM { [ GROUP ] role_name | PUBLIC } [, ...]
    [ CASCADE | RESTRICT ]

REVOKE [ GRANT OPTION FOR ]
    { USAGE | ALL [ PRIVILEGES ] }
    ON LANGUAGE lang_name [, ...]
    FROM { [ GROUP ] role_name | PUBLIC } [, ...]
    [ CASCADE | RESTRICT ]

REVOKE [ GRANT OPTION FOR ]
    { { SELECT | UPDATE } [, ...] | ALL [ PRIVILEGES ] }
    ON LARGE OBJECT loid [, ...]
    FROM { [ GROUP ] role_name | PUBLIC } [, ...]
    [ CASCADE | RESTRICT ]

REVOKE [ GRANT OPTION FOR ]
    { { CREATE | USAGE } [, ...] | ALL [ PRIVILEGES ] }
    ON SCHEMA schema_name [, ...]
    FROM { [ GROUP ] role_name | PUBLIC } [, ...]
    [ CASCADE | RESTRICT ]

REVOKE [ GRANT OPTION FOR ]
    { CREATE | ALL [ PRIVILEGES ] }
    ON TABLESPACE tablespace_name [, ...]
    FROM { [ GROUP ] role_name | PUBLIC } [, ...]
    [ CASCADE | RESTRICT ]

REVOKE [ ADMIN OPTION FOR ]
    role_name [, ...] FROM role_name [, ...]
    [ CASCADE | RESTRICT ]

Description

The REVOKE command revokes previously granted privileges from one or more roles. The key word PUBLIC refers to the implicitly defined group of all roles.

See the description of the GRANT command for the meaning of the privilege types.

Note that any particular role will have the sum of privileges granted directly to it, privileges granted to any role it is presently a member of, and privileges granted to PUBLIC. Thus, for example, revoking SELECT privilege from PUBLIC does not necessarily mean that all roles have lost SELECT privilege on the object: those who have it granted directly or via another role will still have it. Similarly, revoking SELECT from a user might not prevent that user from using SELECT if PUBLIC or another membership role still has SELECT rights.

If GRANT OPTION FOR is specified, only the grant option for the privilege is revoked, not the privilege itself. Otherwise, both the privilege and the grant option are revoked.

If a user holds a privilege with grant option and has granted it to other users then the privileges held by those other users are called dependent privileges. If the privilege or the grant option held by the first user is being revoked and dependent privileges exist, those dependent privileges are also revoked if CASCADE is specified; if it is not, the revoke action will fail. This recursive revocation only affects privileges that were granted through a chain of users that is traceable to the user that is the subject of this REVOKE command. Thus, the affected users might effectively keep the privilege if it was also granted through other users.

When revoking privileges on a table, the corresponding column privileges (if any) are automatically revoked on each column of the table, as well.

When revoking membership in a role, GRANT OPTION is instead called ADMIN OPTION, but the behavior is similar. Note also that this form of the command does not allow the noise word GROUP.

Notes

Use psql's \dp command to display the privileges granted on existing tables and columns. See GRANT for information about the format. For non-table objects there are other \d commands that can display their privileges.

A user can only revoke privileges that were granted directly by that user. If, for example, user A has granted a privilege with grant option to user B, and user B has in turned granted it to user C, then user A cannot revoke the privilege directly from C. Instead, user A could revoke the grant option from user B and use the CASCADE option so that the privilege is in turn revoked from user C. For another example, if both A and B have granted the same privilege to C, A can revoke his own grant but not B's grant, so C will still effectively have the privilege.

When a non-owner of an object attempts to REVOKE privileges on the object, the command will fail outright if the user has no privileges whatsoever on the object. As long as some privilege is available, the command will proceed, but it will revoke only those privileges for which the user has grant options. The REVOKE ALL PRIVILEGES forms will issue a warning message if no grant options are held, while the other forms will issue a warning if grant options for any of the privileges specifically named in the command are not held. (In principle these statements apply to the object owner as well, but since the owner is always treated as holding all grant options, the cases can never occur.)

If a superuser chooses to issue a GRANT or REVOKE command, the command is performed as though it were issued by the owner of the affected object. Since all privileges ultimately come from the object owner (possibly indirectly via chains of grant options), it is possible for a superuser to revoke all privileges, but this might require use of CASCADE as stated above.

REVOKE can also be done by a role that is not the owner of the affected object, but is a member of the role that owns the object, or is a member of a role that holds privileges WITH GRANT OPTION on the object. In this case the command is performed as though it were issued by the containing role that actually owns the object or holds the privileges WITH GRANT OPTION. For example, if table t1 is owned by role g1, of which role u1 is a member, then u1 can revoke privileges on t1 that are recorded as being granted by g1. This would include grants made by u1 as well as by other members of role g1.

If the role executing REVOKE holds privileges indirectly via more than one role membership path, it is unspecified which containing role will be used to perform the command. In such cases it is best practice to use SET ROLE to become the specific role you want to do the REVOKE as. Failure to do so might lead to revoking privileges other than the ones you intended, or not revoking anything at all.

Examples

Revoke insert privilege for the public on table films:

REVOKE INSERT ON films FROM PUBLIC;

Revoke all privileges from user manuel on view kinds:

REVOKE ALL PRIVILEGES ON kinds FROM manuel;

Note that this actually means "revoke all privileges that I granted".

Revoke membership in role admins from user joe:

REVOKE admins FROM joe;

Compatibility

The compatibility notes of the GRANT command apply analogously to REVOKE. The keyword RESTRICT or CASCADE is required according to the standard, but PostgreSQL assumes RESTRICT by default.

See Also

GRANT

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RESET | Up | ROLLBACK


ROLLBACK

Name

ROLLBACK -- abort the current transaction

Synopsis

ROLLBACK [ WORK | TRANSACTION ]

Description

ROLLBACK rolls back the current transaction and causes all the updates made by the transaction to be discarded.

Parameters

WORK
TRANSACTION

Optional key words. They have no effect.

Notes

Use COMMIT to successfully terminate a transaction.

Issuing ROLLBACK when not inside a transaction does no harm, but it will provoke a warning message.

Examples

To abort all changes:

ROLLBACK;

Compatibility

The SQL standard only specifies the two forms ROLLBACK and ROLLBACK WORK. Otherwise, this command is fully conforming.

See Also

BEGIN, COMMIT, ROLLBACK TO SAVEPOINT
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REVOKE | Up | ROLLBACK PREPARED


ROLLBACK PREPARED

Name

ROLLBACK PREPARED -- cancel a transaction that was earlier prepared for two-phase commit

Synopsis

ROLLBACK PREPARED transaction_id

Description

ROLLBACK PREPARED rolls back a transaction that is in prepared state.

Parameters

transaction_id

The transaction identifier of the transaction that is to be rolled back.

Notes

To roll back a prepared transaction, you must be either the same user that executed the transaction originally, or a superuser. But you do not have to be in the same session that executed the transaction.

This command cannot be executed inside a transaction block. The prepared transaction is rolled back immediately.

All currently available prepared transactions are listed in the pg_prepared_xacts system view.

Examples

Roll back the transaction identified by the transaction identifier foobar:

ROLLBACK PREPARED 'foobar';

See Also

PREPARE TRANSACTION, COMMIT PREPARED
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ROLLBACK | Up | ROLLBACK TO SAVEPOINT


ROLLBACK TO SAVEPOINT

Name

ROLLBACK TO SAVEPOINT -- roll back to a savepoint

Synopsis

ROLLBACK [ WORK | TRANSACTION ] TO [ SAVEPOINT ] savepoint_name

Description

Roll back all commands that were executed after the savepoint was established. The savepoint remains valid and can be rolled back to again later, if needed.

ROLLBACK TO SAVEPOINT implicitly destroys all savepoints that were established after the named savepoint.

Parameters

savepoint_name

The savepoint to roll back to.

Notes

Use RELEASE SAVEPOINT to destroy a savepoint without discarding the effects of commands executed after it was established.

Specifying a savepoint name that has not been established is an error.

Cursors have somewhat non-transactional behavior with respect to savepoints. Any cursor that is opened inside a savepoint will be closed when the savepoint is rolled back. If a previously opened cursor is affected by a FETCH or MOVE command inside a savepoint that is later rolled back, the cursor remains at the position that FETCH left it pointing to (that is, the cursor motion caused by FETCH is not rolled back). Closing a cursor is not undone by rolling back, either. However, other side-effects caused by the cursor's query (such as side-effects of volatile functions called by the query) are rolled back if they occur during a savepoint that is later rolled back. A cursor whose execution causes a transaction to abort is put in a cannot-execute state, so while the transaction can be restored using ROLLBACK TO SAVEPOINT, the cursor can no longer be used.

Examples

To undo the effects of the commands executed after my_savepoint was established:

ROLLBACK TO SAVEPOINT my_savepoint;

Cursor positions are not affected by savepoint rollback:

BEGIN;

DECLARE foo CURSOR FOR SELECT 1 UNION SELECT 2;

SAVEPOINT foo;

FETCH 1 FROM foo;
 ?column?
----------
        1

ROLLBACK TO SAVEPOINT foo;

FETCH 1 FROM foo;
 ?column?
----------
        2

COMMIT;

Compatibility

The SQL standard specifies that the key word SAVEPOINT is mandatory, but PostgreSQL and Oracle allow it to be omitted. SQL allows only WORK, not TRANSACTION, as a noise word after ROLLBACK. Also, SQL has an optional clause AND [ NO ] CHAIN which is not currently supported by PostgreSQL. Otherwise, this command conforms to the SQL standard.

See Also

BEGIN, COMMIT, RELEASE SAVEPOINT, ROLLBACK, SAVEPOINT
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ROLLBACK PREPARED | Up | SAVEPOINT


SAVEPOINT

Name

SAVEPOINT -- define a new savepoint within the current transaction

Synopsis

SAVEPOINT savepoint_name

Description

SAVEPOINT establishes a new savepoint within the current transaction.

A savepoint is a special mark inside a transaction that allows all commands that are executed after it was established to be rolled back, restoring the transaction state to what it was at the time of the savepoint.

Parameters

savepoint_name

The name to give to the new savepoint.

Notes

Use ROLLBACK TO SAVEPOINT to rollback to a savepoint. Use RELEASE SAVEPOINT to destroy a savepoint, keeping the effects of commands executed after it was established.

Savepoints can only be established when inside a transaction block. There can be multiple savepoints defined within a transaction.

Examples

To establish a savepoint and later undo the effects of all commands executed after it was established:

BEGIN;
    INSERT INTO table1 VALUES (1);
    SAVEPOINT my_savepoint;
    INSERT INTO table1 VALUES (2);
    ROLLBACK TO SAVEPOINT my_savepoint;
    INSERT INTO table1 VALUES (3);
COMMIT;

The above transaction will insert the values 1 and 3, but not 2.

To establish and later destroy a savepoint:

BEGIN;
    INSERT INTO table1 VALUES (3);
    SAVEPOINT my_savepoint;
    INSERT INTO table1 VALUES (4);
    RELEASE SAVEPOINT my_savepoint;
COMMIT;

The above transaction will insert both 3 and 4.

Compatibility

SQL requires a savepoint to be destroyed automatically when another savepoint with the same name is established. In PostgreSQL, the old savepoint is kept, though only the more recent one will be used when rolling back or releasing. (Releasing the newer savepoint with RELEASE SAVEPOINT will cause the older one to again become accessible to ROLLBACK TO SAVEPOINT and RELEASE SAVEPOINT.) Otherwise, SAVEPOINT is fully SQL conforming.

See Also

BEGIN, COMMIT, RELEASE SAVEPOINT, ROLLBACK, ROLLBACK TO SAVEPOINT
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ROLLBACK TO SAVEPOINT | Up | SECURITY LABEL


SECURITY LABEL

Name

SECURITY LABEL -- define or change a security label applied to an object

Synopsis

SECURITY LABEL [ FOR provider ] ON
{
  TABLE object_name |
  COLUMN table_name.column_name |
  AGGREGATE agg_name (agg_type [, ...] ) |
  DOMAIN object_name |
  FOREIGN TABLE object_name
  FUNCTION function_name ( [ [ argmode ] [ argname ] argtype [, ...] ] ) |
  LARGE OBJECT large_object_oid |
  [ PROCEDURAL ] LANGUAGE object_name |
  SCHEMA object_name |
  SEQUENCE object_name |
  TYPE object_name |
  VIEW object_name
} IS 'label'

Description

SECURITY LABEL applies a security label to a database object. An arbitrary number of security labels, one per label provider, can be associated with a given database object. Label providers are loadable modules which register themselves by using the function register_label_provider.

Note: register_label_provider is not an SQL function; it can only be called from C code loaded into the backend.

The label provider determines whether a given label is valid and whether it is permissible to assign that label to a given object. The meaning of a given label is likewise at the discretion of the label provider. PostgreSQL places no restrictions on whether or how a label provider must interpret security labels; it merely provides a mechanism for storing them. In practice, this facility is intended to allow integration with label-based mandatory access control (MAC) systems such as SE-Linux. Such systems make all access control decisions based on object labels, rather than traditional discretionary access control (DAC) concepts such as users and groups.

Parameters

object_name
table_name.column_name
agg_name
function_name

The name of the object to be labeled. Names of tables, aggregates, domains, foreign tables, functions, sequences, types, and views can be schema-qualified.

provider

The name of the provider with which this label is to be associated. The named provider must be loaded and must consent to the proposed labeling operation. If exactly one provider is loaded, the provider name may be omitted for brevity.

arg_type

An input data type on which the aggregate function operates. To reference a zero-argument aggregate function, write * in place of the list of input data types.

argmode

The mode of a function argument: IN, OUT, INOUT, or VARIADIC. If omitted, the default is IN. Note that SECURITY LABEL ON FUNCTION does not actually pay any attention to OUT arguments, since only the input arguments are needed to determine the function's identity. So it is sufficient to list the IN, INOUT, and VARIADIC arguments.

argname

The name of a function argument. Note that SECURITY LABEL ON FUNCTION does not actually pay any attention to argument names, since only the argument data types are needed to determine the function's identity.

argtype

The data type(s) of the function's arguments (optionally schema-qualified), if any.

large_object_oid

The OID of the large object.

PROCEDURAL

This is a noise word.

label

The new security label, written as a string literal; or NULL to drop the security label.

Examples

The following example shows how the security label of a table might be changed.

SECURITY LABEL FOR selinux ON TABLE mytable IS 'system_u:object_r:sepgsql_table_t:s0';

Compatibility

There is no SECURITY LABEL command in the SQL standard.

See Also

sepgsql, dummy_seclabel
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SAVEPOINT | Up | SELECT


SELECT

Name

SELECT, TABLE, WITH -- retrieve rows from a table or view

Synopsis

[ WITH [ RECURSIVE ] with_query [, ...] ]
SELECT [ ALL | DISTINCT [ ON ( expression [, ...] ) ] ]
    * | expression [ [ AS ] output_name ] [, ...]
    [ FROM from_item [, ...] ]
    [ WHERE condition ]
    [ GROUP BY expression [, ...] ]
    [ HAVING condition [, ...] ]
    [ WINDOW window_name AS ( window_definition ) [, ...] ]
    [ { UNION | INTERSECT | EXCEPT } [ ALL | DISTINCT ] select ]
    [ ORDER BY expression [ ASC | DESC | USING operator ] [ NULLS { FIRST | LAST } ] [, ...] ]
    [ LIMIT { count | ALL } ]
    [ OFFSET start [ ROW | ROWS ] ]
    [ FETCH { FIRST | NEXT } [ count ] { ROW | ROWS } ONLY ]
    [ FOR { UPDATE | SHARE } [ OF table_name [, ...] ] [ NOWAIT ] [...] ]

where from_item can be one of:

    [ ONLY ] table_name [ * ] [ [ AS ] alias [ ( column_alias [, ...] ) ] ]
    ( select ) [ AS ] alias [ ( column_alias [, ...] ) ]
    with_query_name [ [ AS ] alias [ ( column_alias [, ...] ) ] ]
    function_name ( [ argument [, ...] ] ) [ AS ] alias [ ( column_alias [, ...] | column_definition [, ...] ) ]
    function_name ( [ argument [, ...] ] ) AS ( column_definition [, ...] )
    from_item [ NATURAL ] join_type from_item [ ON join_condition | USING ( join_column [, ...] ) ]

and with_query is:

    with_query_name [ ( column_name [, ...] ) ] AS ( select | insert | update | delete )

TABLE [ ONLY ] table_name [ * ]

Description

SELECT retrieves rows from zero or more tables. The general processing of SELECT is as follows:

  1. All queries in the WITH list are computed. These effectively serve as temporary tables that can be referenced in the FROM list. A WITH query that is referenced more than once in FROM is computed only once. (See WITH Clause below.)

  2. All elements in the FROM list are computed. (Each element in the FROM list is a real or virtual table.) If more than one element is specified in the FROM list, they are cross-joined together. (See FROM Clause below.)

  3. If the WHERE clause is specified, all rows that do not satisfy the condition are eliminated from the output. (See WHERE Clause below.)

  4. If the GROUP BY clause is specified, the output is combined into groups of rows that match on one or more values. If the HAVING clause is present, it eliminates groups that do not satisfy the given condition. (See GROUP BY Clause and HAVING Clause below.)

  5. The actual output rows are computed using the SELECT output expressions for each selected row or row group. (See SELECT List below.)

  6. SELECT DISTINCT eliminates duplicate rows from the result. SELECT DISTINCT ON eliminates rows that match on all the specified expressions. SELECT ALL (the default) will return all candidate rows, including duplicates. (See DISTINCT Clause below.)

  7. Using the operators UNION, INTERSECT, and EXCEPT, the output of more than one SELECT statement can be combined to form a single result set. The UNION operator returns all rows that are in one or both of the result sets. The INTERSECT operator returns all rows that are strictly in both result sets. The EXCEPT operator returns the rows that are in the first result set but not in the second. In all three cases, duplicate rows are eliminated unless ALL is specified. The noise word DISTINCT can be added to explicitly specify eliminating duplicate rows. Notice that DISTINCT is the default behavior here, even though ALL is the default for SELECT itself. (See UNION Clause, INTERSECT Clause, and EXCEPT Clause below.)

  8. If the ORDER BY clause is specified, the returned rows are sorted in the specified order. If ORDER BY is not given, the rows are returned in whatever order the system finds fastest to produce. (See ORDER BY Clause below.)

  9. If the LIMIT (or FETCH FIRST) or OFFSET clause is specified, the SELECT statement only returns a subset of the result rows. (See LIMIT Clause below.)

  10. If FOR UPDATE or FOR SHARE is specified, the SELECT statement locks the selected rows against concurrent updates. (See FOR UPDATE/FOR SHARE Clause below.)

You must have SELECT privilege on each column used in a SELECT command. The use of FOR UPDATE or FOR SHARE requires UPDATE privilege as well (for at least one column of each table so selected).

Parameters

WITH Clause

The WITH clause allows you to specify one or more subqueries that can be referenced by name in the primary query. The subqueries effectively act as temporary tables or views for the duration of the primary query. Each subquery can be a SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE or DELETE statement. When writing a data-modifying statement (INSERT, UPDATE or DELETE) in WITH, it is usual to include a RETURNING clause. It is the output of RETURNING, not the underlying table that the statement modifies, that forms the temporary table that is read by the primary query. If RETURNING is omitted, the statement is still executed, but it produces no output so it cannot be referenced as a table by the primary query.

A name (without schema qualification) must be specified for each WITH query. Optionally, a list of column names can be specified; if this is omitted, the column names are inferred from the subquery.

If RECURSIVE is specified, it allows a SELECT subquery to reference itself by name. Such a subquery must have the form

non_recursive_term UNION [ ALL | DISTINCT ] recursive_term

where the recursive self-reference must appear on the right-hand side of the UNION. Only one recursive self-reference is permitted per query. Recursive data-modifying statements are not supported, but you can use the results of a recursive SELECT query in a data-modifying statement. See Section 7.8 for an example.

Another effect of RECURSIVE is that WITH queries need not be ordered: a query can reference another one that is later in the list. (However, circular references, or mutual recursion, are not implemented.) Without RECURSIVE, WITH queries can only reference sibling WITH queries that are earlier in the WITH list.

A key property of WITH queries is that they are evaluated only once per execution of the primary query, even if the primary query refers to them more than once. In particular, data-modifying statements are guaranteed to be executed once and only once, regardless of whether the primary query reads all or any of their output.

The primary query and the WITH queries are all (notionally) executed at the same time. This implies that the effects of a data-modifying statement in WITH cannot be seen from other parts of the query, other than by reading its RETURNING output. If two such data-modifying statements attempt to modify the same row, the results are unspecified.

See Section 7.8 for additional information.

FROM Clause

The FROM clause specifies one or more source tables for the SELECT. If multiple sources are specified, the result is the Cartesian product (cross join) of all the sources. But usually qualification conditions are added to restrict the returned rows to a small subset of the Cartesian product.

The FROM clause can contain the following elements:

table_name

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of an existing table or view. If ONLY is specified before the table name, only that table is scanned. If ONLY is not specified, the table and all its descendant tables (if any) are scanned. Optionally, * can be specified after the table name to explicitly indicate that descendant tables are included.

alias

A substitute name for the FROM item containing the alias. An alias is used for brevity or to eliminate ambiguity for self-joins (where the same table is scanned multiple times). When an alias is provided, it completely hides the actual name of the table or function; for example given FROM foo AS f, the remainder of the SELECT must refer to this FROM item as f not foo. If an alias is written, a column alias list can also be written to provide substitute names for one or more columns of the table.

select

A sub-SELECT can appear in the FROM clause. This acts as though its output were created as a temporary table for the duration of this single SELECT command. Note that the sub-SELECT must be surrounded by parentheses, and an alias must be provided for it. A VALUES command can also be used here.

with_query_name

A WITH query is referenced by writing its name, just as though the query's name were a table name. (In fact, the WITH query hides any real table of the same name for the purposes of the primary query. If necessary, you can refer to a real table of the same name by schema-qualifying the table's name.) An alias can be provided in the same way as for a table.

function_name

Function calls can appear in the FROM clause. (This is especially useful for functions that return result sets, but any function can be used.) This acts as though its output were created as a temporary table for the duration of this single SELECT command. An alias can also be used. If an alias is written, a column alias list can also be written to provide substitute names for one or more attributes of the function's composite return type. If the function has been defined as returning the record data type, then an alias or the key word AS must be present, followed by a column definition list in the form ( column_name data_type [, ... ] ). The column definition list must match the actual number and types of columns returned by the function.

join_type

One of

  • [ INNER ] JOIN

  • LEFT [ OUTER ] JOIN

  • RIGHT [ OUTER ] JOIN

  • FULL [ OUTER ] JOIN

  • CROSS JOIN

For the INNER and OUTER join types, a join condition must be specified, namely exactly one of NATURAL, ON join_condition, or USING (join_column [, ...]). See below for the meaning. For CROSS JOIN, none of these clauses can appear.

A JOIN clause combines two FROM items. Use parentheses if necessary to determine the order of nesting. In the absence of parentheses, JOINs nest left-to-right. In any case JOIN binds more tightly than the commas separating FROM items.

CROSS JOIN and INNER JOIN produce a simple Cartesian product, the same result as you get from listing the two items at the top level of FROM, but restricted by the join condition (if any). CROSS JOIN is equivalent to INNER JOIN ON (TRUE), that is, no rows are removed by qualification. These join types are just a notational convenience, since they do nothing you couldn't do with plain FROM and WHERE.

LEFT OUTER JOIN returns all rows in the qualified Cartesian product (i.e., all combined rows that pass its join condition), plus one copy of each row in the left-hand table for which there was no right-hand row that passed the join condition. This left-hand row is extended to the full width of the joined table by inserting null values for the right-hand columns. Note that only the JOIN clause's own condition is considered while deciding which rows have matches. Outer conditions are applied afterwards.

Conversely, RIGHT OUTER JOIN returns all the joined rows, plus one row for each unmatched right-hand row (extended with nulls on the left). This is just a notational convenience, since you could convert it to a LEFT OUTER JOIN by switching the left and right inputs.

FULL OUTER JOIN returns all the joined rows, plus one row for each unmatched left-hand row (extended with nulls on the right), plus one row for each unmatched right-hand row (extended with nulls on the left).

ON join_condition

join_condition is an expression resulting in a value of type boolean (similar to a WHERE clause) that specifies which rows in a join are considered to match.

USING ( join_column [, ...] )

A clause of the form USING ( a, b, ... ) is shorthand for ON left_table.a = right_table.a AND left_table.b = right_table.b .... Also, USING implies that only one of each pair of equivalent columns will be included in the join output, not both.

NATURAL

NATURAL is shorthand for a USING list that mentions all columns in the two tables that have the same names.

WHERE Clause

The optional WHERE clause has the general form

WHERE condition

where condition is any expression that evaluates to a result of type boolean. Any row that does not satisfy this condition will be eliminated from the output. A row satisfies the condition if it returns true when the actual row values are substituted for any variable references.

GROUP BY Clause

The optional GROUP BY clause has the general form

GROUP BY expression [, ...]

GROUP BY will condense into a single row all selected rows that share the same values for the grouped expressions. expression can be an input column name, or the name or ordinal number of an output column (SELECT list item), or an arbitrary expression formed from input-column values. In case of ambiguity, a GROUP BY name will be interpreted as an input-column name rather than an output column name.

Aggregate functions, if any are used, are computed across all rows making up each group, producing a separate value for each group (whereas without GROUP BY, an aggregate produces a single value computed across all the selected rows). When GROUP BY is present, it is not valid for the SELECT list expressions to refer to ungrouped columns except within aggregate functions or if the ungrouped column is functionally dependent on the grouped columns, since there would otherwise be more than one possible value to return for an ungrouped column. A functional dependency exists if the grouped columns (or a subset thereof) are the primary key of the table containing the ungrouped column.

HAVING Clause

The optional HAVING clause has the general form

HAVING condition

where condition is the same as specified for the WHERE clause.

HAVING eliminates group rows that do not satisfy the condition. HAVING is different from WHERE: WHERE filters individual rows before the application of GROUP BY, while HAVING filters group rows created by GROUP BY. Each column referenced in condition must unambiguously reference a grouping column, unless the reference appears within an aggregate function.

The presence of HAVING turns a query into a grouped query even if there is no GROUP BY clause. This is the same as what happens when the query contains aggregate functions but no GROUP BY clause. All the selected rows are considered to form a single group, and the SELECT list and HAVING clause can only reference table columns from within aggregate functions. Such a query will emit a single row if the HAVING condition is true, zero rows if it is not true.

WINDOW Clause

The optional WINDOW clause has the general form

WINDOW window_name AS ( window_definition ) [, ...]

where window_name is a name that can be referenced from OVER clauses or subsequent window definitions, and window_definition is

[ existing_window_name ]
[ PARTITION BY expression [, ...] ]
[ ORDER BY expression [ ASC | DESC | USING operator ] [ NULLS { FIRST | LAST } ] [, ...] ]
[ frame_clause ]

If an existing_window_name is specified it must refer to an earlier entry in the WINDOW list; the new window copies its partitioning clause from that entry, as well as its ordering clause if any. In this case the new window cannot specify its own PARTITION BY clause, and it can specify ORDER BY only if the copied window does not have one. The new window always uses its own frame clause; the copied window must not specify a frame clause.

The elements of the PARTITION BY list are interpreted in much the same fashion as elements of a GROUP BY Clause, except that they are always simple expressions and never the name or number of an output column. Another difference is that these expressions can contain aggregate function calls, which are not allowed in a regular GROUP BY clause. They are allowed here because windowing occurs after grouping and aggregation.

Similarly, the elements of the ORDER BY list are interpreted in much the same fashion as elements of an ORDER BY Clause, except that the expressions are always taken as simple expressions and never the name or number of an output column.

The optional frame_clause defines the window frame for window functions that depend on the frame (not all do). The window frame is a set of related rows for each row of the query (called the current row). The frame_clause can be one of

{ RANGE | ROWS } frame_start
{ RANGE | ROWS } BETWEEN frame_start AND frame_end

where frame_start and frame_end can be one of

UNBOUNDED PRECEDING
value PRECEDING
CURRENT ROW
value FOLLOWING
UNBOUNDED FOLLOWING

If frame_end is omitted it defaults to CURRENT ROW. Restrictions are that frame_start cannot be UNBOUNDED FOLLOWING, frame_end cannot be UNBOUNDED PRECEDING, and the frame_end choice cannot appear earlier in the above list than the frame_start choice — for example RANGE BETWEEN CURRENT ROW AND value PRECEDING is not allowed.

The default framing option is RANGE UNBOUNDED PRECEDING, which is the same as RANGE BETWEEN UNBOUNDED PRECEDING AND CURRENT ROW; it sets the frame to be all rows from the partition start up through the current row's last peer in the ORDER BY ordering (which means all rows if there is no ORDER BY). In general, UNBOUNDED PRECEDING means that the frame starts with the first row of the partition, and similarly UNBOUNDED FOLLOWING means that the frame ends with the last row of the partition (regardless of RANGE or ROWS mode). In ROWS mode, CURRENT ROW means that the frame starts or ends with the current row; but in RANGE mode it means that the frame starts or ends with the current row's first or last peer in the ORDER BY ordering. The value PRECEDING and value FOLLOWING cases are currently only allowed in ROWS mode. They indicate that the frame starts or ends with the row that many rows before or after the current row. value must be an integer expression not containing any variables, aggregate functions, or window functions. The value must not be null or negative; but it can be zero, which selects the current row itself.

Beware that the ROWS options can produce unpredictable results if the ORDER BY ordering does not order the rows uniquely. The RANGE options are designed to ensure that rows that are peers in the ORDER BY ordering are treated alike; any two peer rows will be both in or both not in the frame.

The purpose of a WINDOW clause is to specify the behavior of window functions appearing in the query's SELECT List or ORDER BY Clause. These functions can reference the WINDOW clause entries by name in their OVER clauses. A WINDOW clause entry does not have to be referenced anywhere, however; if it is not used in the query it is simply ignored. It is possible to use window functions without any WINDOW clause at all, since a window function call can specify its window definition directly in its OVER clause. However, the WINDOW clause saves typing when the same window definition is needed for more than one window function.

Window functions are described in detail in Section 3.5, Section 4.2.8, and Section 7.2.4.

SELECT List

The SELECT list (between the key words SELECT and FROM) specifies expressions that form the output rows of the SELECT statement. The expressions can (and usually do) refer to columns computed in the FROM clause.

Just as in a table, every output column of a SELECT has a name. In a simple SELECT this name is just used to label the column for display, but when the SELECT is a sub-query of a larger query, the name is seen by the larger query as the column name of the virtual table produced by the sub-query. To specify the name to use for an output column, write AS output_name after the column's expression. (You can omit AS, but only if the desired output name does not match any PostgreSQL keyword (see Appendix C). For protection against possible future keyword additions, it is recommended that you always either write AS or double-quote the output name.) If you do not specify a column name, a name is chosen automatically by PostgreSQL. If the column's expression is a simple column reference then the chosen name is the same as that column's name; in more complex cases a generated name looking like ?columnN? is usually chosen.

An output column's name can be used to refer to the column's value in ORDER BY and GROUP BY clauses, but not in the WHERE or HAVING clauses; there you must write out the expression instead.

Instead of an expression, * can be written in the output list as a shorthand for all the columns of the selected rows. Also, you can write table_name.* as a shorthand for the columns coming from just that table. In these cases it is not possible to specify new names with AS; the output column names will be the same as the table columns' names.

DISTINCT Clause

If SELECT DISTINCT is specified, all duplicate rows are removed from the result set (one row is kept from each group of duplicates). SELECT ALL specifies the opposite: all rows are kept; that is the default.

SELECT DISTINCT ON ( expression [, ...] ) keeps only the first row of each set of rows where the given expressions evaluate to equal. The DISTINCT ON expressions are interpreted using the same rules as for ORDER BY (see above). Note that the "first row" of each set is unpredictable unless ORDER BY is used to ensure that the desired row appears first. For example:

SELECT DISTINCT ON (location) location, time, report
    FROM weather_reports
    ORDER BY location, time DESC;

retrieves the most recent weather report for each location. But if we had not used ORDER BY to force descending order of time values for each location, we'd have gotten a report from an unpredictable time for each location.

The DISTINCT ON expression(s) must match the leftmost ORDER BY expression(s). The ORDER BY clause will normally contain additional expression(s) that determine the desired precedence of rows within each DISTINCT ON group.

UNION Clause

The UNION clause has this general form:

select_statement UNION [ ALL | DISTINCT ] select_statement

select_statement is any SELECT statement without an ORDER BY, LIMIT, FOR UPDATE, or FOR SHARE clause. (ORDER BY and LIMIT can be attached to a subexpression if it is enclosed in parentheses. Without parentheses, these clauses will be taken to apply to the result of the UNION, not to its right-hand input expression.)

The UNION operator computes the set union of the rows returned by the involved SELECT statements. A row is in the set union of two result sets if it appears in at least one of the result sets. The two SELECT statements that represent the direct operands of the UNION must produce the same number of columns, and corresponding columns must be of compatible data types.

The result of UNION does not contain any duplicate rows unless the ALL option is specified. ALL prevents elimination of duplicates. (Therefore, UNION ALL is usually significantly quicker than UNION; use ALL when you can.) DISTINCT can be written to explicitly specify the default behavior of eliminating duplicate rows.

Multiple UNION operators in the same SELECT statement are evaluated left to right, unless otherwise indicated by parentheses.

Currently, FOR UPDATE and FOR SHARE cannot be specified either for a UNION result or for any input of a UNION.

INTERSECT Clause

The INTERSECT clause has this general form:

select_statement INTERSECT [ ALL | DISTINCT ] select_statement

select_statement is any SELECT statement without an ORDER BY, LIMIT, FOR UPDATE, or FOR SHARE clause.

The INTERSECT operator computes the set intersection of the rows returned by the involved SELECT statements. A row is in the intersection of two result sets if it appears in both result sets.

The result of INTERSECT does not contain any duplicate rows unless the ALL option is specified. With ALL, a row that has m duplicates in the left table and n duplicates in the right table will appear min(m,n) times in the result set. DISTINCT can be written to explicitly specify the default behavior of eliminating duplicate rows.

Multiple INTERSECT operators in the same SELECT statement are evaluated left to right, unless parentheses dictate otherwise. INTERSECT binds more tightly than UNION. That is, A UNION B INTERSECT C will be read as A UNION (B INTERSECT C).

Currently, FOR UPDATE and FOR SHARE cannot be specified either for an INTERSECT result or for any input of an INTERSECT.

EXCEPT Clause

The EXCEPT clause has this general form:

select_statement EXCEPT [ ALL | DISTINCT ] select_statement

select_statement is any SELECT statement without an ORDER BY, LIMIT, FOR UPDATE, or FOR SHARE clause.

The EXCEPT operator computes the set of rows that are in the result of the left SELECT statement but not in the result of the right one.

The result of EXCEPT does not contain any duplicate rows unless the ALL option is specified. With ALL, a row that has m duplicates in the left table and n duplicates in the right table will appear max(m-n,0) times in the result set. DISTINCT can be written to explicitly specify the default behavior of eliminating duplicate rows.

Multiple EXCEPT operators in the same SELECT statement are evaluated left to right, unless parentheses dictate otherwise. EXCEPT binds at the same level as UNION.

Currently, FOR UPDATE and FOR SHARE cannot be specified either for an EXCEPT result or for any input of an EXCEPT.

ORDER BY Clause

The optional ORDER BY clause has this general form:

ORDER BY expression [ ASC | DESC | USING operator ] [ NULLS { FIRST | LAST } ] [, ...]

The ORDER BY clause causes the result rows to be sorted according to the specified expression(s). If two rows are equal according to the leftmost expression, they are compared according to the next expression and so on. If they are equal according to all specified expressions, they are returned in an implementation-dependent order.

Each expression can be the name or ordinal number of an output column (SELECT list item), or it can be an arbitrary expression formed from input-column values.

The ordinal number refers to the ordinal (left-to-right) position of the output column. This feature makes it possible to define an ordering on the basis of a column that does not have a unique name. This is never absolutely necessary because it is always possible to assign a name to an output column using the AS clause.

It is also possible to use arbitrary expressions in the ORDER BY clause, including columns that do not appear in the SELECT output list. Thus the following statement is valid:

SELECT name FROM distributors ORDER BY code;

A limitation of this feature is that an ORDER BY clause applying to the result of a UNION, INTERSECT, or EXCEPT clause can only specify an output column name or number, not an expression.

If an ORDER BY expression is a simple name that matches both an output column name and an input column name, ORDER BY will interpret it as the output column name. This is the opposite of the choice that GROUP BY will make in the same situation. This inconsistency is made to be compatible with the SQL standard.

Optionally one can add the key word ASC (ascending) or DESC (descending) after any expression in the ORDER BY clause. If not specified, ASC is assumed by default. Alternatively, a specific ordering operator name can be specified in the USING clause. An ordering operator must be a less-than or greater-than member of some B-tree operator family. ASC is usually equivalent to USING < and DESC is usually equivalent to USING >. (But the creator of a user-defined data type can define exactly what the default sort ordering is, and it might correspond to operators with other names.)

If NULLS LAST is specified, null values sort after all non-null values; if NULLS FIRST is specified, null values sort before all non-null values. If neither is specified, the default behavior is NULLS LAST when ASC is specified or implied, and NULLS FIRST when DESC is specified (thus, the default is to act as though nulls are larger than non-nulls). When USING is specified, the default nulls ordering depends on whether the operator is a less-than or greater-than operator.

Note that ordering options apply only to the expression they follow; for example ORDER BY x, y DESC does not mean the same thing as ORDER BY x DESC, y DESC.

Character-string data is sorted according to the collation that applies to the column being sorted. That can be overridden at need by including a COLLATE clause in the expression, for example ORDER BY mycolumn COLLATE "en_US". For more information see Section 4.2.10 and Section 22.2.

LIMIT Clause

The LIMIT clause consists of two independent sub-clauses:

LIMIT { count | ALL }
OFFSET start

count specifies the maximum number of rows to return, while start specifies the number of rows to skip before starting to return rows. When both are specified, start rows are skipped before starting to count the count rows to be returned.

If the count expression evaluates to NULL, it is treated as LIMIT ALL, i.e., no limit. If start evaluates to NULL, it is treated the same as OFFSET 0.

SQL:2008 introduced a different syntax to achieve the same result, which PostgreSQL also supports. It is:

OFFSET start { ROW | ROWS }
FETCH { FIRST | NEXT } [ count ] { ROW | ROWS } ONLY

In this syntax, to write anything except a simple integer constant for start or count, you must write parentheses around it. If count is omitted in a FETCH clause, it defaults to 1. ROW and ROWS as well as FIRST and NEXT are noise words that don't influence the effects of these clauses. According to the standard, the OFFSET clause must come before the FETCH clause if both are present; but PostgreSQL is laxer and allows either order.

When using LIMIT, it is a good idea to use an ORDER BY clause that constrains the result rows into a unique order. Otherwise you will get an unpredictable subset of the query's rows — you might be asking for the tenth through twentieth rows, but tenth through twentieth in what ordering? You don't know what ordering unless you specify ORDER BY.

The query planner takes LIMIT into account when generating a query plan, so you are very likely to get different plans (yielding different row orders) depending on what you use for LIMIT and OFFSET. Thus, using different LIMIT/OFFSET values to select different subsets of a query result will give inconsistent results unless you enforce a predictable result ordering with ORDER BY. This is not a bug; it is an inherent consequence of the fact that SQL does not promise to deliver the results of a query in any particular order unless ORDER BY is used to constrain the order.

It is even possible for repeated executions of the same LIMIT query to return different subsets of the rows of a table, if there is not an ORDER BY to enforce selection of a deterministic subset. Again, this is not a bug; determinism of the results is simply not guaranteed in such a case.

FOR UPDATE/FOR SHARE Clause

The FOR UPDATE clause has this form:

FOR UPDATE [ OF table_name [, ...] ] [ NOWAIT ]

The closely related FOR SHARE clause has this form:

FOR SHARE [ OF table_name [, ...] ] [ NOWAIT ]

FOR UPDATE causes the rows retrieved by the SELECT statement to be locked as though for update. This prevents them from being modified or deleted by other transactions until the current transaction ends. That is, other transactions that attempt UPDATE, DELETE, or SELECT FOR UPDATE of these rows will be blocked until the current transaction ends. Also, if an UPDATE, DELETE, or SELECT FOR UPDATE from another transaction has already locked a selected row or rows, SELECT FOR UPDATE will wait for the other transaction to complete, and will then lock and return the updated row (or no row, if the row was deleted). Within a REPEATABLE READ or SERIALIZABLE transaction, however, an error will be thrown if a row to be locked has changed since the transaction started. For further discussion see Chapter 13.

FOR SHARE behaves similarly, except that it acquires a shared rather than exclusive lock on each retrieved row. A shared lock blocks other transactions from performing UPDATE, DELETE, or SELECT FOR UPDATE on these rows, but it does not prevent them from performing SELECT FOR SHARE.

To prevent the operation from waiting for other transactions to commit, use the NOWAIT option. With NOWAIT, the statement reports an error, rather than waiting, if a selected row cannot be locked immediately. Note that NOWAIT applies only to the row-level lock(s) — the required ROW SHARE table-level lock is still taken in the ordinary way (see Chapter 13). You can use LOCK with the NOWAIT option first, if you need to acquire the table-level lock without waiting.

If specific tables are named in FOR UPDATE or FOR SHARE, then only rows coming from those tables are locked; any other tables used in the SELECT are simply read as usual. A FOR UPDATE or FOR SHARE clause without a table list affects all tables used in the statement. If FOR UPDATE or FOR SHARE is applied to a view or sub-query, it affects all tables used in the view or sub-query. However, FOR UPDATE/FOR SHARE do not apply to WITH queries referenced by the primary query. If you want row locking to occur within a WITH query, specify FOR UPDATE or FOR SHARE within the WITH query.

Multiple FOR UPDATE and FOR SHARE clauses can be written if it is necessary to specify different locking behavior for different tables. If the same table is mentioned (or implicitly affected) by both FOR UPDATE and FOR SHARE clauses, then it is processed as FOR UPDATE. Similarly, a table is processed as NOWAIT if that is specified in any of the clauses affecting it.

FOR UPDATE and FOR SHARE cannot be used in contexts where returned rows cannot be clearly identified with individual table rows; for example they cannot be used with aggregation.

When FOR UPDATE or FOR SHARE appears at the top level of a SELECT query, the rows that are locked are exactly those that are returned by the query; in the case of a join query, the rows locked are those that contribute to returned join rows. In addition, rows that satisfied the query conditions as of the query snapshot will be locked, although they will not be returned if they were updated after the snapshot and no longer satisfy the query conditions. If a LIMIT is used, locking stops once enough rows have been returned to satisfy the limit (but note that rows skipped over by OFFSET will get locked). Similarly, if FOR UPDATE or FOR SHARE is used in a cursor's query, only rows actually fetched or stepped past by the cursor will be locked.

When FOR UPDATE or FOR SHARE appears in a sub-SELECT, the rows locked are those returned to the outer query by the sub-query. This might involve fewer rows than inspection of the sub-query alone would suggest, since conditions from the outer query might be used to optimize execution of the sub-query. For example,

SELECT * FROM (SELECT * FROM mytable FOR UPDATE) ss WHERE col1 = 5;

will lock only rows having col1 = 5, even though that condition is not textually within the sub-query.

Caution

Avoid locking a row and then modifying it within a later savepoint or PL/pgSQL exception block. A subsequent rollback would cause the lock to be lost. For example:

BEGIN;
SELECT * FROM mytable WHERE key = 1 FOR UPDATE;
SAVEPOINT s;
UPDATE mytable SET ... WHERE key = 1;
ROLLBACK TO s;

After the ROLLBACK, the row is effectively unlocked, rather than returned to its pre-savepoint state of being locked but not modified. This hazard occurs if a row locked in the current transaction is updated or deleted, or if a shared lock is upgraded to exclusive: in all these cases, the former lock state is forgotten. If the transaction is then rolled back to a state between the original locking command and the subsequent change, the row will appear not to be locked at all. This is an implementation deficiency which will be addressed in a future release of PostgreSQL.

Caution

It is possible for a SELECT command running at the READ COMMITTED transaction isolation level and using ORDER BY and FOR UPDATE/SHARE to return rows out of order. This is because ORDER BY is applied first. The command sorts the result, but might then block trying to obtain a lock on one or more of the rows. Once the SELECT unblocks, some of the ordering column values might have been modified, leading to those rows appearing to be out of order (though they are in order in terms of the original column values). This can be worked around at need by placing the FOR UPDATE/SHARE clause in a sub-query, for example

SELECT * FROM (SELECT * FROM mytable FOR UPDATE) ss ORDER BY column1;

Note that this will result in locking all rows of mytable, whereas FOR UPDATE at the top level would lock only the actually returned rows. This can make for a significant performance difference, particularly if the ORDER BY is combined with LIMIT or other restrictions. So this technique is recommended only if concurrent updates of the ordering columns are expected and a strictly sorted result is required.

At the REPEATABLE READ or SERIALIZABLE transaction isolation level this would cause a serialization failure (with a SQLSTATE of '40001'), so there is no possibility of receiving rows out of order under these isolation levels.

TABLE Command

The command

TABLE name

is completely equivalent to

SELECT * FROM name

It can be used as a top-level command or as a space-saving syntax variant in parts of complex queries.

Examples

To join the table films with the table distributors:

SELECT f.title, f.did, d.name, f.date_prod, f.kind
    FROM distributors d, films f
    WHERE f.did = d.did

       title       | did |     name     | date_prod  |   kind
-------------------+-----+--------------+------------+----------
 The Third Man     | 101 | British Lion | 1949-12-23 | Drama
 The African Queen | 101 | British Lion | 1951-08-11 | Romantic
 ...

To sum the column len of all films and group the results by kind:

SELECT kind, sum(len) AS total FROM films GROUP BY kind;

   kind   | total
----------+-------
 Action   | 07:34
 Comedy   | 02:58
 Drama    | 14:28
 Musical  | 06:42
 Romantic | 04:38

To sum the column len of all films, group the results by kind and show those group totals that are less than 5 hours:

SELECT kind, sum(len) AS total
    FROM films
    GROUP BY kind
    HAVING sum(len) < interval '5 hours';

   kind   | total
----------+-------
 Comedy   | 02:58
 Romantic | 04:38

The following two examples are identical ways of sorting the individual results according to the contents of the second column (name):

SELECT * FROM distributors ORDER BY name;
SELECT * FROM distributors ORDER BY 2;

 did |       name
-----+------------------
 109 | 20th Century Fox
 110 | Bavaria Atelier
 101 | British Lion
 107 | Columbia
 102 | Jean Luc Godard
 113 | Luso films
 104 | Mosfilm
 103 | Paramount
 106 | Toho
 105 | United Artists
 111 | Walt Disney
 112 | Warner Bros.
 108 | Westward

The next example shows how to obtain the union of the tables distributors and actors, restricting the results to those that begin with the letter W in each table. Only distinct rows are wanted, so the key word ALL is omitted.

distributors:               actors:
 did |     name              id |     name
-----+--------------        ----+----------------
 108 | Westward               1 | Woody Allen
 111 | Walt Disney            2 | Warren Beatty
 112 | Warner Bros.           3 | Walter Matthau
 ...                         ...

SELECT distributors.name
    FROM distributors
    WHERE distributors.name LIKE 'W%'
UNION
SELECT actors.name
    FROM actors
    WHERE actors.name LIKE 'W%';

      name
----------------
 Walt Disney
 Walter Matthau
 Warner Bros.
 Warren Beatty
 Westward
 Woody Allen

This example shows how to use a function in the FROM clause, both with and without a column definition list:

CREATE FUNCTION distributors(int) RETURNS SETOF distributors AS $$
    SELECT * FROM distributors WHERE did = $1;
$$ LANGUAGE SQL;

SELECT * FROM distributors(111);
 did |    name
-----+-------------
 111 | Walt Disney

CREATE FUNCTION distributors_2(int) RETURNS SETOF record AS $$
    SELECT * FROM distributors WHERE did = $1;
$$ LANGUAGE SQL;

SELECT * FROM distributors_2(111) AS (f1 int, f2 text);
 f1  |     f2
-----+-------------
 111 | Walt Disney

This example shows how to use a simple WITH clause:

WITH t AS (
    SELECT random() as x FROM generate_series(1, 3)
  )
SELECT * FROM t
UNION ALL
SELECT * FROM t

         x
--------------------
  0.534150459803641
  0.520092216785997
 0.0735620250925422
  0.534150459803641
  0.520092216785997
 0.0735620250925422

Notice that the WITH query was evaluated only once, so that we got two sets of the same three random values.

This example uses WITH RECURSIVE to find all subordinates (direct or indirect) of the employee Mary, and their level of indirectness, from a table that shows only direct subordinates:

WITH RECURSIVE employee_recursive(distance, employee_name, manager_name) AS (
    SELECT 1, employee_name, manager_name
    FROM employee
    WHERE manager_name = 'Mary'
  UNION ALL
    SELECT er.distance + 1, e.employee_name, e.manager_name
    FROM employee_recursive er, employee e
    WHERE er.employee_name = e.manager_name
  )
SELECT distance, employee_name FROM employee_recursive;

Notice the typical form of recursive queries: an initial condition, followed by UNION, followed by the recursive part of the query. Be sure that the recursive part of the query will eventually return no tuples, or else the query will loop indefinitely. (See Section 7.8 for more examples.)

Compatibility

Of course, the SELECT statement is compatible with the SQL standard. But there are some extensions and some missing features.

Omitted FROM Clauses

PostgreSQL allows one to omit the FROM clause. It has a straightforward use to compute the results of simple expressions:

SELECT 2+2;

 ?column?
----------
        4

Some other SQL databases cannot do this except by introducing a dummy one-row table from which to do the SELECT.

Note that if a FROM clause is not specified, the query cannot reference any database tables. For example, the following query is invalid:

SELECT distributors.* WHERE distributors.name = 'Westward';

PostgreSQL releases prior to 8.1 would accept queries of this form, and add an implicit entry to the query's FROM clause for each table referenced by the query. This is no longer allowed.

Omitting the AS Key Word

In the SQL standard, the optional key word AS can be omitted before an output column name whenever the new column name is a valid column name (that is, not the same as any reserved keyword). PostgreSQL is slightly more restrictive: AS is required if the new column name matches any keyword at all, reserved or not. Recommended practice is to use AS or double-quote output column names, to prevent any possible conflict against future keyword additions.

In FROM items, both the standard and PostgreSQL allow AS to be omitted before an alias that is an unreserved keyword. But this is impractical for output column names, because of syntactic ambiguities.

ONLY and Inheritance

The SQL standard requires parentheses around the table name when writing ONLY, for example SELECT * FROM ONLY (tab1), ONLY (tab2) WHERE .... PostgreSQL considers these parentheses to be optional.

PostgreSQL allows a trailing * to be written to explicitly specify the non-ONLY behavior of including child tables. The standard does not allow this.

(These points apply equally to all SQL commands supporting the ONLY option.)

Namespace Available to GROUP BY and ORDER BY

In the SQL-92 standard, an ORDER BY clause can only use output column names or numbers, while a GROUP BY clause can only use expressions based on input column names. PostgreSQL extends each of these clauses to allow the other choice as well (but it uses the standard's interpretation if there is ambiguity). PostgreSQL also allows both clauses to specify arbitrary expressions. Note that names appearing in an expression will always be taken as input-column names, not as output-column names.

SQL:1999 and later use a slightly different definition which is not entirely upward compatible with SQL-92. In most cases, however, PostgreSQL will interpret an ORDER BY or GROUP BY expression the same way SQL:1999 does.

Functional Dependencies

PostgreSQL recognizes functional dependency (allowing columns to be omitted from GROUP BY) only when a table's primary key is included in the GROUP BY list. The SQL standard specifies additional conditions that should be recognized.

WINDOW Clause Restrictions

The SQL standard provides additional options for the window frame_clause. PostgreSQL currently supports only the options listed above.

LIMIT and OFFSET

The clauses LIMIT and OFFSET are PostgreSQL-specific syntax, also used by MySQL. The SQL:2008 standard has introduced the clauses OFFSET ... FETCH {FIRST|NEXT} ... for the same functionality, as shown above in LIMIT Clause. This syntax is also used by IBM DB2. (Applications written for Oracle frequently use a workaround involving the automatically generated rownum column, which is not available in PostgreSQL, to implement the effects of these clauses.)

FOR UPDATE and FOR SHARE

Although FOR UPDATE appears in the SQL standard, the standard allows it only as an option of DECLARE CURSOR. PostgreSQL allows it in any SELECT query as well as in sub-SELECTs, but this is an extension. The FOR SHARE variant, and the NOWAIT option, do not appear in the standard.

Data-Modifying Statements in WITH

PostgreSQL allows INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE to be used as WITH queries. This is not found in the SQL standard.

Nonstandard Clauses

The clause DISTINCT ON is not defined in the SQL standard.

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SECURITY LABEL | Up | SELECT INTO


SELECT INTO

Name

SELECT INTO -- define a new table from the results of a query

Synopsis

[ WITH [ RECURSIVE ] with_query [, ...] ]
SELECT [ ALL | DISTINCT [ ON ( expression [, ...] ) ] ]
    * | expression [ [ AS ] output_name ] [, ...]
    INTO [ TEMPORARY | TEMP | UNLOGGED ] [ TABLE ] new_table
    [ FROM from_item [, ...] ]
    [ WHERE condition ]
    [ GROUP BY expression [, ...] ]
    [ HAVING condition [, ...] ]
    [ WINDOW window_name AS ( window_definition ) [, ...] ]
    [ { UNION | INTERSECT | EXCEPT } [ ALL | DISTINCT ] select ]
    [ ORDER BY expression [ ASC | DESC | USING operator ] [ NULLS { FIRST | LAST } ] [, ...] ]
    [ LIMIT { count | ALL } ]
    [ OFFSET start [ ROW | ROWS ] ]
    [ FETCH { FIRST | NEXT } [ count ] { ROW | ROWS } ONLY ]
    [ FOR { UPDATE | SHARE } [ OF table_name [, ...] ] [ NOWAIT ] [...] ]

Description

SELECT INTO creates a new table and fills it with data computed by a query. The data is not returned to the client, as it is with a normal SELECT. The new table's columns have the names and data types associated with the output columns of the SELECT.

Parameters

TEMPORARY or TEMP

If specified, the table is created as a temporary table. Refer to CREATE TABLE for details.

UNLOGGED

If specified, the table is created as an unlogged table. Refer to CREATE TABLE for details.

new_table

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of the table to be created.

All other parameters are described in detail under SELECT.

Notes

CREATE TABLE AS is functionally similar to SELECT INTO. CREATE TABLE AS is the recommended syntax, since this form of SELECT INTO is not available in ECPG or PL/pgSQL, because they interpret the INTO clause differently. Furthermore, CREATE TABLE AS offers a superset of the functionality provided by SELECT INTO.

Prior to PostgreSQL 8.1, the table created by SELECT INTO included OIDs by default. In PostgreSQL 8.1, this is not the case — to include OIDs in the new table, the default_with_oids configuration variable must be enabled. Alternatively, CREATE TABLE AS can be used with the WITH OIDS clause.

Examples

Create a new table films_recent consisting of only recent entries from the table films:

SELECT * INTO films_recent FROM films WHERE date_prod >= '2002-01-01';

Compatibility

The SQL standard uses SELECT INTO to represent selecting values into scalar variables of a host program, rather than creating a new table. This indeed is the usage found in ECPG (see Chapter 33) and PL/pgSQL (see Chapter 39). The PostgreSQL usage of SELECT INTO to represent table creation is historical. It is best to use CREATE TABLE AS for this purpose in new code.

See Also

CREATE TABLE AS
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SELECT | Up | SET


SET

Name

SET -- change a run-time parameter

Synopsis

SET [ SESSION | LOCAL ] configuration_parameter { TO | = } { value | 'value' | DEFAULT }
SET [ SESSION | LOCAL ] TIME ZONE { timezone | LOCAL | DEFAULT }

Description

The SET command changes run-time configuration parameters. Many of the run-time parameters listed in Chapter 18 can be changed on-the-fly with SET. (But some require superuser privileges to change, and others cannot be changed after server or session start.) SET only affects the value used by the current session.

If SET (or equivalently SET SESSION) is issued within a transaction that is later aborted, the effects of the SET command disappear when the transaction is rolled back. Once the surrounding transaction is committed, the effects will persist until the end of the session, unless overridden by another SET.

The effects of SET LOCAL last only till the end of the current transaction, whether committed or not. A special case is SET followed by SET LOCAL within a single transaction: the SET LOCAL value will be seen until the end of the transaction, but afterwards (if the transaction is committed) the SET value will take effect.

The effects of SET or SET LOCAL are also canceled by rolling back to a savepoint that is earlier than the command.

If SET LOCAL is used within a function that has a SET option for the same variable (see CREATE FUNCTION), the effects of the SET LOCAL command disappear at function exit; that is, the value in effect when the function was called is restored anyway. This allows SET LOCAL to be used for dynamic or repeated changes of a parameter within a function, while still having the convenience of using the SET option to save and restore the caller's value. However, a regular SET command overrides any surrounding function's SET option; its effects will persist unless rolled back.

Note: In PostgreSQL versions 8.0 through 8.2, the effects of a SET LOCAL would be canceled by releasing an earlier savepoint, or by successful exit from a PL/pgSQL exception block. This behavior has been changed because it was deemed unintuitive.

Parameters

SESSION

Specifies that the command takes effect for the current session. (This is the default if neither SESSION nor LOCAL appears.)

LOCAL

Specifies that the command takes effect for only the current transaction. After COMMIT or ROLLBACK, the session-level setting takes effect again. Note that SET LOCAL will appear to have no effect if it is executed outside a BEGIN block, since the transaction will end immediately.

configuration_parameter

Name of a settable run-time parameter. Available parameters are documented in Chapter 18 and below.

value

New value of parameter. Values can be specified as string constants, identifiers, numbers, or comma-separated lists of these, as appropriate for the particular parameter. DEFAULT can be written to specify resetting the parameter to its default value (that is, whatever value it would have had if no SET had been executed in the current session).

Besides the configuration parameters documented in Chapter 18, there are a few that can only be adjusted using the SET command or that have a special syntax:

SCHEMA

SET SCHEMA 'value' is an alias for SET search_path TO value. Only one schema can be specified using this syntax.

NAMES

SET NAMES value is an alias for SET client_encoding TO value.

SEED

Sets the internal seed for the random number generator (the function random). Allowed values are floating-point numbers between -1 and 1, which are then multiplied by 231-1.

The seed can also be set by invoking the function setseed:

SELECT setseed(value);

TIME ZONE

SET TIME ZONE value is an alias for SET timezone TO value. The syntax SET TIME ZONE allows special syntax for the time zone specification. Here are examples of valid values:

'PST8PDT'

The time zone for Berkeley, California.

'Europe/Rome'

The time zone for Italy.

-7

The time zone 7 hours west from UTC (equivalent to PDT). Positive values are east from UTC.

INTERVAL '-08:00' HOUR TO MINUTE

The time zone 8 hours west from UTC (equivalent to PST).

LOCAL
DEFAULT

Set the time zone to your local time zone (that is, the server's default value of timezone; if this has not been explicitly set anywhere, it will be the zone that the server's operating system defaults to).

See Section 8.5.3 for more information about time zones.

Notes

The function set_config provides equivalent functionality; see Section 9.24. Also, it is possible to UPDATE the pg_settings system view to perform the equivalent of SET.

Examples

Set the schema search path:

SET search_path TO my_schema, public;

Set the style of date to traditional POSTGRES with "day before month" input convention:

SET datestyle TO postgres, dmy;

Set the time zone for Berkeley, California:

SET TIME ZONE 'PST8PDT';

Set the time zone for Italy:

SET TIME ZONE 'Europe/Rome';

Compatibility

SET TIME ZONE extends syntax defined in the SQL standard. The standard allows only numeric time zone offsets while PostgreSQL allows more flexible time-zone specifications. All other SET features are PostgreSQL extensions.

See Also

RESET, SHOW
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SELECT INTO | Up | SET CONSTRAINTS


SET CONSTRAINTS

Name

SET CONSTRAINTS -- set constraint check timing for the current transaction

Synopsis

SET CONSTRAINTS { ALL | name [, ...] } { DEFERRED | IMMEDIATE }

Description

SET CONSTRAINTS sets the behavior of constraint checking within the current transaction. IMMEDIATE constraints are checked at the end of each statement. DEFERRED constraints are not checked until transaction commit. Each constraint has its own IMMEDIATE or DEFERRED mode.

Upon creation, a constraint is given one of three characteristics: DEFERRABLE INITIALLY DEFERRED, DEFERRABLE INITIALLY IMMEDIATE, or NOT DEFERRABLE. The third class is always IMMEDIATE and is not affected by the SET CONSTRAINTS command. The first two classes start every transaction in the indicated mode, but their behavior can be changed within a transaction by SET CONSTRAINTS.

SET CONSTRAINTS with a list of constraint names changes the mode of just those constraints (which must all be deferrable). Each constraint name can be schema-qualified. The current schema search path is used to find the first matching name if no schema name is specified. SET CONSTRAINTS ALL changes the mode of all deferrable constraints.

When SET CONSTRAINTS changes the mode of a constraint from DEFERRED to IMMEDIATE, the new mode takes effect retroactively: any outstanding data modifications that would have been checked at the end of the transaction are instead checked during the execution of the SET CONSTRAINTS command. If any such constraint is violated, the SET CONSTRAINTS fails (and does not change the constraint mode). Thus, SET CONSTRAINTS can be used to force checking of constraints to occur at a specific point in a transaction.

Currently, only UNIQUE, PRIMARY KEY, REFERENCES (foreign key), and EXCLUDE constraints are affected by this setting. NOT NULL and CHECK constraints are always checked immediately when a row is inserted or modified (not at the end of the statement). Uniqueness and exclusion constraints that have not been declared DEFERRABLE are also checked immediately.

The firing of triggers that are declared as "constraint triggers" is also controlled by this setting — they fire at the same time that the associated constraint should be checked.

Notes

Because PostgreSQL does not require constraint names to be unique within a schema (but only per-table), it is possible that there is more than one match for a specified constraint name. In this case SET CONSTRAINTS will act on all matches. For a non-schema-qualified name, once a match or matches have been found in some schema in the search path, schemas appearing later in the path are not searched.

This command only alters the behavior of constraints within the current transaction. Thus, if you execute this command outside of a transaction block (BEGIN/COMMIT pair), it will not appear to have any effect.

Compatibility

This command complies with the behavior defined in the SQL standard, except for the limitation that, in PostgreSQL, it does not apply to NOT NULL and CHECK constraints. Also, PostgreSQL checks non-deferrable uniqueness constraints immediately, not at end of statement as the standard would suggest.

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SET | Up | SET ROLE


SET ROLE

Name

SET ROLE -- set the current user identifier of the current session

Synopsis

SET [ SESSION | LOCAL ] ROLE role_name
SET [ SESSION | LOCAL ] ROLE NONE
RESET ROLE

Description

This command sets the current user identifier of the current SQL session to be role_name. The role name can be written as either an identifier or a string literal. After SET ROLE, permissions checking for SQL commands is carried out as though the named role were the one that had logged in originally.

The specified role_name must be a role that the current session user is a member of. (If the session user is a superuser, any role can be selected.)

The SESSION and LOCAL modifiers act the same as for the regular SET command.

The NONE and RESET forms reset the current user identifier to be the current session user identifier. These forms can be executed by any user.

Notes

Using this command, it is possible to either add privileges or restrict one's privileges. If the session user role has the INHERITS attribute, then it automatically has all the privileges of every role that it could SET ROLE to; in this case SET ROLE effectively drops all the privileges assigned directly to the session user and to the other roles it is a member of, leaving only the privileges available to the named role. On the other hand, if the session user role has the NOINHERITS attribute, SET ROLE drops the privileges assigned directly to the session user and instead acquires the privileges available to the named role.

In particular, when a superuser chooses to SET ROLE to a non-superuser role, she loses her superuser privileges.

SET ROLE has effects comparable to SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION, but the privilege checks involved are quite different. Also, SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION determines which roles are allowable for later SET ROLE commands, whereas changing roles with SET ROLE does not change the set of roles allowed to a later SET ROLE.

SET ROLE does not process session variables as specified by the role's ALTER ROLE settings; this only happens during login.

SET ROLE cannot be used within a SECURITY DEFINER function.

Examples

SELECT SESSION_USER, CURRENT_USER;

 session_user | current_user
--------------+--------------
 peter        | peter

SET ROLE 'paul';

SELECT SESSION_USER, CURRENT_USER;

 session_user | current_user
--------------+--------------
 peter        | paul

Compatibility

PostgreSQL allows identifier syntax ("rolename"), while the SQL standard requires the role name to be written as a string literal. SQL does not allow this command during a transaction; PostgreSQL does not make this restriction because there is no reason to. The SESSION and LOCAL modifiers are a PostgreSQL extension, as is the RESET syntax.

See Also

SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION
Prev | Home | Next
SET CONSTRAINTS | Up | SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION


SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION

Name

SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION -- set the session user identifier and the current user identifier of the current session

Synopsis

SET [ SESSION | LOCAL ] SESSION AUTHORIZATION user_name
SET [ SESSION | LOCAL ] SESSION AUTHORIZATION DEFAULT
RESET SESSION AUTHORIZATION

Description

This command sets the session user identifier and the current user identifier of the current SQL session to be user_name. The user name can be written as either an identifier or a string literal. Using this command, it is possible, for example, to temporarily become an unprivileged user and later switch back to being a superuser.

The session user identifier is initially set to be the (possibly authenticated) user name provided by the client. The current user identifier is normally equal to the session user identifier, but might change temporarily in the context of SECURITY DEFINER functions and similar mechanisms; it can also be changed by SET ROLE. The current user identifier is relevant for permission checking.

The session user identifier can be changed only if the initial session user (the authenticated user) had the superuser privilege. Otherwise, the command is accepted only if it specifies the authenticated user name.

The SESSION and LOCAL modifiers act the same as for the regular SET command.

The DEFAULT and RESET forms reset the session and current user identifiers to be the originally authenticated user name. These forms can be executed by any user.

Notes

SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION cannot be used within a SECURITY DEFINER function.

Examples

SELECT SESSION_USER, CURRENT_USER;

 session_user | current_user
--------------+--------------
 peter        | peter

SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION 'paul';

SELECT SESSION_USER, CURRENT_USER;

 session_user | current_user
--------------+--------------
 paul         | paul

Compatibility

The SQL standard allows some other expressions to appear in place of the literal user_name, but these options are not important in practice. PostgreSQL allows identifier syntax ("username"), which SQL does not. SQL does not allow this command during a transaction; PostgreSQL does not make this restriction because there is no reason to. The SESSION and LOCAL modifiers are a PostgreSQL extension, as is the RESET syntax.

The privileges necessary to execute this command are left implementation-defined by the standard.

See Also

SET ROLE
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SET ROLE | Up | SET TRANSACTION


SET TRANSACTION

Name

SET TRANSACTION -- set the characteristics of the current transaction

Synopsis

SET TRANSACTION transaction_mode [, ...]
SET SESSION CHARACTERISTICS AS TRANSACTION transaction_mode [, ...]

where transaction_mode is one of:

    ISOLATION LEVEL { SERIALIZABLE | REPEATABLE READ | READ COMMITTED | READ UNCOMMITTED }
    READ WRITE | READ ONLY
    [ NOT ] DEFERRABLE

Description

The SET TRANSACTION command sets the characteristics of the current transaction. It has no effect on any subsequent transactions. SET SESSION CHARACTERISTICS sets the default transaction characteristics for subsequent transactions of a session. These defaults can be overridden by SET TRANSACTION for an individual transaction.

The available transaction characteristics are the transaction isolation level, the transaction access mode (read/write or read-only), and the deferrable mode.

The isolation level of a transaction determines what data the transaction can see when other transactions are running concurrently:

READ COMMITTED

A statement can only see rows committed before it began. This is the default.

REPEATABLE READ

All statements of the current transaction can only see rows committed before the first query or data-modification statement was executed in this transaction.

SERIALIZABLE

All statements of the current transaction can only see rows committed before the first query or data-modification statement was executed in this transaction. If a pattern of reads and writes among concurrent serializable transactions would create a situation which could not have occurred for any serial (one-at-a-time) execution of those transactions, one of them will be rolled back with a serialization_failure SQLSTATE.

The SQL standard defines one additional level, READ UNCOMMITTED. In PostgreSQL READ UNCOMMITTED is treated as READ COMMITTED.

The transaction isolation level cannot be changed after the first query or data-modification statement (SELECT, INSERT, DELETE, UPDATE, FETCH, or COPY) of a transaction has been executed. See Chapter 13 for more information about transaction isolation and concurrency control.

The transaction access mode determines whether the transaction is read/write or read-only. Read/write is the default. When a transaction is read-only, the following SQL commands are disallowed: INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, and COPY FROM if the table they would write to is not a temporary table; all CREATE, ALTER, and DROP commands; COMMENT, GRANT, REVOKE, TRUNCATE; and EXPLAIN ANALYZE and EXECUTE if the command they would execute is among those listed. This is a high-level notion of read-only that does not prevent all writes to disk.

The DEFERRABLE transaction property has no effect unless the transaction is also SERIALIZABLE and READ ONLY. When all of these properties are set on a transaction, the transaction may block when first acquiring its snapshot, after which it is able to run without the normal overhead of a SERIALIZABLE transaction and without any risk of contributing to or being canceled by a serialization failure. This mode is well suited for long-running reports or backups.

Notes

If SET TRANSACTION is executed without a prior START TRANSACTION or BEGIN, it will appear to have no effect, since the transaction will immediately end.

It is possible to dispense with SET TRANSACTION by instead specifying the desired transaction_modes in BEGIN or START TRANSACTION.

The session default transaction modes can also be set by setting the configuration parameters default_transaction_isolation, default_transaction_read_only, and default_transaction_deferrable. (In fact SET SESSION CHARACTERISTICS is just a verbose equivalent for setting these variables with SET.) This means the defaults can be set in the configuration file, via ALTER DATABASE, etc. Consult Chapter 18 for more information.

Compatibility

Both commands are defined in the SQL standard. SERIALIZABLE is the default transaction isolation level in the standard. In PostgreSQL the default is ordinarily READ COMMITTED, but you can change it as mentioned above.

In the SQL standard, there is one other transaction characteristic that can be set with these commands: the size of the diagnostics area. This concept is specific to embedded SQL, and therefore is not implemented in the PostgreSQL server.

The DEFERRABLE transaction_mode is a PostgreSQL language extension.

The SQL standard requires commas between successive transaction_modes, but for historical reasons PostgreSQL allows the commas to be omitted.

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SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION | Up | SHOW


SHOW

Name

SHOW -- show the value of a run-time parameter

Synopsis

SHOW name
SHOW ALL

Description

SHOW will display the current setting of run-time parameters. These variables can be set using the SET statement, by editing the postgresql.conf configuration file, through the PGOPTIONS environmental variable (when using libpq or a libpq-based application), or through command-line flags when starting the postgres server. See Chapter 18 for details.

Parameters

name

The name of a run-time parameter. Available parameters are documented in Chapter 18 and on the SET reference page. In addition, there are a few parameters that can be shown but not set:

SERVER_VERSION

Shows the server's version number.

SERVER_ENCODING

Shows the server-side character set encoding. At present, this parameter can be shown but not set, because the encoding is determined at database creation time.

LC_COLLATE

Shows the database's locale setting for collation (text ordering). At present, this parameter can be shown but not set, because the setting is determined at database creation time.

LC_CTYPE

Shows the database's locale setting for character classification. At present, this parameter can be shown but not set, because the setting is determined at database creation time.

IS_SUPERUSER

True if the current role has superuser privileges.

ALL

Show the values of all configuration parameters, with descriptions.

Notes

The function current_setting produces equivalent output; see Section 9.24. Also, the pg_settings system view produces the same information.

Examples

Show the current setting of the parameter DateStyle:

SHOW DateStyle;
 DateStyle
-----------
 ISO, MDY
(1 row)

Show the current setting of the parameter geqo:

SHOW geqo;
 geqo
------
 on
(1 row)

Show all settings:

SHOW ALL;
            name         | setting |                description
-------------------------+---------+-------------------------------------------------
 allow_system_table_mods | off     | Allows modifications of the structure of ...
    .
    .
    .
 xmloption               | content | Sets whether XML data in implicit parsing ...
 zero_damaged_pages      | off     | Continues processing past damaged page headers.
(196 rows)

Compatibility

The SHOW command is a PostgreSQL extension.

See Also

SET, RESET
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SET TRANSACTION | Up | START TRANSACTION


START TRANSACTION

Name

START TRANSACTION -- start a transaction block

Synopsis

START TRANSACTION [ transaction_mode [, ...] ]

where transaction_mode is one of:

    ISOLATION LEVEL { SERIALIZABLE | REPEATABLE READ | READ COMMITTED | READ UNCOMMITTED }
    READ WRITE | READ ONLY
    [ NOT ] DEFERRABLE

Description

This command begins a new transaction block. If the isolation level, read/write mode, or deferrable mode is specified, the new transaction has those characteristics, as if SET TRANSACTION was executed. This is the same as the BEGIN command.

Parameters

Refer to SET TRANSACTION for information on the meaning of the parameters to this statement.

Compatibility

In the standard, it is not necessary to issue START TRANSACTION to start a transaction block: any SQL command implicitly begins a block. PostgreSQL's behavior can be seen as implicitly issuing a COMMIT after each command that does not follow START TRANSACTION (or BEGIN), and it is therefore often called "autocommit". Other relational database systems might offer an autocommit feature as a convenience.

The DEFERRABLE transaction_mode is a PostgreSQL language extension.

The SQL standard requires commas between successive transaction_modes, but for historical reasons PostgreSQL allows the commas to be omitted.

See also the compatibility section of SET TRANSACTION.

See Also

BEGIN, COMMIT, ROLLBACK, SAVEPOINT, SET TRANSACTION
Prev | Home | Next
SHOW | Up | TRUNCATE


TRUNCATE

Name

TRUNCATE -- empty a table or set of tables

Synopsis

TRUNCATE [ TABLE ] [ ONLY ] name [ * ] [, ... ]
    [ RESTART IDENTITY | CONTINUE IDENTITY ] [ CASCADE | RESTRICT ]

Description

TRUNCATE quickly removes all rows from a set of tables. It has the same effect as an unqualified DELETE on each table, but since it does not actually scan the tables it is faster. Furthermore, it reclaims disk space immediately, rather than requiring a subsequent VACUUM operation. This is most useful on large tables.

Parameters

name

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of a table to truncate. If ONLY is specified before the table name, only that table is truncated. If ONLY is not specified, the table and all its descendant tables (if any) are truncated. Optionally, * can be specified after the table name to explicitly indicate that descendant tables are included.

RESTART IDENTITY

Automatically restart sequences owned by columns of the truncated table(s).

CONTINUE IDENTITY

Do not change the values of sequences. This is the default.

CASCADE

Automatically truncate all tables that have foreign-key references to any of the named tables, or to any tables added to the group due to CASCADE.

RESTRICT

Refuse to truncate if any of the tables have foreign-key references from tables that are not listed in the command. This is the default.

Notes

You must have the TRUNCATE privilege on a table to truncate it.

TRUNCATE acquires an ACCESS EXCLUSIVE lock on each table it operates on, which blocks all other concurrent operations on the table. When RESTART IDENTITY is specified, any sequences that are to be restarted are likewise locked exclusively. If concurrent access to a table is required, then the DELETE command should be used instead.

TRUNCATE cannot be used on a table that has foreign-key references from other tables, unless all such tables are also truncated in the same command. Checking validity in such cases would require table scans, and the whole point is not to do one. The CASCADE option can be used to automatically include all dependent tables — but be very careful when using this option, or else you might lose data you did not intend to!

TRUNCATE will not fire any ON DELETE triggers that might exist for the tables. But it will fire ON TRUNCATE triggers. If ON TRUNCATE triggers are defined for any of the tables, then all BEFORE TRUNCATE triggers are fired before any truncation happens, and all AFTER TRUNCATE triggers are fired after the last truncation is performed and any sequences are reset. The triggers will fire in the order that the tables are to be processed (first those listed in the command, and then any that were added due to cascading).

TRUNCATE is not MVCC-safe. After truncation, the table will appear empty to concurrent transactions, if they are using a snapshot taken before the truncation occurred. See Section 13.5 for more details.

TRUNCATE is transaction-safe with respect to the data in the tables: the truncation will be safely rolled back if the surrounding transaction does not commit.

When RESTART IDENTITY is specified, the implied ALTER SEQUENCE RESTART operations are also done transactionally; that is, they will be rolled back if the surrounding transaction does not commit. This is unlike the normal behavior of ALTER SEQUENCE RESTART. Be aware that if any additional sequence operations are done on the restarted sequences before the transaction rolls back, the effects of these operations on the sequences will be rolled back, but not their effects on currval(); that is, after the transaction currval() will continue to reflect the last sequence value obtained inside the failed transaction, even though the sequence itself may no longer be consistent with that. This is similar to the usual behavior of currval() after a failed transaction.

Examples

Truncate the tables bigtable and fattable:

TRUNCATE bigtable, fattable;

The same, and also reset any associated sequence generators:

TRUNCATE bigtable, fattable RESTART IDENTITY;

Truncate the table othertable, and cascade to any tables that reference othertable via foreign-key constraints:

TRUNCATE othertable CASCADE;

Compatibility

The SQL:2008 standard includes a TRUNCATE command with the syntax TRUNCATE TABLE tablename. The clauses CONTINUE IDENTITY/RESTART IDENTITY also appear in that standard, but have slightly different though related meanings. Some of the concurrency behavior of this command is left implementation-defined by the standard, so the above notes should be considered and compared with other implementations if necessary.

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START TRANSACTION | Up | UNLISTEN


UNLISTEN

Name

UNLISTEN -- stop listening for a notification

Synopsis

UNLISTEN { channel | * }

Description

UNLISTEN is used to remove an existing registration for NOTIFY events. UNLISTEN cancels any existing registration of the current PostgreSQL session as a listener on the notification channel named channel. The special wildcard * cancels all listener registrations for the current session.

NOTIFY contains a more extensive discussion of the use of LISTEN and NOTIFY.

Parameters

channel

Name of a notification channel (any identifier).

*

All current listen registrations for this session are cleared.

Notes

You can unlisten something you were not listening for; no warning or error will appear.

At the end of each session, UNLISTEN * is automatically executed.

A transaction that has executed UNLISTEN cannot be prepared for two-phase commit.

Examples

To make a registration:

LISTEN virtual;
NOTIFY virtual;
Asynchronous notification "virtual" received from server process with PID 8448.

Once UNLISTEN has been executed, further NOTIFY messages will be ignored:

UNLISTEN virtual;
NOTIFY virtual;
-- no NOTIFY event is received

Compatibility

There is no UNLISTEN command in the SQL standard.

See Also

LISTEN, NOTIFY
Prev | Home | Next
TRUNCATE | Up | UPDATE


UPDATE

Name

UPDATE -- update rows of a table

Synopsis

[ WITH [ RECURSIVE ] with_query [, ...] ]
UPDATE [ ONLY ] table [ * ] [ [ AS ] alias ]
    SET { column = { expression | DEFAULT } |
          ( column [, ...] ) = ( { expression | DEFAULT } [, ...] ) } [, ...]
    [ FROM from_list ]
    [ WHERE condition | WHERE CURRENT OF cursor_name ]
    [ RETURNING * | output_expression [ [ AS ] output_name ] [, ...] ]

Description

UPDATE changes the values of the specified columns in all rows that satisfy the condition. Only the columns to be modified need be mentioned in the SET clause; columns not explicitly modified retain their previous values.

There are two ways to modify a table using information contained in other tables in the database: using sub-selects, or specifying additional tables in the FROM clause. Which technique is more appropriate depends on the specific circumstances.

The optional RETURNING clause causes UPDATE to compute and return value(s) based on each row actually updated. Any expression using the table's columns, and/or columns of other tables mentioned in FROM, can be computed. The new (post-update) values of the table's columns are used. The syntax of the RETURNING list is identical to that of the output list of SELECT.

You must have the UPDATE privilege on the table, or at least on the column(s) that are listed to be updated. You must also have the SELECT privilege on any column whose values are read in the expressions or condition.

Parameters

with_query

The WITH clause allows you to specify one or more subqueries that can be referenced by name in the UPDATE query. See Section 7.8 and SELECT for details.

table

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of the table to update. If ONLY is specified before the table name, matching rows are updated in the named table only. If ONLY is not specified, matching rows are also updated in any tables inheriting from the named table. Optionally, * can be specified after the table name to explicitly indicate that descendant tables are included.

alias

A substitute name for the target table. When an alias is provided, it completely hides the actual name of the table. For example, given UPDATE foo AS f, the remainder of the UPDATE statement must refer to this table as f not foo.

column

The name of a column in table. The column name can be qualified with a subfield name or array subscript, if needed. Do not include the table's name in the specification of a target column — for example, UPDATE tab SET tab.col = 1 is invalid.

expression

An expression to assign to the column. The expression can use the old values of this and other columns in the table.

DEFAULT

Set the column to its default value (which will be NULL if no specific default expression has been assigned to it).

from_list

A list of table expressions, allowing columns from other tables to appear in the WHERE condition and the update expressions. This is similar to the list of tables that can be specified in the FROM Clause of a SELECT statement. Note that the target table must not appear in the from_list, unless you intend a self-join (in which case it must appear with an alias in the from_list).

condition

An expression that returns a value of type boolean. Only rows for which this expression returns true will be updated.

cursor_name

The name of the cursor to use in a WHERE CURRENT OF condition. The row to be updated is the one most recently fetched from this cursor. The cursor must be a non-grouping query on the UPDATE's target table. Note that WHERE CURRENT OF cannot be specified together with a Boolean condition. See DECLARE for more information about using cursors with WHERE CURRENT OF.

output_expression

An expression to be computed and returned by the UPDATE command after each row is updated. The expression can use any column names of the table or table(s) listed in FROM. Write * to return all columns.

output_name

A name to use for a returned column.

Outputs

On successful completion, an UPDATE command returns a command tag of the form

UPDATE count

The count is the number of rows updated. If count is 0, no rows matched the condition (this is not considered an error).

If the UPDATE command contains a RETURNING clause, the result will be similar to that of a SELECT statement containing the columns and values defined in the RETURNING list, computed over the row(s) updated by the command.

Notes

When a FROM clause is present, what essentially happens is that the target table is joined to the tables mentioned in the from_list, and each output row of the join represents an update operation for the target table. When using FROM you should ensure that the join produces at most one output row for each row to be modified. In other words, a target row shouldn't join to more than one row from the other table(s). If it does, then only one of the join rows will be used to update the target row, but which one will be used is not readily predictable.

Because of this indeterminacy, referencing other tables only within sub-selects is safer, though often harder to read and slower than using a join.

Examples

Change the word Drama to Dramatic in the column kind of the table films:

UPDATE films SET kind = 'Dramatic' WHERE kind = 'Drama';

Adjust temperature entries and reset precipitation to its default value in one row of the table weather:

UPDATE weather SET temp_lo = temp_lo+1, temp_hi = temp_lo+15, prcp = DEFAULT
  WHERE city = 'San Francisco' AND date = '2003-07-03';

Perform the same operation and return the updated entries:

UPDATE weather SET temp_lo = temp_lo+1, temp_hi = temp_lo+15, prcp = DEFAULT
  WHERE city = 'San Francisco' AND date = '2003-07-03'
  RETURNING temp_lo, temp_hi, prcp;

Use the alternative column-list syntax to do the same update:

UPDATE weather SET (temp_lo, temp_hi, prcp) = (temp_lo+1, temp_lo+15, DEFAULT)
  WHERE city = 'San Francisco' AND date = '2003-07-03';

Increment the sales count of the salesperson who manages the account for Acme Corporation, using the FROM clause syntax:

UPDATE employees SET sales_count = sales_count + 1 FROM accounts
  WHERE accounts.name = 'Acme Corporation'
  AND employees.id = accounts.sales_person;

Perform the same operation, using a sub-select in the WHERE clause:

UPDATE employees SET sales_count = sales_count + 1 WHERE id =
  (SELECT sales_person FROM accounts WHERE name = 'Acme Corporation');

Attempt to insert a new stock item along with the quantity of stock. If the item already exists, instead update the stock count of the existing item. To do this without failing the entire transaction, use savepoints:

BEGIN;
-- other operations
SAVEPOINT sp1;
INSERT INTO wines VALUES('Chateau Lafite 2003', '24');
-- Assume the above fails because of a unique key violation,
-- so now we issue these commands:
ROLLBACK TO sp1;
UPDATE wines SET stock = stock + 24 WHERE winename = 'Chateau Lafite 2003';
-- continue with other operations, and eventually
COMMIT;

Change the kind column of the table films in the row on which the cursor c_films is currently positioned:

UPDATE films SET kind = 'Dramatic' WHERE CURRENT OF c_films;

Compatibility

This command conforms to the SQL standard, except that the FROM and RETURNING clauses are PostgreSQL extensions, as is the ability to use WITH with UPDATE.

According to the standard, the column-list syntax should allow a list of columns to be assigned from a single row-valued expression, such as a sub-select:

UPDATE accounts SET (contact_last_name, contact_first_name) =
    (SELECT last_name, first_name FROM salesmen
     WHERE salesmen.id = accounts.sales_id);

This is not currently implemented — the source must be a list of independent expressions.

Some other database systems offer a FROM option in which the target table is supposed to be listed again within FROM. That is not how PostgreSQL interprets FROM. Be careful when porting applications that use this extension.

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UNLISTEN | Up | VACUUM


VACUUM

Name

VACUUM -- garbage-collect and optionally analyze a database

Synopsis

VACUUM [ ( { FULL | FREEZE | VERBOSE | ANALYZE } [, ...] ) ] [ table [ (column [, ...] ) ] ]
VACUUM [ FULL ] [ FREEZE ] [ VERBOSE ] [ table ]
VACUUM [ FULL ] [ FREEZE ] [ VERBOSE ] ANALYZE [ table [ (column [, ...] ) ] ]

Description

VACUUM reclaims storage occupied by dead tuples. In normal PostgreSQL operation, tuples that are deleted or obsoleted by an update are not physically removed from their table; they remain present until a VACUUM is done. Therefore it's necessary to do VACUUM periodically, especially on frequently-updated tables.

With no parameter, VACUUM processes every table in the current database that the current user has permission to vacuum. With a parameter, VACUUM processes only that table.

VACUUM ANALYZE performs a VACUUM and then an ANALYZE for each selected table. This is a handy combination form for routine maintenance scripts. See ANALYZE for more details about its processing.

Plain VACUUM (without FULL) simply reclaims space and makes it available for re-use. This form of the command can operate in parallel with normal reading and writing of the table, as an exclusive lock is not obtained. However, extra space is not returned to the operating system (in most cases); it's just kept available for re-use within the same table. VACUUM FULL rewrites the entire contents of the table into a new disk file with no extra space, allowing unused space to be returned to the operating system. This form is much slower and requires an exclusive lock on each table while it is being processed.

When the option list is surrounded by parentheses, the options can be written in any order. Without parentheses, options must be specified in exactly the order shown above. The parenthesized syntax was added in PostgreSQL 9.0; the unparenthesized syntax is deprecated.

Parameters

FULL

Selects "full" vacuum, which can reclaim more space, but takes much longer and exclusively locks the table. This method also requires extra disk space, since it writes a new copy of the table and doesn't release the old copy until the operation is complete. Usually this should only be used when a significant amount of space needs to be reclaimed from within the table.

FREEZE

Selects aggressive "freezing" of tuples. Specifying FREEZE is equivalent to performing VACUUM with the vacuum_freeze_min_age parameter set to zero.

VERBOSE

Prints a detailed vacuum activity report for each table.

ANALYZE

Updates statistics used by the planner to determine the most efficient way to execute a query.

table

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of a specific table to vacuum. Defaults to all tables in the current database.

column

The name of a specific column to analyze. Defaults to all columns. If a column list is specified, ANALYZE is implied.

Outputs

When VERBOSE is specified, VACUUM emits progress messages to indicate which table is currently being processed. Various statistics about the tables are printed as well.

Notes

To vacuum a table, one must ordinarily be the table's owner or a superuser. However, database owners are allowed to vacuum all tables in their databases, except shared catalogs. (The restriction for shared catalogs means that a true database-wide VACUUM can only be performed by a superuser.) VACUUM will skip over any tables that the calling user does not have permission to vacuum.

VACUUM cannot be executed inside a transaction block.

For tables with GIN indexes, VACUUM (in any form) also completes any pending index insertions, by moving pending index entries to the appropriate places in the main GIN index structure. See Section 54.3.1 for details.

We recommend that active production databases be vacuumed frequently (at least nightly), in order to remove dead rows. After adding or deleting a large number of rows, it might be a good idea to issue a VACUUM ANALYZE command for the affected table. This will update the system catalogs with the results of all recent changes, and allow the PostgreSQL query planner to make better choices in planning queries.

The FULL option is not recommended for routine use, but might be useful in special cases. An example is when you have deleted or updated most of the rows in a table and would like the table to physically shrink to occupy less disk space and allow faster table scans. VACUUM FULL will usually shrink the table more than a plain VACUUM would.

VACUUM causes a substantial increase in I/O traffic, which might cause poor performance for other active sessions. Therefore, it is sometimes advisable to use the cost-based vacuum delay feature. See Section 18.4.3 for details.

PostgreSQL includes an "autovacuum" facility which can automate routine vacuum maintenance. For more information about automatic and manual vacuuming, see Section 23.1.

Examples

The following is an example from running VACUUM on a table in the regression database:

regression=# VACUUM (VERBOSE, ANALYZE) onek;
INFO:  vacuuming "public.onek"
INFO:  index "onek_unique1" now contains 1000 tuples in 14 pages
DETAIL:  3000 index tuples were removed.
0 index pages have been deleted, 0 are currently reusable.
CPU 0.01s/0.08u sec elapsed 0.18 sec.
INFO:  index "onek_unique2" now contains 1000 tuples in 16 pages
DETAIL:  3000 index tuples were removed.
0 index pages have been deleted, 0 are currently reusable.
CPU 0.00s/0.07u sec elapsed 0.23 sec.
INFO:  index "onek_hundred" now contains 1000 tuples in 13 pages
DETAIL:  3000 index tuples were removed.
0 index pages have been deleted, 0 are currently reusable.
CPU 0.01s/0.08u sec elapsed 0.17 sec.
INFO:  index "onek_stringu1" now contains 1000 tuples in 48 pages
DETAIL:  3000 index tuples were removed.
0 index pages have been deleted, 0 are currently reusable.
CPU 0.01s/0.09u sec elapsed 0.59 sec.
INFO:  "onek": removed 3000 tuples in 108 pages
DETAIL:  CPU 0.01s/0.06u sec elapsed 0.07 sec.
INFO:  "onek": found 3000 removable, 1000 nonremovable tuples in 143 pages
DETAIL:  0 dead tuples cannot be removed yet.
There were 0 unused item pointers.
0 pages are entirely empty.
CPU 0.07s/0.39u sec elapsed 1.56 sec.
INFO:  analyzing "public.onek"
INFO:  "onek": 36 pages, 1000 rows sampled, 1000 estimated total rows
VACUUM

Compatibility

There is no VACUUM statement in the SQL standard.

See Also

vacuumdb, Section 18.4.3, Section 23.1.5
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UPDATE | Up | VALUES


VALUES

Name

VALUES -- compute a set of rows

Synopsis

VALUES ( expression [, ...] ) [, ...]
    [ ORDER BY sort_expression [ ASC | DESC | USING operator ] [, ...] ]
    [ LIMIT { count | ALL } ]
    [ OFFSET start [ ROW | ROWS ] ]
    [ FETCH { FIRST | NEXT } [ count ] { ROW | ROWS } ONLY ]

Description

VALUES computes a row value or set of row values specified by value expressions. It is most commonly used to generate a "constant table" within a larger command, but it can be used on its own.

When more than one row is specified, all the rows must have the same number of elements. The data types of the resulting table's columns are determined by combining the explicit or inferred types of the expressions appearing in that column, using the same rules as for UNION (see Section 10.5).

Within larger commands, VALUES is syntactically allowed anywhere that SELECT is. Because it is treated like a SELECT by the grammar, it is possible to use the ORDER BY, LIMIT (or equivalently FETCH FIRST), and OFFSET clauses with a VALUES command.

Parameters

expression

A constant or expression to compute and insert at the indicated place in the resulting table (set of rows). In a VALUES list appearing at the top level of an INSERT, an expression can be replaced by DEFAULT to indicate that the destination column's default value should be inserted. DEFAULT cannot be used when VALUES appears in other contexts.

sort_expression

An expression or integer constant indicating how to sort the result rows. This expression can refer to the columns of the VALUES result as column1, column2, etc. For more details see ORDER BY Clause.

operator

A sorting operator. For details see ORDER BY Clause.

count

The maximum number of rows to return. For details see LIMIT Clause.

start

The number of rows to skip before starting to return rows. For details see LIMIT Clause.

Notes

VALUES lists with very large numbers of rows should be avoided, as you might encounter out-of-memory failures or poor performance. VALUES appearing within INSERT is a special case (because the desired column types are known from the INSERT's target table, and need not be inferred by scanning the VALUES list), so it can handle larger lists than are practical in other contexts.

Examples

A bare VALUES command:

VALUES (1, 'one'), (2, 'two'), (3, 'three');

This will return a table of two columns and three rows. It's effectively equivalent to:

SELECT 1 AS column1, 'one' AS column2
UNION ALL
SELECT 2, 'two'
UNION ALL
SELECT 3, 'three';

More usually, VALUES is used within a larger SQL command. The most common use is in INSERT:

INSERT INTO films (code, title, did, date_prod, kind)
    VALUES ('T_601', 'Yojimbo', 106, '1961-06-16', 'Drama');

In the context of INSERT, entries of a VALUES list can be DEFAULT to indicate that the column default should be used here instead of specifying a value:

INSERT INTO films VALUES
    ('UA502', 'Bananas', 105, DEFAULT, 'Comedy', '82 minutes'),
    ('T_601', 'Yojimbo', 106, DEFAULT, 'Drama', DEFAULT);

VALUES can also be used where a sub-SELECT might be written, for example in a FROM clause:

SELECT f.*
  FROM films f, (VALUES('MGM', 'Horror'), ('UA', 'Sci-Fi')) AS t (studio, kind)
  WHERE f.studio = t.studio AND f.kind = t.kind;

UPDATE employees SET salary = salary * v.increase
  FROM (VALUES(1, 200000, 1.2), (2, 400000, 1.4)) AS v (depno, target, increase)
  WHERE employees.depno = v.depno AND employees.sales >= v.target;

Note that an AS clause is required when VALUES is used in a FROM clause, just as is true for SELECT. It is not required that the AS clause specify names for all the columns, but it's good practice to do so. (The default column names for VALUES are column1, column2, etc in PostgreSQL, but these names might be different in other database systems.)

When VALUES is used in INSERT, the values are all automatically coerced to the data type of the corresponding destination column. When it's used in other contexts, it might be necessary to specify the correct data type. If the entries are all quoted literal constants, coercing the first is sufficient to determine the assumed type for all:

SELECT * FROM machines
WHERE ip_address IN (VALUES('192.168.0.1'::inet), ('192.168.0.10'), ('192.168.1.43'));

Tip: For simple IN tests, it's better to rely on the list-of-scalars form of IN than to write a VALUES query as shown above. The list of scalars method requires less writing and is often more efficient.

Compatibility

VALUES conforms to the SQL standard. LIMIT and OFFSET are PostgreSQL extensions; see also under SELECT.

See Also

INSERT, SELECT
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VACUUM | Up | PostgreSQL Client Applications


PostgreSQL Client Applications

Prev Up Next

II. PostgreSQL Client Applications

This part contains reference information for PostgreSQL client applications and utilities. Not all of these commands are of general utility; some might require special privileges. The common feature of these applications is that they can be run on any host, independent of where the database server resides.

Table of Contents
clusterdb -- cluster a PostgreSQL database
createdb -- create a new PostgreSQL database
createlang -- install a PostgreSQL procedural language
createuser -- define a new PostgreSQL user account
dropdb -- remove a PostgreSQL database
droplang -- remove a PostgreSQL procedural language
dropuser -- remove a PostgreSQL user account
ecpg -- embedded SQL C preprocessor
pg_basebackup -- take a base backup of a PostgreSQL cluster
pg_config -- retrieve information about the installed version of PostgreSQL
pg_dump -- extract a PostgreSQL database into a script file or other archive file
pg_dumpall -- extract a PostgreSQL database cluster into a script file
pg_restore -- restore a PostgreSQL database from an archive file created by pg_dump
psql -- PostgreSQL interactive terminal
reindexdb -- reindex a PostgreSQL database
vacuumdb -- garbage-collect and analyze a PostgreSQL database
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VALUES | Up | clusterdb


clusterdb

Name

clusterdb -- cluster a PostgreSQL database

Synopsis

clusterdb [connection-option...] [--verbose | -v] [--table | -t table ] [dbname]

clusterdb [connection-option...] [--verbose | -v] [--all | -a]

Description

clusterdb is a utility for reclustering tables in a PostgreSQL database. It finds tables that have previously been clustered, and clusters them again on the same index that was last used. Tables that have never been clustered are not affected.

clusterdb is a wrapper around the SQL command CLUSTER. There is no effective difference between clustering databases via this utility and via other methods for accessing the server.

Options

clusterdb accepts the following command-line arguments:

-a
--all

Cluster all databases.

[-d] dbname
[--dbname=]dbname

Specifies the name of the database to be clustered. If this is not specified and -a (or --all) is not used, the database name is read from the environment variable PGDATABASE. If that is not set, the user name specified for the connection is used.

-e
--echo

Echo the commands that clusterdb generates and sends to the server.

-q
--quiet

Do not display progress messages.

-t table
--table=table

Cluster table only.

-v
--verbose

Print detailed information during processing.

-V
--version

Print the clusterdb version and exit.

-?
--help

Show help about clusterdb command line arguments, and exit.

clusterdb also accepts the following command-line arguments for connection parameters:

-h host
--host=host

Specifies the host name of the machine on which the server is running. If the value begins with a slash, it is used as the directory for the Unix domain socket.

-p port
--port=port

Specifies the TCP port or local Unix domain socket file extension on which the server is listening for connections.

-U username
--username=username

User name to connect as.

-w
--no-password

Never issue a password prompt. If the server requires password authentication and a password is not available by other means such as a .pgpass file, the connection attempt will fail. This option can be useful in batch jobs and scripts where no user is present to enter a password.

-W
--password

Force clusterdb to prompt for a password before connecting to a database.

This option is never essential, since clusterdb will automatically prompt for a password if the server demands password authentication. However, clusterdb will waste a connection attempt finding out that the server wants a password. In some cases it is worth typing -W to avoid the extra connection attempt.

Environment

PGDATABASE
PGHOST
PGPORT
PGUSER

Default connection parameters

This utility, like most other PostgreSQL utilities, also uses the environment variables supported by libpq (see Section 31.13).

Diagnostics

In case of difficulty, see CLUSTER and psql for discussions of potential problems and error messages. The database server must be running at the targeted host. Also, any default connection settings and environment variables used by the libpq front-end library will apply.

Examples

To cluster the database test:

$ clusterdb test

To cluster a single table foo in a database named xyzzy:

$ clusterdb --table foo xyzzy

See Also

CLUSTER
Prev | Home | Next
PostgreSQL Client Applications | Up | createdb


createdb

Name

createdb -- create a new PostgreSQL database

Synopsis

createdb [connection-option...] [option...] [dbname] [description]

Description

createdb creates a new PostgreSQL database.

Normally, the database user who executes this command becomes the owner of the new database. However, a different owner can be specified via the -O option, if the executing user has appropriate privileges.

createdb is a wrapper around the SQL command CREATE DATABASE. There is no effective difference between creating databases via this utility and via other methods for accessing the server.

Options

createdb accepts the following command-line arguments:

dbname

Specifies the name of the database to be created. The name must be unique among all PostgreSQL databases in this cluster. The default is to create a database with the same name as the current system user.

description

Specifies a comment to be associated with the newly created database.

-D tablespace
--tablespace=tablespace

Specifies the default tablespace for the database.

-e
--echo

Echo the commands that createdb generates and sends to the server.

-E encoding
--encoding=encoding

Specifies the character encoding scheme to be used in this database. The character sets supported by the PostgreSQL server are described in Section 22.3.1.

-l locale
--locale=locale

Specifies the locale to be used in this database. This is equivalent to specifying both --lc-collate and --lc-ctype.

--lc-collate=locale

Specifies the LC_COLLATE setting to be used in this database.

--lc-ctype=locale

Specifies the LC_CTYPE setting to be used in this database.

-O owner
--owner=owner

Specifies the database user who will own the new database.

-T template
--template=template

Specifies the template database from which to build this database.

-V
--version

Print the createdb version and exit.

-?
--help

Show help about createdb command line arguments, and exit.

The options -D, -l, -E, -O, and -T correspond to options of the underlying SQL command CREATE DATABASE; see there for more information about them.

createdb also accepts the following command-line arguments for connection parameters:

-h host
--host=host

Specifies the host name of the machine on which the server is running. If the value begins with a slash, it is used as the directory for the Unix domain socket.

-p port
--port=port

Specifies the TCP port or the local Unix domain socket file extension on which the server is listening for connections.

-U username
--username=username

User name to connect as.

-w
--no-password

Never issue a password prompt. If the server requires password authentication and a password is not available by other means such as a .pgpass file, the connection attempt will fail. This option can be useful in batch jobs and scripts where no user is present to enter a password.

-W
--password

Force createdb to prompt for a password before connecting to a database.

This option is never essential, since createdb will automatically prompt for a password if the server demands password authentication. However, createdb will waste a connection attempt finding out that the server wants a password. In some cases it is worth typing -W to avoid the extra connection attempt.

Environment

PGDATABASE

If set, the name of the database to create, unless overridden on the command line.

PGHOST
PGPORT
PGUSER

Default connection parameters. PGUSER also determines the name of the database to create, if it is not specified on the command line or by PGDATABASE.

This utility, like most other PostgreSQL utilities, also uses the environment variables supported by libpq (see Section 31.13).

Diagnostics

In case of difficulty, see CREATE DATABASE and psql for discussions of potential problems and error messages. The database server must be running at the targeted host. Also, any default connection settings and environment variables used by the libpq front-end library will apply.

Examples

To create the database demo using the default database server:

$ createdb demo

To create the database demo using the server on host eden, port 5000, using the LATIN1 encoding scheme with a look at the underlying command:

$ createdb -p 5000 -h eden -E LATIN1 -e demo
CREATE DATABASE demo ENCODING 'LATIN1';

See Also

dropdb, CREATE DATABASE
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clusterdb | Up | createlang


createlang

Name

createlang -- install a PostgreSQL procedural language

Synopsis

createlang [connection-option...] langname [dbname]

createlang [connection-option...] --list | -l dbname

Description

createlang is a utility for adding a procedural language to a PostgreSQL database.

createlang is just a wrapper around the CREATE EXTENSION SQL command.

Caution

createlang is deprecated and may be removed in a future PostgreSQL release. Direct use of the CREATE EXTENSION command is recommended instead.

Options

createlang accepts the following command-line arguments:

langname

Specifies the name of the procedural language to be installed.

[-d] dbname
[--dbname=]dbname

Specifies the database to which the language should be added. The default is to use the database with the same name as the current system user.

-e
--echo

Display SQL commands as they are executed.

-l
--list

Show a list of already installed languages in the target database.

-V
--version

Print the createlang version and exit.

-?
--help

Show help about createlang command line arguments, and exit.

createlang also accepts the following command-line arguments for connection parameters:

-h host
--host=host

Specifies the host name of the machine on which the server is running. If the value begins with a slash, it is used as the directory for the Unix domain socket.

-p port
--port=port

Specifies the TCP port or local Unix domain socket file extension on which the server is listening for connections.

-U username
--username=username

User name to connect as.

-w
--no-password

Never issue a password prompt. If the server requires password authentication and a password is not available by other means such as a .pgpass file, the connection attempt will fail. This option can be useful in batch jobs and scripts where no user is present to enter a password.

-W
--password

Force createlang to prompt for a password before connecting to a database.

This option is never essential, since createlang will automatically prompt for a password if the server demands password authentication. However, createlang will waste a connection attempt finding out that the server wants a password. In some cases it is worth typing -W to avoid the extra connection attempt.

Environment

PGDATABASE
PGHOST
PGPORT
PGUSER

Default connection parameters

This utility, like most other PostgreSQL utilities, also uses the environment variables supported by libpq (see Section 31.13).

Diagnostics

Most error messages are self-explanatory. If not, run createlang with the --echo option and see the respective SQL command for details. Also, any default connection settings and environment variables used by the libpq front-end library will apply.

Notes

Use droplang to remove a language.

Examples

To install the language pltcl into the database template1:

$ createlang pltcl template1

Note that installing the language into template1 will cause it to be automatically installed into subsequently-created databases as well.

See Also

droplang, CREATE EXTENSION, CREATE LANGUAGE
Prev | Home | Next
createdb | Up | createuser


createuser

Name

createuser -- define a new PostgreSQL user account

Synopsis

createuser [connection-option...] [option...] [username]

Description

createuser creates a new PostgreSQL user (or more precisely, a role). Only superusers and users with CREATEROLE privilege can create new users, so createuser must be invoked by someone who can connect as a superuser or a user with CREATEROLE privilege.

If you wish to create a new superuser, you must connect as a superuser, not merely with CREATEROLE privilege. Being a superuser implies the ability to bypass all access permission checks within the database, so superuserdom should not be granted lightly.

createuser is a wrapper around the SQL command CREATE ROLE. There is no effective difference between creating users via this utility and via other methods for accessing the server.

Options

createuser accepts the following command-line arguments:

username

Specifies the name of the PostgreSQL user to be created. This name must be different from all existing roles in this PostgreSQL installation.

-c number
--connection-limit=number

Set a maximum number of connections for the new user. The default is to set no limit.

-d
--createdb

The new user will be allowed to create databases.

-D
--no-createdb

The new user will not be allowed to create databases.

-e
--echo

Echo the commands that createuser generates and sends to the server.

-E
--encrypted

Encrypts the user's password stored in the database. If not specified, the default password behavior is used.

-i
--inherit

The new role will automatically inherit privileges of roles it is a member of. This is the default.

-I
--no-inherit

The new role will not automatically inherit privileges of roles it is a member of.

-l
--login

The new user will be allowed to log in (that is, the user name can be used as the initial session user identifier). This is the default.

-L
--no-login

The new user will not be allowed to log in. (A role without login privilege is still useful as a means of managing database permissions.)

-N
--unencrypted

Does not encrypt the user's password stored in the database. If not specified, the default password behavior is used.

-P
--pwprompt

If given, createuser will issue a prompt for the password of the new user. This is not necessary if you do not plan on using password authentication.

-r
--createrole

The new user will be allowed to create new roles (that is, this user will have CREATEROLE privilege).

-R
--no-createrole

The new user will not be allowed to create new roles.

-s
--superuser

The new user will be a superuser.

-S
--no-superuser

The new user will not be a superuser.

-V
--version

Print the createuser version and exit.

-?
--help

Show help about createuser command line arguments, and exit.

You will be prompted for a name and other missing information if it is not specified on the command line.

createuser also accepts the following command-line arguments for connection parameters:

-h host
--host=host

Specifies the host name of the machine on which the server is running. If the value begins with a slash, it is used as the directory for the Unix domain socket.

-p port
--port=port

Specifies the TCP port or local Unix domain socket file extension on which the server is listening for connections.

-U username
--username=username

User name to connect as (not the user name to create).

-w
--no-password

Never issue a password prompt. If the server requires password authentication and a password is not available by other means such as a .pgpass file, the connection attempt will fail. This option can be useful in batch jobs and scripts where no user is present to enter a password.

-W
--password

Force createuser to prompt for a password (for connecting to the server, not for the password of the new user).

This option is never essential, since createuser will automatically prompt for a password if the server demands password authentication. However, createuser will waste a connection attempt finding out that the server wants a password. In some cases it is worth typing -W to avoid the extra connection attempt.

Environment

PGHOST
PGPORT
PGUSER

Default connection parameters

This utility, like most other PostgreSQL utilities, also uses the environment variables supported by libpq (see Section 31.13).

Diagnostics

In case of difficulty, see CREATE ROLE and psql for discussions of potential problems and error messages. The database server must be running at the targeted host. Also, any default connection settings and environment variables used by the libpq front-end library will apply.

Examples

To create a user joe on the default database server:

$ createuser joe
Shall the new role be a superuser? (y/n) n
Shall the new role be allowed to create databases? (y/n) n
Shall the new role be allowed to create more new roles? (y/n) n

To create the same user joe using the server on host eden, port 5000, avoiding the prompts and taking a look at the underlying command:

$ createuser -h eden -p 5000 -S -D -R -e joe
CREATE ROLE joe NOSUPERUSER NOCREATEDB NOCREATEROLE INHERIT LOGIN;

To create the user joe as a superuser, and assign a password immediately:

$ createuser -P -s -e joe
Enter password for new role: xyzzy
Enter it again: xyzzy
CREATE ROLE joe PASSWORD 'md5b5f5ba1a423792b526f799ae4eb3d59e' SUPERUSER CREATEDB CREATEROLE INHERIT LOGIN;

In the above example, the new password isn't actually echoed when typed, but we show what was typed for clarity. As you see, the password is encrypted before it is sent to the client. If the option --unencrypted is used, the password will appear in the echoed command (and possibly also in the server log and elsewhere), so you don't want to use -e in that case, if anyone else can see your screen.

See Also

dropuser, CREATE ROLE
Prev | Home | Next
createlang | Up | dropdb


dropdb

Name

dropdb -- remove a PostgreSQL database

Synopsis

dropdb [connection-option...] [option...] dbname

Description

dropdb destroys an existing PostgreSQL database. The user who executes this command must be a database superuser or the owner of the database.

dropdb is a wrapper around the SQL command DROP DATABASE. There is no effective difference between dropping databases via this utility and via other methods for accessing the server.

Options

dropdb accepts the following command-line arguments:

dbname

Specifies the name of the database to be removed.

-e
--echo

Echo the commands that dropdb generates and sends to the server.

-i
--interactive

Issues a verification prompt before doing anything destructive.

-V
--version

Print the dropdb version and exit.

-?
--help

Show help about dropdb command line arguments, and exit.

dropdb also accepts the following command-line arguments for connection parameters:

-h host
--host=host

Specifies the host name of the machine on which the server is running. If the value begins with a slash, it is used as the directory for the Unix domain socket.

-p port
--port=port

Specifies the TCP port or local Unix domain socket file extension on which the server is listening for connections.

-U username
--username=username

User name to connect as.

-w
--no-password

Never issue a password prompt. If the server requires password authentication and a password is not available by other means such as a .pgpass file, the connection attempt will fail. This option can be useful in batch jobs and scripts where no user is present to enter a password.

-W
--password

Force dropdb to prompt for a password before connecting to a database.

This option is never essential, since dropdb will automatically prompt for a password if the server demands password authentication. However, dropdb will waste a connection attempt finding out that the server wants a password. In some cases it is worth typing -W to avoid the extra connection attempt.

Environment

PGHOST
PGPORT
PGUSER

Default connection parameters

This utility, like most other PostgreSQL utilities, also uses the environment variables supported by libpq (see Section 31.13).

Diagnostics

In case of difficulty, see DROP DATABASE and psql for discussions of potential problems and error messages. The database server must be running at the targeted host. Also, any default connection settings and environment variables used by the libpq front-end library will apply.

Examples

To destroy the database demo on the default database server:

$ dropdb demo

To destroy the database demo using the server on host eden, port 5000, with verification and a peek at the underlying command:

$ dropdb -p 5000 -h eden -i -e demo
Database "demo" will be permanently deleted.
Are you sure? (y/n) y
DROP DATABASE demo;

See Also

createdb, DROP DATABASE
Prev | Home | Next
createuser | Up | droplang


droplang

Name

droplang -- remove a PostgreSQL procedural language

Synopsis

droplang [connection-option...] langname [dbname]

droplang [connection-option...] --list | -l dbname

Description

droplang is a utility for removing an existing procedural language from a PostgreSQL database.

droplang is just a wrapper around the DROP EXTENSION SQL command.

Caution

droplang is deprecated and may be removed in a future PostgreSQL release. Direct use of the DROP EXTENSION command is recommended instead.

Options

droplang accepts the following command line arguments:

langname

Specifies the name of the procedural language to be removed.

[-d] dbname
[--dbname=]dbname

Specifies from which database the language should be removed. The default is to use the database with the same name as the current system user.

-e
--echo

Display SQL commands as they are executed.

-l
--list

Show a list of already installed languages in the target database.

-V
--version

Print the droplang version and exit.

-?
--help

Show help about droplang command line arguments, and exit.

droplang also accepts the following command line arguments for connection parameters:

-h host
--host=host

Specifies the host name of the machine on which the server is running. If host begins with a slash, it is used as the directory for the Unix domain socket.

-p port
--port=port

Specifies the Internet TCP/IP port or local Unix domain socket file extension on which the server is listening for connections.

-U username
--username=username

User name to connect as.

-w
--no-password

Never issue a password prompt. If the server requires password authentication and a password is not available by other means such as a .pgpass file, the connection attempt will fail. This option can be useful in batch jobs and scripts where no user is present to enter a password.

-W
--password

Force droplang to prompt for a password before connecting to a database.

This option is never essential, since droplang will automatically prompt for a password if the server demands password authentication. However, droplang will waste a connection attempt finding out that the server wants a password. In some cases it is worth typing -W to avoid the extra connection attempt.

Environment

PGDATABASE
PGHOST
PGPORT
PGUSER

Default connection parameters

This utility, like most other PostgreSQL utilities, also uses the environment variables supported by libpq (see Section 31.13).

Diagnostics

Most error messages are self-explanatory. If not, run droplang with the --echo option and see under the respective SQL command for details. Also, any default connection settings and environment variables used by the libpq front-end library will apply.

Notes

Use createlang to add a language.

Examples

To remove the language pltcl:

$ droplang pltcl dbname

See Also

createlang, DROP EXTENSION, DROP LANGUAGE
Prev | Home | Next
dropdb | Up | dropuser


dropuser

Name

dropuser -- remove a PostgreSQL user account

Synopsis

dropuser [connection-option...] [option...] [username]

Description

dropuser removes an existing PostgreSQL user. Only superusers and users with the CREATEROLE privilege can remove PostgreSQL users. (To remove a superuser, you must yourself be a superuser.)

dropuser is a wrapper around the SQL command DROP ROLE. There is no effective difference between dropping users via this utility and via other methods for accessing the server.

Options

dropuser accepts the following command-line arguments:

username

Specifies the name of the PostgreSQL user to be removed. You will be prompted for a name if none is specified on the command line.

-e
--echo

Echo the commands that dropuser generates and sends to the server.

-i
--interactive

Prompt for confirmation before actually removing the user.

-V
--version

Print the dropuser version and exit.

-?
--help

Show help about dropuser command line arguments, and exit.

dropuser also accepts the following command-line arguments for connection parameters:

-h host
--host=host

Specifies the host name of the machine on which the server is running. If the value begins with a slash, it is used as the directory for the Unix domain socket.

-p port
--port=port

Specifies the TCP port or local Unix domain socket file extension on which the server is listening for connections.

-U username
--username=username

User name to connect as (not the user name to drop).

-w
--no-password

Never issue a password prompt. If the server requires password authentication and a password is not available by other means such as a .pgpass file, the connection attempt will fail. This option can be useful in batch jobs and scripts where no user is present to enter a password.

-W
--password

Force dropuser to prompt for a password before connecting to a database.

This option is never essential, since dropuser will automatically prompt for a password if the server demands password authentication. However, dropuser will waste a connection attempt finding out that the server wants a password. In some cases it is worth typing -W to avoid the extra connection attempt.

Environment

PGHOST
PGPORT
PGUSER

Default connection parameters

This utility, like most other PostgreSQL utilities, also uses the environment variables supported by libpq (see Section 31.13).

Diagnostics

In case of difficulty, see DROP ROLE and psql for discussions of potential problems and error messages. The database server must be running at the targeted host. Also, any default connection settings and environment variables used by the libpq front-end library will apply.

Examples

To remove user joe from the default database server:

$ dropuser joe

To remove user joe using the server on host eden, port 5000, with verification and a peek at the underlying command:

$ dropuser -p 5000 -h eden -i -e joe
Role "joe" will be permanently removed.
Are you sure? (y/n) y
DROP ROLE joe;

See Also

createuser, DROP ROLE
Prev | Home | Next
droplang | Up | ecpg


ecpg

Name

ecpg -- embedded SQL C preprocessor

Synopsis

ecpg [option...] file...

Description

ecpg is the embedded SQL preprocessor for C programs. It converts C programs with embedded SQL statements to normal C code by replacing the SQL invocations with special function calls. The output files can then be processed with any C compiler tool chain.

ecpg will convert each input file given on the command line to the corresponding C output file. Input files preferably have the extension .pgc, in which case the extension will be replaced by .c to determine the output file name. If the extension of the input file is not .pgc, then the output file name is computed by appending .c to the full file name. The output file name can also be overridden using the -o option.

This reference page does not describe the embedded SQL language. See Chapter 33 for more information on that topic.

Options

ecpg accepts the following command-line arguments:

-c

Automatically generate certain C code from SQL code. Currently, this works for EXEC SQL TYPE.

-C mode

Set a compatibility mode. mode can be INFORMIX or INFORMIX_SE.

-D symbol

Define a C preprocessor symbol.

-i

Parse system include files as well.

-I directory

Specify an additional include path, used to find files included via EXEC SQL INCLUDE. Defaults are . (current directory), /usr/local/include, the PostgreSQL include directory which is defined at compile time (default: /usr/local/pgsql/include), and /usr/include, in that order.

-o filename

Specifies that ecpg should write all its output to the given filename.

-r option

Selects run-time behavior. Option can be one of the following:

no_indicator

Do not use indicators but instead use special values to represent null values. Historically there have been databases using this approach.

prepare

Prepare all statements before using them. Libecpg will keep a cache of prepared statements and reuse a statement if it gets executed again. If the cache runs full, libecpg will free the least used statement.

questionmarks

Allow question mark as placeholder for compatibility reasons. This used to be the default long ago.

-t

Turn on autocommit of transactions. In this mode, each SQL command is automatically committed unless it is inside an explicit transaction block. In the default mode, commands are committed only when EXEC SQL COMMIT is issued.

-v

Print additional information including the version and the "include" path.

--version

Print the ecpg version and exit.

--help

Show help about ecpg command line arguments, and exit.

Notes

When compiling the preprocessed C code files, the compiler needs to be able to find the ECPG header files in the PostgreSQL include directory. Therefore, you might have to use the -I option when invoking the compiler (e.g., -I/usr/local/pgsql/include).

Programs using C code with embedded SQL have to be linked against the libecpg library, for example using the linker options -L/usr/local/pgsql/lib -lecpg.

The value of either of these directories that is appropriate for the installation can be found out using pg_config.

Examples

If you have an embedded SQL C source file named prog1.pgc, you can create an executable program using the following sequence of commands:

ecpg prog1.pgc
cc -I/usr/local/pgsql/include -c prog1.c
cc -o prog1 prog1.o -L/usr/local/pgsql/lib -lecpg

Prev | Home | Next
dropuser | Up | pg_basebackup


pg_basebackup

Name

pg_basebackup -- take a base backup of a PostgreSQL cluster

Synopsis

pg_basebackup [option...]

Description

pg_basebackup is used to take base backups of a running PostgreSQL database cluster. These are taken without affecting other clients to the database, and can be used both for point-in-time recovery (see Section 24.3) and as the starting point for a log shipping or streaming replication standby servers (see Section 25.2).

pg_basebackup makes a binary copy of the database cluster files, while making sure the system is put in and out of backup mode automatically. Backups are always taken of the entire database cluster; it is not possible to back up individual databases or database objects. For individual database backups, a tool such as pg_dump must be used.

The backup is made over a regular PostgreSQL connection, and uses the replication protocol. The connection must be made with a user having REPLICATION permissions (see Section 20.2), and the user must be granted explicit permissions in pg_hba.conf. The server must also be configured with max_wal_senders set high enough to leave at least one session available for the backup.

There can be multiple pg_basebackups running at the same time, but it is better from a performance point of view to take only one backup, and copy the result.

Options

The following command-line options control the location and format of the output.

-D directory
--pgdata=directory

Directory to write the output to.

When the backup is in tar mode, and the directory is specified as - (dash), the tar file will be written to stdout.

This parameter is required.

-F format
--format=format

Selects the format for the output. format can be one of the following:

p
plain

Write the output as plain files, with the same layout as the current data directory and tablespaces. When the cluster has no additional tablespaces, the whole database will be placed in the target directory. If the cluster contains additional tablespaces, the main data directory will be placed in the target directory, but all other tablespaces will be placed in the same absolute path as they have on the server.

This is the default format.

t
tar

Write the output as tar files in the target directory. The main data directory will be written to a file named base.tar, and all other tablespaces will be named after the tablespace OID.

If the value - (dash) is specified as target directory, the tar contents will be written to standard output, suitable for piping to for example gzip. This is only possible if the cluster has no additional tablespaces.

-x
--xlog

Includes the required transaction log files (WAL files) in the backup. This will include all transaction logs generated during the backup. If this option is specified, it is possible to start a postmaster directly in the extracted directory without the need to consult the log archive, thus making this a completely standalone backup.

Note: The transaction log files are collected at the end of the backup. Therefore, it is necessary for the wal_keep_segments parameter to be set high enough that the log is not removed before the end of the backup. If the log has been rotated when it's time to transfer it, the backup will fail and be unusable.

-z
--gzip

Enables gzip compression of tar file output, with the default compression level. Compression is only available when using the tar format.

-Z level
--compress=level

Enables gzip compression of tar file output, and specifies the compression level (1 through 9, 9 being best compression). Compression is only available when using the tar format.

The following command-line options control the generation of the backup and the running of the program.

-c fast|spread
--checkpoint=fast|spread

Sets checkpoint mode to fast or spread (default).

-l label
--label=label

Sets the label for the backup. If none is specified, a default value of pg_basebackup base backup will be used.

-P
--progress

Enables progress reporting. Turning this on will deliver an approximate progress report during the backup. Since the database may change during the backup, this is only an approximation and may not end at exactly 100%. In particular, when WAL log is included in the backup, the total amount of data cannot be estimated in advance, and in this case the estimated target size will increase once it passes the total estimate without WAL.

When this is enabled, the backup will start by enumerating the size of the entire database, and then go back and send the actual contents. This may make the backup take slightly longer, and in particular it will take longer before the first data is sent.

-v
--verbose

Enables verbose mode. Will output some extra steps during startup and shutdown, as well as show the exact file name that is currently being processed if progress reporting is also enabled.

The following command-line options control the database connection parameters.

-h host
--host=host

Specifies the host name of the machine on which the server is running. If the value begins with a slash, it is used as the directory for the Unix domain socket. The default is taken from the PGHOST environment variable, if set, else a Unix domain socket connection is attempted.

-p port
--port=port

Specifies the TCP port or local Unix domain socket file extension on which the server is listening for connections. Defaults to the PGPORT environment variable, if set, or a compiled-in default.

-U username
--username=username

User name to connect as.

-w
--no-password

Never issue a password prompt. If the server requires password authentication and a password is not available by other means such as a .pgpass file, the connection attempt will fail. This option can be useful in batch jobs and scripts where no user is present to enter a password.

-W
--password

Force pg_basebackup to prompt for a password before connecting to a database.

This option is never essential, since pg_basebackup will automatically prompt for a password if the server demands password authentication. However, pg_basebackup will waste a connection attempt finding out that the server wants a password. In some cases it is worth typing -W to avoid the extra connection attempt.

Other, less commonly used, parameters are also available:

-V
--version

Print the pg_basebackup version and exit.

-?
--help

Show help about pg_basebackup command line arguments, and exit.

Environment

This utility, like most other PostgreSQL utilities, uses the environment variables supported by libpq (see Section 31.13).

Notes

The backup will include all files in the data directory and tablespaces, including the configuration files and any additional files placed in the directory by third parties. Only regular files and directories are allowed in the data directory, no symbolic links or special device files.

The way PostgreSQL manages tablespaces, the path for all additional tablespaces must be identical whenever a backup is restored. The main data directory, however, is relocatable to any location.

Examples

To create a base backup of the server at mydbserver and store it in the local directory /usr/local/pgsql/data:

$ pg_basebackup -h mydbserver -D /usr/local/pgsql/data

To create a backup of the local server with one compressed tar file for each tablespace, and store it in the directory backup, showing a progress report while running:

$ pg_basebackup -D backup -Ft -z -P

To create a backup of a single-tablespace local database and compress this with bzip2:

$ pg_basebackup -D - -Ft | bzip2 > backup.tar.bz2

(This command will fail if there are multiple tablespaces in the database.)

See Also

pg_dump
Prev | Home | Next
ecpg | Up | pg_config


pg_config

Name

pg_config -- retrieve information about the installed version of PostgreSQL

Synopsis

pg_config [option...]

Description

The pg_config utility prints configuration parameters of the currently installed version of PostgreSQL. It is intended, for example, to be used by software packages that want to interface to PostgreSQL to facilitate finding the required header files and libraries.

Options

To use pg_config, supply one or more of the following options:

--bindir

Print the location of user executables. Use this, for example, to find the psql program. This is normally also the location where the pg_config program resides.

--docdir

Print the location of documentation files.

--htmldir

Print the location of HTML documentation files.

--includedir

Print the location of C header files of the client interfaces.

--pkgincludedir

Print the location of other C header files.

--includedir-server

Print the location of C header files for server programming.

--libdir

Print the location of object code libraries.

--pkglibdir

Print the location of dynamically loadable modules, or where the server would search for them. (Other architecture-dependent data files might also be installed in this directory.)

--localedir

Print the location of locale support files. (This will be an empty string if locale support was not configured when PostgreSQL was built.)

--mandir

Print the location of manual pages.

--sharedir

Print the location of architecture-independent support files.

--sysconfdir

Print the location of system-wide configuration files.

--pgxs

Print the location of extension makefiles.

--configure

Print the options that were given to the configure script when PostgreSQL was configured for building. This can be used to reproduce the identical configuration, or to find out with what options a binary package was built. (Note however that binary packages often contain vendor-specific custom patches.) See also the examples below.

--cc

Print the value of the CC variable that was used for building PostgreSQL. This shows the C compiler used.

--cppflags

Print the value of the CPPFLAGS variable that was used for building PostgreSQL. This shows C compiler switches needed at preprocessing time (typically, -I switches).

--cflags

Print the value of the CFLAGS variable that was used for building PostgreSQL. This shows C compiler switches.

--cflags_sl

Print the value of the CFLAGS_SL variable that was used for building PostgreSQL. This shows extra C compiler switches used for building shared libraries.

--ldflags

Print the value of the LDFLAGS variable that was used for building PostgreSQL. This shows linker switches.

--ldflags_ex

Print the value of the LDFLAGS_EX variable that was used for building PostgreSQL. This shows linker switches used for building executables only.

--ldflags_sl

Print the value of the LDFLAGS_SL variable that was used for building PostgreSQL. This shows linker switches used for building shared libraries only.

--libs

Print the value of the LIBS variable that was used for building PostgreSQL. This normally contains -l switches for external libraries linked into PostgreSQL.

--version

Print the version of PostgreSQL.

If more than one option is given, the information is printed in that order, one item per line. If no options are given, all available information is printed, with labels.

Notes

The option --includedir-server was added in PostgreSQL 7.2. In prior releases, the server include files were installed in the same location as the client headers, which could be queried with the option --includedir. To make your package handle both cases, try the newer option first and test the exit status to see whether it succeeded.

The options --docdir, --pkgincludedir, --localedir, --mandir, --sharedir, --sysconfdir, --cc, --cppflags, --cflags, --cflags_sl, --ldflags, --ldflags_sl, and --libs were added in PostgreSQL 8.1. The option --htmldir was added in PostgreSQL 8.4. The option --ldflags_ex was added in PostgreSQL 9.0.

In releases prior to PostgreSQL 7.1, before pg_config came to be, a method for finding the equivalent configuration information did not exist.

Example

To reproduce the build configuration of the current PostgreSQL installation, run the following command:

eval ./configure `pg_config --configure`

The output of pg_config --configure contains shell quotation marks so arguments with spaces are represented correctly. Therefore, using eval is required for proper results.

Prev | Home | Next
pg_basebackup | Up | pg_dump


pg_dump

Name

pg_dump -- extract a PostgreSQL database into a script file or other archive file

Synopsis

pg_dump [connection-option...] [option...] [dbname]

Description

pg_dump is a utility for backing up a PostgreSQL database. It makes consistent backups even if the database is being used concurrently. pg_dump does not block other users accessing the database (readers or writers).

Dumps can be output in script or archive file formats. Script dumps are plain-text files containing the SQL commands required to reconstruct the database to the state it was in at the time it was saved. To restore from such a script, feed it to psql. Script files can be used to reconstruct the database even on other machines and other architectures; with some modifications, even on other SQL database products.

The alternative archive file formats must be used with pg_restore to rebuild the database. They allow pg_restore to be selective about what is restored, or even to reorder the items prior to being restored. The archive file formats are designed to be portable across architectures.

When used with one of the archive file formats and combined with pg_restore, pg_dump provides a flexible archival and transfer mechanism. pg_dump can be used to backup an entire database, then pg_restore can be used to examine the archive and/or select which parts of the database are to be restored. The most flexible output file format is the "custom" format (-Fc). It allows for selection and reordering of all archived items, and is compressed by default.

While running pg_dump, one should examine the output for any warnings (printed on standard error), especially in light of the limitations listed below.

Options

The following command-line options control the content and format of the output.

dbname

Specifies the name of the database to be dumped. If this is not specified, the environment variable PGDATABASE is used. If that is not set, the user name specified for the connection is used.

-a
--data-only

Dump only the data, not the schema (data definitions).

This option is only meaningful for the plain-text format. For the archive formats, you can specify the option when you call pg_restore.

-b
--blobs

Include large objects in the dump. This is the default behavior except when --schema, --table, or --schema-only is specified, so the -b switch is only useful to add large objects to selective dumps.

-c
--clean

Output commands to clean (drop) database objects prior to outputting the commands for creating them. (Restore might generate some harmless errors.)

This option is only meaningful for the plain-text format. For the archive formats, you can specify the option when you call pg_restore.

-C
--create

Begin the output with a command to create the database itself and reconnect to the created database. (With a script of this form, it doesn't matter which database you connect to before running the script.)

This option is only meaningful for the plain-text format. For the archive formats, you can specify the option when you call pg_restore.

-E encoding
--encoding=encoding

Create the dump in the specified character set encoding. By default, the dump is created in the database encoding. (Another way to get the same result is to set the PGCLIENTENCODING environment variable to the desired dump encoding.)

-f file
--file=file

Send output to the specified file. This parameter can be omitted for file based output formats, in which case the standard output is used. It must be given for the directory output format however, where it specifies the target directory instead of a file. In this case the directory is created by pg_dump and must not exist before.

-F format
--format=format

Selects the format of the output. format can be one of the following:

p
plain

Output a plain-text SQL script file (the default).

c
custom

Output a custom-format archive suitable for input into pg_restore. Together with the directory output format, this is the most flexible output format in that it allows manual selection and reordering of archived items during restore. This format is also compressed by default.

d
directory

Output a directory-format archive suitable for input into pg_restore. This will create a directory with one file for each table and blob being dumped, plus a so-called Table of Contents file describing the dumped objects in a machine-readable format that pg_restore can read. A directory format archive can be manipulated with standard Unix tools; for example, files in an uncompressed archive can be compressed with the gzip tool. This format is compressed by default.

t
tar

Output a tar-format archive suitable for input into pg_restore. The tar-format is compatible with the directory-format; extracting a tar-format archive produces a valid directory-format archive. However, the tar-format does not support compression and has a limit of 8 GB on the size of individual tables. Also, the relative order of table data items cannot be changed during restore.

-i
--ignore-version

A deprecated option that is now ignored.

-n schema
--schema=schema

Dump only schemas matching schema; this selects both the schema itself, and all its contained objects. When this option is not specified, all non-system schemas in the target database will be dumped. Multiple schemas can be selected by writing multiple -n switches. Also, the schema parameter is interpreted as a pattern according to the same rules used by psql's \d commands (see Patterns), so multiple schemas can also be selected by writing wildcard characters in the pattern. When using wildcards, be careful to quote the pattern if needed to prevent the shell from expanding the wildcards; see Examples.

Note: When -n is specified, pg_dump makes no attempt to dump any other database objects that the selected schema(s) might depend upon. Therefore, there is no guarantee that the results of a specific-schema dump can be successfully restored by themselves into a clean database.

Note: Non-schema objects such as blobs are not dumped when -n is specified. You can add blobs back to the dump with the --blobs switch.

-N schema
--exclude-schema=schema

Do not dump any schemas matching the schema pattern. The pattern is interpreted according to the same rules as for -n. -N can be given more than once to exclude schemas matching any of several patterns.

When both -n and -N are given, the behavior is to dump just the schemas that match at least one -n switch but no -N switches. If -N appears without -n, then schemas matching -N are excluded from what is otherwise a normal dump.

-o
--oids

Dump object identifiers (OIDs) as part of the data for every table. Use this option if your application references the OID columns in some way (e.g., in a foreign key constraint). Otherwise, this option should not be used.

-O
--no-owner

Do not output commands to set ownership of objects to match the original database. By default, pg_dump issues ALTER OWNER or SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION statements to set ownership of created database objects. These statements will fail when the script is run unless it is started by a superuser (or the same user that owns all of the objects in the script). To make a script that can be restored by any user, but will give that user ownership of all the objects, specify -O.

This option is only meaningful for the plain-text format. For the archive formats, you can specify the option when you call pg_restore.

-R
--no-reconnect

This option is obsolete but still accepted for backwards compatibility.

-s
--schema-only

Dump only the object definitions (schema), not data.

-S username
--superuser=username

Specify the superuser user name to use when disabling triggers. This is only relevant if --disable-triggers is used. (Usually, it's better to leave this out, and instead start the resulting script as superuser.)

-t table
--table=table

Dump only tables (or views or sequences or foreign tables) matching table. Multiple tables can be selected by writing multiple -t switches. Also, the table parameter is interpreted as a pattern according to the same rules used by psql's \d commands (see Patterns), so multiple tables can also be selected by writing wildcard characters in the pattern. When using wildcards, be careful to quote the pattern if needed to prevent the shell from expanding the wildcards; see Examples.

The -n and -N switches have no effect when -t is used, because tables selected by -t will be dumped regardless of those switches, and non-table objects will not be dumped.

Note: When -t is specified, pg_dump makes no attempt to dump any other database objects that the selected table(s) might depend upon. Therefore, there is no guarantee that the results of a specific-table dump can be successfully restored by themselves into a clean database.

Note: The behavior of the -t switch is not entirely upward compatible with pre-8.2 PostgreSQL versions. Formerly, writing -t tab would dump all tables named tab, but now it just dumps whichever one is visible in your default search path. To get the old behavior you can write -t '*.tab'. Also, you must write something like -t sch.tab to select a table in a particular schema, rather than the old locution of -n sch -t tab.

-T table
--exclude-table=table

Do not dump any tables matching the table pattern. The pattern is interpreted according to the same rules as for -t. -T can be given more than once to exclude tables matching any of several patterns.

When both -t and -T are given, the behavior is to dump just the tables that match at least one -t switch but no -T switches. If -T appears without -t, then tables matching -T are excluded from what is otherwise a normal dump.

-v
--verbose

Specifies verbose mode. This will cause pg_dump to output detailed object comments and start/stop times to the dump file, and progress messages to standard error.

-V
--version

Print the pg_dump version and exit.

-x
--no-privileges
--no-acl

Prevent dumping of access privileges (grant/revoke commands).

-Z 0..9
--compress=0..9

Specify the compression level to use. Zero means no compression. For the custom archive format, this specifies compression of individual table-data segments, and the default is to compress at a moderate level. For plain text output, setting a nonzero compression level causes the entire output file to be compressed, as though it had been fed through gzip; but the default is not to compress. The tar archive format currently does not support compression at all.

--binary-upgrade

This option is for use by in-place upgrade utilities. Its use for other purposes is not recommended or supported. The behavior of the option may change in future releases without notice.

--column-inserts
--attribute-inserts

Dump data as INSERT commands with explicit column names (INSERT INTO table (column, ...) VALUES ...). This will make restoration very slow; it is mainly useful for making dumps that can be loaded into non-PostgreSQL databases. However, since this option generates a separate command for each row, an error in reloading a row causes only that row to be lost rather than the entire table contents.

--disable-dollar-quoting

This option disables the use of dollar quoting for function bodies, and forces them to be quoted using SQL standard string syntax.

--disable-triggers

This option is only relevant when creating a data-only dump. It instructs pg_dump to include commands to temporarily disable triggers on the target tables while the data is reloaded. Use this if you have referential integrity checks or other triggers on the tables that you do not want to invoke during data reload.

Presently, the commands emitted for --disable-triggers must be done as superuser. So, you should also specify a superuser name with -S, or preferably be careful to start the resulting script as a superuser.

This option is only meaningful for the plain-text format. For the archive formats, you can specify the option when you call pg_restore.

--inserts

Dump data as INSERT commands (rather than COPY). This will make restoration very slow; it is mainly useful for making dumps that can be loaded into non-PostgreSQL databases. However, since this option generates a separate command for each row, an error in reloading a row causes only that row to be lost rather than the entire table contents. Note that the restore might fail altogether if you have rearranged column order. The --column-inserts option is safe against column order changes, though even slower.

--lock-wait-timeout=timeout

Do not wait forever to acquire shared table locks at the beginning of the dump. Instead fail if unable to lock a table within the specified timeout. The timeout may be specified in any of the formats accepted by SET statement_timeout. (Allowed values vary depending on the server version you are dumping from, but an integer number of milliseconds is accepted by all versions since 7.3. This option is ignored when dumping from a pre-7.3 server.)

--no-security-labels

Do not dump security labels.

--no-tablespaces

Do not output commands to select tablespaces. With this option, all objects will be created in whichever tablespace is the default during restore.

This option is only meaningful for the plain-text format. For the archive formats, you can specify the option when you call pg_restore.

--no-unlogged-table-data

Do not dump the contents of unlogged tables. This option has no effect on whether or not the table definitions (schema) are dumped; it only suppresses dumping the table data. Data in unlogged tables is always excluded when dumping from a standby server.

--quote-all-identifiers

Force quoting of all identifiers. This may be useful when dumping a database for migration to a future version that may have introduced additional keywords.

--serializable-deferrable

Use a serializable transaction for the dump, to ensure that the snapshot used is consistent with later database states; but do this by waiting for a point in the transaction stream at which no anomalies can be present, so that there isn't a risk of the dump failing or causing other transactions to roll back with a serialization_failure. See Chapter 13 for more information about transaction isolation and concurrency control.

This option is not beneficial for a dump which is intended only for disaster recovery. It could be useful for a dump used to load a copy of the database for reporting or other read-only load sharing while the original database continues to be updated. Without it the dump may reflect a state which is not consistent with any serial execution of the transactions eventually committed. For example, if batch processing techniques are used, a batch may show as closed in the dump without all of the items which are in the batch appearing.

This option will make no difference if there are no read-write transactions active when pg_dump is started. If read-write transactions are active, the start of the dump may be delayed for an indeterminate length of time. Once running, performance with or without the switch is the same.

--use-set-session-authorization

Output SQL-standard SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION commands instead of ALTER OWNER commands to determine object ownership. This makes the dump more standards-compatible, but depending on the history of the objects in the dump, might not restore properly. Also, a dump using SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION will certainly require superuser privileges to restore correctly, whereas ALTER OWNER requires lesser privileges.

-?
--help

Show help about pg_dump command line arguments, and exit.

The following command-line options control the database connection parameters.

-h host
--host=host

Specifies the host name of the machine on which the server is running. If the value begins with a slash, it is used as the directory for the Unix domain socket. The default is taken from the PGHOST environment variable, if set, else a Unix domain socket connection is attempted.

-p port
--port=port

Specifies the TCP port or local Unix domain socket file extension on which the server is listening for connections. Defaults to the PGPORT environment variable, if set, or a compiled-in default.

-U username
--username=username

User name to connect as.

-w
--no-password

Never issue a password prompt. If the server requires password authentication and a password is not available by other means such as a .pgpass file, the connection attempt will fail. This option can be useful in batch jobs and scripts where no user is present to enter a password.

-W
--password

Force pg_dump to prompt for a password before connecting to a database.

This option is never essential, since pg_dump will automatically prompt for a password if the server demands password authentication. However, pg_dump will waste a connection attempt finding out that the server wants a password. In some cases it is worth typing -W to avoid the extra connection attempt.

--role=rolename

Specifies a role name to be used to create the dump. This option causes pg_dump to issue a SET ROLE rolename command after connecting to the database. It is useful when the authenticated user (specified by -U) lacks privileges needed by pg_dump, but can switch to a role with the required rights. Some installations have a policy against logging in directly as a superuser, and use of this option allows dumps to be made without violating the policy.

Environment

PGDATABASE
PGHOST
PGOPTIONS
PGPORT
PGUSER

Default connection parameters.

This utility, like most other PostgreSQL utilities, also uses the environment variables supported by libpq (see Section 31.13).

Diagnostics

pg_dump internally executes SELECT statements. If you have problems running pg_dump, make sure you are able to select information from the database using, for example, psql. Also, any default connection settings and environment variables used by the libpq front-end library will apply.

The database activity of pg_dump is normally collected by the statistics collector. If this is undesirable, you can set parameter track_counts to false via PGOPTIONS or the ALTER USER command.

Notes

If your database cluster has any local additions to the template1 database, be careful to restore the output of pg_dump into a truly empty database; otherwise you are likely to get errors due to duplicate definitions of the added objects. To make an empty database without any local additions, copy from template0 not template1, for example:

CREATE DATABASE foo WITH TEMPLATE template0;

When a data-only dump is chosen and the option --disable-triggers is used, pg_dump emits commands to disable triggers on user tables before inserting the data, and then commands to re-enable them after the data has been inserted. If the restore is stopped in the middle, the system catalogs might be left in the wrong state.

Members of tar archives are limited to a size less than 8 GB. (This is an inherent limitation of the tar file format.) Therefore this format cannot be used if the textual representation of any one table exceeds that size. The total size of a tar archive and any of the other output formats is not limited, except possibly by the operating system.

The dump file produced by pg_dump does not contain the statistics used by the optimizer to make query planning decisions. Therefore, it is wise to run ANALYZE after restoring from a dump file to ensure optimal performance; see Section 23.1.3 and Section 23.1.5 for more information. The dump file also does not contain any ALTER DATABASE ... SET commands; these settings are dumped by pg_dumpall, along with database users and other installation-wide settings.

Because pg_dump is used to transfer data to newer versions of PostgreSQL, the output of pg_dump can be expected to load into PostgreSQL server versions newer than pg_dump's version. pg_dump can also dump from PostgreSQL servers older than its own version. (Currently, servers back to version 7.0 are supported.) However, pg_dump cannot dump from PostgreSQL servers newer than its own major version; it will refuse to even try, rather than risk making an invalid dump. Also, it is not guaranteed that pg_dump's output can be loaded into a server of an older major version — not even if the dump was taken from a server of that version. Loading a dump file into an older server may require manual editing of the dump file to remove syntax not understood by the older server.

Examples

To dump a database called mydb into a SQL-script file:

$ pg_dump mydb > db.sql

To reload such a script into a (freshly created) database named newdb:

$ psql -d newdb -f db.sql

To dump a database into a custom-format archive file:

$ pg_dump -Fc mydb > db.dump

To dump a database into a directory-format archive:

$ pg_dump -Fd mydb -f dumpdir

To reload an archive file into a (freshly created) database named newdb:

$ pg_restore -d newdb db.dump

To dump a single table named mytab:

$ pg_dump -t mytab mydb > db.sql

To dump all tables whose names start with emp in the detroit schema, except for the table named employee_log:

$ pg_dump -t 'detroit.emp*' -T detroit.employee_log mydb > db.sql

To dump all schemas whose names start with east or west and end in gsm, excluding any schemas whose names contain the word test:

$ pg_dump -n 'east*gsm' -n 'west*gsm' -N '*test*' mydb > db.sql

The same, using regular expression notation to consolidate the switches:

$ pg_dump -n '(east|west)*gsm' -N '*test*' mydb > db.sql

To dump all database objects except for tables whose names begin with ts_:

$ pg_dump -T 'ts_*' mydb > db.sql

To specify an upper-case or mixed-case name in -t and related switches, you need to double-quote the name; else it will be folded to lower case (see Patterns). But double quotes are special to the shell, so in turn they must be quoted. Thus, to dump a single table with a mixed-case name, you need something like

$ pg_dump -t '"MixedCaseName"' mydb > mytab.sql

See Also

pg_dumpall, pg_restore, psql
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pg_dumpall

Name

pg_dumpall -- extract a PostgreSQL database cluster into a script file

Synopsis

pg_dumpall [connection-option...] [option...]

Description

pg_dumpall is a utility for writing out ("dumping") all PostgreSQL databases of a cluster into one script file. The script file contains SQL commands that can be used as input to psql to restore the databases. It does this by calling pg_dump for each database in a cluster. pg_dumpall also dumps global objects that are common to all databases. (pg_dump does not save these objects.) This currently includes information about database users and groups, tablespaces, and properties such as access permissions that apply to databases as a whole.

Since pg_dumpall reads tables from all databases you will most likely have to connect as a database superuser in order to produce a complete dump. Also you will need superuser privileges to execute the saved script in order to be allowed to add users and groups, and to create databases.

The SQL script will be written to the standard output. Use the [-f|file] option or shell operators to redirect it into a file.

pg_dumpall needs to connect several times to the PostgreSQL server (once per database). If you use password authentication it will ask for a password each time. It is convenient to have a ~/.pgpass file in such cases. See Section 31.14 for more information.

Options

The following command-line options control the content and format of the output.

-a
--data-only

Dump only the data, not the schema (data definitions).

-c
--clean

Include SQL commands to clean (drop) databases before recreating them. DROP commands for roles and tablespaces are added as well.

-f filename
--file=filename

Send output to the specified file. If this is omitted, the standard output is used.

-g
--globals-only

Dump only global objects (roles and tablespaces), no databases.

-i
--ignore-version

A deprecated option that is now ignored.

-o
--oids

Dump object identifiers (OIDs) as part of the data for every table. Use this option if your application references the OID columns in some way (e.g., in a foreign key constraint). Otherwise, this option should not be used.

-O
--no-owner

Do not output commands to set ownership of objects to match the original database. By default, pg_dumpall issues ALTER OWNER or SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION statements to set ownership of created schema elements. These statements will fail when the script is run unless it is started by a superuser (or the same user that owns all of the objects in the script). To make a script that can be restored by any user, but will give that user ownership of all the objects, specify -O.

-r
--roles-only

Dump only roles, no databases or tablespaces.

-s
--schema-only

Dump only the object definitions (schema), not data.

-S username
--superuser=username

Specify the superuser user name to use when disabling triggers. This is only relevant if --disable-triggers is used. (Usually, it's better to leave this out, and instead start the resulting script as superuser.)

-t
--tablespaces-only

Dump only tablespaces, no databases or roles.

-v
--verbose

Specifies verbose mode. This will cause pg_dumpall to output start/stop times to the dump file, and progress messages to standard error. It will also enable verbose output in pg_dump.

-V
--version

Print the pg_dumpall version and exit.

-x
--no-privileges
--no-acl

Prevent dumping of access privileges (grant/revoke commands).

--binary-upgrade

This option is for use by in-place upgrade utilities. Its use for other purposes is not recommended or supported. The behavior of the option may change in future releases without notice.

--column-inserts
--attribute-inserts

Dump data as INSERT commands with explicit column names (INSERT INTO table (column, ...) VALUES ...). This will make restoration very slow; it is mainly useful for making dumps that can be loaded into non-PostgreSQL databases.

--disable-dollar-quoting

This option disables the use of dollar quoting for function bodies, and forces them to be quoted using SQL standard string syntax.

--disable-triggers

This option is only relevant when creating a data-only dump. It instructs pg_dumpall to include commands to temporarily disable triggers on the target tables while the data is reloaded. Use this if you have referential integrity checks or other triggers on the tables that you do not want to invoke during data reload.

Presently, the commands emitted for --disable-triggers must be done as superuser. So, you should also specify a superuser name with -S, or preferably be careful to start the resulting script as a superuser.

--inserts

Dump data as INSERT commands (rather than COPY). This will make restoration very slow; it is mainly useful for making dumps that can be loaded into non-PostgreSQL databases. Note that the restore might fail altogether if you have rearranged column order. The --column-inserts option is safer, though even slower.

--lock-wait-timeout=timeout

Do not wait forever to acquire shared table locks at the beginning of the dump. Instead, fail if unable to lock a table within the specified timeout. The timeout may be specified in any of the formats accepted by SET statement_timeout. Allowed values vary depending on the server version you are dumping from, but an integer number of milliseconds is accepted by all versions since 7.3. This option is ignored when dumping from a pre-7.3 server.

--no-security-labels

Do not dump security labels.

--no-tablespaces

Do not output commands to create tablespaces nor select tablespaces for objects. With this option, all objects will be created in whichever tablespace is the default during restore.

--no-unlogged-table-data

Do not dump the contents of unlogged tables. This option has no effect on whether or not the table definitions (schema) are dumped; it only suppresses dumping the table data.

--quote-all-identifiers

Force quoting of all identifiers. This may be useful when dumping a database for migration to a future version that may have introduced additional keywords.

--use-set-session-authorization

Output SQL-standard SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION commands instead of ALTER OWNER commands to determine object ownership. This makes the dump more standards compatible, but depending on the history of the objects in the dump, might not restore properly.

-?
--help

Show help about pg_dumpall command line arguments, and exit.

The following command-line options control the database connection parameters.

-h host
--host=host

Specifies the host name of the machine on which the database server is running. If the value begins with a slash, it is used as the directory for the Unix domain socket. The default is taken from the PGHOST environment variable, if set, else a Unix domain socket connection is attempted.

-l dbname
--database=dbname

Specifies the name of the database to connect to to dump global objects and discover what other databases should be dumped. If not specified, the postgres database will be used, and if that does not exist, template1 will be used.

-p port
--port=port

Specifies the TCP port or local Unix domain socket file extension on which the server is listening for connections. Defaults to the PGPORT environment variable, if set, or a compiled-in default.

-U username
--username=username

User name to connect as.

-w
--no-password

Never issue a password prompt. If the server requires password authentication and a password is not available by other means such as a .pgpass file, the connection attempt will fail. This option can be useful in batch jobs and scripts where no user is present to enter a password.

-W
--password

Force pg_dumpall to prompt for a password before connecting to a database.

This option is never essential, since pg_dumpall will automatically prompt for a password if the server demands password authentication. However, pg_dumpall will waste a connection attempt finding out that the server wants a password. In some cases it is worth typing -W to avoid the extra connection attempt.

Note that the password prompt will occur again for each database to be dumped. Usually, it's better to set up a ~/.pgpass file than to rely on manual password entry.

--role=rolename

Specifies a role name to be used to create the dump. This option causes pg_dumpall to issue a SET ROLE rolename command after connecting to the database. It is useful when the authenticated user (specified by -U) lacks privileges needed by pg_dumpall, but can switch to a role with the required rights. Some installations have a policy against logging in directly as a superuser, and use of this option allows dumps to be made without violating the policy.

Environment

PGHOST
PGOPTIONS
PGPORT
PGUSER

Default connection parameters

This utility, like most other PostgreSQL utilities, also uses the environment variables supported by libpq (see Section 31.13).

Notes

Since pg_dumpall calls pg_dump internally, some diagnostic messages will refer to pg_dump.

Once restored, it is wise to run ANALYZE on each database so the optimizer has useful statistics. You can also run vacuumdb -a -z to analyze all databases.

pg_dumpall requires all needed tablespace directories to exist before the restore; otherwise, database creation will fail for databases in non-default locations.

Examples

To dump all databases:

$ pg_dumpall > db.out

To reload database(s) from this file, you can use:

$ psql -f db.out postgres

(It is not important to which database you connect here since the script file created by pg_dumpall will contain the appropriate commands to create and connect to the saved databases.)

See Also

Check pg_dump for details on possible error conditions.

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pg_restore

Name

pg_restore -- restore a PostgreSQL database from an archive file created by pg_dump

Synopsis

pg_restore [connection-option...] [option...] [filename]

Description

pg_restore is a utility for restoring a PostgreSQL database from an archive created by pg_dump in one of the non-plain-text formats. It will issue the commands necessary to reconstruct the database to the state it was in at the time it was saved. The archive files also allow pg_restore to be selective about what is restored, or even to reorder the items prior to being restored. The archive files are designed to be portable across architectures.

pg_restore can operate in two modes. If a database name is specified, pg_restore connects to that database and restores archive contents directly into the database. Otherwise, a script containing the SQL commands necessary to rebuild the database is created and written to a file or standard output. This script output is equivalent to the plain text output format of pg_dump. Some of the options controlling the output are therefore analogous to pg_dump options.

Obviously, pg_restore cannot restore information that is not present in the archive file. For instance, if the archive was made using the "dump data as INSERT commands" option, pg_restore will not be able to load the data using COPY statements.

Options

pg_restore accepts the following command line arguments.

filename

Specifies the location of the archive file (or directory, for a directory-format archive) to be restored. If not specified, the standard input is used.

-a
--data-only

Restore only the data, not the schema (data definitions).

-c
--clean

Clean (drop) database objects before recreating them.

-C
--create

Create the database before restoring into it. (When this option is used, the database named with -d is used only to issue the initial CREATE DATABASE command. All data is restored into the database name that appears in the archive.)

-d dbname
--dbname=dbname

Connect to database dbname and restore directly into the database.

-e
--exit-on-error

Exit if an error is encountered while sending SQL commands to the database. The default is to continue and to display a count of errors at the end of the restoration.

-f filename
--file=filename

Specify output file for generated script, or for the listing when used with -l. Default is the standard output.

-F format
--format=format

Specify format of the archive. It is not necessary to specify the format, since pg_restore will determine the format automatically. If specified, it can be one of the following:

c
custom

The archive is in the custom format of pg_dump.

d
directory

The archive is a directory archive.

t
tar

The archive is a tar archive.

-i
--ignore-version

A deprecated option that is now ignored.

-I index
--index=index

Restore definition of named index only.

-j number-of-jobs
--jobs=number-of-jobs

Run the most time-consuming parts of pg_restore — those which load data, create indexes, or create constraints — using multiple concurrent jobs. This option can dramatically reduce the time to restore a large database to a server running on a multiprocessor machine.

Each job is one process or one thread, depending on the operating system, and uses a separate connection to the server.

The optimal value for this option depends on the hardware setup of the server, of the client, and of the network. Factors include the number of CPU cores and the disk setup. A good place to start is the number of CPU cores on the server, but values larger than that can also lead to faster restore times in many cases. Of course, values that are too high will lead to decreased performance because of thrashing.

Only the custom archive format is supported with this option. The input file must be a regular file (not, for example, a pipe). This option is ignored when emitting a script rather than connecting directly to a database server. Also, multiple jobs cannot be used together with the option --single-transaction.

-l
--list

List the contents of the archive. The output of this operation can be used as input to the -L option. Note that if filtering switches such as -n or -t are used with -l, they will restrict the items listed.

-L list-file
--use-list=list-file

Restore only those archive elements that are listed in list-file, and restore them in the order they appear in the file. Note that if filtering switches such as -n or -t are used with -L, they will further restrict the items restored.

list-file is normally created by editing the output of a previous -l operation. Lines can be moved or removed, and can also be commented out by placing a semicolon (;) at the start of the line. See below for examples.

-n namespace
--schema=schema

Restore only objects that are in the named schema. This can be combined with the -t option to restore just a specific table.

-O
--no-owner

Do not output commands to set ownership of objects to match the original database. By default, pg_restore issues ALTER OWNER or SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION statements to set ownership of created schema elements. These statements will fail unless the initial connection to the database is made by a superuser (or the same user that owns all of the objects in the script). With -O, any user name can be used for the initial connection, and this user will own all the created objects.

-P function-name(argtype [, ...])
--function=function-name(argtype [, ...])

Restore the named function only. Be careful to spell the function name and arguments exactly as they appear in the dump file's table of contents.

-R
--no-reconnect

This option is obsolete but still accepted for backwards compatibility.

-s
--schema-only

Restore only the schema (data definitions), not the data (table contents). Current sequence values will not be restored, either. (Do not confuse this with the --schema option, which uses the word "schema" in a different meaning.)

-S username
--superuser=username

Specify the superuser user name to use when disabling triggers. This is only relevant if --disable-triggers is used.

-t table
--table=table

Restore definition and/or data of named table only. This can be combined with the -n option to specify a schema.

-T trigger
--trigger=trigger

Restore named trigger only.

-v
--verbose

Specifies verbose mode.

-V
--version

Print the pg_restore version and exit.

-x
--no-privileges
--no-acl

Prevent restoration of access privileges (grant/revoke commands).

-1
--single-transaction

Execute the restore as a single transaction (that is, wrap the emitted commands in BEGIN/COMMIT). This ensures that either all the commands complete successfully, or no changes are applied. This option implies --exit-on-error.

--disable-triggers

This option is only relevant when performing a data-only restore. It instructs pg_restore to execute commands to temporarily disable triggers on the target tables while the data is reloaded. Use this if you have referential integrity checks or other triggers on the tables that you do not want to invoke during data reload.

Presently, the commands emitted for --disable-triggers must be done as superuser. So, you should also specify a superuser name with -S, or preferably run pg_restore as a PostgreSQL superuser.

--no-data-for-failed-tables

By default, table data is restored even if the creation command for the table failed (e.g., because it already exists). With this option, data for such a table is skipped. This behavior is useful if the target database already contains the desired table contents. For example, auxiliary tables for PostgreSQL extensions such as PostGIS might already be loaded in the target database; specifying this option prevents duplicate or obsolete data from being loaded into them.

This option is effective only when restoring directly into a database, not when producing SQL script output.

--no-security-labels

Do not output commands to restore security labels, even if the archive contains them.

--no-tablespaces

Do not output commands to select tablespaces. With this option, all objects will be created in whichever tablespace is the default during restore.

--use-set-session-authorization

Output SQL-standard SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION commands instead of ALTER OWNER commands to determine object ownership. This makes the dump more standards-compatible, but depending on the history of the objects in the dump, might not restore properly.

-?
--help

Show help about pg_restore command line arguments, and exit.

pg_restore also accepts the following command line arguments for connection parameters:

-h host
--host=host

Specifies the host name of the machine on which the server is running. If the value begins with a slash, it is used as the directory for the Unix domain socket. The default is taken from the PGHOST environment variable, if set, else a Unix domain socket connection is attempted.

-p port
--port=port

Specifies the TCP port or local Unix domain socket file extension on which the server is listening for connections. Defaults to the PGPORT environment variable, if set, or a compiled-in default.

-U username
--username=username

User name to connect as.

-w
--no-password

Never issue a password prompt. If the server requires password authentication and a password is not available by other means such as a .pgpass file, the connection attempt will fail. This option can be useful in batch jobs and scripts where no user is present to enter a password.

-W
--password

Force pg_restore to prompt for a password before connecting to a database.

This option is never essential, since pg_restore will automatically prompt for a password if the server demands password authentication. However, pg_restore will waste a connection attempt finding out that the server wants a password. In some cases it is worth typing -W to avoid the extra connection attempt.

--role=rolename

Specifies a role name to be used to perform the restore. This option causes pg_restore to issue a SET ROLE rolename command after connecting to the database. It is useful when the authenticated user (specified by -U) lacks privileges needed by pg_restore, but can switch to a role with the required rights. Some installations have a policy against logging in directly as a superuser, and use of this option allows restores to be performed without violating the policy.

Environment

PGHOST
PGOPTIONS
PGPORT
PGUSER

Default connection parameters

This utility, like most other PostgreSQL utilities, also uses the environment variables supported by libpq (see Section 31.13).

Diagnostics

When a direct database connection is specified using the -d option, pg_restore internally executes SQL statements. If you have problems running pg_restore, make sure you are able to select information from the database using, for example, psql. Also, any default connection settings and environment variables used by the libpq front-end library will apply.

Notes

If your installation has any local additions to the template1 database, be careful to load the output of pg_restore into a truly empty database; otherwise you are likely to get errors due to duplicate definitions of the added objects. To make an empty database without any local additions, copy from template0 not template1, for example:

CREATE DATABASE foo WITH TEMPLATE template0;

The limitations of pg_restore are detailed below.

  • When restoring data to a pre-existing table and the option --disable-triggers is used, pg_restore emits commands to disable triggers on user tables before inserting the data, then emits commands to re-enable them after the data has been inserted. If the restore is stopped in the middle, the system catalogs might be left in the wrong state.

  • pg_restore cannot restore large objects selectively; for instance, only those for a specific table. If an archive contains large objects, then all large objects will be restored, or none of them if they are excluded via -L, -t, or other options.

See also the pg_dump documentation for details on limitations of pg_dump.

Once restored, it is wise to run ANALYZE on each restored table so the optimizer has useful statistics; see Section 23.1.3 and Section 23.1.5 for more information.

Examples

Assume we have dumped a database called mydb into a custom-format dump file:

$ pg_dump -Fc mydb > db.dump

To drop the database and recreate it from the dump:

$ dropdb mydb
$ pg_restore -C -d postgres db.dump

The database named in the -d switch can be any database existing in the cluster; pg_restore only uses it to issue the CREATE DATABASE command for mydb. With -C, data is always restored into the database name that appears in the dump file.

To reload the dump into a new database called newdb:

$ createdb -T template0 newdb
$ pg_restore -d newdb db.dump

Notice we don't use -C, and instead connect directly to the database to be restored into. Also note that we clone the new database from template0 not template1, to ensure it is initially empty.

To reorder database items, it is first necessary to dump the table of contents of the archive:

$ pg_restore -l db.dump > db.list

The listing file consists of a header and one line for each item, e.g.:

;
; Archive created at Mon Sep 14 13:55:39 2009
;     dbname: DBDEMOS
;     TOC Entries: 81
;     Compression: 9
;     Dump Version: 1.10-0
;     Format: CUSTOM
;     Integer: 4 bytes
;     Offset: 8 bytes
;     Dumped from database version: 8.3.5
;     Dumped by pg_dump version: 8.3.8
;
;
; Selected TOC Entries:
;
3; 2615 2200 SCHEMA - public pasha
1861; 0 0 COMMENT - SCHEMA public pasha
1862; 0 0 ACL - public pasha
317; 1247 17715 TYPE public composite pasha
319; 1247 25899 DOMAIN public domain0 pasha

Semicolons start a comment, and the numbers at the start of lines refer to the internal archive ID assigned to each item.

Lines in the file can be commented out, deleted, and reordered. For example:

10; 145433 TABLE map_resolutions postgres
;2; 145344 TABLE species postgres
;4; 145359 TABLE nt_header postgres
6; 145402 TABLE species_records postgres
;8; 145416 TABLE ss_old postgres

could be used as input to pg_restore and would only restore items 10 and 6, in that order:

$ pg_restore -L db.list db.dump

See Also

pg_dump, pg_dumpall, psql
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psql

Name

psql -- PostgreSQL interactive terminal

Synopsis

psql [option...] [dbname [username]]

Description

psql is a terminal-based front-end to PostgreSQL. It enables you to type in queries interactively, issue them to PostgreSQL, and see the query results. Alternatively, input can be from a file. In addition, it provides a number of meta-commands and various shell-like features to facilitate writing scripts and automating a wide variety of tasks.

Options

-a
--echo-all

Print all nonempty input lines to standard output as they are read. (This does not apply to lines read interactively.) This is equivalent to setting the variable ECHO to all.

-A
--no-align

Switches to unaligned output mode. (The default output mode is otherwise aligned.)

-c command
--command=command

Specifies that psql is to execute one command string, command, and then exit. This is useful in shell scripts. Start-up files (psqlrc and ~/.psqlrc) are ignored with this option.

command must be either a command string that is completely parsable by the server (i.e., it contains no psql-specific features), or a single backslash command. Thus you cannot mix SQL and psql meta-commands with this option. To achieve that, you could pipe the string into psql, for example: echo '\x \\ SELECT * FROM foo;' | psql. (\\ is the separator meta-command.)

If the command string contains multiple SQL commands, they are processed in a single transaction, unless there are explicit BEGIN/COMMIT commands included in the string to divide it into multiple transactions. This is different from the behavior when the same string is fed to psql's standard input. Also, only the result of the last SQL command is returned.

Because of these legacy behaviors, putting more than one command in the -c string often has unexpected results. It's better to feed multiple commands to psql's standard input, either using echo as illustrated above, or via a shell here-document, for example:

psql <<EOF
\x
SELECT * FROM foo;
EOF

-d dbname
--dbname=dbname

Specifies the name of the database to connect to. This is equivalent to specifying dbname as the first non-option argument on the command line.

If this parameter contains an = sign, it is treated as a conninfo string. See Section 31.1 for more information.

-e
--echo-queries

Copy all SQL commands sent to the server to standard output as well. This is equivalent to setting the variable ECHO to queries.

-E
--echo-hidden

Echo the actual queries generated by \d and other backslash commands. You can use this to study psql's internal operations. This is equivalent to setting the variable ECHO_HIDDEN to on.

-f filename
--file=filename

Use the file filename as the source of commands instead of reading commands interactively. After the file is processed, psql terminates. This is in many ways equivalent to the internal command \i.

If filename is - (hyphen), then standard input is read.

Using this option is subtly different from writing psql < filename. In general, both will do what you expect, but using -f enables some nice features such as error messages with line numbers. There is also a slight chance that using this option will reduce the start-up overhead. On the other hand, the variant using the shell's input redirection is (in theory) guaranteed to yield exactly the same output you would have received had you entered everything by hand.

-F separator
--field-separator=separator

Use separator as the field separator for unaligned output. This is equivalent to \pset fieldsep or \f.

-h hostname
--host=hostname

Specifies the host name of the machine on which the server is running. If the value begins with a slash, it is used as the directory for the Unix-domain socket.

-H
--html

Turn on HTML tabular output. This is equivalent to \pset format html or the \H command.

-l
--list

List all available databases, then exit. Other non-connection options are ignored. This is similar to the internal command \list.

-L filename
--log-file=filename

Write all query output into file filename, in addition to the normal output destination.

-n
--no-readline

Do not use Readline for line editing and do not use the command history. This can be useful to turn off tab expansion when cutting and pasting.

-o filename
--output=filename

Put all query output into file filename. This is equivalent to the command \o.

-p port
--port=port

Specifies the TCP port or the local Unix-domain socket file extension on which the server is listening for connections. Defaults to the value of the PGPORT environment variable or, if not set, to the port specified at compile time, usually 5432.

-P assignment
--pset=assignment

Specifies printing options, in the style of \pset. Note that here you have to separate name and value with an equal sign instead of a space. For example, to set the output format to LaTeX, you could write -P format=latex.

-q
--quiet

Specifies that psql should do its work quietly. By default, it prints welcome messages and various informational output. If this option is used, none of this happens. This is useful with the -c option. This is equivalent to setting the variable QUIET to on.

-R separator
--record-separator=separator

Use separator as the record separator for unaligned output. This is equivalent to the \pset recordsep command.

-s
--single-step

Run in single-step mode. That means the user is prompted before each command is sent to the server, with the option to cancel execution as well. Use this to debug scripts.

-S
--single-line

Runs in single-line mode where a newline terminates an SQL command, as a semicolon does.

Note: This mode is provided for those who insist on it, but you are not necessarily encouraged to use it. In particular, if you mix SQL and meta-commands on a line the order of execution might not always be clear to the inexperienced user.

-t
--tuples-only

Turn off printing of column names and result row count footers, etc. This is equivalent to the \t command.

-T table_options
--table-attr=table_options

Specifies options to be placed within the HTML table tag. See \pset for details.

-U username
--username=username

Connect to the database as the user username instead of the default. (You must have permission to do so, of course.)

-v assignment
--set=assignment
--variable=assignment

Perform a variable assignment, like the \set internal command. Note that you must separate name and value, if any, by an equal sign on the command line. To unset a variable, leave off the equal sign. To just set a variable without a value, use the equal sign but leave off the value. These assignments are done during a very early stage of start-up, so variables reserved for internal purposes might get overwritten later.

-V
--version

Print the psql version and exit.

-w
--no-password

Never issue a password prompt. If the server requires password authentication and a password is not available by other means such as a .pgpass file, the connection attempt will fail. This option can be useful in batch jobs and scripts where no user is present to enter a password.

Note that this option will remain set for the entire session, and so it affects uses of the meta-command \connect as well as the initial connection attempt.

-W
--password

Force psql to prompt for a password before connecting to a database.

This option is never essential, since psql will automatically prompt for a password if the server demands password authentication. However, psql will waste a connection attempt finding out that the server wants a password. In some cases it is worth typing -W to avoid the extra connection attempt.

Note that this option will remain set for the entire session, and so it affects uses of the meta-command \connect as well as the initial connection attempt.

-x
--expanded

Turn on the expanded table formatting mode. This is equivalent to the \x command.

-X,
--no-psqlrc

Do not read the start-up file (neither the system-wide psqlrc file nor the user's ~/.psqlrc file).

-1
--single-transaction

When psql executes a script with the -f option, adding this option wraps BEGIN/COMMIT around the script to execute it as a single transaction. This ensures that either all the commands complete successfully, or no changes are applied.

If the script itself uses BEGIN, COMMIT, or ROLLBACK, this option will not have the desired effects. Also, if the script contains any command that cannot be executed inside a transaction block, specifying this option will cause that command (and hence the whole transaction) to fail.

-?
--help

Show help about psql command line arguments, and exit.

Exit Status

psql returns 0 to the shell if it finished normally, 1 if a fatal error of its own occurs (e.g. out of memory, file not found), 2 if the connection to the server went bad and the session was not interactive, and 3 if an error occurred in a script and the variable ON_ERROR_STOP was set.

Usage

Connecting to a Database

psql is a regular PostgreSQL client application. In order to connect to a database you need to know the name of your target database, the host name and port number of the server, and what user name you want to connect as. psql can be told about those parameters via command line options, namely -d, -h, -p, and -U respectively. If an argument is found that does not belong to any option it will be interpreted as the database name (or the user name, if the database name is already given). Not all of these options are required; there are useful defaults. If you omit the host name, psql will connect via a Unix-domain socket to a server on the local host, or via TCP/IP to localhost on machines that don't have Unix-domain sockets. The default port number is determined at compile time. Since the database server uses the same default, you will not have to specify the port in most cases. The default user name is your operating-system user name, as is the default database name. Note that you cannot just connect to any database under any user name. Your database administrator should have informed you about your access rights.

When the defaults aren't quite right, you can save yourself some typing by setting the environment variables PGDATABASE, PGHOST, PGPORT and/or PGUSER to appropriate values. (For additional environment variables, see Section 31.13.) It is also convenient to have a ~/.pgpass file to avoid regularly having to type in passwords. See Section 31.14 for more information.

An alternative way to specify connection parameters is in a conninfo string, which is used instead of a database name. This mechanism give you very wide control over the connection. For example:

$ psql "service=myservice sslmode=require"

This way you can also use LDAP for connection parameter lookup as described in Section 31.16. See Section 31.1 for more information on all the available connection options.

If the connection could not be made for any reason (e.g., insufficient privileges, server is not running on the targeted host, etc.), psql will return an error and terminate.

If at least one of standard input or standard output are a terminal, then psql sets the client encoding to "auto", which will detect the appropriate client encoding from the locale settings (LC_CTYPE environment variable on Unix systems). If this doesn't work out as expected, the client encoding can be overridden using the environment variable PGCLIENTENCODING.

Entering SQL Commands

In normal operation, psql provides a prompt with the name of the database to which psql is currently connected, followed by the string =>. For example:

$ psql testdb
psql (9.1.19)
Type "help" for help.

testdb=>

At the prompt, the user can type in SQL commands. Ordinarily, input lines are sent to the server when a command-terminating semicolon is reached. An end of line does not terminate a command. Thus commands can be spread over several lines for clarity. If the command was sent and executed without error, the results of the command are displayed on the screen.

Whenever a command is executed, psql also polls for asynchronous notification events generated by LISTEN and NOTIFY.

Meta-Commands

Anything you enter in psql that begins with an unquoted backslash is a psql meta-command that is processed by psql itself. These commands make psql more useful for administration or scripting. Meta-commands are often called slash or backslash commands.

The format of a psql command is the backslash, followed immediately by a command verb, then any arguments. The arguments are separated from the command verb and each other by any number of whitespace characters.

To include whitespace into an argument you can quote it with a single quote. To include a single quote into such an argument, use two single quotes. Anything contained in single quotes is furthermore subject to C-like substitutions for \n (new line), \t (tab), \digits (octal), and \xdigits (hexadecimal).

If an unquoted argument begins with a colon (:), it is taken as a psql variable and the value of the variable is used as the argument instead. If the variable name is surrounded by single quotes (e.g. :'var'), it will be escaped as an SQL literal and the result will be used as the argument. If the variable name is surrounded by double quotes, it will be escaped as an SQL identifier and the result will be used as the argument.

Arguments that are enclosed in backquotes (`) are taken as a command line that is passed to the shell. The output of the command (with any trailing newline removed) is taken as the argument value. The above escape sequences also apply in backquotes.

Some commands take an SQL identifier (such as a table name) as argument. These arguments follow the syntax rules of SQL: Unquoted letters are forced to lowercase, while double quotes (") protect letters from case conversion and allow incorporation of whitespace into the identifier. Within double quotes, paired double quotes reduce to a single double quote in the resulting name. For example, FOO"BAR"BAZ is interpreted as fooBARbaz, and "A weird"" name" becomes A weird" name.

Parsing for arguments stops at the end of the line, or when another unquoted backslash is found. An unquoted backslash is taken as the beginning of a new meta-command. The special sequence \\ (two backslashes) marks the end of arguments and continues parsing SQL commands, if any. That way SQL and psql commands can be freely mixed on a line. But in any case, the arguments of a meta-command cannot continue beyond the end of the line.

The following meta-commands are defined:

\a

If the current table output format is unaligned, it is switched to aligned. If it is not unaligned, it is set to unaligned. This command is kept for backwards compatibility. See \pset for a more general solution.

\c or \connect [ dbname [ username ] [ host ] [ port ] ] | conninfo

Establishes a new connection to a PostgreSQL server. The connection parameters to use can be specified either using a positional syntax, or using conninfo connection strings as detailed in Section 31.1.

When using positional parameters, if any of dbname, username, host or port are omitted or specified as -, the value of that parameter from the previous connection is used; if there is no previous connection, the libpq default for the parameter's value is used. When using conninfo strings, no values from the previous connection are used for the new connection.

If the new connection is successfully made, the previous connection is closed. If the connection attempt failed (wrong user name, access denied, etc.), the previous connection will only be kept if psql is in interactive mode. When executing a non-interactive script, processing will immediately stop with an error. This distinction was chosen as a user convenience against typos on the one hand, and a safety mechanism that scripts are not accidentally acting on the wrong database on the other hand.

Examples:

=> \c mydb myuser host.dom 6432
=> \c service=foo
=> \c "host=localhost port=5432 dbname=mydb connect_timeout=10 sslmode=disable"
\C [ title ]

Sets the title of any tables being printed as the result of a query or unset any such title. This command is equivalent to \pset title title. (The name of this command derives from "caption", as it was previously only used to set the caption in an HTML table.)

\cd [ directory ]

Changes the current working directory to directory. Without argument, changes to the current user's home directory.

Tip: To print your current working directory, use \! pwd.

\conninfo

Outputs information about the current database connection.

\copy { table [ ( column_list ) ] | ( query ) } { from | to } { filename | stdin | stdout | pstdin | pstdout } [ with ] [ binary ] [ oids ] [ delimiter [ as ] 'character' ] [ null [ as ] 'string' ] [ csv [ header ] [ quote [ as ] 'character' ] [ escape [ as ] 'character' ] [ force quote column_list | * ] [ force not null column_list ] ]

Performs a frontend (client) copy. This is an operation that runs an SQL COPY command, but instead of the server reading or writing the specified file, psql reads or writes the file and routes the data between the server and the local file system. This means that file accessibility and privileges are those of the local user, not the server, and no SQL superuser privileges are required.

The syntax of the command is similar to that of the SQL COPY command. Note that, because of this, special parsing rules apply to the \copy command. In particular, the variable substitution rules and backslash escapes do not apply.

\copy ... from stdin | to stdout reads/writes based on the command input and output respectively. All rows are read from the same source that issued the command, continuing until \. is read or the stream reaches EOF. Output is sent to the same place as command output. To read/write from psql's standard input or output, use pstdin or pstdout. This option is useful for populating tables in-line within a SQL script file.

Tip: This operation is not as efficient as the SQL COPY command because all data must pass through the client/server connection. For large amounts of data the SQL command might be preferable.

\copyright

Shows the copyright and distribution terms of PostgreSQL.

\d[S+] [ pattern ]

For each relation (table, view, index, sequence, or foreign table) or composite type matching the pattern, show all columns, their types, the tablespace (if not the default) and any special attributes such as NOT NULL or defaults. Associated indexes, constraints, rules, and triggers are also shown. For foreign tables, the associated foreign server is shown as well. ("Matching the pattern" is defined in Patterns below.)

The command form \d+ is identical, except that more information is displayed: any comments associated with the columns of the table are shown, as is the presence of OIDs in the table, the view definition if the relation is a view, and the generic options if the relation is a foreign table.

By default, only user-created objects are shown; supply a pattern or the S modifier to include system objects.

Note: If \d is used without a pattern argument, it is equivalent to \dtvsE which will show a list of all visible tables, views, sequences and foreign tables. This is purely a convenience measure.

\da[S] [ pattern ]

Lists aggregate functions, together with their return type and the data types they operate on. If pattern is specified, only aggregates whose names match the pattern are shown. By default, only user-created objects are shown; supply a pattern or the S modifier to include system objects.

\db[+] [ pattern ]

Lists tablespaces. If pattern is specified, only tablespaces whose names match the pattern are shown. If + is appended to the command name, each object is listed with its associated permissions.

\dc[S] [ pattern ]

Lists conversions between character-set encodings. If pattern is specified, only conversions whose names match the pattern are listed. By default, only user-created objects are shown; supply a pattern or the S modifier to include system objects.

\dC [ pattern ]

Lists type casts. If pattern is specified, only casts whose source or target types match the pattern are listed.

\dd[S] [ pattern ]

Shows the descriptions of objects matching the pattern, or of all visible objects if no argument is given. But in either case, only objects that have a description are listed. By default, only user-created objects are shown; supply a pattern or the S modifier to include system objects. "Object" covers aggregates, functions, operators, types, relations (tables, views, indexes, sequences), large objects, rules, and triggers. For example:

=> \dd version
                     Object descriptions
   Schema   |  Name   |  Object  |        Description
------------+---------+----------+---------------------------
 pg_catalog | version | function | PostgreSQL version string
(1 row)

Descriptions for objects can be created with the COMMENT SQL command.

\ddp [ pattern ]

Lists default access privilege settings. An entry is shown for each role (and schema, if applicable) for which the default privilege settings have been changed from the built-in defaults. If pattern is specified, only entries whose role name or schema name matches the pattern are listed.

The ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES command is used to set default access privileges. The meaning of the privilege display is explained under GRANT.

\dD[S] [ pattern ]

Lists domains. If pattern is specified, only domains whose names match the pattern are shown. By default, only user-created objects are shown; supply a pattern or the S modifier to include system objects.

\dE[S+] [ pattern ]
\di[S+] [ pattern ]
\ds[S+] [ pattern ]
\dt[S+] [ pattern ]
\dv[S+] [ pattern ]

In this group of commands, the letters E, i, s, t, and v stand for foreign table, index, sequence, table, and view, respectively. You can specify any or all of these letters, in any order, to obtain a listing of objects of these types. For example, \dit lists indexes and tables. If + is appended to the command name, each object is listed with its physical size on disk and its associated description, if any. If pattern is specified, only objects whose names match the pattern are listed. By default, only user-created objects are shown; supply a pattern or the S modifier to include system objects.

\des[+] [ pattern ]

Lists foreign servers (mnemonic: "external servers"). If pattern is specified, only those servers whose name matches the pattern are listed. If the form \des+ is used, a full description of each server is shown, including the server's ACL, type, version, and options.

\det[+] [ pattern ]

Lists foreign tables (mnemonic: "external tables"). If pattern is specified, only entries whose table name or schema name matches the pattern are listed. If the form \det+ is used, generic options are also displayed.

\deu[+] [ pattern ]

Lists user mappings (mnemonic: "external users"). If pattern is specified, only those mappings whose user names match the pattern are listed. If the form \deu+ is used, additional information about each mapping is shown.

Caution

\deu+ might also display the user name and password of the remote user, so care should be taken not to disclose them.

\dew[+] [ pattern ]

Lists foreign-data wrappers (mnemonic: "external wrappers"). If pattern is specified, only those foreign-data wrappers whose name matches the pattern are listed. If the form \dew+ is used, the ACL and options of the foreign-data wrapper are also shown.

\df[antwS+] [ pattern ]

Lists functions, together with their arguments, return types, and function types, which are classified as "agg" (aggregate), "normal", "trigger", or "window". To display only functions of specific type(s), add the corresponding letters a, n, t, or w to the command. If pattern is specified, only functions whose names match the pattern are shown. If the form \df+ is used, additional information about each function, including volatility, language, source code and description, is shown. By default, only user-created objects are shown; supply a pattern or the S modifier to include system objects.

Tip: To look up functions taking arguments or returning values of a specific type, use your pager's search capability to scroll through the \df output.

\dF[+] [ pattern ]

Lists text search configurations. If pattern is specified, only configurations whose names match the pattern are shown. If the form \dF+ is used, a full description of each configuration is shown, including the underlying text search parser and the dictionary list for each parser token type.

\dFd[+] [ pattern ]

Lists text search dictionaries. If pattern is specified, only dictionaries whose names match the pattern are shown. If the form \dFd+ is used, additional information is shown about each selected dictionary, including the underlying text search template and the option values.

\dFp[+] [ pattern ]

Lists text search parsers. If pattern is specified, only parsers whose names match the pattern are shown. If the form \dFp+ is used, a full description of each parser is shown, including the underlying functions and the list of recognized token types.

\dFt[+] [ pattern ]

Lists text search templates. If pattern is specified, only templates whose names match the pattern are shown. If the form \dFt+ is used, additional information is shown about each template, including the underlying function names.

\dg[+] [ pattern ]

Lists database roles. If pattern is specified, only those roles whose names match the pattern are listed. (This command is now effectively the same as \du). If the form \dg+ is used, additional information is shown about each role, including the comment for each role.

\dl

This is an alias for \lo_list, which shows a list of large objects.

\dL[S+] [ pattern ]

Lists procedural languages. If pattern is specified, only languages whose names match the pattern are listed. By default, only user-created languages are shown; supply the S modifier to include system objects. If + is appended to the command name, each language is listed with its call handler, validator, access privileges, and whether it is a system object.

\dn[S+] [ pattern ]

Lists schemas (namespaces). If pattern is specified, only schemas whose names match the pattern are listed. By default, only user-created objects are shown; supply a pattern or the S modifier to include system objects. If + is appended to the command name, each object is listed with its associated permissions and description, if any.

\do[S] [ pattern ]

Lists operators with their operand and return types. If pattern is specified, only operators whose names match the pattern are listed. By default, only user-created objects are shown; supply a pattern or the S modifier to include system objects.

\dO[S+] [ pattern ]

Lists collations. If pattern is specified, only collations whose names match the pattern are listed. By default, only user-created objects are shown; supply a pattern or the S modifier to include system objects. If + is appended to the command name, each collation is listed with its associated description, if any. Note that only collations usable with the current database's encoding are shown, so the results may vary in different databases of the same installation.

\dp [ pattern ]

Lists tables, views and sequences with their associated access privileges. If pattern is specified, only tables, views and sequences whose names match the pattern are listed.

The GRANT and REVOKE commands are used to set access privileges. The meaning of the privilege display is explained under GRANT.

\drds [ role-pattern [ database-pattern ] ]

Lists defined configuration settings. These settings can be role-specific, database-specific, or both. role-pattern and database-pattern are used to select specific roles and databases to list, respectively. If omitted, or if * is specified, all settings are listed, including those not role-specific or database-specific, respectively.

The ALTER ROLE and ALTER DATABASE commands are used to define per-role and per-database configuration settings.

\dT[S+] [ pattern ]

Lists data types. If pattern is specified, only types whose names match the pattern are listed. If + is appended to the command name, each type is listed with its internal name and size, as well as its allowed values if it is an enum type. By default, only user-created objects are shown; supply a pattern or the S modifier to include system objects.

\du[+] [ pattern ]

Lists database roles. If pattern is specified, only those roles whose names match the pattern are listed. If the form \du+ is used, additional information is shown about each role, including the comment for each role.

\dx[+] [ pattern ]

Lists installed extensions. If pattern is specified, only those extensions whose names match the pattern are listed. If the form \dx+ is used, all the objects belonging to each matching extension are listed.

\e or \edit [ filename ] [ line_number ]

If filename is specified, the file is edited; after the editor exits, its content is copied back to the query buffer. If no filename is given, the current query buffer is copied to a temporary file which is then edited in the same fashion.

The new query buffer is then re-parsed according to the normal rules of psql, where the whole buffer is treated as a single line. (Thus you cannot make scripts this way. Use \i for that.) This means that if the query ends with (or contains) a semicolon, it is immediately executed. Otherwise it will merely wait in the query buffer; type semicolon or \g to send it, or \r to cancel.

If a line number is specified, psql will position the cursor on the specified line of the file or query buffer. Note that if a single all-digits argument is given, psql assumes it is a line number, not a file name.

Tip: See under Environment for how to configure and customize your editor.

\echo text [ ... ]

Prints the arguments to the standard output, separated by one space and followed by a newline. This can be useful to intersperse information in the output of scripts. For example:

=> \echo `date`
Tue Oct 26 21:40:57 CEST 1999

If the first argument is an unquoted -n the trailing newline is not written.

Tip: If you use the \o command to redirect your query output you might wish to use \qecho instead of this command.

\ef [ function_description [ line_number ] ]

This command fetches and edits the definition of the named function, in the form of a CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION command. Editing is done in the same way as for \edit. After the editor exits, the updated command waits in the query buffer; type semicolon or \g to send it, or \r to cancel.

The target function can be specified by name alone, or by name and arguments, for example foo(integer, text). The argument types must be given if there is more than one function of the same name.

If no function is specified, a blank CREATE FUNCTION template is presented for editing.

If a line number is specified, psql will position the cursor on the specified line of the function body. (Note that the function body typically does not begin on the first line of the file.)

Tip: See under Environment for how to configure and customize your editor.

\encoding [ encoding ]

Sets the client character set encoding. Without an argument, this command shows the current encoding.

\f [ string ]

Sets the field separator for unaligned query output. The default is the vertical bar (|). See also \pset for a generic way of setting output options.

\g [ filename ]
\g [ |command ]

Sends the current query input buffer to the server, and optionally stores the query's output in filename or pipes the output to the shell command command. A bare \g is virtually equivalent to a semicolon. A \g with argument is a "one-shot" alternative to the \o command.

\h or \help [ command ]

Gives syntax help on the specified SQL command. If command is not specified, then psql will list all the commands for which syntax help is available. If command is an asterisk (*), then syntax help on all SQL commands is shown.

Note: To simplify typing, commands that consists of several words do not have to be quoted. Thus it is fine to type \help alter table.

\H or \html

Turns on HTML query output format. If the HTML format is already on, it is switched back to the default aligned text format. This command is for compatibility and convenience, but see \pset about setting other output options.

\i or \include filename

Reads input from the file filename and executes it as though it had been typed on the keyboard.

Note: If you want to see the lines on the screen as they are read you must set the variable ECHO to all.

\l (or \list)
\l+ (or \list+)

List the names, owners, character set encodings, and access privileges of all the databases in the server. If + is appended to the command name, database sizes, default tablespaces, and descriptions are also displayed. (Size information is only available for databases that the current user can connect to.)

\lo_export loid filename

Reads the large object with OID loid from the database and writes it to filename. Note that this is subtly different from the server function lo_export, which acts with the permissions of the user that the database server runs as and on the server's file system.

Tip: Use \lo_list to find out the large object's OID.

\lo_import filename [ comment ]

Stores the file into a PostgreSQL large object. Optionally, it associates the given comment with the object. Example:

foo=> \lo_import '/home/peter/pictures/photo.xcf' 'a picture of me'
lo_import 152801

The response indicates that the large object received object ID 152801, which can be used to access the newly-created large object in the future. For the sake of readability, it is recommended to always associate a human-readable comment with every object. Both OIDs and comments can be viewed with the \lo_list command.

Note that this command is subtly different from the server-side lo_import because it acts as the local user on the local file system, rather than the server's user and file system.

\lo_list

Shows a list of all PostgreSQL large objects currently stored in the database, along with any comments provided for them.

\lo_unlink loid

Deletes the large object with OID loid from the database.

Tip: Use \lo_list to find out the large object's OID.

\o or \out [ filename ]
\o or \out [ |command ]

Arranges to save future query results to the file filename or pipe future results to the shell command command. If no argument is specified, the query output is reset to the standard output.

"Query results" includes all tables, command responses, and notices obtained from the database server, as well as output of various backslash commands that query the database (such as \d), but not error messages.

Tip: To intersperse text output in between query results, use \qecho.

\p or \print

Print the current query buffer to the standard output.

\password [ username ]

Changes the password of the specified user (by default, the current user). This command prompts for the new password, encrypts it, and sends it to the server as an ALTER ROLE command. This makes sure that the new password does not appear in cleartext in the command history, the server log, or elsewhere.

\prompt [ text ] name

Prompts the user to set variable name. An optional prompt, text, can be specified. (For multiword prompts, use single quotes.)

By default, \prompt uses the terminal for input and output. However, if the -f command line switch is used, \prompt uses standard input and standard output.

\pset option [ value ]

This command sets options affecting the output of query result tables. option indicates which option is to be set. The semantics of value vary depending on the selected option. For some options, omitting value causes the option to be toggled or unset, as described under the particular option. If no such behavior is mentioned, then omitting value just results in the current setting being displayed.

Adjustable printing options are:

border

The value must be a number. In general, the higher the number the more borders and lines the tables will have, but this depends on the particular format. In HTML format, this will translate directly into the border=... attribute; in the other formats only values 0 (no border), 1 (internal dividing lines), and 2 (table frame) make sense.

columns

Sets the target width for the wrapped format, and also the width limit for determining whether output is wide enough to require the pager. Zero (the default) causes the target width to be controlled by the environment variable COLUMNS, or the detected screen width if COLUMNS is not set. In addition, if columns is zero then the wrapped format only affects screen output. If columns is nonzero then file and pipe output is wrapped to that width as well.

expanded (or x)

If value is specified it must be either on or off which will enable or disable expanded mode. If value is omitted the command toggles between regular and expanded mode. When expanded mode is enabled, query results are displayed in two columns, with the column name on the left and the data on the right. This mode is useful if the data wouldn't fit on the screen in the normal "horizontal" mode.

fieldsep

Specifies the field separator to be used in unaligned output format. That way one can create, for example, tab- or comma-separated output, which other programs might prefer. To set a tab as field separator, type \pset fieldsep '\t'. The default field separator is '|' (a vertical bar).

footer

If value is specified it must be either on or off which will enable or disable display of the table footer (the (n rows) count). If value is omitted the command toggles footer display on or off.

format

Sets the output format to one of unaligned, aligned, wrapped, html, latex, or troff-ms. Unique abbreviations are allowed. (That would mean one letter is enough.)

unaligned format writes all columns of a row on one line, separated by the currently active field separator. This is useful for creating output that might be intended to be read in by other programs (for example, tab-separated or comma-separated format).

aligned format is the standard, human-readable, nicely formatted text output; this is the default.

wrapped format is like aligned but wraps wide data values across lines to make the output fit in the target column width. The target width is determined as described under the columns option. Note that psql will not attempt to wrap column header titles; therefore, wrapped format behaves the same as aligned if the total width needed for column headers exceeds the target.

The html, latex, and troff-ms formats put out tables that are intended to be included in documents using the respective mark-up language. They are not complete documents! (This might not be so dramatic in HTML, but in LaTeX you must have a complete document wrapper.)

linestyle

Sets the border line drawing style to one of ascii, old-ascii or unicode. Unique abbreviations are allowed. (That would mean one letter is enough.) The default setting is ascii. This option only affects the aligned and wrapped output formats.

ascii style uses plain ASCII characters. Newlines in data are shown using a + symbol in the right-hand margin. When the wrapped format wraps data from one line to the next without a newline character, a dot (.) is shown in the right-hand margin of the first line, and again in the left-hand margin of the following line.

old-ascii style uses plain ASCII characters, using the formatting style used in PostgreSQL 8.4 and earlier. Newlines in data are shown using a : symbol in place of the left-hand column separator. When the data is wrapped from one line to the next without a newline character, a ; symbol is used in place of the left-hand column separator.

unicode style uses Unicode box-drawing characters. Newlines in data are shown using a carriage return symbol in the right-hand margin. When the data is wrapped from one line to the next without a newline character, an ellipsis symbol is shown in the right-hand margin of the first line, and again in the left-hand margin of the following line.

When the border setting is greater than zero, this option also determines the characters with which the border lines are drawn. Plain ASCII characters work everywhere, but Unicode characters look nicer on displays that recognize them.

null

Sets the string to be printed in place of a null value. The default is to print nothing, which can easily be mistaken for an empty string. For example, one might prefer \pset null '(null)'.

numericlocale

If value is specified it must be either on or off which will enable or disable display of a locale-specific character to separate groups of digits to the left of the decimal marker. If value is omitted the command toggles between regular and locale-specific numeric output.

pager

Controls use of a pager program for query and psql help output. If the environment variable PAGER is set, the output is piped to the specified program. Otherwise a platform-dependent default (such as more) is used.

When the pager option is off, the pager program is not used. When the pager option is on, the pager is used when appropriate, i.e., when the output is to a terminal and will not fit on the screen. The pager option can also be set to always, which causes the pager to be used for all terminal output regardless of whether it fits on the screen. \pset pager without a value toggles pager use on and off.

recordsep

Specifies the record (line) separator to use in unaligned output format. The default is a newline character.

tableattr (or T)

Specifies attributes to be placed inside the HTML table tag in html output format. This could for example be cellpadding or bgcolor. Note that you probably don't want to specify border here, as that is already taken care of by \pset border. If no value is given, the table attributes are unset.

title

Sets the table title for any subsequently printed tables. This can be used to give your output descriptive tags. If no value is given, the title is unset.

tuples_only (or t)

If value is specified it must be either on or off which will enable or disable tuples-only mode. If value is omitted the command toggles between regular and tuples-only output. Regular output includes extra information such as column headers, titles, and various footers. In tuples-only mode, only actual table data is shown.

Illustrations of how these different formats look can be seen in the Examples section.

Tip: There are various shortcut commands for \pset. See \a, \C, \H, \t, \T, and \x.

Note: It is an error to call \pset without any arguments. In the future this case might show the current status of all printing options.

\q or \quit

Quits the psql program. In a script file, only execution of that script is terminated.

\qecho text [ ... ]

This command is identical to \echo except that the output will be written to the query output channel, as set by \o.

\r or \reset

Resets (clears) the query buffer.

\s [ filename ]

Print psql's command line history to filename. If filename is omitted, the history is written to the standard output (using the pager if appropriate). This command is not available if psql was built without Readline support.

\set [ name [ value [ ... ] ] ]

Sets the internal variable name to value or, if more than one value is given, to the concatenation of all of them. If no second argument is given, the variable is just set with no value. To unset a variable, use the \unset command.

Valid variable names can contain characters, digits, and underscores. See the section Variables below for details. Variable names are case-sensitive.

Although you are welcome to set any variable to anything you want, psql treats several variables as special. They are documented in the section about variables.

Note: This command is totally separate from the SQL command SET.

\sf[+] function_description

This command fetches and shows the definition of the named function, in the form of a CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION command. The definition is printed to the current query output channel, as set by \o.

The target function can be specified by name alone, or by name and arguments, for example foo(integer, text). The argument types must be given if there is more than one function of the same name.

If + is appended to the command name, then the output lines are numbered, with the first line of the function body being line 1.

\t

Toggles the display of output column name headings and row count footer. This command is equivalent to \pset tuples_only and is provided for convenience.

\T table_options

Specifies attributes to be placed within the table tag in HTML output format. This command is equivalent to \pset tableattr table_options.

\timing [ on | off ]

Without parameter, toggles a display of how long each SQL statement takes, in milliseconds. With parameter, sets same.

\w or \write filename
\w or \write |command

Outputs the current query buffer to the file filename or pipes it to the shell command command.

\x

Toggles expanded table formatting mode. As such it is equivalent to \pset expanded.

\z [ pattern ]

Lists tables, views and sequences with their associated access privileges. If a pattern is specified, only tables, views and sequences whose names match the pattern are listed.

This is an alias for \dp ("display privileges").

\! [ command ]

Escapes to a separate shell or executes the shell command command. The arguments are not further interpreted; the shell will see them as-is.

\?

Shows help information about the backslash commands.

Patterns

The various \d commands accept a pattern parameter to specify the object name(s) to be displayed. In the simplest case, a pattern is just the exact name of the object. The characters within a pattern are normally folded to lower case, just as in SQL names; for example, \dt FOO will display the table named foo. As in SQL names, placing double quotes around a pattern stops folding to lower case. Should you need to include an actual double quote character in a pattern, write it as a pair of double quotes within a double-quote sequence; again this is in accord with the rules for SQL quoted identifiers. For example, \dt "FOO""BAR" will display the table named FOO"BAR (not foo"bar). Unlike the normal rules for SQL names, you can put double quotes around just part of a pattern, for instance \dt FOO"FOO"BAR will display the table named fooFOObar.

Whenever the pattern parameter is omitted completely, the \d commands display all objects that are visible in the current schema search path — this is equivalent to using * as the pattern. (An object is said to be visible if its containing schema is in the search path and no object of the same kind and name appears earlier in the search path. This is equivalent to the statement that the object can be referenced by name without explicit schema qualification.) To see all objects in the database regardless of visibility, use *.* as the pattern.

Within a pattern, * matches any sequence of characters (including no characters) and ? matches any single character. (This notation is comparable to Unix shell file name patterns.) For example, \dt int* displays tables whose names begin with int. But within double quotes, * and ? lose these special meanings and are just matched literally.

A pattern that contains a dot (.) is interpreted as a schema name pattern followed by an object name pattern. For example, \dt foo*.*bar* displays all tables whose table name includes bar that are in schemas whose schema name starts with foo. When no dot appears, then the pattern matches only objects that are visible in the current schema search path. Again, a dot within double quotes loses its special meaning and is matched literally.

Advanced users can use regular-expression notations such as character classes, for example [0-9] to match any digit. All regular expression special characters work as specified in Section 9.7.3, except for . which is taken as a separator as mentioned above, * which is translated to the regular-expression notation .*, ? which is translated to ., and $ which is matched literally. You can emulate these pattern characters at need by writing ? for ., (R+|) for R*, or (R|) for R?. $ is not needed as a regular-expression character since the pattern must match the whole name, unlike the usual interpretation of regular expressions (in other words, $ is automatically appended to your pattern). Write * at the beginning and/or end if you don't wish the pattern to be anchored. Note that within double quotes, all regular expression special characters lose their special meanings and are matched literally. Also, the regular expression special characters are matched literally in operator name patterns (i.e., the argument of \do).

Advanced Features

Variables

psql provides variable substitution features similar to common Unix command shells. Variables are simply name/value pairs, where the value can be any string of any length. To set variables, use the psql meta-command \set:

testdb=> \set foo bar

sets the variable foo to the value bar. To retrieve the content of the variable, precede the name with a colon and use it as the argument of any slash command:

testdb=> \echo :foo
bar

Note: The arguments of \set are subject to the same substitution rules as with other commands. Thus you can construct interesting references such as \set :foo 'something' and get "soft links" or "variable variables" of Perl or PHP fame, respectively. Unfortunately (or fortunately?), there is no way to do anything useful with these constructs. On the other hand, \set bar :foo is a perfectly valid way to copy a variable.

If you call \set without a second argument, the variable is set, with an empty string as value. To unset (or delete) a variable, use the command \unset.

psql's internal variable names can consist of letters, numbers, and underscores in any order and any number of them. A number of these variables are treated specially by psql. They indicate certain option settings that can be changed at run time by altering the value of the variable or that represent some state of the application. Although you can use these variables for any other purpose, this is not recommended, as the program behavior might grow really strange really quickly. By convention, all specially treated variables consist of all upper-case letters (and possibly numbers and underscores). To ensure maximum compatibility in the future, avoid using such variable names for your own purposes. A list of all specially treated variables follows.

AUTOCOMMIT

When on (the default), each SQL command is automatically committed upon successful completion. To postpone commit in this mode, you must enter a BEGIN or START TRANSACTION SQL command. When off or unset, SQL commands are not committed until you explicitly issue COMMIT or END. The autocommit-off mode works by issuing an implicit BEGIN for you, just before any command that is not already in a transaction block and is not itself a BEGIN or other transaction-control command, nor a command that cannot be executed inside a transaction block (such as VACUUM).

Note: In autocommit-off mode, you must explicitly abandon any failed transaction by entering ABORT or ROLLBACK. Also keep in mind that if you exit the session without committing, your work will be lost.

Note: The autocommit-on mode is PostgreSQL's traditional behavior, but autocommit-off is closer to the SQL spec. If you prefer autocommit-off, you might wish to set it in the system-wide psqlrc file or your ~/.psqlrc file.

DBNAME

The name of the database you are currently connected to. This is set every time you connect to a database (including program start-up), but can be unset.

ECHO

If set to all, all nonempty input lines are printed to standard output as they are read. (This does not apply to lines read interactively.) To select this behavior on program start-up, use the switch -a. If set to queries, psql prints each query to standard output as it is sent to the server. The switch for this is -e.

ECHO_HIDDEN

When this variable is set to on and a backslash command queries the database, the query is first shown. This feature helps you to study PostgreSQL internals and provide similar functionality in your own programs. (To select this behavior on program start-up, use the switch -E.) If you set the variable to the value noexec, the queries are just shown but are not actually sent to the server and executed.

ENCODING

The current client character set encoding.

FETCH_COUNT

If this variable is set to an integer value > 0, the results of SELECT queries are fetched and displayed in groups of that many rows, rather than the default behavior of collecting the entire result set before display. Therefore only a limited amount of memory is used, regardless of the size of the result set. Settings of 100 to 1000 are commonly used when enabling this feature. Keep in mind that when using this feature, a query might fail after having already displayed some rows.

Tip: Although you can use any output format with this feature, the default aligned format tends to look bad because each group of FETCH_COUNT rows will be formatted separately, leading to varying column widths across the row groups. The other output formats work better.

HISTCONTROL

If this variable is set to ignorespace, lines which begin with a space are not entered into the history list. If set to a value of ignoredups, lines matching the previous history line are not entered. A value of ignoreboth combines the two options. If unset, or if set to any other value than those above, all lines read in interactive mode are saved on the history list.

Note: This feature was shamelessly plagiarized from Bash.

HISTFILE

The file name that will be used to store the history list. The default value is ~/.psql_history. For example, putting:

\set HISTFILE ~/.psql_history- :DBNAME

in ~/.psqlrc will cause psql to maintain a separate history for each database.

Note: This feature was shamelessly plagiarized from Bash.

HISTSIZE

The number of commands to store in the command history. The default value is 500.

Note: This feature was shamelessly plagiarized from Bash.

HOST

The database server host you are currently connected to. This is set every time you connect to a database (including program start-up), but can be unset.

IGNOREEOF

If unset, sending an EOF character (usually Control+D) to an interactive session of psql will terminate the application. If set to a numeric value, that many EOF characters are ignored before the application terminates. If the variable is set but has no numeric value, the default is 10.

Note: This feature was shamelessly plagiarized from Bash.

LASTOID

The value of the last affected OID, as returned from an INSERT or \lo_import command. This variable is only guaranteed to be valid until after the result of the next SQL command has been displayed.

ON_ERROR_ROLLBACK

When set to on, if a statement in a transaction block generates an error, the error is ignored and the transaction continues. When set to interactive, such errors are only ignored in interactive sessions, and not when reading script files. When unset or set to off, a statement in a transaction block that generates an error aborts the entire transaction. The error rollback mode works by issuing an implicit SAVEPOINT for you, just before each command that is in a transaction block, and then rolling back to the savepoint if the command fails.

ON_ERROR_STOP

By default, command processing continues after an error. When this variable is set to on, processing will instead stop immediately. In interactive mode, psql will return to the command prompt; otherwise, psql will exit, returning error code 3 to distinguish this case from fatal error conditions, which are reported using error code 1. In either case, any currently running scripts (the top-level script, if any, and any other scripts which it may have in invoked) will be terminated immediately. If the top-level command string contained multiple SQL commands, processing will stop with the current command.

PORT

The database server port to which you are currently connected. This is set every time you connect to a database (including program start-up), but can be unset.

PROMPT1
PROMPT2
PROMPT3

These specify what the prompts psql issues should look like. See Prompting below.

QUIET

Setting this variable to on is equivalent to the command line option -q. It is probably not too useful in interactive mode.

SINGLELINE

Setting this variable to on is equivalent to the command line option -S.

SINGLESTEP

Setting this variable to on is equivalent to the command line option -s.

USER

The database user you are currently connected as. This is set every time you connect to a database (including program start-up), but can be unset.

VERBOSITY

This variable can be set to the values default, verbose, or terse to control the verbosity of error reports.

SQL Interpolation

An additional useful feature of psql variables is that you can substitute ("interpolate") them into regular SQL statements. psql provides special facilities for ensuring that values used as SQL literals and identifiers are properly escaped. The syntax for interpolating a value without any special escaping is again to prepend the variable name with a colon (:):

testdb=> \set foo 'my_table'
testdb=> SELECT * FROM :foo;

would then query the table my_table. Note that this may be unsafe: the value of the variable is copied literally, so it can even contain unbalanced quotes or backslash commands. You must make sure that it makes sense where you put it.

When a value is to be used as an SQL literal or identifier, it is safest to arrange for it to be escaped. To escape the value of a variable as an SQL literal, write a colon followed by the variable name in single quotes. To escape the value an SQL identifier, write a colon followed by the variable name in double quotes. The previous example would be more safely written this way:

testdb=> \set foo 'my_table'
testdb=> SELECT * FROM :"foo";

Variable interpolation will not be performed into quoted SQL entities.

One possible use of this mechanism is to copy the contents of a file into a table column. First load the file into a variable and then proceed as above:

testdb=> \set content `cat my_file.txt`
testdb=> INSERT INTO my_table VALUES (:'content');

(Note that this still won't work if my_file.txt contains NUL bytes. psql does not support embedded NUL bytes in variable values.)

Since colons can legally appear in SQL commands, an apparent attempt at interpolation (such as :name, :'name', or :"name") is not changed unless the named variable is currently set. In any case, you can escape a colon with a backslash to protect it from substitution. (The colon syntax for variables is standard SQL for embedded query languages, such as ECPG. The colon syntax for array slices and type casts are PostgreSQL extensions, hence the conflict. The colon syntax for escaping a variable's value as an SQL literal or identifier is a psql extension.)

Prompting

The prompts psql issues can be customized to your preference. The three variables PROMPT1, PROMPT2, and PROMPT3 contain strings and special escape sequences that describe the appearance of the prompt. Prompt 1 is the normal prompt that is issued when psql requests a new command. Prompt 2 is issued when more input is expected during command input because the command was not terminated with a semicolon or a quote was not closed. Prompt 3 is issued when you run an SQL COPY command and you are expected to type in the row values on the terminal.

The value of the selected prompt variable is printed literally, except where a percent sign (%) is encountered. Depending on the next character, certain other text is substituted instead. Defined substitutions are:

%M

The full host name (with domain name) of the database server, or [local] if the connection is over a Unix domain socket, or [local:/dir/name], if the Unix domain socket is not at the compiled in default location.

%m

The host name of the database server, truncated at the first dot, or [local] if the connection is over a Unix domain socket.

%>

The port number at which the database server is listening.

%n

The database session user name. (The expansion of this value might change during a database session as the result of the command SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION.)

%/

The name of the current database.

%~

Like %/, but the output is ~ (tilde) if the database is your default database.

%#

If the session user is a database superuser, then a #, otherwise a >. (The expansion of this value might change during a database session as the result of the command SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION.)

%R

In prompt 1 normally =, but ^ if in single-line mode, and ! if the session is disconnected from the database (which can happen if \connect fails). In prompt 2 the sequence is replaced by -, *, a single quote, a double quote, or a dollar sign, depending on whether psql expects more input because the command wasn't terminated yet, because you are inside a /* ... */ comment, or because you are inside a quoted or dollar-escaped string. In prompt 3 the sequence doesn't produce anything.

%x

Transaction status: an empty string when not in a transaction block, or * when in a transaction block, or ! when in a failed transaction block, or ? when the transaction state is indeterminate (for example, because there is no connection).

%digits

The character with the indicated octal code is substituted.

%:name:

The value of the psql variable name. See the section Variables for details.

%`command`

The output of command, similar to ordinary "back-tick" substitution.

%[ ... %]

Prompts can contain terminal control characters which, for example, change the color, background, or style of the prompt text, or change the title of the terminal window. In order for the line editing features of Readline to work properly, these non-printing control characters must be designated as invisible by surrounding them with %[ and %]. Multiple pairs of these can occur within the prompt. For example:

testdb=> \set PROMPT1 '%[%033[1;33;40m%]%n@%/%R%[%033[0m%]%# '

results in a boldfaced (1;) yellow-on-black (33;40) prompt on VT100-compatible, color-capable terminals.

To insert a percent sign into your prompt, write %%. The default prompts are '%/%R%# ' for prompts 1 and 2, and '>> ' for prompt 3.

Note: This feature was shamelessly plagiarized from tcsh.

Command-Line Editing

psql supports the Readline library for convenient line editing and retrieval. The command history is automatically saved when psql exits and is reloaded when psql starts up. Tab-completion is also supported, although the completion logic makes no claim to be an SQL parser. If for some reason you do not like the tab completion, you can turn it off by putting this in a file named .inputrc in your home directory:

$if psql
set disable-completion on
$endif

(This is not a psql but a Readline feature. Read its documentation for further details.)

Environment

COLUMNS

If \pset columns is zero, controls the width for the wrapped format and width for determining if wide output requires the pager.

PAGER

If the query results do not fit on the screen, they are piped through this command. Typical values are more or less. The default is platform-dependent. The use of the pager can be disabled by using the \pset command.

PGDATABASE
PGHOST
PGPORT
PGUSER

Default connection parameters (see Section 31.13).

PSQL_EDITOR
EDITOR
VISUAL

Editor used by the \e and \ef commands. The variables are examined in the order listed; the first that is set is used.

The built-in default editors are vi on Unix systems and notepad.exe on Windows systems.

PSQL_EDITOR_LINENUMBER_ARG

When \e or \ef is used with a line number argument, this variable specifies the command-line argument used to pass the starting line number to the user's editor. For editors such as Emacs or vi, this is a plus sign. Include a trailing space in the value of the variable if there needs to be space between the option name and the line number. Examples:

PSQL_EDITOR_LINENUMBER_ARG='+'
PSQL_EDITOR_LINENUMBER_ARG='--line '

The default is + on Unix systems (corresponding to the default editor vi, and useful for many other common editors); but there is no default on Windows systems.

SHELL

Command executed by the \! command.

TMPDIR

Directory for storing temporary files. The default is /tmp.

This utility, like most other PostgreSQL utilities, also uses the environment variables supported by libpq (see Section 31.13).

Files

  • Unless it is passed an -X or -c option, psql attempts to read and execute commands from the system-wide psqlrc file and the user's ~/.psqlrc file before starting up. (On Windows, the user's startup file is named %APPDATA%\postgresql\psqlrc.conf.) See PREFIX/share/psqlrc.sample for information on setting up the system-wide file. It could be used to set up the client or the server to taste (using the \set and SET commands).

  • Both the system-wide psqlrc file and the user's ~/.psqlrc file can be made version-specific by appending a dash and the PostgreSQL release number, for example ~/.psqlrc-9.1.19. A matching version-specific file will be read in preference to a non-version-specific file.

  • The command-line history is stored in the file ~/.psql_history, or %APPDATA%\postgresql\psql_history on Windows.

Notes

  • In an earlier life psql allowed the first argument of a single-letter backslash command to start directly after the command, without intervening whitespace. As of PostgreSQL 8.4 this is no longer allowed.

  • psql is only guaranteed to work smoothly with servers of the same version. That does not mean other combinations will fail outright, but subtle and not-so-subtle problems might come up. Backslash commands are particularly likely to fail if the server is of a newer version than psql itself. However, backslash commands of the \d family should work with servers of versions back to 7.4, though not necessarily with servers newer than psql itself.

Notes for Windows Users

psql is built as a "console application". Since the Windows console windows use a different encoding than the rest of the system, you must take special care when using 8-bit characters within psql. If psql detects a problematic console code page, it will warn you at startup. To change the console code page, two things are necessary:

  • Set the code page by entering cmd.exe /c chcp 1252. (1252 is a code page that is appropriate for German; replace it with your value.) If you are using Cygwin, you can put this command in /etc/profile.

  • Set the console font to Lucida Console, because the raster font does not work with the ANSI code page.

Examples

The first example shows how to spread a command over several lines of input. Notice the changing prompt:

testdb=> CREATE TABLE my_table (
testdb(>  first integer not null default 0,
testdb(>  second text)
testdb-> ;
CREATE TABLE

Now look at the table definition again:

testdb=> \d my_table
             Table "my_table"
 Attribute |  Type   |      Modifier
-----------+---------+--------------------
 first     | integer | not null default 0
 second    | text    |

Now we change the prompt to something more interesting:

testdb=> \set PROMPT1 '%n@%m %~%R%# '
peter@localhost testdb=>

Let's assume you have filled the table with data and want to take a look at it:

peter@localhost testdb=> SELECT * FROM my_table;
 first | second
-------+--------
     1 | one
     2 | two
     3 | three
     4 | four
(4 rows)

You can display tables in different ways by using the \pset command:

peter@localhost testdb=> \pset border 2
Border style is 2.
peter@localhost testdb=> SELECT * FROM my_table;
+-------+--------+
| first | second |
+-------+--------+
|     1 | one    |
|     2 | two    |
|     3 | three  |
|     4 | four   |
+-------+--------+
(4 rows)

peter@localhost testdb=> \pset border 0
Border style is 0.
peter@localhost testdb=> SELECT * FROM my_table;
first second
----- ------
    1 one
    2 two
    3 three
    4 four
(4 rows)

peter@localhost testdb=> \pset border 1
Border style is 1.
peter@localhost testdb=> \pset format unaligned
Output format is unaligned.
peter@localhost testdb=> \pset fieldsep ","
Field separator is ",".
peter@localhost testdb=> \pset tuples_only
Showing only tuples.
peter@localhost testdb=> SELECT second, first FROM my_table;
one,1
two,2
three,3
four,4

Alternatively, use the short commands:

peter@localhost testdb=> \a \t \x
Output format is aligned.
Tuples only is off.
Expanded display is on.
peter@localhost testdb=> SELECT * FROM my_table;
-[ RECORD 1 ]-
first  | 1
second | one
-[ RECORD 2 ]-
first  | 2
second | two
-[ RECORD 3 ]-
first  | 3
second | three
-[ RECORD 4 ]-
first  | 4
second | four

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pg_restore | Up | reindexdb


reindexdb

Name

reindexdb -- reindex a PostgreSQL database

Synopsis

reindexdb [connection-option...] [--table | -t table ] [--index | -i index ] [dbname]

reindexdb [connection-option...] [--all | -a]

reindexdb [connection-option...] [--system | -s] [dbname]

Description

reindexdb is a utility for rebuilding indexes in a PostgreSQL database.

reindexdb is a wrapper around the SQL command REINDEX. There is no effective difference between reindexing databases via this utility and via other methods for accessing the server.

Options

reindexdb accepts the following command-line arguments:

-a
--all

Reindex all databases.

[-d] dbname
[--dbname=]dbname

Specifies the name of the database to be reindexed. If this is not specified and -a (or --all) is not used, the database name is read from the environment variable PGDATABASE. If that is not set, the user name specified for the connection is used.

-e
--echo

Echo the commands that reindexdb generates and sends to the server.

-i index
--index=index

Recreate index only.

-q
--quiet

Do not display progress messages.

-s
--system

Reindex database's system catalogs.

-t table
--table=table

Reindex table only.

-V
--version

Print the reindexdb version and exit.

-?
--help

Show help about reindexdb command line arguments, and exit.

reindexdb also accepts the following command-line arguments for connection parameters:

-h host
--host=host

Specifies the host name of the machine on which the server is running. If the value begins with a slash, it is used as the directory for the Unix domain socket.

-p port
--port=port

Specifies the TCP port or local Unix domain socket file extension on which the server is listening for connections.

-U username
--username=username

User name to connect as.

-w
--no-password

Never issue a password prompt. If the server requires password authentication and a password is not available by other means such as a .pgpass file, the connection attempt will fail. This option can be useful in batch jobs and scripts where no user is present to enter a password.

-W
--password

Force reindexdb to prompt for a password before connecting to a database.

This option is never essential, since reindexdb will automatically prompt for a password if the server demands password authentication. However, reindexdb will waste a connection attempt finding out that the server wants a password. In some cases it is worth typing -W to avoid the extra connection attempt.

Environment

PGDATABASE
PGHOST
PGPORT
PGUSER

Default connection parameters

This utility, like most other PostgreSQL utilities, also uses the environment variables supported by libpq (see Section 31.13).

Diagnostics

In case of difficulty, see REINDEX and psql for discussions of potential problems and error messages. The database server must be running at the targeted host. Also, any default connection settings and environment variables used by the libpq front-end library will apply.

Notes

reindexdb might need to connect several times to the PostgreSQL server, asking for a password each time. It is convenient to have a ~/.pgpass file in such cases. See Section 31.14 for more information.

Examples

To reindex the database test:

$ reindexdb test

To reindex the table foo and the index bar in a database named abcd:

$ reindexdb --table foo --index bar abcd

See Also

REINDEX
Prev | Home | Next
psql | Up | vacuumdb


vacuumdb

Name

vacuumdb -- garbage-collect and analyze a PostgreSQL database

Synopsis

vacuumdb [connection-option...] [--full | -f] [--freeze | -F] [--verbose | -v] [--analyze | -z] [--analyze-only | -Z] [--table | -t table [( column [,...] )] ] [dbname]

vacuumdb [connection-option...] [--full | -f] [--freeze | -F] [--verbose | -v] [--analyze | -z] [--analyze-only | -Z] [--all | -a]

Description

vacuumdb is a utility for cleaning a PostgreSQL database. vacuumdb will also generate internal statistics used by the PostgreSQL query optimizer.

vacuumdb is a wrapper around the SQL command VACUUM. There is no effective difference between vacuuming and analyzing databases via this utility and via other methods for accessing the server.

Options

vacuumdb accepts the following command-line arguments:

-a
--all

Vacuum all databases.

[-d] dbname
[--dbname=]dbname

Specifies the name of the database to be cleaned or analyzed. If this is not specified and -a (or --all) is not used, the database name is read from the environment variable PGDATABASE. If that is not set, the user name specified for the connection is used.

-e
--echo

Echo the commands that vacuumdb generates and sends to the server.

-f
--full

Perform "full" vacuuming.

-F
--freeze

Aggressively "freeze" tuples.

-q
--quiet

Do not display progress messages.

-t table [ (column [,...]) ]
--table=table [ (column [,...]) ]

Clean or analyze table only. Column names can be specified only in conjunction with the --analyze or --analyze-only options.

Tip: If you specify columns, you probably have to escape the parentheses from the shell. (See examples below.)

-v
--verbose

Print detailed information during processing.

-V
--version

Print the vacuumdb version and exit.

-z
--analyze

Also calculate statistics for use by the optimizer.

-Z
--analyze-only

Only calculate statistics for use by the optimizer (no vacuum).

-?
--help

Show help about vacuumdb command line arguments, and exit.

vacuumdb also accepts the following command-line arguments for connection parameters:

-h host
--host=host

Specifies the host name of the machine on which the server is running. If the value begins with a slash, it is used as the directory for the Unix domain socket.

-p port
--port=port

Specifies the TCP port or local Unix domain socket file extension on which the server is listening for connections.

-U username
--username=username

User name to connect as.

-w
--no-password

Never issue a password prompt. If the server requires password authentication and a password is not available by other means such as a .pgpass file, the connection attempt will fail. This option can be useful in batch jobs and scripts where no user is present to enter a password.

-W
--password

Force vacuumdb to prompt for a password before connecting to a database.

This option is never essential, since vacuumdb will automatically prompt for a password if the server demands password authentication. However, vacuumdb will waste a connection attempt finding out that the server wants a password. In some cases it is worth typing -W to avoid the extra connection attempt.

Environment

PGDATABASE
PGHOST
PGPORT
PGUSER

Default connection parameters

This utility, like most other PostgreSQL utilities, also uses the environment variables supported by libpq (see Section 31.13).

Diagnostics

In case of difficulty, see VACUUM and psql for discussions of potential problems and error messages. The database server must be running at the targeted host. Also, any default connection settings and environment variables used by the libpq front-end library will apply.

Notes

vacuumdb might need to connect several times to the PostgreSQL server, asking for a password each time. It is convenient to have a ~/.pgpass file in such cases. See Section 31.14 for more information.

Examples

To clean the database test:

$ vacuumdb test

To clean and analyze for the optimizer a database named bigdb:

$ vacuumdb --analyze bigdb

To clean a single table foo in a database named xyzzy, and analyze a single column bar of the table for the optimizer:

$ vacuumdb --analyze --verbose --table 'foo(bar)' xyzzy

See Also

VACUUM
Prev | Home | Next
reindexdb | Up | PostgreSQL Server Applications


PostgreSQL Server Applications

Prev Up Next

III. PostgreSQL Server Applications

This part contains reference information for PostgreSQL server applications and support utilities. These commands can only be run usefully on the host where the database server resides. Other utility programs are listed in Reference II, PostgreSQL Client Applications.

Table of Contents
initdb -- create a new PostgreSQL database cluster
pg_controldata -- display control information of a PostgreSQL database cluster
pg_ctl -- initialize, start, stop, or control a PostgreSQL server
pg_resetxlog -- reset the write-ahead log and other control information of a PostgreSQL database cluster
postgres -- PostgreSQL database server
postmaster -- PostgreSQL database server
Prev | Home | Next
vacuumdb | Up | initdb


initdb

Name

initdb -- create a new PostgreSQL database cluster

Synopsis

initdb [option...] --pgdata | -D directory

Description

initdb creates a new PostgreSQL database cluster. A database cluster is a collection of databases that are managed by a single server instance.

Creating a database cluster consists of creating the directories in which the database data will live, generating the shared catalog tables (tables that belong to the whole cluster rather than to any particular database), and creating the template1 and postgres databases. When you later create a new database, everything in the template1 database is copied. (Therefore, anything installed in template1 is automatically copied into each database created later.) The postgres database is a default database meant for use by users, utilities and third party applications.

Although initdb will attempt to create the specified data directory, it might not have permission if the parent directory of the desired data directory is root-owned. To initialize in such a setup, create an empty data directory as root, then use chown to assign ownership of that directory to the database user account, then su to become the database user to run initdb.

initdb must be run as the user that will own the server process, because the server needs to have access to the files and directories that initdb creates. Since the server cannot be run as root, you must not run initdb as root either. (It will in fact refuse to do so.)

initdb initializes the database cluster's default locale and character set encoding. The character set encoding, collation order (LC_COLLATE) and character set classes (LC_CTYPE, e.g. upper, lower, digit) can be set separately for a database when it is created. initdb determines those settings for the template1 database, which will serve as the default for all other databases.

To alter the default collation order or character set classes, use the --lc-collate and --lc-ctype options. Collation orders other than C or POSIX also have a performance penalty. For these reasons it is important to choose the right locale when running initdb.

The remaining locale categories can be changed later when the server is started. You can also use --locale to set the default for all locale categories, including collation order and character set classes. All server locale values (lc_*) can be displayed via SHOW ALL. More details can be found in Section 22.1.

To alter the default encoding, use the --encoding. More details can be found in Section 22.3.

Options

-A authmethod
--auth=authmethod

This option specifies the authentication method for local users used in pg_hba.conf. Do not use trust unless you trust all local users on your system. Trust is the default for ease of installation.

-D directory
--pgdata=directory

This option specifies the directory where the database cluster should be stored. This is the only information required by initdb, but you can avoid writing it by setting the PGDATA environment variable, which can be convenient since the database server (postgres) can find the database directory later by the same variable.

-E encoding
--encoding=encoding

Selects the encoding of the template database. This will also be the default encoding of any database you create later, unless you override it there. The default is derived from the locale, or SQL_ASCII if that does not work. The character sets supported by the PostgreSQL server are described in Section 22.3.1.

--locale=locale

Sets the default locale for the database cluster. If this option is not specified, the locale is inherited from the environment that initdb runs in. Locale support is described in Section 22.1.

--lc-collate=locale
--lc-ctype=locale
--lc-messages=locale
--lc-monetary=locale
--lc-numeric=locale
--lc-time=locale

Like --locale, but only sets the locale in the specified category.

--no-locale

Equivalent to --locale=C.

--pwfile=filename

Makes initdb read the database superuser's password from a file. The first line of the file is taken as the password.

--text-search-config=CFG

Sets the default text search configuration. See default_text_search_config for further information.

-U username
--username=username

Selects the user name of the database superuser. This defaults to the name of the effective user running initdb. It is really not important what the superuser's name is, but one might choose to keep the customary name postgres, even if the operating system user's name is different.

-W
--pwprompt

Makes initdb prompt for a password to give the database superuser. If you don't plan on using password authentication, this is not important. Otherwise you won't be able to use password authentication until you have a password set up.

-X directory
--xlogdir=directory

This option specifies the directory where the transaction log should be stored.

Other, less commonly used, parameters are also available:

-d
--debug

Print debugging output from the bootstrap backend and a few other messages of lesser interest for the general public. The bootstrap backend is the program initdb uses to create the catalog tables. This option generates a tremendous amount of extremely boring output.

-L directory

Specifies where initdb should find its input files to initialize the database cluster. This is normally not necessary. You will be told if you need to specify their location explicitly.

-n
--noclean

By default, when initdb determines that an error prevented it from completely creating the database cluster, it removes any files it might have created before discovering that it cannot finish the job. This option inhibits tidying-up and is thus useful for debugging.

-V
--version

Print the initdb version and exit.

-?
--help

Show help about initdb command line arguments, and exit.

Environment

PGDATA

Specifies the directory where the database cluster is to be stored; can be overridden using the -D option.

This utility, like most other PostgreSQL utilities, also uses the environment variables supported by libpq (see Section 31.13).

Notes

initdb can also be invoked via pg_ctl initdb.

See Also

pg_ctl, postgres
Prev | Home | Next
PostgreSQL Server Applications | Up | pg_controldata


pg_controldata

Name

pg_controldata -- display control information of a PostgreSQL database cluster

Synopsis

pg_controldata [option] [datadir]

Description

pg_controldata prints information initialized during initdb, such as the catalog version. It also shows information about write-ahead logging and checkpoint processing. This information is cluster-wide, and not specific to any one database.

This utility can only be run by the user who initialized the cluster because it requires read access to the data directory. You can specify the data directory on the command line, or use the environment variable PGDATA. This utility supports the options -V and --version, which print the pg_controldata version and exit. It also supports options -? and --help, which output the supported arguments.

Environment

PGDATA

Default data directory location

Prev | Home | Next
initdb | Up | pg_ctl


pg_ctl

Name

pg_ctl -- initialize, start, stop, or control a PostgreSQL server

Synopsis

pg_ctl init[db] [-s] [-D datadir] [-o initdb-options]

pg_ctl start [-w] [-t seconds] [-s] [-D datadir] [-l filename] [-o options] [-p path] [-c]

pg_ctl stop [-W] [-t seconds] [-s] [-D datadir] [-m s[mart] | f[ast] | i[mmediate] ]

pg_ctl restart [-w] [-t seconds] [-s] [-D datadir] [-c] [-m s[mart] | f[ast] | i[mmediate] ] [-o options]

pg_ctl reload [-s] [-D datadir]

pg_ctl status [-D datadir]

pg_ctl promote [-s] [-D datadir]

pg_ctl kill signal_name process_id

pg_ctl register [-N servicename] [-U username] [-P password] [-D datadir] [-S a[uto] | d[emand] ] [-w] [-t seconds] [-s] [-o options]

pg_ctl unregister [-N servicename]

Description

pg_ctl is a utility for initializing a PostgreSQL database cluster, starting, stopping, or restarting the PostgreSQL database server (postgres), or displaying the status of a running server. Although the server can be started manually, pg_ctl encapsulates tasks such as redirecting log output and properly detaching from the terminal and process group. It also provides convenient options for controlled shutdown.

The init or initdb mode creates a new PostgreSQL database cluster. A database cluster is a collection of databases that are managed by a single server instance. This mode invokes the initdb command. See initdb for details.

In start mode, a new server is launched. The server is started in the background, and its standard input is attached to /dev/null (or nul on Windows). On Unix-like systems, by default, the server's standard output and standard error are sent to pg_ctl's standard output (not standard error). The standard output of pg_ctl should then be redirected to a file or piped to another process such as a log rotating program like rotatelogs; otherwise postgres will write its output to the controlling terminal (from the background) and will not leave the shell's process group. On Windows, by default the server's standard output and standard error are sent to the terminal. These default behaviors can be changed by using -l to append the server's output to a log file. Use of either -l or output redirection is recommended.

In stop mode, the server that is running in the specified data directory is shut down. Three different shutdown methods can be selected with the -m option. "Smart" mode (the default) waits for all active clients to disconnect and any online backup to finish. If the server is in hot standby, recovery and streaming replication will be terminated once all clients have disconnected. "Fast" mode does not wait for clients to disconnect and will terminate an online backup in progress. All active transactions are rolled back and clients are forcibly disconnected, then the server is shut down. "Immediate" mode will abort all server processes immediately, without a clean shutdown. This will lead to a crash-recovery run on the next restart.

restart mode effectively executes a stop followed by a start. This allows changing the postgres command-line options.

reload mode simply sends the postgres process a SIGHUP signal, causing it to reread its configuration files (postgresql.conf, pg_hba.conf, etc.). This allows changing of configuration-file options that do not require a complete restart to take effect.

status mode checks whether a server is running in the specified data directory. If it is, the PID and the command line options that were used to invoke it are displayed.

In promote mode, the standby server that is running in the specified data directory is commanded to exit recovery and begin read-write operations.

kill mode allows you to send a signal to a specified process. This is particularly valuable for Microsoft Windows which does not have a kill command. Use --help to see a list of supported signal names.

register mode allows you to register a system service on Microsoft Windows. The -S option allows selection of service start type, either "auto" (start service automatically on system startup) or "demand" (start service on demand).

unregister mode allows you to unregister a system service on Microsoft Windows. This undoes the effects of the register command.

Options

-c

Attempt to allow server crashes to produce core files, on platforms where this is possible, by lifting any soft resource limit placed on core files. This is useful in debugging or diagnosing problems by allowing a stack trace to be obtained from a failed server process.

-D datadir

Specifies the file system location of the database files. If this is omitted, the environment variable PGDATA is used.

-l filename

Append the server log output to filename. If the file does not exist, it is created. The umask is set to 077, so access to the log file is disallowed to other users by default.

-m mode

Specifies the shutdown mode. mode can be smart, fast, or immediate, or the first letter of one of these three. If this is omitted, smart is used.

-o options

Specifies options to be passed directly to the postgres command.

The options should usually be surrounded by single or double quotes to ensure that they are passed through as a group.

-o initdb-options

Specifies options to be passed directly to the initdb command.

The options should usually be surrounded by single or double quotes to ensure that they are passed through as a group.

-p path

Specifies the location of the postgres executable. By default the postgres executable is taken from the same directory as pg_ctl, or failing that, the hard-wired installation directory. It is not necessary to use this option unless you are doing something unusual and get errors that the postgres executable was not found.

In init mode, this option analogously specifies the location of the initdb executable.

-s

Print only errors, no informational messages.

-t

The maximum number of seconds to wait when waiting for startup or shutdown to complete. The default is 60 seconds.

-w

Wait for the startup or shutdown to complete. Waiting is the default option for shutdowns, but not startups. When waiting for startup, pg_ctl repeatedly attempts to connect to the server. When waiting for shutdown, pg_ctl waits for the server to remove its PID file. pg_ctl returns an exit code based on the success of the startup or shutdown.

-W

Do not wait for startup or shutdown to complete. This is the default for start and restart modes.

Options for Windows

-N servicename

Name of the system service to register. The name will be used as both the service name and the display name.

-P password

Password for the user to start the service.

-S start-type

Start type of the system service to register. start-type can be auto, or demand, or the first letter of one of these two. If this is omitted, auto is used.

-U username

User name for the user to start the service. For domain users, use the format DOMAIN\username.

Environment

PGDATA

Default data directory location.

pg_ctl, like most other PostgreSQL utilities, also uses the environment variables supported by libpq (see Section 31.13). For additional server variables, see postgres.

Files

postmaster.pid

The existence of this file in the data directory is used to help pg_ctl determine if the server is currently running.

postmaster.opts

If this file exists in the data directory, pg_ctl (in restart mode) will pass the contents of the file as options to postgres, unless overridden by the -o option. The contents of this file are also displayed in status mode.

Examples

Starting the Server

To start the server:

$ pg_ctl start

To start the server, waiting until the server is accepting connections:

$ pg_ctl -w start

To start the server using port 5433, and running without fsync, use:

$ pg_ctl -o "-F -p 5433" start

Stopping the Server

To stop the server, use:

$ pg_ctl stop

The -m option allows control over how the server shuts down:

$ pg_ctl stop -m fast

Restarting the Server

Restarting the server is almost equivalent to stopping the server and starting it again, except that pg_ctl saves and reuses the command line options that were passed to the previously running instance. To restart the server in the simplest form, use:

$ pg_ctl restart

To restart the server, waiting for it to shut down and restart:

$ pg_ctl -w restart

To restart using port 5433, disabling fsync upon restart:

$ pg_ctl -o "-F -p 5433" restart

Showing the Server Status

Here is sample status output from pg_ctl:

$ pg_ctl status
pg_ctl: server is running (PID: 13718)
/usr/local/pgsql/bin/postgres "-D" "/usr/local/pgsql/data" "-p" "5433" "-B" "128"

This is the command line that would be invoked in restart mode.

See Also

initdb, postgres
Prev | Home | Next
pg_controldata | Up | pg_resetxlog


pg_resetxlog

Name

pg_resetxlog -- reset the write-ahead log and other control information of a PostgreSQL database cluster

Synopsis

pg_resetxlog [-f] [-n] [-ooid ] [-x xid ] [-e xid_epoch ] [-m mxid ] [-O mxoff ] [-l timelineid,fileid,seg ] datadir

Description

pg_resetxlog clears the write-ahead log (WAL) and optionally resets some other control information stored in the pg_control file. This function is sometimes needed if these files have become corrupted. It should be used only as a last resort, when the server will not start due to such corruption.

After running this command, it should be possible to start the server, but bear in mind that the database might contain inconsistent data due to partially-committed transactions. You should immediately dump your data, run initdb, and reload. After reload, check for inconsistencies and repair as needed.

This utility can only be run by the user who installed the server, because it requires read/write access to the data directory. For safety reasons, you must specify the data directory on the command line. pg_resetxlog does not use the environment variable PGDATA.

If pg_resetxlog complains that it cannot determine valid data for pg_control, you can force it to proceed anyway by specifying the -f (force) switch. In this case plausible values will be substituted for the missing data. Most of the fields can be expected to match, but manual assistance might be needed for the next OID, next transaction ID and epoch, next multitransaction ID and offset, and WAL starting address fields. These fields can be set using the switches discussed below. If you are not able to determine correct values for all these fields, -f can still be used, but the recovered database must be treated with even more suspicion than usual: an immediate dump and reload is imperative. Do not execute any data-modifying operations in the database before you dump, as any such action is likely to make the corruption worse.

The -o, -x, -e, -m, -O, and -l switches allow the next OID, next transaction ID, next transaction ID's epoch, next multitransaction ID, next multitransaction offset, and WAL starting address values to be set manually. These are only needed when pg_resetxlog is unable to determine appropriate values by reading pg_control. Safe values can be determined as follows:

  • A safe value for the next transaction ID (-x) can be determined by looking for the numerically largest file name in the directory pg_clog under the data directory, adding one, and then multiplying by 1048576. Note that the file names are in hexadecimal. It is usually easiest to specify the switch value in hexadecimal too. For example, if 0011 is the largest entry in pg_clog, -x 0x1200000 will work (five trailing zeroes provide the proper multiplier).

  • A safe value for the next multitransaction ID (-m) can be determined by looking for the numerically largest file name in the directory pg_multixact/offsets under the data directory, adding one, and then multiplying by 65536. As above, the file names are in hexadecimal, so the easiest way to do this is to specify the switch value in hexadecimal and add four zeroes.

  • A safe value for the next multitransaction offset (-O) can be determined by looking for the numerically largest file name in the directory pg_multixact/members under the data directory, adding one, and then multiplying by 65536. As above, the file names are in hexadecimal, so the easiest way to do this is to specify the switch value in hexadecimal and add four zeroes.

  • The WAL starting address (-l) should be larger than any WAL segment file name currently existing in the directory pg_xlog under the data directory. These names are also in hexadecimal and have three parts. The first part is the "timeline ID" and should usually be kept the same. Do not choose a value larger than 255 (0xFF) for the third part; instead increment the second part and reset the third part to 0. For example, if 00000001000000320000004A is the largest entry in pg_xlog, -l 0x1,0x32,0x4B will work; but if the largest entry is 000000010000003A000000FF, choose -l 0x1,0x3B,0x0 or more.

    Note: pg_resetxlog itself looks at the files in pg_xlog and chooses a default -l setting beyond the last existing file name. Therefore, manual adjustment of -l should only be needed if you are aware of WAL segment files that are not currently present in pg_xlog, such as entries in an offline archive; or if the contents of pg_xlog have been lost entirely.

  • There is no comparably easy way to determine a next OID that's beyond the largest one in the database, but fortunately it is not critical to get the next-OID setting right.

  • The transaction ID epoch is not actually stored anywhere in the database except in the field that is set by pg_resetxlog, so any value will work so far as the database itself is concerned. You might need to adjust this value to ensure that replication systems such as Slony-I work correctly — if so, an appropriate value should be obtainable from the state of the downstream replicated database.

The -n (no operation) switch instructs pg_resetxlog to print the values reconstructed from pg_control and then exit without modifying anything. This is mainly a debugging tool, but can be useful as a sanity check before allowing pg_resetxlog to proceed for real.

The -V and --version options print the pg_resetxlog version and exit. The options -? and --help show supported arguments, and exit.

Notes

This command must not be used when the server is running. pg_resetxlog will refuse to start up if it finds a server lock file in the data directory. If the server crashed then a lock file might have been left behind; in that case you can remove the lock file to allow pg_resetxlog to run. But before you do so, make doubly certain that there is no server process still alive.

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postgres

Name

postgres -- PostgreSQL database server

Synopsis

postgres [option...]

Description

postgres is the PostgreSQL database server. In order for a client application to access a database it connects (over a network or locally) to a running postgres instance. The postgres instance then starts a separate server process to handle the connection.

One postgres instance always manages the data of exactly one database cluster. A database cluster is a collection of databases that is stored at a common file system location (the "data area"). More than one postgres instance can run on a system at one time, so long as they use different data areas and different communication ports (see below). When postgres starts it needs to know the location of the data area. The location must be specified by the -D option or the PGDATA environment variable; there is no default. Typically, -D or PGDATA points directly to the data area directory created by initdb. Other possible file layouts are discussed in Section 18.2.

By default postgres starts in the foreground and prints log messages to the standard error stream. In practical applications postgres should be started as a background process, perhaps at boot time.

The postgres command can also be called in single-user mode. The primary use for this mode is during bootstrapping by initdb. Sometimes it is used for debugging or disaster recovery; note that running a single-user server is not truly suitable for debugging the server, since no realistic interprocess communication and locking will happen. When invoked in single-user mode from the shell, the user can enter queries and the results will be printed to the screen, but in a form that is more useful for developers than end users. In the single-user mode, the session user will be set to the user with ID 1, and implicit superuser powers are granted to this user. This user does not actually have to exist, so the single-user mode can be used to manually recover from certain kinds of accidental damage to the system catalogs.

Options

postgres accepts the following command-line arguments. For a detailed discussion of the options consult Chapter 18. You can save typing most of these options by setting up a configuration file. Some (safe) options can also be set from the connecting client in an application-dependent way to apply only for that session. For example, if the environment variable PGOPTIONS is set, then libpq-based clients will pass that string to the server, which will interpret it as postgres command-line options.

General Purpose

-A 0|1

Enables run-time assertion checks, which is a debugging aid to detect programming mistakes. This option is only available if assertions were enabled when PostgreSQL was compiled. If so, the default is on.

-B nbuffers

Sets the number of shared buffers for use by the server processes. The default value of this parameter is chosen automatically by initdb. Specifying this option is equivalent to setting the shared_buffers configuration parameter.

-c name=value

Sets a named run-time parameter. The configuration parameters supported by PostgreSQL are described in Chapter 18. Most of the other command line options are in fact short forms of such a parameter assignment. -c can appear multiple times to set multiple parameters.

-d debug-level

Sets the debug level. The higher this value is set, the more debugging output is written to the server log. Values are from 1 to 5. It is also possible to pass -d 0 for a specific session, which will prevent the server log level of the parent postgres process from being propagated to this session.

-D datadir

Specifies the file system location of the data directory or configuration file(s). See Section 18.2 for details.

-e

Sets the default date style to "European", that is DMY ordering of input date fields. This also causes the day to be printed before the month in certain date output formats. See Section 8.5 for more information.

-F

Disables fsync calls for improved performance, at the risk of data corruption in the event of a system crash. Specifying this option is equivalent to disabling the fsync configuration parameter. Read the detailed documentation before using this!

-h hostname

Specifies the IP host name or address on which postgres is to listen for TCP/IP connections from client applications. The value can also be a comma-separated list of addresses, or * to specify listening on all available interfaces. An empty value specifies not listening on any IP addresses, in which case only Unix-domain sockets can be used to connect to the server. Defaults to listening only on localhost. Specifying this option is equivalent to setting the listen_addresses configuration parameter.

-i

Allows remote clients to connect via TCP/IP (Internet domain) connections. Without this option, only local connections are accepted. This option is equivalent to setting listen_addresses to * in postgresql.conf or via -h.

This option is deprecated since it does not allow access to the full functionality of listen_addresses. It's usually better to set listen_addresses directly.

-k directory

Specifies the directory of the Unix-domain socket on which postgres is to listen for connections from client applications. The default is normally /tmp, but can be changed at build time.

-l

Enables secure connections using SSL. PostgreSQL must have been compiled with support for SSL for this option to be available. For more information on using SSL, refer to Section 17.9.

-N max-connections

Sets the maximum number of client connections that this server will accept. The default value of this parameter is chosen automatically by initdb. Specifying this option is equivalent to setting the max_connections configuration parameter.

-o extra-options

The command-line-style options specified in extra-options are passed to all server processes started by this postgres process. If the option string contains any spaces, the entire string must be quoted.

The use of this option is obsolete; all command-line options for server processes can be specified directly on the postgres command line.

-p port

Specifies the TCP/IP port or local Unix domain socket file extension on which postgres is to listen for connections from client applications. Defaults to the value of the PGPORT environment variable, or if PGPORT is not set, then defaults to the value established during compilation (normally 5432). If you specify a port other than the default port, then all client applications must specify the same port using either command-line options or PGPORT.

-s

Print time information and other statistics at the end of each command. This is useful for benchmarking or for use in tuning the number of buffers.

-S work-mem

Specifies the amount of memory to be used by internal sorts and hashes before resorting to temporary disk files. See the description of the work_mem configuration parameter in Section 18.4.1.

--name=value

Sets a named run-time parameter; a shorter form of -c.

--describe-config

This option dumps out the server's internal configuration variables, descriptions, and defaults in tab-delimited COPY format. It is designed primarily for use by administration tools.

Semi-internal Options

The options described here are used mainly for debugging purposes, and in some cases to assist with recovery of severely damaged databases. There should be no reason to use them in a production database setup. They are listed here only for use by PostgreSQL system developers. Furthermore, these options might change or be removed in a future release without notice.

-f { s | i | m | n | h }

Forbids the use of particular scan and join methods: s and i disable sequential and index scans respectively, while n, m, and h disable nested-loop, merge and hash joins respectively.

Neither sequential scans nor nested-loop joins can be disabled completely; the -fs and -fn options simply discourage the optimizer from using those plan types if it has any other alternative.

-n

This option is for debugging problems that cause a server process to die abnormally. The ordinary strategy in this situation is to notify all other server processes that they must terminate and then reinitialize the shared memory and semaphores. This is because an errant server process could have corrupted some shared state before terminating. This option specifies that postgres will not reinitialize shared data structures. A knowledgeable system programmer can then use a debugger to examine shared memory and semaphore state.

-O

Allows the structure of system tables to be modified. This is used by initdb.

-P

Ignore system indexes when reading system tables, but still update the indexes when modifying the tables. This is useful when recovering from damaged system indexes.

-t pa[rser] | pl[anner] | e[xecutor]

Print timing statistics for each query relating to each of the major system modules. This option cannot be used together with the -s option.

-T

This option is for debugging problems that cause a server process to die abnormally. The ordinary strategy in this situation is to notify all other server processes that they must terminate and then reinitialize the shared memory and semaphores. This is because an errant server process could have corrupted some shared state before terminating. This option specifies that postgres will stop all other server processes by sending the signal SIGSTOP, but will not cause them to terminate. This permits system programmers to collect core dumps from all server processes by hand.

-v protocol

Specifies the version number of the frontend/backend protocol to be used for a particular session. This option is for internal use only.

-W seconds

A delay of this many seconds occurs when a new server process is started, after it conducts the authentication procedure. This is intended to give an opportunity to attach to the server process with a debugger.

Options for Single-User Mode

The following options only apply to the single-user mode.

--single

Selects the single-user mode. This must be the first argument on the command line.

database

Specifies the name of the database to be accessed. This must be the last argument on the command line. If it is omitted it defaults to the user name.

-E

Echo all commands.

-j

Disables use of newline as a statement delimiter.

-r filename

Send all server log output to filename. In normal multiuser mode, this option is ignored, and stderr is used by all processes.

Environment

PGCLIENTENCODING

Default character encoding used by clients. (The clients can override this individually.) This value can also be set in the configuration file.

PGDATA

Default data directory location

PGDATESTYLE

Default value of the DateStyle run-time parameter. (The use of this environment variable is deprecated.)

PGPORT

Default port number (preferably set in the configuration file)

TZ

Server time zone

Diagnostics

A failure message mentioning semget or shmget probably indicates you need to configure your kernel to provide adequate shared memory and semaphores. For more discussion see Section 17.4. You might be able to postpone reconfiguring your kernel by decreasing shared_buffers to reduce the shared memory consumption of PostgreSQL, and/or by reducing max_connections to reduce the semaphore consumption.

A failure message suggesting that another server is already running should be checked carefully, for example by using the command

$ ps ax | grep postgres

or

$ ps -ef | grep postgres

depending on your system. If you are certain that no conflicting server is running, you can remove the lock file mentioned in the message and try again.

A failure message indicating inability to bind to a port might indicate that that port is already in use by some non-PostgreSQL process. You might also get this error if you terminate postgres and immediately restart it using the same port; in this case, you must simply wait a few seconds until the operating system closes the port before trying again. Finally, you might get this error if you specify a port number that your operating system considers to be reserved. For example, many versions of Unix consider port numbers under 1024 to be "trusted" and only permit the Unix superuser to access them.

Notes

The utility command pg_ctl can be used to start and shut down the postgres server safely and comfortably.

If at all possible, do not use SIGKILL to kill the main postgres server. Doing so will prevent postgres from freeing the system resources (e.g., shared memory and semaphores) that it holds before terminating. This might cause problems for starting a fresh postgres run.

To terminate the postgres server normally, the signals SIGTERM, SIGINT, or SIGQUIT can be used. The first will wait for all clients to terminate before quitting, the second will forcefully disconnect all clients, and the third will quit immediately without proper shutdown, resulting in a recovery run during restart.

The SIGHUP signal will reload the server configuration files. It is also possible to send SIGHUP to an individual server process, but that is usually not sensible.

To cancel a running query, send the SIGINT signal to the process running that command.

The postgres server uses SIGTERM to tell subordinate server processes to quit normally and SIGQUIT to terminate without the normal cleanup. These signals should not be used by users. It is also unwise to send SIGKILL to a server process — the main postgres process will interpret this as a crash and will force all the sibling processes to quit as part of its standard crash-recovery procedure.

Bugs

The -- options will not work on FreeBSD or OpenBSD. Use -c instead. This is a bug in the affected operating systems; a future release of PostgreSQL will provide a workaround if this is not fixed.

Usage

To start a single-user mode server, use a command like

postgres --single -D /usr/local/pgsql/data other-options my_database

Provide the correct path to the database directory with -D, or make sure that the environment variable PGDATA is set. Also specify the name of the particular database you want to work in.

Normally, the single-user mode server treats newline as the command entry terminator; there is no intelligence about semicolons, as there is in psql. To continue a command across multiple lines, you must type backslash just before each newline except the last one.

But if you use the -j command line switch, then newline does not terminate command entry. In this case, the server will read the standard input until the end-of-file (EOF) marker, then process the input as a single command string. Backslash-newline is not treated specially in this case.

To quit the session, type EOF (Control+D, usually). If you've used -j, two consecutive EOFs are needed to exit.

Note that the single-user mode server does not provide sophisticated line-editing features (no command history, for example). Single-User mode also does not do any background processing, like automatic checkpoints.

Examples

To start postgres in the background using default values, type:

$ nohup postgres >logfile 2>&1 </dev/null &

To start postgres with a specific port, e.g. 1234:

$ postgres -p 1234

To connect to this server using psql, specify this port with the -p option:

$ psql -p 1234

or set the environment variable PGPORT:

$ export PGPORT=1234
$ psql

Named run-time parameters can be set in either of these styles:

$ postgres -c work_mem=1234
$ postgres --work-mem=1234

Either form overrides whatever setting might exist for work_mem in postgresql.conf. Notice that underscores in parameter names can be written as either underscore or dash on the command line. Except for short-term experiments, it's probably better practice to edit the setting in postgresql.conf than to rely on a command-line switch to set a parameter.

See Also

initdb, pg_ctl

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postmaster

Name

postmaster -- PostgreSQL database server

Synopsis

postmaster [option...]

Description

postmaster is a deprecated alias of postgres.

See Also

postgres

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Internals

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VII. Internals

This part contains assorted information that might be of use to PostgreSQL developers.

Table of Contents
44. Overview of PostgreSQL Internals
44.1. The Path of a Query
44.2. How Connections are Established
44.3. The Parser Stage
44.4. The PostgreSQL Rule System
44.5. Planner/Optimizer
44.6. Executor
45. System Catalogs
45.1. Overview
45.2. pg_aggregate
45.3. pg_am
45.4. pg_amop
45.5. pg_amproc
45.6. pg_attrdef
45.7. pg_attribute
45.8. pg_authid
45.9. pg_auth_members
45.10. pg_cast
45.11. pg_class
45.12. pg_constraint
45.13. pg_collation
45.14. pg_conversion
45.15. pg_database
45.16. pg_db_role_setting
45.17. pg_default_acl
45.18. pg_depend
45.19. pg_description
45.20. pg_enum
45.21. pg_extension
45.22. pg_foreign_data_wrapper
45.23. pg_foreign_server
45.24. pg_foreign_table
45.25. pg_index
45.26. pg_inherits
45.27. pg_language
45.28. pg_largeobject
45.29. pg_largeobject_metadata
45.30. pg_namespace
45.31. pg_opclass
45.32. pg_operator
45.33. pg_opfamily
45.34. pg_pltemplate
45.35. pg_proc
45.36. pg_rewrite
45.37. pg_seclabel
45.38. pg_shdepend
45.39. pg_shdescription
45.40. pg_statistic
45.41. pg_tablespace
45.42. pg_trigger
45.43. pg_ts_config
45.44. pg_ts_config_map
45.45. pg_ts_dict
45.46. pg_ts_parser
45.47. pg_ts_template
45.48. pg_type
45.49. pg_user_mapping
45.50. System Views
45.51. pg_available_extensions
45.52. pg_available_extension_versions
45.53. pg_cursors
45.54. pg_group
45.55. pg_indexes
45.56. pg_locks
45.57. pg_prepared_statements
45.58. pg_prepared_xacts
45.59. pg_roles
45.60. pg_rules
45.61. pg_seclabels
45.62. pg_settings
45.63. pg_shadow
45.64. pg_stats
45.65. pg_tables
45.66. pg_timezone_abbrevs
45.67. pg_timezone_names
45.68. pg_user
45.69. pg_user_mappings
45.70. pg_views
46. Frontend/Backend Protocol
46.1. Overview
46.2. Message Flow
46.3. Streaming Replication Protocol
46.4. Message Data Types
46.5. Message Formats
46.6. Error and Notice Message Fields
46.7. Summary of Changes since Protocol 2.0
47. PostgreSQL Coding Conventions
47.1. Formatting
47.2. Reporting Errors Within the Server
47.3. Error Message Style Guide
48. Native Language Support
48.1. For the Translator
48.2. For the Programmer
49. Writing A Procedural Language Handler
50. Writing A Foreign Data Wrapper
50.1. Foreign Data Wrapper Functions
50.2. Foreign Data Wrapper Callback Routines
51. Genetic Query Optimizer
51.1. Query Handling as a Complex Optimization Problem
51.2. Genetic Algorithms
51.3. Genetic Query Optimization (GEQO) in PostgreSQL
51.4. Further Reading
52. Index Access Method Interface Definition
52.1. Catalog Entries for Indexes
52.2. Index Access Method Functions
52.3. Index Scanning
52.4. Index Locking Considerations
52.5. Index Uniqueness Checks
52.6. Index Cost Estimation Functions
53. GiST Indexes
53.1. Introduction
53.2. Extensibility
53.3. Implementation
53.4. Examples
54. GIN Indexes
54.1. Introduction
54.2. Extensibility
54.3. Implementation
54.4. GIN Tips and Tricks
54.5. Limitations
54.6. Examples
55. Database Physical Storage
55.1. Database File Layout
55.2. TOAST
55.3. Free Space Map
55.4. Visibility Map
55.5. The Initialization Fork
55.6. Database Page Layout
56. BKI Backend Interface
56.1. BKI File Format
56.2. BKI Commands
56.3. Structure of the Bootstrap BKI File
56.4. Example
57. How the Planner Uses Statistics
57.1. Row Estimation Examples
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Overview of PostgreSQL Internals

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Chapter 44. Overview of PostgreSQL Internals

Table of Contents
44.1. The Path of a Query
44.2. How Connections are Established
44.3. The Parser Stage
44.3.1. Parser
44.3.2. Transformation Process
44.4. The PostgreSQL Rule System
44.5. Planner/Optimizer
44.6. Executor

Author: This chapter originated as part of Enhancement of the ANSI SQL Implementation of PostgreSQL, Stefan Simkovics' Master's Thesis prepared at Vienna University of Technology under the direction of O.Univ.Prof.Dr. Georg Gottlob and Univ.Ass. Mag. Katrin Seyr.

This chapter gives an overview of the internal structure of the backend of PostgreSQL. After having read the following sections you should have an idea of how a query is processed. This chapter does not aim to provide a detailed description of the internal operation of PostgreSQL, as such a document would be very extensive. Rather, this chapter is intended to help the reader understand the general sequence of operations that occur within the backend from the point at which a query is received, to the point at which the results are returned to the client.

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The Path of a Query

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44.1. The Path of a Query

Here we give a short overview of the stages a query has to pass in order to obtain a result.

  1. A connection from an application program to the PostgreSQL server has to be established. The application program transmits a query to the server and waits to receive the results sent back by the server.

  2. The parser stage checks the query transmitted by the application program for correct syntax and creates a query tree.

  3. The rewrite system takes the query tree created by the parser stage and looks for any rules (stored in the system catalogs) to apply to the query tree. It performs the transformations given in the rule bodies.

    One application of the rewrite system is in the realization of views. Whenever a query against a view (i.e., a virtual table) is made, the rewrite system rewrites the user's query to a query that accesses the base tables given in the view definition instead.

  4. The planner/optimizer takes the (rewritten) query tree and creates a query plan that will be the input to the executor.

    It does so by first creating all possible paths leading to the same result. For example if there is an index on a relation to be scanned, there are two paths for the scan. One possibility is a simple sequential scan and the other possibility is to use the index. Next the cost for the execution of each path is estimated and the cheapest path is chosen. The cheapest path is expanded into a complete plan that the executor can use.

  5. The executor recursively steps through the plan tree and retrieves rows in the way represented by the plan. The executor makes use of the storage system while scanning relations, performs sorts and joins, evaluates qualifications and finally hands back the rows derived.

In the following sections we will cover each of the above listed items in more detail to give a better understanding of PostgreSQL's internal control and data structures.

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How Connections are Established

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44.2. How Connections are Established

PostgreSQL is implemented using a simple "process per user" client/server model. In this model there is one client process connected to exactly one server process. As we do not know ahead of time how many connections will be made, we have to use a master process that spawns a new server process every time a connection is requested. This master process is called postgres and listens at a specified TCP/IP port for incoming connections. Whenever a request for a connection is detected the postgres process spawns a new server process. The server tasks communicate with each other using semaphores and shared memory to ensure data integrity throughout concurrent data access.

The client process can be any program that understands the PostgreSQL protocol described in Chapter 46. Many clients are based on the C-language library libpq, but several independent implementations of the protocol exist, such as the Java JDBC driver.

Once a connection is established the client process can send a query to the backend (server). The query is transmitted using plain text, i.e., there is no parsing done in the frontend (client). The server parses the query, creates an execution plan, executes the plan and returns the retrieved rows to the client by transmitting them over the established connection.

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The Parser Stage

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44.3. The Parser Stage

The parser stage consists of two parts:

  • The parser defined in gram.y and scan.l is built using the Unix tools bison and flex.

  • The transformation process does modifications and augmentations to the data structures returned by the parser.

44.3.1. Parser

The parser has to check the query string (which arrives as plain ASCII text) for valid syntax. If the syntax is correct a parse tree is built up and handed back; otherwise an error is returned. The parser and lexer are implemented using the well-known Unix tools bison and flex.

The lexer is defined in the file scan.l and is responsible for recognizing identifiers, the SQL key words etc. For every key word or identifier that is found, a token is generated and handed to the parser.

The parser is defined in the file gram.y and consists of a set of grammar rules and actions that are executed whenever a rule is fired. The code of the actions (which is actually C code) is used to build up the parse tree.

The file scan.l is transformed to the C source file scan.c using the program flex and gram.y is transformed to gram.c using bison. After these transformations have taken place a normal C compiler can be used to create the parser. Never make any changes to the generated C files as they will be overwritten the next time flex or bison is called.

Note: The mentioned transformations and compilations are normally done automatically using the makefiles shipped with the PostgreSQL source distribution.

A detailed description of bison or the grammar rules given in gram.y would be beyond the scope of this paper. There are many books and documents dealing with flex and bison. You should be familiar with bison before you start to study the grammar given in gram.y otherwise you won't understand what happens there.

44.3.2. Transformation Process

The parser stage creates a parse tree using only fixed rules about the syntactic structure of SQL. It does not make any lookups in the system catalogs, so there is no possibility to understand the detailed semantics of the requested operations. After the parser completes, the transformation process takes the tree handed back by the parser as input and does the semantic interpretation needed to understand which tables, functions, and operators are referenced by the query. The data structure that is built to represent this information is called the query tree.

The reason for separating raw parsing from semantic analysis is that system catalog lookups can only be done within a transaction, and we do not wish to start a transaction immediately upon receiving a query string. The raw parsing stage is sufficient to identify the transaction control commands (BEGIN, ROLLBACK, etc), and these can then be correctly executed without any further analysis. Once we know that we are dealing with an actual query (such as SELECT or UPDATE), it is okay to start a transaction if we're not already in one. Only then can the transformation process be invoked.

The query tree created by the transformation process is structurally similar to the raw parse tree in most places, but it has many differences in detail. For example, a FuncCall node in the parse tree represents something that looks syntactically like a function call. This might be transformed to either a FuncExpr or Aggref node depending on whether the referenced name turns out to be an ordinary function or an aggregate function. Also, information about the actual data types of columns and expression results is added to the query tree.

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The PostgreSQL Rule System

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44.4. The PostgreSQL Rule System

PostgreSQL supports a powerful rule system for the specification of views and ambiguous view updates. Originally the PostgreSQL rule system consisted of two implementations:

  • The first one worked using row level processing and was implemented deep in the executor. The rule system was called whenever an individual row had been accessed. This implementation was removed in 1995 when the last official release of the Berkeley Postgres project was transformed into Postgres95.

  • The second implementation of the rule system is a technique called query rewriting. The rewrite system is a module that exists between the parser stage and the planner/optimizer. This technique is still implemented.

The query rewriter is discussed in some detail in Chapter 37, so there is no need to cover it here. We will only point out that both the input and the output of the rewriter are query trees, that is, there is no change in the representation or level of semantic detail in the trees. Rewriting can be thought of as a form of macro expansion.

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Planner/Optimizer

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44.5. Planner/Optimizer

The task of the planner/optimizer is to create an optimal execution plan. A given SQL query (and hence, a query tree) can be actually executed in a wide variety of different ways, each of which will produce the same set of results. If it is computationally feasible, the query optimizer will examine each of these possible execution plans, ultimately selecting the execution plan that is expected to run the fastest.

Note: In some situations, examining each possible way in which a query can be executed would take an excessive amount of time and memory space. In particular, this occurs when executing queries involving large numbers of join operations. In order to determine a reasonable (not necessarily optimal) query plan in a reasonable amount of time, PostgreSQL uses a Genetic Query Optimizer (see Chapter 51) when the number of joins exceeds a threshold (see geqo_threshold).

The planner's search procedure actually works with data structures called paths, which are simply cut-down representations of plans containing only as much information as the planner needs to make its decisions. After the cheapest path is determined, a full-fledged plan tree is built to pass to the executor. This represents the desired execution plan in sufficient detail for the executor to run it. In the rest of this section we'll ignore the distinction between paths and plans.

44.5.1. Generating Possible Plans

The planner/optimizer starts by generating plans for scanning each individual relation (table) used in the query. The possible plans are determined by the available indexes on each relation. There is always the possibility of performing a sequential scan on a relation, so a sequential scan plan is always created. Assume an index is defined on a relation (for example a B-tree index) and a query contains the restriction relation.attribute OPR constant. If relation.attribute happens to match the key of the B-tree index and OPR is one of the operators listed in the index's operator class, another plan is created using the B-tree index to scan the relation. If there are further indexes present and the restrictions in the query happen to match a key of an index, further plans will be considered. Index scan plans are also generated for indexes that have a sort ordering that can match the query's ORDER BY clause (if any), or a sort ordering that might be useful for merge joining (see below).

If the query requires joining two or more relations, plans for joining relations are considered after all feasible plans have been found for scanning single relations. The three available join strategies are:

  • nested loop join: The right relation is scanned once for every row found in the left relation. This strategy is easy to implement but can be very time consuming. (However, if the right relation can be scanned with an index scan, this can be a good strategy. It is possible to use values from the current row of the left relation as keys for the index scan of the right.)

  • merge join: Each relation is sorted on the join attributes before the join starts. Then the two relations are scanned in parallel, and matching rows are combined to form join rows. This kind of join is more attractive because each relation has to be scanned only once. The required sorting might be achieved either by an explicit sort step, or by scanning the relation in the proper order using an index on the join key.

  • hash join: the right relation is first scanned and loaded into a hash table, using its join attributes as hash keys. Next the left relation is scanned and the appropriate values of every row found are used as hash keys to locate the matching rows in the table.

When the query involves more than two relations, the final result must be built up by a tree of join steps, each with two inputs. The planner examines different possible join sequences to find the cheapest one.

If the query uses fewer than geqo_threshold relations, a near-exhaustive search is conducted to find the best join sequence. The planner preferentially considers joins between any two relations for which there exist a corresponding join clause in the WHERE qualification (i.e., for which a restriction like where rel1.attr1=rel2.attr2 exists). Join pairs with no join clause are considered only when there is no other choice, that is, a particular relation has no available join clauses to any other relation. All possible plans are generated for every join pair considered by the planner, and the one that is (estimated to be) the cheapest is chosen.

When geqo_threshold is exceeded, the join sequences considered are determined by heuristics, as described in Chapter 51. Otherwise the process is the same.

The finished plan tree consists of sequential or index scans of the base relations, plus nested-loop, merge, or hash join nodes as needed, plus any auxiliary steps needed, such as sort nodes or aggregate-function calculation nodes. Most of these plan node types have the additional ability to do selection (discarding rows that do not meet a specified Boolean condition) and projection (computation of a derived column set based on given column values, that is, evaluation of scalar expressions where needed). One of the responsibilities of the planner is to attach selection conditions from the WHERE clause and computation of required output expressions to the most appropriate nodes of the plan tree.

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Executor

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44.6. Executor

The executor takes the plan created by the planner/optimizer and recursively processes it to extract the required set of rows. This is essentially a demand-pull pipeline mechanism. Each time a plan node is called, it must deliver one more row, or report that it is done delivering rows.

To provide a concrete example, assume that the top node is a MergeJoin node. Before any merge can be done two rows have to be fetched (one from each subplan). So the executor recursively calls itself to process the subplans (it starts with the subplan attached to lefttree). The new top node (the top node of the left subplan) is, let's say, a Sort node and again recursion is needed to obtain an input row. The child node of the Sort might be a SeqScan node, representing actual reading of a table. Execution of this node causes the executor to fetch a row from the table and return it up to the calling node. The Sort node will repeatedly call its child to obtain all the rows to be sorted. When the input is exhausted (as indicated by the child node returning a NULL instead of a row), the Sort code performs the sort, and finally is able to return its first output row, namely the first one in sorted order. It keeps the remaining rows stored so that it can deliver them in sorted order in response to later demands.

The MergeJoin node similarly demands the first row from its right subplan. Then it compares the two rows to see if they can be joined; if so, it returns a join row to its caller. On the next call, or immediately if it cannot join the current pair of inputs, it advances to the next row of one table or the other (depending on how the comparison came out), and again checks for a match. Eventually, one subplan or the other is exhausted, and the MergeJoin node returns NULL to indicate that no more join rows can be formed.

Complex queries can involve many levels of plan nodes, but the general approach is the same: each node computes and returns its next output row each time it is called. Each node is also responsible for applying any selection or projection expressions that were assigned to it by the planner.

The executor mechanism is used to evaluate all four basic SQL query types: SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE. For SELECT, the top-level executor code only needs to send each row returned by the query plan tree off to the client. For INSERT, each returned row is inserted into the target table specified for the INSERT. This is done in a special top-level plan node called ModifyTable. (A simple INSERT ... VALUES command creates a trivial plan tree consisting of a single Result node, which computes just one result row, and ModifyTable above it to perform the insertion. But INSERT ... SELECT can demand the full power of the executor mechanism.) For UPDATE, the planner arranges that each computed row includes all the updated column values, plus the TID (tuple ID, or row ID) of the original target row; this data is fed into a ModifyTable node, which uses the information to create a new updated row and mark the old row deleted. For DELETE, the only column that is actually returned by the plan is the TID, and the ModifyTable node simply uses the TID to visit each target row and mark it deleted.

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System Catalogs

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Chapter 45. System Catalogs

Table of Contents
45.1. Overview
45.2. pg_aggregate
45.3. pg_am
45.4. pg_amop
45.5. pg_amproc
45.6. pg_attrdef
45.7. pg_attribute
45.8. pg_authid
45.9. pg_auth_members
45.10. pg_cast
45.11. pg_class
45.12. pg_constraint
45.13. pg_collation
45.14. pg_conversion
45.15. pg_database
45.16. pg_db_role_setting
45.17. pg_default_acl
45.18. pg_depend
45.19. pg_description
45.20. pg_enum
45.21. pg_extension
45.22. pg_foreign_data_wrapper
45.23. pg_foreign_server
45.24. pg_foreign_table
45.25. pg_index
45.26. pg_inherits
45.27. pg_language
45.28. pg_largeobject
45.29. pg_largeobject_metadata
45.30. pg_namespace
45.31. pg_opclass
45.32. pg_operator
45.33. pg_opfamily
45.34. pg_pltemplate
45.35. pg_proc
45.36. pg_rewrite
45.37. pg_seclabel
45.38. pg_shdepend
45.39. pg_shdescription
45.40. pg_statistic
45.41. pg_tablespace
45.42. pg_trigger
45.43. pg_ts_config
45.44. pg_ts_config_map
45.45. pg_ts_dict
45.46. pg_ts_parser
45.47. pg_ts_template
45.48. pg_type
45.49. pg_user_mapping
45.50. System Views
45.51. pg_available_extensions
45.52. pg_available_extension_versions
45.53. pg_cursors
45.54. pg_group
45.55. pg_indexes
45.56. pg_locks
45.57. pg_prepared_statements
45.58. pg_prepared_xacts
45.59. pg_roles
45.60. pg_rules
45.61. pg_seclabels
45.62. pg_settings
45.63. pg_shadow
45.64. pg_stats
45.65. pg_tables
45.66. pg_timezone_abbrevs
45.67. pg_timezone_names
45.68. pg_user
45.69. pg_user_mappings
45.70. pg_views

The system catalogs are the place where a relational database management system stores schema metadata, such as information about tables and columns, and internal bookkeeping information. PostgreSQL's system catalogs are regular tables. You can drop and recreate the tables, add columns, insert and update values, and severely mess up your system that way. Normally, one should not change the system catalogs by hand, there are always SQL commands to do that. (For example, CREATE DATABASE inserts a row into the pg_database catalog — and actually creates the database on disk.) There are some exceptions for particularly esoteric operations, such as adding index access methods.

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Overview

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45.1. Overview

Table 45-1 lists the system catalogs. More detailed documentation of each catalog follows below.

Most system catalogs are copied from the template database during database creation and are thereafter database-specific. A few catalogs are physically shared across all databases in a cluster; these are noted in the descriptions of the individual catalogs.

Table 45-1. System Catalogs

Catalog Name | Purpose
pg_aggregate | aggregate functions
pg_am | index access methods
pg_amop | access method operators
pg_amproc | access method support procedures
pg_attrdef | column default values
pg_attribute | table columns ("attributes")
pg_authid | authorization identifiers (roles)
pg_auth_members | authorization identifier membership relationships
pg_cast | casts (data type conversions)
pg_class | tables, indexes, sequences, views ("relations")
pg_constraint | check constraints, unique constraints, primary key constraints, foreign key constraints
pg_collation | collations (locale information)
pg_conversion | encoding conversion information
pg_database | databases within this database cluster
pg_db_role_setting | per-role and per-database settings
pg_default_acl | default privileges for object types
pg_depend | dependencies between database objects
pg_description | descriptions or comments on database objects
pg_enum | enum label and value definitions
pg_extension | installed extensions
pg_foreign_data_wrapper | foreign-data wrapper definitions
pg_foreign_server | foreign server definitions
pg_foreign_table | additional foreign table information
pg_index | additional index information
pg_inherits | table inheritance hierarchy
pg_language | languages for writing functions
pg_largeobject | data pages for large objects
pg_largeobject_metadata | metadata for large objects
pg_namespace | schemas
pg_opclass | access method operator classes
pg_operator | operators
pg_opfamily | access method operator families
pg_pltemplate | template data for procedural languages
pg_proc | functions and procedures
pg_rewrite | query rewrite rules
pg_seclabel | security labels on database objects
pg_shdepend | dependencies on shared objects
pg_shdescription | comments on shared objects
pg_statistic | planner statistics
pg_tablespace | tablespaces within this database cluster
pg_trigger | triggers
pg_ts_config | text search configurations
pg_ts_config_map | text search configurations' token mappings
pg_ts_dict | text search dictionaries
pg_ts_parser | text search parsers
pg_ts_template | text search templates
pg_type | data types
pg_user_mapping | mappings of users to foreign servers
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pg_aggregate

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45.2. pg_aggregate

The catalog pg_aggregate stores information about aggregate functions. An aggregate function is a function that operates on a set of values (typically one column from each row that matches a query condition) and returns a single value computed from all these values. Typical aggregate functions are sum, count, and max. Each entry in pg_aggregate is an extension of an entry in pg_proc. The pg_proc entry carries the aggregate's name, input and output data types, and other information that is similar to ordinary functions.

Table 45-2. pg_aggregate Columns

Name | Type | References | Description
aggfnoid | regproc | pg_proc.oid | pg_proc OID of the aggregate function
aggtransfn | regproc | pg_proc.oid | Transition function
aggfinalfn | regproc | pg_proc.oid | Final function (zero if none)
aggsortop | oid | pg_operator.oid | Associated sort operator (zero if none)
aggtranstype | oid | pg_type.oid | Data type of the aggregate function's internal transition (state) data
agginitval | text |  | The initial value of the transition state. This is a text field containing the initial value in its external string representation. If this field is null, the transition state value starts out null.

New aggregate functions are registered with the CREATE AGGREGATE command. See Section 35.10 for more information about writing aggregate functions and the meaning of the transition functions, etc.

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pg_am

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45.3. pg_am

The catalog pg_am stores information about index access methods. There is one row for each index access method supported by the system. The contents of this catalog are discussed in detail in Chapter 52.

Table 45-3. pg_am Columns

Name | Type | References | Description
amname | name |  | Name of the access method
amstrategies | int2 |  | Number of operator strategies for this access method, or zero if access method does not have a fixed set of operator strategies
amsupport | int2 |  | Number of support routines for this access method
amcanorder | bool |  | Does the access method support ordered scans sorted by the indexed column's value?
amcanorderbyop | bool |  | Does the access method support ordered scans sorted by the result of an operator on the indexed column?
amcanbackward | bool |  | Does the access method support backward scanning?
amcanunique | bool |  | Does the access method support unique indexes?
amcanmulticol | bool |  | Does the access method support multicolumn indexes?
amoptionalkey | bool |  | Does the access method support a scan without any constraint for the first index column?
amsearchnulls | bool |  | Does the access method support IS NULL/NOT NULL searches?
amstorage | bool |  | Can index storage data type differ from column data type?
amclusterable | bool |  | Can an index of this type be clustered on?
ampredlocks | bool |  | Does an index of this type manage fine-grained predicate locks?
amkeytype | oid | pg_type.oid | Type of data stored in index, or zero if not a fixed type
aminsert | regproc | pg_proc.oid | "Insert this tuple" function
ambeginscan | regproc | pg_proc.oid | "Prepare for index scan" function
amgettuple | regproc | pg_proc.oid | "Next valid tuple" function, or zero if none
amgetbitmap | regproc | pg_proc.oid | "Fetch all valid tuples" function, or zero if none
amrescan | regproc | pg_proc.oid | "(Re)start index scan" function
amendscan | regproc | pg_proc.oid | "Clean up after index scan" function
ammarkpos | regproc | pg_proc.oid | "Mark current scan position" function
amrestrpos | regproc | pg_proc.oid | "Restore marked scan position" function
ambuild | regproc | pg_proc.oid | "Build new index" function
ambuildempty | regproc | pg_proc.oid | "Build empty index" function
ambulkdelete | regproc | pg_proc.oid | Bulk-delete function
amvacuumcleanup | regproc | pg_proc.oid | Post-VACUUM cleanup function
amcostestimate | regproc | pg_proc.oid | Function to estimate cost of an index scan
amoptions | regproc | pg_proc.oid | Function to parse and validate reloptions for an index
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pg_amop

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45.4. pg_amop

The catalog pg_amop stores information about operators associated with access method operator families. There is one row for each operator that is a member of an operator family. A family member can be either a search operator or an ordering operator. An operator can appear in more than one family, but cannot appear in more than one search position nor more than one ordering position within a family. (It is allowed, though unlikely, for an operator to be used for both search and ordering purposes.)

Table 45-4. pg_amop Columns

Name | Type | References | Description
amopfamily | oid | pg_opfamily.oid | The operator family this entry is for
amoplefttype | oid | pg_type.oid | Left-hand input data type of operator
amoprighttype | oid | pg_type.oid | Right-hand input data type of operator
amopstrategy | int2 |  | Operator strategy number
amoppurpose | char |  | Operator purpose, either s for search or o for ordering
amopopr | oid | pg_operator.oid | OID of the operator
amopmethod | oid | pg_am.oid | Index access method operator family is for
amopsortfamily | oid | pg_opfamily.oid | The btree operator family this entry sorts according to, if an ordering operator; zero if a search operator

A "search" operator entry indicates that an index of this operator family can be searched to find all rows satisfying WHERE indexed_column operator constant. Obviously, such an operator must return boolean, and its left-hand input type must match the index's column data type.

An "ordering" operator entry indicates that an index of this operator family can be scanned to return rows in the order represented by ORDER BY indexed_column operator constant. Such an operator could return any sortable data type, though again its left-hand input type must match the index's column data type. The exact semantics of the ORDER BY are specified by the amopsortfamily column, which must reference a btree operator family for the operator's result type.

Note: At present, it's assumed that the sort order for an ordering operator is the default for the referenced opfamily, i.e., ASC NULLS LAST. This might someday be relaxed by adding additional columns to specify sort options explicitly.

An entry's amopmethod must match the opfmethod of its containing operator family (including amopmethod here is an intentional denormalization of the catalog structure for performance reasons). Also, amoplefttype and amoprighttype must match the oprleft and oprright fields of the referenced pg_operator entry.

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pg_amproc

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45.5. pg_amproc

The catalog pg_amproc stores information about support procedures associated with access method operator families. There is one row for each support procedure belonging to an operator family.

Table 45-5. pg_amproc Columns

Name | Type | References | Description
amprocfamily | oid | pg_opfamily.oid | The operator family this entry is for
amproclefttype | oid | pg_type.oid | Left-hand input data type of associated operator
amprocrighttype | oid | pg_type.oid | Right-hand input data type of associated operator
amprocnum | int2 |  | Support procedure number
amproc | regproc | pg_proc.oid | OID of the procedure

The usual interpretation of the amproclefttype and amprocrighttype fields is that they identify the left and right input types of the operator(s) that a particular support procedure supports. For some access methods these match the input data type(s) of the support procedure itself, for others not. There is a notion of "default" support procedures for an index, which are those with amproclefttype and amprocrighttype both equal to the index opclass's opcintype.

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pg_attrdef

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45.6. pg_attrdef

The catalog pg_attrdef stores column default values. The main information about columns is stored in pg_attribute (see below). Only columns that explicitly specify a default value (when the table is created or the column is added) will have an entry here.

Table 45-6. pg_attrdef Columns

Name | Type | References | Description
adrelid | oid | pg_class.oid | The table this column belongs to
adnum | int2 | pg_attribute.attnum | The number of the column
adbin | pg_node_tree |  | The internal representation of the column default value
adsrc | text |  | A human-readable representation of the default value

The adsrc field is historical, and is best not used, because it does not track outside changes that might affect the representation of the default value. Reverse-compiling the adbin field (with pg_get_expr for example) is a better way to display the default value.

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pg_attribute

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45.7. pg_attribute

The catalog pg_attribute stores information about table columns. There will be exactly one pg_attribute row for every column in every table in the database. (There will also be attribute entries for indexes, and indeed all objects that have pg_class entries.)

The term attribute is equivalent to column and is used for historical reasons.

Table 45-7. pg_attribute Columns

Name | Type | References | Description
attrelid | oid | pg_class.oid | The table this column belongs to
attname | name |  | The column name
atttypid | oid | pg_type.oid | The data type of this column
attstattarget | int4 |  | attstattarget controls the level of detail of statistics accumulated for this column by ANALYZE. A zero value indicates that no statistics should be collected. A negative value says to use the system default statistics target. The exact meaning of positive values is data type-dependent. For scalar data types, attstattarget is both the target number of "most common values" to collect, and the target number of histogram bins to create.
attlen | int2 |  | A copy of pg_type.typlen of this column's type
attnum | int2 |  | The number of the column. Ordinary columns are numbered from 1 up. System columns, such as oid, have (arbitrary) negative numbers.
attndims | int4 |  | Number of dimensions, if the column is an array type; otherwise 0. (Presently, the number of dimensions of an array is not enforced, so any nonzero value effectively means "it's an array".)
attcacheoff | int4 |  | Always -1 in storage, but when loaded into a row descriptor in memory this might be updated to cache the offset of the attribute within the row
atttypmod | int4 |  | atttypmod records type-specific data supplied at table creation time (for example, the maximum length of a varchar column). It is passed to type-specific input functions and length coercion functions. The value will generally be -1 for types that do not need atttypmod.
attbyval | bool |  | A copy of pg_type.typbyval of this column's type
attstorage | char |  | Normally a copy of pg_type.typstorage of this column's type. For TOAST-able data types, this can be altered after column creation to control storage policy.
attalign | char |  | A copy of pg_type.typalign of this column's type
attnotnull | bool |  | This represents a not-null constraint. It is possible to change this column to enable or disable the constraint.
atthasdef | bool |  | This column has a default value, in which case there will be a corresponding entry in the pg_attrdef catalog that actually defines the value.
attisdropped | bool |  | This column has been dropped and is no longer valid. A dropped column is still physically present in the table, but is ignored by the parser and so cannot be accessed via SQL.
attislocal | bool |  | This column is defined locally in the relation. Note that a column can be locally defined and inherited simultaneously.
attinhcount | int4 |  | The number of direct ancestors this column has. A column with a nonzero number of ancestors cannot be dropped nor renamed.
attcollation | oid | pg_collation.oid | The defined collation of the column, or zero if the column is not of a collatable data type.
attacl | aclitem[] |  | Column-level access privileges, if any have been granted specifically on this column
attoptions | text[] |  | Attribute-level options, as "keyword=value" strings

In a dropped column's pg_attribute entry, atttypid is reset to zero, but attlen and the other fields copied from pg_type are still valid. This arrangement is needed to cope with the situation where the dropped column's data type was later dropped, and so there is no pg_type row anymore. attlen and the other fields can be used to interpret the contents of a row of the table.

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pg_authid

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45.8. pg_authid

The catalog pg_authid contains information about database authorization identifiers (roles). A role subsumes the concepts of "users" and "groups". A user is essentially just a role with the rolcanlogin flag set. Any role (with or without rolcanlogin) can have other roles as members; see pg_auth_members.

Since this catalog contains passwords, it must not be publicly readable. pg_roles is a publicly readable view on pg_authid that blanks out the password field.

Chapter 20 contains detailed information about user and privilege management.

Because user identities are cluster-wide, pg_authid is shared across all databases of a cluster: there is only one copy of pg_authid per cluster, not one per database.

Table 45-8. pg_authid Columns

Name | Type | Description
rolname | name | Role name
rolsuper | bool | Role has superuser privileges
rolinherit | bool | Role automatically inherits privileges of roles it is a member of
rolcreaterole | bool | Role can create more roles
rolcreatedb | bool | Role can create databases
rolcatupdate | bool | Role can update system catalogs directly. (Even a superuser cannot do this unless this column is true)
rolcanlogin | bool | Role can log in. That is, this role can be given as the initial session authorization identifier
rolreplication | bool | Role is a replication role. That is, this role can initiate streaming replication (see Section 25.2.5) and set/unset the system backup mode using pg_start_backup and pg_stop_backup
rolconnlimit | int4 | For roles that can log in, this sets maximum number of concurrent connections this role can make. -1 means no limit.
rolpassword | text | Password (possibly encrypted); null if none. If the password is encrypted, this column will begin with the string md5 followed by a 32-character hexadecimal MD5 hash. The MD5 hash will be of the user's password concatenated to their user name. For example, if user joe has password xyzzy, PostgreSQL will store the md5 hash of xyzzyjoe. A password that does not follow that format is assumed to be unencrypted.
rolvaliduntil | timestamptz | Password expiry time (only used for password authentication); null if no expiration
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pg_auth_members

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45.9. pg_auth_members

The catalog pg_auth_members shows the membership relations between roles. Any non-circular set of relationships is allowed.

Because user identities are cluster-wide, pg_auth_members is shared across all databases of a cluster: there is only one copy of pg_auth_members per cluster, not one per database.

Table 45-9. pg_auth_members Columns

Name | Type | References | Description
roleid | oid | pg_authid.oid | ID of a role that has a member
member | oid | pg_authid.oid | ID of a role that is a member of roleid
grantor | oid | pg_authid.oid | ID of the role that granted this membership
admin_option | bool |  | True if member can grant membership in roleid to others
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pg_cast

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45.10. pg_cast

The catalog pg_cast stores data type conversion paths, both built-in paths and those defined with CREATE CAST.

It should be noted that pg_cast does not represent every type conversion that the system knows how to perform; only those that cannot be deduced from some generic rule. For example, casting between a domain and its base type is not explicitly represented in pg_cast. Another important exception is that "automatic I/O conversion casts", those performed using a data type's own I/O functions to convert to or from text or other string types, are not explicitly represented in pg_cast.

Table 45-10. pg_cast Columns

Name | Type | References | Description
castsource | oid | pg_type.oid | OID of the source data type
casttarget | oid | pg_type.oid | OID of the target data type
castfunc | oid | pg_proc.oid | The OID of the function to use to perform this cast. Zero is stored if the cast method doesn't require a function.
castcontext | char |  | Indicates what contexts the cast can be invoked in. e means only as an explicit cast (using CAST or :: syntax). a means implicitly in assignment to a target column, as well as explicitly. i means implicitly in expressions, as well as the other cases.
castmethod | char |  | Indicates how the cast is performed. f means that the function specified in the castfunc field is used. i means that the input/output functions are used. b means that the types are binary-coercible, thus no conversion is required.

The cast functions listed in pg_cast must always take the cast source type as their first argument type, and return the cast destination type as their result type. A cast function can have up to three arguments. The second argument, if present, must be type integer; it receives the type modifier associated with the destination type, or -1 if there is none. The third argument, if present, must be type boolean; it receives true if the cast is an explicit cast, false otherwise.

It is legitimate to create a pg_cast entry in which the source and target types are the same, if the associated function takes more than one argument. Such entries represent "length coercion functions" that coerce values of the type to be legal for a particular type modifier value.

When a pg_cast entry has different source and target types and a function that takes more than one argument, it represents converting from one type to another and applying a length coercion in a single step. When no such entry is available, coercion to a type that uses a type modifier involves two steps, one to convert between data types and a second to apply the modifier.

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pg_class

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45.11. pg_class

The catalog pg_class catalogs tables and most everything else that has columns or is otherwise similar to a table. This includes indexes (but see also pg_index), sequences, views, composite types, and TOAST tables; see relkind. Below, when we mean all of these kinds of objects we speak of "relations". Not all columns are meaningful for all relation types.

Table 45-11. pg_class Columns

Name | Type | References | Description
relname | name |  | Name of the table, index, view, etc.
relnamespace | oid | pg_namespace.oid | The OID of the namespace that contains this relation
reltype | oid | pg_type.oid | The OID of the data type that corresponds to this table's row type, if any (zero for indexes, which have no pg_type entry)
reloftype | oid | pg_type.oid | For typed tables, the OID of the underlying composite type, zero for all other relations
relowner | oid | pg_authid.oid | Owner of the relation
relam | oid | pg_am.oid | If this is an index, the access method used (B-tree, hash, etc.)
relfilenode | oid |  | Name of the on-disk file of this relation; zero means this is a "mapped" relation whose disk file name is determined by low-level state
reltablespace | oid | pg_tablespace.oid | The tablespace in which this relation is stored. If zero, the database's default tablespace is implied. (Not meaningful if the relation has no on-disk file.)
relpages | int4 |  | Size of the on-disk representation of this table in pages (of size BLCKSZ). This is only an estimate used by the planner. It is updated by VACUUM, ANALYZE, and a few DDL commands such as CREATE INDEX.
reltuples | float4 |  | Number of rows in the table. This is only an estimate used by the planner. It is updated by VACUUM, ANALYZE, and a few DDL commands such as CREATE INDEX.
reltoastrelid | oid | pg_class.oid | OID of the TOAST table associated with this table, 0 if none. The TOAST table stores large attributes "out of line" in a secondary table.
reltoastidxid | oid | pg_class.oid | For a TOAST table, the OID of its index. 0 if not a TOAST table.
relhasindex | bool |  | True if this is a table and it has (or recently had) any indexes
relisshared | bool |  | True if this table is shared across all databases in the cluster. Only certain system catalogs (such as pg_database) are shared.
relpersistence | char |  | p = permanent table, u = unlogged table, t = temporary table
relkind | char |  | r = ordinary table, i = index, S = sequence, v = view, c = composite type, t = TOAST table, f = foreign table
relnatts | int2 |  | Number of user columns in the relation (system columns not counted). There must be this many corresponding entries in pg_attribute. See also pg_attribute.attnum.
relchecks | int2 |  | Number of CHECK constraints on the table; see pg_constraint catalog
relhasoids | bool |  | True if we generate an OID for each row of the relation
relhaspkey | bool |  | True if the table has (or once had) a primary key
relhasrules | bool |  | True if table has (or once had) rules; see pg_rewrite catalog
relhastriggers | bool |  | True if table has (or once had) triggers; see pg_trigger catalog
relhassubclass | bool |  | True if table has (or once had) any inheritance children
relfrozenxid | xid |  | All transaction IDs before this one have been replaced with a permanent ("frozen") transaction ID in this table. This is used to track whether the table needs to be vacuumed in order to prevent transaction ID wraparound or to allow pg_clog to be shrunk. Zero (InvalidTransactionId) if the relation is not a table.
relacl | aclitem[] |  | Access privileges; see GRANT and REVOKE for details
reloptions | text[] |  | Access-method-specific options, as "keyword=value" strings

Several of the Boolean flags in pg_class are maintained lazily: they are guaranteed to be true if that's the correct state, but may not be reset to false immediately when the condition is no longer true. For example, relhasindex is set by CREATE INDEX, but it is never cleared by DROP INDEX. Instead, VACUUM clears relhasindex if it finds the table has no indexes. This arrangement avoids race conditions and improves concurrency.

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pg_constraint

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45.12. pg_constraint

The catalog pg_constraint stores check, primary key, unique, foreign key, and exclusion constraints on tables. (Column constraints are not treated specially. Every column constraint is equivalent to some table constraint.) Not-null constraints are represented in the pg_attribute catalog, not here.

User-defined constraint triggers (created with CREATE CONSTRAINT TRIGGER) also give rise to an entry in this table.

Check constraints on domains are stored here, too.

Table 45-12. pg_constraint Columns

Name | Type | References | Description
conname | name |  | Constraint name (not necessarily unique!)
connamespace | oid | pg_namespace.oid | The OID of the namespace that contains this constraint
contype | char |  | c = check constraint, f = foreign key constraint, p = primary key constraint, u = unique constraint, t = constraint trigger, x = exclusion constraint
condeferrable | bool |  | Is the constraint deferrable?
condeferred | bool |  | Is the constraint deferred by default?
convalidated | bool |  | Has the constraint been validated? Currently, can only be false for foreign keys
conrelid | oid | pg_class.oid | The table this constraint is on; 0 if not a table constraint
contypid | oid | pg_type.oid | The domain this constraint is on; 0 if not a domain constraint
conindid | oid | pg_class.oid | The index supporting this constraint, if it's a unique, primary key, foreign key, or exclusion constraint; else 0
confrelid | oid | pg_class.oid | If a foreign key, the referenced table; else 0
confupdtype | char |  | Foreign key update action code: a = no action, r = restrict, c = cascade, n = set null, d = set default
confdeltype | char |  | Foreign key deletion action code: a = no action, r = restrict, c = cascade, n = set null, d = set default
confmatchtype | char |  | Foreign key match type: f = full, p = partial, u = simple (unspecified)
conislocal | bool |  | This constraint is defined locally for the relation. Note that a constraint can be locally defined and inherited simultaneously.
coninhcount | int4 |  | The number of direct inheritance ancestors this constraint has. A constraint with a nonzero number of ancestors cannot be dropped nor renamed.
conkey | int2[] | pg_attribute.attnum | If a table constraint (including foreign keys, but not constraint triggers), list of the constrained columns
confkey | int2[] | pg_attribute.attnum | If a foreign key, list of the referenced columns
conpfeqop | oid[] | pg_operator.oid | If a foreign key, list of the equality operators for PK = FK comparisons
conppeqop | oid[] | pg_operator.oid | If a foreign key, list of the equality operators for PK = PK comparisons
conffeqop | oid[] | pg_operator.oid | If a foreign key, list of the equality operators for FK = FK comparisons
conexclop | oid[] | pg_operator.oid | If an exclusion constraint, list of the per-column exclusion operators
conbin | pg_node_tree |  | If a check constraint, an internal representation of the expression
consrc | text |  | If a check constraint, a human-readable representation of the expression

In the case of an exclusion constraint, conkey is only useful for constraint elements that are simple column references. For other cases, a zero appears in conkey and the associated index must be consulted to discover the expression that is constrained. (conkey thus has the same contents as pg_index.indkey for the index.)

Note: consrc is not updated when referenced objects change; for example, it won't track renaming of columns. Rather than relying on this field, it's best to use pg_get_constraintdef() to extract the definition of a check constraint.

Note: pg_class.relchecks needs to agree with the number of check-constraint entries found in this table for each relation.

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pg_collation

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45.13. pg_collation

The catalog pg_collation describes the available collations, which are essentially mappings from an SQL name to operating system locale categories. See Section 22.2 for more information.

Table 45-13. pg_collation Columns

Name | Type | References | Description
collname | name |  | Collation name (unique per namespace and encoding)
collnamespace | oid | pg_namespace.oid | The OID of the namespace that contains this collation
collowner | oid | pg_authid.oid | Owner of the collation
collencoding | int4 |  | Encoding in which the collation is applicable, or -1 if it works for any encoding
collcollate | name |  | LC_COLLATE for this collation object
collctype | name |  | LC_CTYPE for this collation object

Note that the unique key on this catalog is (collname, collencoding, collnamespace) not just (collname, collnamespace). PostgreSQL generally ignores all collations that do not have collencoding equal to either the current database's encoding or -1, and creation of new entries with the same name as an entry with collencoding = -1 is forbidden. Therefore it is sufficient to use a qualified SQL name (schema.name) to identify a collation, even though this is not unique according to the catalog definition. The reason for defining the catalog this way is that initdb fills it in at cluster initialization time with entries for all locales available on the system, so it must be able to hold entries for all encodings that might ever be used in the cluster.

In the template0 database, it could be useful to create collations whose encoding does not match the database encoding, since they could match the encodings of databases later cloned from template0. This would currently have to be done manually.

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pg_conversion

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45.14. pg_conversion

The catalog pg_conversion describes encoding conversion procedures. See CREATE CONVERSION for more information.

Table 45-14. pg_conversion Columns

Name | Type | References | Description
conname | name |  | Conversion name (unique within a namespace)
connamespace | oid | pg_namespace.oid | The OID of the namespace that contains this conversion
conowner | oid | pg_authid.oid | Owner of the conversion
conforencoding | int4 |  | Source encoding ID
contoencoding | int4 |  | Destination encoding ID
conproc | regproc | pg_proc.oid | Conversion procedure
condefault | bool |  | True if this is the default conversion
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pg_database

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45.15. pg_database

The catalog pg_database stores information about the available databases. Databases are created with the CREATE DATABASE command. Consult Chapter 21 for details about the meaning of some of the parameters.

Unlike most system catalogs, pg_database is shared across all databases of a cluster: there is only one copy of pg_database per cluster, not one per database.

Table 45-15. pg_database Columns

Name | Type | References | Description
datname | name |  | Database name
datdba | oid | pg_authid.oid | Owner of the database, usually the user who created it
encoding | int4 |  | Character encoding for this database (pg_encoding_to_char() can translate this number to the encoding name)
datcollate | name |  | LC_COLLATE for this database
datctype | name |  | LC_CTYPE for this database
datistemplate | bool |  | If true then this database can be used in the TEMPLATE clause of CREATE DATABASE to create a new database as a clone of this one
datallowconn | bool |  | If false then no one can connect to this database. This is used to protect the template0 database from being altered.
datconnlimit | int4 |  | Sets maximum number of concurrent connections that can be made to this database. -1 means no limit.
datlastsysoid | oid |  | Last system OID in the database; useful particularly to pg_dump
datfrozenxid | xid |  | All transaction IDs before this one have been replaced with a permanent ("frozen") transaction ID in this database. This is used to track whether the database needs to be vacuumed in order to prevent transaction ID wraparound or to allow pg_clog to be shrunk. It is the minimum of the per-table pg_class.relfrozenxid values.
dattablespace | oid | pg_tablespace.oid | The default tablespace for the database. Within this database, all tables for which pg_class.reltablespace is zero will be stored in this tablespace; in particular, all the non-shared system catalogs will be there.
datacl | aclitem[] |  | Access privileges; see GRANT and REVOKE for details
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pg_db_role_setting

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45.16. pg_db_role_setting

The catalog pg_db_role_setting records the default values that have been set for run-time configuration variables, for each role and database combination.

Unlike most system catalogs, pg_db_role_setting is shared across all databases of a cluster: there is only one copy of pg_db_role_setting per cluster, not one per database.

Table 45-16. pg_db_role_setting Columns

Name | Type | References | Description
setdatabase | oid | pg_database.oid | The OID of the database the setting is applicable to, or zero if not database-specific
setrole | oid | pg_authid.oid | The OID of the role the setting is applicable to, or zero if not role-specific
setconfig | text[] |  | Defaults for run-time configuration variables
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pg_default_acl

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45.17. pg_default_acl

The catalog pg_default_acl stores initial privileges to be assigned to newly created objects.

Table 45-17. pg_default_acl Columns

Name | Type | References | Description
defaclrole | oid | pg_authid.oid | The OID of the role associated with this entry
defaclnamespace | oid | pg_namespace.oid | The OID of the namespace associated with this entry, or 0 if none
defaclobjtype | char |  | Type of object this entry is for: r = relation (table, view), S = sequence, f = function
defaclacl | aclitem[] |  | Access privileges that this type of object should have on creation

A pg_default_acl entry shows the initial privileges to be assigned to an object belonging to the indicated user. There are currently two types of entry: "global" entries with defaclnamespace = 0, and "per-schema" entries that reference a particular schema. If a global entry is present then it overrides the normal hard-wired default privileges for the object type. A per-schema entry, if present, represents privileges to be added to the global or hard-wired default privileges.

Note that when an ACL entry in another catalog is null, it is taken to represent the hard-wired default privileges for its object, not whatever might be in pg_default_acl at the moment. pg_default_acl is only consulted during object creation.

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pg_depend

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45.18. pg_depend

The catalog pg_depend records the dependency relationships between database objects. This information allows DROP commands to find which other objects must be dropped by DROP CASCADE or prevent dropping in the DROP RESTRICT case.

See also pg_shdepend, which performs a similar function for dependencies involving objects that are shared across a database cluster.

Table 45-18. pg_depend Columns

Name | Type | References | Description
classid | oid | pg_class.oid | The OID of the system catalog the dependent object is in
objid | oid | any OID column | The OID of the specific dependent object
objsubid | int4 |  | For a table column, this is the column number (the objid and classid refer to the table itself). For all other object types, this column is zero.
refclassid | oid | pg_class.oid | The OID of the system catalog the referenced object is in
refobjid | oid | any OID column | The OID of the specific referenced object
refobjsubid | int4 |  | For a table column, this is the column number (the refobjid and refclassid refer to the table itself). For all other object types, this column is zero.
deptype | char |  | A code defining the specific semantics of this dependency relationship; see text

In all cases, a pg_depend entry indicates that the referenced object cannot be dropped without also dropping the dependent object. However, there are several subflavors identified by deptype:

DEPENDENCY_NORMAL (n)

A normal relationship between separately-created objects. The dependent object can be dropped without affecting the referenced object. The referenced object can only be dropped by specifying CASCADE, in which case the dependent object is dropped, too. Example: a table column has a normal dependency on its data type.

DEPENDENCY_AUTO (a)

The dependent object can be dropped separately from the referenced object, and should be automatically dropped (regardless of RESTRICT or CASCADE mode) if the referenced object is dropped. Example: a named constraint on a table is made autodependent on the table, so that it will go away if the table is dropped.

DEPENDENCY_INTERNAL (i)

The dependent object was created as part of creation of the referenced object, and is really just a part of its internal implementation. A DROP of the dependent object will be disallowed outright (we'll tell the user to issue a DROP against the referenced object, instead). A DROP of the referenced object will be propagated through to drop the dependent object whether CASCADE is specified or not. Example: a trigger that's created to enforce a foreign-key constraint is made internally dependent on the constraint's pg_constraint entry.

DEPENDENCY_EXTENSION (e)

The dependent object is a member of the extension that is the referenced object (see pg_extension). The dependent object can be dropped only via DROP EXTENSION on the referenced object. Functionally this dependency type acts the same as an internal dependency, but it's kept separate for clarity and to simplify pg_dump.

DEPENDENCY_PIN (p)

There is no dependent object; this type of entry is a signal that the system itself depends on the referenced object, and so that object must never be deleted. Entries of this type are created only by initdb. The columns for the dependent object contain zeroes.

Other dependency flavors might be needed in future.

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pg_description

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45.19. pg_description

The catalog pg_description stores optional descriptions (comments) for each database object. Descriptions can be manipulated with the COMMENT command and viewed with psql's \d commands. Descriptions of many built-in system objects are provided in the initial contents of pg_description.

See also pg_shdescription, which performs a similar function for descriptions involving objects that are shared across a database cluster.

Table 45-19. pg_description Columns

Name | Type | References | Description
objoid | oid | any OID column | The OID of the object this description pertains to
classoid | oid | pg_class.oid | The OID of the system catalog this object appears in
objsubid | int4 |  | For a comment on a table column, this is the column number (the objoid and classoid refer to the table itself). For all other object types, this column is zero.
description | text |  | Arbitrary text that serves as the description of this object
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pg_enum

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45.20. pg_enum

The pg_enum catalog contains entries showing the values and labels for each enum type. The internal representation of a given enum value is actually the OID of its associated row in pg_enum.

Table 45-20. pg_enum Columns

Name | Type | References | Description
enumtypid | oid | pg_type.oid | The OID of the pg_type entry owning this enum value
enumsortorder | float4 |  | The sort position of this enum value within its enum type
enumlabel | name |  | The textual label for this enum value

The OIDs for pg_enum rows follow a special rule: even-numbered OIDs are guaranteed to be ordered in the same way as the sort ordering of their enum type. That is, if two even OIDs belong to the same enum type, the smaller OID must have the smaller enumsortorder value. Odd-numbered OID values need bear no relationship to the sort order. This rule allows the enum comparison routines to avoid catalog lookups in many common cases. The routines that create and alter enum types attempt to assign even OIDs to enum values whenever possible.

When an enum type is created, its members are assigned sort-order positions 1..n. But members added later might be given negative or fractional values of enumsortorder. The only requirement on these values is that they be correctly ordered and unique within each enum type.

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pg_extension

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45.21. pg_extension

The catalog pg_extension stores information about the installed extensions. See Section 35.15 for details about extensions.

Table 45-21. pg_extension Columns

Name | Type | References | Description
extname | name |  | Name of the extension
extowner | oid | pg_authid.oid | Owner of the extension
extnamespace | oid | pg_namespace.oid | Schema containing the extension's exported objects
extrelocatable | bool |  | True if extension can be relocated to another schema
extversion | text |  | Version name for the extension
extconfig | oid[] | pg_class.oid | Array of regclass OIDs for the extension's configuration table(s), or NULL if none
extcondition | text[] |  | Array of WHERE-clause filter conditions for the extension's configuration table(s), or NULL if none

Note that unlike most catalogs with a "namespace" column, extnamespace is not meant to imply that the extension belongs to that schema. Extension names are never schema-qualified. Rather, extnamespace indicates the schema that contains most or all of the extension's objects. If extrelocatable is true, then this schema must in fact contain all schema-qualifiable objects belonging to the extension.

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pg_foreign_data_wrapper

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45.22. pg_foreign_data_wrapper

The catalog pg_foreign_data_wrapper stores foreign-data wrapper definitions. A foreign-data wrapper is the mechanism by which external data, residing on foreign servers, is accessed.

Table 45-22. pg_foreign_data_wrapper Columns

Name | Type | References | Description
fdwname | name |  | Name of the foreign-data wrapper
fdwowner | oid | pg_authid.oid | Owner of the foreign-data wrapper
fdwhandler | oid | pg_proc.oid | References a handler function that is responsible for supplying execution routines for the foreign-data wrapper. Zero if no handler is provided
fdwvalidator | oid | pg_proc.oid | References a validator function that is responsible for checking the validity of the options given to the foreign-data wrapper, as well as options for foreign servers and user mappings using the foreign-data wrapper. Zero if no validator is provided
fdwacl | aclitem[] |  | Access privileges; see GRANT and REVOKE for details
fdwoptions | text[] |  | Foreign-data wrapper specific options, as "keyword=value" strings
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pg_foreign_server

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45.23. pg_foreign_server

The catalog pg_foreign_server stores foreign server definitions. A foreign server describes a source of external data, such as a remote server. Foreign servers are accessed via foreign-data wrappers.

Table 45-23. pg_foreign_server Columns

Name | Type | References | Description
srvname | name |  | Name of the foreign server
srvowner | oid | pg_authid.oid | Owner of the foreign server
srvfdw | oid | pg_foreign_data_wrapper.oid | OID of the foreign-data wrapper of this foreign server
srvtype | text |  | Type of the server (optional)
srvversion | text |  | Version of the server (optional)
srvacl | aclitem[] |  | Access privileges; see GRANT and REVOKE for details
srvoptions | text[] |  | Foreign server specific options, as "keyword=value" strings
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pg_foreign_table

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45.24. pg_foreign_table

The catalog pg_foreign_table contains auxiliary information about foreign tables. A foreign table is primarily represented by a pg_class entry, just like a regular table. Its pg_foreign_table entry contains the information that is pertinent only to foreign tables and not any other kind of relation.

Table 45-24. pg_foreign_table Columns

Name | Type | References | Description
ftrelid | oid | pg_class.oid | OID of the pg_class entry for this foreign table
ftserver | oid | pg_foreign_server.oid | OID of the foreign server for this foreign table
ftoptions | text[] |  | Foreign table options, as "keyword=value" strings
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pg_index

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45.25. pg_index

The catalog pg_index contains part of the information about indexes. The rest is mostly in pg_class.

Table 45-25. pg_index Columns

Name | Type | References | Description
indexrelid | oid | pg_class.oid | The OID of the pg_class entry for this index
indrelid | oid | pg_class.oid | The OID of the pg_class entry for the table this index is for
indnatts | int2 |  | The number of columns in the index (duplicates pg_class.relnatts)
indisunique | bool |  | If true, this is a unique index
indisprimary | bool |  | If true, this index represents the primary key of the table (indisunique should always be true when this is true)
indisexclusion | bool |  | If true, this index supports an exclusion constraint
indimmediate | bool |  | If true, the uniqueness check is enforced immediately on insertion (irrelevant if indisunique is not true)
indisclustered | bool |  | If true, the table was last clustered on this index
indisvalid | bool |  | If true, the index is currently valid for queries. False means the index is possibly incomplete: it must still be modified by INSERT/UPDATE operations, but it cannot safely be used for queries. If it is unique, the uniqueness property is not true either.
indcheckxmin | bool |  | If true, queries must not use the index until the xmin of this pg_index row is below their TransactionXmin event horizon, because the table may contain broken HOT chains with incompatible rows that they can see
indisready | bool |  | If true, the index is currently ready for inserts. False means the index must be ignored by INSERT/UPDATE operations.
indkey | int2vector | pg_attribute.attnum | This is an array of indnatts values that indicate which table columns this index indexes. For example a value of 1 3 would mean that the first and the third table columns make up the index key. A zero in this array indicates that the corresponding index attribute is an expression over the table columns, rather than a simple column reference.
indcollation | oidvector | pg_collation.oid | For each column in the index key, this contains the OID of the collation to use for the index.
indclass | oidvector | pg_opclass.oid | For each column in the index key, this contains the OID of the operator class to use. See pg_opclass for details.
indoption | int2vector |  | This is an array of indnatts values that store per-column flag bits. The meaning of the bits is defined by the index's access method.
indexprs | pg_node_tree |  | Expression trees (in nodeToString() representation) for index attributes that are not simple column references. This is a list with one element for each zero entry in indkey. Null if all index attributes are simple references.
indpred | pg_node_tree |  | Expression tree (in nodeToString() representation) for partial index predicate. Null if not a partial index.
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pg_inherits

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45.26. pg_inherits

The catalog pg_inherits records information about table inheritance hierarchies. There is one entry for each direct child table in the database. (Indirect inheritance can be determined by following chains of entries.)

Table 45-26. pg_inherits Columns

Name | Type | References | Description
inhrelid | oid | pg_class.oid | The OID of the child table
inhparent | oid | pg_class.oid | The OID of the parent table
inhseqno | int4 |  | If there is more than one direct parent for a child table (multiple inheritance), this number tells the order in which the inherited columns are to be arranged. The count starts at 1.
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pg_index | Up | pg_language


pg_language

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45.27. pg_language

The catalog pg_language registers languages in which you can write functions or stored procedures. See CREATE LANGUAGE and Chapter 38 for more information about language handlers.

Table 45-27. pg_language Columns

Name | Type | References | Description
lanname | name |  | Name of the language
lanowner | oid | pg_authid.oid | Owner of the language
lanispl | bool |  | This is false for internal languages (such as SQL) and true for user-defined languages. Currently, pg_dump still uses this to determine which languages need to be dumped, but this might be replaced by a different mechanism in the future.
lanpltrusted | bool |  | True if this is a trusted language, which means that it is believed not to grant access to anything outside the normal SQL execution environment. Only superusers can create functions in untrusted languages.
lanplcallfoid | oid | pg_proc.oid | For noninternal languages this references the language handler, which is a special function that is responsible for executing all functions that are written in the particular language
laninline | oid | pg_proc.oid | This references a function that is responsible for executing "inline" anonymous code blocks (DO blocks). Zero if inline blocks are not supported.
lanvalidator | oid | pg_proc.oid | This references a language validator function that is responsible for checking the syntax and validity of new functions when they are created. Zero if no validator is provided.
lanacl | aclitem[] |  | Access privileges; see GRANT and REVOKE for details
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pg_inherits | Up | pg_largeobject


pg_largeobject

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45.28. pg_largeobject

The catalog pg_largeobject holds the data making up "large objects". A large object is identified by an OID assigned when it is created. Each large object is broken into segments or "pages" small enough to be conveniently stored as rows in pg_largeobject. The amount of data per page is defined to be LOBLKSIZE (which is currently BLCKSZ/4, or typically 2 kB).

Prior to PostgreSQL 9.0, there was no permission structure associated with large objects. As a result, pg_largeobject was publicly readable and could be used to obtain the OIDs (and contents) of all large objects in the system. This is no longer the case; use pg_largeobject_metadata to obtain a list of large object OIDs.

Table 45-28. pg_largeobject Columns

Name | Type | References | Description
loid | oid | pg_largeobject_metadata.oid | Identifier of the large object that includes this page
pageno | int4 |  | Page number of this page within its large object (counting from zero)
data | bytea |  | Actual data stored in the large object. This will never be more than LOBLKSIZE bytes and might be less.

Each row of pg_largeobject holds data for one page of a large object, beginning at byte offset (pageno * LOBLKSIZE) within the object. The implementation allows sparse storage: pages might be missing, and might be shorter than LOBLKSIZE bytes even if they are not the last page of the object. Missing regions within a large object read as zeroes.

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pg_language | Up | pg_largeobject_metadata


pg_largeobject_metadata

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45.29. pg_largeobject_metadata

The catalog pg_largeobject_metadata holds metadata associated with large objects. The actual large object data is stored in pg_largeobject.

Table 45-29. pg_largeobject_metadata Columns

Name | Type | References | Description
lomowner | oid | pg_authid.oid | Owner of the large object
lomacl | aclitem[] |  | Access privileges; see GRANT and REVOKE for details
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pg_largeobject | Up | pg_namespace


pg_namespace

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45.30. pg_namespace

The catalog pg_namespace stores namespaces. A namespace is the structure underlying SQL schemas: each namespace can have a separate collection of relations, types, etc. without name conflicts.

Table 45-30. pg_namespace Columns

Name | Type | References | Description
nspname | name |  | Name of the namespace
nspowner | oid | pg_authid.oid | Owner of the namespace
nspacl | aclitem[] |  | Access privileges; see GRANT and REVOKE for details
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pg_largeobject_metadata | Up | pg_opclass


pg_opclass

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45.31. pg_opclass

The catalog pg_opclass defines index access method operator classes. Each operator class defines semantics for index columns of a particular data type and a particular index access method. An operator class essentially specifies that a particular operator family is applicable to a particular indexable column data type. The set of operators from the family that are actually usable with the indexed column are whichever ones accept the column's data type as their lefthand input.

Operator classes are described at length in Section 35.14.

Table 45-31. pg_opclass Columns

Name | Type | References | Description
opcmethod | oid | pg_am.oid | Index access method operator class is for
opcname | name |  | Name of this operator class
opcnamespace | oid | pg_namespace.oid | Namespace of this operator class
opcowner | oid | pg_authid.oid | Owner of the operator class
opcfamily | oid | pg_opfamily.oid | Operator family containing the operator class
opcintype | oid | pg_type.oid | Data type that the operator class indexes
opcdefault | bool |  | True if this operator class is the default for opcintype
opckeytype | oid | pg_type.oid | Type of data stored in index, or zero if same as opcintype

An operator class's opcmethod must match the opfmethod of its containing operator family. Also, there must be no more than one pg_opclass row having opcdefault true for any given combination of opcmethod and opcintype.

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pg_namespace | Up | pg_operator


pg_operator

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45.32. pg_operator

The catalog pg_operator stores information about operators. See CREATE OPERATOR and Section 35.12 for more information.

Table 45-32. pg_operator Columns

Name | Type | References | Description
oprname | name |  | Name of the operator
oprnamespace | oid | pg_namespace.oid | The OID of the namespace that contains this operator
oprowner | oid | pg_authid.oid | Owner of the operator
oprkind | char |  | b = infix ("both"), l = prefix ("left"), r = postfix ("right")
oprcanmerge | bool |  | This operator supports merge joins
oprcanhash | bool |  | This operator supports hash joins
oprleft | oid | pg_type.oid | Type of the left operand
oprright | oid | pg_type.oid | Type of the right operand
oprresult | oid | pg_type.oid | Type of the result
oprcom | oid | pg_operator.oid | Commutator of this operator, if any
oprnegate | oid | pg_operator.oid | Negator of this operator, if any
oprcode | regproc | pg_proc.oid | Function that implements this operator
oprrest | regproc | pg_proc.oid | Restriction selectivity estimation function for this operator
oprjoin | regproc | pg_proc.oid | Join selectivity estimation function for this operator

Unused column contain zeroes. For example, oprleft is zero for a prefix operator.

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pg_opfamily

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45.33. pg_opfamily

The catalog pg_opfamily defines operator families. Each operator family is a collection of operators and associated support routines that implement the semantics specified for a particular index access method. Furthermore, the operators in a family are all "compatible", in a way that is specified by the access method. The operator family concept allows cross-data-type operators to be used with indexes and to be reasoned about using knowledge of access method semantics.

Operator families are described at length in Section 35.14.

Table 45-33. pg_opfamily Columns

Name | Type | References | Description
opfmethod | oid | pg_am.oid | Index access method operator family is for
opfname | name |  | Name of this operator family
opfnamespace | oid | pg_namespace.oid | Namespace of this operator family
opfowner | oid | pg_authid.oid | Owner of the operator family

The majority of the information defining an operator family is not in its pg_opfamily row, but in the associated rows in pg_amop, pg_amproc, and pg_opclass.

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pg_pltemplate

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45.34. pg_pltemplate

The catalog pg_pltemplate stores "template" information for procedural languages. A template for a language allows the language to be created in a particular database by a simple CREATE LANGUAGE command, with no need to specify implementation details.

Unlike most system catalogs, pg_pltemplate is shared across all databases of a cluster: there is only one copy of pg_pltemplate per cluster, not one per database. This allows the information to be accessible in each database as it is needed.

Table 45-34. pg_pltemplate Columns

Name | Type | Description
tmplname | name | Name of the language this template is for
tmpltrusted | boolean | True if language is considered trusted
tmpldbacreate | boolean | True if language may be created by a database owner
tmplhandler | text | Name of call handler function
tmplinline | text | Name of anonymous-block handler function, or null if none
tmplvalidator | text | Name of validator function, or null if none
tmpllibrary | text | Path of shared library that implements language
tmplacl | aclitem[] | Access privileges for template (not actually used)

There are not currently any commands that manipulate procedural language templates; to change the built-in information, a superuser must modify the table using ordinary INSERT, DELETE, or UPDATE commands.

Note: It is likely that pg_pltemplate will be removed in some future release of PostgreSQL, in favor of keeping this knowledge about procedural languages in their respective extension installation scripts.

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pg_proc

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45.35. pg_proc

The catalog pg_proc stores information about functions (or procedures). See CREATE FUNCTION and Section 35.3 for more information.

The table contains data for aggregate functions as well as plain functions. If proisagg is true, there should be a matching row in pg_aggregate.

Table 45-35. pg_proc Columns

Name | Type | References | Description
proname | name |  | Name of the function
pronamespace | oid | pg_namespace.oid | The OID of the namespace that contains this function
proowner | oid | pg_authid.oid | Owner of the function
prolang | oid | pg_language.oid | Implementation language or call interface of this function
procost | float4 |  | Estimated execution cost (in units of cpu_operator_cost); if proretset, this is cost per row returned
prorows | float4 |  | Estimated number of result rows (zero if not proretset)
provariadic | oid | pg_type.oid | Data type of the variadic array parameter's elements, or zero if the function does not have a variadic parameter
proisagg | bool |  | Function is an aggregate function
proiswindow | bool |  | Function is a window function
prosecdef | bool |  | Function is a security definer (i.e., a "setuid" function)
proisstrict | bool |  | Function returns null if any call argument is null. In that case the function won't actually be called at all. Functions that are not "strict" must be prepared to handle null inputs.
proretset | bool |  | Function returns a set (i.e., multiple values of the specified data type)
provolatile | char |  | provolatile tells whether the function's result depends only on its input arguments, or is affected by outside factors. It is i for "immutable" functions, which always deliver the same result for the same inputs. It is s for "stable" functions, whose results (for fixed inputs) do not change within a scan. It is v for "volatile" functions, whose results might change at any time. (Use v also for functions with side-effects, so that calls to them cannot get optimized away.)
pronargs | int2 |  | Number of input arguments
pronargdefaults | int2 |  | Number of arguments that have defaults
prorettype | oid | pg_type.oid | Data type of the return value
proargtypes | oidvector | pg_type.oid | An array with the data types of the function arguments. This includes only input arguments (including INOUT and VARIADIC arguments), and thus represents the call signature of the function.
proallargtypes | oid[] | pg_type.oid | An array with the data types of the function arguments. This includes all arguments (including OUT and INOUT arguments); however, if all the arguments are IN arguments, this field will be null. Note that subscripting is 1-based, whereas for historical reasons proargtypes is subscripted from 0.
proargmodes | char[] |  | An array with the modes of the function arguments, encoded as i for IN arguments, o for OUT arguments, b for INOUT arguments, v for VARIADIC arguments, t for TABLE arguments. If all the arguments are IN arguments, this field will be null. Note that subscripts correspond to positions of proallargtypes not proargtypes.
proargnames | text[] |  | An array with the names of the function arguments. Arguments without a name are set to empty strings in the array. If none of the arguments have a name, this field will be null. Note that subscripts correspond to positions of proallargtypes not proargtypes.
proargdefaults | pg_node_tree |  | Expression trees (in nodeToString() representation) for default values. This is a list with pronargdefaults elements, corresponding to the last N input arguments (i.e., the last N proargtypes positions). If none of the arguments have defaults, this field will be null.
prosrc | text |  | This tells the function handler how to invoke the function. It might be the actual source code of the function for interpreted languages, a link symbol, a file name, or just about anything else, depending on the implementation language/call convention.
probin | text |  | Additional information about how to invoke the function. Again, the interpretation is language-specific.
proconfig | text[] |  | Function's local settings for run-time configuration variables
proacl | aclitem[] |  | Access privileges; see GRANT and REVOKE for details

For compiled functions, both built-in and dynamically loaded, prosrc contains the function's C-language name (link symbol). For all other currently-known language types, prosrc contains the function's source text. probin is unused except for dynamically-loaded C functions, for which it gives the name of the shared library file containing the function.

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pg_rewrite

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45.36. pg_rewrite

The catalog pg_rewrite stores rewrite rules for tables and views.

Table 45-36. pg_rewrite Columns

Name | Type | References | Description
rulename | name |  | Rule name
ev_class | oid | pg_class.oid | The table this rule is for
ev_attr | int2 |  | The column this rule is for (currently, always -1 to indicate the whole table)
ev_type | char |  | Event type that the rule is for: 1 = SELECT, 2 = UPDATE, 3 = INSERT, 4 = DELETE
ev_enabled | char |  | Controls in which session_replication_role modes the rule fires. O = rule fires in "origin" and "local" modes, D = rule is disabled, R = rule fires in "replica" mode, A = rule fires always.
is_instead | bool |  | True if the rule is an INSTEAD rule
ev_qual | pg_node_tree |  | Expression tree (in the form of a nodeToString() representation) for the rule's qualifying condition
ev_action | pg_node_tree |  | Query tree (in the form of a nodeToString() representation) for the rule's action

Note: pg_class.relhasrules must be true if a table has any rules in this catalog.

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pg_seclabel

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45.37. pg_seclabel

The catalog pg_seclabel stores security labels on database objects. Security labels can be manipulated with the SECURITY LABEL command. For an easier way to view security labels, see Section 45.61.

Table 45-37. pg_seclabel Columns

Name | Type | References | Description
objoid | oid | any OID column | The OID of the object this security label pertains to
classoid | oid | pg_class.oid | The OID of the system catalog this object appears in
objsubid | int4 |  | For a security label on a table column, this is the column number (the objoid and classoid refer to the table itself). For all other object types, this column is zero.
provider | text |  | The label provider associated with this label.
label | text |  | The security label applied to this object.
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pg_shdepend

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45.38. pg_shdepend

The catalog pg_shdepend records the dependency relationships between database objects and shared objects, such as roles. This information allows PostgreSQL to ensure that those objects are unreferenced before attempting to delete them.

See also pg_depend, which performs a similar function for dependencies involving objects within a single database.

Unlike most system catalogs, pg_shdepend is shared across all databases of a cluster: there is only one copy of pg_shdepend per cluster, not one per database.

Table 45-38. pg_shdepend Columns

Name | Type | References | Description
dbid | oid | pg_database.oid | The OID of the database the dependent object is in, or zero for a shared object
classid | oid | pg_class.oid | The OID of the system catalog the dependent object is in
objid | oid | any OID column | The OID of the specific dependent object
objsubid | int4 |  | For a table column, this is the column number (the objid and classid refer to the table itself). For all other object types, this column is zero.
refclassid | oid | pg_class.oid | The OID of the system catalog the referenced object is in (must be a shared catalog)
refobjid | oid | any OID column | The OID of the specific referenced object
deptype | char |  | A code defining the specific semantics of this dependency relationship; see text

In all cases, a pg_shdepend entry indicates that the referenced object cannot be dropped without also dropping the dependent object. However, there are several subflavors identified by deptype:

SHARED_DEPENDENCY_OWNER (o)

The referenced object (which must be a role) is the owner of the dependent object.

SHARED_DEPENDENCY_ACL (a)

The referenced object (which must be a role) is mentioned in the ACL (access control list, i.e., privileges list) of the dependent object. (A SHARED_DEPENDENCY_ACL entry is not made for the owner of the object, since the owner will have a SHARED_DEPENDENCY_OWNER entry anyway.)

SHARED_DEPENDENCY_PIN (p)

There is no dependent object; this type of entry is a signal that the system itself depends on the referenced object, and so that object must never be deleted. Entries of this type are created only by initdb. The columns for the dependent object contain zeroes.

Other dependency flavors might be needed in future. Note in particular that the current definition only supports roles as referenced objects.

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pg_seclabel | Up | pg_shdescription


pg_shdescription

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45.39. pg_shdescription

The catalog pg_shdescription stores optional descriptions (comments) for shared database objects. Descriptions can be manipulated with the COMMENT command and viewed with psql's \d commands.

See also pg_description, which performs a similar function for descriptions involving objects within a single database.

Unlike most system catalogs, pg_shdescription is shared across all databases of a cluster: there is only one copy of pg_shdescription per cluster, not one per database.

Table 45-39. pg_shdescription Columns

Name | Type | References | Description
objoid | oid | any OID column | The OID of the object this description pertains to
classoid | oid | pg_class.oid | The OID of the system catalog this object appears in
description | text |  | Arbitrary text that serves as the description of this object
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pg_shdepend | Up | pg_statistic


pg_statistic

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45.40. pg_statistic

The catalog pg_statistic stores statistical data about the contents of the database. Entries are created by ANALYZE and subsequently used by the query planner. Note that all the statistical data is inherently approximate, even assuming that it is up-to-date.

Normally there is one entry, with stainherit = false, for each table column that has been analyzed. If the table has inheritance children, a second entry with stainherit = true is also created. This row represents the column's statistics over the inheritance tree, i.e., statistics for the data you'd see with SELECT column FROM table*, whereas the stainherit = false row represents the results of SELECT column FROM ONLY table.

pg_statistic also stores statistical data about the values of index expressions. These are described as if they were actual data columns; in particular, starelid references the index. No entry is made for an ordinary non-expression index column, however, since it would be redundant with the entry for the underlying table column. Currently, entries for index expressions always have stainherit = false.

Since different kinds of statistics might be appropriate for different kinds of data, pg_statistic is designed not to assume very much about what sort of statistics it stores. Only extremely general statistics (such as nullness) are given dedicated columns in pg_statistic. Everything else is stored in "slots", which are groups of associated columns whose content is identified by a code number in one of the slot's columns. For more information see src/include/catalog/pg_statistic.h.

pg_statistic should not be readable by the public, since even statistical information about a table's contents might be considered sensitive. (Example: minimum and maximum values of a salary column might be quite interesting.) pg_stats is a publicly readable view on pg_statistic that only exposes information about those tables that are readable by the current user.

Table 45-40. pg_statistic Columns

Name | Type | References | Description
starelid | oid | pg_class.oid | The table or index that the described column belongs to
staattnum | int2 | pg_attribute.attnum | The number of the described column
stainherit | bool |  | If true, the stats include inheritance child columns, not just the values in the specified relation
stanullfrac | float4 |  | The fraction of the column's entries that are null
stawidth | int4 |  | The average stored width, in bytes, of nonnull entries
stadistinct | float4 |  | The number of distinct nonnull data values in the column. A value greater than zero is the actual number of distinct values. A value less than zero is the negative of a multiplier for the number of rows in the table; for example, a column in which values appear about twice on the average could be represented by stadistinct = -0.5. A zero value means the number of distinct values is unknown.
stakindN | int2 |  | A code number indicating the kind of statistics stored in the Nth "slot" of the pg_statistic row.
staopN | oid | pg_operator.oid | An operator used to derive the statistics stored in the Nth "slot". For example, a histogram slot would show the < operator that defines the sort order of the data.
stanumbersN | float4[] |  | Numerical statistics of the appropriate kind for the Nth "slot", or null if the slot kind does not involve numerical values
stavaluesN | anyarray |  | Column data values of the appropriate kind for the Nth "slot", or null if the slot kind does not store any data values. Each array's element values are actually of the specific column's data type, so there is no way to define these columns' type more specifically than anyarray.
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pg_shdescription | Up | pg_tablespace


pg_tablespace

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45.41. pg_tablespace

The catalog pg_tablespace stores information about the available tablespaces. Tables can be placed in particular tablespaces to aid administration of disk layout.

Unlike most system catalogs, pg_tablespace is shared across all databases of a cluster: there is only one copy of pg_tablespace per cluster, not one per database.

Table 45-41. pg_tablespace Columns

Name | Type | References | Description
spcname | name |  | Tablespace name
spcowner | oid | pg_authid.oid | Owner of the tablespace, usually the user who created it
spclocation | text |  | Location (directory path) of the tablespace
spcacl | aclitem[] |  | Access privileges; see GRANT and REVOKE for details
spcoptions | text[] |  | Tablespace-level options, as "keyword=value" strings
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pg_trigger

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45.42. pg_trigger

The catalog pg_trigger stores triggers on tables and views. See CREATE TRIGGER for more information.

Table 45-42. pg_trigger Columns

Name | Type | References | Description
tgrelid | oid | pg_class.oid | The table this trigger is on
tgname | name |  | Trigger name (must be unique among triggers of same table)
tgfoid | oid | pg_proc.oid | The function to be called
tgtype | int2 |  | Bit mask identifying trigger firing conditions
tgenabled | char |  | Controls in which session_replication_role modes the trigger fires. O = trigger fires in "origin" and "local" modes, D = trigger is disabled, R = trigger fires in "replica" mode, A = trigger fires always.
tgisinternal | bool |  | True if trigger is internally generated (usually, to enforce the constraint identified by tgconstraint)
tgconstrrelid | oid | pg_class.oid | The table referenced by a referential integrity constraint
tgconstrindid | oid | pg_class.oid | The index supporting a unique, primary key, or referential integrity constraint
tgconstraint | oid | pg_constraint.oid | The pg_constraint entry associated with the trigger, if any
tgdeferrable | bool |  | True if constraint trigger is deferrable
tginitdeferred | bool |  | True if constraint trigger is initially deferred
tgnargs | int2 |  | Number of argument strings passed to trigger function
tgattr | int2vector | pg_attribute.attnum | Column numbers, if trigger is column-specific; otherwise an empty array
tgargs | bytea |  | Argument strings to pass to trigger, each NULL-terminated
tgqual | pg_node_tree |  | Expression tree (in nodeToString() representation) for the trigger's WHEN condition, or null if none

Currently, column-specific triggering is supported only for UPDATE events, and so tgattr is relevant only for that event type. tgtype might contain bits for other event types as well, but those are presumed to be table-wide regardless of what is in tgattr.

Note: When tgconstraint is nonzero, tgconstrrelid, tgconstrindid, tgdeferrable, and tginitdeferred are largely redundant with the referenced pg_constraint entry. However, it is possible for a non-deferrable trigger to be associated with a deferrable constraint: foreign key constraints can have some deferrable and some non-deferrable triggers.

Note: pg_class.relhastriggers must be true if a relation has any triggers in this catalog.

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pg_ts_config

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45.43. pg_ts_config

The pg_ts_config catalog contains entries representing text search configurations. A configuration specifies a particular text search parser and a list of dictionaries to use for each of the parser's output token types. The parser is shown in the pg_ts_config entry, but the token-to-dictionary mapping is defined by subsidiary entries in pg_ts_config_map.

PostgreSQL's text search features are described at length in Chapter 12.

Table 45-43. pg_ts_config Columns

Name | Type | References | Description
cfgname | name |  | Text search configuration name
cfgnamespace | oid | pg_namespace.oid | The OID of the namespace that contains this configuration
cfgowner | oid | pg_authid.oid | Owner of the configuration
cfgparser | oid | pg_ts_parser.oid | The OID of the text search parser for this configuration
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pg_trigger | Up | pg_ts_config_map


pg_ts_config_map

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45.44. pg_ts_config_map

The pg_ts_config_map catalog contains entries showing which text search dictionaries should be consulted, and in what order, for each output token type of each text search configuration's parser.

PostgreSQL's text search features are described at length in Chapter 12.

Table 45-44. pg_ts_config_map Columns

Name | Type | References | Description
mapcfg | oid | pg_ts_config.oid | The OID of the pg_ts_config entry owning this map entry
maptokentype | integer |  | A token type emitted by the configuration's parser
mapseqno | integer |  | Order in which to consult this entry (lower mapseqnos first)
mapdict | oid | pg_ts_dict.oid | The OID of the text search dictionary to consult
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pg_ts_config | Up | pg_ts_dict


pg_ts_dict

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45.45. pg_ts_dict

The pg_ts_dict catalog contains entries defining text search dictionaries. A dictionary depends on a text search template, which specifies all the implementation functions needed; the dictionary itself provides values for the user-settable parameters supported by the template. This division of labor allows dictionaries to be created by unprivileged users. The parameters are specified by a text string dictinitoption, whose format and meaning vary depending on the template.

PostgreSQL's text search features are described at length in Chapter 12.

Table 45-45. pg_ts_dict Columns

Name | Type | References | Description
dictname | name |  | Text search dictionary name
dictnamespace | oid | pg_namespace.oid | The OID of the namespace that contains this dictionary
dictowner | oid | pg_authid.oid | Owner of the dictionary
dicttemplate | oid | pg_ts_template.oid | The OID of the text search template for this dictionary
dictinitoption | text |  | Initialization option string for the template
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pg_ts_config_map | Up | pg_ts_parser


pg_ts_parser

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45.46. pg_ts_parser

The pg_ts_parser catalog contains entries defining text search parsers. A parser is responsible for splitting input text into lexemes and assigning a token type to each lexeme. Since a parser must be implemented by C-language-level functions, creation of new parsers is restricted to database superusers.

PostgreSQL's text search features are described at length in Chapter 12.

Table 45-46. pg_ts_parser Columns

Name | Type | References | Description
prsname | name |  | Text search parser name
prsnamespace | oid | pg_namespace.oid | The OID of the namespace that contains this parser
prsstart | regproc | pg_proc.oid | OID of the parser's startup function
prstoken | regproc | pg_proc.oid | OID of the parser's next-token function
prsend | regproc | pg_proc.oid | OID of the parser's shutdown function
prsheadline | regproc | pg_proc.oid | OID of the parser's headline function
prslextype | regproc | pg_proc.oid | OID of the parser's lextype function
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pg_ts_template

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45.47. pg_ts_template

The pg_ts_template catalog contains entries defining text search templates. A template is the implementation skeleton for a class of text search dictionaries. Since a template must be implemented by C-language-level functions, creation of new templates is restricted to database superusers.

PostgreSQL's text search features are described at length in Chapter 12.

Table 45-47. pg_ts_template Columns

Name | Type | References | Description
tmplname | name |  | Text search template name
tmplnamespace | oid | pg_namespace.oid | The OID of the namespace that contains this template
tmplinit | regproc | pg_proc.oid | OID of the template's initialization function
tmpllexize | regproc | pg_proc.oid | OID of the template's lexize function
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pg_type

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45.48. pg_type

The catalog pg_type stores information about data types. Base types and enum types (scalar types) are created with CREATE TYPE, and domains with CREATE DOMAIN. A composite type is automatically created for each table in the database, to represent the row structure of the table. It is also possible to create composite types with CREATE TYPE AS.

Table 45-48. pg_type Columns

Name | Type | References | Description
typname | name | Data type name
typnamespace | oid | pg_namespace.oid | The OID of the namespace that contains this type
typowner | oid | pg_authid.oid | Owner of the type
typlen | int2 | For a fixed-size type, typlen is the number of bytes in the internal representation of the type. But for a variable-length type, typlen is negative. -1 indicates a "varlena" type (one that has a length word), -2 indicates a null-terminated C string.
typbyval | bool | typbyval determines whether internal routines pass a value of this type by value or by reference. typbyval had better be false if typlen is not 1, 2, or 4 (or 8 on machines where Datum is 8 bytes). Variable-length types are always passed by reference. Note that typbyval can be false even if the length would allow pass-by-value.
typtype | char | typtype is b for a base type, c for a composite type (e.g., a table's row type), d for a domain, e for an enum type, or p for a pseudo-type. See also typrelid and typbasetype.
typcategory | char | typcategory is an arbitrary classification of data types that is used by the parser to determine which implicit casts should be "preferred". See Table 45-49.
typispreferred | bool | True if the type is a preferred cast target within its typcategory
typisdefined | bool | True if the type is defined, false if this is a placeholder entry for a not-yet-defined type. When typisdefined is false, nothing except the type name, namespace, and OID can be relied on.
typdelim | char | Character that separates two values of this type when parsing array input. Note that the delimiter is associated with the array element data type, not the array data type.
typrelid | oid | pg_class.oid | If this is a composite type (see typtype), then this column points to the pg_class entry that defines the corresponding table. (For a free-standing composite type, the pg_class entry doesn't really represent a table, but it is needed anyway for the type's pg_attribute entries to link to.) Zero for non-composite types.
typelem | oid | pg_type.oid | If typelem is not 0 then it identifies another row in pg_type. The current type can then be subscripted like an array yielding values of type typelem. A "true" array type is variable length (typlen = -1), but some fixed-length (typlen > 0) types also have nonzero typelem, for example name and point. If a fixed-length type has a typelem then its internal representation must be some number of values of the typelem data type with no other data. Variable-length array types have a header defined by the array subroutines.
typarray | oid | pg_type.oid | If typarray is not 0 then it identifies another row in pg_type, which is the "true" array type having this type as element
typinput | regproc | pg_proc.oid | Input conversion function (text format)
typoutput | regproc | pg_proc.oid | Output conversion function (text format)
typreceive | regproc | pg_proc.oid | Input conversion function (binary format), or 0 if none
typsend | regproc | pg_proc.oid | Output conversion function (binary format), or 0 if none
typmodin | regproc | pg_proc.oid | Type modifier input function, or 0 if type does not support modifiers
typmodout | regproc | pg_proc.oid | Type modifier output function, or 0 to use the standard format
typanalyze | regproc | pg_proc.oid | Custom ANALYZE function, or 0 to use the standard function
typalign char

typalign is the alignment required when storing a value of this type. It applies to storage on disk as well as most representations of the value inside PostgreSQL. When multiple values are stored consecutively, such as in the representation of a complete row on disk, padding is inserted before a datum of this type so that it begins on the specified boundary. The alignment reference is the beginning of the first datum in the sequence.

Possible values are:

  • c = char alignment, i.e., no alignment needed.

  • s = short alignment (2 bytes on most machines).

  • i = int alignment (4 bytes on most machines).

  • d = double alignment (8 bytes on many machines, but by no means all).

Note: For types used in system tables, it is critical that the size and alignment defined in pg_type agree with the way that the compiler will lay out the column in a structure representing a table row.

typstorage char

typstorage tells for varlena types (those with typlen = -1) if the type is prepared for toasting and what the default strategy for attributes of this type should be. Possible values are

  • p: Value must always be stored plain.

  • e: Value can be stored in a "secondary" relation (if relation has one, see pg_class.reltoastrelid).

  • m: Value can be stored compressed inline.

  • x: Value can be stored compressed inline or stored in "secondary" storage.

Note that m columns can also be moved out to secondary storage, but only as a last resort (e and x columns are moved first).

typnotnull bool

typnotnull represents a not-null constraint on a type. Used for domains only.

typbasetype oid pg_type.oid

If this is a domain (see typtype), then typbasetype identifies the type that this one is based on. Zero if this type is not a domain.

typtypmod int4

Domains use typtypmod to record the typmod to be applied to their base type (-1 if base type does not use a typmod). -1 if this type is not a domain.

typndims int4

typndims is the number of array dimensions for a domain over an array (that is, typbasetype is an array type). Zero for types other than domains over array types.

typcollation oid pg_collation.oid

typcollation specifies the collation of the type. If the type does not support collations, this will be zero. A base type that supports collations will have DEFAULT_COLLATION_OID here. A domain over a collatable type can have some other collation OID, if one was specified for the domain.

typdefaultbin pg_node_tree

If typdefaultbin is not null, it is the nodeToString() representation of a default expression for the type. This is only used for domains.

typdefault text

typdefault is null if the type has no associated default value. If typdefaultbin is not null, typdefault must contain a human-readable version of the default expression represented by typdefaultbin. If typdefaultbin is null and typdefault is not, then typdefault is the external representation of the type's default value, which can be fed to the type's input converter to produce a constant.

Table 45-49 lists the system-defined values of typcategory. Any future additions to this list will also be upper-case ASCII letters. All other ASCII characters are reserved for user-defined categories.

Table 45-49. typcategory Codes

Code | Category
A | Array types
B | Boolean types
C | Composite types
D | Date/time types
E | Enum types
G | Geometric types
I | Network address types
N | Numeric types
P | Pseudo-types
S | String types
T | Timespan types
U | User-defined types
V | Bit-string types
X | unknown type
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pg_user_mapping

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45.49. pg_user_mapping

The catalog pg_user_mapping stores the mappings from local user to remote. Access to this catalog is restricted from normal users, use the view pg_user_mappings instead.

Table 45-50. pg_user_mapping Columns

Name | Type | References | Description
umuser | oid | pg_authid.oid | OID of the local role being mapped, 0 if the user mapping is public
umserver | oid | pg_foreign_server.oid | The OID of the foreign server that contains this mapping
umoptions | text[] |  | User mapping specific options, as "keyword=value" strings
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System Views

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45.50. System Views

In addition to the system catalogs, PostgreSQL provides a number of built-in views. Some system views provide convenient access to some commonly used queries on the system catalogs. Other views provide access to internal server state.

The information schema (Chapter 34) provides an alternative set of views which overlap the functionality of the system views. Since the information schema is SQL-standard whereas the views described here are PostgreSQL-specific, it's usually better to use the information schema if it provides all the information you need.

Table 45-51 lists the system views described here. More detailed documentation of each view follows below. There are some additional views that provide access to the results of the statistics collector; they are described in Table 27-1.

Except where noted, all the views described here are read-only.

Table 45-51. System Views

View Name | Purpose
pg_available_extensions | available extensions
pg_available_extension_versions | available versions of extensions
pg_cursors | open cursors
pg_group | groups of database users
pg_indexes | indexes
pg_locks | currently held locks
pg_prepared_statements | prepared statements
pg_prepared_xacts | prepared transactions
pg_roles | database roles
pg_rules | rules
pg_seclabels | security labels
pg_settings | parameter settings
pg_shadow | database users
pg_stats | planner statistics
pg_tables | tables
pg_timezone_abbrevs | time zone abbreviations
pg_timezone_names | time zone names
pg_user | database users
pg_user_mappings | user mappings
pg_views | views
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pg_available_extensions

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45.51. pg_available_extensions

The pg_available_extensions view lists the extensions that are available for installation. See also the pg_extension catalog, which shows the extensions currently installed.

Table 45-52. pg_available_extensions Columns

Name | Type | Description
name | name | Extension name
default_version | text | Name of default version, or NULL if none is specified
installed_version | text | Currently installed version of the extension, or NULL if not installed
comment | text | Comment string from the extension's control file

The pg_available_extensions view is read only.

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pg_available_extension_versions

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45.52. pg_available_extension_versions

The pg_available_extension_versions view lists the specific extension versions that are available for installation. See also the pg_extension catalog, which shows the extensions currently installed.

Table 45-53. pg_available_extension_versions Columns

Name | Type | Description
name | name | Extension name
version | text | Version name
installed | bool | True if this version of this extension is currently installed
superuser | bool | True if only superusers are allowed to install this extension
relocatable | bool | True if extension can be relocated to another schema
schema | name | Name of the schema that the extension must be installed into, or NULL if partially or fully relocatable
requires | name[] | Names of prerequisite extensions, or NULL if none
comment | text | Comment string from the extension's control file

The pg_available_extension_versions view is read only.

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pg_cursors

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45.53. pg_cursors

The pg_cursors view lists the cursors that are currently available. Cursors can be defined in several ways:

  • via the DECLARE statement in SQL

  • via the Bind message in the frontend/backend protocol, as described in Section 46.2.3

  • via the Server Programming Interface (SPI), as described in Section 43.1

The pg_cursors view displays cursors created by any of these means. Cursors only exist for the duration of the transaction that defines them, unless they have been declared WITH HOLD. Therefore non-holdable cursors are only present in the view until the end of their creating transaction.

Note: Cursors are used internally to implement some of the components of PostgreSQL, such as procedural languages. Therefore, the pg_cursors view might include cursors that have not been explicitly created by the user.

Table 45-54. pg_cursors Columns

Name | Type | Description
name | text | The name of the cursor
statement | text | The verbatim query string submitted to declare this cursor
is_holdable | boolean | true if the cursor is holdable (that is, it can be accessed after the transaction that declared the cursor has committed); false otherwise
is_binary | boolean | true if the cursor was declared BINARY; false otherwise
is_scrollable | boolean | true if the cursor is scrollable (that is, it allows rows to be retrieved in a nonsequential manner); false otherwise
creation_time | timestamptz | The time at which the cursor was declared

The pg_cursors view is read only.

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pg_group

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45.54. pg_group

The view pg_group exists for backwards compatibility: it emulates a catalog that existed in PostgreSQL before version 8.1. It shows the names and members of all roles that are marked as not rolcanlogin, which is an approximation to the set of roles that are being used as groups.

Table 45-55. pg_group Columns

Name | Type | References | Description
groname | name | pg_authid.rolname | Name of the group
grosysid | oid | pg_authid.oid | ID of this group
grolist | oid[] | pg_authid.oid | An array containing the IDs of the roles in this group
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pg_indexes

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45.55. pg_indexes

The view pg_indexes provides access to useful information about each index in the database.

Table 45-56. pg_indexes Columns

Name | Type | References | Description
schemaname | name | pg_namespace.nspname | Name of schema containing table and index
tablename | name | pg_class.relname | Name of table the index is for
indexname | name | pg_class.relname | Name of index
tablespace | name | pg_tablespace.spcname | Name of tablespace containing index (null if default for database)
indexdef | text |  | Index definition (a reconstructed CREATE INDEX command)
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pg_locks

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45.56. pg_locks

The view pg_locks provides access to information about the locks held by open transactions within the database server. See Chapter 13 for more discussion of locking.

pg_locks contains one row per active lockable object, requested lock mode, and relevant transaction. Thus, the same lockable object might appear many times, if multiple transactions are holding or waiting for locks on it. However, an object that currently has no locks on it will not appear at all.

There are several distinct types of lockable objects: whole relations (e.g., tables), individual pages of relations, individual tuples of relations, transaction IDs (both virtual and permanent IDs), and general database objects (identified by class OID and object OID, in the same way as in pg_description or pg_depend). Also, the right to extend a relation is represented as a separate lockable object. Also, "advisory" locks can be taken on numbers that have user-defined meanings.

Table 45-57. pg_locks Columns

Name | Type | References | Description
locktype | text |  | Type of the lockable object: relation, extend, page, tuple, transactionid, virtualxid, object, userlock, or advisory
database | oid | pg_database.oid | OID of the database in which the object exists, or zero if the object is a shared object, or null if the object is a transaction ID
relation | oid | pg_class.oid | OID of the relation, or null if the object is not a relation or part of a relation
page | integer |  | Page number within the relation, or null if the object is not a tuple or relation page
tuple | smallint |  | Tuple number within the page, or null if the object is not a tuple
virtualxid | text |  | Virtual ID of a transaction, or null if the object is not a virtual transaction ID
transactionid | xid |  | ID of a transaction, or null if the object is not a transaction ID
classid | oid | pg_class.oid | OID of the system catalog containing the object, or null if the object is not a general database object
objid | oid | any OID column | OID of the object within its system catalog, or null if the object is not a general database object
objsubid | smallint |  | Column number targeted by the lock (the classid and objid refer to the table itself), or zero if the target is some other general database object, or null if the target is not a general database object
virtualtransaction | text |  | Virtual ID of the transaction that is holding or awaiting this lock
pid | integer |  | Process ID of the server process holding or awaiting this lock, or null if the lock is held by a prepared transaction
mode | text |  | Name of the lock mode held or desired by this process (see Section 13.3.1 and Section 13.2.3)
granted | boolean |  | True if lock is held, false if lock is awaited

granted is true in a row representing a lock held by the indicated transaction. False indicates that this transaction is currently waiting to acquire this lock, which implies that some other transaction is holding a conflicting lock mode on the same lockable object. The waiting transaction will sleep until the other lock is released (or a deadlock situation is detected). A single transaction can be waiting to acquire at most one lock at a time.

Every transaction holds an exclusive lock on its virtual transaction ID for its entire duration. If a permanent ID is assigned to the transaction (which normally happens only if the transaction changes the state of the database), it also holds an exclusive lock on its permanent transaction ID until it ends. When one transaction finds it necessary to wait specifically for another transaction, it does so by attempting to acquire share lock on the other transaction ID (either virtual or permanent ID depending on the situation). That will succeed only when the other transaction terminates and releases its locks.

Although tuples are a lockable type of object, information about row-level locks is stored on disk, not in memory, and therefore row-level locks normally do not appear in this view. If a transaction is waiting for a row-level lock, it will usually appear in the view as waiting for the permanent transaction ID of the current holder of that row lock.

Advisory locks can be acquired on keys consisting of either a single bigint value or two integer values. A bigint key is displayed with its high-order half in the classid column, its low-order half in the objid column, and objsubid equal to 1. Integer keys are displayed with the first key in the classid column, the second key in the objid column, and objsubid equal to 2. The actual meaning of the keys is up to the user. Advisory locks are local to each database, so the database column is meaningful for an advisory lock.

pg_locks provides a global view of all locks in the database cluster, not only those relevant to the current database. Although its relation column can be joined against pg_class.oid to identify locked relations, this will only work correctly for relations in the current database (those for which the database column is either the current database's OID or zero).

The pid column can be joined to the procpid column of the pg_stat_activity view to get more information on the session holding or waiting to hold each lock, for example

SELECT * FROM pg_locks pl LEFT JOIN pg_stat_activity psa
    ON pl.pid = psa.procpid;

Also, if you are using prepared transactions, the virtualtransaction column can be joined to the transaction column of the pg_prepared_xacts view to get more information on prepared transactions that hold locks. (A prepared transaction can never be waiting for a lock, but it continues to hold the locks it acquired while running.) For example:

SELECT * FROM pg_locks pl LEFT JOIN pg_prepared_xacts ppx
    ON pl.virtualtransaction = '-1/' || ppx.transaction;

The pg_locks view displays data from both the regular lock manager and the predicate lock manager, which are separate systems. When this view is accessed, the internal data structures of each lock manager are momentarily locked, and copies are made for the view to display. Each lock manager will therefore produce a consistent set of results, but as we do not lock both lock managers simultaneously, it is possible for locks to be taken or released after we interrogate the regular lock manager and before we interrogate the predicate lock manager. Each lock manager is only locked for the minimum possible time so as to reduce the performance impact of querying this view, but there could nevertheless be some impact on database performance if it is frequently accessed.

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pg_prepared_statements

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45.57. pg_prepared_statements

The pg_prepared_statements view displays all the prepared statements that are available in the current session. See PREPARE for more information about prepared statements.

pg_prepared_statements contains one row for each prepared statement. Rows are added to the view when a new prepared statement is created and removed when a prepared statement is released (for example, via the DEALLOCATE command).

Table 45-58. pg_prepared_statements Columns

Name | Type | Description
name | text | The identifier of the prepared statement
statement | text | The query string submitted by the client to create this prepared statement. For prepared statements created via SQL, this is the PREPARE statement submitted by the client. For prepared statements created via the frontend/backend protocol, this is the text of the prepared statement itself.
prepare_time | timestamptz | The time at which the prepared statement was created
parameter_types | regtype[] | The expected parameter types for the prepared statement in the form of an array of regtype. The OID corresponding to an element of this array can be obtained by casting the regtype value to oid.
from_sql | boolean | true if the prepared statement was created via the PREPARE SQL statement; false if the statement was prepared via the frontend/backend protocol

The pg_prepared_statements view is read only.

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pg_prepared_xacts

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45.58. pg_prepared_xacts

The view pg_prepared_xacts displays information about transactions that are currently prepared for two-phase commit (see PREPARE TRANSACTION for details).

pg_prepared_xacts contains one row per prepared transaction. An entry is removed when the transaction is committed or rolled back.

Table 45-59. pg_prepared_xacts Columns

Name | Type | References | Description
transaction | xid |  | Numeric transaction identifier of the prepared transaction
gid | text |  | Global transaction identifier that was assigned to the transaction
prepared | timestamp with time zone |  | Time at which the transaction was prepared for commit
owner | name | pg_authid.rolname | Name of the user that executed the transaction
database | name | pg_database.datname | Name of the database in which the transaction was executed

When the pg_prepared_xacts view is accessed, the internal transaction manager data structures are momentarily locked, and a copy is made for the view to display. This ensures that the view produces a consistent set of results, while not blocking normal operations longer than necessary. Nonetheless there could be some impact on database performance if this view is frequently accessed.

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pg_roles

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45.59. pg_roles

The view pg_roles provides access to information about database roles. This is simply a publicly readable view of pg_authid that blanks out the password field.

This view explicitly exposes the OID column of the underlying table, since that is needed to do joins to other catalogs.

Table 45-60. pg_roles Columns

Name | Type | References | Description
rolname | name |  | Role name
rolsuper | bool |  | Role has superuser privileges
rolinherit | bool |  | Role automatically inherits privileges of roles it is a member of
rolcreaterole | bool |  | Role can create more roles
rolcreatedb | bool |  | Role can create databases
rolcatupdate | bool |  | Role can update system catalogs directly. (Even a superuser cannot do this unless this column is true)
rolcanlogin | bool |  | Role can log in. That is, this role can be given as the initial session authorization identifier
rolreplication | bool |  | Role is a replication role. That is, this role can initiate streaming replication (see Section 25.2.5) and set/unset the system backup mode using pg_start_backup and pg_stop_backup
rolconnlimit | int4 |  | For roles that can log in, this sets maximum number of concurrent connections this role can make. -1 means no limit.
rolpassword | text |  | Not the password (always reads as ********)
rolvaliduntil | timestamptz |  | Password expiry time (only used for password authentication); null if no expiration
rolconfig | text[] |  | Role-specific defaults for run-time configuration variables
oid | oid | pg_authid.oid | ID of role
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pg_rules

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45.60. pg_rules

The view pg_rules provides access to useful information about query rewrite rules.

Table 45-61. pg_rules Columns

Name | Type | References | Description
schemaname | name | pg_namespace.nspname | Name of schema containing table
tablename | name | pg_class.relname | Name of table the rule is for
rulename | name | pg_rewrite.rulename | Name of rule
definition | text |  | Rule definition (a reconstructed creation command)

The pg_rules view excludes the ON SELECT rules of views; those can be seen in pg_views.

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pg_seclabels

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45.61. pg_seclabels

The view pg_seclabels provides information about security labels. It as an easier-to-query version of the pg_seclabel catalog.

Table 45-62. pg_seclabels Columns

Name | Type | References | Description
objoid | oid | any OID column | The OID of the object this security label pertains to
classoid | oid | pg_class.oid | The OID of the system catalog this object appears in
objsubid | int4 |  | For a security label on a table column, this is the column number (the objoid and classoid refer to the table itself). For all other object types, this column is zero.
objtype | text |  | The type of object to which this label applies, as text.
objnamespace | oid | pg_namespace.oid | The OID of the namespace for this object, if applicable; otherwise NULL.
objname | text |  | The name of the object to which this label applies, as text.
provider | text | pg_seclabel.provider | The label provider associated with this label.
label | text | pg_seclabel.label | The security label applied to this object.
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pg_settings

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45.62. pg_settings

The view pg_settings provides access to run-time parameters of the server. It is essentially an alternative interface to the SHOW and SET commands. It also provides access to some facts about each parameter that are not directly available from SHOW, such as minimum and maximum values.

Table 45-63. pg_settings Columns

Name | Type | Description
name | text | Run-time configuration parameter name
setting | text | Current value of the parameter
unit | text | Implicit unit of the parameter
category | text | Logical group of the parameter
short_desc | text | A brief description of the parameter
extra_desc | text | Additional, more detailed, description of the parameter
context | text | Context required to set the parameter's value (see below)
vartype | text | Parameter type (bool, enum, integer, real, or string)
source | text | Source of the current parameter value
min_val | text | Minimum allowed value of the parameter (null for non-numeric values)
max_val | text | Maximum allowed value of the parameter (null for non-numeric values)
enumvals | text[] | Allowed values of an enum parameter (null for non-enum values)
boot_val | text | Parameter value assumed at server startup if the parameter is not otherwise set
reset_val | text | Value that RESET would reset the parameter to in the current session
sourcefile | text | Configuration file the current value was set in (null for values set from sources other than configuration files, or when examined by a non-superuser); helpful when using include directives in configuration files
sourceline | integer | Line number within the configuration file the current value was set at (null for values set from sources other than configuration files, or when examined by a non-superuser)

There are several possible values of context. In order of decreasing difficulty of changing the setting, they are:

internal

These settings cannot be changed directly; they reflect internally determined values. Some of them may be adjustable by rebuilding the server with different configuration options, or by changing options supplied to initdb.

postmaster

These settings can only be applied when the server starts, so any change requires restarting the server. Values for these settings are typically stored in the postgresql.conf file, or passed on the command line when starting the server. Of course, settings with any of the lower context types can also be set at server start time.

sighup

Changes to these settings can be made in postgresql.conf without restarting the server. Send a SIGHUP signal to the postmaster to cause it to re-read postgresql.conf and apply the changes. The postmaster will also forward the SIGHUP signal to its child processes so that they all pick up the new value.

backend

Changes to these settings can be made in postgresql.conf without restarting the server; they can also be set for a particular session in the connection request packet (for example, via libpq's PGOPTIONS environment variable). However, these settings never change in a session after it is started. If you change them in postgresql.conf, send a SIGHUP signal to the postmaster to cause it to re-read postgresql.conf. The new values will only affect subsequently-launched sessions.

superuser

These settings can be set from postgresql.conf, or within a session via the SET command; but only superusers can change them via SET. Changes in postgresql.conf will affect existing sessions only if no session-local value has been established with SET.

user

These settings can be set from postgresql.conf, or within a session via the SET command. Any user is allowed to change his session-local value. Changes in postgresql.conf will affect existing sessions only if no session-local value has been established with SET.

See Section 18.1 for more information about the various ways to change these parameters.

The pg_settings view cannot be inserted into or deleted from, but it can be updated. An UPDATE applied to a row of pg_settings is equivalent to executing the SET command on that named parameter. The change only affects the value used by the current session. If an UPDATE is issued within a transaction that is later aborted, the effects of the UPDATE command disappear when the transaction is rolled back. Once the surrounding transaction is committed, the effects will persist until the end of the session, unless overridden by another UPDATE or SET.

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pg_shadow

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45.63. pg_shadow

The view pg_shadow exists for backwards compatibility: it emulates a catalog that existed in PostgreSQL before version 8.1. It shows properties of all roles that are marked as rolcanlogin in pg_authid.

The name stems from the fact that this table should not be readable by the public since it contains passwords. pg_user is a publicly readable view on pg_shadow that blanks out the password field.

Table 45-64. pg_shadow Columns

Name | Type | References | Description
usename | name | pg_authid.rolname | User name
usesysid | oid | pg_authid.oid | ID of this user
usecreatedb | bool |  | User can create databases
usesuper | bool |  | User is a superuser
usecatupd | bool |  | User can update system catalogs. (Even a superuser cannot do this unless this column is true.)
passwd | text |  | Password (possibly encrypted); null if none. See pg_authid for details of how encrypted passwords are stored.
valuntil | abstime |  | Password expiry time (only used for password authentication)
useconfig | text[] |  | Session defaults for run-time configuration variables
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pg_stats

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45.64. pg_stats

The view pg_stats provides access to the information stored in the pg_statistic catalog. This view allows access only to rows of pg_statistic that correspond to tables the user has permission to read, and therefore it is safe to allow public read access to this view.

pg_stats is also designed to present the information in a more readable format than the underlying catalog — at the cost that its schema must be extended whenever new slot types are defined for pg_statistic.

Table 45-65. pg_stats Columns

Name | Type | References | Description
schemaname | name | pg_namespace.nspname | Name of schema containing table
tablename | name | pg_class.relname | Name of table
attname | name | pg_attribute.attname | Name of the column described by this row
inherited | bool |  | If true, this row includes inheritance child columns, not just the values in the specified table
null_frac | real |  | Fraction of column entries that are null
avg_width | integer |  | Average width in bytes of column's entries
n_distinct | real |  | If greater than zero, the estimated number of distinct values in the column. If less than zero, the negative of the number of distinct values divided by the number of rows. (The negated form is used when ANALYZE believes that the number of distinct values is likely to increase as the table grows; the positive form is used when the column seems to have a fixed number of possible values.) For example, -1 indicates a unique column in which the number of distinct values is the same as the number of rows.
most_common_vals | anyarray |  | A list of the most common values in the column. (Null if no values seem to be more common than any others.) For some data types such as tsvector, this is a list of the most common element values rather than values of the type itself.
most_common_freqs | real[] |  | A list of the frequencies of the most common values or elements, i.e., number of occurrences of each divided by total number of rows. (Null when most_common_vals is.) For some data types such as tsvector, it can also store some additional information, making it longer than the most_common_vals array.
histogram_bounds | anyarray |  | A list of values that divide the column's values into groups of approximately equal population. The values in most_common_vals, if present, are omitted from this histogram calculation. (This column is null if the column data type does not have a < operator or if the most_common_vals list accounts for the entire population.)
correlation | real |  | Statistical correlation between physical row ordering and logical ordering of the column values. This ranges from -1 to +1. When the value is near -1 or +1, an index scan on the column will be estimated to be cheaper than when it is near zero, due to reduction of random access to the disk. (This column is null if the column data type does not have a < operator.)

The maximum number of entries in the most_common_vals and histogram_bounds arrays can be set on a column-by-column basis using the ALTER TABLE SET STATISTICS command, or globally by setting the default_statistics_target run-time parameter.

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pg_tables

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45.65. pg_tables

The view pg_tables provides access to useful information about each table in the database.

Table 45-66. pg_tables Columns

Name | Type | References | Description
schemaname | name | pg_namespace.nspname | Name of schema containing table
tablename | name | pg_class.relname | Name of table
tableowner | name | pg_authid.rolname | Name of table's owner
tablespace | name | pg_tablespace.spcname | Name of tablespace containing table (null if default for database)
hasindexes | boolean | pg_class.relhasindex | True if table has (or recently had) any indexes
hasrules | boolean | pg_class.relhasrules | True if table has (or once had) rules
hastriggers | boolean | pg_class.relhastriggers | True if table has (or once had) triggers
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pg_timezone_abbrevs

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45.66. pg_timezone_abbrevs

The view pg_timezone_abbrevs provides a list of time zone abbreviations that are currently recognized by the datetime input routines. The contents of this view change when the timezone_abbreviations run-time parameter is modified.

Table 45-67. pg_timezone_abbrevs Columns

Name | Type | Description
abbrev | text | Time zone abbreviation
utc_offset | interval | Offset from UTC (positive means east of Greenwich)
is_dst | boolean | True if this is a daylight-savings abbreviation
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pg_timezone_names

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45.67. pg_timezone_names

The view pg_timezone_names provides a list of time zone names that are recognized by SET TIMEZONE, along with their associated abbreviations, UTC offsets, and daylight-savings status. (Technically, PostgreSQL uses UT1 rather than UTC because leap seconds are not handled.) Unlike the abbreviations shown in pg_timezone_abbrevs, many of these names imply a set of daylight-savings transition date rules. Therefore, the associated information changes across local DST boundaries. The displayed information is computed based on the current value of CURRENT_TIMESTAMP.

Table 45-68. pg_timezone_names Columns

Name | Type | Description
name | text | Time zone name
abbrev | text | Time zone abbreviation
utc_offset | interval | Offset from UTC (positive means east of Greenwich)
is_dst | boolean | True if currently observing daylight savings
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pg_user

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45.68. pg_user

The view pg_user provides access to information about database users. This is simply a publicly readable view of pg_shadow that blanks out the password field.

Table 45-69. pg_user Columns

Name | Type | Description
usename | name | User name
usesysid | int4 | User ID (arbitrary number used to reference this user)
usecreatedb | bool | User can create databases
usesuper | bool | User is a superuser
usecatupd | bool | User can update system catalogs. (Even a superuser cannot do this unless this column is true.)
passwd | text | Not the password (always reads as ********)
valuntil | abstime | Password expiry time (only used for password authentication)
useconfig | text[] | Session defaults for run-time configuration variables
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pg_user_mappings

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45.69. pg_user_mappings

The view pg_user_mappings provides access to information about user mappings. This is essentially a publicly readable view of pg_user_mapping that leaves out the options field if the user has no rights to use it.

Table 45-70. pg_user_mappings Columns

Name | Type | References | Description
umid | oid | pg_user_mapping.oid | OID of the user mapping
srvid | oid | pg_foreign_server.oid | The OID of the foreign server that contains this mapping
srvname | text |  | Name of the foreign server
umuser | oid | pg_authid.oid | OID of the local role being mapped, 0 if the user mapping is public
usename | name |  | Name of the local user to be mapped
umoptions | text[] |  | User mapping specific options, as "keyword=value" strings, if the current user is the owner of the foreign server, else null
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pg_views

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45.70. pg_views

The view pg_views provides access to useful information about each view in the database.

Table 45-71. pg_views Columns

Name | Type | References | Description
schemaname | name | pg_namespace.nspname | Name of schema containing view
viewname | name | pg_class.relname | Name of view
viewowner | name | pg_authid.rolname | Name of view's owner
definition | text |  | View definition (a reconstructed SELECT query)
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Frontend/Backend Protocol

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Chapter 46. Frontend/Backend Protocol

Table of Contents
46.1. Overview
46.1.1. Messaging Overview
46.1.2. Extended Query Overview
46.1.3. Formats and Format Codes
46.2. Message Flow
46.2.1. Start-up
46.2.2. Simple Query
46.2.3. Extended Query
46.2.4. Function Call
46.2.5. COPY Operations
46.2.6. Asynchronous Operations
46.2.7. Canceling Requests in Progress
46.2.8. Termination
46.2.9. SSL Session Encryption
46.3. Streaming Replication Protocol
46.4. Message Data Types
46.5. Message Formats
46.6. Error and Notice Message Fields
46.7. Summary of Changes since Protocol 2.0

PostgreSQL uses a message-based protocol for communication between frontends and backends (clients and servers). The protocol is supported over TCP/IP and also over Unix-domain sockets. Port number 5432 has been registered with IANA as the customary TCP port number for servers supporting this protocol, but in practice any non-privileged port number can be used.

This document describes version 3.0 of the protocol, implemented in PostgreSQL 7.4 and later. For descriptions of the earlier protocol versions, see previous releases of the PostgreSQL documentation. A single server can support multiple protocol versions. The initial startup-request message tells the server which protocol version the client is attempting to use, and then the server follows that protocol if it is able.

In order to serve multiple clients efficiently, the server launches a new "backend" process for each client. In the current implementation, a new child process is created immediately after an incoming connection is detected. This is transparent to the protocol, however. For purposes of the protocol, the terms "backend" and "server" are interchangeable; likewise "frontend" and "client" are interchangeable.

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Overview

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46.1. Overview

The protocol has separate phases for startup and normal operation. In the startup phase, the frontend opens a connection to the server and authenticates itself to the satisfaction of the server. (This might involve a single message, or multiple messages depending on the authentication method being used.) If all goes well, the server then sends status information to the frontend, and finally enters normal operation. Except for the initial startup-request message, this part of the protocol is driven by the server.

During normal operation, the frontend sends queries and other commands to the backend, and the backend sends back query results and other responses. There are a few cases (such as NOTIFY) wherein the backend will send unsolicited messages, but for the most part this portion of a session is driven by frontend requests.

Termination of the session is normally by frontend choice, but can be forced by the backend in certain cases. In any case, when the backend closes the connection, it will roll back any open (incomplete) transaction before exiting.

Within normal operation, SQL commands can be executed through either of two sub-protocols. In the "simple query" protocol, the frontend just sends a textual query string, which is parsed and immediately executed by the backend. In the "extended query" protocol, processing of queries is separated into multiple steps: parsing, binding of parameter values, and execution. This offers flexibility and performance benefits, at the cost of extra complexity.

Normal operation has additional sub-protocols for special operations such as COPY.

46.1.1. Messaging Overview

All communication is through a stream of messages. The first byte of a message identifies the message type, and the next four bytes specify the length of the rest of the message (this length count includes itself, but not the message-type byte). The remaining contents of the message are determined by the message type. For historical reasons, the very first message sent by the client (the startup message) has no initial message-type byte.

To avoid losing synchronization with the message stream, both servers and clients typically read an entire message into a buffer (using the byte count) before attempting to process its contents. This allows easy recovery if an error is detected while processing the contents. In extreme situations (such as not having enough memory to buffer the message), the receiver can use the byte count to determine how much input to skip before it resumes reading messages.

Conversely, both servers and clients must take care never to send an incomplete message. This is commonly done by marshaling the entire message in a buffer before beginning to send it. If a communications failure occurs partway through sending or receiving a message, the only sensible response is to abandon the connection, since there is little hope of recovering message-boundary synchronization.

46.1.2. Extended Query Overview

In the extended-query protocol, execution of SQL commands is divided into multiple steps. The state retained between steps is represented by two types of objects: prepared statements and portals. A prepared statement represents the result of parsing, semantic analysis, and (optionally) planning of a textual query string. A prepared statement is not necessarily ready to execute, because it might lack specific values for parameters. A portal represents a ready-to-execute or already-partially-executed statement, with any missing parameter values filled in. (For SELECT statements, a portal is equivalent to an open cursor, but we choose to use a different term since cursors don't handle non-SELECT statements.)

The overall execution cycle consists of a parse step, which creates a prepared statement from a textual query string; a bind step, which creates a portal given a prepared statement and values for any needed parameters; and an execute step that runs a portal's query. In the case of a query that returns rows (SELECT, SHOW, etc), the execute step can be told to fetch only a limited number of rows, so that multiple execute steps might be needed to complete the operation.

The backend can keep track of multiple prepared statements and portals (but note that these exist only within a session, and are never shared across sessions). Existing prepared statements and portals are referenced by names assigned when they were created. In addition, an "unnamed" prepared statement and portal exist. Although these behave largely the same as named objects, operations on them are optimized for the case of executing a query only once and then discarding it, whereas operations on named objects are optimized on the expectation of multiple uses.

46.1.3. Formats and Format Codes

Data of a particular data type might be transmitted in any of several different formats. As of PostgreSQL 7.4 the only supported formats are "text" and "binary", but the protocol makes provision for future extensions. The desired format for any value is specified by a format code. Clients can specify a format code for each transmitted parameter value and for each column of a query result. Text has format code zero, binary has format code one, and all other format codes are reserved for future definition.

The text representation of values is whatever strings are produced and accepted by the input/output conversion functions for the particular data type. In the transmitted representation, there is no trailing null character; the frontend must add one to received values if it wants to process them as C strings. (The text format does not allow embedded nulls, by the way.)

Binary representations for integers use network byte order (most significant byte first). For other data types consult the documentation or source code to learn about the binary representation. Keep in mind that binary representations for complex data types might change across server versions; the text format is usually the more portable choice.

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Message Flow

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46.2. Message Flow

This section describes the message flow and the semantics of each message type. (Details of the exact representation of each message appear in Section 46.5.) There are several different sub-protocols depending on the state of the connection: start-up, query, function call, COPY, and termination. There are also special provisions for asynchronous operations (including notification responses and command cancellation), which can occur at any time after the start-up phase.

46.2.1. Start-up

To begin a session, a frontend opens a connection to the server and sends a startup message. This message includes the names of the user and of the database the user wants to connect to; it also identifies the particular protocol version to be used. (Optionally, the startup message can include additional settings for run-time parameters.) The server then uses this information and the contents of its configuration files (such as pg_hba.conf) to determine whether the connection is provisionally acceptable, and what additional authentication is required (if any).

The server then sends an appropriate authentication request message, to which the frontend must reply with an appropriate authentication response message (such as a password). For all authentication methods except GSSAPI and SSPI, there is at most one request and one response. In some methods, no response at all is needed from the frontend, and so no authentication request occurs. For GSSAPI and SSPI, multiple exchanges of packets may be needed to complete the authentication.

The authentication cycle ends with the server either rejecting the connection attempt (ErrorResponse), or sending AuthenticationOk.

The possible messages from the server in this phase are:

ErrorResponse

The connection attempt has been rejected. The server then immediately closes the connection.

AuthenticationOk

The authentication exchange is successfully completed.

AuthenticationKerberosV5

The frontend must now take part in a Kerberos V5 authentication dialog (not described here, part of the Kerberos specification) with the server. If this is successful, the server responds with an AuthenticationOk, otherwise it responds with an ErrorResponse.

AuthenticationCleartextPassword

The frontend must now send a PasswordMessage containing the password in clear-text form. If this is the correct password, the server responds with an AuthenticationOk, otherwise it responds with an ErrorResponse.

AuthenticationMD5Password

The frontend must now send a PasswordMessage containing the password encrypted via MD5, using the 4-character salt specified in the AuthenticationMD5Password message. If this is the correct password, the server responds with an AuthenticationOk, otherwise it responds with an ErrorResponse.

AuthenticationSCMCredential

This response is only possible for local Unix-domain connections on platforms that support SCM credential messages. The frontend must issue an SCM credential message and then send a single data byte. (The contents of the data byte are uninteresting; it's only used to ensure that the server waits long enough to receive the credential message.) If the credential is acceptable, the server responds with an AuthenticationOk, otherwise it responds with an ErrorResponse. (This message type is only issued by pre-9.1 servers. It may eventually be removed from the protocol specification.)

AuthenticationGSS

The frontend must now initiate a GSSAPI negotiation. The frontend will send a PasswordMessage with the first part of the GSSAPI data stream in response to this. If further messages are needed, the server will respond with AuthenticationGSSContinue.

AuthenticationSSPI

The frontend must now initiate a SSPI negotiation. The frontend will send a PasswordMessage with the first part of the SSPI data stream in response to this. If further messages are needed, the server will respond with AuthenticationGSSContinue.

AuthenticationGSSContinue

This message contains the response data from the previous step of GSSAPI or SSPI negotiation (AuthenticationGSS, AuthenticationSSPI or a previous AuthenticationGSSContinue). If the GSSAPI or SSPI data in this message indicates more data is needed to complete the authentication, the frontend must send that data as another PasswordMessage. If GSSAPI or SSPI authentication is completed by this message, the server will next send AuthenticationOk to indicate successful authentication or ErrorResponse to indicate failure.

If the frontend does not support the authentication method requested by the server, then it should immediately close the connection.

After having received AuthenticationOk, the frontend must wait for further messages from the server. In this phase a backend process is being started, and the frontend is just an interested bystander. It is still possible for the startup attempt to fail (ErrorResponse), but in the normal case the backend will send some ParameterStatus messages, BackendKeyData, and finally ReadyForQuery.

During this phase the backend will attempt to apply any additional run-time parameter settings that were given in the startup message. If successful, these values become session defaults. An error causes ErrorResponse and exit.

The possible messages from the backend in this phase are:

BackendKeyData

This message provides secret-key data that the frontend must save if it wants to be able to issue cancel requests later. The frontend should not respond to this message, but should continue listening for a ReadyForQuery message.

ParameterStatus

This message informs the frontend about the current (initial) setting of backend parameters, such as client_encoding or DateStyle. The frontend can ignore this message, or record the settings for its future use; see Section 46.2.6 for more details. The frontend should not respond to this message, but should continue listening for a ReadyForQuery message.

ReadyForQuery

Start-up is completed. The frontend can now issue commands.

ErrorResponse

Start-up failed. The connection is closed after sending this message.

NoticeResponse

A warning message has been issued. The frontend should display the message but continue listening for ReadyForQuery or ErrorResponse.

The ReadyForQuery message is the same one that the backend will issue after each command cycle. Depending on the coding needs of the frontend, it is reasonable to consider ReadyForQuery as starting a command cycle, or to consider ReadyForQuery as ending the start-up phase and each subsequent command cycle.

46.2.2. Simple Query

A simple query cycle is initiated by the frontend sending a Query message to the backend. The message includes an SQL command (or commands) expressed as a text string. The backend then sends one or more response messages depending on the contents of the query command string, and finally a ReadyForQuery response message. ReadyForQuery informs the frontend that it can safely send a new command. (It is not actually necessary for the frontend to wait for ReadyForQuery before issuing another command, but the frontend must then take responsibility for figuring out what happens if the earlier command fails and already-issued later commands succeed.)

The possible response messages from the backend are:

CommandComplete

An SQL command completed normally.

CopyInResponse

The backend is ready to copy data from the frontend to a table; see Section 46.2.5.

CopyOutResponse

The backend is ready to copy data from a table to the frontend; see Section 46.2.5.

RowDescription

Indicates that rows are about to be returned in response to a SELECT, FETCH, etc query. The contents of this message describe the column layout of the rows. This will be followed by a DataRow message for each row being returned to the frontend.

DataRow

One of the set of rows returned by a SELECT, FETCH, etc query.

EmptyQueryResponse

An empty query string was recognized.

ErrorResponse

An error has occurred.

ReadyForQuery

Processing of the query string is complete. A separate message is sent to indicate this because the query string might contain multiple SQL commands. (CommandComplete marks the end of processing one SQL command, not the whole string.) ReadyForQuery will always be sent, whether processing terminates successfully or with an error.

NoticeResponse

A warning message has been issued in relation to the query. Notices are in addition to other responses, i.e., the backend will continue processing the command.

The response to a SELECT query (or other queries that return row sets, such as EXPLAIN or SHOW) normally consists of RowDescription, zero or more DataRow messages, and then CommandComplete. COPY to or from the frontend invokes special protocol as described in Section 46.2.5. All other query types normally produce only a CommandComplete message.

Since a query string could contain several queries (separated by semicolons), there might be several such response sequences before the backend finishes processing the query string. ReadyForQuery is issued when the entire string has been processed and the backend is ready to accept a new query string.

If a completely empty (no contents other than whitespace) query string is received, the response is EmptyQueryResponse followed by ReadyForQuery.

In the event of an error, ErrorResponse is issued followed by ReadyForQuery. All further processing of the query string is aborted by ErrorResponse (even if more queries remained in it). Note that this might occur partway through the sequence of messages generated by an individual query.

In simple Query mode, the format of retrieved values is always text, except when the given command is a FETCH from a cursor declared with the BINARY option. In that case, the retrieved values are in binary format. The format codes given in the RowDescription message tell which format is being used.

A frontend must be prepared to accept ErrorResponse and NoticeResponse messages whenever it is expecting any other type of message. See also Section 46.2.6 concerning messages that the backend might generate due to outside events.

Recommended practice is to code frontends in a state-machine style that will accept any message type at any time that it could make sense, rather than wiring in assumptions about the exact sequence of messages.

46.2.3. Extended Query

The extended query protocol breaks down the above-described simple query protocol into multiple steps. The results of preparatory steps can be re-used multiple times for improved efficiency. Furthermore, additional features are available, such as the possibility of supplying data values as separate parameters instead of having to insert them directly into a query string.

In the extended protocol, the frontend first sends a Parse message, which contains a textual query string, optionally some information about data types of parameter placeholders, and the name of a destination prepared-statement object (an empty string selects the unnamed prepared statement). The response is either ParseComplete or ErrorResponse. Parameter data types can be specified by OID; if not given, the parser attempts to infer the data types in the same way as it would do for untyped literal string constants.

Note: A parameter data type can be left unspecified by setting it to zero, or by making the array of parameter type OIDs shorter than the number of parameter symbols ($n) used in the query string. Another special case is that a parameter's type can be specified as void (that is, the OID of the void pseudotype). This is meant to allow parameter symbols to be used for function parameters that are actually OUT parameters. Ordinarily there is no context in which a void parameter could be used, but if such a parameter symbol appears in a function's parameter list, it is effectively ignored. For example, a function call such as foo($1,$2,$3,$4) could match a function with two IN and two OUT arguments, if $3 and $4 are specified as having type void.

Note: The query string contained in a Parse message cannot include more than one SQL statement; else a syntax error is reported. This restriction does not exist in the simple-query protocol, but it does exist in the extended protocol, because allowing prepared statements or portals to contain multiple commands would complicate the protocol unduly.

If successfully created, a named prepared-statement object lasts till the end of the current session, unless explicitly destroyed. An unnamed prepared statement lasts only until the next Parse statement specifying the unnamed statement as destination is issued. (Note that a simple Query message also destroys the unnamed statement.) Named prepared statements must be explicitly closed before they can be redefined by a Parse message, but this is not required for the unnamed statement. Named prepared statements can also be created and accessed at the SQL command level, using PREPARE and EXECUTE.

Once a prepared statement exists, it can be readied for execution using a Bind message. The Bind message gives the name of the source prepared statement (empty string denotes the unnamed prepared statement), the name of the destination portal (empty string denotes the unnamed portal), and the values to use for any parameter placeholders present in the prepared statement. The supplied parameter set must match those needed by the prepared statement. (If you declared any void parameters in the Parse message, pass NULL values for them in the Bind message.) Bind also specifies the format to use for any data returned by the query; the format can be specified overall, or per-column. The response is either BindComplete or ErrorResponse.

Note: The choice between text and binary output is determined by the format codes given in Bind, regardless of the SQL command involved. The BINARY attribute in cursor declarations is irrelevant when using extended query protocol.

Query planning for named prepared-statement objects occurs when the Parse message is processed. If a query will be repeatedly executed with different parameters, it might be beneficial to send a single Parse message containing a parameterized query, followed by multiple Bind and Execute messages. This will avoid replanning the query on each execution.

The unnamed prepared statement is likewise planned during Parse processing if the Parse message defines no parameters. But if there are parameters, query planning occurs every time Bind parameters are supplied. This allows the planner to make use of the actual values of the parameters provided by each Bind message, rather than use generic estimates.

Note: Query plans generated from a parameterized query might be less efficient than query plans generated from an equivalent query with actual parameter values substituted. The query planner cannot make decisions based on actual parameter values (for example, index selectivity) when planning a parameterized query assigned to a named prepared-statement object. This possible penalty is avoided when using the unnamed statement, since it is not planned until actual parameter values are available. The cost is that planning must occur afresh for each Bind, even if the query stays the same.

If successfully created, a named portal object lasts till the end of the current transaction, unless explicitly destroyed. An unnamed portal is destroyed at the end of the transaction, or as soon as the next Bind statement specifying the unnamed portal as destination is issued. (Note that a simple Query message also destroys the unnamed portal.) Named portals must be explicitly closed before they can be redefined by a Bind message, but this is not required for the unnamed portal. Named portals can also be created and accessed at the SQL command level, using DECLARE CURSOR and FETCH.

Once a portal exists, it can be executed using an Execute message. The Execute message specifies the portal name (empty string denotes the unnamed portal) and a maximum result-row count (zero meaning "fetch all rows"). The result-row count is only meaningful for portals containing commands that return row sets; in other cases the command is always executed to completion, and the row count is ignored. The possible responses to Execute are the same as those described above for queries issued via simple query protocol, except that Execute doesn't cause ReadyForQuery or RowDescription to be issued.

If Execute terminates before completing the execution of a portal (due to reaching a nonzero result-row count), it will send a PortalSuspended message; the appearance of this message tells the frontend that another Execute should be issued against the same portal to complete the operation. The CommandComplete message indicating completion of the source SQL command is not sent until the portal's execution is completed. Therefore, an Execute phase is always terminated by the appearance of exactly one of these messages: CommandComplete, EmptyQueryResponse (if the portal was created from an empty query string), ErrorResponse, or PortalSuspended.

At completion of each series of extended-query messages, the frontend should issue a Sync message. This parameterless message causes the backend to close the current transaction if it's not inside a BEGIN/COMMIT transaction block ("close" meaning to commit if no error, or roll back if error). Then a ReadyForQuery response is issued. The purpose of Sync is to provide a resynchronization point for error recovery. When an error is detected while processing any extended-query message, the backend issues ErrorResponse, then reads and discards messages until a Sync is reached, then issues ReadyForQuery and returns to normal message processing. (But note that no skipping occurs if an error is detected while processing Sync — this ensures that there is one and only one ReadyForQuery sent for each Sync.)

Note: Sync does not cause a transaction block opened with BEGIN to be closed. It is possible to detect this situation since the ReadyForQuery message includes transaction status information.

In addition to these fundamental, required operations, there are several optional operations that can be used with extended-query protocol.

The Describe message (portal variant) specifies the name of an existing portal (or an empty string for the unnamed portal). The response is a RowDescription message describing the rows that will be returned by executing the portal; or a NoData message if the portal does not contain a query that will return rows; or ErrorResponse if there is no such portal.

The Describe message (statement variant) specifies the name of an existing prepared statement (or an empty string for the unnamed prepared statement). The response is a ParameterDescription message describing the parameters needed by the statement, followed by a RowDescription message describing the rows that will be returned when the statement is eventually executed (or a NoData message if the statement will not return rows). ErrorResponse is issued if there is no such prepared statement. Note that since Bind has not yet been issued, the formats to be used for returned columns are not yet known to the backend; the format code fields in the RowDescription message will be zeroes in this case.

Tip: In most scenarios the frontend should issue one or the other variant of Describe before issuing Execute, to ensure that it knows how to interpret the results it will get back.

The Close message closes an existing prepared statement or portal and releases resources. It is not an error to issue Close against a nonexistent statement or portal name. The response is normally CloseComplete, but could be ErrorResponse if some difficulty is encountered while releasing resources. Note that closing a prepared statement implicitly closes any open portals that were constructed from that statement.

The Flush message does not cause any specific output to be generated, but forces the backend to deliver any data pending in its output buffers. A Flush must be sent after any extended-query command except Sync, if the frontend wishes to examine the results of that command before issuing more commands. Without Flush, messages returned by the backend will be combined into the minimum possible number of packets to minimize network overhead.

Note: The simple Query message is approximately equivalent to the series Parse, Bind, portal Describe, Execute, Close, Sync, using the unnamed prepared statement and portal objects and no parameters. One difference is that it will accept multiple SQL statements in the query string, automatically performing the bind/describe/execute sequence for each one in succession. Another difference is that it will not return ParseComplete, BindComplete, CloseComplete, or NoData messages.

46.2.4. Function Call

The Function Call sub-protocol allows the client to request a direct call of any function that exists in the database's pg_proc system catalog. The client must have execute permission for the function.

Note: The Function Call sub-protocol is a legacy feature that is probably best avoided in new code. Similar results can be accomplished by setting up a prepared statement that does SELECT function($1, ...). The Function Call cycle can then be replaced with Bind/Execute.

A Function Call cycle is initiated by the frontend sending a FunctionCall message to the backend. The backend then sends one or more response messages depending on the results of the function call, and finally a ReadyForQuery response message. ReadyForQuery informs the frontend that it can safely send a new query or function call.

The possible response messages from the backend are:

ErrorResponse

An error has occurred.

FunctionCallResponse

The function call was completed and returned the result given in the message. (Note that the Function Call protocol can only handle a single scalar result, not a row type or set of results.)

ReadyForQuery

Processing of the function call is complete. ReadyForQuery will always be sent, whether processing terminates successfully or with an error.

NoticeResponse

A warning message has been issued in relation to the function call. Notices are in addition to other responses, i.e., the backend will continue processing the command.

46.2.5. COPY Operations

The COPY command allows high-speed bulk data transfer to or from the server. Copy-in and copy-out operations each switch the connection into a distinct sub-protocol, which lasts until the operation is completed.

Copy-in mode (data transfer to the server) is initiated when the backend executes a COPY FROM STDIN SQL statement. The backend sends a CopyInResponse message to the frontend. The frontend should then send zero or more CopyData messages, forming a stream of input data. (The message boundaries are not required to have anything to do with row boundaries, although that is often a reasonable choice.) The frontend can terminate the copy-in mode by sending either a CopyDone message (allowing successful termination) or a CopyFail message (which will cause the COPY SQL statement to fail with an error). The backend then reverts to the command-processing mode it was in before the COPY started, which will be either simple or extended query protocol. It will next send either CommandComplete (if successful) or ErrorResponse (if not).

In the event of a backend-detected error during copy-in mode (including receipt of a CopyFail message), the backend will issue an ErrorResponse message. If the COPY command was issued via an extended-query message, the backend will now discard frontend messages until a Sync message is received, then it will issue ReadyForQuery and return to normal processing. If the COPY command was issued in a simple Query message, the rest of that message is discarded and ReadyForQuery is issued. In either case, any subsequent CopyData, CopyDone, or CopyFail messages issued by the frontend will simply be dropped.

The backend will ignore Flush and Sync messages received during copy-in mode. Receipt of any other non-copy message type constitutes an error that will abort the copy-in state as described above. (The exception for Flush and Sync is for the convenience of client libraries that always send Flush or Sync after an Execute message, without checking whether the command to be executed is a COPY FROM STDIN.)

Copy-out mode (data transfer from the server) is initiated when the backend executes a COPY TO STDOUT SQL statement. The backend sends a CopyOutResponse message to the frontend, followed by zero or more CopyData messages (always one per row), followed by CopyDone. The backend then reverts to the command-processing mode it was in before the COPY started, and sends CommandComplete. The frontend cannot abort the transfer (except by closing the connection or issuing a Cancel request), but it can discard unwanted CopyData and CopyDone messages.

In the event of a backend-detected error during copy-out mode, the backend will issue an ErrorResponse message and revert to normal processing. The frontend should treat receipt of ErrorResponse as terminating the copy-out mode.

It is possible for NoticeResponse and ParameterStatus messages to be interspersed between CopyData messages; frontends must handle these cases, and should be prepared for other asynchronous message types as well (see Section 46.2.6). Otherwise, any message type other than CopyData or CopyDone may be treated as terminating copy-out mode.

There is another Copy-related mode called Copy-both, which allows high-speed bulk data transfer to and from the server. Copy-both mode is initiated when a backend in walsender mode executes a START_REPLICATION statement. The backend sends a CopyBothResponse message to the frontend. Both the backend and the frontend may then send CopyData messages until the connection is terminated. See Section 46.3.

The CopyInResponse, CopyOutResponse and CopyBothResponse messages include fields that inform the frontend of the number of columns per row and the format codes being used for each column. (As of the present implementation, all columns in a given COPY operation will use the same format, but the message design does not assume this.)

46.2.6. Asynchronous Operations

There are several cases in which the backend will send messages that are not specifically prompted by the frontend's command stream. Frontends must be prepared to deal with these messages at any time, even when not engaged in a query. At minimum, one should check for these cases before beginning to read a query response.

It is possible for NoticeResponse messages to be generated due to outside activity; for example, if the database administrator commands a "fast" database shutdown, the backend will send a NoticeResponse indicating this fact before closing the connection. Accordingly, frontends should always be prepared to accept and display NoticeResponse messages, even when the connection is nominally idle.

ParameterStatus messages will be generated whenever the active value changes for any of the parameters the backend believes the frontend should know about. Most commonly this occurs in response to a SET SQL command executed by the frontend, and this case is effectively synchronous — but it is also possible for parameter status changes to occur because the administrator changed a configuration file and then sent the SIGHUP signal to the server. Also, if a SET command is rolled back, an appropriate ParameterStatus message will be generated to report the current effective value.

At present there is a hard-wired set of parameters for which ParameterStatus will be generated: they are server_version, server_encoding, client_encoding, application_name, is_superuser, session_authorization, DateStyle, IntervalStyle, TimeZone, integer_datetimes, and standard_conforming_strings. (server_encoding, TimeZone, and integer_datetimes were not reported by releases before 8.0; standard_conforming_strings was not reported by releases before 8.1; IntervalStyle was not reported by releases before 8.4; application_name was not reported by releases before 9.0.) Note that server_version, server_encoding and integer_datetimes are pseudo-parameters that cannot change after startup. This set might change in the future, or even become configurable. Accordingly, a frontend should simply ignore ParameterStatus for parameters that it does not understand or care about.

If a frontend issues a LISTEN command, then the backend will send a NotificationResponse message (not to be confused with NoticeResponse!) whenever a NOTIFY command is executed for the same channel name.

Note: At present, NotificationResponse can only be sent outside a transaction, and thus it will not occur in the middle of a command-response series, though it might occur just before ReadyForQuery. It is unwise to design frontend logic that assumes that, however. Good practice is to be able to accept NotificationResponse at any point in the protocol.

46.2.7. Canceling Requests in Progress

During the processing of a query, the frontend might request cancellation of the query. The cancel request is not sent directly on the open connection to the backend for reasons of implementation efficiency: we don't want to have the backend constantly checking for new input from the frontend during query processing. Cancel requests should be relatively infrequent, so we make them slightly cumbersome in order to avoid a penalty in the normal case.

To issue a cancel request, the frontend opens a new connection to the server and sends a CancelRequest message, rather than the StartupMessage message that would ordinarily be sent across a new connection. The server will process this request and then close the connection. For security reasons, no direct reply is made to the cancel request message.

A CancelRequest message will be ignored unless it contains the same key data (PID and secret key) passed to the frontend during connection start-up. If the request matches the PID and secret key for a currently executing backend, the processing of the current query is aborted. (In the existing implementation, this is done by sending a special signal to the backend process that is processing the query.)

The cancellation signal might or might not have any effect — for example, if it arrives after the backend has finished processing the query, then it will have no effect. If the cancellation is effective, it results in the current command being terminated early with an error message.

The upshot of all this is that for reasons of both security and efficiency, the frontend has no direct way to tell whether a cancel request has succeeded. It must continue to wait for the backend to respond to the query. Issuing a cancel simply improves the odds that the current query will finish soon, and improves the odds that it will fail with an error message instead of succeeding.

Since the cancel request is sent across a new connection to the server and not across the regular frontend/backend communication link, it is possible for the cancel request to be issued by any process, not just the frontend whose query is to be canceled. This might provide additional flexibility when building multiple-process applications. It also introduces a security risk, in that unauthorized persons might try to cancel queries. The security risk is addressed by requiring a dynamically generated secret key to be supplied in cancel requests.

46.2.8. Termination

The normal, graceful termination procedure is that the frontend sends a Terminate message and immediately closes the connection. On receipt of this message, the backend closes the connection and terminates.

In rare cases (such as an administrator-commanded database shutdown) the backend might disconnect without any frontend request to do so. In such cases the backend will attempt to send an error or notice message giving the reason for the disconnection before it closes the connection.

Other termination scenarios arise from various failure cases, such as core dump at one end or the other, loss of the communications link, loss of message-boundary synchronization, etc. If either frontend or backend sees an unexpected closure of the connection, it should clean up and terminate. The frontend has the option of launching a new backend by recontacting the server if it doesn't want to terminate itself. Closing the connection is also advisable if an unrecognizable message type is received, since this probably indicates loss of message-boundary sync.

For either normal or abnormal termination, any open transaction is rolled back, not committed. One should note however that if a frontend disconnects while a non-SELECT query is being processed, the backend will probably finish the query before noticing the disconnection. If the query is outside any transaction block (BEGIN ... COMMIT sequence) then its results might be committed before the disconnection is recognized.

46.2.9. SSL Session Encryption

If PostgreSQL was built with SSL support, frontend/backend communications can be encrypted using SSL. This provides communication security in environments where attackers might be able to capture the session traffic. For more information on encrypting PostgreSQL sessions with SSL, see Section 17.9.

To initiate an SSL-encrypted connection, the frontend initially sends an SSLRequest message rather than a StartupMessage. The server then responds with a single byte containing S or N, indicating that it is willing or unwilling to perform SSL, respectively. The frontend might close the connection at this point if it is dissatisfied with the response. To continue after S, perform an SSL startup handshake (not described here, part of the SSL specification) with the server. If this is successful, continue with sending the usual StartupMessage. In this case the StartupMessage and all subsequent data will be SSL-encrypted. To continue after N, send the usual StartupMessage and proceed without encryption.

The frontend should also be prepared to handle an ErrorMessage response to SSLRequest from the server. This would only occur if the server predates the addition of SSL support to PostgreSQL. In this case the connection must be closed, but the frontend might choose to open a fresh connection and proceed without requesting SSL.

An initial SSLRequest can also be used in a connection that is being opened to send a CancelRequest message.

While the protocol itself does not provide a way for the server to force SSL encryption, the administrator can configure the server to reject unencrypted sessions as a byproduct of authentication checking.

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Streaming Replication Protocol

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46.3. Streaming Replication Protocol

To initiate streaming replication, the frontend sends the replication parameter in the startup message. This tells the backend to go into walsender mode, wherein a small set of replication commands can be issued instead of SQL statements. Only the simple query protocol can be used in walsender mode. The commands accepted in walsender mode are:

IDENTIFY_SYSTEM

Requests the server to identify itself. Server replies with a result set of a single row, containing three fields:

systemid

The unique system identifier identifying the cluster. This can be used to check that the base backup used to initialize the standby came from the same cluster.

timeline

Current TimelineID. Also useful to check that the standby is consistent with the master.

xlogpos

Current xlog flush location. Useful to get a known location in the transaction log where streaming can start.

START_REPLICATION XXX/XXX

Instructs server to start streaming WAL, starting at WAL position XXX/XXX. The server can reply with an error, e.g. if the requested section of WAL has already been recycled. On success, server responds with a CopyBothResponse message, and then starts to stream WAL to the frontend. WAL will continue to be streamed until the connection is broken; no further commands will be accepted.

WAL data is sent as a series of CopyData messages. (This allows other information to be intermixed; in particular the server can send an ErrorResponse message if it encounters a failure after beginning to stream.) The payload in each CopyData message follows this format:

XLogData (B)

Byte1('w')

Identifies the message as WAL data.

Byte8

The starting point of the WAL data in this message, given in XLogRecPtr format.

Byte8

The current end of WAL on the server, given in XLogRecPtr format.

Byte8

The server's system clock at the time of transmission, given in TimestampTz format.

Byten

A section of the WAL data stream.

A single WAL record is never split across two CopyData messages. When a WAL record crosses a WAL page boundary, and is therefore already split using continuation records, it can be split at the page boundary. In other words, the first main WAL record and its continuation records can be sent in different CopyData messages.

Note that all fields within the WAL data and the above-described header will be in the sending server's native format. Endianness, and the format for the timestamp, are unpredictable unless the receiver has verified that the sender's system identifier matches its own pg_control contents.

If the WAL sender process is terminated normally (during postmaster shutdown), it will send a CommandComplete message before exiting. This might not happen during an abnormal shutdown, of course.

The receiving process can send replies back to the sender at any time, using one of the following message formats (also in the payload of a CopyData message):

Standby status update (F)

Byte1('r')

Identifies the message as a receiver status update.

Byte8

The location of the last WAL byte + 1 received and written to disk in the standby, in XLogRecPtr format.

Byte8

The location of the last WAL byte + 1 flushed to disk in the standby, in XLogRecPtr format.

Byte8

The location of the last WAL byte + 1 applied in the standby, in XLogRecPtr format.

Byte8

The server's system clock at the time of transmission, given in TimestampTz format.

Hot Standby feedback message (F)

Byte1('h')

Identifies the message as a Hot Standby feedback message.

Byte8

The server's system clock at the time of transmission, given in TimestampTz format.

Byte4

The standby's current xmin. This may be 0, if the standby is sending notification that Hot Standby feedback will no longer be sent on this connection. Later non-zero messages may reinitiate the feedback mechanism.

Byte4

The standby's current epoch.

BASE_BACKUP [LABEL 'label'] [PROGRESS] [FAST] [WAL] [NOWAIT]

Instructs the server to start streaming a base backup. The system will automatically be put in backup mode before the backup is started, and taken out of it when the backup is complete. The following options are accepted:

LABEL 'label'

Sets the label of the backup. If none is specified, a backup label of base backup will be used. The quoting rules for the label are the same as a standard SQL string with standard_conforming_strings turned on.

PROGRESS

Request information required to generate a progress report. This will send back an approximate size in the header of each tablespace, which can be used to calculate how far along the stream is done. This is calculated by enumerating all the file sizes once before the transfer is even started, and may as such have a negative impact on the performance - in particular it may take longer before the first data is streamed. Since the database files can change during the backup, the size is only approximate and may both grow and shrink between the time of approximation and the sending of the actual files.

FAST

Request a fast checkpoint.

WAL

Include the necessary WAL segments in the backup. This will include all the files between start and stop backup in the pg_xlog directory of the base directory tar file.

NOWAIT

By default, the backup will wait until the last required xlog segment has been archived, or emit a warning if log archiving is not enabled. Specifying NOWAIT disables both the waiting and the warning, leaving the client responsible for ensuring the required log is available.

When the backup is started, the server will first send two ordinary result sets, followed by one or more CopyResponse results.

The first ordinary result set contains the starting position of the backup, given in XLogRecPtr format as a single column in a single row.

The second ordinary result set has one row for each tablespace. The fields in this row are:

spcoid

The oid of the tablespace, or NULL if it's the base directory.

spclocation

The full path of the tablespace directory, or NULL if it's the base directory.

size

The approximate size of the tablespace, if progress report has been requested; otherwise it's NULL.

After the second regular result set, one or more CopyResponse results will be sent, one for PGDATA and one for each additional tablespace other than pg_default and pg_global. The data in the CopyResponse results will be a tar format (following the "ustar interchange format" specified in the POSIX 1003.1-2008 standard) dump of the tablespace contents, except that the two trailing blocks of zeroes specified in the standard are omitted. After the tar data is complete, a final ordinary result set will be sent.

The tar archive for the data directory and each tablespace will contain all files in the directories, regardless of whether they are PostgreSQL files or other files added to the same directory. The only excluded files are:

  • postmaster.pid

  • postmaster.opts

  • pg_xlog, including subdirectories. If the backup is run with wal files included, a synthesized version of pg_xlog will be included, but it will only contain the files necessary for the backup to work, not the rest of the contents.

Owner, group and file mode are set if the underlying filesystem on the server supports it.

Once all tablespaces have been sent, a final regular result set will be sent. This result set contains the end position of the backup, given in XLogRecPtr format as a single column in a single row.

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Message Data Types

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46.4. Message Data Types

This section describes the base data types used in messages.

Intn(i)

An n-bit integer in network byte order (most significant byte first). If i is specified it is the exact value that will appear, otherwise the value is variable. Eg. Int16, Int32(42).

Intn[k]

An array of k n-bit integers, each in network byte order. The array length k is always determined by an earlier field in the message. Eg. Int16[M].

String(s)

A null-terminated string (C-style string). There is no specific length limitation on strings. If s is specified it is the exact value that will appear, otherwise the value is variable. Eg. String, String("user").

Note: There is no predefined limit on the length of a string that can be returned by the backend. Good coding strategy for a frontend is to use an expandable buffer so that anything that fits in memory can be accepted. If that's not feasible, read the full string and discard trailing characters that don't fit into your fixed-size buffer.

Byten(c)

Exactly n bytes. If the field width n is not a constant, it is always determinable from an earlier field in the message. If c is specified it is the exact value. Eg. Byte2, Byte1('\n').

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Message Formats

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46.5. Message Formats

This section describes the detailed format of each message. Each is marked to indicate that it can be sent by a frontend (F), a backend (B), or both (F & B). Notice that although each message includes a byte count at the beginning, the message format is defined so that the message end can be found without reference to the byte count. This aids validity checking. (The CopyData message is an exception, because it forms part of a data stream; the contents of any individual CopyData message cannot be interpretable on their own.)

AuthenticationOk (B)

Byte1('R')

Identifies the message as an authentication request.

Int32(8)

Length of message contents in bytes, including self.

Int32(0)

Specifies that the authentication was successful.

AuthenticationKerberosV5 (B)

Byte1('R')

Identifies the message as an authentication request.

Int32(8)

Length of message contents in bytes, including self.

Int32(2)

Specifies that Kerberos V5 authentication is required.

AuthenticationCleartextPassword (B)

Byte1('R')

Identifies the message as an authentication request.

Int32(8)

Length of message contents in bytes, including self.

Int32(3)

Specifies that a clear-text password is required.

AuthenticationMD5Password (B)

Byte1('R')

Identifies the message as an authentication request.

Int32(12)

Length of message contents in bytes, including self.

Int32(5)

Specifies that an MD5-encrypted password is required.

Byte4

The salt to use when encrypting the password.

AuthenticationSCMCredential (B)

Byte1('R')

Identifies the message as an authentication request.

Int32(8)

Length of message contents in bytes, including self.

Int32(6)

Specifies that an SCM credentials message is required.

AuthenticationGSS (B)

Byte1('R')

Identifies the message as an authentication request.

Int32(8)

Length of message contents in bytes, including self.

Int32(7)

Specifies that GSSAPI authentication is required.

AuthenticationSSPI (B)

Byte1('R')

Identifies the message as an authentication request.

Int32(8)

Length of message contents in bytes, including self.

Int32(9)

Specifies that SSPI authentication is required.

AuthenticationGSSContinue (B)

Byte1('R')

Identifies the message as an authentication request.

Int32

Length of message contents in bytes, including self.

Int32(8)

Specifies that this message contains GSSAPI or SSPI data.

Byten

GSSAPI or SSPI authentication data.

BackendKeyData (B)

Byte1('K')

Identifies the message as cancellation key data. The frontend must save these values if it wishes to be able to issue CancelRequest messages later.

Int32(12)

Length of message contents in bytes, including self.

Int32

The process ID of this backend.

Int32

The secret key of this backend.

Bind (F)

Byte1('B')

Identifies the message as a Bind command.

Int32

Length of message contents in bytes, including self.

String

The name of the destination portal (an empty string selects the unnamed portal).

String

The name of the source prepared statement (an empty string selects the unnamed prepared statement).

Int16

The number of parameter format codes that follow (denoted C below). This can be zero to indicate that there are no parameters or that the parameters all use the default format (text); or one, in which case the specified format code is applied to all parameters; or it can equal the actual number of parameters.

Int16[C]

The parameter format codes. Each must presently be zero (text) or one (binary).

Int16

The number of parameter values that follow (possibly zero). This must match the number of parameters needed by the query.

Next, the following pair of fields appear for each parameter:

Int32

The length of the parameter value, in bytes (this count does not include itself). Can be zero. As a special case, -1 indicates a NULL parameter value. No value bytes follow in the NULL case.

Byten

The value of the parameter, in the format indicated by the associated format code. n is the above length.

After the last parameter, the following fields appear:

Int16

The number of result-column format codes that follow (denoted R below). This can be zero to indicate that there are no result columns or that the result columns should all use the default format (text); or one, in which case the specified format code is applied to all result columns (if any); or it can equal the actual number of result columns of the query.

Int16[R]

The result-column format codes. Each must presently be zero (text) or one (binary).

BindComplete (B)

Byte1('2')

Identifies the message as a Bind-complete indicator.

Int32(4)

Length of message contents in bytes, including self.

CancelRequest (F)

Int32(16)

Length of message contents in bytes, including self.

Int32(80877102)

The cancel request code. The value is chosen to contain 1234 in the most significant 16 bits, and 5678 in the least 16 significant bits. (To avoid confusion, this code must not be the same as any protocol version number.)

Int32

The process ID of the target backend.

Int32

The secret key for the target backend.

Close (F)

Byte1('C')

Identifies the message as a Close command.

Int32

Length of message contents in bytes, including self.

Byte1

'S' to close a prepared statement; or 'P' to close a portal.

String

The name of the prepared statement or portal to close (an empty string selects the unnamed prepared statement or portal).

CloseComplete (B)

Byte1('3')

Identifies the message as a Close-complete indicator.

Int32(4)

Length of message contents in bytes, including self.

CommandComplete (B)

Byte1('C')

Identifies the message as a command-completed response.

Int32

Length of message contents in bytes, including self.

String

The command tag. This is usually a single word that identifies which SQL command was completed.

For an INSERT command, the tag is INSERT oid rows, where rows is the number of rows inserted. oid is the object ID of the inserted row if rows is 1 and the target table has OIDs; otherwise oid is 0.

For a DELETE command, the tag is DELETE rows where rows is the number of rows deleted.

For an UPDATE command, the tag is UPDATE rows where rows is the number of rows updated.

For a SELECT or CREATE TABLE AS command, the tag is SELECT rows where rows is the number of rows retrieved.

For a MOVE command, the tag is MOVE rows where rows is the number of rows the cursor's position has been changed by.

For a FETCH command, the tag is FETCH rows where rows is the number of rows that have been retrieved from the cursor.

For a COPY command, the tag is COPY rows where rows is the number of rows copied. (Note: the row count appears only in PostgreSQL 8.2 and later.)

CopyData (F & B)

Byte1('d')

Identifies the message as COPY data.

Int32

Length of message contents in bytes, including self.

Byten

Data that forms part of a COPY data stream. Messages sent from the backend will always correspond to single data rows, but messages sent by frontends might divide the data stream arbitrarily.

CopyDone (F & B)

Byte1('c')

Identifies the message as a COPY-complete indicator.

Int32(4)

Length of message contents in bytes, including self.

CopyFail (F)

Byte1('f')

Identifies the message as a COPY-failure indicator.

Int32

Length of message contents in bytes, including self.

String

An error message to report as the cause of failure.

CopyInResponse (B)

Byte1('G')

Identifies the message as a Start Copy In response. The frontend must now send copy-in data (if not prepared to do so, send a CopyFail message).

Int32

Length of message contents in bytes, including self.

Int8

0 indicates the overall COPY format is textual (rows separated by newlines, columns separated by separator characters, etc). 1 indicates the overall copy format is binary (similar to DataRow format). See COPY for more information.

Int16

The number of columns in the data to be copied (denoted N below).

Int16[N]

The format codes to be used for each column. Each must presently be zero (text) or one (binary). All must be zero if the overall copy format is textual.

CopyOutResponse (B)

Byte1('H')

Identifies the message as a Start Copy Out response. This message will be followed by copy-out data.

Int32

Length of message contents in bytes, including self.

Int8

0 indicates the overall COPY format is textual (rows separated by newlines, columns separated by separator characters, etc). 1 indicates the overall copy format is binary (similar to DataRow format). See COPY for more information.

Int16

The number of columns in the data to be copied (denoted N below).

Int16[N]

The format codes to be used for each column. Each must presently be zero (text) or one (binary). All must be zero if the overall copy format is textual.

CopyBothResponse (B)

Byte1('W')

Identifies the message as a Start Copy Both response. This message is used only for Streaming Replication.

Int32

Length of message contents in bytes, including self.

Int8

0 indicates the overall COPY format is textual (rows separated by newlines, columns separated by separator characters, etc). 1 indicates the overall copy format is binary (similar to DataRow format). See COPY for more information.

Int16

The number of columns in the data to be copied (denoted N below).

Int16[N]

The format codes to be used for each column. Each must presently be zero (text) or one (binary). All must be zero if the overall copy format is textual.

DataRow (B)

Byte1('D')

Identifies the message as a data row.

Int32

Length of message contents in bytes, including self.

Int16

The number of column values that follow (possibly zero).

Next, the following pair of fields appear for each column:

Int32

The length of the column value, in bytes (this count does not include itself). Can be zero. As a special case, -1 indicates a NULL column value. No value bytes follow in the NULL case.

Byten

The value of the column, in the format indicated by the associated format code. n is the above length.

Describe (F)

Byte1('D')

Identifies the message as a Describe command.

Int32

Length of message contents in bytes, including self.

Byte1

'S' to describe a prepared statement; or 'P' to describe a portal.

String

The name of the prepared statement or portal to describe (an empty string selects the unnamed prepared statement or portal).

EmptyQueryResponse (B)

Byte1('I')

Identifies the message as a response to an empty query string. (This substitutes for CommandComplete.)

Int32(4)

Length of message contents in bytes, including self.

ErrorResponse (B)

Byte1('E')

Identifies the message as an error.

Int32

Length of message contents in bytes, including self.

The message body consists of one or more identified fields, followed by a zero byte as a terminator. Fields can appear in any order. For each field there is the following:

Byte1

A code identifying the field type; if zero, this is the message terminator and no string follows. The presently defined field types are listed in Section 46.6. Since more field types might be added in future, frontends should silently ignore fields of unrecognized type.

String

The field value.

Execute (F)

Byte1('E')

Identifies the message as an Execute command.

Int32

Length of message contents in bytes, including self.

String

The name of the portal to execute (an empty string selects the unnamed portal).

Int32

Maximum number of rows to return, if portal contains a query that returns rows (ignored otherwise). Zero denotes "no limit".

Flush (F)

Byte1('H')

Identifies the message as a Flush command.

Int32(4)

Length of message contents in bytes, including self.

FunctionCall (F)

Byte1('F')

Identifies the message as a function call.

Int32

Length of message contents in bytes, including self.

Int32

Specifies the object ID of the function to call.

Int16

The number of argument format codes that follow (denoted C below). This can be zero to indicate that there are no arguments or that the arguments all use the default format (text); or one, in which case the specified format code is applied to all arguments; or it can equal the actual number of arguments.

Int16[C]

The argument format codes. Each must presently be zero (text) or one (binary).

Int16

Specifies the number of arguments being supplied to the function.

Next, the following pair of fields appear for each argument:

Int32

The length of the argument value, in bytes (this count does not include itself). Can be zero. As a special case, -1 indicates a NULL argument value. No value bytes follow in the NULL case.

Byten

The value of the argument, in the format indicated by the associated format code. n is the above length.

After the last argument, the following field appears:

Int16

The format code for the function result. Must presently be zero (text) or one (binary).

FunctionCallResponse (B)

Byte1('V')

Identifies the message as a function call result.

Int32

Length of message contents in bytes, including self.

Int32

The length of the function result value, in bytes (this count does not include itself). Can be zero. As a special case, -1 indicates a NULL function result. No value bytes follow in the NULL case.

Byten

The value of the function result, in the format indicated by the associated format code. n is the above length.

NoData (B)

Byte1('n')

Identifies the message as a no-data indicator.

Int32(4)

Length of message contents in bytes, including self.

NoticeResponse (B)

Byte1('N')

Identifies the message as a notice.

Int32

Length of message contents in bytes, including self.

The message body consists of one or more identified fields, followed by a zero byte as a terminator. Fields can appear in any order. For each field there is the following:

Byte1

A code identifying the field type; if zero, this is the message terminator and no string follows. The presently defined field types are listed in Section 46.6. Since more field types might be added in future, frontends should silently ignore fields of unrecognized type.

String

The field value.

NotificationResponse (B)

Byte1('A')

Identifies the message as a notification response.

Int32

Length of message contents in bytes, including self.

Int32

The process ID of the notifying backend process.

String

The name of the channel that the notify has been raised on.

String

The "payload" string passed from the notifying process.

ParameterDescription (B)

Byte1('t')

Identifies the message as a parameter description.

Int32

Length of message contents in bytes, including self.

Int16

The number of parameters used by the statement (can be zero).

Then, for each parameter, there is the following:

Int32

Specifies the object ID of the parameter data type.

ParameterStatus (B)

Byte1('S')

Identifies the message as a run-time parameter status report.

Int32

Length of message contents in bytes, including self.

String

The name of the run-time parameter being reported.

String

The current value of the parameter.

Parse (F)

Byte1('P')

Identifies the message as a Parse command.

Int32

Length of message contents in bytes, including self.

String

The name of the destination prepared statement (an empty string selects the unnamed prepared statement).

String

The query string to be parsed.

Int16

The number of parameter data types specified (can be zero). Note that this is not an indication of the number of parameters that might appear in the query string, only the number that the frontend wants to prespecify types for.

Then, for each parameter, there is the following:

Int32

Specifies the object ID of the parameter data type. Placing a zero here is equivalent to leaving the type unspecified.

ParseComplete (B)

Byte1('1')

Identifies the message as a Parse-complete indicator.

Int32(4)

Length of message contents in bytes, including self.

PasswordMessage (F)

Byte1('p')

Identifies the message as a password response. Note that this is also used for GSSAPI and SSPI response messages (which is really a design error, since the contained data is not a null-terminated string in that case, but can be arbitrary binary data).

Int32

Length of message contents in bytes, including self.

String

The password (encrypted, if requested).

PortalSuspended (B)

Byte1('s')

Identifies the message as a portal-suspended indicator. Note this only appears if an Execute message's row-count limit was reached.

Int32(4)

Length of message contents in bytes, including self.

Query (F)

Byte1('Q')

Identifies the message as a simple query.

Int32

Length of message contents in bytes, including self.

String

The query string itself.

ReadyForQuery (B)

Byte1('Z')

Identifies the message type. ReadyForQuery is sent whenever the backend is ready for a new query cycle.

Int32(5)

Length of message contents in bytes, including self.

Byte1

Current backend transaction status indicator. Possible values are 'I' if idle (not in a transaction block); 'T' if in a transaction block; or 'E' if in a failed transaction block (queries will be rejected until block is ended).

RowDescription (B)

Byte1('T')

Identifies the message as a row description.

Int32

Length of message contents in bytes, including self.

Int16

Specifies the number of fields in a row (can be zero).

Then, for each field, there is the following:

String

The field name.

Int32

If the field can be identified as a column of a specific table, the object ID of the table; otherwise zero.

Int16

If the field can be identified as a column of a specific table, the attribute number of the column; otherwise zero.

Int32

The object ID of the field's data type.

Int16

The data type size (see pg_type.typlen). Note that negative values denote variable-width types.

Int32

The type modifier (see pg_attribute.atttypmod). The meaning of the modifier is type-specific.

Int16

The format code being used for the field. Currently will be zero (text) or one (binary). In a RowDescription returned from the statement variant of Describe, the format code is not yet known and will always be zero.

SSLRequest (F)

Int32(8)

Length of message contents in bytes, including self.

Int32(80877103)

The SSL request code. The value is chosen to contain 1234 in the most significant 16 bits, and 5679 in the least 16 significant bits. (To avoid confusion, this code must not be the same as any protocol version number.)

StartupMessage (F)

Int32

Length of message contents in bytes, including self.

Int32(196608)

The protocol version number. The most significant 16 bits are the major version number (3 for the protocol described here). The least significant 16 bits are the minor version number (0 for the protocol described here).

The protocol version number is followed by one or more pairs of parameter name and value strings. A zero byte is required as a terminator after the last name/value pair. Parameters can appear in any order. user is required, others are optional. Each parameter is specified as:

String

The parameter name. Currently recognized names are:

user

The database user name to connect as. Required; there is no default.

database

The database to connect to. Defaults to the user name.

options

Command-line arguments for the backend. (This is deprecated in favor of setting individual run-time parameters.)

In addition to the above, any run-time parameter that can be set at backend start time might be listed. Such settings will be applied during backend start (after parsing the command-line options if any). The values will act as session defaults.

String

The parameter value.

Sync (F)

Byte1('S')

Identifies the message as a Sync command.

Int32(4)

Length of message contents in bytes, including self.

Terminate (F)

Byte1('X')

Identifies the message as a termination.

Int32(4)

Length of message contents in bytes, including self.

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Error and Notice Message Fields

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46.6. Error and Notice Message Fields

This section describes the fields that can appear in ErrorResponse and NoticeResponse messages. Each field type has a single-byte identification token. Note that any given field type should appear at most once per message.

S

Severity: the field contents are ERROR, FATAL, or PANIC (in an error message), or WARNING, NOTICE, DEBUG, INFO, or LOG (in a notice message), or a localized translation of one of these. Always present.

C

Code: the SQLSTATE code for the error (see Appendix A). Not localizable. Always present.

M

Message: the primary human-readable error message. This should be accurate but terse (typically one line). Always present.

D

Detail: an optional secondary error message carrying more detail about the problem. Might run to multiple lines.

H

Hint: an optional suggestion what to do about the problem. This is intended to differ from Detail in that it offers advice (potentially inappropriate) rather than hard facts. Might run to multiple lines.

P

Position: the field value is a decimal ASCII integer, indicating an error cursor position as an index into the original query string. The first character has index 1, and positions are measured in characters not bytes.

p

Internal position: this is defined the same as the P field, but it is used when the cursor position refers to an internally generated command rather than the one submitted by the client. The q field will always appear when this field appears.

q

Internal query: the text of a failed internally-generated command. This could be, for example, a SQL query issued by a PL/pgSQL function.

W

Where: an indication of the context in which the error occurred. Presently this includes a call stack traceback of active procedural language functions and internally-generated queries. The trace is one entry per line, most recent first.

F

File: the file name of the source-code location where the error was reported.

L

Line: the line number of the source-code location where the error was reported.

R

Routine: the name of the source-code routine reporting the error.

The client is responsible for formatting displayed information to meet its needs; in particular it should break long lines as needed. Newline characters appearing in the error message fields should be treated as paragraph breaks, not line breaks.

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Summary of Changes since Protocol 2.0

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46.7. Summary of Changes since Protocol 2.0

This section provides a quick checklist of changes, for the benefit of developers trying to update existing client libraries to protocol 3.0.

The initial startup packet uses a flexible list-of-strings format instead of a fixed format. Notice that session default values for run-time parameters can now be specified directly in the startup packet. (Actually, you could do that before using the options field, but given the limited width of options and the lack of any way to quote whitespace in the values, it wasn't a very safe technique.)

All messages now have a length count immediately following the message type byte (except for startup packets, which have no type byte). Also note that PasswordMessage now has a type byte.

ErrorResponse and NoticeResponse ('E' and 'N') messages now contain multiple fields, from which the client code can assemble an error message of the desired level of verbosity. Note that individual fields will typically not end with a newline, whereas the single string sent in the older protocol always did.

The ReadyForQuery ('Z') message includes a transaction status indicator.

The distinction between BinaryRow and DataRow message types is gone; the single DataRow message type serves for returning data in all formats. Note that the layout of DataRow has changed to make it easier to parse. Also, the representation of binary values has changed: it is no longer directly tied to the server's internal representation.

There is a new "extended query" sub-protocol, which adds the frontend message types Parse, Bind, Execute, Describe, Close, Flush, and Sync, and the backend message types ParseComplete, BindComplete, PortalSuspended, ParameterDescription, NoData, and CloseComplete. Existing clients do not have to concern themselves with this sub-protocol, but making use of it might allow improvements in performance or functionality.

COPY data is now encapsulated into CopyData and CopyDone messages. There is a well-defined way to recover from errors during COPY. The special "\." last line is not needed anymore, and is not sent during COPY OUT. (It is still recognized as a terminator during COPY IN, but its use is deprecated and will eventually be removed.) Binary COPY is supported. The CopyInResponse and CopyOutResponse messages include fields indicating the number of columns and the format of each column.

The layout of FunctionCall and FunctionCallResponse messages has changed. FunctionCall can now support passing NULL arguments to functions. It also can handle passing parameters and retrieving results in either text or binary format. There is no longer any reason to consider FunctionCall a potential security hole, since it does not offer direct access to internal server data representations.

The backend sends ParameterStatus ('S') messages during connection startup for all parameters it considers interesting to the client library. Subsequently, a ParameterStatus message is sent whenever the active value changes for any of these parameters.

The RowDescription ('T') message carries new table OID and column number fields for each column of the described row. It also shows the format code for each column.

The CursorResponse ('P') message is no longer generated by the backend.

The NotificationResponse ('A') message has an additional string field, which can carry a "payload" string passed from the NOTIFY event sender.

The EmptyQueryResponse ('I') message used to include an empty string parameter; this has been removed.

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PostgreSQL Coding Conventions

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Chapter 47. PostgreSQL Coding Conventions

Table of Contents
47.1. Formatting
47.2. Reporting Errors Within the Server
47.3. Error Message Style Guide
47.3.1. What Goes Where
47.3.2. Formatting
47.3.3. Quotation Marks
47.3.4. Use of Quotes
47.3.5. Grammar and Punctuation
47.3.6. Upper Case vs. Lower Case
47.3.7. Avoid Passive Voice
47.3.8. Present vs. Past Tense
47.3.9. Type of the Object
47.3.10. Brackets
47.3.11. Assembling Error Messages
47.3.12. Reasons for Errors
47.3.13. Function Names
47.3.14. Tricky Words to Avoid
47.3.15. Proper Spelling
47.3.16. Localization
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Formatting

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47.1. Formatting

Source code formatting uses 4 column tab spacing, with tabs preserved (i.e., tabs are not expanded to spaces). Each logical indentation level is one additional tab stop.

Layout rules (brace positioning, etc) follow BSD conventions. In particular, curly braces for the controlled blocks of if, while, switch, etc go on their own lines.

Limit line lengths so that the code is readable in an 80-column window. (This doesn't mean that you must never go past 80 columns. For instance, breaking a long error message string in arbitrary places just to keep the code within 80 columns is probably not a net gain in readability.)

Do not use C++ style comments (// comments). Strict ANSI C compilers do not accept them. For the same reason, do not use C++ extensions such as declaring new variables mid-block.

The preferred style for multi-line comment blocks is

/*
 * comment text begins here
 * and continues here
 */

Note that comment blocks that begin in column 1 will be preserved as-is by pgindent, but it will re-flow indented comment blocks as though they were plain text. If you want to preserve the line breaks in an indented block, add dashes like this:

    /*----------
     * comment text begins here
     * and continues here
     *----------
     */

While submitted patches do not absolutely have to follow these formatting rules, it's a good idea to do so. Your code will get run through pgindent before the next release, so there's no point in making it look nice under some other set of formatting conventions. A good rule of thumb for patches is "make the new code look like the existing code around it".

The src/tools directory contains sample settings files that can be used with the emacs, xemacs or vim editors to help ensure that they format code according to these conventions.

The text browsing tools more and less can be invoked as:

more -x4
less -x4

to make them show tabs appropriately.

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Reporting Errors Within the Server

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47.2. Reporting Errors Within the Server

Error, warning, and log messages generated within the server code should be created using ereport, or its older cousin elog. The use of this function is complex enough to require some explanation.

There are two required elements for every message: a severity level (ranging from DEBUG to PANIC) and a primary message text. In addition there are optional elements, the most common of which is an error identifier code that follows the SQL spec's SQLSTATE conventions. ereport itself is just a shell function, that exists mainly for the syntactic convenience of making message generation look like a function call in the C source code. The only parameter accepted directly by ereport is the severity level. The primary message text and any optional message elements are generated by calling auxiliary functions, such as errmsg, within the ereport call.

A typical call to ereport might look like this:

ereport(ERROR,
        (errcode(ERRCODE_DIVISION_BY_ZERO),
         errmsg("division by zero")));

This specifies error severity level ERROR (a run-of-the-mill error). The errcode call specifies the SQLSTATE error code using a macro defined in src/include/utils/errcodes.h. The errmsg call provides the primary message text. Notice the extra set of parentheses surrounding the auxiliary function calls — these are annoying but syntactically necessary.

Here is a more complex example:

ereport(ERROR,
        (errcode(ERRCODE_AMBIGUOUS_FUNCTION),
         errmsg("function %s is not unique",
                func_signature_string(funcname, nargs,
                                      NIL, actual_arg_types)),
         errhint("Unable to choose a best candidate function. "
                 "You might need to add explicit typecasts.")));

This illustrates the use of format codes to embed run-time values into a message text. Also, an optional "hint" message is provided.

The available auxiliary routines for ereport are:

  • errcode(sqlerrcode) specifies the SQLSTATE error identifier code for the condition. If this routine is not called, the error identifier defaults to ERRCODE_INTERNAL_ERROR when the error severity level is ERROR or higher, ERRCODE_WARNING when the error level is WARNING, otherwise (for NOTICE and below) ERRCODE_SUCCESSFUL_COMPLETION. While these defaults are often convenient, always think whether they are appropriate before omitting the errcode() call.

  • errmsg(const char *msg, ...) specifies the primary error message text, and possibly run-time values to insert into it. Insertions are specified by sprintf-style format codes. In addition to the standard format codes accepted by sprintf, the format code %m can be used to insert the error message returned by strerror for the current value of errno. [1] %m does not require any corresponding entry in the parameter list for errmsg. Note that the message string will be run through gettext for possible localization before format codes are processed.

  • errmsg_internal(const char *msg, ...) is the same as errmsg, except that the message string will not be translated nor included in the internationalization message dictionary. This should be used for "cannot happen" cases that are probably not worth expending translation effort on.

  • errmsg_plural(const char *fmt_singular, const char *fmt_plural, unsigned long n, ...) is like errmsg, but with support for various plural forms of the message. fmt_singular is the English singular format, fmt_plural is the English plural format, n is the integer value that determines which plural form is needed, and the remaining arguments are formatted according to the selected format string. For more information see Section 48.2.2.

  • errdetail(const char *msg, ...) supplies an optional "detail" message; this is to be used when there is additional information that seems inappropriate to put in the primary message. The message string is processed in just the same way as for errmsg.

  • errdetail_internal(const char *msg, ...) is the same as errdetail, except that the message string will not be translated nor included in the internationalization message dictionary. This should be used for detail messages that are not worth expending translation effort on, for instance because they are too technical to be useful to most users.

  • errdetail_plural(const char *fmt_singular, const char *fmt_plural, unsigned long n, ...) is like errdetail, but with support for various plural forms of the message. For more information see Section 48.2.2.

  • errdetail_log(const char *msg, ...) is the same as errdetail except that this string goes only to the server log, never to the client. If both errdetail (or one of its equivalents above) and errdetail_log are used then one string goes to the client and the other to the log. This is useful for error details that are too security-sensitive or too bulky to include in the report sent to the client.

  • errhint(const char *msg, ...) supplies an optional "hint" message; this is to be used when offering suggestions about how to fix the problem, as opposed to factual details about what went wrong. The message string is processed in just the same way as for errmsg.

  • errcontext(const char *msg, ...) is not normally called directly from an ereport message site; rather it is used in error_context_stack callback functions to provide information about the context in which an error occurred, such as the current location in a PL function. The message string is processed in just the same way as for errmsg. Unlike the other auxiliary functions, this can be called more than once per ereport call; the successive strings thus supplied are concatenated with separating newlines.

  • errposition(int cursorpos) specifies the textual location of an error within a query string. Currently it is only useful for errors detected in the lexical and syntactic analysis phases of query processing.

  • errcode_for_file_access() is a convenience function that selects an appropriate SQLSTATE error identifier for a failure in a file-access-related system call. It uses the saved errno to determine which error code to generate. Usually this should be used in combination with %m in the primary error message text.

  • errcode_for_socket_access() is a convenience function that selects an appropriate SQLSTATE error identifier for a failure in a socket-related system call.

  • errhidestmt(bool hide_stmt) can be called to specify suppression of the STATEMENT: portion of a message in the postmaster log. Generally this is appropriate if the message text includes the current statement already.

There is an older function elog that is still heavily used. An elog call:

elog(level, "format string", ...);

is exactly equivalent to:

ereport(level, (errmsg_internal("format string", ...)));

Notice that the SQLSTATE error code is always defaulted, and the message string is not subject to translation. Therefore, elog should be used only for internal errors and low-level debug logging. Any message that is likely to be of interest to ordinary users should go through ereport. Nonetheless, there are enough internal "cannot happen" error checks in the system that elog is still widely used; it is preferred for those messages for its notational simplicity.

Advice about writing good error messages can be found in Section 47.3.

Notes

[1]

That is, the value that was current when the ereport call was reached; changes of errno within the auxiliary reporting routines will not affect it. That would not be true if you were to write strerror(errno) explicitly in errmsg's parameter list; accordingly, do not do so.

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Error Message Style Guide

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47.3. Error Message Style Guide

This style guide is offered in the hope of maintaining a consistent, user-friendly style throughout all the messages generated by PostgreSQL.

47.3.1. What Goes Where

The primary message should be short, factual, and avoid reference to implementation details such as specific function names. "Short" means "should fit on one line under normal conditions". Use a detail message if needed to keep the primary message short, or if you feel a need to mention implementation details such as the particular system call that failed. Both primary and detail messages should be factual. Use a hint message for suggestions about what to do to fix the problem, especially if the suggestion might not always be applicable.

For example, instead of:

IpcMemoryCreate: shmget(key=%d, size=%u, 0%o) failed: %m
(plus a long addendum that is basically a hint)

write:

Primary:    could not create shared memory segment: %m
Detail:     Failed syscall was shmget(key=%d, size=%u, 0%o).
Hint:       the addendum

Rationale: keeping the primary message short helps keep it to the point, and lets clients lay out screen space on the assumption that one line is enough for error messages. Detail and hint messages can be relegated to a verbose mode, or perhaps a pop-up error-details window. Also, details and hints would normally be suppressed from the server log to save space. Reference to implementation details is best avoided since users don't know the details anyway.

47.3.2. Formatting

Don't put any specific assumptions about formatting into the message texts. Expect clients and the server log to wrap lines to fit their own needs. In long messages, newline characters (\n) can be used to indicate suggested paragraph breaks. Don't end a message with a newline. Don't use tabs or other formatting characters. (In error context displays, newlines are automatically added to separate levels of context such as function calls.)

Rationale: Messages are not necessarily displayed on terminal-type displays. In GUI displays or browsers these formatting instructions are at best ignored.

47.3.3. Quotation Marks

English text should use double quotes when quoting is appropriate. Text in other languages should consistently use one kind of quotes that is consistent with publishing customs and computer output of other programs.

Rationale: The choice of double quotes over single quotes is somewhat arbitrary, but tends to be the preferred use. Some have suggested choosing the kind of quotes depending on the type of object according to SQL conventions (namely, strings single quoted, identifiers double quoted). But this is a language-internal technical issue that many users aren't even familiar with, it won't scale to other kinds of quoted terms, it doesn't translate to other languages, and it's pretty pointless, too.

47.3.4. Use of Quotes

Use quotes always to delimit file names, user-supplied identifiers, and other variables that might contain words. Do not use them to mark up variables that will not contain words (for example, operator names).

There are functions in the backend that will double-quote their own output at need (for example, format_type_be()). Do not put additional quotes around the output of such functions.

Rationale: Objects can have names that create ambiguity when embedded in a message. Be consistent about denoting where a plugged-in name starts and ends. But don't clutter messages with unnecessary or duplicate quote marks.

47.3.5. Grammar and Punctuation

The rules are different for primary error messages and for detail/hint messages:

Primary error messages: Do not capitalize the first letter. Do not end a message with a period. Do not even think about ending a message with an exclamation point.

Detail and hint messages: Use complete sentences, and end each with a period. Capitalize the first word of sentences. Put two spaces after the period if another sentence follows (for English text; might be inappropriate in other languages).

Error context strings: Do not capitalize the first letter and do not end the string with a period. Context strings should normally not be complete sentences.

Rationale: Avoiding punctuation makes it easier for client applications to embed the message into a variety of grammatical contexts. Often, primary messages are not grammatically complete sentences anyway. (And if they're long enough to be more than one sentence, they should be split into primary and detail parts.) However, detail and hint messages are longer and might need to include multiple sentences. For consistency, they should follow complete-sentence style even when there's only one sentence.

47.3.6. Upper Case vs. Lower Case

Use lower case for message wording, including the first letter of a primary error message. Use upper case for SQL commands and key words if they appear in the message.

Rationale: It's easier to make everything look more consistent this way, since some messages are complete sentences and some not.

47.3.7. Avoid Passive Voice

Use the active voice. Use complete sentences when there is an acting subject ("A could not do B"). Use telegram style without subject if the subject would be the program itself; do not use "I" for the program.

Rationale: The program is not human. Don't pretend otherwise.

47.3.8. Present vs. Past Tense

Use past tense if an attempt to do something failed, but could perhaps succeed next time (perhaps after fixing some problem). Use present tense if the failure is certainly permanent.

There is a nontrivial semantic difference between sentences of the form:

could not open file "%s": %m

and:

cannot open file "%s"

The first one means that the attempt to open the file failed. The message should give a reason, such as "disk full" or "file doesn't exist". The past tense is appropriate because next time the disk might not be full anymore or the file in question might exist.

The second form indicates that the functionality of opening the named file does not exist at all in the program, or that it's conceptually impossible. The present tense is appropriate because the condition will persist indefinitely.

Rationale: Granted, the average user will not be able to draw great conclusions merely from the tense of the message, but since the language provides us with a grammar we should use it correctly.

47.3.9. Type of the Object

When citing the name of an object, state what kind of object it is.

Rationale: Otherwise no one will know what "foo.bar.baz" refers to.

47.3.10. Brackets

Square brackets are only to be used (1) in command synopses to denote optional arguments, or (2) to denote an array subscript.

Rationale: Anything else does not correspond to widely-known customary usage and will confuse people.

47.3.11. Assembling Error Messages

When a message includes text that is generated elsewhere, embed it in this style:

could not open file %s: %m

Rationale: It would be difficult to account for all possible error codes to paste this into a single smooth sentence, so some sort of punctuation is needed. Putting the embedded text in parentheses has also been suggested, but it's unnatural if the embedded text is likely to be the most important part of the message, as is often the case.

47.3.12. Reasons for Errors

Messages should always state the reason why an error occurred. For example:

BAD:    could not open file %s
BETTER: could not open file %s (I/O failure)

If no reason is known you better fix the code.

47.3.13. Function Names

Don't include the name of the reporting routine in the error text. We have other mechanisms for finding that out when needed, and for most users it's not helpful information. If the error text doesn't make as much sense without the function name, reword it.

BAD:    pg_atoi: error in "z": cannot parse "z"
BETTER: invalid input syntax for integer: "z"

Avoid mentioning called function names, either; instead say what the code was trying to do:

BAD:    open() failed: %m
BETTER: could not open file %s: %m

If it really seems necessary, mention the system call in the detail message. (In some cases, providing the actual values passed to the system call might be appropriate information for the detail message.)

Rationale: Users don't know what all those functions do.

47.3.14. Tricky Words to Avoid

Unable. "Unable" is nearly the passive voice. Better use "cannot" or "could not", as appropriate.

Bad. Error messages like "bad result" are really hard to interpret intelligently. It's better to write why the result is "bad", e.g., "invalid format".

Illegal. "Illegal" stands for a violation of the law, the rest is "invalid". Better yet, say why it's invalid.

Unknown. Try to avoid "unknown". Consider "error: unknown response". If you don't know what the response is, how do you know it's erroneous? "Unrecognized" is often a better choice. Also, be sure to include the value being complained of.

BAD:    unknown node type
BETTER: unrecognized node type: 42

Find vs. Exists. If the program uses a nontrivial algorithm to locate a resource (e.g., a path search) and that algorithm fails, it is fair to say that the program couldn't "find" the resource. If, on the other hand, the expected location of the resource is known but the program cannot access it there then say that the resource doesn't "exist". Using "find" in this case sounds weak and confuses the issue.

May vs. Can vs. Might. "May" suggests permission (e.g., "You may borrow my rake."), and has little use in documentation or error messages. "Can" suggests ability (e.g., "I can lift that log."), and "might" suggests possibility (e.g., "It might rain today."). Using the proper word clarifies meaning and assists translation.

Contractions. Avoid contractions, like "can't"; use "cannot" instead.

47.3.15. Proper Spelling

Spell out words in full. For instance, avoid:

  • spec

  • stats

  • parens

  • auth

  • xact

Rationale: This will improve consistency.

47.3.16. Localization

Keep in mind that error message texts need to be translated into other languages. Follow the guidelines in Section 48.2.2 to avoid making life difficult for translators.

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Native Language Support

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Chapter 48. Native Language Support

Table of Contents
48.1. For the Translator
48.1.1. Requirements
48.1.2. Concepts
48.1.3. Creating and Maintaining Message Catalogs
48.1.4. Editing the PO Files
48.2. For the Programmer
48.2.1. Mechanics
48.2.2. Message-writing Guidelines
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48.1. For the Translator

PostgreSQL programs (server and client) can issue their messages in your favorite language — if the messages have been translated. Creating and maintaining translated message sets needs the help of people who speak their own language well and want to contribute to the PostgreSQL effort. You do not have to be a programmer at all to do this. This section explains how to help.

48.1.1. Requirements

We won't judge your language skills — this section is about software tools. Theoretically, you only need a text editor. But this is only in the unlikely event that you do not want to try out your translated messages. When you configure your source tree, be sure to use the --enable-nls option. This will also check for the libintl library and the msgfmt program, which all end users will need anyway. To try out your work, follow the applicable portions of the installation instructions.

If you want to start a new translation effort or want to do a message catalog merge (described later), you will need the programs xgettext and msgmerge, respectively, in a GNU-compatible implementation. Later, we will try to arrange it so that if you use a packaged source distribution, you won't need xgettext. (If working from Git, you will still need it.) GNU Gettext 0.10.36 or later is currently recommended.

Your local gettext implementation should come with its own documentation. Some of that is probably duplicated in what follows, but for additional details you should look there.

48.1.2. Concepts

The pairs of original (English) messages and their (possibly) translated equivalents are kept in message catalogs, one for each program (although related programs can share a message catalog) and for each target language. There are two file formats for message catalogs: The first is the "PO" file (for Portable Object), which is a plain text file with special syntax that translators edit. The second is the "MO" file (for Machine Object), which is a binary file generated from the respective PO file and is used while the internationalized program is run. Translators do not deal with MO files; in fact hardly anyone does.

The extension of the message catalog file is to no surprise either .po or .mo. The base name is either the name of the program it accompanies, or the language the file is for, depending on the situation. This is a bit confusing. Examples are psql.po (PO file for psql) or fr.mo (MO file in French).

The file format of the PO files is illustrated here:

# comment

msgid "original string"
msgstr "translated string"

msgid "more original"
msgstr "another translated"
"string can be broken up like this"

...

The msgid's are extracted from the program source. (They need not be, but this is the most common way.) The msgstr lines are initially empty and are filled in with useful strings by the translator. The strings can contain C-style escape characters and can be continued across lines as illustrated. (The next line must start at the beginning of the line.)

The # character introduces a comment. If whitespace immediately follows the # character, then this is a comment maintained by the translator. There can also be automatic comments, which have a non-whitespace character immediately following the #. These are maintained by the various tools that operate on the PO files and are intended to aid the translator.

#. automatic comment
#: filename.c:1023
#, flags, flags

The #. style comments are extracted from the source file where the message is used. Possibly the programmer has inserted information for the translator, such as about expected alignment. The #: comment indicates the exact location(s) where the message is used in the source. The translator need not look at the program source, but he can if there is doubt about the correct translation. The #, comments contain flags that describe the message in some way. There are currently two flags: fuzzy is set if the message has possibly been outdated because of changes in the program source. The translator can then verify this and possibly remove the fuzzy flag. Note that fuzzy messages are not made available to the end user. The other flag is c-format, which indicates that the message is a printf-style format template. This means that the translation should also be a format string with the same number and type of placeholders. There are tools that can verify this, which key off the c-format flag.

48.1.3. Creating and Maintaining Message Catalogs

OK, so how does one create a "blank" message catalog? First, go into the directory that contains the program whose messages you want to translate. If there is a file nls.mk, then this program has been prepared for translation.

If there are already some .po files, then someone has already done some translation work. The files are named language.po, where language is the ISO 639-1 two-letter language code (in lower case), e.g., fr.po for French. If there is really a need for more than one translation effort per language then the files can also be named language_region.po where region is the ISO 3166-1 two-letter country code (in upper case), e.g., pt_BR.po for Portuguese in Brazil. If you find the language you wanted you can just start working on that file.

If you need to start a new translation effort, then first run the command:

gmake init-po

This will create a file progname.pot. (.pot to distinguish it from PO files that are "in production". The T stands for "template".) Copy this file to language.po and edit it. To make it known that the new language is available, also edit the file nls.mk and add the language (or language and country) code to the line that looks like:

AVAIL_LANGUAGES := de fr

(Other languages can appear, of course.)

As the underlying program or library changes, messages might be changed or added by the programmers. In this case you do not need to start from scratch. Instead, run the command:

gmake update-po

which will create a new blank message catalog file (the pot file you started with) and will merge it with the existing PO files. If the merge algorithm is not sure about a particular message it marks it "fuzzy" as explained above. The new PO file is saved with a .po.new extension.

48.1.4. Editing the PO Files

The PO files can be edited with a regular text editor. The translator should only change the area between the quotes after the msgstr directive, add comments, and alter the fuzzy flag. There is (unsurprisingly) a PO mode for Emacs, which I find quite useful.

The PO files need not be completely filled in. The software will automatically fall back to the original string if no translation (or an empty translation) is available. It is no problem to submit incomplete translations for inclusions in the source tree; that gives room for other people to pick up your work. However, you are encouraged to give priority to removing fuzzy entries after doing a merge. Remember that fuzzy entries will not be installed; they only serve as reference for what might be the right translation.

Here are some things to keep in mind while editing the translations:

  • Make sure that if the original ends with a newline, the translation does, too. Similarly for tabs, etc.

  • If the original is a printf format string, the translation also needs to be. The translation also needs to have the same format specifiers in the same order. Sometimes the natural rules of the language make this impossible or at least awkward. In that case you can modify the format specifiers like this:

    msgstr "Die Datei %2$s hat %1$u Zeichen."

    Then the first placeholder will actually use the second argument from the list. The digits$ needs to follow the % immediately, before any other format manipulators. (This feature really exists in the printf family of functions. You might not have heard of it before because there is little use for it outside of message internationalization.)

  • If the original string contains a linguistic mistake, report that (or fix it yourself in the program source) and translate normally. The corrected string can be merged in when the program sources have been updated. If the original string contains a factual mistake, report that (or fix it yourself) and do not translate it. Instead, you can mark the string with a comment in the PO file.

  • Maintain the style and tone of the original string. Specifically, messages that are not sentences (cannot open file %s) should probably not start with a capital letter (if your language distinguishes letter case) or end with a period (if your language uses punctuation marks). It might help to read Section 47.3.

  • If you don't know what a message means, or if it is ambiguous, ask on the developers' mailing list. Chances are that English speaking end users might also not understand it or find it ambiguous, so it's best to improve the message.

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For the Programmer

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48.2. For the Programmer

48.2.1. Mechanics

This section describes how to implement native language support in a program or library that is part of the PostgreSQL distribution. Currently, it only applies to C programs.

Adding NLS Support to a Program

  1. Insert this code into the start-up sequence of the program:

    #ifdef ENABLE_NLS
#include <locale.h>
#endif

...

#ifdef ENABLE_NLS
setlocale(LC_ALL, "");
bindtextdomain("progname", LOCALEDIR);
textdomain("progname");
#endif

    (The progname can actually be chosen freely.)

  2. Wherever a message that is a candidate for translation is found, a call to gettext() needs to be inserted. E.g.:

    fprintf(stderr, "panic level %d\n", lvl);

    would be changed to:

    fprintf(stderr, gettext("panic level %d\n"), lvl);

    (gettext is defined as a no-op if NLS support is not configured.)

    This tends to add a lot of clutter. One common shortcut is to use:

    #define _(x) gettext(x)

    Another solution is feasible if the program does much of its communication through one or a few functions, such as ereport() in the backend. Then you make this function call gettext internally on all input strings.

  3. Add a file nls.mk in the directory with the program sources. This file will be read as a makefile. The following variable assignments need to be made here:

    CATALOG_NAME

    The program name, as provided in the textdomain() call.

    AVAIL_LANGUAGES

    List of provided translations — initially empty.

    GETTEXT_FILES

    List of files that contain translatable strings, i.e., those marked with gettext or an alternative solution. Eventually, this will include nearly all source files of the program. If this list gets too long you can make the first "file" be a + and the second word be a file that contains one file name per line.

    GETTEXT_TRIGGERS

    The tools that generate message catalogs for the translators to work on need to know what function calls contain translatable strings. By default, only gettext() calls are known. If you used _ or other identifiers you need to list them here. If the translatable string is not the first argument, the item needs to be of the form func:2 (for the second argument). If you have a function that supports pluralized messages, the item should look like func:1,2 (identifying the singular and plural message arguments).

The build system will automatically take care of building and installing the message catalogs.

48.2.2. Message-writing Guidelines

Here are some guidelines for writing messages that are easily translatable.

  • Do not construct sentences at run-time, like:

    printf("Files were %s.\n", flag ? "copied" : "removed");

    The word order within the sentence might be different in other languages. Also, even if you remember to call gettext() on each fragment, the fragments might not translate well separately. It's better to duplicate a little code so that each message to be translated is a coherent whole. Only numbers, file names, and such-like run-time variables should be inserted at run time into a message text.

  • For similar reasons, this won't work:

    printf("copied %d file%s", n, n!=1 ? "s" : "");

    because it assumes how the plural is formed. If you figured you could solve it like this:

    if (n==1)
    printf("copied 1 file");
else
    printf("copied %d files", n):

    then be disappointed. Some languages have more than two forms, with some peculiar rules. It's often best to design the message to avoid the issue altogether, for instance like this:

    printf("number of copied files: %d", n);

    If you really want to construct a properly pluralized message, there is support for this, but it's a bit awkward. When generating a primary or detail error message in ereport(), you can write something like this:

    errmsg_plural("copied %d file",
              "copied %d files",
              n,
              n)

    The first argument is the format string appropriate for English singular form, the second is the format string appropriate for English plural form, and the third is the integer control value that determines which plural form to use. Subsequent arguments are formatted per the format string as usual. (Normally, the pluralization control value will also be one of the values to be formatted, so it has to be written twice.) In English it only matters whether n is 1 or not 1, but in other languages there can be many different plural forms. The translator sees the two English forms as a group and has the opportunity to supply multiple substitute strings, with the appropriate one being selected based on the run-time value of n.

    If you need to pluralize a message that isn't going directly to an errmsg or errdetail report, you have to use the underlying function ngettext. See the gettext documentation.

  • If you want to communicate something to the translator, such as about how a message is intended to line up with other output, precede the occurrence of the string with a comment that starts with translator, e.g.:

    /* translator: This message is not what it seems to be. */

    These comments are copied to the message catalog files so that the translators can see them.

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Writing A Procedural Language Handler

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Chapter 49. Writing A Procedural Language Handler

All calls to functions that are written in a language other than the current "version 1" interface for compiled languages (this includes functions in user-defined procedural languages, functions written in SQL, and functions using the version 0 compiled language interface) go through a call handler function for the specific language. It is the responsibility of the call handler to execute the function in a meaningful way, such as by interpreting the supplied source text. This chapter outlines how a new procedural language's call handler can be written.

The call handler for a procedural language is a "normal" function that must be written in a compiled language such as C, using the version-1 interface, and registered with PostgreSQL as taking no arguments and returning the type language_handler. This special pseudotype identifies the function as a call handler and prevents it from being called directly in SQL commands. For more details on C language calling conventions and dynamic loading, see Section 35.9.

The call handler is called in the same way as any other function: It receives a pointer to a FunctionCallInfoData struct containing argument values and information about the called function, and it is expected to return a Datum result (and possibly set the isnull field of the FunctionCallInfoData structure, if it wishes to return an SQL null result). The difference between a call handler and an ordinary callee function is that the flinfo->fn_oid field of the FunctionCallInfoData structure will contain the OID of the actual function to be called, not of the call handler itself. The call handler must use this field to determine which function to execute. Also, the passed argument list has been set up according to the declaration of the target function, not of the call handler.

It's up to the call handler to fetch the entry of the function from the pg_proc system catalog and to analyze the argument and return types of the called function. The AS clause from the CREATE FUNCTION command for the function will be found in the prosrc column of the pg_proc row. This is commonly source text in the procedural language, but in theory it could be something else, such as a path name to a file, or anything else that tells the call handler what to do in detail.

Often, the same function is called many times per SQL statement. A call handler can avoid repeated lookups of information about the called function by using the flinfo->fn_extra field. This will initially be NULL, but can be set by the call handler to point at information about the called function. On subsequent calls, if flinfo->fn_extra is already non-NULL then it can be used and the information lookup step skipped. The call handler must make sure that flinfo->fn_extra is made to point at memory that will live at least until the end of the current query, since an FmgrInfo data structure could be kept that long. One way to do this is to allocate the extra data in the memory context specified by flinfo->fn_mcxt; such data will normally have the same lifespan as the FmgrInfo itself. But the handler could also choose to use a longer-lived memory context so that it can cache function definition information across queries.

When a procedural-language function is invoked as a trigger, no arguments are passed in the usual way, but the FunctionCallInfoData's context field points at a TriggerData structure, rather than being NULL as it is in a plain function call. A language handler should provide mechanisms for procedural-language functions to get at the trigger information.

This is a template for a procedural-language handler written in C:

#include "postgres.h"
#include "executor/spi.h"
#include "commands/trigger.h"
#include "fmgr.h"
#include "access/heapam.h"
#include "utils/syscache.h"
#include "catalog/pg_proc.h"
#include "catalog/pg_type.h"

#ifdef PG_MODULE_MAGIC
PG_MODULE_MAGIC;
#endif

PG_FUNCTION_INFO_V1(plsample_call_handler);

Datum
plsample_call_handler(PG_FUNCTION_ARGS)
{
    Datum          retval;

    if (CALLED_AS_TRIGGER(fcinfo))
    {
        /*
         * Called as a trigger procedure
         */
        TriggerData    *trigdata = (TriggerData *) fcinfo->context;

        retval = ...
    }
    else
    {
        /*
         * Called as a function
         */

        retval = ...
    }

    return retval;
}

Only a few thousand lines of code have to be added instead of the dots to complete the call handler.

After having compiled the handler function into a loadable module (see Section 35.9.6), the following commands then register the sample procedural language:

CREATE FUNCTION plsample_call_handler() RETURNS language_handler
    AS 'filename'
    LANGUAGE C;
CREATE LANGUAGE plsample
    HANDLER plsample_call_handler;

Although providing a call handler is sufficient to create a minimal procedural language, there are two other functions that can optionally be provided to make the language more convenient to use. These are a validator and an inline handler. A validator can be provided to allow language-specific checking to be done during CREATE FUNCTION. An inline handler can be provided to allow the language to support anonymous code blocks executed via the DO command.

If a validator is provided by a procedural language, it must be declared as a function taking a single parameter of type oid. The validator's result is ignored, so it is customarily declared to return void. The validator will be called at the end of a CREATE FUNCTION command that has created or updated a function written in the procedural language. The passed-in OID is the OID of the function's pg_proc row. The validator must fetch this row in the usual way, and do whatever checking is appropriate. First, call CheckFunctionValidatorAccess() to diagnose explicit calls to the validator that the user could not achieve through CREATE FUNCTION. Typical checks then include verifying that the function's argument and result types are supported by the language, and that the function's body is syntactically correct in the language. If the validator finds the function to be okay, it should just return. If it finds an error, it should report that via the normal ereport() error reporting mechanism. Throwing an error will force a transaction rollback and thus prevent the incorrect function definition from being committed.

Validator functions should typically honor the check_function_bodies parameter: if it is turned off then any expensive or context-sensitive checking should be skipped. If the language provides for code execution at compilation time, the validator must suppress checks that would induce such execution. In particular, this parameter is turned off by pg_dump so that it can load procedural language functions without worrying about side effects or dependencies of the function bodies on other database objects. (Because of this requirement, the call handler should avoid assuming that the validator has fully checked the function. The point of having a validator is not to let the call handler omit checks, but to notify the user immediately if there are obvious errors in a CREATE FUNCTION command.) While the choice of exactly what to check is mostly left to the discretion of the validator function, note that the core CREATE FUNCTION code only executes SET clauses attached to a function when check_function_bodies is on. Therefore, checks whose results might be affected by GUC parameters definitely should be skipped when check_function_bodies is off, to avoid false failures when reloading a dump.

If an inline handler is provided by a procedural language, it must be declared as a function taking a single parameter of type internal. The inline handler's result is ignored, so it is customarily declared to return void. The inline handler will be called when a DO statement is executed specifying the procedural language. The parameter actually passed is a pointer to an InlineCodeBlock struct, which contains information about the DO statement's parameters, in particular the text of the anonymous code block to be executed. The inline handler should execute this code and return.

It's recommended that you wrap all these function declarations, as well as the CREATE LANGUAGE command itself, into an extension so that a simple CREATE EXTENSION command is sufficient to install the language. See Section 35.15 for information about writing extensions.

The procedural languages included in the standard distribution are good references when trying to write your own language handler. Look into the src/pl subdirectory of the source tree. The CREATE LANGUAGE reference page also has some useful details.

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Writing A Foreign Data Wrapper

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Chapter 50. Writing A Foreign Data Wrapper

Table of Contents
50.1. Foreign Data Wrapper Functions
50.2. Foreign Data Wrapper Callback Routines

All operations on a foreign table are handled through its foreign data wrapper, which consists of a set of functions that the planner and executor call. The foreign data wrapper is responsible for fetching data from the remote data source and returning it to the PostgreSQL executor. This chapter outlines how to write a new foreign data wrapper.

The foreign data wrappers included in the standard distribution are good references when trying to write your own. Look into the contrib/file_fdw subdirectory of the source tree. The CREATE FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER reference page also has some useful details.

Note: The SQL standard specifies an interface for writing foreign data wrappers. However, PostgreSQL does not implement that API, because the effort to accommodate it into PostgreSQL would be large, and the standard API hasn't gained wide adoption anyway.

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Foreign Data Wrapper Functions

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50.1. Foreign Data Wrapper Functions

The FDW author needs to implement a handler function, and optionally a validator function. Both functions must be written in a compiled language such as C, using the version-1 interface. For details on C language calling conventions and dynamic loading, see Section 35.9.

The handler function simply returns a struct of function pointers to callback functions that will be called by the planner and executor. Most of the effort in writing an FDW is in implementing these callback functions. The handler function must be registered with PostgreSQL as taking no arguments and returning the special pseudo-type fdw_handler. The callback functions are plain C functions and are not visible or callable at the SQL level. The callback functions are described in Section 50.2.

The validator function is responsible for validating options given in CREATE and ALTER commands for its foreign data wrapper, as well as foreign servers, user mappings, and foreign tables using the wrapper. The validator function must be registered as taking two arguments, a text array containing the options to be validated, and an OID representing the type of object the options are associated with (in the form of the OID of the system catalog the object would be stored in, either ForeignDataWrapperRelationId, ForeignServerRelationId, UserMappingRelationId, or ForeignTableRelationId). If no validator function is supplied, options are not checked at object creation time or object alteration time.

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Foreign Data Wrapper Callback Routines

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50.2. Foreign Data Wrapper Callback Routines

The FDW handler function returns a palloc'd FdwRoutine struct containing pointers to the following callback functions:

FdwPlan *
PlanForeignScan (Oid foreigntableid,
                 PlannerInfo *root,
                 RelOptInfo *baserel);

Plan a scan on a foreign table. This is called when a query is planned. foreigntableid is the pg_class OID of the foreign table. root is the planner's global information about the query, and baserel is the planner's information about this table. The function must return a palloc'd struct that contains cost estimates plus any FDW-private information that is needed to execute the foreign scan at a later time. (Note that the private information must be represented in a form that copyObject knows how to copy.)

The information in root and baserel can be used to reduce the amount of information that has to be fetched from the foreign table (and therefore reduce the cost estimate). baserel->baserestrictinfo is particularly interesting, as it contains restriction quals (WHERE clauses) that can be used to filter the rows to be fetched. (The FDW is not required to enforce these quals, as the finished plan will recheck them anyway.) baserel->reltargetlist can be used to determine which columns need to be fetched.

In addition to returning cost estimates, the function should update baserel->rows to be the expected number of rows returned by the scan, after accounting for the filtering done by the restriction quals. The initial value of baserel->rows is just a constant default estimate, which should be replaced if at all possible. The function may also choose to update baserel->width if it can compute a better estimate of the average result row width.

void
ExplainForeignScan (ForeignScanState *node,
                    ExplainState *es);

Print additional EXPLAIN output for a foreign table scan. This can just return if there is no need to print anything. Otherwise, it should call ExplainPropertyText and related functions to add fields to the EXPLAIN output. The flag fields in es can be used to determine what to print, and the state of the ForeignScanState node can be inspected to provide runtime statistics in the EXPLAIN ANALYZE case.

void
BeginForeignScan (ForeignScanState *node,
                  int eflags);

Begin executing a foreign scan. This is called during executor startup. It should perform any initialization needed before the scan can start, but not start executing the actual scan (that should be done upon the first call to IterateForeignScan). The ForeignScanState node has already been created, but its fdw_state field is still NULL. Information about the table to scan is accessible through the ForeignScanState node (in particular, from the underlying ForeignScan plan node, which contains a pointer to the FdwPlan structure returned by PlanForeignScan).

Note that when (eflags & EXEC_FLAG_EXPLAIN_ONLY) is true, this function should not perform any externally-visible actions; it should only do the minimum required to make the node state valid for ExplainForeignScan and EndForeignScan.

TupleTableSlot *
IterateForeignScan (ForeignScanState *node);

Fetch one row from the foreign source, returning it in a tuple table slot (the node's ScanTupleSlot should be used for this purpose). Return NULL if no more rows are available. The tuple table slot infrastructure allows either a physical or virtual tuple to be returned; in most cases the latter choice is preferable from a performance standpoint. Note that this is called in a short-lived memory context that will be reset between invocations. Create a memory context in BeginForeignScan if you need longer-lived storage, or use the es_query_cxt of the node's EState.

The rows returned must match the column signature of the foreign table being scanned. If you choose to optimize away fetching columns that are not needed, you should insert nulls in those column positions.

Note that PostgreSQL's executor doesn't care whether the rows returned violate the NOT NULL constraints which were defined on the foreign table columns - but the planner does care, and may optimize queries incorrectly if NULL values are present in a column declared not to contain them. If a NULL value is encountered when the user has declared that none should be present, it may be appropriate to raise an error (just as you would need to do in the case of a data type mismatch).

void
ReScanForeignScan (ForeignScanState *node);

Restart the scan from the beginning. Note that any parameters the scan depends on may have changed value, so the new scan does not necessarily return exactly the same rows.

void
EndForeignScan (ForeignScanState *node);

End the scan and release resources. It is normally not important to release palloc'd memory, but for example open files and connections to remote servers should be cleaned up.

The FdwRoutine and FdwPlan struct types are declared in src/include/foreign/fdwapi.h, which see for additional details.

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Genetic Query Optimizer

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Chapter 51. Genetic Query Optimizer

Table of Contents
51.1. Query Handling as a Complex Optimization Problem
51.2. Genetic Algorithms
51.3. Genetic Query Optimization (GEQO) in PostgreSQL
51.3.1. Generating Possible Plans with GEQO
51.3.2. Future Implementation Tasks for PostgreSQL GEQO
51.4. Further Reading

Author: Written by Martin Utesch (<utesch@aut.tu-freiberg.de>) for the Institute of Automatic Control at the University of Mining and Technology in Freiberg, Germany.

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Query Handling as a Complex Optimization Problem

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51.1. Query Handling as a Complex Optimization Problem

Among all relational operators the most difficult one to process and optimize is the join. The number of possible query plans grows exponentially with the number of joins in the query. Further optimization effort is caused by the support of a variety of join methods (e.g., nested loop, hash join, merge join in PostgreSQL) to process individual joins and a diversity of indexes (e.g., B-tree, hash, GiST and GIN in PostgreSQL) as access paths for relations.

The normal PostgreSQL query optimizer performs a near-exhaustive search over the space of alternative strategies. This algorithm, first introduced in IBM's System R database, produces a near-optimal join order, but can take an enormous amount of time and memory space when the number of joins in the query grows large. This makes the ordinary PostgreSQL query optimizer inappropriate for queries that join a large number of tables.

The Institute of Automatic Control at the University of Mining and Technology, in Freiberg, Germany, encountered some problems when it wanted to use PostgreSQL as the backend for a decision support knowledge based system for the maintenance of an electrical power grid. The DBMS needed to handle large join queries for the inference machine of the knowledge based system. The number of joins in these queries made using the normal query optimizer infeasible.

In the following we describe the implementation of a genetic algorithm to solve the join ordering problem in a manner that is efficient for queries involving large numbers of joins.

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Genetic Algorithms

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51.2. Genetic Algorithms

The genetic algorithm (GA) is a heuristic optimization method which operates through randomized search. The set of possible solutions for the optimization problem is considered as a population of individuals. The degree of adaptation of an individual to its environment is specified by its fitness.

The coordinates of an individual in the search space are represented by chromosomes, in essence a set of character strings. A gene is a subsection of a chromosome which encodes the value of a single parameter being optimized. Typical encodings for a gene could be binary or integer.

Through simulation of the evolutionary operations recombination, mutation, and selection new generations of search points are found that show a higher average fitness than their ancestors.

According to the comp.ai.genetic FAQ it cannot be stressed too strongly that a GA is not a pure random search for a solution to a problem. A GA uses stochastic processes, but the result is distinctly non-random (better than random).

Figure 51-1. Structured Diagram of a Genetic Algorithm

P(t) | generation of ancestors at a time t
P''(t) | generation of descendants at a time t

+=========================================+
|>>>>>>>>>>>  Algorithm GA  <<<<<<<<<<<<<<|
+=========================================+
| INITIALIZE t := 0                       |
+=========================================+
| INITIALIZE P(t)                         |
+=========================================+
| evaluate FITNESS of P(t)                |
+=========================================+
| while not STOPPING CRITERION do         |
|   +-------------------------------------+
|   | P'(t)  := RECOMBINATION{P(t)}       |
|   +-------------------------------------+
|   | P''(t) := MUTATION{P'(t)}           |
|   +-------------------------------------+
|   | P(t+1) := SELECTION{P''(t) + P(t)}  |
|   +-------------------------------------+
|   | evaluate FITNESS of P''(t)          |
|   +-------------------------------------+
|   | t := t + 1                          |
+===+=====================================+
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Genetic Query Optimization (GEQO) in PostgreSQL

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51.3. Genetic Query Optimization (GEQO) in PostgreSQL

The GEQO module approaches the query optimization problem as though it were the well-known traveling salesman problem (TSP). Possible query plans are encoded as integer strings. Each string represents the join order from one relation of the query to the next. For example, the join tree

   /\
  /\ 2
 /\ 3
4  1

is encoded by the integer string '4-1-3-2', which means, first join relation '4' and '1', then '3', and then '2', where 1, 2, 3, 4 are relation IDs within the PostgreSQL optimizer.

Specific characteristics of the GEQO implementation in PostgreSQL are:

  • Usage of a steady state GA (replacement of the least fit individuals in a population, not whole-generational replacement) allows fast convergence towards improved query plans. This is essential for query handling with reasonable time;

  • Usage of edge recombination crossover which is especially suited to keep edge losses low for the solution of the TSP by means of a GA;

  • Mutation as genetic operator is deprecated so that no repair mechanisms are needed to generate legal TSP tours.

Parts of the GEQO module are adapted from D. Whitley's Genitor algorithm.

The GEQO module allows the PostgreSQL query optimizer to support large join queries effectively through non-exhaustive search.

51.3.1. Generating Possible Plans with GEQO

The GEQO planning process uses the standard planner code to generate plans for scans of individual relations. Then join plans are developed using the genetic approach. As shown above, each candidate join plan is represented by a sequence in which to join the base relations. In the initial stage, the GEQO code simply generates some possible join sequences at random. For each join sequence considered, the standard planner code is invoked to estimate the cost of performing the query using that join sequence. (For each step of the join sequence, all three possible join strategies are considered; and all the initially-determined relation scan plans are available. The estimated cost is the cheapest of these possibilities.) Join sequences with lower estimated cost are considered "more fit" than those with higher cost. The genetic algorithm discards the least fit candidates. Then new candidates are generated by combining genes of more-fit candidates — that is, by using randomly-chosen portions of known low-cost join sequences to create new sequences for consideration. This process is repeated until a preset number of join sequences have been considered; then the best one found at any time during the search is used to generate the finished plan.

This process is inherently nondeterministic, because of the randomized choices made during both the initial population selection and subsequent "mutation" of the best candidates. To avoid surprising changes of the selected plan, each run of the GEQO algorithm restarts its random number generator with the current geqo_seed parameter setting. As long as geqo_seed and the other GEQO parameters are kept fixed, the same plan will be generated for a given query (and other planner inputs such as statistics). To experiment with different search paths, try changing geqo_seed.

51.3.2. Future Implementation Tasks for PostgreSQL GEQO

Work is still needed to improve the genetic algorithm parameter settings. In file src/backend/optimizer/geqo/geqo_main.c, routines gimme_pool_size and gimme_number_generations, we have to find a compromise for the parameter settings to satisfy two competing demands:

  • Optimality of the query plan

  • Computing time

In the current implementation, the fitness of each candidate join sequence is estimated by running the standard planner's join selection and cost estimation code from scratch. To the extent that different candidates use similar sub-sequences of joins, a great deal of work will be repeated. This could be made significantly faster by retaining cost estimates for sub-joins. The problem is to avoid expending unreasonable amounts of memory on retaining that state.

At a more basic level, it is not clear that solving query optimization with a GA algorithm designed for TSP is appropriate. In the TSP case, the cost associated with any substring (partial tour) is independent of the rest of the tour, but this is certainly not true for query optimization. Thus it is questionable whether edge recombination crossover is the most effective mutation procedure.

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Further Reading

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51.4. Further Reading

The following resources contain additional information about genetic algorithms:

  • The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to Evolutionary Computation, (FAQ for news://comp.ai.genetic)

  • Evolutionary Computation and its application to art and design, by Craig Reynolds

  • Fundamentals of Database Systems

  • The design and implementation of the POSTGRES query optimizer

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Index Access Method Interface Definition

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Chapter 52. Index Access Method Interface Definition

Table of Contents
52.1. Catalog Entries for Indexes
52.2. Index Access Method Functions
52.3. Index Scanning
52.4. Index Locking Considerations
52.5. Index Uniqueness Checks
52.6. Index Cost Estimation Functions

This chapter defines the interface between the core PostgreSQL system and index access methods, which manage individual index types. The core system knows nothing about indexes beyond what is specified here, so it is possible to develop entirely new index types by writing add-on code.

All indexes in PostgreSQL are what are known technically as secondary indexes; that is, the index is physically separate from the table file that it describes. Each index is stored as its own physical relation and so is described by an entry in the pg_class catalog. The contents of an index are entirely under the control of its index access method. In practice, all index access methods divide indexes into standard-size pages so that they can use the regular storage manager and buffer manager to access the index contents. (All the existing index access methods furthermore use the standard page layout described in Section 55.6, and they all use the same format for index tuple headers; but these decisions are not forced on an access method.)

An index is effectively a mapping from some data key values to tuple identifiers, or TIDs, of row versions (tuples) in the index's parent table. A TID consists of a block number and an item number within that block (see Section 55.6). This is sufficient information to fetch a particular row version from the table. Indexes are not directly aware that under MVCC, there might be multiple extant versions of the same logical row; to an index, each tuple is an independent object that needs its own index entry. Thus, an update of a row always creates all-new index entries for the row, even if the key values did not change. (HOT tuples are an exception to this statement; but indexes do not deal with those, either.) Index entries for dead tuples are reclaimed (by vacuuming) when the dead tuples themselves are reclaimed.

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Catalog Entries for Indexes

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52.1. Catalog Entries for Indexes

Each index access method is described by a row in the pg_am system catalog (see Section 45.3). The principal contents of a pg_am row are references to pg_proc entries that identify the index access functions supplied by the access method. The APIs for these functions are defined later in this chapter. In addition, the pg_am row specifies a few fixed properties of the access method, such as whether it can support multicolumn indexes. There is not currently any special support for creating or deleting pg_am entries; anyone able to write a new access method is expected to be competent to insert an appropriate row for themselves.

To be useful, an index access method must also have one or more operator families and operator classes defined in pg_opfamily, pg_opclass, pg_amop, and pg_amproc. These entries allow the planner to determine what kinds of query qualifications can be used with indexes of this access method. Operator families and classes are described in Section 35.14, which is prerequisite material for reading this chapter.

An individual index is defined by a pg_class entry that describes it as a physical relation, plus a pg_index entry that shows the logical content of the index — that is, the set of index columns it has and the semantics of those columns, as captured by the associated operator classes. The index columns (key values) can be either simple columns of the underlying table or expressions over the table rows. The index access method normally has no interest in where the index key values come from (it is always handed precomputed key values) but it will be very interested in the operator class information in pg_index. Both of these catalog entries can be accessed as part of the Relation data structure that is passed to all operations on the index.

Some of the flag columns of pg_am have nonobvious implications. The requirements of amcanunique are discussed in Section 52.5. The amcanmulticol flag asserts that the access method supports multicolumn indexes, while amoptionalkey asserts that it allows scans where no indexable restriction clause is given for the first index column. When amcanmulticol is false, amoptionalkey essentially says whether the access method supports full-index scans without any restriction clause. Access methods that support multiple index columns must support scans that omit restrictions on any or all of the columns after the first; however they are permitted to require some restriction to appear for the first index column, and this is signaled by setting amoptionalkey false. One reason that an index AM might set amoptionalkey false is if it doesn't index NULLs. Since most indexable operators are strict and hence cannot return TRUE for NULL inputs, it is at first sight attractive to not store index entries for null values: they could never be returned by an index scan anyway. However, this argument fails when an index scan has no restriction clause for a given index column. In practice this means that indexes that have amoptionalkey true must index nulls, since the planner might decide to use such an index with no scan keys at all. A related restriction is that an index access method that supports multiple index columns must support indexing null values in columns after the first, because the planner will assume the index can be used for queries that do not restrict these columns. For example, consider an index on (a,b) and a query with WHERE a = 4. The system will assume the index can be used to scan for rows with a = 4, which is wrong if the index omits rows where b is null. It is, however, OK to omit rows where the first indexed column is null. An index access method that does index nulls may also set amsearchnulls, indicating that it supports IS NULL and IS NOT NULL clauses as search conditions.

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Index Access Method Functions

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52.2. Index Access Method Functions

The index construction and maintenance functions that an index access method must provide are:

IndexBuildResult *
ambuild (Relation heapRelation,
         Relation indexRelation,
         IndexInfo *indexInfo);

Build a new index. The index relation has been physically created, but is empty. It must be filled in with whatever fixed data the access method requires, plus entries for all tuples already existing in the table. Ordinarily the ambuild function will call IndexBuildHeapScan() to scan the table for existing tuples and compute the keys that need to be inserted into the index. The function must return a palloc'd struct containing statistics about the new index.

void
ambuildempty (Relation indexRelation);

Build an empty index, and write it to the initialization fork (INIT_FORKNUM) of the given relation. This method is called only for unlogged tables; the empty index written to the initialization fork will be copied over the main relation fork on each server restart.

bool
aminsert (Relation indexRelation,
          Datum *values,
          bool *isnull,
          ItemPointer heap_tid,
          Relation heapRelation,
          IndexUniqueCheck checkUnique);

Insert a new tuple into an existing index. The values and isnull arrays give the key values to be indexed, and heap_tid is the TID to be indexed. If the access method supports unique indexes (its pg_am.amcanunique flag is true) then checkUnique indicates the type of uniqueness check to perform. This varies depending on whether the unique constraint is deferrable; see Section 52.5 for details. Normally the access method only needs the heapRelation parameter when performing uniqueness checking (since then it will have to look into the heap to verify tuple liveness).

The function's Boolean result value is significant only when checkUnique is UNIQUE_CHECK_PARTIAL. In this case a TRUE result means the new entry is known unique, whereas FALSE means it might be non-unique (and a deferred uniqueness check must be scheduled). For other cases a constant FALSE result is recommended.

Some indexes might not index all tuples. If the tuple is not to be indexed, aminsert should just return without doing anything.

IndexBulkDeleteResult *
ambulkdelete (IndexVacuumInfo *info,
              IndexBulkDeleteResult *stats,
              IndexBulkDeleteCallback callback,
              void *callback_state);

Delete tuple(s) from the index. This is a "bulk delete" operation that is intended to be implemented by scanning the whole index and checking each entry to see if it should be deleted. The passed-in callback function must be called, in the style callback(TID, callback_state) returns bool, to determine whether any particular index entry, as identified by its referenced TID, is to be deleted. Must return either NULL or a palloc'd struct containing statistics about the effects of the deletion operation. It is OK to return NULL if no information needs to be passed on to amvacuumcleanup.

Because of limited maintenance_work_mem, ambulkdelete might need to be called more than once when many tuples are to be deleted. The stats argument is the result of the previous call for this index (it is NULL for the first call within a VACUUM operation). This allows the AM to accumulate statistics across the whole operation. Typically, ambulkdelete will modify and return the same struct if the passed stats is not null.

IndexBulkDeleteResult *
amvacuumcleanup (IndexVacuumInfo *info,
                 IndexBulkDeleteResult *stats);

Clean up after a VACUUM operation (zero or more ambulkdelete calls). This does not have to do anything beyond returning index statistics, but it might perform bulk cleanup such as reclaiming empty index pages. stats is whatever the last ambulkdelete call returned, or NULL if ambulkdelete was not called because no tuples needed to be deleted. If the result is not NULL it must be a palloc'd struct. The statistics it contains will be used to update pg_class, and will be reported by VACUUM if VERBOSE is given. It is OK to return NULL if the index was not changed at all during the VACUUM operation, but otherwise correct stats should be returned.

As of PostgreSQL 8.4, amvacuumcleanup will also be called at completion of an ANALYZE operation. In this case stats is always NULL and any return value will be ignored. This case can be distinguished by checking info->analyze_only. It is recommended that the access method do nothing except post-insert cleanup in such a call, and that only in an autovacuum worker process.

void
amcostestimate (PlannerInfo *root,
                IndexOptInfo *index,
                List *indexQuals,
                List *indexOrderBys,
                RelOptInfo *outer_rel,
                Cost *indexStartupCost,
                Cost *indexTotalCost,
                Selectivity *indexSelectivity,
                double *indexCorrelation);

Estimate the costs of an index scan. This function is described fully in Section 52.6, below.

bytea *
amoptions (ArrayType *reloptions,
           bool validate);

Parse and validate the reloptions array for an index. This is called only when a non-null reloptions array exists for the index. reloptions is a text array containing entries of the form name=value. The function should construct a bytea value, which will be copied into the rd_options field of the index's relcache entry. The data contents of the bytea value are open for the access method to define; most of the standard access methods use struct StdRdOptions. When validate is true, the function should report a suitable error message if any of the options are unrecognized or have invalid values; when validate is false, invalid entries should be silently ignored. (validate is false when loading options already stored in pg_catalog; an invalid entry could only be found if the access method has changed its rules for options, and in that case ignoring obsolete entries is appropriate.) It is OK to return NULL if default behavior is wanted.

The purpose of an index, of course, is to support scans for tuples matching an indexable WHERE condition, often called a qualifier or scan key. The semantics of index scanning are described more fully in Section 52.3, below. An index access method can support "plain" index scans, "bitmap" index scans, or both. The scan-related functions that an index access method must or may provide are:

IndexScanDesc
ambeginscan (Relation indexRelation,
             int nkeys,
             int norderbys);

Prepare for an index scan. The nkeys and norderbys parameters indicate the number of quals and ordering operators that will be used in the scan; these may be useful for space allocation purposes. Note that the actual values of the scan keys aren't provided yet. The result must be a palloc'd struct. For implementation reasons the index access method must create this struct by calling RelationGetIndexScan(). In most cases ambeginscan does little beyond making that call and perhaps acquiring locks; the interesting parts of index-scan startup are in amrescan.

void
amrescan (IndexScanDesc scan,
          ScanKey keys,
          int nkeys,
          ScanKey orderbys,
          int norderbys);

Start or restart an indexscan, possibly with new scan keys. (To restart using previously-passed keys, NULL is passed for keys and/or orderbys.) Note that it is not allowed for the number of keys or order-by operators to be larger than what was passed to ambeginscan. In practice the restart feature is used when a new outer tuple is selected by a nested-loop join and so a new key comparison value is needed, but the scan key structure remains the same.

boolean
amgettuple (IndexScanDesc scan,
            ScanDirection direction);

Fetch the next tuple in the given scan, moving in the given direction (forward or backward in the index). Returns TRUE if a tuple was obtained, FALSE if no matching tuples remain. In the TRUE case the tuple TID is stored into the scan structure. Note that "success" means only that the index contains an entry that matches the scan keys, not that the tuple necessarily still exists in the heap or will pass the caller's snapshot test. On success, amgettuple must also set scan->xs_recheck to TRUE or FALSE. FALSE means it is certain that the index entry matches the scan keys. TRUE means this is not certain, and the conditions represented by the scan keys must be rechecked against the heap tuple after fetching it. This provision supports "lossy" index operators. Note that rechecking will extend only to the scan conditions; a partial index predicate (if any) is never rechecked by amgettuple callers.

The amgettuple function need only be provided if the access method supports "plain" index scans. If it doesn't, the amgettuple field in its pg_am row must be set to zero.

int64
amgetbitmap (IndexScanDesc scan,
             TIDBitmap *tbm);

Fetch all tuples in the given scan and add them to the caller-supplied TIDBitmap (that is, OR the set of tuple IDs into whatever set is already in the bitmap). The number of tuples fetched is returned (this might be just an approximate count, for instance some AMs do not detect duplicates). While inserting tuple IDs into the bitmap, amgetbitmap can indicate that rechecking of the scan conditions is required for specific tuple IDs. This is analogous to the xs_recheck output parameter of amgettuple. Note: in the current implementation, support for this feature is conflated with support for lossy storage of the bitmap itself, and therefore callers recheck both the scan conditions and the partial index predicate (if any) for recheckable tuples. That might not always be true, however. amgetbitmap and amgettuple cannot be used in the same index scan; there are other restrictions too when using amgetbitmap, as explained in Section 52.3.

The amgetbitmap function need only be provided if the access method supports "bitmap" index scans. If it doesn't, the amgetbitmap field in its pg_am row must be set to zero.

void
amendscan (IndexScanDesc scan);

End a scan and release resources. The scan struct itself should not be freed, but any locks or pins taken internally by the access method must be released.

void
ammarkpos (IndexScanDesc scan);

Mark current scan position. The access method need only support one remembered scan position per scan.

void
amrestrpos (IndexScanDesc scan);

Restore the scan to the most recently marked position.

By convention, the pg_proc entry for an index access method function should show the correct number of arguments, but declare them all as type internal (since most of the arguments have types that are not known to SQL, and we don't want users calling the functions directly anyway). The return type is declared as void, internal, or boolean as appropriate. The only exception is amoptions, which should be correctly declared as taking text[] and bool and returning bytea. This provision allows client code to execute amoptions to test validity of options settings.

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Index Scanning

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52.3. Index Scanning

In an index scan, the index access method is responsible for regurgitating the TIDs of all the tuples it has been told about that match the scan keys. The access method is not involved in actually fetching those tuples from the index's parent table, nor in determining whether they pass the scan's time qualification test or other conditions.

A scan key is the internal representation of a WHERE clause of the form index_key operator constant, where the index key is one of the columns of the index and the operator is one of the members of the operator family associated with that index column. An index scan has zero or more scan keys, which are implicitly ANDed — the returned tuples are expected to satisfy all the indicated conditions.

The access method can report that the index is lossy, or requires rechecks, for a particular query. This implies that the index scan will return all the entries that pass the scan key, plus possibly additional entries that do not. The core system's index-scan machinery will then apply the index conditions again to the heap tuple to verify whether or not it really should be selected. If the recheck option is not specified, the index scan must return exactly the set of matching entries.

Note that it is entirely up to the access method to ensure that it correctly finds all and only the entries passing all the given scan keys. Also, the core system will simply hand off all the WHERE clauses that match the index keys and operator families, without any semantic analysis to determine whether they are redundant or contradictory. As an example, given WHERE x > 4 AND x > 14 where x is a b-tree indexed column, it is left to the b-tree amrescan function to realize that the first scan key is redundant and can be discarded. The extent of preprocessing needed during amrescan will depend on the extent to which the index access method needs to reduce the scan keys to a "normalized" form.

Some access methods return index entries in a well-defined order, others do not. There are actually two different ways that an access method can support sorted output:

  • Access methods that always return entries in the natural ordering of their data (such as btree) should set pg_am.amcanorder to true. Currently, such access methods must use btree-compatible strategy numbers for their equality and ordering operators.

  • Access methods that support ordering operators should set pg_am.amcanorderbyop to true. This indicates that the index is capable of returning entries in an order satisfying ORDER BY index_key operator constant. Scan modifiers of that form can be passed to amrescan as described previously.

The amgettuple function has a direction argument, which can be either ForwardScanDirection (the normal case) or BackwardScanDirection. If the first call after amrescan specifies BackwardScanDirection, then the set of matching index entries is to be scanned back-to-front rather than in the normal front-to-back direction, so amgettuple must return the last matching tuple in the index, rather than the first one as it normally would. (This will only occur for access methods that set amcanorder to true.) After the first call, amgettuple must be prepared to advance the scan in either direction from the most recently returned entry. (But if pg_am.amcanbackward is false, all subsequent calls will have the same direction as the first one.)

Access methods that support ordered scans must support "marking" a position in a scan and later returning to the marked position. The same position might be restored multiple times. However, only one position need be remembered per scan; a new ammarkpos call overrides the previously marked position. An access method that does not support ordered scans should still provide mark and restore functions in pg_am, but it is sufficient to have them throw errors if called.

Both the scan position and the mark position (if any) must be maintained consistently in the face of concurrent insertions or deletions in the index. It is OK if a freshly-inserted entry is not returned by a scan that would have found the entry if it had existed when the scan started, or for the scan to return such an entry upon rescanning or backing up even though it had not been returned the first time through. Similarly, a concurrent delete might or might not be reflected in the results of a scan. What is important is that insertions or deletions not cause the scan to miss or multiply return entries that were not themselves being inserted or deleted.

Instead of using amgettuple, an index scan can be done with amgetbitmap to fetch all tuples in one call. This can be noticeably more efficient than amgettuple because it allows avoiding lock/unlock cycles within the access method. In principle amgetbitmap should have the same effects as repeated amgettuple calls, but we impose several restrictions to simplify matters. First of all, amgetbitmap returns all tuples at once and marking or restoring scan positions isn't supported. Secondly, the tuples are returned in a bitmap which doesn't have any specific ordering, which is why amgetbitmap doesn't take a direction argument. (Ordering operators will never be supplied for such a scan, either.) Finally, amgetbitmap does not guarantee any locking of the returned tuples, with implications spelled out in Section 52.4.

Note that it is permitted for an access method to implement only amgetbitmap and not amgettuple, or vice versa, if its internal implementation is unsuited to one API or the other.

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Index Locking Considerations

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52.4. Index Locking Considerations

Index access methods must handle concurrent updates of the index by multiple processes. The core PostgreSQL system obtains AccessShareLock on the index during an index scan, and RowExclusiveLock when updating the index (including plain VACUUM). Since these lock types do not conflict, the access method is responsible for handling any fine-grained locking it might need. An exclusive lock on the index as a whole will be taken only during index creation, destruction, or REINDEX.

Building an index type that supports concurrent updates usually requires extensive and subtle analysis of the required behavior. For the b-tree and hash index types, you can read about the design decisions involved in src/backend/access/nbtree/README and src/backend/access/hash/README.

Aside from the index's own internal consistency requirements, concurrent updates create issues about consistency between the parent table (the heap) and the index. Because PostgreSQL separates accesses and updates of the heap from those of the index, there are windows in which the index might be inconsistent with the heap. We handle this problem with the following rules:

  • A new heap entry is made before making its index entries. (Therefore a concurrent index scan is likely to fail to see the heap entry. This is okay because the index reader would be uninterested in an uncommitted row anyway. But see Section 52.5.)

  • When a heap entry is to be deleted (by VACUUM), all its index entries must be removed first.

  • An index scan must maintain a pin on the index page holding the item last returned by amgettuple, and ambulkdelete cannot delete entries from pages that are pinned by other backends. The need for this rule is explained below.

Without the third rule, it is possible for an index reader to see an index entry just before it is removed by VACUUM, and then to arrive at the corresponding heap entry after that was removed by VACUUM. This creates no serious problems if that item number is still unused when the reader reaches it, since an empty item slot will be ignored by heap_fetch(). But what if a third backend has already re-used the item slot for something else? When using an MVCC-compliant snapshot, there is no problem because the new occupant of the slot is certain to be too new to pass the snapshot test. However, with a non-MVCC-compliant snapshot (such as SnapshotNow), it would be possible to accept and return a row that does not in fact match the scan keys. We could defend against this scenario by requiring the scan keys to be rechecked against the heap row in all cases, but that is too expensive. Instead, we use a pin on an index page as a proxy to indicate that the reader might still be "in flight" from the index entry to the matching heap entry. Making ambulkdelete block on such a pin ensures that VACUUM cannot delete the heap entry before the reader is done with it. This solution costs little in run time, and adds blocking overhead only in the rare cases where there actually is a conflict.

This solution requires that index scans be "synchronous": we have to fetch each heap tuple immediately after scanning the corresponding index entry. This is expensive for a number of reasons. An "asynchronous" scan in which we collect many TIDs from the index, and only visit the heap tuples sometime later, requires much less index locking overhead and can allow a more efficient heap access pattern. Per the above analysis, we must use the synchronous approach for non-MVCC-compliant snapshots, but an asynchronous scan is workable for a query using an MVCC snapshot.

In an amgetbitmap index scan, the access method does not keep an index pin on any of the returned tuples. Therefore it is only safe to use such scans with MVCC-compliant snapshots.

When the ampredlocks flag is not set, any scan using that index access method within a serializable transaction will acquire a non-blocking predicate lock on the full index. This will generate a read-write conflict with the insert of any tuple into that index by a concurrent serializable transaction. If certain patterns of read-write conflicts are detected among a set of concurrent serializable transactions, one of those transactions may be canceled to protect data integrity. When the flag is set, it indicates that the index access method implements finer-grained predicate locking, which will tend to reduce the frequency of such transaction cancellations.

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Index Uniqueness Checks

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52.5. Index Uniqueness Checks

PostgreSQL enforces SQL uniqueness constraints using unique indexes, which are indexes that disallow multiple entries with identical keys. An access method that supports this feature sets pg_am.amcanunique true. (At present, only b-tree supports it.)

Because of MVCC, it is always necessary to allow duplicate entries to exist physically in an index: the entries might refer to successive versions of a single logical row. The behavior we actually want to enforce is that no MVCC snapshot could include two rows with equal index keys. This breaks down into the following cases that must be checked when inserting a new row into a unique index:

  • If a conflicting valid row has been deleted by the current transaction, it's okay. (In particular, since an UPDATE always deletes the old row version before inserting the new version, this will allow an UPDATE on a row without changing the key.)

  • If a conflicting row has been inserted by an as-yet-uncommitted transaction, the would-be inserter must wait to see if that transaction commits. If it rolls back then there is no conflict. If it commits without deleting the conflicting row again, there is a uniqueness violation. (In practice we just wait for the other transaction to end and then redo the visibility check in toto.)

  • Similarly, if a conflicting valid row has been deleted by an as-yet-uncommitted transaction, the would-be inserter must wait for that transaction to commit or abort, and then repeat the test.

Furthermore, immediately before reporting a uniqueness violation according to the above rules, the access method must recheck the liveness of the row being inserted. If it is committed dead then no violation should be reported. (This case cannot occur during the ordinary scenario of inserting a row that's just been created by the current transaction. It can happen during CREATE UNIQUE INDEX CONCURRENTLY, however.)

We require the index access method to apply these tests itself, which means that it must reach into the heap to check the commit status of any row that is shown to have a duplicate key according to the index contents. This is without a doubt ugly and non-modular, but it saves redundant work: if we did a separate probe then the index lookup for a conflicting row would be essentially repeated while finding the place to insert the new row's index entry. What's more, there is no obvious way to avoid race conditions unless the conflict check is an integral part of insertion of the new index entry.

If the unique constraint is deferrable, there is additional complexity: we need to be able to insert an index entry for a new row, but defer any uniqueness-violation error until end of statement or even later. To avoid unnecessary repeat searches of the index, the index access method should do a preliminary uniqueness check during the initial insertion. If this shows that there is definitely no conflicting live tuple, we are done. Otherwise, we schedule a recheck to occur when it is time to enforce the constraint. If, at the time of the recheck, both the inserted tuple and some other tuple with the same key are live, then the error must be reported. (Note that for this purpose, "live" actually means "any tuple in the index entry's HOT chain is live".) To implement this, the aminsert function is passed a checkUnique parameter having one of the following values:

  • UNIQUE_CHECK_NO indicates that no uniqueness checking should be done (this is not a unique index).

  • UNIQUE_CHECK_YES indicates that this is a non-deferrable unique index, and the uniqueness check must be done immediately, as described above.

  • UNIQUE_CHECK_PARTIAL indicates that the unique constraint is deferrable. PostgreSQL will use this mode to insert each row's index entry. The access method must allow duplicate entries into the index, and report any potential duplicates by returning FALSE from aminsert. For each row for which FALSE is returned, a deferred recheck will be scheduled.

    The access method must identify any rows which might violate the unique constraint, but it is not an error for it to report false positives. This allows the check to be done without waiting for other transactions to finish; conflicts reported here are not treated as errors and will be rechecked later, by which time they may no longer be conflicts.

  • UNIQUE_CHECK_EXISTING indicates that this is a deferred recheck of a row that was reported as a potential uniqueness violation. Although this is implemented by calling aminsert, the access method must not insert a new index entry in this case. The index entry is already present. Rather, the access method must check to see if there is another live index entry. If so, and if the target row is also still live, report error.

    It is recommended that in a UNIQUE_CHECK_EXISTING call, the access method further verify that the target row actually does have an existing entry in the index, and report error if not. This is a good idea because the index tuple values passed to aminsert will have been recomputed. If the index definition involves functions that are not really immutable, we might be checking the wrong area of the index. Checking that the target row is found in the recheck verifies that we are scanning for the same tuple values as were used in the original insertion.

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Index Cost Estimation Functions

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52.6. Index Cost Estimation Functions

The amcostestimate function is given information describing a possible index scan, including lists of WHERE and ORDER BY clauses that have been determined to be usable with the index. It must return estimates of the cost of accessing the index and the selectivity of the WHERE clauses (that is, the fraction of parent-table rows that will be retrieved during the index scan). For simple cases, nearly all the work of the cost estimator can be done by calling standard routines in the optimizer; the point of having an amcostestimate function is to allow index access methods to provide index-type-specific knowledge, in case it is possible to improve on the standard estimates.

Each amcostestimate function must have the signature:

void
amcostestimate (PlannerInfo *root,
                IndexOptInfo *index,
                List *indexQuals,
                List *indexOrderBys,
                RelOptInfo *outer_rel,
                Cost *indexStartupCost,
                Cost *indexTotalCost,
                Selectivity *indexSelectivity,
                double *indexCorrelation);

The first five parameters are inputs:

root

The planner's information about the query being processed.

index

The index being considered.

indexQuals

List of index qual clauses (implicitly ANDed); a NIL list indicates no qualifiers are available. Note that the list contains expression trees with RestrictInfo nodes at the top, not ScanKeys.

indexOrderBys

List of indexable ORDER BY operators, or NIL if none. Note that the list contains expression trees, not ScanKeys.

outer_rel

If the index is being considered for use in a join inner indexscan, the planner's information about the outer side of the join. Otherwise NULL. When non-NULL, some of the qual clauses will be join clauses with this rel rather than being simple restriction clauses. Also, the cost estimator should expect that the index scan will be repeated for each row of the outer rel.

The last four parameters are pass-by-reference outputs:

*indexStartupCost

Set to cost of index start-up processing

*indexTotalCost

Set to total cost of index processing

*indexSelectivity

Set to index selectivity

*indexCorrelation

Set to correlation coefficient between index scan order and underlying table's order

Note that cost estimate functions must be written in C, not in SQL or any available procedural language, because they must access internal data structures of the planner/optimizer.

The index access costs should be computed using the parameters used by src/backend/optimizer/path/costsize.c: a sequential disk block fetch has cost seq_page_cost, a nonsequential fetch has cost random_page_cost, and the cost of processing one index row should usually be taken as cpu_index_tuple_cost. In addition, an appropriate multiple of cpu_operator_cost should be charged for any comparison operators invoked during index processing (especially evaluation of the indexQuals themselves).

The access costs should include all disk and CPU costs associated with scanning the index itself, but not the costs of retrieving or processing the parent-table rows that are identified by the index.

The "start-up cost" is the part of the total scan cost that must be expended before we can begin to fetch the first row. For most indexes this can be taken as zero, but an index type with a high start-up cost might want to set it nonzero.

The indexSelectivity should be set to the estimated fraction of the parent table rows that will be retrieved during the index scan. In the case of a lossy query, this will typically be higher than the fraction of rows that actually pass the given qual conditions.

The indexCorrelation should be set to the correlation (ranging between -1.0 and 1.0) between the index order and the table order. This is used to adjust the estimate for the cost of fetching rows from the parent table.

In the join case, the returned numbers should be averages expected for any one scan of the index.

Cost Estimation

A typical cost estimator will proceed as follows:

  1. Estimate and return the fraction of parent-table rows that will be visited based on the given qual conditions. In the absence of any index-type-specific knowledge, use the standard optimizer function clauselist_selectivity():

    *indexSelectivity = clauselist_selectivity(root, indexQuals,
                                           index->rel->relid,
                                           JOIN_INNER, NULL);

  2. Estimate the number of index rows that will be visited during the scan. For many index types this is the same as indexSelectivity times the number of rows in the index, but it might be more. (Note that the index's size in pages and rows is available from the IndexOptInfo struct.)

  3. Estimate the number of index pages that will be retrieved during the scan. This might be just indexSelectivity times the index's size in pages.

  4. Compute the index access cost. A generic estimator might do this:

    /*
 * Our generic assumption is that the index pages will be read
 * sequentially, so they cost seq_page_cost each, not random_page_cost.
 * Also, we charge for evaluation of the indexquals at each index row.
 * All the costs are assumed to be paid incrementally during the scan.
 */
cost_qual_eval(&index_qual_cost, indexQuals, root);
*indexStartupCost = index_qual_cost.startup;
*indexTotalCost = seq_page_cost * numIndexPages +
    (cpu_index_tuple_cost + index_qual_cost.per_tuple) * numIndexTuples;

    However, the above does not account for amortization of index reads across repeated index scans in the join case.

  5. Estimate the index correlation. For a simple ordered index on a single field, this can be retrieved from pg_statistic. If the correlation is not known, the conservative estimate is zero (no correlation).

Examples of cost estimator functions can be found in src/backend/utils/adt/selfuncs.c.

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GiST Indexes

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Chapter 53. GiST Indexes

Table of Contents
53.1. Introduction
53.2. Extensibility
53.3. Implementation
53.4. Examples
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Introduction

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53.1. Introduction

GiST stands for Generalized Search Tree. It is a balanced, tree-structured access method, that acts as a base template in which to implement arbitrary indexing schemes. B-trees, R-trees and many other indexing schemes can be implemented in GiST.

One advantage of GiST is that it allows the development of custom data types with the appropriate access methods, by an expert in the domain of the data type, rather than a database expert.

Some of the information here is derived from the University of California at Berkeley's GiST Indexing Project web site and Marcel Kornacker's thesis, Access Methods for Next-Generation Database Systems. The GiST implementation in PostgreSQL is primarily maintained by Teodor Sigaev and Oleg Bartunov, and there is more information on their web site.

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Extensibility

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53.2. Extensibility

Traditionally, implementing a new index access method meant a lot of difficult work. It was necessary to understand the inner workings of the database, such as the lock manager and Write-Ahead Log. The GiST interface has a high level of abstraction, requiring the access method implementer only to implement the semantics of the data type being accessed. The GiST layer itself takes care of concurrency, logging and searching the tree structure.

This extensibility should not be confused with the extensibility of the other standard search trees in terms of the data they can handle. For example, PostgreSQL supports extensible B-trees and hash indexes. That means that you can use PostgreSQL to build a B-tree or hash over any data type you want. But B-trees only support range predicates (<, =, >), and hash indexes only support equality queries.

So if you index, say, an image collection with a PostgreSQL B-tree, you can only issue queries such as "is imagex equal to imagey", "is imagex less than imagey" and "is imagex greater than imagey". Depending on how you define "equals", "less than" and "greater than" in this context, this could be useful. However, by using a GiST based index, you could create ways to ask domain-specific questions, perhaps "find all images of horses" or "find all over-exposed images".

All it takes to get a GiST access method up and running is to implement several user-defined methods, which define the behavior of keys in the tree. Of course these methods have to be pretty fancy to support fancy queries, but for all the standard queries (B-trees, R-trees, etc.) they're relatively straightforward. In short, GiST combines extensibility along with generality, code reuse, and a clean interface.

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Implementation

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53.3. Implementation

There are seven methods that an index operator class for GiST must provide, and an eighth that is optional. Correctness of the index is ensured by proper implementation of the same, consistent and union methods, while efficiency (size and speed) of the index will depend on the penalty and picksplit methods. The remaining two basic methods are compress and decompress, which allow an index to have internal tree data of a different type than the data it indexes. The leaves are to be of the indexed data type, while the other tree nodes can be of any C struct (but you still have to follow PostgreSQL data type rules here, see about varlena for variable sized data). If the tree's internal data type exists at the SQL level, the STORAGE option of the CREATE OPERATOR CLASS command can be used. The optional eighth method is distance, which is needed if the operator class wishes to support ordered scans (nearest-neighbor searches).

consistent

Given an index entry p and a query value q, this function determines whether the index entry is "consistent" with the query; that is, could the predicate "indexed_column indexable_operator q" be true for any row represented by the index entry? For a leaf index entry this is equivalent to testing the indexable condition, while for an internal tree node this determines whether it is necessary to scan the subtree of the index represented by the tree node. When the result is true, a recheck flag must also be returned. This indicates whether the predicate is certainly true or only possibly true. If recheck = false then the index has tested the predicate condition exactly, whereas if recheck = true the row is only a candidate match. In that case the system will automatically evaluate the indexable_operator against the actual row value to see if it is really a match. This convention allows GiST to support both lossless and lossy index structures.

The SQL declaration of the function must look like this:

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION my_consistent(internal, data_type, smallint, oid, internal)
RETURNS bool
AS 'MODULE_PATHNAME'
LANGUAGE C STRICT;

And the matching code in the C module could then follow this skeleton:

Datum       my_consistent(PG_FUNCTION_ARGS);
PG_FUNCTION_INFO_V1(my_consistent);

Datum
my_consistent(PG_FUNCTION_ARGS)
{
    GISTENTRY  *entry = (GISTENTRY *) PG_GETARG_POINTER(0);
    data_type  *query = PG_GETARG_DATA_TYPE_P(1);
    StrategyNumber strategy = (StrategyNumber) PG_GETARG_UINT16(2);
    /* Oid subtype = PG_GETARG_OID(3); */
    bool       *recheck = (bool *) PG_GETARG_POINTER(4);
    data_type  *key = DatumGetDataType(entry->key);
    bool        retval;

    /*
     * determine return value as a function of strategy, key and query.
     *
     * Use GIST_LEAF(entry) to know where you're called in the index tree,
     * which comes handy when supporting the = operator for example (you could
     * check for non empty union() in non-leaf nodes and equality in leaf
     * nodes).
     */

    *recheck = true;        /* or false if check is exact */

    PG_RETURN_BOOL(retval);
}

Here, key is an element in the index and query the value being looked up in the index. The StrategyNumber parameter indicates which operator of your operator class is being applied — it matches one of the operator numbers in the CREATE OPERATOR CLASS command. Depending on what operators you have included in the class, the data type of query could vary with the operator, but the above skeleton assumes it doesn't.

union

This method consolidates information in the tree. Given a set of entries, this function generates a new index entry that represents all the given entries.

The SQL declaration of the function must look like this:

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION my_union(internal, internal)
RETURNS internal
AS 'MODULE_PATHNAME'
LANGUAGE C STRICT;

And the matching code in the C module could then follow this skeleton:

Datum       my_union(PG_FUNCTION_ARGS);
PG_FUNCTION_INFO_V1(my_union);

Datum
my_union(PG_FUNCTION_ARGS)
{
    GistEntryVector *entryvec = (GistEntryVector *) PG_GETARG_POINTER(0);
    GISTENTRY  *ent = entryvec->vector;
    data_type  *out,
               *tmp,
               *old;
    int         numranges,
                i = 0;

    numranges = entryvec->n;
    tmp = DatumGetDataType(ent[0].key);
    out = tmp;

    if (numranges == 1)
    {
        out = data_type_deep_copy(tmp);

        PG_RETURN_DATA_TYPE_P(out);
    }

    for (i = 1; i < numranges; i++)
    {
        old = out;
        tmp = DatumGetDataType(ent[i].key);
        out = my_union_implementation(out, tmp);
    }

    PG_RETURN_DATA_TYPE_P(out);
}

As you can see, in this skeleton we're dealing with a data type where union(X, Y, Z) = union(union(X, Y), Z). It's easy enough to support data types where this is not the case, by implementing the proper union algorithm in this GiST support method.

The union implementation function should return a pointer to newly palloc()ed memory. You can't just return whatever the input is.

compress

Converts the data item into a format suitable for physical storage in an index page.

The SQL declaration of the function must look like this:

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION my_compress(internal)
RETURNS internal
AS 'MODULE_PATHNAME'
LANGUAGE C STRICT;

And the matching code in the C module could then follow this skeleton:

Datum       my_compress(PG_FUNCTION_ARGS);
PG_FUNCTION_INFO_V1(my_compress);

Datum
my_compress(PG_FUNCTION_ARGS)
{
    GISTENTRY  *entry = (GISTENTRY *) PG_GETARG_POINTER(0);
    GISTENTRY  *retval;

    if (entry->leafkey)
    {
        /* replace entry->key with a compressed version */
        compressed_data_type *compressed_data = palloc(sizeof(compressed_data_type));

        /* fill *compressed_data from entry->key ... */

        retval = palloc(sizeof(GISTENTRY));
        gistentryinit(*retval, PointerGetDatum(compressed_data),
                      entry->rel, entry->page, entry->offset, FALSE);
    }
    else
    {
        /* typically we needn't do anything with non-leaf entries */
        retval = entry;
    }

    PG_RETURN_POINTER(retval);
}

You have to adapt compressed_data_type to the specific type you're converting to in order to compress your leaf nodes, of course.

Depending on your needs, you could also need to care about compressing NULL values in there, storing for example (Datum) 0 like gist_circle_compress does.

decompress

The reverse of the compress method. Converts the index representation of the data item into a format that can be manipulated by the database.

The SQL declaration of the function must look like this:

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION my_decompress(internal)
RETURNS internal
AS 'MODULE_PATHNAME'
LANGUAGE C STRICT;

And the matching code in the C module could then follow this skeleton:

Datum       my_decompress(PG_FUNCTION_ARGS);
PG_FUNCTION_INFO_V1(my_decompress);

Datum
my_decompress(PG_FUNCTION_ARGS)
{
    PG_RETURN_POINTER(PG_GETARG_POINTER(0));
}

The above skeleton is suitable for the case where no decompression is needed.

penalty

Returns a value indicating the "cost" of inserting the new entry into a particular branch of the tree. Items will be inserted down the path of least penalty in the tree. Values returned by penalty should be non-negative. If a negative value is returned, it will be treated as zero.

The SQL declaration of the function must look like this:

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION my_penalty(internal, internal, internal)
RETURNS internal
AS 'MODULE_PATHNAME'
LANGUAGE C STRICT;  -- in some cases penalty functions need not be strict

And the matching code in the C module could then follow this skeleton:

Datum       my_penalty(PG_FUNCTION_ARGS);
PG_FUNCTION_INFO_V1(my_penalty);

Datum
my_penalty(PG_FUNCTION_ARGS)
{
    GISTENTRY  *origentry = (GISTENTRY *) PG_GETARG_POINTER(0);
    GISTENTRY  *newentry = (GISTENTRY *) PG_GETARG_POINTER(1);
    float      *penalty = (float *) PG_GETARG_POINTER(2);
    data_type  *orig = DatumGetDataType(origentry->key);
    data_type  *new = DatumGetDataType(newentry->key);

    *penalty = my_penalty_implementation(orig, new);
    PG_RETURN_POINTER(penalty);
}

The penalty function is crucial to good performance of the index. It'll get used at insertion time to determine which branch to follow when choosing where to add the new entry in the tree. At query time, the more balanced the index, the quicker the lookup.

picksplit

When an index page split is necessary, this function decides which entries on the page are to stay on the old page, and which are to move to the new page.

The SQL declaration of the function must look like this:

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION my_picksplit(internal, internal)
RETURNS internal
AS 'MODULE_PATHNAME'
LANGUAGE C STRICT;

And the matching code in the C module could then follow this skeleton:

Datum       my_picksplit(PG_FUNCTION_ARGS);
PG_FUNCTION_INFO_V1(my_picksplit);

Datum
my_picksplit(PG_FUNCTION_ARGS)
{
    GistEntryVector *entryvec = (GistEntryVector *) PG_GETARG_POINTER(0);
    OffsetNumber maxoff = entryvec->n - 1;
    GISTENTRY  *ent = entryvec->vector;
    GIST_SPLITVEC *v = (GIST_SPLITVEC *) PG_GETARG_POINTER(1);
    int         i,
                nbytes;
    OffsetNumber *left,
               *right;
    data_type  *tmp_union;
    data_type  *unionL;
    data_type  *unionR;
    GISTENTRY **raw_entryvec;

    maxoff = entryvec->n - 1;
    nbytes = (maxoff + 1) * sizeof(OffsetNumber);

    v->spl_left = (OffsetNumber *) palloc(nbytes);
    left = v->spl_left;
    v->spl_nleft = 0;

    v->spl_right = (OffsetNumber *) palloc(nbytes);
    right = v->spl_right;
    v->spl_nright = 0;

    unionL = NULL;
    unionR = NULL;

    /* Initialize the raw entry vector. */
    raw_entryvec = (GISTENTRY **) malloc(entryvec->n * sizeof(void *));
    for (i = FirstOffsetNumber; i <= maxoff; i = OffsetNumberNext(i))
        raw_entryvec[i] = &(entryvec->vector[i]);

    for (i = FirstOffsetNumber; i <= maxoff; i = OffsetNumberNext(i))
    {
        int         real_index = raw_entryvec[i] - entryvec->vector;

        tmp_union = DatumGetDataType(entryvec->vector[real_index].key);
        Assert(tmp_union != NULL);

        /*
         * Choose where to put the index entries and update unionL and unionR
         * accordingly. Append the entries to either v_spl_left or
         * v_spl_right, and care about the counters.
         */

        if (my_choice_is_left(unionL, curl, unionR, curr))
        {
            if (unionL == NULL)
                unionL = tmp_union;
            else
                unionL = my_union_implementation(unionL, tmp_union);

            *left = real_index;
            ++left;
            ++(v->spl_nleft);
        }
        else
        {
            /*
             * Same on the right
             */
        }
    }

    v->spl_ldatum = DataTypeGetDatum(unionL);
    v->spl_rdatum = DataTypeGetDatum(unionR);
    PG_RETURN_POINTER(v);
}

Like penalty, the picksplit function is crucial to good performance of the index. Designing suitable penalty and picksplit implementations is where the challenge of implementing well-performing GiST indexes lies.

same

Returns true if two index entries are identical, false otherwise.

The SQL declaration of the function must look like this:

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION my_same(internal, internal, internal)
RETURNS internal
AS 'MODULE_PATHNAME'
LANGUAGE C STRICT;

And the matching code in the C module could then follow this skeleton:

Datum       my_same(PG_FUNCTION_ARGS);
PG_FUNCTION_INFO_V1(my_same);

Datum
my_same(PG_FUNCTION_ARGS)
{
    prefix_range *v1 = PG_GETARG_PREFIX_RANGE_P(0);
    prefix_range *v2 = PG_GETARG_PREFIX_RANGE_P(1);
    bool       *result = (bool *) PG_GETARG_POINTER(2);

    *result = my_eq(v1, v2);
    PG_RETURN_POINTER(result);
}

For historical reasons, the same function doesn't just return a Boolean result; instead it has to store the flag at the location indicated by the third argument.

distance

Given an index entry p and a query value q, this function determines the index entry's "distance" from the query value. This function must be supplied if the operator class contains any ordering operators. A query using the ordering operator will be implemented by returning index entries with the smallest "distance" values first, so the results must be consistent with the operator's semantics. For a leaf index entry the result just represents the distance to the index entry; for an internal tree node, the result must be the smallest distance that any child entry could have.

The SQL declaration of the function must look like this:

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION my_distance(internal, data_type, smallint, oid)
RETURNS float8
AS 'MODULE_PATHNAME'
LANGUAGE C STRICT;

And the matching code in the C module could then follow this skeleton:

Datum       my_distance(PG_FUNCTION_ARGS);
PG_FUNCTION_INFO_V1(my_distance);

Datum
my_distance(PG_FUNCTION_ARGS)
{
    GISTENTRY  *entry = (GISTENTRY *) PG_GETARG_POINTER(0);
    data_type  *query = PG_GETARG_DATA_TYPE_P(1);
    StrategyNumber strategy = (StrategyNumber) PG_GETARG_UINT16(2);
    /* Oid subtype = PG_GETARG_OID(3); */
    data_type  *key = DatumGetDataType(entry->key);
    double      retval;

    /*
     * determine return value as a function of strategy, key and query.
     */

    PG_RETURN_FLOAT8(retval);
}

The arguments to the distance function are identical to the arguments of the consistent function, except that no recheck flag is used. The distance to a leaf index entry must always be determined exactly, since there is no way to re-order the tuples once they are returned. Some approximation is allowed when determining the distance to an internal tree node, so long as the result is never greater than any child's actual distance. Thus, for example, distance to a bounding box is usually sufficient in geometric applications. The result value can be any finite float8 value. (Infinity and minus infinity are used internally to handle cases such as nulls, so it is not recommended that distance functions return these values.)

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Examples

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53.4. Examples

The PostgreSQL source distribution includes several examples of index methods implemented using GiST. The core system currently provides text search support (indexing for tsvector and tsquery) as well as R-Tree equivalent functionality for some of the built-in geometric data types (see src/backend/access/gist/gistproc.c). The following contrib modules also contain GiST operator classes:

btree_gist

B-tree equivalent functionality for several data types

cube

Indexing for multidimensional cubes

hstore

Module for storing (key, value) pairs

intarray

RD-Tree for one-dimensional array of int4 values

ltree

Indexing for tree-like structures

pg_trgm

Text similarity using trigram matching

seg

Indexing for "float ranges"

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GIN Indexes

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Chapter 54. GIN Indexes

Table of Contents
54.1. Introduction
54.2. Extensibility
54.3. Implementation
54.3.1. GIN Fast Update Technique
54.3.2. Partial Match Algorithm
54.4. GIN Tips and Tricks
54.5. Limitations
54.6. Examples
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Introduction

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54.1. Introduction

GIN stands for Generalized Inverted Index. GIN is designed for handling cases where the items to be indexed are composite values, and the queries to be handled by the index need to search for element values that appear within the composite items. For example, the items could be documents, and the queries could be searches for documents containing specific words.

We use the word item to refer to a composite value that is to be indexed, and the word key to refer to an element value. GIN always stores and searches for keys, not item values per se.

A GIN index stores a set of (key, posting list) pairs, where a posting list is a set of row IDs in which the key occurs. The same row ID can appear in multiple posting lists, since an item can contain more than one key. Each key value is stored only once, so a GIN index is very compact for cases where the same key appears many times.

GIN is generalized in the sense that the GIN access method code does not need to know the specific operations that it accelerates. Instead, it uses custom strategies defined for particular data types. The strategy defines how keys are extracted from indexed items and query conditions, and how to determine whether a row that contains some of the key values in a query actually satisfies the query.

One advantage of GIN is that it allows the development of custom data types with the appropriate access methods, by an expert in the domain of the data type, rather than a database expert. This is much the same advantage as using GiST.

The GIN implementation in PostgreSQL is primarily maintained by Teodor Sigaev and Oleg Bartunov. There is more information about GIN on their website.

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Extensibility

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54.2. Extensibility

The GIN interface has a high level of abstraction, requiring the access method implementer only to implement the semantics of the data type being accessed. The GIN layer itself takes care of concurrency, logging and searching the tree structure.

All it takes to get a GIN access method working is to implement four (or five) user-defined methods, which define the behavior of keys in the tree and the relationships between keys, indexed items, and indexable queries. In short, GIN combines extensibility with generality, code reuse, and a clean interface.

The four methods that an operator class for GIN must provide are:

int compare(Datum a, Datum b)

Compares two keys (not indexed items!) and returns an integer less than zero, zero, or greater than zero, indicating whether the first key is less than, equal to, or greater than the second. Null keys are never passed to this function.

Datum *extractValue(Datum itemValue, int32 *nkeys, bool **nullFlags)

Returns a palloc'd array of keys given an item to be indexed. The number of returned keys must be stored into *nkeys. If any of the keys can be null, also palloc an array of *nkeys booleans, store its address at *nullFlags, and set these null flags as needed. *nullFlags can be left NULL (its initial value) if all keys are non-null. The return value can be NULL if the item contains no keys.

Datum *extractQuery(Datum query, int32 *nkeys, StrategyNumber n, bool **pmatch, Pointer **extra_data, bool **nullFlags, int32 *searchMode)

Returns a palloc'd array of keys given a value to be queried; that is, query is the value on the right-hand side of an indexable operator whose left-hand side is the indexed column. n is the strategy number of the operator within the operator class (see Section 35.14.2). Often, extractQuery will need to consult n to determine the data type of query and the method it should use to extract key values. The number of returned keys must be stored into *nkeys. If any of the keys can be null, also palloc an array of *nkeys booleans, store its address at *nullFlags, and set these null flags as needed. *nullFlags can be left NULL (its initial value) if all keys are non-null. The return value can be NULL if the query contains no keys.

searchMode is an output argument that allows extractQuery to specify details about how the search will be done. If *searchMode is set to GIN_SEARCH_MODE_DEFAULT (which is the value it is initialized to before call), only items that match at least one of the returned keys are considered candidate matches. If *searchMode is set to GIN_SEARCH_MODE_INCLUDE_EMPTY, then in addition to items containing at least one matching key, items that contain no keys at all are considered candidate matches. (This mode is useful for implementing is-subset-of operators, for example.) If *searchMode is set to GIN_SEARCH_MODE_ALL, then all non-null items in the index are considered candidate matches, whether they match any of the returned keys or not. (This mode is much slower than the other two choices, since it requires scanning essentially the entire index, but it may be necessary to implement corner cases correctly. An operator that needs this mode in most cases is probably not a good candidate for a GIN operator class.) The symbols to use for setting this mode are defined in access/gin.h.

pmatch is an output argument for use when partial match is supported. To use it, extractQuery must allocate an array of *nkeys booleans and store its address at *pmatch. Each element of the array should be set to TRUE if the corresponding key requires partial match, FALSE if not. If *pmatch is set to NULL then GIN assumes partial match is not required. The variable is initialized to NULL before call, so this argument can simply be ignored by operator classes that do not support partial match.

extra_data is an output argument that allows extractQuery to pass additional data to the consistent and comparePartial methods. To use it, extractQuery must allocate an array of *nkeys Pointers and store its address at *extra_data, then store whatever it wants to into the individual pointers. The variable is initialized to NULL before call, so this argument can simply be ignored by operator classes that do not require extra data. If *extra_data is set, the whole array is passed to the consistent method, and the appropriate element to the comparePartial method.

bool consistent(bool check[], StrategyNumber n, Datum query, int32 nkeys, Pointer extra_data[], bool *recheck, Datum queryKeys[], bool nullFlags[])

Returns TRUE if an indexed item satisfies the query operator with strategy number n (or might satisfy it, if the recheck indication is returned). This function does not have direct access to the indexed item's value, since GIN does not store items explicitly. Rather, what is available is knowledge about which key values extracted from the query appear in a given indexed item. The check array has length nkeys, which is the same as the number of keys previously returned by extractQuery for this query datum. Each element of the check array is TRUE if the indexed item contains the corresponding query key, ie, if (check[i] == TRUE) the i-th key of the extractQuery result array is present in the indexed item. The original query datum is passed in case the consistent method needs to consult it, and so are the queryKeys[] and nullFlags[] arrays previously returned by extractQuery. extra_data is the extra-data array returned by extractQuery, or NULL if none.

When extractQuery returns a null key in queryKeys[], the corresponding check[] element is TRUE if the indexed item contains a null key; that is, the semantics of check[] are like IS NOT DISTINCT FROM. The consistent function can examine the corresponding nullFlags[] element if it needs to tell the difference between a regular value match and a null match.

On success, *recheck should be set to TRUE if the heap tuple needs to be rechecked against the query operator, or FALSE if the index test is exact. That is, a FALSE return value guarantees that the heap tuple does not match the query; a TRUE return value with *recheck set to FALSE guarantees that the heap tuple does match the query; and a TRUE return value with *recheck set to TRUE means that the heap tuple might match the query, so it needs to be fetched and rechecked by evaluating the query operator directly against the originally indexed item.

Optionally, an operator class for GIN can supply a fifth method:

int comparePartial(Datum partial_key, Datum key, StrategyNumber n, Pointer extra_data)

Compare a partial-match query key to an index key. Returns an integer whose sign indicates the result: less than zero means the index key does not match the query, but the index scan should continue; zero means that the index key does match the query; greater than zero indicates that the index scan should stop because no more matches are possible. The strategy number n of the operator that generated the partial match query is provided, in case its semantics are needed to determine when to end the scan. Also, extra_data is the corresponding element of the extra-data array made by extractQuery, or NULL if none. Null keys are never passed to this function.

To support "partial match" queries, an operator class must provide the comparePartial method, and its extractQuery method must set the pmatch parameter when a partial-match query is encountered. See Section 54.3.2 for details.

The actual data types of the various Datum values mentioned above vary depending on the operator class. The item values passed to extractValue are always of the operator class's input type, and all key values must be of the class's STORAGE type. The type of the query argument passed to extractQuery and consistent is whatever is specified as the right-hand input type of the class member operator identified by the strategy number. This need not be the same as the item type, so long as key values of the correct type can be extracted from it.

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Implementation

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54.3. Implementation

Internally, a GIN index contains a B-tree index constructed over keys, where each key is an element of one or more indexed items (a member of an array, for example) and where each tuple in a leaf page contains either a pointer to a B-tree of heap pointers (a "posting tree"), or a simple list of heap pointers (a "posting list") when the list is small enough to fit into a single index tuple along with the key value.

As of PostgreSQL 9.1, NULL key values can be included in the index. Also, placeholder NULLs are included in the index for indexed items that are NULL or contain no keys according to extractValue. This allows searches that should find empty items to do so.

Multi-column GIN indexes are implemented by building a single B-tree over composite values (column number, key value). The key values for different columns can be of different types.

54.3.1. GIN Fast Update Technique

Updating a GIN index tends to be slow because of the intrinsic nature of inverted indexes: inserting or updating one heap row can cause many inserts into the index (one for each key extracted from the indexed item). As of PostgreSQL 8.4, GIN is capable of postponing much of this work by inserting new tuples into a temporary, unsorted list of pending entries. When the table is vacuumed, or if the pending list becomes too large (larger than work_mem), the entries are moved to the main GIN data structure using the same bulk insert techniques used during initial index creation. This greatly improves GIN index update speed, even counting the additional vacuum overhead. Moreover the overhead work can be done by a background process instead of in foreground query processing.

The main disadvantage of this approach is that searches must scan the list of pending entries in addition to searching the regular index, and so a large list of pending entries will slow searches significantly. Another disadvantage is that, while most updates are fast, an update that causes the pending list to become "too large" will incur an immediate cleanup cycle and thus be much slower than other updates. Proper use of autovacuum can minimize both of these problems.

If consistent response time is more important than update speed, use of pending entries can be disabled by turning off the FASTUPDATE storage parameter for a GIN index. See CREATE INDEX for details.

54.3.2. Partial Match Algorithm

GIN can support "partial match" queries, in which the query does not determine an exact match for one or more keys, but the possible matches fall within a reasonably narrow range of key values (within the key sorting order determined by the compare support method). The extractQuery method, instead of returning a key value to be matched exactly, returns a key value that is the lower bound of the range to be searched, and sets the pmatch flag true. The key range is then scanned using the comparePartial method. comparePartial must return zero for a matching index key, less than zero for a non-match that is still within the range to be searched, or greater than zero if the index key is past the range that could match.

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GIN Tips and Tricks

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54.4. GIN Tips and Tricks

Create vs. insert

Insertion into a GIN index can be slow due to the likelihood of many keys being inserted for each item. So, for bulk insertions into a table it is advisable to drop the GIN index and recreate it after finishing bulk insertion.

As of PostgreSQL 8.4, this advice is less necessary since delayed indexing is used (see Section 54.3.1 for details). But for very large updates it may still be best to drop and recreate the index.

maintenance_work_mem

Build time for a GIN index is very sensitive to the maintenance_work_mem setting; it doesn't pay to skimp on work memory during index creation.

work_mem

During a series of insertions into an existing GIN index that has FASTUPDATE enabled, the system will clean up the pending-entry list whenever the list grows larger than work_mem. To avoid fluctuations in observed response time, it's desirable to have pending-list cleanup occur in the background (i.e., via autovacuum). Foreground cleanup operations can be avoided by increasing work_mem or making autovacuum more aggressive. However, enlarging work_mem means that if a foreground cleanup does occur, it will take even longer.

gin_fuzzy_search_limit

The primary goal of developing GIN indexes was to create support for highly scalable full-text search in PostgreSQL, and there are often situations when a full-text search returns a very large set of results. Moreover, this often happens when the query contains very frequent words, so that the large result set is not even useful. Since reading many tuples from the disk and sorting them could take a lot of time, this is unacceptable for production. (Note that the index search itself is very fast.)

To facilitate controlled execution of such queries, GIN has a configurable soft upper limit on the number of rows returned: the gin_fuzzy_search_limit configuration parameter. It is set to 0 (meaning no limit) by default. If a non-zero limit is set, then the returned set is a subset of the whole result set, chosen at random.

"Soft" means that the actual number of returned results could differ somewhat from the specified limit, depending on the query and the quality of the system's random number generator.

From experience, values in the thousands (e.g., 5000 — 20000) work well.

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Limitations

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54.5. Limitations

GIN assumes that indexable operators are strict. This means that extractValue will not be called at all on a NULL item value (instead, a placeholder index entry is created automatically), and extractQuery will not be called on a NULL query value either (instead, the query is presumed to be unsatisfiable). Note however that NULL key values contained within a non-null composite item or query value are supported.

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Examples

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54.6. Examples

The PostgreSQL source distribution includes GIN operator classes for tsvector and for one-dimensional arrays of all internal types. Prefix searching in tsvector is implemented using the GIN partial match feature. The following contrib modules also contain GIN operator classes:

btree_gin

B-tree equivalent functionality for several data types

hstore

Module for storing (key, value) pairs

intarray

Enhanced support for int[]

pg_trgm

Text similarity using trigram matching

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Database Physical Storage

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Chapter 55. Database Physical Storage

Table of Contents
55.1. Database File Layout
55.2. TOAST
55.3. Free Space Map
55.4. Visibility Map
55.5. The Initialization Fork
55.6. Database Page Layout

This chapter provides an overview of the physical storage format used by PostgreSQL databases.

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Database File Layout

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55.1. Database File Layout

This section describes the storage format at the level of files and directories.

All the data needed for a database cluster is stored within the cluster's data directory, commonly referred to as PGDATA (after the name of the environment variable that can be used to define it). A common location for PGDATA is /var/lib/pgsql/data. Multiple clusters, managed by different server instances, can exist on the same machine.

The PGDATA directory contains several subdirectories and control files, as shown in Table 55-1. In addition to these required items, the cluster configuration files postgresql.conf, pg_hba.conf, and pg_ident.conf are traditionally stored in PGDATA (although in PostgreSQL 8.0 and later, it is possible to keep them elsewhere).

Table 55-1. Contents of PGDATA

Item | Description
PG_VERSION | A file containing the major version number of PostgreSQL
base | Subdirectory containing per-database subdirectories
global | Subdirectory containing cluster-wide tables, such as pg_database
pg_clog | Subdirectory containing transaction commit status data
pg_multixact | Subdirectory containing multitransaction status data (used for shared row locks)
pg_notify | Subdirectory containing LISTEN/NOTIFY status data
pg_serial | Subdirectory containing information about committed serializable transactions
pg_stat_tmp | Subdirectory containing temporary files for the statistics subsystem
pg_subtrans | Subdirectory containing subtransaction status data
pg_tblspc | Subdirectory containing symbolic links to tablespaces
pg_twophase | Subdirectory containing state files for prepared transactions
pg_xlog | Subdirectory containing WAL (Write Ahead Log) files
postmaster.opts | A file recording the command-line options the server was last started with
postmaster.pid | A lock file recording the current postmaster process ID (PID), cluster data directory path, postmaster start timestamp, port number, Unix-domain socket directory path (empty on Windows), first valid listen_address (IP address or *, or empty if not listening on TCP), and shared memory segment ID (this file is not present after server shutdown)

For each database in the cluster there is a subdirectory within PGDATA/base, named after the database's OID in pg_database. This subdirectory is the default location for the database's files; in particular, its system catalogs are stored there.

Each table and index is stored in a separate file. For ordinary relations, these files are named after the table or index's filenode number, which can be found in pg_class.relfilenode. But for temporary relations, the file name is of the form tBBB_FFF, where BBB is the backend ID of the backend which created the file, and FFF is the filenode number. In either case, in addition to the main file (a/k/a main fork), each table and index has a free space map (see Section 55.3), which stores information about free space available in the relation. The free space map is stored in a file named with the filenode number plus the suffix _fsm. Tables also have a visibility map, stored in a fork with the suffix _vm, to track which pages are known to have no dead tuples. The visibility map is described further in Section 55.4. Unlogged tables and indexes have a third fork, known as the initialization fork, which is stored in a fork with the suffix _init (see Section 55.5).

Caution

Note that while a table's filenode often matches its OID, this is not necessarily the case; some operations, like TRUNCATE, REINDEX, CLUSTER and some forms of ALTER TABLE, can change the filenode while preserving the OID. Avoid assuming that filenode and table OID are the same. Also, for certain system catalogs including pg_class itself, pg_class.relfilenode contains zero. The actual filenode number of these catalogs is stored in a lower-level data structure, and can be obtained using the pg_relation_filenode() function.

When a table or index exceeds 1 GB, it is divided into gigabyte-sized segments. The first segment's file name is the same as the filenode; subsequent segments are named filenode.1, filenode.2, etc. This arrangement avoids problems on platforms that have file size limitations. (Actually, 1 GB is just the default segment size. The segment size can be adjusted using the configuration option --with-segsize when building PostgreSQL.) In principle, free space map and visibility map forks could require multiple segments as well, though this is unlikely to happen in practice.

A table that has columns with potentially large entries will have an associated TOAST table, which is used for out-of-line storage of field values that are too large to keep in the table rows proper. pg_class.reltoastrelid links from a table to its TOAST table, if any. See Section 55.2 for more information.

The contents of tables and indexes are discussed further in Section 55.6.

Tablespaces make the scenario more complicated. Each user-defined tablespace has a symbolic link inside the PGDATA/pg_tblspc directory, which points to the physical tablespace directory (i.e., the location specified in the tablespace's CREATE TABLESPACE command). This symbolic link is named after the tablespace's OID. Inside the physical tablespace directory there is a subdirectory with a name that depends on the PostgreSQL server version, such as PG_9.0_201008051. (The reason for using this subdirectory is so that successive versions of the database can use the same CREATE TABLESPACE location value without conflicts.) Within the version-specific subdirectory, there is a subdirectory for each database that has elements in the tablespace, named after the database's OID. Tables and indexes are stored within that directory, using the filenode naming scheme. The pg_default tablespace is not accessed through pg_tblspc, but corresponds to PGDATA/base. Similarly, the pg_global tablespace is not accessed through pg_tblspc, but corresponds to PGDATA/global.

The pg_relation_filepath() function shows the entire path (relative to PGDATA) of any relation. It is often useful as a substitute for remembering many of the above rules. But keep in mind that this function just gives the name of the first segment of the main fork of the relation — you may need to append a segment number and/or _fsm, _vm, or _init to find all the files associated with the relation.

Temporary files (for operations such as sorting more data than can fit in memory) are created within PGDATA/base/pgsql_tmp, or within a pgsql_tmp subdirectory of a tablespace directory if a tablespace other than pg_default is specified for them. The name of a temporary file has the form pgsql_tmpPPP.NNN, where PPP is the PID of the owning backend and NNN distinguishes different temporary files of that backend.

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TOAST

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55.2. TOAST

This section provides an overview of TOAST (The Oversized-Attribute Storage Technique).

PostgreSQL uses a fixed page size (commonly 8 kB), and does not allow tuples to span multiple pages. Therefore, it is not possible to store very large field values directly. To overcome this limitation, large field values are compressed and/or broken up into multiple physical rows. This happens transparently to the user, with only small impact on most of the backend code. The technique is affectionately known as TOAST (or "the best thing since sliced bread").

Only certain data types support TOAST — there is no need to impose the overhead on data types that cannot produce large field values. To support TOAST, a data type must have a variable-length (varlena) representation, in which the first 32-bit word of any stored value contains the total length of the value in bytes (including itself). TOAST does not constrain the rest of the representation. All the C-level functions supporting a TOAST-able data type must be careful to handle TOASTed input values. (This is normally done by invoking PG_DETOAST_DATUM before doing anything with an input value, but in some cases more efficient approaches are possible.)

TOAST usurps two bits of the varlena length word (the high-order bits on big-endian machines, the low-order bits on little-endian machines), thereby limiting the logical size of any value of a TOAST-able data type to 1 GB (230 - 1 bytes). When both bits are zero, the value is an ordinary un-TOASTed value of the data type, and the remaining bits of the length word give the total datum size (including length word) in bytes. When the highest-order or lowest-order bit is set, the value has only a single-byte header instead of the normal four-byte header, and the remaining bits give the total datum size (including length byte) in bytes. As a special case, if the remaining bits are all zero (which would be impossible for a self-inclusive length), the value is a pointer to out-of-line data stored in a separate TOAST table. (The size of a TOAST pointer is given in the second byte of the datum.) Values with single-byte headers aren't aligned on any particular boundary, either. Lastly, when the highest-order or lowest-order bit is clear but the adjacent bit is set, the content of the datum has been compressed and must be decompressed before use. In this case the remaining bits of the length word give the total size of the compressed datum, not the original data. Note that compression is also possible for out-of-line data but the varlena header does not tell whether it has occurred — the content of the TOAST pointer tells that, instead.

If any of the columns of a table are TOAST-able, the table will have an associated TOAST table, whose OID is stored in the table's pg_class.reltoastrelid entry. Out-of-line TOASTed values are kept in the TOAST table, as described in more detail below.

The compression technique used is a fairly simple and very fast member of the LZ family of compression techniques. See src/backend/utils/adt/pg_lzcompress.c for the details.

Out-of-line values are divided (after compression if used) into chunks of at most TOAST_MAX_CHUNK_SIZE bytes (by default this value is chosen so that four chunk rows will fit on a page, making it about 2000 bytes). Each chunk is stored as a separate row in the TOAST table for the owning table. Every TOAST table has the columns chunk_id (an OID identifying the particular TOASTed value), chunk_seq (a sequence number for the chunk within its value), and chunk_data (the actual data of the chunk). A unique index on chunk_id and chunk_seq provides fast retrieval of the values. A pointer datum representing an out-of-line TOASTed value therefore needs to store the OID of the TOAST table in which to look and the OID of the specific value (its chunk_id). For convenience, pointer datums also store the logical datum size (original uncompressed data length) and actual stored size (different if compression was applied). Allowing for the varlena header bytes, the total size of a TOAST pointer datum is therefore 18 bytes regardless of the actual size of the represented value.

The TOAST code is triggered only when a row value to be stored in a table is wider than TOAST_TUPLE_THRESHOLD bytes (normally 2 kB). The TOAST code will compress and/or move field values out-of-line until the row value is shorter than TOAST_TUPLE_TARGET bytes (also normally 2 kB) or no more gains can be had. During an UPDATE operation, values of unchanged fields are normally preserved as-is; so an UPDATE of a row with out-of-line values incurs no TOAST costs if none of the out-of-line values change.

The TOAST code recognizes four different strategies for storing TOAST-able columns:

  • PLAIN prevents either compression or out-of-line storage; furthermore it disables use of single-byte headers for varlena types. This is the only possible strategy for columns of non-TOAST-able data types.

  • EXTENDED allows both compression and out-of-line storage. This is the default for most TOAST-able data types. Compression will be attempted first, then out-of-line storage if the row is still too big.

  • EXTERNAL allows out-of-line storage but not compression. Use of EXTERNAL will make substring operations on wide text and bytea columns faster (at the penalty of increased storage space) because these operations are optimized to fetch only the required parts of the out-of-line value when it is not compressed.

  • MAIN allows compression but not out-of-line storage. (Actually, out-of-line storage will still be performed for such columns, but only as a last resort when there is no other way to make the row small enough to fit on a page.)

Each TOAST-able data type specifies a default strategy for columns of that data type, but the strategy for a given table column can be altered with ALTER TABLE SET STORAGE.

This scheme has a number of advantages compared to a more straightforward approach such as allowing row values to span pages. Assuming that queries are usually qualified by comparisons against relatively small key values, most of the work of the executor will be done using the main row entry. The big values of TOASTed attributes will only be pulled out (if selected at all) at the time the result set is sent to the client. Thus, the main table is much smaller and more of its rows fit in the shared buffer cache than would be the case without any out-of-line storage. Sort sets shrink also, and sorts will more often be done entirely in memory. A little test showed that a table containing typical HTML pages and their URLs was stored in about half of the raw data size including the TOAST table, and that the main table contained only about 10% of the entire data (the URLs and some small HTML pages). There was no run time difference compared to an un-TOASTed comparison table, in which all the HTML pages were cut down to 7 kB to fit.

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Free Space Map

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55.3. Free Space Map

Each heap and index relation, except for hash indexes, has a Free Space Map (FSM) to keep track of available space in the relation. It's stored alongside the main relation data in a separate relation fork, named after the filenode number of the relation, plus a _fsm suffix. For example, if the filenode of a relation is 12345, the FSM is stored in a file called 12345_fsm, in the same directory as the main relation file.

The Free Space Map is organized as a tree of FSM pages. The bottom level FSM pages store the free space available on each heap (or index) page, using one byte to represent each such page. The upper levels aggregate information from the lower levels.

Within each FSM page is a binary tree, stored in an array with one byte per node. Each leaf node represents a heap page, or a lower level FSM page. In each non-leaf node, the higher of its children's values is stored. The maximum value in the leaf nodes is therefore stored at the root.

See src/backend/storage/freespace/README for more details on how the FSM is structured, and how it's updated and searched. The pg_freespacemap module can be used to examine the information stored in free space maps.

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Visibility Map

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55.4. Visibility Map

Each heap relation has a Visibility Map (VM) to keep track of which pages contain only tuples that are known to be visible to all active transactions. It's stored alongside the main relation data in a separate relation fork, named after the filenode number of the relation, plus a _vm suffix. For example, if the filenode of a relation is 12345, the VM is stored in a file called 12345_vm, in the same directory as the main relation file. Note that indexes do not have VMs.

The visibility map simply stores one bit per heap page. A set bit means that all tuples on the page are known to be visible to all transactions. This means that the page does not contain any tuples that need to be vacuumed; in future it might also be used to avoid visiting the page for visibility checks. The map is conservative in the sense that we make sure that whenever a bit is set, we know the condition is true, but if a bit is not set, it might or might not be true.

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The Initialization Fork

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55.5. The Initialization Fork

Each unlogged table, and each index on an unlogged table, has an initialization fork. The initialization fork is an empty table or index of the appropriate type. When an unlogged table must be reset to empty due to a crash, the initialization fork is copied over the main fork, and any other forks are erased (they will be recreated automatically as needed).

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Database Page Layout

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55.6. Database Page Layout

This section provides an overview of the page format used within PostgreSQL tables and indexes.[1] Sequences and TOAST tables are formatted just like a regular table.

In the following explanation, a byte is assumed to contain 8 bits. In addition, the term item refers to an individual data value that is stored on a page. In a table, an item is a row; in an index, an item is an index entry.

Every table and index is stored as an array of pages of a fixed size (usually 8 kB, although a different page size can be selected when compiling the server). In a table, all the pages are logically equivalent, so a particular item (row) can be stored in any page. In indexes, the first page is generally reserved as a metapage holding control information, and there can be different types of pages within the index, depending on the index access method.

Table 55-2 shows the overall layout of a page. There are five parts to each page.

Table 55-2. Overall Page Layout

Item | Description
PageHeaderData | 24 bytes long. Contains general information about the page, including free space pointers.
ItemIdData | Array of (offset,length) pairs pointing to the actual items. 4 bytes per item.
Free space | The unallocated space. New item pointers are allocated from the start of this area, new items from the end.
Items | The actual items themselves.
Special space | Index access method specific data. Different methods store different data. Empty in ordinary tables.

The first 24 bytes of each page consists of a page header (PageHeaderData). Its format is detailed in Table 55-3. The first two fields track the most recent WAL entry related to this page. Next is a 2-byte field containing flag bits. This is followed by three 2-byte integer fields (pd_lower, pd_upper, and pd_special). These contain byte offsets from the page start to the start of unallocated space, to the end of unallocated space, and to the start of the special space. The next 2 bytes of the page header, pd_pagesize_version, store both the page size and a version indicator. Beginning with PostgreSQL 8.3 the version number is 4; PostgreSQL 8.1 and 8.2 used version number 3; PostgreSQL 8.0 used version number 2; PostgreSQL 7.3 and 7.4 used version number 1; prior releases used version number 0. (The basic page layout and header format has not changed in most of these versions, but the layout of heap row headers has.) The page size is basically only present as a cross-check; there is no support for having more than one page size in an installation. The last field is a hint that shows whether pruning the page is likely to be profitable: it tracks the oldest un-pruned XMAX on the page.

Table 55-3. PageHeaderData Layout

Field | Type | Length | Description
pd_lsn | XLogRecPtr | 8 bytes | LSN: next byte after last byte of xlog record for last change to this page
pd_tli | uint16 | 2 bytes | TimeLineID of last change (only its lowest 16 bits)
pd_flags | uint16 | 2 bytes | Flag bits
pd_lower | LocationIndex | 2 bytes | Offset to start of free space
pd_upper | LocationIndex | 2 bytes | Offset to end of free space
pd_special | LocationIndex | 2 bytes | Offset to start of special space
pd_pagesize_version | uint16 | 2 bytes | Page size and layout version number information
pd_prune_xid | TransactionId | 4 bytes | Oldest unpruned XMAX on page, or zero if none

All the details can be found in src/include/storage/bufpage.h.

Following the page header are item identifiers (ItemIdData), each requiring four bytes. An item identifier contains a byte-offset to the start of an item, its length in bytes, and a few attribute bits which affect its interpretation. New item identifiers are allocated as needed from the beginning of the unallocated space. The number of item identifiers present can be determined by looking at pd_lower, which is increased to allocate a new identifier. Because an item identifier is never moved until it is freed, its index can be used on a long-term basis to reference an item, even when the item itself is moved around on the page to compact free space. In fact, every pointer to an item (ItemPointer, also known as CTID) created by PostgreSQL consists of a page number and the index of an item identifier.

The items themselves are stored in space allocated backwards from the end of unallocated space. The exact structure varies depending on what the table is to contain. Tables and sequences both use a structure named HeapTupleHeaderData, described below.

The final section is the "special section" which can contain anything the access method wishes to store. For example, b-tree indexes store links to the page's left and right siblings, as well as some other data relevant to the index structure. Ordinary tables do not use a special section at all (indicated by setting pd_special to equal the page size).

All table rows are structured in the same way. There is a fixed-size header (occupying 23 bytes on most machines), followed by an optional null bitmap, an optional object ID field, and the user data. The header is detailed in Table 55-4. The actual user data (columns of the row) begins at the offset indicated by t_hoff, which must always be a multiple of the MAXALIGN distance for the platform. The null bitmap is only present if the HEAP_HASNULL bit is set in t_infomask. If it is present it begins just after the fixed header and occupies enough bytes to have one bit per data column (that is, t_natts bits altogether). In this list of bits, a 1 bit indicates not-null, a 0 bit is a null. When the bitmap is not present, all columns are assumed not-null. The object ID is only present if the HEAP_HASOID bit is set in t_infomask. If present, it appears just before the t_hoff boundary. Any padding needed to make t_hoff a MAXALIGN multiple will appear between the null bitmap and the object ID. (This in turn ensures that the object ID is suitably aligned.)

Table 55-4. HeapTupleHeaderData Layout

Field | Type | Length | Description
t_xmin | TransactionId | 4 bytes | insert XID stamp
t_xmax | TransactionId | 4 bytes | delete XID stamp
t_cid | CommandId | 4 bytes | insert and/or delete CID stamp (overlays with t_xvac)
t_xvac | TransactionId | 4 bytes | XID for VACUUM operation moving a row version
t_ctid | ItemPointerData | 6 bytes | current TID of this or newer row version
t_infomask2 | int16 | 2 bytes | number of attributes, plus various flag bits
t_infomask | uint16 | 2 bytes | various flag bits
t_hoff | uint8 | 1 byte | offset to user data

All the details can be found in src/include/access/htup.h.

Interpreting the actual data can only be done with information obtained from other tables, mostly pg_attribute. The key values needed to identify field locations are attlen and attalign. There is no way to directly get a particular attribute, except when there are only fixed width fields and no null values. All this trickery is wrapped up in the functions heap_getattr, fastgetattr and heap_getsysattr.

To read the data you need to examine each attribute in turn. First check whether the field is NULL according to the null bitmap. If it is, go to the next. Then make sure you have the right alignment. If the field is a fixed width field, then all the bytes are simply placed. If it's a variable length field (attlen = -1) then it's a bit more complicated. All variable-length data types share the common header structure struct varlena, which includes the total length of the stored value and some flag bits. Depending on the flags, the data can be either inline or in a TOAST table; it might be compressed, too (see Section 55.2).

Notes

[1]

Actually, index access methods need not use this page format. All the existing index methods do use this basic format, but the data kept on index metapages usually doesn't follow the item layout rules.

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The Initialization Fork | Up | BKI Backend Interface


BKI Backend Interface

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Chapter 56. BKI Backend Interface

Table of Contents
56.1. BKI File Format
56.2. BKI Commands
56.3. Structure of the Bootstrap BKI File
56.4. Example

Backend Interface (BKI) files are scripts in a special language that is understood by the PostgreSQL backend when running in the "bootstrap" mode. The bootstrap mode allows system catalogs to be created and filled from scratch, whereas ordinary SQL commands require the catalogs to exist already. BKI files can therefore be used to create the database system in the first place. (And they are probably not useful for anything else.)

initdb uses a BKI file to do part of its job when creating a new database cluster. The input file used by initdb is created as part of building and installing PostgreSQL by a program named genbki.pl, which reads some specially formatted C header files in the src/include/catalog/ directory of the source tree. The created BKI file is called postgres.bki and is normally installed in the share subdirectory of the installation tree.

Related information can be found in the documentation for initdb.

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BKI File Format

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56.1. BKI File Format

This section describes how the PostgreSQL backend interprets BKI files. This description will be easier to understand if the postgres.bki file is at hand as an example.

BKI input consists of a sequence of commands. Commands are made up of a number of tokens, depending on the syntax of the command. Tokens are usually separated by whitespace, but need not be if there is no ambiguity. There is no special command separator; the next token that syntactically cannot belong to the preceding command starts a new one. (Usually you would put a new command on a new line, for clarity.) Tokens can be certain key words, special characters (parentheses, commas, etc.), numbers, or double-quoted strings. Everything is case sensitive.

Lines starting with # are ignored.

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BKI Commands

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56.2. BKI Commands

create tablename tableoid [bootstrap] [shared_relation] [without_oids] [rowtype_oid oid] (name1 = type1 [, name2 = type2, ...])

Create a table named tablename, and having the OID tableoid, with the columns given in parentheses.

The following column types are supported directly by bootstrap.c: bool, bytea, char (1 byte), name, int2, int4, regproc, regclass, regtype, text, oid, tid, xid, cid, int2vector, oidvector, _int4 (array), _text (array), _oid (array), _char (array), _aclitem (array). Although it is possible to create tables containing columns of other types, this cannot be done until after pg_type has been created and filled with appropriate entries. (That effectively means that only these column types can be used in bootstrapped tables, but non-bootstrap catalogs can contain any built-in type.)

When bootstrap is specified, the table will only be created on disk; nothing is entered into pg_class, pg_attribute, etc, for it. Thus the table will not be accessible by ordinary SQL operations until such entries are made the hard way (with insert commands). This option is used for creating pg_class etc themselves.

The table is created as shared if shared_relation is specified. It will have OIDs unless without_oids is specified. The table's row type OID (pg_type OID) can optionally be specified via the rowtype_oid clause; if not specified, an OID is automatically generated for it. (The rowtype_oid clause is useless if bootstrap is specified, but it can be provided anyway for documentation.)

open tablename

Open the table named tablename for insertion of data. Any currently open table is closed.

close [tablename]

Close the open table. The name of the table can be given as a cross-check, but this is not required.

insert [OID = oid_value] ( value1 value2 ... )

Insert a new row into the open table using value1, value2, etc., for its column values and oid_value for its OID. If oid_value is zero (0) or the clause is omitted, and the table has OIDs, then the next available OID is assigned.

NULL values can be specified using the special key word _null_. Values containing spaces must be double quoted.

declare [unique] index indexname indexoid on tablename using amname ( opclass1 name1 [, ...] )

Create an index named indexname, having OID indexoid, on the table named tablename, using the amname access method. The fields to index are called name1, name2 etc., and the operator classes to use are opclass1, opclass2 etc., respectively. The index file is created and appropriate catalog entries are made for it, but the index contents are not initialized by this command.

declare toast toasttableoid toastindexoid on tablename

Create a TOAST table for the table named tablename. The TOAST table is assigned OID toasttableoid and its index is assigned OID toastindexoid. As with declare index, filling of the index is postponed.

build indices

Fill in the indices that have previously been declared.

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Structure of the Bootstrap BKI File

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56.3. Structure of the Bootstrap BKI File

The open command cannot be used until the tables it uses exist and have entries for the table that is to be opened. (These minimum tables are pg_class, pg_attribute, pg_proc, and pg_type.) To allow those tables themselves to be filled, create with the bootstrap option implicitly opens the created table for data insertion.

Also, the declare index and declare toast commands cannot be used until the system catalogs they need have been created and filled in.

Thus, the structure of the postgres.bki file has to be:

  1. create bootstrap one of the critical tables

  2. insert data describing at least the critical tables

  3. close

  4. Repeat for the other critical tables.

  5. create (without bootstrap) a noncritical table

  6. open

  7. insert desired data

  8. close

  9. Repeat for the other noncritical tables.

  10. Define indexes and toast tables.

  11. build indices

There are doubtless other, undocumented ordering dependencies.

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Example

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56.4. Example

The following sequence of commands will create the table test_table with OID 420, having two columns cola and colb of type int4 and text, respectively, and insert two rows into the table:

create test_table 420 (cola = int4, colb = text)
open test_table
insert OID=421 ( 1 "value1" )
insert OID=422 ( 2 _null_ )
close test_table

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How the Planner Uses Statistics

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Chapter 57. How the Planner Uses Statistics

This chapter builds on the material covered in Section 14.1 and Section 14.2 to show some additional details about how the planner uses the system statistics to estimate the number of rows each part of a query might return. This is a significant part of the planning process, providing much of the raw material for cost calculation.

The intent of this chapter is not to document the code in detail, but to present an overview of how it works. This will perhaps ease the learning curve for someone who subsequently wishes to read the code.

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Appendixes

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VIII. Appendixes

Table of Contents
A. PostgreSQL Error Codes
B. Date/Time Support
B.1. Date/Time Input Interpretation
B.2. Date/Time Key Words
B.3. Date/Time Configuration Files
B.4. History of Units
C. SQL Key Words
D. SQL Conformance
D.1. Supported Features
D.2. Unsupported Features
E. Release Notes
E.1. Release 9.1.19
E.2. Release 9.1.18
E.3. Release 9.1.17
E.4. Release 9.1.16
E.5. Release 9.1.15
E.6. Release 9.1.14
E.7. Release 9.1.13
E.8. Release 9.1.12
E.9. Release 9.1.11
E.10. Release 9.1.10
E.11. Release 9.1.9
E.12. Release 9.1.8
E.13. Release 9.1.7
E.14. Release 9.1.6
E.15. Release 9.1.5
E.16. Release 9.1.4
E.17. Release 9.1.3
E.18. Release 9.1.2
E.19. Release 9.1.1
E.20. Release 9.1
E.21. Release 9.0.23
E.22. Release 9.0.22
E.23. Release 9.0.21
E.24. Release 9.0.20
E.25. Release 9.0.19
E.26. Release 9.0.18
E.27. Release 9.0.17
E.28. Release 9.0.16
E.29. Release 9.0.15
E.30. Release 9.0.14
E.31. Release 9.0.13
E.32. Release 9.0.12
E.33. Release 9.0.11
E.34. Release 9.0.10
E.35. Release 9.0.9
E.36. Release 9.0.8
E.37. Release 9.0.7
E.38. Release 9.0.6
E.39. Release 9.0.5
E.40. Release 9.0.4
E.41. Release 9.0.3
E.42. Release 9.0.2
E.43. Release 9.0.1
E.44. Release 9.0
E.45. Release 8.4.22
E.46. Release 8.4.21
E.47. Release 8.4.20
E.48. Release 8.4.19
E.49. Release 8.4.18
E.50. Release 8.4.17
E.51. Release 8.4.16
E.52. Release 8.4.15
E.53. Release 8.4.14
E.54. Release 8.4.13
E.55. Release 8.4.12
E.56. Release 8.4.11
E.57. Release 8.4.10
E.58. Release 8.4.9
E.59. Release 8.4.8
E.60. Release 8.4.7
E.61. Release 8.4.6
E.62. Release 8.4.5
E.63. Release 8.4.4
E.64. Release 8.4.3
E.65. Release 8.4.2
E.66. Release 8.4.1
E.67. Release 8.4
E.68. Release 8.3.23
E.69. Release 8.3.22
E.70. Release 8.3.21
E.71. Release 8.3.20
E.72. Release 8.3.19
E.73. Release 8.3.18
E.74. Release 8.3.17
E.75. Release 8.3.16
E.76. Release 8.3.15
E.77. Release 8.3.14
E.78. Release 8.3.13
E.79. Release 8.3.12
E.80. Release 8.3.11
E.81. Release 8.3.10
E.82. Release 8.3.9
E.83. Release 8.3.8
E.84. Release 8.3.7
E.85. Release 8.3.6
E.86. Release 8.3.5
E.87. Release 8.3.4
E.88. Release 8.3.3
E.89. Release 8.3.2
E.90. Release 8.3.1
E.91. Release 8.3
E.92. Release 8.2.23
E.93. Release 8.2.22
E.94. Release 8.2.21
E.95. Release 8.2.20
E.96. Release 8.2.19
E.97. Release 8.2.18
E.98. Release 8.2.17
E.99. Release 8.2.16
E.100. Release 8.2.15
E.101. Release 8.2.14
E.102. Release 8.2.13
E.103. Release 8.2.12
E.104. Release 8.2.11
E.105. Release 8.2.10
E.106. Release 8.2.9
E.107. Release 8.2.8
E.108. Release 8.2.7
E.109. Release 8.2.6
E.110. Release 8.2.5
E.111. Release 8.2.4
E.112. Release 8.2.3
E.113. Release 8.2.2
E.114. Release 8.2.1
E.115. Release 8.2
E.116. Release 8.1.23
E.117. Release 8.1.22
E.118. Release 8.1.21
E.119. Release 8.1.20
E.120. Release 8.1.19
E.121. Release 8.1.18
E.122. Release 8.1.17
E.123. Release 8.1.16
E.124. Release 8.1.15
E.125. Release 8.1.14
E.126. Release 8.1.13
E.127. Release 8.1.12
E.128. Release 8.1.11
E.129. Release 8.1.10
E.130. Release 8.1.9
E.131. Release 8.1.8
E.132. Release 8.1.7
E.133. Release 8.1.6
E.134. Release 8.1.5
E.135. Release 8.1.4
E.136. Release 8.1.3
E.137. Release 8.1.2
E.138. Release 8.1.1
E.139. Release 8.1
E.140. Release 8.0.26
E.141. Release 8.0.25
E.142. Release 8.0.24
E.143. Release 8.0.23
E.144. Release 8.0.22
E.145. Release 8.0.21
E.146. Release 8.0.20
E.147. Release 8.0.19
E.148. Release 8.0.18
E.149. Release 8.0.17
E.150. Release 8.0.16
E.151. Release 8.0.15
E.152. Release 8.0.14
E.153. Release 8.0.13
E.154. Release 8.0.12
E.155. Release 8.0.11
E.156. Release 8.0.10
E.157. Release 8.0.9
E.158. Release 8.0.8
E.159. Release 8.0.7
E.160. Release 8.0.6
E.161. Release 8.0.5
E.162. Release 8.0.4
E.163. Release 8.0.3
E.164. Release 8.0.2
E.165. Release 8.0.1
E.166. Release 8.0
E.167. Release 7.4.30
E.168. Release 7.4.29
E.169. Release 7.4.28
E.170. Release 7.4.27
E.171. Release 7.4.26
E.172. Release 7.4.25
E.173. Release 7.4.24
E.174. Release 7.4.23
E.175. Release 7.4.22
E.176. Release 7.4.21
E.177. Release 7.4.20
E.178. Release 7.4.19
E.179. Release 7.4.18
E.180. Release 7.4.17
E.181. Release 7.4.16
E.182. Release 7.4.15
E.183. Release 7.4.14
E.184. Release 7.4.13
E.185. Release 7.4.12
E.186. Release 7.4.11
E.187. Release 7.4.10
E.188. Release 7.4.9
E.189. Release 7.4.8
E.190. Release 7.4.7
E.191. Release 7.4.6
E.192. Release 7.4.5
E.193. Release 7.4.4
E.194. Release 7.4.3
E.195. Release 7.4.2
E.196. Release 7.4.1
E.197. Release 7.4
E.198. Release 7.3.21
E.199. Release 7.3.20
E.200. Release 7.3.19
E.201. Release 7.3.18
E.202. Release 7.3.17
E.203. Release 7.3.16
E.204. Release 7.3.15
E.205. Release 7.3.14
E.206. Release 7.3.13
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E.208. Release 7.3.11
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E.210. Release 7.3.9
E.211. Release 7.3.8
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E.213. Release 7.3.6
E.214. Release 7.3.5
E.215. Release 7.3.4
E.216. Release 7.3.3
E.217. Release 7.3.2
E.218. Release 7.3.1
E.219. Release 7.3
E.220. Release 7.2.8
E.221. Release 7.2.7
E.222. Release 7.2.6
E.223. Release 7.2.5
E.224. Release 7.2.4
E.225. Release 7.2.3
E.226. Release 7.2.2
E.227. Release 7.2.1
E.228. Release 7.2
E.229. Release 7.1.3
E.230. Release 7.1.2
E.231. Release 7.1.1
E.232. Release 7.1
E.233. Release 7.0.3
E.234. Release 7.0.2
E.235. Release 7.0.1
E.236. Release 7.0
E.237. Release 6.5.3
E.238. Release 6.5.2
E.239. Release 6.5.1
E.240. Release 6.5
E.241. Release 6.4.2
E.242. Release 6.4.1
E.243. Release 6.4
E.244. Release 6.3.2
E.245. Release 6.3.1
E.246. Release 6.3
E.247. Release 6.2.1
E.248. Release 6.2
E.249. Release 6.1.1
E.250. Release 6.1
E.251. Release 6.0
E.252. Release 1.09
E.253. Release 1.02
E.254. Release 1.01
E.255. Release 1.0
E.256. Postgres95 Release 0.03
E.257. Postgres95 Release 0.02
E.258. Postgres95 Release 0.01
F. Additional Supplied Modules
F.1. adminpack
F.2. auth_delay
F.3. auto_explain
F.4. btree_gin
F.5. btree_gist
F.6. chkpass
F.7. citext
F.8. cube
F.9. dblink
F.10. dict_int
F.11. dict_xsyn
F.12. dummy_seclabel
F.13. earthdistance
F.14. file_fdw
F.15. fuzzystrmatch
F.16. hstore
F.17. intagg
F.18. intarray
F.19. isn
F.20. lo
F.21. ltree
F.22. oid2name
F.23. pageinspect
F.24. passwordcheck
F.25. pg_archivecleanup
F.26. pgbench
F.27. pg_buffercache
F.28. pgcrypto
F.29. pg_freespacemap
F.30. pgrowlocks
F.31. pg_standby
F.32. pg_stat_statements
F.33. pgstattuple
F.34. pg_test_fsync
F.35. pg_trgm
F.36. pg_upgrade
F.37. seg
F.38. sepgsql
F.39. spi
F.40. sslinfo
F.41. tablefunc
F.42. test_parser
F.43. tsearch2
F.44. unaccent
F.45. uuid-ossp
F.46. vacuumlo
F.47. xml2
G. External Projects
G.1. Client Interfaces
G.2. Administration Tools
G.3. Procedural Languages
G.4. Extensions
H. The Source Code Repository
H.1. Getting The Source via Git
I. Documentation
I.1. DocBook
I.2. Tool Sets
I.3. Building The Documentation
I.4. Documentation Authoring
I.5. Style Guide
J. Acronyms
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Row Estimation Examples |  | PostgreSQL Error Codes


PostgreSQL Error Codes

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Appendix A. PostgreSQL Error Codes

All messages emitted by the PostgreSQL server are assigned five-character error codes that follow the SQL standard's conventions for "SQLSTATE" codes. Applications that need to know which error condition has occurred should usually test the error code, rather than looking at the textual error message. The error codes are less likely to change across PostgreSQL releases, and also are not subject to change due to localization of error messages. Note that some, but not all, of the error codes produced by PostgreSQL are defined by the SQL standard; some additional error codes for conditions not defined by the standard have been invented or borrowed from other databases.

According to the standard, the first two characters of an error code denote a class of errors, while the last three characters indicate a specific condition within that class. Thus, an application that does not recognize the specific error code can still be able to infer what to do from the error class.

Table A-1 lists all the error codes defined in PostgreSQL 9.1.19. (Some are not actually used at present, but are defined by the SQL standard.) The error classes are also shown. For each error class there is a "standard" error code having the last three characters 000. This code is used only for error conditions that fall within the class but do not have any more-specific code assigned.

The symbol shown in the column "Condition Name" is also the condition name to use in PL/pgSQL. Condition names can be written in either upper or lower case. (Note that PL/pgSQL does not recognize warning, as opposed to error, condition names; those are classes 00, 01, and 02.)

Table A-1. PostgreSQL Error Codes

Error Code | Condition Name
Class 00 — Successful Completion
00000 | successful_completion
Class 01 — Warning
01000 | warning
0100C | dynamic_result_sets_returned
01008 | implicit_zero_bit_padding
01003 | null_value_eliminated_in_set_function
01007 | privilege_not_granted
01006 | privilege_not_revoked
01004 | string_data_right_truncation
01P01 | deprecated_feature
Class 02 — No Data (this is also a warning class per the SQL standard)
02000 | no_data
02001 | no_additional_dynamic_result_sets_returned
Class 03 — SQL Statement Not Yet Complete
03000 | sql_statement_not_yet_complete
Class 08 — Connection Exception
08000 | connection_exception
08003 | connection_does_not_exist
08006 | connection_failure
08001 | sqlclient_unable_to_establish_sqlconnection
08004 | sqlserver_rejected_establishment_of_sqlconnection
08007 | transaction_resolution_unknown
08P01 | protocol_violation
Class 09 — Triggered Action Exception
09000 | triggered_action_exception
Class 0A — Feature Not Supported
0A000 | feature_not_supported
Class 0B — Invalid Transaction Initiation
0B000 | invalid_transaction_initiation
Class 0F — Locator Exception
0F000 | locator_exception
0F001 | invalid_locator_specification
Class 0L — Invalid Grantor
0L000 | invalid_grantor
0LP01 | invalid_grant_operation
Class 0P — Invalid Role Specification
0P000 | invalid_role_specification
Class 20 — Case Not Found
20000 | case_not_found
Class 21 — Cardinality Violation
21000 | cardinality_violation
Class 22 — Data Exception
22000 | data_exception
2202E | array_subscript_error
22021 | character_not_in_repertoire
22008 | datetime_field_overflow
22012 | division_by_zero
22005 | error_in_assignment
2200B | escape_character_conflict
22022 | indicator_overflow
22015 | interval_field_overflow
2201E | invalid_argument_for_logarithm
22014 | invalid_argument_for_ntile_function
22016 | invalid_argument_for_nth_value_function
2201F | invalid_argument_for_power_function
2201G | invalid_argument_for_width_bucket_function
22018 | invalid_character_value_for_cast
22007 | invalid_datetime_format
22019 | invalid_escape_character
2200D | invalid_escape_octet
22025 | invalid_escape_sequence
22P06 | nonstandard_use_of_escape_character
22010 | invalid_indicator_parameter_value
22023 | invalid_parameter_value
2201B | invalid_regular_expression
2201W | invalid_row_count_in_limit_clause
2201X | invalid_row_count_in_result_offset_clause
22009 | invalid_time_zone_displacement_value
2200C | invalid_use_of_escape_character
2200G | most_specific_type_mismatch
22004 | null_value_not_allowed
22002 | null_value_no_indicator_parameter
22003 | numeric_value_out_of_range
22026 | string_data_length_mismatch
22001 | string_data_right_truncation
22011 | substring_error
22027 | trim_error
22024 | unterminated_c_string
2200F | zero_length_character_string
22P01 | floating_point_exception
22P02 | invalid_text_representation
22P03 | invalid_binary_representation
22P04 | bad_copy_file_format
22P05 | untranslatable_character
2200L | not_an_xml_document
2200M | invalid_xml_document
2200N | invalid_xml_content
2200S | invalid_xml_comment
2200T | invalid_xml_processing_instruction
Class 23 — Integrity Constraint Violation
23000 | integrity_constraint_violation
23001 | restrict_violation
23502 | not_null_violation
23503 | foreign_key_violation
23505 | unique_violation
23514 | check_violation
23P01 | exclusion_violation
Class 24 — Invalid Cursor State
24000 | invalid_cursor_state
Class 25 — Invalid Transaction State
25000 | invalid_transaction_state
25001 | active_sql_transaction
25002 | branch_transaction_already_active
25008 | held_cursor_requires_same_isolation_level
25003 | inappropriate_access_mode_for_branch_transaction
25004 | inappropriate_isolation_level_for_branch_transaction
25005 | no_active_sql_transaction_for_branch_transaction
25006 | read_only_sql_transaction
25007 | schema_and_data_statement_mixing_not_supported
25P01 | no_active_sql_transaction
25P02 | in_failed_sql_transaction
Class 26 — Invalid SQL Statement Name
26000 | invalid_sql_statement_name
Class 27 — Triggered Data Change Violation
27000 | triggered_data_change_violation
Class 28 — Invalid Authorization Specification
28000 | invalid_authorization_specification
28P01 | invalid_password
Class 2B — Dependent Privilege Descriptors Still Exist
2B000 | dependent_privilege_descriptors_still_exist
2BP01 | dependent_objects_still_exist
Class 2D — Invalid Transaction Termination
2D000 | invalid_transaction_termination
Class 2F — SQL Routine Exception
2F000 | sql_routine_exception
2F005 | function_executed_no_return_statement
2F002 | modifying_sql_data_not_permitted
2F003 | prohibited_sql_statement_attempted
2F004 | reading_sql_data_not_permitted
Class 34 — Invalid Cursor Name
34000 | invalid_cursor_name
Class 38 — External Routine Exception
38000 | external_routine_exception
38001 | containing_sql_not_permitted
38002 | modifying_sql_data_not_permitted
38003 | prohibited_sql_statement_attempted
38004 | reading_sql_data_not_permitted
Class 39 — External Routine Invocation Exception
39000 | external_routine_invocation_exception
39001 | invalid_sqlstate_returned
39004 | null_value_not_allowed
39P01 | trigger_protocol_violated
39P02 | srf_protocol_violated
Class 3B — Savepoint Exception
3B000 | savepoint_exception
3B001 | invalid_savepoint_specification
Class 3D — Invalid Catalog Name
3D000 | invalid_catalog_name
Class 3F — Invalid Schema Name
3F000 | invalid_schema_name
Class 40 — Transaction Rollback
40000 | transaction_rollback
40002 | transaction_integrity_constraint_violation
40001 | serialization_failure
40003 | statement_completion_unknown
40P01 | deadlock_detected
Class 42 — Syntax Error or Access Rule Violation
42000 | syntax_error_or_access_rule_violation
42601 | syntax_error
42501 | insufficient_privilege
42846 | cannot_coerce
42803 | grouping_error
42P20 | windowing_error
42P19 | invalid_recursion
42830 | invalid_foreign_key
42602 | invalid_name
42622 | name_too_long
42939 | reserved_name
42804 | datatype_mismatch
42P18 | indeterminate_datatype
42P21 | collation_mismatch
42P22 | indeterminate_collation
42809 | wrong_object_type
42703 | undefined_column
42883 | undefined_function
42P01 | undefined_table
42P02 | undefined_parameter
42704 | undefined_object
42701 | duplicate_column
42P03 | duplicate_cursor
42P04 | duplicate_database
42723 | duplicate_function
42P05 | duplicate_prepared_statement
42P06 | duplicate_schema
42P07 | duplicate_table
42712 | duplicate_alias
42710 | duplicate_object
42702 | ambiguous_column
42725 | ambiguous_function
42P08 | ambiguous_parameter
42P09 | ambiguous_alias
42P10 | invalid_column_reference
42611 | invalid_column_definition
42P11 | invalid_cursor_definition
42P12 | invalid_database_definition
42P13 | invalid_function_definition
42P14 | invalid_prepared_statement_definition
42P15 | invalid_schema_definition
42P16 | invalid_table_definition
42P17 | invalid_object_definition
Class 44 — WITH CHECK OPTION Violation
44000 | with_check_option_violation
Class 53 — Insufficient Resources
53000 | insufficient_resources
53100 | disk_full
53200 | out_of_memory
53300 | too_many_connections
Class 54 — Program Limit Exceeded
54000 | program_limit_exceeded
54001 | statement_too_complex
54011 | too_many_columns
54023 | too_many_arguments
Class 55 — Object Not In Prerequisite State
55000 | object_not_in_prerequisite_state
55006 | object_in_use
55P02 | cant_change_runtime_param
55P03 | lock_not_available
Class 57 — Operator Intervention
57000 | operator_intervention
57014 | query_canceled
57P01 | admin_shutdown
57P02 | crash_shutdown
57P03 | cannot_connect_now
57P04 | database_dropped
Class 58 — System Error (errors external to PostgreSQL itself)
58030 | io_error
58P01 | undefined_file
58P02 | duplicate_file
Class F0 — Configuration File Error
F0000 | config_file_error
F0001 | lock_file_exists
Class HV — Foreign Data Wrapper Error (SQL/MED)
HV000 | fdw_error
HV005 | fdw_column_name_not_found
HV002 | fdw_dynamic_parameter_value_needed
HV010 | fdw_function_sequence_error
HV021 | fdw_inconsistent_descriptor_information
HV024 | fdw_invalid_attribute_value
HV007 | fdw_invalid_column_name
HV008 | fdw_invalid_column_number
HV004 | fdw_invalid_data_type
HV006 | fdw_invalid_data_type_descriptors
HV091 | fdw_invalid_descriptor_field_identifier
HV00B | fdw_invalid_handle
HV00C | fdw_invalid_option_index
HV00D | fdw_invalid_option_name
HV090 | fdw_invalid_string_length_or_buffer_length
HV00A | fdw_invalid_string_format
HV009 | fdw_invalid_use_of_null_pointer
HV014 | fdw_too_many_handles
HV001 | fdw_out_of_memory
HV00P | fdw_no_schemas
HV00J | fdw_option_name_not_found
HV00K | fdw_reply_handle
HV00Q | fdw_schema_not_found
HV00R | fdw_table_not_found
HV00L | fdw_unable_to_create_execution
HV00M | fdw_unable_to_create_reply
HV00N | fdw_unable_to_establish_connection
Class P0 — PL/pgSQL Error
P0000 | plpgsql_error
P0001 | raise_exception
P0002 | no_data_found
P0003 | too_many_rows
Class XX — Internal Error
XX000 | internal_error
XX001 | data_corrupted
XX002 | index_corrupted
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Date/Time Support

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Appendix B. Date/Time Support

Table of Contents
B.1. Date/Time Input Interpretation
B.2. Date/Time Key Words
B.3. Date/Time Configuration Files
B.4. History of Units

PostgreSQL uses an internal heuristic parser for all date/time input support. Dates and times are input as strings, and are broken up into distinct fields with a preliminary determination of what kind of information can be in the field. Each field is interpreted and either assigned a numeric value, ignored, or rejected. The parser contains internal lookup tables for all textual fields, including months, days of the week, and time zones.

This appendix includes information on the content of these lookup tables and describes the steps used by the parser to decode dates and times.

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Date/Time Input Interpretation

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B.1. Date/Time Input Interpretation

The date/time type inputs are all decoded using the following procedure.

  1. Break the input string into tokens and categorize each token as a string, time, time zone, or number.

    1. If the numeric token contains a colon (:), this is a time string. Include all subsequent digits and colons.

    2. If the numeric token contains a dash (-), slash (/), or two or more dots (.), this is a date string which might have a text month. If a date token has already been seen, it is instead interpreted as a time zone name (e.g., America/New_York).

    3. If the token is numeric only, then it is either a single field or an ISO 8601 concatenated date (e.g., 19990113 for January 13, 1999) or time (e.g., 141516 for 14:15:16).

    4. If the token starts with a plus (+) or minus (-), then it is either a numeric time zone or a special field.

  2. If the token is a text string, match up with possible strings:

    1. Do a binary-search table lookup for the token as a time zone abbreviation.

    2. If not found, do a similar binary-search table lookup to match the token as either a special string (e.g., today), day (e.g., Thursday), month (e.g., January), or noise word (e.g., at, on).

    3. If still not found, throw an error.

  3. When the token is a number or number field:

    1. If there are eight or six digits, and if no other date fields have been previously read, then interpret as a "concatenated date" (e.g., 19990118 or 990118). The interpretation is YYYYMMDD or YYMMDD.

    2. If the token is three digits and a year has already been read, then interpret as day of year.

    3. If four or six digits and a year has already been read, then interpret as a time (HHMM or HHMMSS).

    4. If three or more digits and no date fields have yet been found, interpret as a year (this forces yy-mm-dd ordering of the remaining date fields).

    5. Otherwise the date field ordering is assumed to follow the DateStyle setting: mm-dd-yy, dd-mm-yy, or yy-mm-dd. Throw an error if a month or day field is found to be out of range.

  4. If BC has been specified, negate the year and add one for internal storage. (There is no year zero in the Gregorian calendar, so numerically 1 BC becomes year zero.)

  5. If BC was not specified, and if the year field was two digits in length, then adjust the year to four digits. If the field is less than 70, then add 2000, otherwise add 1900.

    Tip: Gregorian years AD 1-99 can be entered by using 4 digits with leading zeros (e.g., 0099 is AD 99).

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Date/Time Key Words

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B.2. Date/Time Key Words

Table B-1 shows the tokens that are recognized as names of months.

Table B-1. Month Names

Month | Abbreviations
January | Jan
February | Feb
March | Mar
April | Apr
May |
June | Jun
July | Jul
August | Aug
September | Sep, Sept
October | Oct
November | Nov
December | Dec

Table B-2 shows the tokens that are recognized as names of days of the week.

Table B-2. Day of the Week Names

Day | Abbreviations
Sunday | Sun
Monday | Mon
Tuesday | Tue, Tues
Wednesday | Wed, Weds
Thursday | Thu, Thur, Thurs
Friday | Fri
Saturday | Sat

Table B-3 shows the tokens that serve various modifier purposes.

Table B-3. Date/Time Field Modifiers

Identifier | Description
AM | Time is before 12:00
AT | Ignored
JULIAN, JD, J | Next field is Julian Day
ON | Ignored
PM | Time is on or after 12:00
T | Next field is time
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Date/Time Configuration Files

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B.3. Date/Time Configuration Files

Since timezone abbreviations are not well standardized, PostgreSQL provides a means to customize the set of abbreviations accepted by the server. The timezone_abbreviations run-time parameter determines the active set of abbreviations. While this parameter can be altered by any database user, the possible values for it are under the control of the database administrator — they are in fact names of configuration files stored in .../share/timezonesets/ of the installation directory. By adding or altering files in that directory, the administrator can set local policy for timezone abbreviations.

timezone_abbreviations can be set to any file name found in .../share/timezonesets/, if the file's name is entirely alphabetic. (The prohibition against non-alphabetic characters in timezone_abbreviations prevents reading files outside the intended directory, as well as reading editor backup files and other extraneous files.)

A timezone abbreviation file can contain blank lines and comments beginning with #. Non-comment lines must have one of these formats:

zone_abbreviation offset
zone_abbreviation offset D
zone_abbreviation time_zone_name
@INCLUDE file_name
@OVERRIDE

A zone_abbreviation is just the abbreviation being defined. The offset is the equivalent offset in seconds from UTC, positive being east from Greenwich and negative being west. For example, -18000 would be five hours west of Greenwich, or North American east coast standard time. D indicates that the zone name represents local daylight-savings time rather than standard time. Alternatively, a time_zone_name can be given, in which case that time zone definition is consulted, and the abbreviation's meaning in that zone is used. This alternative is recommended only for abbreviations whose meaning has historically varied, as looking up the meaning is noticeably more expensive than just using a fixed integer value.

The @INCLUDE syntax allows inclusion of another file in the .../share/timezonesets/ directory. Inclusion can be nested, to a limited depth.

The @OVERRIDE syntax indicates that subsequent entries in the file can override previous entries (typically, entries obtained from included files). Without this, conflicting definitions of the same timezone abbreviation are considered an error.

In an unmodified installation, the file Default contains all the non-conflicting time zone abbreviations for most of the world. Additional files Australia and India are provided for those regions: these files first include the Default file and then add or modify abbreviations as needed.

For reference purposes, a standard installation also contains files Africa.txt, America.txt, etc, containing information about every time zone abbreviation known to be in use according to the IANA timezone database. The zone name definitions found in these files can be copied and pasted into a custom configuration file as needed. Note that these files cannot be directly referenced as timezone_abbreviations settings, because of the dot embedded in their names.

Note: If an error occurs while reading the time zone abbreviation set, no new value is applied and the old set is kept. If the error occurs while starting the database, startup fails.

Caution

Time zone abbreviations defined in the configuration file override non-timezone meanings built into PostgreSQL. For example, the Australia configuration file defines SAT (for South Australian Standard Time). When this file is active, SAT will not be recognized as an abbreviation for Saturday.

Caution

If you modify files in .../share/timezonesets/, it is up to you to make backups — a normal database dump will not include this directory.

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History of Units

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B.4. History of Units

The Julian calendar was introduced by Julius Caesar in 45 BC. It was in common use in the Western world until the year 1582, when countries started changing to the Gregorian calendar. In the Julian calendar, the tropical year is approximated as 365 1/4 days = 365.25 days. This gives an error of about 1 day in 128 years.

The accumulating calendar error prompted Pope Gregory XIII to reform the calendar in accordance with instructions from the Council of Trent. In the Gregorian calendar, the tropical year is approximated as 365 + 97 / 400 days = 365.2425 days. Thus it takes approximately 3300 years for the tropical year to shift one day with respect to the Gregorian calendar.

The approximation 365+97/400 is achieved by having 97 leap years every 400 years, using the following rules:

Every year divisible by 4 is a leap year.
However, every year divisible by 100 is not a leap year.
However, every year divisible by 400 is a leap year after all.

So, 1700, 1800, 1900, 2100, and 2200 are not leap years. But 1600, 2000, and 2400 are leap years. By contrast, in the older Julian calendar all years divisible by 4 are leap years.

The papal bull of February 1582 decreed that 10 days should be dropped from October 1582 so that 15 October should follow immediately after 4 October. This was observed in Italy, Poland, Portugal, and Spain. Other Catholic countries followed shortly after, but Protestant countries were reluctant to change, and the Greek Orthodox countries didn't change until the start of the 20th century. The reform was observed by Great Britain and Dominions (including what is now the USA) in 1752. Thus 2 September 1752 was followed by 14 September 1752. This is why Unix systems have the cal program produce the following:

$ cal 9 1752
   September 1752
 S  M Tu  W Th  F  S
       1  2 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 21 22 23
24 25 26 27 28 29 30

The SQL standard states that "Within the definition of a 'datetime literal', the 'datetime value's are constrained by the natural rules for dates and times according to the Gregorian calendar". Dates between 1582-10-05 and 1582-10-14, although eliminated in some countries by Papal fiat, conform to "natural rules" and are hence valid dates. PostgreSQL follows the SQL standard's lead by counting dates exclusively in the Gregorian calendar, even for years before that calendar was in use.

Different calendars have been developed in various parts of the world, many predating the Gregorian system. For example, the beginnings of the Chinese calendar can be traced back to the 14th century BC. Legend has it that the Emperor Huangdi invented that calendar in 2637 BC. The People's Republic of China uses the Gregorian calendar for civil purposes. The Chinese calendar is used for determining festivals.

The "Julian Date" is unrelated to the "Julian calendar". The Julian Date system was invented by the French scholar Joseph Justus Scaliger (1540-1609) and probably takes its name from Scaliger's father, the Italian scholar Julius Caesar Scaliger (1484-1558). In the Julian Date system, each day has a sequential number, starting from JD 0 (which is sometimes called the Julian Date). JD 0 corresponds to 1 January 4713 BC in the Julian calendar, or 24 November 4714 BC in the Gregorian calendar. Julian Date counting is most often used by astronomers for labeling their nightly observations, and therefore a date runs from noon UTC to the next noon UTC, rather than from midnight to midnight: JD 0 designates the 24 hours from noon UTC on 1 January 4713 BC to noon UTC on 2 January 4713 BC.

Although PostgreSQL supports Julian Date notation for input and output of dates (and also uses them for some internal datetime calculations), it does not observe the nicety of having dates run from noon to noon. PostgreSQL treats a Julian Date as running from midnight to midnight.

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SQL Key Words

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Appendix C. SQL Key Words

Table C-1 lists all tokens that are key words in the SQL standard and in PostgreSQL 9.1.19. Background information can be found in Section 4.1.1.

SQL distinguishes between reserved and non-reserved key words. According to the standard, reserved key words are the only real key words; they are never allowed as identifiers. Non-reserved key words only have a special meaning in particular contexts and can be used as identifiers in other contexts. Most non-reserved key words are actually the names of built-in tables and functions specified by SQL. The concept of non-reserved key words essentially only exists to declare that some predefined meaning is attached to a word in some contexts.

In the PostgreSQL parser life is a bit more complicated. There are several different classes of tokens ranging from those that can never be used as an identifier to those that have absolutely no special status in the parser as compared to an ordinary identifier. (The latter is usually the case for functions specified by SQL.) Even reserved key words are not completely reserved in PostgreSQL, but can be used as column labels (for example, SELECT 55 AS CHECK, even though CHECK is a reserved key word).

In Table C-1 in the column for PostgreSQL we classify as "non-reserved" those key words that are explicitly known to the parser but are allowed as column or table names. Some key words that are otherwise non-reserved cannot be used as function or data type names and are marked accordingly. (Most of these words represent built-in functions or data types with special syntax. The function or type is still available but it cannot be redefined by the user.) Labeled "reserved" are those tokens that are not allowed as column or table names. Some reserved key words are allowable as names for functions or data types; this is also shown in the table. If not so marked, a reserved key word is only allowed as an "AS" column label name.

As a general rule, if you get spurious parser errors for commands that contain any of the listed key words as an identifier you should try to quote the identifier to see if the problem goes away.

It is important to understand before studying Table C-1 that the fact that a key word is not reserved in PostgreSQL does not mean that the feature related to the word is not implemented. Conversely, the presence of a key word does not indicate the existence of a feature.

Table C-1. SQL Key Words

Key Word | PostgreSQL | SQL:2008 | SQL:2003 | SQL:1999 | SQL-92
A |  | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
ABORT | non-reserved |  |  |  |
ABS |  | reserved | reserved | non-reserved |
ABSENT |  | non-reserved |  |  |
ABSOLUTE | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved | reserved
ACCESS | non-reserved |  |  |  |
ACCORDING |  | non-reserved |  |  |
ACTION | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved | reserved
ADA |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved
ADD | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved | reserved
ADMIN | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved |
AFTER | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved |
AGGREGATE | non-reserved |  |  | reserved |
ALIAS |  |  |  | reserved |
ALL | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
ALLOCATE |  | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
ALSO | non-reserved |  |  |  |
ALTER | non-reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
ALWAYS | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
ANALYSE | reserved |  |  |  |
ANALYZE | reserved |  |  |  |
AND | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
ANY | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
ARE |  | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
ARRAY | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved |
ARRAY_AGG |  | reserved |  |  |
AS | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
ASC | reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved | reserved
ASENSITIVE |  | reserved | reserved | non-reserved |
ASSERTION | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved | reserved
ASSIGNMENT | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |
ASYMMETRIC | reserved | reserved | reserved | non-reserved |
AT | non-reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
ATOMIC |  | reserved | reserved | non-reserved |
ATTRIBUTE | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
ATTRIBUTES |  | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
AUTHORIZATION | reserved (can be function or type) | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
AVG |  | reserved | reserved | non-reserved | reserved
BACKWARD | non-reserved |  |  |  |
BASE64 |  | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
BEFORE | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved |
BEGIN | non-reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
BERNOULLI |  | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
BETWEEN | non-reserved (cannot be function or type) | reserved | reserved | non-reserved | reserved
BIGINT | non-reserved (cannot be function or type) | reserved | reserved |  |
BINARY | reserved (can be function or type) | reserved | reserved | reserved |
BIT | non-reserved (cannot be function or type) |  |  | reserved | reserved
BITVAR |  |  |  | non-reserved |
BIT_LENGTH |  |  |  | non-reserved | reserved
BLOB |  | reserved | reserved | reserved |
BLOCKED |  | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
BOM |  | non-reserved |  |  |
BOOLEAN | non-reserved (cannot be function or type) | reserved | reserved | reserved |
BOTH | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
BREADTH |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved |
BY | non-reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
C |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved
CACHE | non-reserved |  |  |  |
CALL |  | reserved | reserved | reserved |
CALLED | non-reserved | reserved | reserved | non-reserved |
CARDINALITY |  | reserved | reserved | non-reserved |
CASCADE | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved | reserved
CASCADED | non-reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
CASE | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
CAST | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
CATALOG | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved | reserved
CATALOG_NAME |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved
CEIL |  | reserved | reserved |  |
CEILING |  | reserved | reserved |  |
CHAIN | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |
CHAR | non-reserved (cannot be function or type) | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
CHARACTER | non-reserved (cannot be function or type) | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
CHARACTERISTICS | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
CHARACTERS |  | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
CHARACTER_LENGTH |  | reserved | reserved | non-reserved | reserved
CHARACTER_SET_CATALOG |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved
CHARACTER_SET_NAME |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved
CHARACTER_SET_SCHEMA |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved
CHAR_LENGTH |  | reserved | reserved | non-reserved | reserved
CHECK | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
CHECKED |  |  |  | non-reserved |
CHECKPOINT | non-reserved |  |  |  |
CLASS | non-reserved |  |  | reserved |
CLASS_ORIGIN |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved
CLOB |  | reserved | reserved | reserved |
CLOSE | non-reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
CLUSTER | non-reserved |  |  |  |
COALESCE | non-reserved (cannot be function or type) | reserved | reserved | non-reserved | reserved
COBOL |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved
COLLATE | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
COLLATION | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved | reserved
COLLATION_CATALOG |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved
COLLATION_NAME |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved
COLLATION_SCHEMA |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved
COLLECT |  | reserved | reserved |  |
COLUMN | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
COLUMNS |  | non-reserved |  |  |
COLUMN_NAME |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved
COMMAND_FUNCTION |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved
COMMAND_FUNCTION_CODE |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |
COMMENT | non-reserved |  |  |  |
COMMENTS | non-reserved |  |  |  |
COMMIT | non-reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
COMMITTED | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved
COMPLETION |  |  |  | reserved |
CONCURRENTLY | reserved (can be function or type) |  |  |  |
CONDITION |  | reserved | reserved |  |
CONDITION_NUMBER |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved
CONFIGURATION | non-reserved |  |  |  |
CONNECT |  | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
CONNECTION | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved | reserved
CONNECTION_NAME |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved
CONSTRAINT | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
CONSTRAINTS | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved | reserved
CONSTRAINT_CATALOG |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved
CONSTRAINT_NAME |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved
CONSTRAINT_SCHEMA |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved
CONSTRUCTOR |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved |
CONTAINS |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |
CONTENT | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
CONTINUE | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved | reserved
CONTROL |  | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
CONVERSION | non-reserved |  |  |  |
CONVERT |  | reserved | reserved | non-reserved | reserved
COPY | non-reserved |  |  |  |
CORR |  | reserved | reserved |  |
CORRESPONDING |  | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
COST | non-reserved |  |  |  |
COUNT |  | reserved | reserved | non-reserved | reserved
COVAR_POP |  | reserved | reserved |  |
COVAR_SAMP |  | reserved | reserved |  |
CREATE | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
CROSS | reserved (can be function or type) | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
CSV | non-reserved |  |  |  |
CUBE |  | reserved | reserved | reserved |
CUME_DIST |  | reserved | reserved |  |
CURRENT | non-reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
CURRENT_CATALOG | reserved | reserved |  |  |
CURRENT_DATE | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
CURRENT_DEFAULT_TRANSFORM_GROUP |  | reserved | reserved |  |
CURRENT_PATH |  | reserved | reserved | reserved |
CURRENT_ROLE | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved |
CURRENT_SCHEMA | reserved (can be function or type) | reserved |  |  |
CURRENT_TIME | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
CURRENT_TIMESTAMP | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
CURRENT_TRANSFORM_GROUP_FOR_TYPE |  | reserved | reserved |  |
CURRENT_USER | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
CURSOR | non-reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
CURSOR_NAME |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved
CYCLE | non-reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved |
DATA | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved | non-reserved
DATABASE | non-reserved |  |  |  |
DATALINK |  | reserved | reserved |  |
DATE |  | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
DATETIME_INTERVAL_CODE |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved
DATETIME_INTERVAL_PRECISION |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved
DAY | non-reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
DB |  | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
DEALLOCATE | non-reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
DEC | non-reserved (cannot be function or type) | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
DECIMAL | non-reserved (cannot be function or type) | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
DECLARE | non-reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
DEFAULT | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
DEFAULTS | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
DEFERRABLE | reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved | reserved
DEFERRED | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved | reserved
DEFINED |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |
DEFINER | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |
DEGREE |  | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
DELETE | non-reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
DELIMITER | non-reserved |  |  |  |
DELIMITERS | non-reserved |  |  |  |
DENSE_RANK |  | reserved | reserved |  |
DEPTH |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved |
DEREF |  | reserved | reserved | reserved |
DERIVED |  | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
DESC | reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved | reserved
DESCRIBE |  | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
DESCRIPTOR |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved | reserved
DESTROY |  |  |  | reserved |
DESTRUCTOR |  |  |  | reserved |
DETERMINISTIC |  | reserved | reserved | reserved |
DIAGNOSTICS |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved | reserved
DICTIONARY | non-reserved |  |  | reserved |
DISABLE | non-reserved |  |  |  |
DISCARD | non-reserved |  |  |  |
DISCONNECT |  | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
DISPATCH |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |
DISTINCT | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
DLNEWCOPY |  | reserved | reserved |  |
DLPREVIOUSCOPY |  | reserved | reserved |  |
DLURLCOMPLETE |  | reserved | reserved |  |
DLURLCOMPLETEONLY |  | reserved | reserved |  |
DLURLCOMPLETEWRITE |  | reserved | reserved |  |
DLURLPATH |  | reserved | reserved |  |
DLURLPATHONLY |  | reserved | reserved |  |
DLURLPATHWRITE |  | reserved | reserved |  |
DLURLSCHEME |  | reserved | reserved |  |
DLURLSERVER |  | reserved | reserved |  |
DLVALUE |  | reserved | reserved |  |
DO | reserved |  |  |  |
DOCUMENT | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
DOMAIN | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved | reserved
DOUBLE | non-reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
DROP | non-reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
DYNAMIC |  | reserved | reserved | reserved |
DYNAMIC_FUNCTION |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved
DYNAMIC_FUNCTION_CODE |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |
EACH | non-reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved |
ELEMENT |  | reserved | reserved |  |
ELSE | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
EMPTY |  | non-reserved |  |  |
ENABLE | non-reserved |  |  |  |
ENCODING | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |  |
ENCRYPTED | non-reserved |  |  |  |
END | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
END-EXEC |  | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
ENUM | non-reserved |  |  |  |
EQUALS |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved |
ESCAPE | non-reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
EVERY |  | reserved | reserved | reserved |
EXCEPT | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
EXCEPTION |  |  | non-reserved | reserved | reserved
EXCLUDE | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
EXCLUDING | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
EXCLUSIVE | non-reserved |  |  |  |
EXEC |  | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
EXECUTE | non-reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
EXISTING |  |  |  | non-reserved |
EXISTS | non-reserved (cannot be function or type) | reserved | reserved | non-reserved | reserved
EXP |  | reserved | reserved |  |
EXPLAIN | non-reserved |  |  |  |
EXTENSION | non-reserved |  |  |  |
EXTERNAL | non-reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
EXTRACT | non-reserved (cannot be function or type) | reserved | reserved | non-reserved | reserved
FALSE | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
FAMILY | non-reserved |  |  |  |
FETCH | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
FILE |  | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
FILTER |  | reserved | reserved |  |
FINAL |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |
FIRST | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved | reserved
FIRST_VALUE |  | reserved |  |  |
FLAG |  | non-reserved |  |  |
FLOAT | non-reserved (cannot be function or type) | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
FLOOR |  | reserved | reserved |  |
FOLLOWING | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
FOR | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
FORCE | non-reserved |  |  |  |
FOREIGN | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
FORTRAN |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved
FORWARD | non-reserved |  |  |  |
FOUND |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved | reserved
FREE |  | reserved | reserved | reserved |
FREEZE | reserved (can be function or type) |  |  |  |
FROM | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
FS |  | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
FULL | reserved (can be function or type) | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
FUNCTION | non-reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved |
FUNCTIONS | non-reserved |  |  |  |
FUSION |  | reserved | reserved |  |
G |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |
GENERAL |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved |
GENERATED |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |
GET |  | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
GLOBAL | non-reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
GO |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved | reserved
GOTO |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved | reserved
GRANT | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
GRANTED | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |
GREATEST | non-reserved (cannot be function or type) |  |  |  |
GROUP | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
GROUPING |  | reserved | reserved | reserved |
HANDLER | non-reserved |  |  |  |
HAVING | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
HEADER | non-reserved |  |  |  |
HEX |  | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
HIERARCHY |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |
HOLD | non-reserved | reserved | reserved | non-reserved |
HOST |  |  |  | reserved |
HOUR | non-reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
ID |  | non-reserved |  |  |
IDENTITY | non-reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
IF | non-reserved |  |  |  |
IGNORE |  | non-reserved |  | reserved |
ILIKE | reserved (can be function or type) |  |  |  |
IMMEDIATE | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved | reserved
IMMUTABLE | non-reserved |  |  |  |
IMPLEMENTATION |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |
IMPLICIT | non-reserved |  |  |  |
IMPORT |  | reserved | reserved |  |
IN | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
INCLUDING | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
INCREMENT | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
INDENT |  | non-reserved |  |  |
INDEX | non-reserved |  |  |  |
INDEXES | non-reserved |  |  |  |
INDICATOR |  | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
INFIX |  |  |  | non-reserved |
INHERIT | non-reserved |  |  |  |
INHERITS | non-reserved |  |  |  |
INITIALIZE |  |  |  | reserved |
INITIALLY | reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved | reserved
INLINE | non-reserved |  |  |  |
INNER | reserved (can be function or type) | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
INOUT | non-reserved (cannot be function or type) | reserved | reserved | reserved |
INPUT | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved | reserved
INSENSITIVE | non-reserved | reserved | reserved | non-reserved | reserved
INSERT | non-reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
INSTANCE |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |
INSTANTIABLE |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |
INSTEAD | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |  |
INT | non-reserved (cannot be function or type) | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
INTEGER | non-reserved (cannot be function or type) | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
INTEGRITY |  | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
INTERSECT | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
INTERSECTION |  | reserved | reserved |  |
INTERVAL | non-reserved (cannot be function or type) | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
INTO | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
INVOKER | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |
IS | reserved (can be function or type) | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
ISNULL | reserved (can be function or type) |  |  |  |
ISOLATION | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved | reserved
ITERATE |  |  |  | reserved |
JOIN | reserved (can be function or type) | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
K |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |
KEY | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved | reserved
KEY_MEMBER |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |
KEY_TYPE |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |
LABEL | non-reserved |  |  |  |
LAG |  | reserved |  |  |
LANGUAGE | non-reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
LARGE | non-reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved |
LAST | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved | reserved
LAST_VALUE |  | reserved |  |  |
LATERAL |  | reserved | reserved | reserved |
LC_COLLATE | non-reserved |  |  |  |
LC_CTYPE | non-reserved |  |  |  |
LEAD |  | reserved |  |  |
LEADING | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
LEAST | non-reserved (cannot be function or type) |  |  |  |
LEFT | reserved (can be function or type) | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
LENGTH |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved
LESS |  |  |  | reserved |
LEVEL | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved | reserved
LIBRARY |  | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
LIKE | reserved (can be function or type) | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
LIKE_REGEX |  | reserved |  |  |
LIMIT | reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved |
LINK |  | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
LISTEN | non-reserved |  |  |  |
LN |  | reserved | reserved |  |
LOAD | non-reserved |  |  |  |
LOCAL | non-reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
LOCALTIME | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved |
LOCALTIMESTAMP | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved |
LOCATION | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |  |
LOCATOR |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved |
LOCK | non-reserved |  |  |  |
LOWER |  | reserved | reserved | non-reserved | reserved
M |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |
MAP |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved |
MAPPING | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
MATCH | non-reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
MATCHED |  | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
MAX |  | reserved | reserved | non-reserved | reserved
MAXVALUE | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
MAX_CARDINALITY |  | reserved |  |  |
MEMBER |  | reserved | reserved |  |
MERGE |  | reserved | reserved |  |
MESSAGE_LENGTH |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved
MESSAGE_OCTET_LENGTH |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved
MESSAGE_TEXT |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved
METHOD |  | reserved | reserved | non-reserved |
MIN |  | reserved | reserved | non-reserved | reserved
MINUTE | non-reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
MINVALUE | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
MOD |  | reserved | reserved | non-reserved |
MODE | non-reserved |  |  |  |
MODIFIES |  | reserved | reserved | reserved |
MODIFY |  |  |  | reserved |
MODULE |  | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
MONTH | non-reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
MORE |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved
MOVE | non-reserved |  |  |  |
MULTISET |  | reserved | reserved |  |
MUMPS |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved
NAME | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved
NAMES | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved | reserved
NAMESPACE |  | non-reserved |  |  |
NATIONAL | non-reserved (cannot be function or type) | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
NATURAL | reserved (can be function or type) | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
NCHAR | non-reserved (cannot be function or type) | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
NCLOB |  | reserved | reserved | reserved |
NESTING |  | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
NEW |  | reserved | reserved | reserved |
NEXT | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved | reserved
NFC |  | non-reserved |  |  |
NFD |  | non-reserved |  |  |
NFKC |  | non-reserved |  |  |
NFKD |  | non-reserved |  |  |
NIL |  | non-reserved |  |  |
NO | non-reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
NONE | non-reserved (cannot be function or type) | reserved | reserved | reserved |
NORMALIZE |  | reserved | reserved |  |
NORMALIZED |  | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
NOT | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
NOTHING | non-reserved |  |  |  |
NOTIFY | non-reserved |  |  |  |
NOTNULL | reserved (can be function or type) |  |  |  |
NOWAIT | non-reserved |  |  |  |
NTH_VALUE |  | reserved |  |  |
NTILE |  | reserved |  |  |
NULL | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
NULLABLE |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved
NULLIF | non-reserved (cannot be function or type) | reserved | reserved | non-reserved | reserved
NULLS | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
NUMBER |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved
NUMERIC | non-reserved (cannot be function or type) | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
OBJECT | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved |
OCCURRENCES_REGEX |  | reserved |  |  |
OCTETS |  | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
OCTET_LENGTH |  | reserved | reserved | non-reserved | reserved
OF | non-reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
OFF | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved |
OFFSET | reserved | reserved |  |  |
OIDS | non-reserved |  |  |  |
OLD |  | reserved | reserved | reserved |
ON | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
ONLY | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
OPEN |  | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
OPERATION |  |  |  | reserved |
OPERATOR | non-reserved |  |  |  |
OPTION | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved | reserved
OPTIONS | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |
OR | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
ORDER | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
ORDERING |  | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
ORDINALITY |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved |
OTHERS |  | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
OUT | non-reserved (cannot be function or type) | reserved | reserved | reserved |
OUTER | reserved (can be function or type) | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
OUTPUT |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved | reserved
OVER | reserved (can be function or type) | reserved | reserved |  |
OVERLAPS | reserved (can be function or type) | reserved | reserved | non-reserved | reserved
OVERLAY | non-reserved (cannot be function or type) | reserved | reserved | non-reserved |
OVERRIDING |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |
OWNED | non-reserved |  |  |  |
OWNER | non-reserved |  |  |  |
P |  | non-reserved |  |  |
PAD |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved | reserved
PARAMETER |  | reserved | reserved | reserved |
PARAMETERS |  |  |  | reserved |
PARAMETER_MODE |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |
PARAMETER_NAME |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |
PARAMETER_ORDINAL_POSITION |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |
PARAMETER_SPECIFIC_CATALOG |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |
PARAMETER_SPECIFIC_NAME |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |
PARAMETER_SPECIFIC_SCHEMA |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |
PARSER | non-reserved |  |  |  |
PARTIAL | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved | reserved
PARTITION | non-reserved | reserved | reserved |  |
PASCAL |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved
PASSING | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |  |
PASSTHROUGH |  | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
PASSWORD | non-reserved |  |  |  |
PATH |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved |
PERCENTILE_CONT |  | reserved | reserved |  |
PERCENTILE_DISC |  | reserved | reserved |  |
PERCENT_RANK |  | reserved | reserved |  |
PERMISSION |  | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
PLACING | reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
PLANS | non-reserved |  |  |  |
PLI |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved
POSITION | non-reserved (cannot be function or type) | reserved | reserved | non-reserved | reserved
POSITION_REGEX |  | reserved |  |  |
POSTFIX |  |  |  | reserved |
POWER |  | reserved | reserved |  |
PRECEDING | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
PRECISION | non-reserved (cannot be function or type) | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
PREFIX |  |  |  | reserved |
PREORDER |  |  |  | reserved |
PREPARE | non-reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
PREPARED | non-reserved |  |  |  |
PRESERVE | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved | reserved
PRIMARY | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
PRIOR | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved | reserved
PRIVILEGES | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved | reserved
PROCEDURAL | non-reserved |  |  |  |
PROCEDURE | non-reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
PUBLIC |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved | reserved
QUOTE | non-reserved |  |  |  |
RANGE | non-reserved | reserved | reserved |  |
RANK |  | reserved | reserved |  |
READ | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved | reserved
READS |  | reserved | reserved | reserved |
REAL | non-reserved (cannot be function or type) | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
REASSIGN | non-reserved |  |  |  |
RECHECK | non-reserved |  |  |  |
RECOVERY |  | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
RECURSIVE | non-reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved |
REF | non-reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved |
REFERENCES | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
REFERENCING |  | reserved | reserved | reserved |
REGR_AVGX |  | reserved | reserved |  |
REGR_AVGY |  | reserved | reserved |  |
REGR_COUNT |  | reserved | reserved |  |
REGR_INTERCEPT |  | reserved | reserved |  |
REGR_R2 |  | reserved | reserved |  |
REGR_SLOPE |  | reserved | reserved |  |
REGR_SXX |  | reserved | reserved |  |
REGR_SXY |  | reserved | reserved |  |
REGR_SYY |  | reserved | reserved |  |
REINDEX | non-reserved |  |  |  |
RELATIVE | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved | reserved
RELEASE | non-reserved | reserved | reserved |  |
RENAME | non-reserved |  |  |  |
REPEATABLE | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved
REPLACE | non-reserved |  |  |  |
REPLICA | non-reserved |  |  |  |
REQUIRING |  | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
RESET | non-reserved |  |  |  |
RESPECT |  | non-reserved |  |  |
RESTART | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
RESTORE |  | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
RESTRICT | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved | reserved
RESULT |  | reserved | reserved | reserved |
RETURN |  | reserved | reserved | reserved |
RETURNED_CARDINALITY |  | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
RETURNED_LENGTH |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved
RETURNED_OCTET_LENGTH |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved
RETURNED_SQLSTATE |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved
RETURNING | reserved | non-reserved |  |  |
RETURNS | non-reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved |
REVOKE | non-reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
RIGHT | reserved (can be function or type) | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
ROLE | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved |
ROLLBACK | non-reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
ROLLUP |  | reserved | reserved | reserved |
ROUTINE |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved |
ROUTINE_CATALOG |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |
ROUTINE_NAME |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |
ROUTINE_SCHEMA |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |
ROW | non-reserved (cannot be function or type) | reserved | reserved | reserved |
ROWS | non-reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
ROW_COUNT |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved
ROW_NUMBER |  | reserved | reserved |  |
RULE | non-reserved |  |  |  |
SAVEPOINT | non-reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved |
SCALE |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved
SCHEMA | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved | reserved
SCHEMA_NAME |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved
SCOPE |  | reserved | reserved | reserved |
SCOPE_CATALOG |  | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
SCOPE_NAME |  | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
SCOPE_SCHEMA |  | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
SCROLL | non-reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
SEARCH | non-reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved |
SECOND | non-reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
SECTION |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved | reserved
SECURITY | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |
SELECT | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
SELECTIVE |  | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
SELF |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |
SENSITIVE |  | reserved | reserved | non-reserved |
SEQUENCE | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved |
SEQUENCES | non-reserved |  |  |  |
SERIALIZABLE | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved
SERVER | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
SERVER_NAME |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved
SESSION | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved | reserved
SESSION_USER | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
SET | non-reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
SETOF | non-reserved (cannot be function or type) |  |  |  |
SETS |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved |
SHARE | non-reserved |  |  |  |
SHOW | non-reserved |  |  |  |
SIMILAR | reserved (can be function or type) | reserved | reserved | non-reserved |
SIMPLE | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |
SIZE |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved | reserved
SMALLINT | non-reserved (cannot be function or type) | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
SOME | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
SOURCE |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |
SPACE |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved | reserved
SPECIFIC |  | reserved | reserved | reserved |
SPECIFICTYPE |  | reserved | reserved | reserved |
SPECIFIC_NAME |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |
SQL |  | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
SQLCODE |  |  |  |  | reserved
SQLERROR |  |  |  |  | reserved
SQLEXCEPTION |  | reserved | reserved | reserved |
SQLSTATE |  | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
SQLWARNING |  | reserved | reserved | reserved |
SQRT |  | reserved | reserved |  |
STABLE | non-reserved |  |  |  |
STANDALONE | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
START | non-reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved |
STATE |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved |
STATEMENT | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved |
STATIC |  | reserved | reserved | reserved |
STATISTICS | non-reserved |  |  |  |
STDDEV_POP |  | reserved | reserved |  |
STDDEV_SAMP |  | reserved | reserved |  |
STDIN | non-reserved |  |  |  |
STDOUT | non-reserved |  |  |  |
STORAGE | non-reserved |  |  |  |
STRICT | non-reserved |  |  |  |
STRIP | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
STRUCTURE |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved |
STYLE |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |
SUBCLASS_ORIGIN |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved
SUBLIST |  |  |  | non-reserved |
SUBMULTISET |  | reserved | reserved |  |
SUBSTRING | non-reserved (cannot be function or type) | reserved | reserved | non-reserved | reserved
SUBSTRING_REGEX |  | reserved |  |  |
SUM |  | reserved | reserved | non-reserved | reserved
SYMMETRIC | reserved | reserved | reserved | non-reserved |
SYSID | non-reserved |  |  |  |
SYSTEM | non-reserved | reserved | reserved | non-reserved |
SYSTEM_USER |  | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
T |  | non-reserved |  |  |
TABLE | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
TABLES | non-reserved |  |  |  |
TABLESAMPLE |  | reserved | reserved |  |
TABLESPACE | non-reserved |  |  |  |
TABLE_NAME |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved
TEMP | non-reserved |  |  |  |
TEMPLATE | non-reserved |  |  |  |
TEMPORARY | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved | reserved
TERMINATE |  |  |  | reserved |
TEXT | non-reserved |  |  |  |
THAN |  |  |  | reserved |
THEN | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
TIES |  | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
TIME | non-reserved (cannot be function or type) | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
TIMESTAMP | non-reserved (cannot be function or type) | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
TIMEZONE_HOUR |  | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
TIMEZONE_MINUTE |  | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
TO | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
TOKEN |  | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
TOP_LEVEL_COUNT |  | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
TRAILING | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
TRANSACTION | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved | reserved
TRANSACTIONS_COMMITTED |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |
TRANSACTIONS_ROLLED_BACK |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |
TRANSACTION_ACTIVE |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |
TRANSFORM |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |
TRANSFORMS |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |
TRANSLATE |  | reserved | reserved | non-reserved | reserved
TRANSLATE_REGEX |  | reserved |  |  |
TRANSLATION |  | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
TREAT | non-reserved (cannot be function or type) | reserved | reserved | reserved |
TRIGGER | non-reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved |
TRIGGER_CATALOG |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |
TRIGGER_NAME |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |
TRIGGER_SCHEMA |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |
TRIM | non-reserved (cannot be function or type) | reserved | reserved | non-reserved | reserved
TRIM_ARRAY |  | reserved |  |  |
TRUE | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
TRUNCATE | non-reserved | reserved |  |  |
TRUSTED | non-reserved |  |  |  |
TYPE | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved
UESCAPE |  | reserved | reserved |  |
UNBOUNDED | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
UNCOMMITTED | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved
UNDER |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved |
UNENCRYPTED | non-reserved |  |  |  |
UNION | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
UNIQUE | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
UNKNOWN | non-reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
UNLINK |  | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
UNLISTEN | non-reserved |  |  |  |
UNLOGGED | non-reserved |  |  |  |
UNNAMED |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved
UNNEST |  | reserved | reserved | reserved |
UNTIL | non-reserved |  |  |  |
UNTYPED |  | non-reserved |  |  |
UPDATE | non-reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
UPPER |  | reserved | reserved | non-reserved | reserved
URI |  | non-reserved |  |  |
USAGE |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved | reserved
USER | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
USER_DEFINED_TYPE_CATALOG |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |
USER_DEFINED_TYPE_CODE |  | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
USER_DEFINED_TYPE_NAME |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |
USER_DEFINED_TYPE_SCHEMA |  | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |
USING | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
VACUUM | non-reserved |  |  |  |
VALID | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |  |
VALIDATE | non-reserved |  |  |  |
VALIDATOR | non-reserved |  |  |  |
VALUE | non-reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
VALUES | non-reserved (cannot be function or type) | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
VARBINARY |  | reserved |  |  |
VARCHAR | non-reserved (cannot be function or type) | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
VARIABLE |  |  |  | reserved |
VARIADIC | reserved |  |  |  |
VARYING | non-reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
VAR_POP |  | reserved | reserved |  |
VAR_SAMP |  | reserved | reserved |  |
VERBOSE | reserved (can be function or type) |  |  |  |
VERSION | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
VIEW | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved | reserved
VOLATILE | non-reserved |  |  |  |
WHEN | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
WHENEVER |  | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
WHERE | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
WHITESPACE | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
WIDTH_BUCKET |  | reserved | reserved |  |
WINDOW | reserved | reserved | reserved |  |
WITH | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
WITHIN |  | reserved | reserved |  |
WITHOUT | non-reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved |
WORK | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved | reserved
WRAPPER | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |
WRITE | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved | reserved
XML | non-reserved | reserved | reserved |  |
XMLAGG |  | reserved | reserved |  |
XMLATTRIBUTES | non-reserved (cannot be function or type) | reserved | reserved |  |
XMLBINARY |  | reserved | reserved |  |
XMLCAST |  | reserved |  |  |
XMLCOMMENT |  | reserved | reserved |  |
XMLCONCAT | non-reserved (cannot be function or type) | reserved | reserved |  |
XMLDECLARATION |  | non-reserved |  |  |
XMLDOCUMENT |  | reserved |  |  |
XMLELEMENT | non-reserved (cannot be function or type) | reserved | reserved |  |
XMLEXISTS | non-reserved (cannot be function or type) | reserved |  |  |
XMLFOREST | non-reserved (cannot be function or type) | reserved | reserved |  |
XMLITERATE |  | reserved |  |  |
XMLNAMESPACES |  | reserved | reserved |  |
XMLPARSE | non-reserved (cannot be function or type) | reserved | reserved |  |
XMLPI | non-reserved (cannot be function or type) | reserved | reserved |  |
XMLQUERY |  | reserved |  |  |
XMLROOT | non-reserved (cannot be function or type) |  | reserved |  |
XMLSCHEMA |  | non-reserved |  |  |
XMLSERIALIZE | non-reserved (cannot be function or type) | reserved | reserved |  |
XMLTABLE |  | reserved |  |  |
XMLTEXT |  | reserved |  |  |
XMLVALIDATE |  | reserved |  |  |
YEAR | non-reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved | reserved
YES | non-reserved | non-reserved |  |  |
ZONE | non-reserved | non-reserved | non-reserved | reserved | reserved
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SQL Conformance

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Appendix D. SQL Conformance

Table of Contents
D.1. Supported Features
D.2. Unsupported Features

This section attempts to outline to what extent PostgreSQL conforms to the current SQL standard. The following information is not a full statement of conformance, but it presents the main topics in as much detail as is both reasonable and useful for users.

The formal name of the SQL standard is ISO/IEC 9075 "Database Language SQL". A revised version of the standard is released from time to time; the most recent update appearing in 2008. The 2008 version is referred to as ISO/IEC 9075:2008, or simply as SQL:2008. The versions prior to that were SQL:2003, SQL:1999, and SQL-92. Each version replaces the previous one, so claims of conformance to earlier versions have no official merit. PostgreSQL development aims for conformance with the latest official version of the standard where such conformance does not contradict traditional features or common sense. Many of the features required by the SQL standard are supported, though sometimes with slightly differing syntax or function. Further moves towards conformance can be expected over time.

SQL-92 defined three feature sets for conformance: Entry, Intermediate, and Full. Most database management systems claiming SQL standard conformance were conforming at only the Entry level, since the entire set of features in the Intermediate and Full levels was either too voluminous or in conflict with legacy behaviors.

Starting with SQL:1999, the SQL standard defines a large set of individual features rather than the ineffectively broad three levels found in SQL-92. A large subset of these features represents the "Core" features, which every conforming SQL implementation must supply. The rest of the features are purely optional. Some optional features are grouped together to form "packages", which SQL implementations can claim conformance to, thus claiming conformance to particular groups of features.

The SQL:2008 and SQL:2003 standard versions are also split into a number of parts. Each is known by a shorthand name. Note that these parts are not consecutively numbered.

  • ISO/IEC 9075-1 Framework (SQL/Framework)

  • ISO/IEC 9075-2 Foundation (SQL/Foundation)

  • ISO/IEC 9075-3 Call Level Interface (SQL/CLI)

  • ISO/IEC 9075-4 Persistent Stored Modules (SQL/PSM)

  • ISO/IEC 9075-9 Management of External Data (SQL/MED)

  • ISO/IEC 9075-10 Object Language Bindings (SQL/OLB)

  • ISO/IEC 9075-11 Information and Definition Schemas (SQL/Schemata)

  • ISO/IEC 9075-13 Routines and Types using the Java Language (SQL/JRT)

  • ISO/IEC 9075-14 XML-related specifications (SQL/XML)

The PostgreSQL core covers parts 1, 2, 9, 11, and 14. Part 3 is covered by the ODBC driver, and part 13 is covered by the PL/Java plug-in, but exact conformance is currently not being verified for these components. There are currently no implementations of parts 4 and 10 for PostgreSQL.

PostgreSQL supports most of the major features of SQL:2008. Out of 179 mandatory features required for full Core conformance, PostgreSQL conforms to at least 160. In addition, there is a long list of supported optional features. It might be worth noting that at the time of writing, no current version of any database management system claims full conformance to Core SQL:2008.

In the following two sections, we provide a list of those features that PostgreSQL supports, followed by a list of the features defined in SQL:2008 which are not yet supported in PostgreSQL. Both of these lists are approximate: There might be minor details that are nonconforming for a feature that is listed as supported, and large parts of an unsupported feature might in fact be implemented. The main body of the documentation always contains the most accurate information about what does and does not work.

Note: Feature codes containing a hyphen are subfeatures. Therefore, if a particular subfeature is not supported, the main feature is listed as unsupported even if some other subfeatures are supported.

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Supported Features

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D.1. Supported Features

Identifier | Package | Description | Comment
B012 |  | Embedded C |
B021 |  | Direct SQL |
E011 | Core | Numeric data types |
E011-01 | Core | INTEGER and SMALLINT data types |
E011-02 | Core | REAL, DOUBLE PRECISION, and FLOAT data types |
E011-03 | Core | DECIMAL and NUMERIC data types |
E011-04 | Core | Arithmetic operators |
E011-05 | Core | Numeric comparison |
E011-06 | Core | Implicit casting among the numeric data types |
E021 | Core | Character data types |
E021-01 | Core | CHARACTER data type |
E021-02 | Core | CHARACTER VARYING data type |
E021-03 | Core | Character literals |
E021-04 | Core | CHARACTER_LENGTH function | trims trailing spaces from CHARACTER values before counting
E021-05 | Core | OCTET_LENGTH function |
E021-06 | Core | SUBSTRING function |
E021-07 | Core | Character concatenation |
E021-08 | Core | UPPER and LOWER functions |
E021-09 | Core | TRIM function |
E021-10 | Core | Implicit casting among the character string types |
E021-11 | Core | POSITION function |
E021-12 | Core | Character comparison |
E031 | Core | Identifiers |
E031-01 | Core | Delimited identifiers |
E031-02 | Core | Lower case identifiers |
E031-03 | Core | Trailing underscore |
E051 | Core | Basic query specification |
E051-01 | Core | SELECT DISTINCT |
E051-02 | Core | GROUP BY clause |
E051-04 | Core | GROUP BY can contain columns not in <select list> |
E051-05 | Core | Select list items can be renamed |
E051-06 | Core | HAVING clause |
E051-07 | Core | Qualified * in select list |
E051-08 | Core | Correlation names in the FROM clause |
E051-09 | Core | Rename columns in the FROM clause |
E061 | Core | Basic predicates and search conditions |
E061-01 | Core | Comparison predicate |
E061-02 | Core | BETWEEN predicate |
E061-03 | Core | IN predicate with list of values |
E061-04 | Core | LIKE predicate |
E061-05 | Core | LIKE predicate ESCAPE clause |
E061-06 | Core | NULL predicate |
E061-07 | Core | Quantified comparison predicate |
E061-08 | Core | EXISTS predicate |
E061-09 | Core | Subqueries in comparison predicate |
E061-11 | Core | Subqueries in IN predicate |
E061-12 | Core | Subqueries in quantified comparison predicate |
E061-13 | Core | Correlated subqueries |
E061-14 | Core | Search condition |
E071 | Core | Basic query expressions |
E071-01 | Core | UNION DISTINCT table operator |
E071-02 | Core | UNION ALL table operator |
E071-03 | Core | EXCEPT DISTINCT table operator |
E071-05 | Core | Columns combined via table operators need not have exactly the same data type |
E071-06 | Core | Table operators in subqueries |
E081-01 | Core | SELECT privilege |
E081-02 | Core | DELETE privilege |
E081-03 | Core | INSERT privilege at the table level |
E081-04 | Core | UPDATE privilege at the table level |
E081-05 | Core | UPDATE privilege at the column level |
E081-06 | Core | REFERENCES privilege at the table level |
E081-07 | Core | REFERENCES privilege at the column level |
E081-08 | Core | WITH GRANT OPTION |
E081-10 | Core | EXECUTE privilege |
E091 | Core | Set functions |
E091-01 | Core | AVG |
E091-02 | Core | COUNT |
E091-03 | Core | MAX |
E091-04 | Core | MIN |
E091-05 | Core | SUM |
E091-06 | Core | ALL quantifier |
E091-07 | Core | DISTINCT quantifier |
E101 | Core | Basic data manipulation |
E101-01 | Core | INSERT statement |
E101-03 | Core | Searched UPDATE statement |
E101-04 | Core | Searched DELETE statement |
E111 | Core | Single row SELECT statement |
E121 | Core | Basic cursor support |
E121-01 | Core | DECLARE CURSOR |
E121-02 | Core | ORDER BY columns need not be in select list |
E121-03 | Core | Value expressions in ORDER BY clause |
E121-04 | Core | OPEN statement |
E121-06 | Core | Positioned UPDATE statement |
E121-07 | Core | Positioned DELETE statement |
E121-08 | Core | CLOSE statement |
E121-10 | Core | FETCH statement implicit NEXT |
E121-17 | Core | WITH HOLD cursors |
E131 | Core | Null value support (nulls in lieu of values) |
E141 | Core | Basic integrity constraints |
E141-01 | Core | NOT NULL constraints |
E141-02 | Core | UNIQUE constraints of NOT NULL columns |
E141-03 | Core | PRIMARY KEY constraints |
E141-04 | Core | Basic FOREIGN KEY constraint with the NO ACTION default for both referential delete action and referential update action |
E141-06 | Core | CHECK constraints |
E141-07 | Core | Column defaults |
E141-08 | Core | NOT NULL inferred on PRIMARY KEY |
E141-10 | Core | Names in a foreign key can be specified in any order |
E151 | Core | Transaction support |
E151-01 | Core | COMMIT statement |
E151-02 | Core | ROLLBACK statement |
E152 | Core | Basic SET TRANSACTION statement |
E152-01 | Core | SET TRANSACTION statement: ISOLATION LEVEL SERIALIZABLE clause |
E152-02 | Core | SET TRANSACTION statement: READ ONLY and READ WRITE clauses |
E161 | Core | SQL comments using leading double minus |
E171 | Core | SQLSTATE support |
F021 | Core | Basic information schema |
F021-01 | Core | COLUMNS view |
F021-02 | Core | TABLES view |
F021-03 | Core | VIEWS view |
F021-04 | Core | TABLE_CONSTRAINTS view |
F021-05 | Core | REFERENTIAL_CONSTRAINTS view |
F021-06 | Core | CHECK_CONSTRAINTS view |
F031 | Core | Basic schema manipulation |
F031-01 | Core | CREATE TABLE statement to create persistent base tables |
F031-02 | Core | CREATE VIEW statement |
F031-03 | Core | GRANT statement |
F031-04 | Core | ALTER TABLE statement: ADD COLUMN clause |
F031-13 | Core | DROP TABLE statement: RESTRICT clause |
F031-16 | Core | DROP VIEW statement: RESTRICT clause |
F031-19 | Core | REVOKE statement: RESTRICT clause |
F032 |  | CASCADE drop behavior |
F033 |  | ALTER TABLE statement: DROP COLUMN clause |
F034 |  | Extended REVOKE statement |
F034-01 |  | REVOKE statement performed by other than the owner of a schema object |
F034-02 |  | REVOKE statement: GRANT OPTION FOR clause |
F034-03 |  | REVOKE statement to revoke a privilege that the grantee has WITH GRANT OPTION |
F041 | Core | Basic joined table |
F041-01 | Core | Inner join (but not necessarily the INNER keyword) |
F041-02 | Core | INNER keyword |
F041-03 | Core | LEFT OUTER JOIN |
F041-04 | Core | RIGHT OUTER JOIN |
F041-05 | Core | Outer joins can be nested |
F041-07 | Core | The inner table in a left or right outer join can also be used in an inner join |
F041-08 | Core | All comparison operators are supported (rather than just =) |
F051 | Core | Basic date and time |
F051-01 | Core | DATE data type (including support of DATE literal) |
F051-02 | Core | TIME data type (including support of TIME literal) with fractional seconds precision of at least 0 |
F051-03 | Core | TIMESTAMP data type (including support of TIMESTAMP literal) with fractional seconds precision of at least 0 and 6 |
F051-04 | Core | Comparison predicate on DATE, TIME, and TIMESTAMP data types |
F051-05 | Core | Explicit CAST between datetime types and character string types |
F051-06 | Core | CURRENT_DATE |
F051-07 | Core | LOCALTIME |
F051-08 | Core | LOCALTIMESTAMP |
F052 | Enhanced datetime facilities | Intervals and datetime arithmetic |
F053 |  | OVERLAPS predicate |
F081 | Core | UNION and EXCEPT in views |
F111 |  | Isolation levels other than SERIALIZABLE |
F111-01 |  | READ UNCOMMITTED isolation level |
F111-02 |  | READ COMMITTED isolation level |
F111-03 |  | REPEATABLE READ isolation level |
F131 | Core | Grouped operations |
F131-01 | Core | WHERE, GROUP BY, and HAVING clauses supported in queries with grouped views |
F131-02 | Core | Multiple tables supported in queries with grouped views |
F131-03 | Core | Set functions supported in queries with grouped views |
F131-04 | Core | Subqueries with GROUP BY and HAVING clauses and grouped views |
F131-05 | Core | Single row SELECT with GROUP BY and HAVING clauses and grouped views |
F171 |  | Multiple schemas per user |
F191 | Enhanced integrity management | Referential delete actions |
F200 |  | TRUNCATE TABLE statement |
F201 | Core | CAST function |
F221 | Core | Explicit defaults |
F222 |  | INSERT statement: DEFAULT VALUES clause |
F231 |  | Privilege tables |
F231-01 |  | TABLE_PRIVILEGES view |
F231-02 |  | COLUMN_PRIVILEGES view |
F231-03 |  | USAGE_PRIVILEGES view |
F251 |  | Domain support |
F261 | Core | CASE expression |
F261-01 | Core | Simple CASE |
F261-02 | Core | Searched CASE |
F261-03 | Core | NULLIF |
F261-04 | Core | COALESCE |
F262 |  | Extended CASE expression |
F271 |  | Compound character literals |
F281 |  | LIKE enhancements |
F302 |  | INTERSECT table operator |
F302-01 |  | INTERSECT DISTINCT table operator |
F302-02 |  | INTERSECT ALL table operator |
F304 |  | EXCEPT ALL table operator |
F311-01 | Core | CREATE SCHEMA |
F311-02 | Core | CREATE TABLE for persistent base tables |
F311-03 | Core | CREATE VIEW |
F311-05 | Core | GRANT statement |
F321 |  | User authorization |
F361 |  | Subprogram support |
F381 |  | Extended schema manipulation |
F381-01 |  | ALTER TABLE statement: ALTER COLUMN clause |
F381-02 |  | ALTER TABLE statement: ADD CONSTRAINT clause |
F381-03 |  | ALTER TABLE statement: DROP CONSTRAINT clause |
F382 |  | Alter column data type |
F391 |  | Long identifiers |
F392 |  | Unicode escapes in identifiers |
F393 |  | Unicode escapes in literals |
F401 |  | Extended joined table |
F401-01 |  | NATURAL JOIN |
F401-02 |  | FULL OUTER JOIN |
F401-04 |  | CROSS JOIN |
F402 |  | Named column joins for LOBs, arrays, and multisets |
F411 | Enhanced datetime facilities | Time zone specification | differences regarding literal interpretation
F421 |  | National character |
F431 |  | Read-only scrollable cursors |
F431-01 |  | FETCH with explicit NEXT |
F431-02 |  | FETCH FIRST |
F431-03 |  | FETCH LAST |
F431-04 |  | FETCH PRIOR |
F431-05 |  | FETCH ABSOLUTE |
F431-06 |  | FETCH RELATIVE |
F441 |  | Extended set function support |
F442 |  | Mixed column references in set functions |
F471 | Core | Scalar subquery values |
F481 | Core | Expanded NULL predicate |
F491 | Enhanced integrity management | Constraint management |
F501 | Core | Features and conformance views |
F501-01 | Core | SQL_FEATURES view |
F501-02 | Core | SQL_SIZING view |
F501-03 | Core | SQL_LANGUAGES view |
F502 |  | Enhanced documentation tables |
F502-01 |  | SQL_SIZING_PROFILES view |
F502-02 |  | SQL_IMPLEMENTATION_INFO view |
F502-03 |  | SQL_PACKAGES view |
F531 |  | Temporary tables |
F555 | Enhanced datetime facilities | Enhanced seconds precision |
F561 |  | Full value expressions |
F571 |  | Truth value tests |
F591 |  | Derived tables |
F611 |  | Indicator data types |
F641 |  | Row and table constructors |
F651 |  | Catalog name qualifiers |
F661 |  | Simple tables |
F672 |  | Retrospective check constraints |
F690 |  | Collation support | but no character set support
F692 |  | Extended collation support |
F701 | Enhanced integrity management | Referential update actions |
F711 |  | ALTER domain |
F731 |  | INSERT column privileges |
F761 |  | Session management |
F762 |  | CURRENT_CATALOG |
F763 |  | CURRENT_SCHEMA |
F771 |  | Connection management |
F781 |  | Self-referencing operations |
F791 |  | Insensitive cursors |
F801 |  | Full set function |
F850 |  | Top-level <order by clause> in <query expression> |
F851 |  | <order by clause> in subqueries |
F852 |  | Top-level <order by clause> in views |
F855 |  | Nested <order by clause> in <query expression> |
F856 |  | Nested <fetch first clause> in <query expression> |
F857 |  | Top-level <fetch first clause> in <query expression> |
F858 |  | <fetch first clause> in subqueries |
F859 |  | Top-level <fetch first clause> in views |
F860 |  | <fetch first row count> in <fetch first clause> |
F861 |  | Top-level <result offset clause> in <query expression> |
F862 |  | <result offset clause> in subqueries |
F863 |  | Nested <result offset clause> in <query expression> |
F864 |  | Top-level <result offset clause> in views |
F865 |  | <offset row count> in <result offset clause> |
S071 | Enhanced object support | SQL paths in function and type name resolution |
S092 |  | Arrays of user-defined types |
S095 |  | Array constructors by query |
S096 |  | Optional array bounds |
S098 |  | ARRAY_AGG |
S111 | Enhanced object support | ONLY in query expressions |
S201 |  | SQL-invoked routines on arrays |
S201-01 |  | Array parameters |
S201-02 |  | Array as result type of functions |
S211 | Enhanced object support | User-defined cast functions |
T031 |  | BOOLEAN data type |
T071 |  | BIGINT data type |
T121 |  | WITH (excluding RECURSIVE) in query expression |
T122 |  | WITH (excluding RECURSIVE) in subquery |
T131 |  | Recursive query |
T132 |  | Recursive query in subquery |
T141 |  | SIMILAR predicate |
T151 |  | DISTINCT predicate |
T152 |  | DISTINCT predicate with negation |
T171 |  | LIKE clause in table definition |
T172 |  | AS subquery clause in table definition |
T173 |  | Extended LIKE clause in table definition |
T191 | Enhanced integrity management | Referential action RESTRICT |
T201 | Enhanced integrity management | Comparable data types for referential constraints |
T211-01 | Active database, Enhanced integrity management | Triggers activated on UPDATE, INSERT, or DELETE of one base table |
T211-02 | Active database, Enhanced integrity management | BEFORE triggers |
T211-03 | Active database, Enhanced integrity management | AFTER triggers |
T211-04 | Active database, Enhanced integrity management | FOR EACH ROW triggers |
T211-05 | Active database, Enhanced integrity management | Ability to specify a search condition that must be true before the trigger is invoked |
T211-07 | Active database, Enhanced integrity management | TRIGGER privilege |
T212 | Enhanced integrity management | Enhanced trigger capability |
T213 |  | INSTEAD OF triggers |
T231 |  | Sensitive cursors |
T241 |  | START TRANSACTION statement |
T271 |  | Savepoints |
T281 |  | SELECT privilege with column granularity |
T312 |  | OVERLAY function |
T321-01 | Core | User-defined functions with no overloading |
T321-03 | Core | Function invocation |
T321-06 | Core | ROUTINES view |
T321-07 | Core | PARAMETERS view |
T322 | PSM | Overloading of SQL-invoked functions and procedures |
T323 |  | Explicit security for external routines |
T331 |  | Basic roles |
T351 |  | Bracketed SQL comments (/*...*/ comments) |
T441 |  | ABS and MOD functions |
T461 |  | Symmetric BETWEEN predicate |
T501 |  | Enhanced EXISTS predicate |
T551 |  | Optional key words for default syntax |
T581 |  | Regular expression substring function |
T591 |  | UNIQUE constraints of possibly null columns |
T614 |  | NTILE function |
T615 |  | LEAD and LAG functions |
T617 |  | FIRST_VALUE and LAST_VALUE function |
T621 |  | Enhanced numeric functions |
T631 | Core | IN predicate with one list element |
T651 |  | SQL-schema statements in SQL routines |
T655 |  | Cyclically dependent routines |
X010 |  | XML type |
X011 |  | Arrays of XML type |
X016 |  | Persistent XML values |
X020 |  | XMLConcat |
X031 |  | XMLElement |
X032 |  | XMLForest |
X034 |  | XMLAgg |
X035 |  | XMLAgg: ORDER BY option |
X036 |  | XMLComment |
X037 |  | XMLPI |
X040 |  | Basic table mapping |
X041 |  | Basic table mapping: nulls absent |
X042 |  | Basic table mapping: null as nil |
X043 |  | Basic table mapping: table as forest |
X044 |  | Basic table mapping: table as element |
X045 |  | Basic table mapping: with target namespace |
X046 |  | Basic table mapping: data mapping |
X047 |  | Basic table mapping: metadata mapping |
X048 |  | Basic table mapping: base64 encoding of binary strings |
X049 |  | Basic table mapping: hex encoding of binary strings |
X050 |  | Advanced table mapping |
X051 |  | Advanced table mapping: nulls absent |
X052 |  | Advanced table mapping: null as nil |
X053 |  | Advanced table mapping: table as forest |
X054 |  | Advanced table mapping: table as element |
X055 |  | Advanced table mapping: target namespace |
X056 |  | Advanced table mapping: data mapping |
X057 |  | Advanced table mapping: metadata mapping |
X058 |  | Advanced table mapping: base64 encoding of binary strings |
X059 |  | Advanced table mapping: hex encoding of binary strings |
X060 |  | XMLParse: Character string input and CONTENT option |
X061 |  | XMLParse: Character string input and DOCUMENT option |
X070 |  | XMLSerialize: Character string serialization and CONTENT option |
X071 |  | XMLSerialize: Character string serialization and DOCUMENT option |
X072 |  | XMLSerialize: Character string serialization |
X090 |  | XML document predicate |
X120 |  | XML parameters in SQL routines |
X121 |  | XML parameters in external routines |
X400 |  | Name and identifier mapping |

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SQL Conformance | Up | Unsupported Features


Unsupported Features

Prev Up Appendix D. SQL Conformance Next

D.2. Unsupported Features

The following features defined in SQL:2008 are not implemented in this release of PostgreSQL. In a few cases, equivalent functionality is available.

Identifier | Package | Description | Comment
B011 |  | Embedded Ada |
B013 |  | Embedded COBOL |
B014 |  | Embedded Fortran |
B015 |  | Embedded MUMPS |
B016 |  | Embedded Pascal |
B017 |  | Embedded PL/I |
B031 |  | Basic dynamic SQL |
B032 |  | Extended dynamic SQL |
B032-01 |  | <describe input statement> |
B033 |  | Untyped SQL-invoked function arguments |
B034 |  | Dynamic specification of cursor attributes |
B035 |  | Non-extended descriptor names |
B041 |  | Extensions to embedded SQL exception declarations |
B051 |  | Enhanced execution rights |
B111 |  | Module language Ada |
B112 |  | Module language C |
B113 |  | Module language COBOL |
B114 |  | Module language Fortran |
B115 |  | Module language MUMPS |
B116 |  | Module language Pascal |
B117 |  | Module language PL/I |
B121 |  | Routine language Ada |
B122 |  | Routine language C |
B123 |  | Routine language COBOL |
B124 |  | Routine language Fortran |
B125 |  | Routine language MUMPS |
B126 |  | Routine language Pascal |
B127 |  | Routine language PL/I |
B128 |  | Routine language SQL |
E081 | Core | Basic Privileges |
E081-09 | Core | USAGE privilege |
E153 | Core | Updatable queries with subqueries |
E182 | Core | Module language |
F121 |  | Basic diagnostics management |
F121-01 |  | GET DIAGNOSTICS statement |
F121-02 |  | SET TRANSACTION statement: DIAGNOSTICS SIZE clause |
F122 |  | Enhanced diagnostics management |
F123 |  | All diagnostics |
F181 | Core | Multiple module support |
F202 |  | TRUNCATE TABLE: identity column restart option |
F263 |  | Comma-separated predicates in simple CASE expression |
F291 |  | UNIQUE predicate |
F301 |  | CORRESPONDING in query expressions |
F311 | Core | Schema definition statement |
F311-04 | Core | CREATE VIEW: WITH CHECK OPTION |
F312 |  | MERGE statement |
F313 |  | Enhanced MERGE statement |
F341 |  | Usage tables | no ROUTINE_*_USAGE tables
F394 |  | Optional normal form specification |
F403 |  | Partitioned joined tables |
F451 |  | Character set definition |
F461 |  | Named character sets |
F521 | Enhanced integrity management | Assertions |
F671 | Enhanced integrity management | Subqueries in CHECK | intentionally omitted
F693 |  | SQL-session and client module collations |
F695 |  | Translation support |
F696 |  | Additional translation documentation |
F721 |  | Deferrable constraints | foreign and unique keys only
F741 |  | Referential MATCH types | no partial match yet
F751 |  | View CHECK enhancements |
F812 | Core | Basic flagging |
F813 |  | Extended flagging |
F821 |  | Local table references |
F831 |  | Full cursor update |
F831-01 |  | Updatable scrollable cursors |
F831-02 |  | Updatable ordered cursors |
F841 |  | LIKE_REGEX predicate |
F842 |  | OCCURENCES_REGEX function |
F843 |  | POSITION_REGEX function |
F844 |  | SUBSTRING_REGEX function |
F845 |  | TRANSLATE_REGEX function |
F846 |  | Octet support in regular expression operators |
F847 |  | Nonconstant regular expressions |
S011 | Core | Distinct data types |
S011-01 | Core | USER_DEFINED_TYPES view |
S023 | Basic object support | Basic structured types |
S024 | Enhanced object support | Enhanced structured types |
S025 |  | Final structured types |
S026 |  | Self-referencing structured types |
S027 |  | Create method by specific method name |
S028 |  | Permutable UDT options list |
S041 | Basic object support | Basic reference types |
S043 | Enhanced object support | Enhanced reference types |
S051 | Basic object support | Create table of type | partially supported
S081 | Enhanced object support | Subtables |
S091 |  | Basic array support | partially supported
S091-01 |  | Arrays of built-in data types |
S091-02 |  | Arrays of distinct types |
S091-03 |  | Array expressions |
S094 |  | Arrays of reference types |
S097 |  | Array element assignment |
S151 | Basic object support | Type predicate |
S161 | Enhanced object support | Subtype treatment |
S162 |  | Subtype treatment for references |
S202 |  | SQL-invoked routines on multisets |
S231 | Enhanced object support | Structured type locators |
S232 |  | Array locators |
S233 |  | Multiset locators |
S241 |  | Transform functions |
S242 |  | Alter transform statement |
S251 |  | User-defined orderings |
S261 |  | Specific type method |
S271 |  | Basic multiset support |
S272 |  | Multisets of user-defined types |
S274 |  | Multisets of reference types |
S275 |  | Advanced multiset support |
S281 |  | Nested collection types |
S291 |  | Unique constraint on entire row |
S301 |  | Enhanced UNNEST |
S401 |  | Distinct types based on array types |
S402 |  | Distinct types based on distinct types |
S403 |  | MAX_CARDINALITY |
S404 |  | TRIM_ARRAY |
T011 |  | Timestamp in Information Schema |
T021 |  | BINARY and VARBINARY data types |
T022 |  | Advanced support for BINARY and VARBINARY data types |
T023 |  | Compound binary literal |
T024 |  | Spaces in binary literals |
T041 | Basic object support | Basic LOB data type support |
T041-01 | Basic object support | BLOB data type |
T041-02 | Basic object support | CLOB data type |
T041-03 | Basic object support | POSITION, LENGTH, LOWER, TRIM, UPPER, and SUBSTRING functions for LOB data types |
T041-04 | Basic object support | Concatenation of LOB data types |
T041-05 | Basic object support | LOB locator: non-holdable |
T042 |  | Extended LOB data type support |
T043 |  | Multiplier T |
T044 |  | Multiplier P |
T051 |  | Row types |
T052 |  | MAX and MIN for row types |
T053 |  | Explicit aliases for all-fields reference |
T061 |  | UCS support |
T101 |  | Enhanced nullability determination |
T111 |  | Updatable joins, unions, and columns |
T174 |  | Identity columns |
T175 |  | Generated columns |
T176 |  | Sequence generator support |
T177 |  | Sequence generator support: simple restart option |
T178 |  | Identity columns: simple restart option |
T211 | Active database, Enhanced integrity management | Basic trigger capability |
T211-06 | Active database, Enhanced integrity management | Support for run-time rules for the interaction of triggers and constraints |
T211-08 | Active database, Enhanced integrity management | Multiple triggers for the same event are executed in the order in which they were created in the catalog | intentionally omitted
T251 |  | SET TRANSACTION statement: LOCAL option |
T261 |  | Chained transactions |
T272 |  | Enhanced savepoint management |
T285 |  | Enhanced derived column names |
T301 |  | Functional dependencies | partially supported
T321 | Core | Basic SQL-invoked routines |
T321-02 | Core | User-defined stored procedures with no overloading |
T321-04 | Core | CALL statement |
T321-05 | Core | RETURN statement |
T324 |  | Explicit security for SQL routines |
T325 |  | Qualified SQL parameter references |
T326 |  | Table functions |
T332 |  | Extended roles | mostly supported
T431 | OLAP | Extended grouping capabilities |
T432 |  | Nested and concatenated GROUPING SETS |
T433 |  | Multiargument GROUPING function |
T434 |  | GROUP BY DISTINCT |
T471 |  | Result sets return value |
T491 |  | LATERAL derived table |
T511 |  | Transaction counts |
T541 |  | Updatable table references |
T561 |  | Holdable locators |
T571 |  | Array-returning external SQL-invoked functions |
T572 |  | Multiset-returning external SQL-invoked functions |
T601 |  | Local cursor references |
T611 | OLAP | Elementary OLAP operations | most forms supported
T612 |  | Advanced OLAP operations | some forms supported
T613 |  | Sampling |
T616 |  | Null treatment option for LEAD and LAG functions |
T618 |  | NTH_VALUE function | function exists, but some options missing
T641 |  | Multiple column assignment | only some syntax variants supported
T652 |  | SQL-dynamic statements in SQL routines |
T653 |  | SQL-schema statements in external routines |
T654 |  | SQL-dynamic statements in external routines |
M001 |  | Datalinks |
M002 |  | Datalinks via SQL/CLI |
M003 |  | Datalinks via Embedded SQL |
M004 |  | Foreign data support | partially supported
M005 |  | Foreign schema support |
M006 |  | GetSQLString routine |
M007 |  | TransmitRequest |
M009 |  | GetOpts and GetStatistics routines |
M010 |  | Foreign data wrapper support |
M011 |  | Datalinks via Ada |
M012 |  | Datalinks via C |
M013 |  | Datalinks via COBOL |
M014 |  | Datalinks via Fortran |
M015 |  | Datalinks via M |
M016 |  | Datalinks via Pascal |
M017 |  | Datalinks via PL/I |
M018 |  | Foreign data wrapper interface routines in Ada |
M019 |  | Foreign data wrapper interface routines in C |
M020 |  | Foreign data wrapper interface routines in COBOL |
M021 |  | Foreign data wrapper interface routines in Fortran |
M022 |  | Foreign data wrapper interface routines in MUMPS |
M023 |  | Foreign data wrapper interface routines in Pascal |
M024 |  | Foreign data wrapper interface routines in PL/I |
M030 |  | SQL-server foreign data support |
M031 |  | Foreign data wrapper general routines |
X012 |  | Multisets of XML type |
X013 |  | Distinct types of XML type |
X014 |  | Attributes of XML type |
X015 |  | Fields of XML type |
X025 |  | XMLCast |
X030 |  | XMLDocument |
X038 |  | XMLText |
X065 |  | XMLParse: BLOB input and CONTENT option |
X066 |  | XMLParse: BLOB input and DOCUMENT option |
X068 |  | XMLSerialize: BOM |
X069 |  | XMLSerialize: INDENT |
X073 |  | XMLSerialize: BLOB serialization and CONTENT option |
X074 |  | XMLSerialize: BLOB serialization and DOCUMENT option |
X075 |  | XMLSerialize: BLOB serialization |
X076 |  | XMLSerialize: VERSION |
X077 |  | XMLSerialize: explicit ENCODING option |
X078 |  | XMLSerialize: explicit XML declaration |
X080 |  | Namespaces in XML publishing |
X081 |  | Query-level XML namespace declarations |
X082 |  | XML namespace declarations in DML |
X083 |  | XML namespace declarations in DDL |
X084 |  | XML namespace declarations in compound statements |
X085 |  | Predefined namespace prefixes |
X086 |  | XML namespace declarations in XMLTable |
X091 |  | XML content predicate |
X096 |  | XMLExists |
X100 |  | Host language support for XML: CONTENT option |
X101 |  | Host language support for XML: DOCUMENT option |
X110 |  | Host language support for XML: VARCHAR mapping |
X111 |  | Host language support for XML: CLOB mapping |
X112 |  | Host language support for XML: BLOB mapping |
X113 |  | Host language support for XML: STRIP WHITESPACE option |
X114 |  | Host language support for XML: PRESERVE WHITESPACE option |
X131 |  | Query-level XMLBINARY clause |
X132 |  | XMLBINARY clause in DML |
X133 |  | XMLBINARY clause in DDL |
X134 |  | XMLBINARY clause in compound statements |
X135 |  | XMLBINARY clause in subqueries |
X141 |  | IS VALID predicate: data-driven case |
X142 |  | IS VALID predicate: ACCORDING TO clause |
X143 |  | IS VALID predicate: ELEMENT clause |
X144 |  | IS VALID predicate: schema location |
X145 |  | IS VALID predicate outside check constraints |
X151 |  | IS VALID predicate with DOCUMENT option |
X152 |  | IS VALID predicate with CONTENT option |
X153 |  | IS VALID predicate with SEQUENCE option |
X155 |  | IS VALID predicate: NAMESPACE without ELEMENT clause |
X157 |  | IS VALID predicate: NO NAMESPACE with ELEMENT clause |
X160 |  | Basic Information Schema for registered XML Schemas |
X161 |  | Advanced Information Schema for registered XML Schemas |
X170 |  | XML null handling options |
X171 |  | NIL ON NO CONTENT option |
X181 |  | XML(DOCUMENT(UNTYPED)) type |
X182 |  | XML(DOCUMENT(ANY)) type |
X190 |  | XML(SEQUENCE) type |
X191 |  | XML(DOCUMENT(XMLSCHEMA)) type |
X192 |  | XML(CONTENT(XMLSCHEMA)) type |
X200 |  | XMLQuery |
X201 |  | XMLQuery: RETURNING CONTENT |
X202 |  | XMLQuery: RETURNING SEQUENCE |
X203 |  | XMLQuery: passing a context item |
X204 |  | XMLQuery: initializing an XQuery variable |
X205 |  | XMLQuery: EMPTY ON EMPTY option |
X206 |  | XMLQuery: NULL ON EMPTY option |
X211 |  | XML 1.1 support |
X221 |  | XML passing mechanism BY VALUE |
X222 |  | XML passing mechanism BY REF |
X231 |  | XML(CONTENT(UNTYPED)) type |
X232 |  | XML(CONTENT(ANY)) type |
X241 |  | RETURNING CONTENT in XML publishing |
X242 |  | RETURNING SEQUENCE in XML publishing |
X251 |  | Persistent XML values of XML(DOCUMENT(UNTYPED)) type |
X252 |  | Persistent XML values of XML(DOCUMENT(ANY)) type |
X253 |  | Persistent XML values of XML(CONTENT(UNTYPED)) type |
X254 |  | Persistent XML values of XML(CONTENT(ANY)) type |
X255 |  | Persistent XML values of XML(SEQUENCE) type |
X256 |  | Persistent XML values of XML(DOCUMENT(XMLSCHEMA)) type |
X257 |  | Persistent XML values of XML(CONTENT(XMLSCHEMA)) type |
X260 |  | XML type: ELEMENT clause |
X261 |  | XML type: NAMESPACE without ELEMENT clause |
X263 |  | XML type: NO NAMESPACE with ELEMENT clause |
X264 |  | XML type: schema location |
X271 |  | XMLValidate: data-driven case |
X272 |  | XMLValidate: ACCORDING TO clause |
X273 |  | XMLValidate: ELEMENT clause |
X274 |  | XMLValidate: schema location |
X281 |  | XMLValidate: with DOCUMENT option |
X282 |  | XMLValidate with CONTENT option |
X283 |  | XMLValidate with SEQUENCE option |
X284 |  | XMLValidate NAMESPACE without ELEMENT clause |
X286 |  | XMLValidate: NO NAMESPACE with ELEMENT clause |
X300 |  | XMLTable |
X301 |  | XMLTable: derived column list option |
X302 |  | XMLTable: ordinality column option |
X303 |  | XMLTable: column default option |
X304 |  | XMLTable: passing a context item |
X305 |  | XMLTable: initializing an XQuery variable |

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Supported Features | Up | Release Notes


Release Notes

Prev Up Next

Appendix E. Release Notes

Table of Contents
E.1. Release 9.1.19
E.2. Release 9.1.18
E.3. Release 9.1.17
E.4. Release 9.1.16
E.5. Release 9.1.15
E.6. Release 9.1.14
E.7. Release 9.1.13
E.8. Release 9.1.12
E.9. Release 9.1.11
E.10. Release 9.1.10
E.11. Release 9.1.9
E.12. Release 9.1.8
E.13. Release 9.1.7
E.14. Release 9.1.6
E.15. Release 9.1.5
E.16. Release 9.1.4
E.17. Release 9.1.3
E.18. Release 9.1.2
E.19. Release 9.1.1
E.20. Release 9.1
E.21. Release 9.0.23
E.22. Release 9.0.22
E.23. Release 9.0.21
E.24. Release 9.0.20
E.25. Release 9.0.19
E.26. Release 9.0.18
E.27. Release 9.0.17
E.28. Release 9.0.16
E.29. Release 9.0.15
E.30. Release 9.0.14
E.31. Release 9.0.13
E.32. Release 9.0.12
E.33. Release 9.0.11
E.34. Release 9.0.10
E.35. Release 9.0.9
E.36. Release 9.0.8
E.37. Release 9.0.7
E.38. Release 9.0.6
E.39. Release 9.0.5
E.40. Release 9.0.4
E.41. Release 9.0.3
E.42. Release 9.0.2
E.43. Release 9.0.1
E.44. Release 9.0
E.45. Release 8.4.22
E.46. Release 8.4.21
E.47. Release 8.4.20
E.48. Release 8.4.19
E.49. Release 8.4.18
E.50. Release 8.4.17
E.51. Release 8.4.16
E.52. Release 8.4.15
E.53. Release 8.4.14
E.54. Release 8.4.13
E.55. Release 8.4.12
E.56. Release 8.4.11
E.57. Release 8.4.10
E.58. Release 8.4.9
E.59. Release 8.4.8
E.60. Release 8.4.7
E.61. Release 8.4.6
E.62. Release 8.4.5
E.63. Release 8.4.4
E.64. Release 8.4.3
E.65. Release 8.4.2
E.66. Release 8.4.1
E.67. Release 8.4
E.68. Release 8.3.23
E.69. Release 8.3.22
E.70. Release 8.3.21
E.71. Release 8.3.20
E.72. Release 8.3.19
E.73. Release 8.3.18
E.74. Release 8.3.17
E.75. Release 8.3.16
E.76. Release 8.3.15
E.77. Release 8.3.14
E.78. Release 8.3.13
E.79. Release 8.3.12
E.80. Release 8.3.11
E.81. Release 8.3.10
E.82. Release 8.3.9
E.83. Release 8.3.8
E.84. Release 8.3.7
E.85. Release 8.3.6
E.86. Release 8.3.5
E.87. Release 8.3.4
E.88. Release 8.3.3
E.89. Release 8.3.2
E.90. Release 8.3.1
E.91. Release 8.3
E.92. Release 8.2.23
E.93. Release 8.2.22
E.94. Release 8.2.21
E.95. Release 8.2.20
E.96. Release 8.2.19
E.97. Release 8.2.18
E.98. Release 8.2.17
E.99. Release 8.2.16
E.100. Release 8.2.15
E.101. Release 8.2.14
E.102. Release 8.2.13
E.103. Release 8.2.12
E.104. Release 8.2.11
E.105. Release 8.2.10
E.106. Release 8.2.9
E.107. Release 8.2.8
E.108. Release 8.2.7
E.109. Release 8.2.6
E.110. Release 8.2.5
E.111. Release 8.2.4
E.112. Release 8.2.3
E.113. Release 8.2.2
E.114. Release 8.2.1
E.115. Release 8.2
E.116. Release 8.1.23
E.117. Release 8.1.22
E.118. Release 8.1.21
E.119. Release 8.1.20
E.120. Release 8.1.19
E.121. Release 8.1.18
E.122. Release 8.1.17
E.123. Release 8.1.16
E.124. Release 8.1.15
E.125. Release 8.1.14
E.126. Release 8.1.13
E.127. Release 8.1.12
E.128. Release 8.1.11
E.129. Release 8.1.10
E.130. Release 8.1.9
E.131. Release 8.1.8
E.132. Release 8.1.7
E.133. Release 8.1.6
E.134. Release 8.1.5
E.135. Release 8.1.4
E.136. Release 8.1.3
E.137. Release 8.1.2
E.138. Release 8.1.1
E.139. Release 8.1
E.140. Release 8.0.26
E.141. Release 8.0.25
E.142. Release 8.0.24
E.143. Release 8.0.23
E.144. Release 8.0.22
E.145. Release 8.0.21
E.146. Release 8.0.20
E.147. Release 8.0.19
E.148. Release 8.0.18
E.149. Release 8.0.17
E.150. Release 8.0.16
E.151. Release 8.0.15
E.152. Release 8.0.14
E.153. Release 8.0.13
E.154. Release 8.0.12
E.155. Release 8.0.11
E.156. Release 8.0.10
E.157. Release 8.0.9
E.158. Release 8.0.8
E.159. Release 8.0.7
E.160. Release 8.0.6
E.161. Release 8.0.5
E.162. Release 8.0.4
E.163. Release 8.0.3
E.164. Release 8.0.2
E.165. Release 8.0.1
E.166. Release 8.0
E.167. Release 7.4.30
E.168. Release 7.4.29
E.169. Release 7.4.28
E.170. Release 7.4.27
E.171. Release 7.4.26
E.172. Release 7.4.25
E.173. Release 7.4.24
E.174. Release 7.4.23
E.175. Release 7.4.22
E.176. Release 7.4.21
E.177. Release 7.4.20
E.178. Release 7.4.19
E.179. Release 7.4.18
E.180. Release 7.4.17
E.181. Release 7.4.16
E.182. Release 7.4.15
E.183. Release 7.4.14
E.184. Release 7.4.13
E.185. Release 7.4.12
E.186. Release 7.4.11
E.187. Release 7.4.10
E.188. Release 7.4.9
E.189. Release 7.4.8
E.190. Release 7.4.7
E.191. Release 7.4.6
E.192. Release 7.4.5
E.193. Release 7.4.4
E.194. Release 7.4.3
E.195. Release 7.4.2
E.196. Release 7.4.1
E.197. Release 7.4
E.198. Release 7.3.21
E.199. Release 7.3.20
E.200. Release 7.3.19
E.201. Release 7.3.18
E.202. Release 7.3.17
E.203. Release 7.3.16
E.204. Release 7.3.15
E.205. Release 7.3.14
E.206. Release 7.3.13
E.207. Release 7.3.12
E.208. Release 7.3.11
E.209. Release 7.3.10
E.210. Release 7.3.9
E.211. Release 7.3.8
E.212. Release 7.3.7
E.213. Release 7.3.6
E.214. Release 7.3.5
E.215. Release 7.3.4
E.216. Release 7.3.3
E.217. Release 7.3.2
E.218. Release 7.3.1
E.219. Release 7.3
E.220. Release 7.2.8
E.221. Release 7.2.7
E.222. Release 7.2.6
E.223. Release 7.2.5
E.224. Release 7.2.4
E.225. Release 7.2.3
E.226. Release 7.2.2
E.227. Release 7.2.1
E.228. Release 7.2
E.229. Release 7.1.3
E.230. Release 7.1.2
E.231. Release 7.1.1
E.232. Release 7.1
E.233. Release 7.0.3
E.234. Release 7.0.2
E.235. Release 7.0.1
E.236. Release 7.0
E.237. Release 6.5.3
E.238. Release 6.5.2
E.239. Release 6.5.1
E.240. Release 6.5
E.241. Release 6.4.2
E.242. Release 6.4.1
E.243. Release 6.4
E.244. Release 6.3.2
E.245. Release 6.3.1
E.246. Release 6.3
E.247. Release 6.2.1
E.248. Release 6.2
E.249. Release 6.1.1
E.250. Release 6.1
E.251. Release 6.0
E.252. Release 1.09
E.253. Release 1.02
E.254. Release 1.01
E.255. Release 1.0
E.256. Postgres95 Release 0.03
E.257. Postgres95 Release 0.02
E.258. Postgres95 Release 0.01

The release notes contain the significant changes in each PostgreSQL release, with major features and migration issues listed at the top. The release notes do not contain changes that affect only a few users or changes that are internal and therefore not user-visible. For example, the optimizer is improved in almost every release, but the improvements are usually observed by users as simply faster queries.

A complete list of changes for each release can be obtained by viewing the Git logs for each release. The pgsql-committers email list records all source code changes as well. There is also a web interface that shows changes to specific files.

The name appearing next to each item represents the major developer for that item. Of course all changes involve community discussion and patch review, so each item is truly a community effort.

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Unsupported Features | Up | Release 9.1.19


Release 9.1.19

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.1. Release 9.1.19

Release Date: 2015-10-08

This release contains a variety of fixes from 9.1.18. For information about new features in the 9.1 major release, see Section E.20.

E.1.1. Migration to Version 9.1.19

A dump/restore is not required for those running 9.1.X.

However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 9.1.16, see Section E.4.

E.1.2. Changes

  • Fix contrib/pgcrypto to detect and report too-short crypt() salts (Josh Kupershmidt)

    Certain invalid salt arguments crashed the server or disclosed a few bytes of server memory. We have not ruled out the viability of attacks that arrange for presence of confidential information in the disclosed bytes, but they seem unlikely. (CVE-2015-5288)

  • Fix subtransaction cleanup after a portal (cursor) belonging to an outer subtransaction fails (Tom Lane, Michael Paquier)

    A function executed in an outer-subtransaction cursor could cause an assertion failure or crash by referencing a relation created within an inner subtransaction.

  • Fix insertion of relations into the relation cache "init file" (Tom Lane)

    An oversight in a patch in the most recent minor releases caused pg_trigger_tgrelid_tgname_index to be omitted from the init file. Subsequent sessions detected this, then deemed the init file to be broken and silently ignored it, resulting in a significant degradation in session startup time. In addition to fixing the bug, install some guards so that any similar future mistake will be more obvious.

  • Avoid O(N^2) behavior when inserting many tuples into a SPI query result (Neil Conway)

  • Improve LISTEN startup time when there are many unread notifications (Matt Newell)

  • Back-patch 9.3-era addition of per-resource-owner lock caches (Jeff Janes)

    This substantially improves performance when pg_dump tries to dump a large number of tables.

  • Disable SSL renegotiation by default (Michael Paquier, Andres Freund)

    While use of SSL renegotiation is a good idea in theory, we have seen too many bugs in practice, both in the underlying OpenSSL library and in our usage of it. Renegotiation will be removed entirely in 9.5 and later. In the older branches, just change the default value of ssl_renegotiation_limit to zero (disabled).

  • Lower the minimum values of the *_freeze_max_age parameters (Andres Freund)

    This is mainly to make tests of related behavior less time-consuming, but it may also be of value for installations with limited disk space.

  • Limit the maximum value of wal_buffers to 2GB to avoid server crashes (Josh Berkus)

  • Fix rare internal overflow in multiplication of numeric values (Dean Rasheed)

  • Guard against hard-to-reach stack overflows involving record types, range types, json, jsonb, tsquery, ltxtquery and query_int (Noah Misch)

  • Fix handling of DOW and DOY in datetime input (Greg Stark)

    These tokens aren't meant to be used in datetime values, but previously they resulted in opaque internal error messages rather than "invalid input syntax".

  • Add more query-cancel checks to regular expression matching (Tom Lane)

  • Add recursion depth protections to regular expression, SIMILAR TO, and LIKE matching (Tom Lane)

    Suitable search patterns and a low stack depth limit could lead to stack-overrun crashes.

  • Fix potential infinite loop in regular expression execution (Tom Lane)

    A search pattern that can apparently match a zero-length string, but actually doesn't match because of a back reference, could lead to an infinite loop.

  • Fix low-memory failures in regular expression compilation (Andreas Seltenreich)

  • Fix low-probability memory leak during regular expression execution (Tom Lane)

  • Fix rare low-memory failure in lock cleanup during transaction abort (Tom Lane)

  • Fix "unexpected out-of-memory situation during sort" errors when using tuplestores with small work_mem settings (Tom Lane)

  • Fix very-low-probability stack overrun in qsort (Tom Lane)

  • Fix "invalid memory alloc request size" failure in hash joins with large work_mem settings (Tomas Vondra, Tom Lane)

  • Fix assorted planner bugs (Tom Lane)

    These mistakes could lead to incorrect query plans that would give wrong answers, or to assertion failures in assert-enabled builds, or to odd planner errors such as "could not devise a query plan for the given query", "could not find pathkey item to sort", "plan should not reference subplan's variable", or "failed to assign all NestLoopParams to plan nodes". Thanks are due to Andreas Seltenreich and Piotr Stefaniak for fuzz testing that exposed these problems.

  • Use fuzzy path cost tiebreaking rule in all supported branches (Tom Lane)

    This change is meant to avoid platform-specific behavior when alternative plan choices have effectively-identical estimated costs.

  • Ensure standby promotion trigger files are removed at postmaster startup (Michael Paquier, Fujii Masao)

    This prevents unwanted promotion from occurring if these files appear in a database backup that is used to initialize a new standby server.

  • During postmaster shutdown, ensure that per-socket lock files are removed and listen sockets are closed before we remove the postmaster.pid file (Tom Lane)

    This avoids race-condition failures if an external script attempts to start a new postmaster as soon as pg_ctl stop returns.

  • Fix postmaster's handling of a startup-process crash during crash recovery (Tom Lane)

    If, during a crash recovery cycle, the startup process crashes without having restored database consistency, we'd try to launch a new startup process, which typically would just crash again, leading to an infinite loop.

  • Do not print a WARNING when an autovacuum worker is already gone when we attempt to signal it, and reduce log verbosity for such signals (Tom Lane)

  • Prevent autovacuum launcher from sleeping unduly long if the server clock is moved backwards a large amount (Álvaro Herrera)

  • Ensure that cleanup of a GIN index's pending-insertions list is interruptable by cancel requests (Jeff Janes)

  • Allow all-zeroes pages in GIN indexes to be reused (Heikki Linnakangas)

    Such a page might be left behind after a crash.

  • Fix off-by-one error that led to otherwise-harmless warnings about "apparent wraparound" in subtrans/multixact truncation (Thomas Munro)

  • Fix misreporting of CONTINUE and MOVE statement types in PL/pgSQL's error context messages (Pavel Stehule, Tom Lane)

  • Fix PL/Perl to handle non-ASCII error message texts correctly (Alex Hunsaker)

  • Fix PL/Python crash when returning the string representation of a record result (Tom Lane)

  • Fix some places in PL/Tcl that neglected to check for failure of malloc() calls (Michael Paquier, Álvaro Herrera)

  • In contrib/isn, fix output of ISBN-13 numbers that begin with 979 (Fabien Coelho)

    EANs beginning with 979 (but not 9790) are considered ISBNs, but they must be printed in the new 13-digit format, not the 10-digit format.

  • Improve libpq's handling of out-of-memory conditions (Michael Paquier, Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Fix memory leaks and missing out-of-memory checks in ecpg (Michael Paquier)

  • Fix psql's code for locale-aware formatting of numeric output (Tom Lane)

    The formatting code invoked by \pset numericlocale on did the wrong thing for some uncommon cases such as numbers with an exponent but no decimal point. It could also mangle already-localized output from the money data type.

  • Prevent crash in psql's \c command when there is no current connection (Noah Misch)

  • Fix selection of default zlib compression level in pg_dump's directory output format (Andrew Dunstan)

  • Ensure that temporary files created during a pg_dump run with tar-format output are not world-readable (Michael Paquier)

  • Fix pg_dump and pg_upgrade to support cases where the postgres or template1 database is in a non-default tablespace (Marti Raudsepp, Bruce Momjian)

  • Fix pg_dump to handle object privileges sanely when dumping from a server too old to have a particular privilege type (Tom Lane)

    When dumping functions or procedural languages from pre-7.3 servers, pg_dump would produce GRANT/REVOKE commands that revoked the owner's grantable privileges and instead granted all privileges to PUBLIC. Since the privileges involved are just USAGE and EXECUTE, this isn't a security problem, but it's certainly a surprising representation of the older systems' behavior. Fix it to leave the default privilege state alone in these cases.

  • Fix pg_dump to dump shell types (Tom Lane)

    Shell types (that is, not-yet-fully-defined types) aren't useful for much, but nonetheless pg_dump should dump them.

  • Fix assorted minor memory leaks in pg_dump and other client-side programs (Michael Paquier)

  • Fix spinlock assembly code for PPC hardware to be compatible with AIX's native assembler (Tom Lane)

    Building with gcc didn't work if gcc had been configured to use the native assembler, which is becoming more common.

  • On AIX, test the -qlonglong compiler option rather than just assuming it's safe to use (Noah Misch)

  • On AIX, use -Wl,-brtllib link option to allow symbols to be resolved at runtime (Noah Misch)

    Perl relies on this ability in 5.8.0 and later.

  • Avoid use of inline functions when compiling with 32-bit xlc, due to compiler bugs (Noah Misch)

  • Use librt for sched_yield() when necessary, which it is on some Solaris versions (Oskari Saarenmaa)

  • Fix Windows install.bat script to handle target directory names that contain spaces (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Make the numeric form of the PostgreSQL version number (e.g., 90405) readily available to extension Makefiles, as a variable named VERSION_NUM (Michael Paquier)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2015g for DST law changes in Cayman Islands, Fiji, Moldova, Morocco, Norfolk Island, North Korea, Turkey, and Uruguay. There is a new zone name America/Fort_Nelson for the Canadian Northern Rockies.

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Release Notes | Up | Release 9.1.18


Release 9.1.18

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.2. Release 9.1.18

Release Date: 2015-06-12

This release contains a small number of fixes from 9.1.17. For information about new features in the 9.1 major release, see Section E.20.

E.2.1. Migration to Version 9.1.18

A dump/restore is not required for those running 9.1.X.

However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 9.1.16, see Section E.4.

E.2.2. Changes

  • Fix rare failure to invalidate relation cache init file (Tom Lane)

    With just the wrong timing of concurrent activity, a VACUUM FULL on a system catalog might fail to update the "init file" that's used to avoid cache-loading work for new sessions. This would result in later sessions being unable to access that catalog at all. This is a very ancient bug, but it's so hard to trigger that no reproducible case had been seen until recently.

  • Avoid deadlock between incoming sessions and CREATE/DROP DATABASE (Tom Lane)

    A new session starting in a database that is the target of a DROP DATABASE command, or is the template for a CREATE DATABASE command, could cause the command to wait for five seconds and then fail, even if the new session would have exited before that.

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Release 9.1.19 | Up | Release 9.1.17


Release 9.1.17

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.3. Release 9.1.17

Release Date: 2015-06-04

This release contains a small number of fixes from 9.1.16. For information about new features in the 9.1 major release, see Section E.20.

E.3.1. Migration to Version 9.1.17

A dump/restore is not required for those running 9.1.X.

However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 9.1.16, see Section E.4.

E.3.2. Changes

  • Avoid failures while fsync'ing data directory during crash restart (Abhijit Menon-Sen, Tom Lane)

    In the previous minor releases we added a patch to fsync everything in the data directory after a crash. Unfortunately its response to any error condition was to fail, thereby preventing the server from starting up, even when the problem was quite harmless. An example is that an unwritable file in the data directory would prevent restart on some platforms; but it is common to make SSL certificate files unwritable by the server. Revise this behavior so that permissions failures are ignored altogether, and other types of failures are logged but do not prevent continuing.

  • Remove configure's check prohibiting linking to a threaded libpython on OpenBSD (Tom Lane)

    The failure this restriction was meant to prevent seems to not be a problem anymore on current OpenBSD versions.

  • Allow libpq to use TLS protocol versions beyond v1 (Noah Misch)

    For a long time, libpq was coded so that the only SSL protocol it would allow was TLS v1. Now that newer TLS versions are becoming popular, allow it to negotiate the highest commonly-supported TLS version with the server. (PostgreSQL servers were already capable of such negotiation, so no change is needed on the server side.) This is a back-patch of a change already released in 9.4.0.

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Release 9.1.18 | Up | Release 9.1.16


Release 9.1.16

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.4. Release 9.1.16

Release Date: 2015-05-22

This release contains a variety of fixes from 9.1.15. For information about new features in the 9.1 major release, see Section E.20.

E.4.1. Migration to Version 9.1.16

A dump/restore is not required for those running 9.1.X.

However, if you use contrib/citext's regexp_matches() functions, see the changelog entry below about that.

Also, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 9.1.14, see Section E.6.

E.4.2. Changes

  • Avoid possible crash when client disconnects just before the authentication timeout expires (Benkocs Norbert Attila)

    If the timeout interrupt fired partway through the session shutdown sequence, SSL-related state would be freed twice, typically causing a crash and hence denial of service to other sessions. Experimentation shows that an unauthenticated remote attacker could trigger the bug somewhat consistently, hence treat as security issue. (CVE-2015-3165)

  • Improve detection of system-call failures (Noah Misch)

    Our replacement implementation of snprintf() failed to check for errors reported by the underlying system library calls; the main case that might be missed is out-of-memory situations. In the worst case this might lead to information exposure, due to our code assuming that a buffer had been overwritten when it hadn't been. Also, there were a few places in which security-relevant calls of other system library functions did not check for failure.

    It remains possible that some calls of the *printf() family of functions are vulnerable to information disclosure if an out-of-memory error occurs at just the wrong time. We judge the risk to not be large, but will continue analysis in this area. (CVE-2015-3166)

  • In contrib/pgcrypto, uniformly report decryption failures as "Wrong key or corrupt data" (Noah Misch)

    Previously, some cases of decryption with an incorrect key could report other error message texts. It has been shown that such variance in error reports can aid attackers in recovering keys from other systems. While it's unknown whether pgcrypto's specific behaviors are likewise exploitable, it seems better to avoid the risk by using a one-size-fits-all message. (CVE-2015-3167)

  • Fix incorrect declaration of contrib/citext's regexp_matches() functions (Tom Lane)

    These functions should return setof text[], like the core functions they are wrappers for; but they were incorrectly declared as returning just text[]. This mistake had two results: first, if there was no match you got a scalar null result, whereas what you should get is an empty set (zero rows). Second, the g flag was effectively ignored, since you would get only one result array even if there were multiple matches.

    While the latter behavior is clearly a bug, there might be applications depending on the former behavior; therefore the function declarations will not be changed by default until PostgreSQL 9.5. In pre-9.5 branches, the old behavior exists in version 1.0 of the citext extension, while we have provided corrected declarations in version 1.1 (which is not installed by default). To adopt the fix in pre-9.5 branches, execute ALTER EXTENSION citext UPDATE TO '1.1' in each database in which citext is installed. (You can also "update" back to 1.0 if you need to undo that.) Be aware that either update direction will require dropping and recreating any views or rules that use citext's regexp_matches() functions.

  • Fix incorrect checking of deferred exclusion constraints after a HOT update (Tom Lane)

    If a new row that potentially violates a deferred exclusion constraint is HOT-updated (that is, no indexed columns change and the row can be stored back onto the same table page) later in the same transaction, the exclusion constraint would be reported as violated when the check finally occurred, even if the row(s) the new row originally conflicted with had been deleted.

  • Prevent improper reordering of antijoins (NOT EXISTS joins) versus other outer joins (Tom Lane)

    This oversight in the planner has been observed to cause "could not find RelOptInfo for given relids" errors, but it seems possible that sometimes an incorrect query plan might get past that consistency check and result in silently-wrong query output.

  • Fix incorrect matching of subexpressions in outer-join plan nodes (Tom Lane)

    Previously, if textually identical non-strict subexpressions were used both above and below an outer join, the planner might try to re-use the value computed below the join, which would be incorrect because the executor would force the value to NULL in case of an unmatched outer row.

  • Fix GEQO planner to cope with failure of its join order heuristic (Tom Lane)

    This oversight has been seen to lead to "failed to join all relations together" errors in queries involving LATERAL, and that might happen in other cases as well.

  • Fix possible deadlock at startup when max_prepared_transactions is too small (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Don't archive useless preallocated WAL files after a timeline switch (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Avoid "cannot GetMultiXactIdMembers() during recovery" error (Álvaro Herrera)

  • Recursively fsync() the data directory after a crash (Abhijit Menon-Sen, Robert Haas)

    This ensures consistency if another crash occurs shortly later. (The second crash would have to be a system-level crash, not just a database crash, for there to be a problem.)

  • Fix autovacuum launcher's possible failure to shut down, if an error occurs after it receives SIGTERM (Álvaro Herrera)

  • Cope with unexpected signals in LockBufferForCleanup() (Andres Freund)

    This oversight could result in spurious errors about "multiple backends attempting to wait for pincount 1".

  • Avoid waiting for WAL flush or synchronous replication during commit of a transaction that was read-only so far as the user is concerned (Andres Freund)

    Previously, a delay could occur at commit in transactions that had written WAL due to HOT page pruning, leading to undesirable effects such as sessions getting stuck at startup if all synchronous replicas are down. Sessions have also been observed to get stuck in catchup interrupt processing when using synchronous replication; this will fix that problem as well.

  • Fix crash when manipulating hash indexes on temporary tables (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Fix possible failure during hash index bucket split, if other processes are modifying the index concurrently (Tom Lane)

  • Check for interrupts while analyzing index expressions (Jeff Janes)

    ANALYZE executes index expressions many times; if there are slow functions in such an expression, it's desirable to be able to cancel the ANALYZE before that loop finishes.

  • Ensure tableoid of a foreign table is reported correctly when a READ COMMITTED recheck occurs after locking rows in SELECT FOR UPDATE, UPDATE, or DELETE (Etsuro Fujita)

  • Add the name of the target server to object description strings for foreign-server user mappings (Álvaro Herrera)

  • Recommend setting include_realm to 1 when using Kerberos/GSSAPI/SSPI authentication (Stephen Frost)

    Without this, identically-named users from different realms cannot be distinguished. For the moment this is only a documentation change, but it will become the default setting in PostgreSQL 9.5.

  • Remove code for matching IPv4 pg_hba.conf entries to IPv4-in-IPv6 addresses (Tom Lane)

    This hack was added in 2003 in response to a report that some Linux kernels of the time would report IPv4 connections as having IPv4-in-IPv6 addresses. However, the logic was accidentally broken in 9.0. The lack of any field complaints since then shows that it's not needed anymore. Now we have reports that the broken code causes crashes on some systems, so let's just remove it rather than fix it. (Had we chosen to fix it, that would make for a subtle and potentially security-sensitive change in the effective meaning of IPv4 pg_hba.conf entries, which does not seem like a good thing to do in minor releases.)

  • Report WAL flush, not insert, position in IDENTIFY_SYSTEM replication command (Heikki Linnakangas)

    This avoids a possible startup failure in pg_receivexlog.

  • While shutting down service on Windows, periodically send status updates to the Service Control Manager to prevent it from killing the service too soon; and ensure that pg_ctl will wait for shutdown (Krystian Bigaj)

  • Reduce risk of network deadlock when using libpq's non-blocking mode (Heikki Linnakangas)

    When sending large volumes of data, it's important to drain the input buffer every so often, in case the server has sent enough response data to cause it to block on output. (A typical scenario is that the server is sending a stream of NOTICE messages during COPY FROM STDIN.) This worked properly in the normal blocking mode, but not so much in non-blocking mode. We've modified libpq to opportunistically drain input when it can, but a full defense against this problem requires application cooperation: the application should watch for socket read-ready as well as write-ready conditions, and be sure to call PQconsumeInput() upon read-ready.

  • Fix array handling in ecpg (Michael Meskes)

  • Fix psql to sanely handle URIs and conninfo strings as the first parameter to \connect (David Fetter, Andrew Dunstan, Álvaro Herrera)

    This syntax has been accepted (but undocumented) for a long time, but previously some parameters might be taken from the old connection instead of the given string, which was agreed to be undesirable.

  • Suppress incorrect complaints from psql on some platforms that it failed to write ~/.psql_history at exit (Tom Lane)

    This misbehavior was caused by a workaround for a bug in very old (pre-2006) versions of libedit. We fixed it by removing the workaround, which will cause a similar failure to appear for anyone still using such versions of libedit. Recommendation: upgrade that library, or use libreadline.

  • Fix pg_dump's rule for deciding which casts are system-provided casts that should not be dumped (Tom Lane)

  • In pg_dump, fix failure to honor -Z compression level option together with -Fd (Michael Paquier)

  • Make pg_dump consider foreign key relationships between extension configuration tables while choosing dump order (Gilles Darold, Michael Paquier, Stephen Frost)

    This oversight could result in producing dumps that fail to reload because foreign key constraints are transiently violated.

  • Fix dumping of views that are just VALUES(...) but have column aliases (Tom Lane)

  • In pg_upgrade, force timeline 1 in the new cluster (Bruce Momjian)

    This change prevents upgrade failures caused by bogus complaints about missing WAL history files.

  • In pg_upgrade, check for improperly non-connectable databases before proceeding (Bruce Momjian)

  • In pg_upgrade, quote directory paths properly in the generated delete_old_cluster script (Bruce Momjian)

  • In pg_upgrade, preserve database-level freezing info properly (Bruce Momjian)

    This oversight could cause missing-clog-file errors for tables within the postgres and template1 databases.

  • Run pg_upgrade and pg_resetxlog with restricted privileges on Windows, so that they don't fail when run by an administrator (Muhammad Asif Naeem)

  • Improve handling of readdir() failures when scanning directories in initdb and pg_basebackup (Marco Nenciarini)

  • Fix slow sorting algorithm in contrib/intarray (Tom Lane)

  • Fix compile failure on Sparc V8 machines (Rob Rowan)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2015d for DST law changes in Egypt, Mongolia, and Palestine, plus historical changes in Canada and Chile. Also adopt revised zone abbreviations for the America/Adak zone (HST/HDT not HAST/HADT).

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Release 9.1.17 | Up | Release 9.1.15


Release 9.1.15

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.5. Release 9.1.15

Release Date: 2015-02-05

This release contains a variety of fixes from 9.1.14. For information about new features in the 9.1 major release, see Section E.20.

E.5.1. Migration to Version 9.1.15

A dump/restore is not required for those running 9.1.X.

However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 9.1.14, see Section E.6.

E.5.2. Changes

  • Fix buffer overruns in to_char() (Bruce Momjian)

    When to_char() processes a numeric formatting template calling for a large number of digits, PostgreSQL would read past the end of a buffer. When processing a crafted timestamp formatting template, PostgreSQL would write past the end of a buffer. Either case could crash the server. We have not ruled out the possibility of attacks that lead to privilege escalation, though they seem unlikely. (CVE-2015-0241)

  • Fix buffer overrun in replacement *printf() functions (Tom Lane)

    PostgreSQL includes a replacement implementation of printf and related functions. This code will overrun a stack buffer when formatting a floating point number (conversion specifiers e, E, f, F, g or G) with requested precision greater than about 500. This will crash the server, and we have not ruled out the possibility of attacks that lead to privilege escalation. A database user can trigger such a buffer overrun through the to_char() SQL function. While that is the only affected core PostgreSQL functionality, extension modules that use printf-family functions may be at risk as well.

    This issue primarily affects PostgreSQL on Windows. PostgreSQL uses the system implementation of these functions where adequate, which it is on other modern platforms. (CVE-2015-0242)

  • Fix buffer overruns in contrib/pgcrypto (Marko Tiikkaja, Noah Misch)

    Errors in memory size tracking within the pgcrypto module permitted stack buffer overruns and improper dependence on the contents of uninitialized memory. The buffer overrun cases can crash the server, and we have not ruled out the possibility of attacks that lead to privilege escalation. (CVE-2015-0243)

  • Fix possible loss of frontend/backend protocol synchronization after an error (Heikki Linnakangas)

    If any error occurred while the server was in the middle of reading a protocol message from the client, it could lose synchronization and incorrectly try to interpret part of the message's data as a new protocol message. An attacker able to submit crafted binary data within a command parameter might succeed in injecting his own SQL commands this way. Statement timeout and query cancellation are the most likely sources of errors triggering this scenario. Particularly vulnerable are applications that use a timeout and also submit arbitrary user-crafted data as binary query parameters. Disabling statement timeout will reduce, but not eliminate, the risk of exploit. Our thanks to Emil Lenngren for reporting this issue. (CVE-2015-0244)

  • Fix information leak via constraint-violation error messages (Stephen Frost)

    Some server error messages show the values of columns that violate a constraint, such as a unique constraint. If the user does not have SELECT privilege on all columns of the table, this could mean exposing values that the user should not be able to see. Adjust the code so that values are displayed only when they came from the SQL command or could be selected by the user. (CVE-2014-8161)

  • Lock down regression testing's temporary installations on Windows (Noah Misch)

    Use SSPI authentication to allow connections only from the OS user who launched the test suite. This closes on Windows the same vulnerability previously closed on other platforms, namely that other users might be able to connect to the test postmaster. (CVE-2014-0067)

  • Avoid possible data corruption if ALTER DATABASE SET TABLESPACE is used to move a database to a new tablespace and then shortly later move it back to its original tablespace (Tom Lane)

  • Avoid corrupting tables when ANALYZE inside a transaction is rolled back (Andres Freund, Tom Lane, Michael Paquier)

    If the failing transaction had earlier removed the last index, rule, or trigger from the table, the table would be left in a corrupted state with the relevant pg_class flags not set though they should be.

  • Ensure that unlogged tables are copied correctly during CREATE DATABASE or ALTER DATABASE SET TABLESPACE (Pavan Deolasee, Andres Freund)

  • Fix DROP's dependency searching to correctly handle the case where a table column is recursively visited before its table (Petr Jelinek, Tom Lane)

    This case is only known to arise when an extension creates both a datatype and a table using that datatype. The faulty code might refuse a DROP EXTENSION unless CASCADE is specified, which should not be required.

  • Fix use-of-already-freed-memory problem in EvalPlanQual processing (Tom Lane)

    In READ COMMITTED mode, queries that lock or update recently-updated rows could crash as a result of this bug.

  • Fix planning of SELECT FOR UPDATE when using a partial index on a child table (Kyotaro Horiguchi)

    In READ COMMITTED mode, SELECT FOR UPDATE must also recheck the partial index's WHERE condition when rechecking a recently-updated row to see if it still satisfies the query's WHERE condition. This requirement was missed if the index belonged to an inheritance child table, so that it was possible to incorrectly return rows that no longer satisfy the query condition.

  • Fix corner case wherein SELECT FOR UPDATE could return a row twice, and possibly miss returning other rows (Tom Lane)

    In READ COMMITTED mode, a SELECT FOR UPDATE that is scanning an inheritance tree could incorrectly return a row from a prior child table instead of the one it should return from a later child table.

  • Reject duplicate column names in the referenced-columns list of a FOREIGN KEY declaration (David Rowley)

    This restriction is per SQL standard. Previously we did not reject the case explicitly, but later on the code would fail with bizarre-looking errors.

  • Fix bugs in raising a numeric value to a large integral power (Tom Lane)

    The previous code could get a wrong answer, or consume excessive amounts of time and memory before realizing that the answer must overflow.

  • In numeric_recv(), truncate away any fractional digits that would be hidden according to the value's dscale field (Tom Lane)

    A numeric value's display scale (dscale) should never be less than the number of nonzero fractional digits; but apparently there's at least one broken client application that transmits binary numeric values in which that's true. This leads to strange behavior since the extra digits are taken into account by arithmetic operations even though they aren't printed. The least risky fix seems to be to truncate away such "hidden" digits on receipt, so that the value is indeed what it prints as.

  • Reject out-of-range numeric timezone specifications (Tom Lane)

    Simple numeric timezone specifications exceeding +/- 168 hours (one week) would be accepted, but could then cause null-pointer dereference crashes in certain operations. There's no use-case for such large UTC offsets, so reject them.

  • Fix bugs in tsquery @> tsquery operator (Heikki Linnakangas)

    Two different terms would be considered to match if they had the same CRC. Also, if the second operand had more terms than the first, it would be assumed not to be contained in the first; which is wrong since it might contain duplicate terms.

  • Improve ispell dictionary's defenses against bad affix files (Tom Lane)

  • Allow more than 64K phrases in a thesaurus dictionary (David Boutin)

    The previous coding could crash on an oversize dictionary, so this was deemed a back-patchable bug fix rather than a feature addition.

  • Fix namespace handling in xpath() (Ali Akbar)

    Previously, the xml value resulting from an xpath() call would not have namespace declarations if the namespace declarations were attached to an ancestor element in the input xml value, rather than to the specific element being returned. Propagate the ancestral declaration so that the result is correct when considered in isolation.

  • Fix planner problems with nested append relations, such as inherited tables within UNION ALL subqueries (Tom Lane)

  • Fail cleanly when a GiST index tuple doesn't fit on a page, rather than going into infinite recursion (Andrew Gierth)

  • Exempt tables that have per-table cost_limit and/or cost_delay settings from autovacuum's global cost balancing rules (Álvaro Herrera)

    The previous behavior resulted in basically ignoring these per-table settings, which was unintended. Now, a table having such settings will be vacuumed using those settings, independently of what is going on in other autovacuum workers. This may result in heavier total I/O load than before, so such settings should be re-examined for sanity.

  • Avoid wholesale autovacuuming when autovacuum is nominally off (Tom Lane)

    Even when autovacuum is nominally off, we will still launch autovacuum worker processes to vacuum tables that are at risk of XID wraparound. However, such a worker process then proceeded to vacuum all tables in the target database, if they met the usual thresholds for autovacuuming. This is at best pretty unexpected; at worst it delays response to the wraparound threat. Fix it so that if autovacuum is turned off, workers only do anti-wraparound vacuums and not any other work.

  • During crash recovery, ensure that unlogged relations are rewritten as empty and are synced to disk before recovery is considered complete (Abhijit Menon-Sen, Andres Freund)

    This prevents scenarios in which unlogged relations might contain garbage data following database crash recovery.

  • Fix race condition between hot standby queries and replaying a full-page image (Heikki Linnakangas)

    This mistake could result in transient errors in queries being executed in hot standby.

  • Fix several cases where recovery logic improperly ignored WAL records for COMMIT/ABORT PREPARED (Heikki Linnakangas)

    The most notable oversight was that recovery_min_apply_delay failed to delay application of a two-phase commit.

  • Avoid creating unnecessary .ready marker files for timeline history files (Fujii Masao)

  • Fix possible null pointer dereference when an empty prepared statement is used and the log_statement setting is mod or ddl (Fujii Masao)

  • Change "pgstat wait timeout" warning message to be LOG level, and rephrase it to be more understandable (Tom Lane)

    This message was originally thought to be essentially a can't-happen case, but it occurs often enough on our slower buildfarm members to be a nuisance. Reduce it to LOG level, and expend a bit more effort on the wording: it now reads "using stale statistics instead of current ones because stats collector is not responding".

  • Fix SPARC spinlock implementation to ensure correctness if the CPU is being run in a non-TSO coherency mode, as some non-Solaris kernels do (Andres Freund)

  • Warn if OS X's setlocale() starts an unwanted extra thread inside the postmaster (Noah Misch)

  • Fix processing of repeated dbname parameters in PQconnectdbParams() (Alex Shulgin)

    Unexpected behavior ensued if the first occurrence of dbname contained a connection string or URI to be expanded.

  • Ensure that libpq reports a suitable error message on unexpected socket EOF (Marko Tiikkaja, Tom Lane)

    Depending on kernel behavior, libpq might return an empty error string rather than something useful when the server unexpectedly closed the socket.

  • Clear any old error message during PQreset() (Heikki Linnakangas)

    If PQreset() is called repeatedly, and the connection cannot be re-established, error messages from the failed connection attempts kept accumulating in the PGconn's error string.

  • Properly handle out-of-memory conditions while parsing connection options in libpq (Alex Shulgin, Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Fix array overrun in ecpg's version of ParseDateTime() (Michael Paquier)

  • In initdb, give a clearer error message if a password file is specified but is empty (Mats Erik Andersson)

  • Fix psql's \s command to work nicely with libedit, and add pager support (Stepan Rutz, Tom Lane)

    When using libedit rather than readline, \s printed the command history in a fairly unreadable encoded format, and on recent libedit versions might fail altogether. Fix that by printing the history ourselves rather than having the library do it. A pleasant side-effect is that the pager is used if appropriate.

    This patch also fixes a bug that caused newline encoding to be applied inconsistently when saving the command history with libedit. Multiline history entries written by older psql versions will be read cleanly with this patch, but perhaps not vice versa, depending on the exact libedit versions involved.

  • Improve consistency of parsing of psql's special variables (Tom Lane)

    Allow variant spellings of on and off (such as 1/0) for ECHO_HIDDEN and ON_ERROR_ROLLBACK. Report a warning for unrecognized values for COMP_KEYWORD_CASE, ECHO, ECHO_HIDDEN, HISTCONTROL, ON_ERROR_ROLLBACK, and VERBOSITY. Recognize all values for all these variables case-insensitively; previously there was a mishmash of case-sensitive and case-insensitive behaviors.

  • Fix psql's expanded-mode display to work consistently when using border = 3 and linestyle = ascii or unicode (Stephen Frost)

  • Improve performance of pg_dump when the database contains many instances of multiple dependency paths between the same two objects (Tom Lane)

  • Fix possible deadlock during parallel restore of a schema-only dump (Robert Haas, Tom Lane)

  • Fix core dump in pg_dump --binary-upgrade on zero-column composite type (Rushabh Lathia)

  • Prevent WAL files created by pg_basebackup -x/-X from being archived again when the standby is promoted (Andres Freund)

  • Fix upgrade-from-unpackaged script for contrib/citext (Tom Lane)

  • Fix block number checking in contrib/pageinspect's get_raw_page() (Tom Lane)

    The incorrect checking logic could prevent access to some pages in non-main relation forks.

  • Fix contrib/pgcrypto's pgp_sym_decrypt() to not fail on messages whose length is 6 less than a power of 2 (Marko Tiikkaja)

  • Fix file descriptor leak in contrib/pg_test_fsync (Jeff Janes)

    This could cause failure to remove temporary files on Windows.

  • Handle unexpected query results, especially NULLs, safely in contrib/tablefunc's connectby() (Michael Paquier)

    connectby() previously crashed if it encountered a NULL key value. It now prints that row but doesn't recurse further.

  • Avoid a possible crash in contrib/xml2's xslt_process() (Mark Simonetti)

    libxslt seems to have an undocumented dependency on the order in which resources are freed; reorder our calls to avoid a crash.

  • Mark some contrib I/O functions with correct volatility properties (Tom Lane)

    The previous over-conservative marking was immaterial in normal use, but could cause optimization problems or rejection of valid index expression definitions. Since the consequences are not large, we've just adjusted the function definitions in the extension modules' scripts, without changing version numbers.

  • Numerous cleanups of warnings from Coverity static code analyzer (Andres Freund, Tatsuo Ishii, Marko Kreen, Tom Lane, Michael Paquier)

    These changes are mostly cosmetic but in some cases fix corner-case bugs, for example a crash rather than a proper error report after an out-of-memory failure. None are believed to represent security issues.

  • Detect incompatible OpenLDAP versions during build (Noah Misch)

    With OpenLDAP versions 2.4.24 through 2.4.31, inclusive, PostgreSQL backends can crash at exit. Raise a warning during configure based on the compile-time OpenLDAP version number, and test the crashing scenario in the contrib/dblink regression test.

  • In non-MSVC Windows builds, ensure libpq.dll is installed with execute permissions (Noah Misch)

  • Make pg_regress remove any temporary installation it created upon successful exit (Tom Lane)

    This results in a very substantial reduction in disk space usage during make check-world, since that sequence involves creation of numerous temporary installations.

  • Support time zone abbreviations that change UTC offset from time to time (Tom Lane)

    Previously, PostgreSQL assumed that the UTC offset associated with a time zone abbreviation (such as EST) never changes in the usage of any particular locale. However this assumption fails in the real world, so introduce the ability for a zone abbreviation to represent a UTC offset that sometimes changes. Update the zone abbreviation definition files to make use of this feature in timezone locales that have changed the UTC offset of their abbreviations since 1970 (according to the IANA timezone database). In such timezones, PostgreSQL will now associate the correct UTC offset with the abbreviation depending on the given date.

  • Update time zone abbreviations lists (Tom Lane)

    Add CST (China Standard Time) to our lists. Remove references to ADT as "Arabia Daylight Time", an abbreviation that's been out of use since 2007; therefore, claiming there is a conflict with "Atlantic Daylight Time" doesn't seem especially helpful. Fix entirely incorrect GMT offsets for CKT (Cook Islands), FJT, and FJST (Fiji); we didn't even have them on the proper side of the date line.

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2015a.

    The IANA timezone database has adopted abbreviations of the form AxST/AxDT for all Australian time zones, reflecting what they believe to be current majority practice Down Under. These names do not conflict with usage elsewhere (other than ACST for Acre Summer Time, which has been in disuse since 1994). Accordingly, adopt these names into our "Default" timezone abbreviation set. The "Australia" abbreviation set now contains only CST, EAST, EST, SAST, SAT, and WST, all of which are thought to be mostly historical usage. Note that SAST has also been changed to be South Africa Standard Time in the "Default" abbreviation set.

    Also, add zone abbreviations SRET (Asia/Srednekolymsk) and XJT (Asia/Urumqi), and use WSST/WSDT for western Samoa. Also, there were DST law changes in Chile, Mexico, the Turks & Caicos Islands (America/Grand_Turk), and Fiji. There is a new zone Pacific/Bougainville for portions of Papua New Guinea. Also, numerous corrections for historical (pre-1970) time zone data.

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Release 9.1.14

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.6. Release 9.1.14

Release Date: 2014-07-24

This release contains a variety of fixes from 9.1.13. For information about new features in the 9.1 major release, see Section E.20.

E.6.1. Migration to Version 9.1.14

A dump/restore is not required for those running 9.1.X.

However, this release corrects an index corruption problem in some GiST indexes. See the first changelog entry below to find out whether your installation has been affected and what steps you should take if so.

Also, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 9.1.11, see Section E.9.

E.6.2. Changes

  • Correctly initialize padding bytes in contrib/btree_gist indexes on bit columns (Heikki Linnakangas)

    This error could result in incorrect query results due to values that should compare equal not being seen as equal. Users with GiST indexes on bit or bit varying columns should REINDEX those indexes after installing this update.

  • Protect against torn pages when deleting GIN list pages (Heikki Linnakangas)

    This fix prevents possible index corruption if a system crash occurs while the page update is being written to disk.

  • Don't clear the right-link of a GiST index page while replaying updates from WAL (Heikki Linnakangas)

    This error could lead to transiently wrong answers from GiST index scans performed in Hot Standby.

  • Fix feedback status when hot_standby_feedback is turned off on-the-fly (Simon Riggs)

  • Fix possibly-incorrect cache invalidation during nested calls to ReceiveSharedInvalidMessages (Andres Freund)

  • Fix "could not find pathkey item to sort" planner failures with UNION ALL over subqueries reading from tables with inheritance children (Tom Lane)

  • Don't assume a subquery's output is unique if there's a set-returning function in its targetlist (David Rowley)

    This oversight could lead to misoptimization of constructs like WHERE x IN (SELECT y, generate_series(1,10) FROM t GROUP BY y).

  • Fix failure to detoast fields in composite elements of structured types (Tom Lane)

    This corrects cases where TOAST pointers could be copied into other tables without being dereferenced. If the original data is later deleted, it would lead to errors like "missing chunk number 0 for toast value ..." when the now-dangling pointer is used.

  • Fix "record type has not been registered" failures with whole-row references to the output of Append plan nodes (Tom Lane)

  • Fix possible crash when invoking a user-defined function while rewinding a cursor (Tom Lane)

  • Fix query-lifespan memory leak while evaluating the arguments for a function in FROM (Tom Lane)

  • Fix session-lifespan memory leaks in regular-expression processing (Tom Lane, Arthur O'Dwyer, Greg Stark)

  • Fix data encoding error in hungarian.stop (Tom Lane)

  • Prevent foreign tables from being created with OIDS when default_with_oids is true (Etsuro Fujita)

  • Fix liveness checks for rows that were inserted in the current transaction and then deleted by a now-rolled-back subtransaction (Andres Freund)

    This could cause problems (at least spurious warnings, and at worst an infinite loop) if CREATE INDEX or CLUSTER were done later in the same transaction.

  • Clear pg_stat_activity.xact_start during PREPARE TRANSACTION (Andres Freund)

    After the PREPARE, the originating session is no longer in a transaction, so it should not continue to display a transaction start time.

  • Fix REASSIGN OWNED to not fail for text search objects (Álvaro Herrera)

  • Block signals during postmaster startup (Tom Lane)

    This ensures that the postmaster will properly clean up after itself if, for example, it receives SIGINT while still starting up.

  • Fix client host name lookup when processing pg_hba.conf entries that specify host names instead of IP addresses (Tom Lane)

    Ensure that reverse-DNS lookup failures are reported, instead of just silently not matching such entries. Also ensure that we make only one reverse-DNS lookup attempt per connection, not one per host name entry, which is what previously happened if the lookup attempts failed.

  • Secure Unix-domain sockets of temporary postmasters started during make check (Noah Misch)

    Any local user able to access the socket file could connect as the server's bootstrap superuser, then proceed to execute arbitrary code as the operating-system user running the test, as we previously noted in CVE-2014-0067. This change defends against that risk by placing the server's socket in a temporary, mode 0700 subdirectory of /tmp. The hazard remains however on platforms where Unix sockets are not supported, notably Windows, because then the temporary postmaster must accept local TCP connections.

    A useful side effect of this change is to simplify make check testing in builds that override DEFAULT_PGSOCKET_DIR. Popular non-default values like /var/run/postgresql are often not writable by the build user, requiring workarounds that will no longer be necessary.

  • Fix tablespace creation WAL replay to work on Windows (MauMau)

  • Fix detection of socket creation failures on Windows (Bruce Momjian)

  • On Windows, allow new sessions to absorb values of PGC_BACKEND parameters (such as log_connections) from the configuration file (Amit Kapila)

    Previously, if such a parameter were changed in the file post-startup, the change would have no effect.

  • Properly quote executable path names on Windows (Nikhil Deshpande)

    This oversight could cause initdb and pg_upgrade to fail on Windows, if the installation path contained both spaces and @ signs.

  • Fix linking of libpython on OS X (Tom Lane)

    The method we previously used can fail with the Python library supplied by Xcode 5.0 and later.

  • Avoid buffer bloat in libpq when the server consistently sends data faster than the client can absorb it (Shin-ichi Morita, Tom Lane)

    libpq could be coerced into enlarging its input buffer until it runs out of memory (which would be reported misleadingly as "lost synchronization with server"). Under ordinary circumstances it's quite far-fetched that data could be continuously transmitted more quickly than the recv() loop can absorb it, but this has been observed when the client is artificially slowed by scheduler constraints.

  • Ensure that LDAP lookup attempts in libpq time out as intended (Laurenz Albe)

  • Fix ecpg to do the right thing when an array of char * is the target for a FETCH statement returning more than one row, as well as some other array-handling fixes (Ashutosh Bapat)

  • Fix pg_restore's processing of old-style large object comments (Tom Lane)

    A direct-to-database restore from an archive file generated by a pre-9.0 version of pg_dump would usually fail if the archive contained more than a few comments for large objects.

  • In contrib/pgcrypto functions, ensure sensitive information is cleared from stack variables before returning (Marko Kreen)

  • In contrib/uuid-ossp, cache the state of the OSSP UUID library across calls (Tom Lane)

    This improves the efficiency of UUID generation and reduces the amount of entropy drawn from /dev/urandom, on platforms that have that.

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2014e for DST law changes in Crimea, Egypt, and Morocco.

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Release 9.1.15 | Up | Release 9.1.13


Release 9.1.13

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.7. Release 9.1.13

Release Date: 2014-03-20

This release contains a variety of fixes from 9.1.12. For information about new features in the 9.1 major release, see Section E.20.

E.7.1. Migration to Version 9.1.13

A dump/restore is not required for those running 9.1.X.

However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 9.1.11, see Section E.9.

E.7.2. Changes

  • Restore GIN metapages unconditionally to avoid torn-page risk (Heikki Linnakangas)

    Although this oversight could theoretically result in a corrupted index, it is unlikely to have caused any problems in practice, since the active part of a GIN metapage is smaller than a standard 512-byte disk sector.

  • Avoid race condition in checking transaction commit status during receipt of a NOTIFY message (Marko Tiikkaja)

    This prevents a scenario wherein a sufficiently fast client might respond to a notification before database updates made by the notifier have become visible to the recipient.

  • Allow regular-expression operators to be terminated early by query cancel requests (Tom Lane)

    This prevents scenarios wherein a pathological regular expression could lock up a server process uninterruptably for a long time.

  • Remove incorrect code that tried to allow OVERLAPS with single-element row arguments (Joshua Yanovski)

    This code never worked correctly, and since the case is neither specified by the SQL standard nor documented, it seemed better to remove it than fix it.

  • Avoid getting more than AccessShareLock when de-parsing a rule or view (Dean Rasheed)

    This oversight resulted in pg_dump unexpectedly acquiring RowExclusiveLock locks on tables mentioned as the targets of INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE commands in rules. While usually harmless, that could interfere with concurrent transactions that tried to acquire, for example, ShareLock on those tables.

  • Improve performance of index endpoint probes during planning (Tom Lane)

    This change fixes a significant performance problem that occurred when there were many not-yet-committed rows at the end of the index, which is a common situation for indexes on sequentially-assigned values such as timestamps or sequence-generated identifiers.

  • Fix walsender's failure to shut down cleanly when client is pg_receivexlog (Fujii Masao)

  • Fix test to see if hot standby connections can be allowed immediately after a crash (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Prevent interrupts while reporting non-ERROR messages (Tom Lane)

    This guards against rare server-process freezeups due to recursive entry to syslog(), and perhaps other related problems.

  • Fix memory leak in PL/Perl when returning a composite result, including multiple-OUT-parameter cases (Alex Hunsaker)

  • Prevent intermittent "could not reserve shared memory region" failures on recent Windows versions (MauMau)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2014a for DST law changes in Fiji and Turkey, plus historical changes in Israel and Ukraine.

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Release 9.1.14 | Up | Release 9.1.12


Release 9.1.12

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.8. Release 9.1.12

Release Date: 2014-02-20

This release contains a variety of fixes from 9.1.11. For information about new features in the 9.1 major release, see Section E.20.

E.8.1. Migration to Version 9.1.12

A dump/restore is not required for those running 9.1.X.

However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 9.1.11, see Section E.9.

E.8.2. Changes

  • Shore up GRANT ... WITH ADMIN OPTION restrictions (Noah Misch)

    Granting a role without ADMIN OPTION is supposed to prevent the grantee from adding or removing members from the granted role, but this restriction was easily bypassed by doing SET ROLE first. The security impact is mostly that a role member can revoke the access of others, contrary to the wishes of his grantor. Unapproved role member additions are a lesser concern, since an uncooperative role member could provide most of his rights to others anyway by creating views or SECURITY DEFINER functions. (CVE-2014-0060)

  • Prevent privilege escalation via manual calls to PL validator functions (Andres Freund)

    The primary role of PL validator functions is to be called implicitly during CREATE FUNCTION, but they are also normal SQL functions that a user can call explicitly. Calling a validator on a function actually written in some other language was not checked for and could be exploited for privilege-escalation purposes. The fix involves adding a call to a privilege-checking function in each validator function. Non-core procedural languages will also need to make this change to their own validator functions, if any. (CVE-2014-0061)

  • Avoid multiple name lookups during table and index DDL (Robert Haas, Andres Freund)

    If the name lookups come to different conclusions due to concurrent activity, we might perform some parts of the DDL on a different table than other parts. At least in the case of CREATE INDEX, this can be used to cause the permissions checks to be performed against a different table than the index creation, allowing for a privilege escalation attack. (CVE-2014-0062)

  • Prevent buffer overrun with long datetime strings (Noah Misch)

    The MAXDATELEN constant was too small for the longest possible value of type interval, allowing a buffer overrun in interval_out(). Although the datetime input functions were more careful about avoiding buffer overrun, the limit was short enough to cause them to reject some valid inputs, such as input containing a very long timezone name. The ecpg library contained these vulnerabilities along with some of its own. (CVE-2014-0063)

  • Prevent buffer overrun due to integer overflow in size calculations (Noah Misch, Heikki Linnakangas)

    Several functions, mostly type input functions, calculated an allocation size without checking for overflow. If overflow did occur, a too-small buffer would be allocated and then written past. (CVE-2014-0064)

  • Prevent overruns of fixed-size buffers (Peter Eisentraut, Jozef Mlich)

    Use strlcpy() and related functions to provide a clear guarantee that fixed-size buffers are not overrun. Unlike the preceding items, it is unclear whether these cases really represent live issues, since in most cases there appear to be previous constraints on the size of the input string. Nonetheless it seems prudent to silence all Coverity warnings of this type. (CVE-2014-0065)

  • Avoid crashing if crypt() returns NULL (Honza Horak, Bruce Momjian)

    There are relatively few scenarios in which crypt() could return NULL, but contrib/chkpass would crash if it did. One practical case in which this could be an issue is if libc is configured to refuse to execute unapproved hashing algorithms (e.g., "FIPS mode"). (CVE-2014-0066)

  • Document risks of make check in the regression testing instructions (Noah Misch, Tom Lane)

    Since the temporary server started by make check uses "trust" authentication, another user on the same machine could connect to it as database superuser, and then potentially exploit the privileges of the operating-system user who started the tests. A future release will probably incorporate changes in the testing procedure to prevent this risk, but some public discussion is needed first. So for the moment, just warn people against using make check when there are untrusted users on the same machine. (CVE-2014-0067)

  • Fix possible mis-replay of WAL records when some segments of a relation aren't full size (Greg Stark, Tom Lane)

    The WAL update could be applied to the wrong page, potentially many pages past where it should have been. Aside from corrupting data, this error has been observed to result in significant "bloat" of standby servers compared to their masters, due to updates being applied far beyond where the end-of-file should have been. This failure mode does not appear to be a significant risk during crash recovery, only when initially synchronizing a standby created from a base backup taken from a quickly-changing master.

  • Fix bug in determining when recovery has reached consistency (Tomonari Katsumata, Heikki Linnakangas)

    In some cases WAL replay would mistakenly conclude that the database was already consistent at the start of replay, thus possibly allowing hot-standby queries before the database was really consistent. Other symptoms such as "PANIC: WAL contains references to invalid pages" were also possible.

  • Fix improper locking of btree index pages while replaying a VACUUM operation in hot-standby mode (Andres Freund, Heikki Linnakangas, Tom Lane)

    This error could result in "PANIC: WAL contains references to invalid pages" failures.

  • Ensure that insertions into non-leaf GIN index pages write a full-page WAL record when appropriate (Heikki Linnakangas)

    The previous coding risked index corruption in the event of a partial-page write during a system crash.

  • When pause_at_recovery_target and recovery_target_inclusive are both set, ensure the target record is applied before pausing, not after (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Fix race conditions during server process exit (Robert Haas)

    Ensure that signal handlers don't attempt to use the process's MyProc pointer after it's no longer valid.

  • Fix race conditions in walsender shutdown logic and walreceiver SIGHUP signal handler (Tom Lane)

  • Fix unsafe references to errno within error reporting logic (Christian Kruse)

    This would typically lead to odd behaviors such as missing or inappropriate HINT fields.

  • Fix possible crashes from using ereport() too early during server startup (Tom Lane)

    The principal case we've seen in the field is a crash if the server is started in a directory it doesn't have permission to read.

  • Clear retry flags properly in OpenSSL socket write function (Alexander Kukushkin)

    This omission could result in a server lockup after unexpected loss of an SSL-encrypted connection.

  • Fix length checking for Unicode identifiers (U&"..." syntax) containing escapes (Tom Lane)

    A spurious truncation warning would be printed for such identifiers if the escaped form of the identifier was too long, but the identifier actually didn't need truncation after de-escaping.

  • Allow keywords that are type names to be used in lists of roles (Stephen Frost)

    A previous patch allowed such keywords to be used without quoting in places such as role identifiers; but it missed cases where a list of role identifiers was permitted, such as DROP ROLE.

  • Fix parser crash for EXISTS(SELECT * FROM zero_column_table) (Tom Lane)

  • Fix possible crash due to invalid plan for nested sub-selects, such as WHERE (... x IN (SELECT ...) ...) IN (SELECT ...) (Tom Lane)

  • Ensure that ANALYZE creates statistics for a table column even when all the values in it are "too wide" (Tom Lane)

    ANALYZE intentionally omits very wide values from its histogram and most-common-values calculations, but it neglected to do something sane in the case that all the sampled entries are too wide.

  • In ALTER TABLE ... SET TABLESPACE, allow the database's default tablespace to be used without a permissions check (Stephen Frost)

    CREATE TABLE has always allowed such usage, but ALTER TABLE didn't get the memo.

  • Fix "cannot accept a set" error when some arms of a CASE return a set and others don't (Tom Lane)

  • Fix checks for all-zero client addresses in pgstat functions (Kevin Grittner)

  • Fix possible misclassification of multibyte characters by the text search parser (Tom Lane)

    Non-ASCII characters could be misclassified when using C locale with a multibyte encoding. On Cygwin, non-C locales could fail as well.

  • Fix possible misbehavior in plainto_tsquery() (Heikki Linnakangas)

    Use memmove() not memcpy() for copying overlapping memory regions. There have been no field reports of this actually causing trouble, but it's certainly risky.

  • Fix placement of permissions checks in pg_start_backup() and pg_stop_backup() (Andres Freund, Magnus Hagander)

    The previous coding might attempt to do catalog access when it shouldn't.

  • Accept SHIFT_JIS as an encoding name for locale checking purposes (Tatsuo Ishii)

  • Fix misbehavior of PQhost() on Windows (Fujii Masao)

    It should return localhost if no host has been specified.

  • Improve error handling in libpq and psql for failures during COPY TO STDOUT/FROM STDIN (Tom Lane)

    In particular this fixes an infinite loop that could occur in 9.2 and up if the server connection was lost during COPY FROM STDIN. Variants of that scenario might be possible in older versions, or with other client applications.

  • Fix possible incorrect printing of filenames in pg_basebackup's verbose mode (Magnus Hagander)

  • Avoid including tablespaces inside PGDATA twice in base backups (Dimitri Fontaine, Magnus Hagander)

  • Fix misaligned descriptors in ecpg (MauMau)

  • In ecpg, handle lack of a hostname in the connection parameters properly (Michael Meskes)

  • Fix performance regression in contrib/dblink connection startup (Joe Conway)

    Avoid an unnecessary round trip when client and server encodings match.

  • In contrib/isn, fix incorrect calculation of the check digit for ISMN values (Fabien Coelho)

  • Ensure client-code-only installation procedure works as documented (Peter Eisentraut)

  • In Mingw and Cygwin builds, install the libpq DLL in the bin directory (Andrew Dunstan)

    This duplicates what the MSVC build has long done. It should fix problems with programs like psql failing to start because they can't find the DLL.

  • Avoid using the deprecated dllwrap tool in Cygwin builds (Marco Atzeri)

  • Don't generate plain-text HISTORY and src/test/regress/README files anymore (Tom Lane)

    These text files duplicated the main HTML and PDF documentation formats. The trouble involved in maintaining them greatly outweighs the likely audience for plain-text format. Distribution tarballs will still contain files by these names, but they'll just be stubs directing the reader to consult the main documentation. The plain-text INSTALL file will still be maintained, as there is arguably a use-case for that.

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2013i for DST law changes in Jordan and historical changes in Cuba.

    In addition, the zones Asia/Riyadh87, Asia/Riyadh88, and Asia/Riyadh89 have been removed, as they are no longer maintained by IANA, and never represented actual civil timekeeping practice.

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Release 9.1.13 | Up | Release 9.1.11


Release 9.1.11

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.9. Release 9.1.11

Release Date: 2013-12-05

This release contains a variety of fixes from 9.1.10. For information about new features in the 9.1 major release, see Section E.20.

E.9.1. Migration to Version 9.1.11

A dump/restore is not required for those running 9.1.X.

However, this release corrects a number of potential data corruption issues. See the first two changelog entries below to find out whether your installation has been affected and what steps you can take if so.

Also, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 9.1.9, see Section E.11.

E.9.2. Changes

  • Fix VACUUM's tests to see whether it can update relfrozenxid (Andres Freund)

    In some cases VACUUM (either manual or autovacuum) could incorrectly advance a table's relfrozenxid value, allowing tuples to escape freezing, causing those rows to become invisible once 2^31 transactions have elapsed. The probability of data loss is fairly low since multiple incorrect advancements would need to happen before actual loss occurs, but it's not zero. Users upgrading from releases 9.0.4 or 8.4.8 or earlier are not affected, but all later versions contain the bug.

    The issue can be ameliorated by, after upgrading, vacuuming all tables in all databases while having vacuum_freeze_table_age set to zero. This will fix any latent corruption but will not be able to fix all pre-existing data errors. However, an installation can be presumed safe after performing this vacuuming if it has executed fewer than 2^31 update transactions in its lifetime (check this with SELECT txid_current() < 2^31).

  • Fix initialization of pg_clog and pg_subtrans during hot standby startup (Andres Freund, Heikki Linnakangas)

    This bug can cause data loss on standby servers at the moment they start to accept hot-standby queries, by marking committed transactions as uncommitted. The likelihood of such corruption is small unless, at the time of standby startup, the primary server has executed many updating transactions since its last checkpoint. Symptoms include missing rows, rows that should have been deleted being still visible, and obsolete versions of updated rows being still visible alongside their newer versions.

    This bug was introduced in versions 9.3.0, 9.2.5, 9.1.10, and 9.0.14. Standby servers that have only been running earlier releases are not at risk. It's recommended that standby servers that have ever run any of the buggy releases be re-cloned from the primary (e.g., with a new base backup) after upgrading.

  • Truncate pg_multixact contents during WAL replay (Andres Freund)

    This avoids ever-increasing disk space consumption in standby servers.

  • Fix race condition in GIN index posting tree page deletion (Heikki Linnakangas)

    This could lead to transient wrong answers or query failures.

  • Avoid flattening a subquery whose SELECT list contains a volatile function wrapped inside a sub-SELECT (Tom Lane)

    This avoids unexpected results due to extra evaluations of the volatile function.

  • Fix planner's processing of non-simple-variable subquery outputs nested within outer joins (Tom Lane)

    This error could lead to incorrect plans for queries involving multiple levels of subqueries within JOIN syntax.

  • Fix incorrect generation of optimized MIN()/MAX() plans for inheritance trees (Tom Lane)

    The planner could fail in cases where the MIN()/MAX() argument was an expression rather than a simple variable.

  • Fix premature deletion of temporary files (Andres Freund)

  • Fix possible read past end of memory in rule printing (Peter Eisentraut)

  • Fix array slicing of int2vector and oidvector values (Tom Lane)

    Expressions of this kind are now implicitly promoted to regular int2 or oid arrays.

  • Fix incorrect behaviors when using a SQL-standard, simple GMT offset timezone (Tom Lane)

    In some cases, the system would use the simple GMT offset value when it should have used the regular timezone setting that had prevailed before the simple offset was selected. This change also causes the timeofday function to honor the simple GMT offset zone.

  • Prevent possible misbehavior when logging translations of Windows error codes (Tom Lane)

  • Properly quote generated command lines in pg_ctl (Naoya Anzai and Tom Lane)

    This fix applies only to Windows.

  • Fix pg_dumpall to work when a source database sets default_transaction_read_only via ALTER DATABASE SET (Kevin Grittner)

    Previously, the generated script would fail during restore.

  • Make ecpg search for quoted cursor names case-sensitively (Zoltán Böszörményi)

  • Fix ecpg's processing of lists of variables declared varchar (Zoltán Böszörményi)

  • Make contrib/lo defend against incorrect trigger definitions (Marc Cousin)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2013h for DST law changes in Argentina, Brazil, Jordan, Libya, Liechtenstein, Morocco, and Palestine. Also, new timezone abbreviations WIB, WIT, WITA for Indonesia.

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Release 9.1.12 | Up | Release 9.1.10


Release 9.1.10

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.10. Release 9.1.10

Release Date: 2013-10-10

This release contains a variety of fixes from 9.1.9. For information about new features in the 9.1 major release, see Section E.20.

E.10.1. Migration to Version 9.1.10

A dump/restore is not required for those running 9.1.X.

However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 9.1.9, see Section E.11.

E.10.2. Changes

  • Prevent corruption of multi-byte characters when attempting to case-fold identifiers (Andrew Dunstan)

    PostgreSQL case-folds non-ASCII characters only when using a single-byte server encoding.

  • Fix checkpoint memory leak in background writer when wal_level = hot_standby (Naoya Anzai)

  • Fix memory leak caused by lo_open() failure (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Fix memory overcommit bug when work_mem is using more than 24GB of memory (Stephen Frost)

  • Serializable snapshot fixes (Kevin Grittner, Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Fix deadlock bug in libpq when using SSL (Stephen Frost)

  • Fix possible SSL state corruption in threaded libpq applications (Nick Phillips, Stephen Frost)

  • Properly compute row estimates for boolean columns containing many NULL values (Andrew Gierth)

    Previously tests like col IS NOT TRUE and col IS NOT FALSE did not properly factor in NULL values when estimating plan costs.

  • Prevent pushing down WHERE clauses into unsafe UNION/INTERSECT subqueries (Tom Lane)

    Subqueries of a UNION or INTERSECT that contain set-returning functions or volatile functions in their SELECT lists could be improperly optimized, leading to run-time errors or incorrect query results.

  • Fix rare case of "failed to locate grouping columns" planner failure (Tom Lane)

  • Fix pg_dump of foreign tables with dropped columns (Andrew Dunstan)

    Previously such cases could cause a pg_upgrade error.

  • Reorder pg_dump processing of extension-related rules and event triggers (Joe Conway)

  • Force dumping of extension tables if specified by pg_dump -t or -n (Joe Conway)

  • Improve view dumping code's handling of dropped columns in referenced tables (Tom Lane)

  • Fix pg_restore -l with the directory archive to display the correct format name (Fujii Masao)

  • Properly record index comments created using UNIQUE and PRIMARY KEY syntax (Andres Freund)

    This fixes a parallel pg_restore failure.

  • Properly guarantee transmission of WAL files before clean switchover (Fujii Masao)

    Previously, the streaming replication connection might close before all WAL files had been replayed on the standby.

  • Fix WAL segment timeline handling during recovery (Mitsumasa Kondo, Heikki Linnakangas)

    WAL file recycling during standby recovery could lead to premature recovery completion, resulting in data loss.

  • Fix REINDEX TABLE and REINDEX DATABASE to properly revalidate constraints and mark invalidated indexes as valid (Noah Misch)

    REINDEX INDEX has always worked properly.

  • Fix possible deadlock during concurrent CREATE INDEX CONCURRENTLY operations (Tom Lane)

  • Fix regexp_matches() handling of zero-length matches (Jeevan Chalke)

    Previously, zero-length matches like '^' could return too many matches.

  • Fix crash for overly-complex regular expressions (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Fix regular expression match failures for back references combined with non-greedy quantifiers (Jeevan Chalke)

  • Prevent CREATE FUNCTION from checking SET variables unless function body checking is enabled (Tom Lane)

  • Allow ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES to operate on schemas without requiring CREATE permission (Tom Lane)

  • Loosen restriction on keywords used in queries (Tom Lane)

    Specifically, lessen keyword restrictions for role names, language names, EXPLAIN and COPY options, and SET values. This allows COPY ... (FORMAT BINARY) to work as expected; previously BINARY needed to be quoted.

  • Fix pgp_pub_decrypt() so it works for secret keys with passwords (Marko Kreen)

  • Make pg_upgrade use pg_dump --quote-all-identifiers to avoid problems with keyword changes between releases (Tom Lane)

  • Remove rare inaccurate warning during vacuum of index-less tables (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Ensure that VACUUM ANALYZE still runs the ANALYZE phase if its attempt to truncate the file is cancelled due to lock conflicts (Kevin Grittner)

  • Avoid possible failure when performing transaction control commands (e.g ROLLBACK) in prepared queries (Tom Lane)

  • Ensure that floating-point data input accepts standard spellings of "infinity" on all platforms (Tom Lane)

    The C99 standard says that allowable spellings are inf, +inf, -inf, infinity, +infinity, and -infinity. Make sure we recognize these even if the platform's strtod function doesn't.

  • Expand ability to compare rows to records and arrays (Rafal Rzepecki, Tom Lane)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2013d for DST law changes in Israel, Morocco, Palestine, and Paraguay. Also, historical zone data corrections for Macquarie Island.

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Release 9.1.11 | Up | Release 9.1.9


Release 9.1.9

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.11. Release 9.1.9

Release Date: 2013-04-04

This release contains a variety of fixes from 9.1.8. For information about new features in the 9.1 major release, see Section E.20.

E.11.1. Migration to Version 9.1.9

A dump/restore is not required for those running 9.1.X.

However, this release corrects several errors in management of GiST indexes. After installing this update, it is advisable to REINDEX any GiST indexes that meet one or more of the conditions described below.

Also, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 9.1.6, see Section E.14.

E.11.2. Changes

  • Fix insecure parsing of server command-line switches (Mitsumasa Kondo, Kyotaro Horiguchi)

    A connection request containing a database name that begins with "-" could be crafted to damage or destroy files within the server's data directory, even if the request is eventually rejected. (CVE-2013-1899)

  • Reset OpenSSL randomness state in each postmaster child process (Marko Kreen)

    This avoids a scenario wherein random numbers generated by contrib/pgcrypto functions might be relatively easy for another database user to guess. The risk is only significant when the postmaster is configured with ssl = on but most connections don't use SSL encryption. (CVE-2013-1900)

  • Make REPLICATION privilege checks test current user not authenticated user (Noah Misch)

    An unprivileged database user could exploit this mistake to call pg_start_backup() or pg_stop_backup(), thus possibly interfering with creation of routine backups. (CVE-2013-1901)

  • Fix GiST indexes to not use "fuzzy" geometric comparisons when it's not appropriate to do so (Alexander Korotkov)

    The core geometric types perform comparisons using "fuzzy" equality, but gist_box_same must do exact comparisons, else GiST indexes using it might become inconsistent. After installing this update, users should REINDEX any GiST indexes on box, polygon, circle, or point columns, since all of these use gist_box_same.

  • Fix erroneous range-union and penalty logic in GiST indexes that use contrib/btree_gist for variable-width data types, that is text, bytea, bit, and numeric columns (Tom Lane)

    These errors could result in inconsistent indexes in which some keys that are present would not be found by searches, and also in useless index bloat. Users are advised to REINDEX such indexes after installing this update.

  • Fix bugs in GiST page splitting code for multi-column indexes (Tom Lane)

    These errors could result in inconsistent indexes in which some keys that are present would not be found by searches, and also in indexes that are unnecessarily inefficient to search. Users are advised to REINDEX multi-column GiST indexes after installing this update.

  • Fix gist_point_consistent to handle fuzziness consistently (Alexander Korotkov)

    Index scans on GiST indexes on point columns would sometimes yield results different from a sequential scan, because gist_point_consistent disagreed with the underlying operator code about whether to do comparisons exactly or fuzzily.

  • Fix buffer leak in WAL replay (Heikki Linnakangas)

    This bug could result in "incorrect local pin count" errors during replay, making recovery impossible.

  • Fix race condition in DELETE RETURNING (Tom Lane)

    Under the right circumstances, DELETE RETURNING could attempt to fetch data from a shared buffer that the current process no longer has any pin on. If some other process changed the buffer meanwhile, this would lead to garbage RETURNING output, or even a crash.

  • Fix infinite-loop risk in regular expression compilation (Tom Lane, Don Porter)

  • Fix potential null-pointer dereference in regular expression compilation (Tom Lane)

  • Fix to_char() to use ASCII-only case-folding rules where appropriate (Tom Lane)

    This fixes misbehavior of some template patterns that should be locale-independent, but mishandled "I" and "i" in Turkish locales.

  • Fix unwanted rejection of timestamp 1999-12-31 24:00:00 (Tom Lane)

  • Fix logic error when a single transaction does UNLISTEN then LISTEN (Tom Lane)

    The session wound up not listening for notify events at all, though it surely should listen in this case.

  • Fix possible planner crash after columns have been added to a view that's depended on by another view (Tom Lane)

  • Remove useless "picksplit doesn't support secondary split" log messages (Josh Hansen, Tom Lane)

    This message seems to have been added in expectation of code that was never written, and probably never will be, since GiST's default handling of secondary splits is actually pretty good. So stop nagging end users about it.

  • Fix possible failure to send a session's last few transaction commit/abort counts to the statistics collector (Tom Lane)

  • Eliminate memory leaks in PL/Perl's spi_prepare() function (Alex Hunsaker, Tom Lane)

  • Fix pg_dumpall to handle database names containing "=" correctly (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Avoid crash in pg_dump when an incorrect connection string is given (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Ignore invalid indexes in pg_dump and pg_upgrade (Michael Paquier, Bruce Momjian)

    Dumping invalid indexes can cause problems at restore time, for example if the reason the index creation failed was because it tried to enforce a uniqueness condition not satisfied by the table's data. Also, if the index creation is in fact still in progress, it seems reasonable to consider it to be an uncommitted DDL change, which pg_dump wouldn't be expected to dump anyway. pg_upgrade now also skips invalid indexes rather than failing.

  • In pg_basebackup, include only the current server version's subdirectory when backing up a tablespace (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Add a server version check in pg_basebackup and pg_receivexlog, so they fail cleanly with version combinations that won't work (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Fix contrib/pg_trgm's similarity() function to return zero for trigram-less strings (Tom Lane)

    Previously it returned NaN due to internal division by zero.

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2013b for DST law changes in Chile, Haiti, Morocco, Paraguay, and some Russian areas. Also, historical zone data corrections for numerous places.

    Also, update the time zone abbreviation files for recent changes in Russia and elsewhere: CHOT, GET, IRKT, KGT, KRAT, MAGT, MAWT, MSK, NOVT, OMST, TKT, VLAT, WST, YAKT, YEKT now follow their current meanings, and VOLT (Europe/Volgograd) and MIST (Antarctica/Macquarie) are added to the default abbreviations list.

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Release 9.1.10 | Up | Release 9.1.8


Release 9.1.8

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.12. Release 9.1.8

Release Date: 2013-02-07

This release contains a variety of fixes from 9.1.7. For information about new features in the 9.1 major release, see Section E.20.

E.12.1. Migration to Version 9.1.8

A dump/restore is not required for those running 9.1.X.

However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 9.1.6, see Section E.14.

E.12.2. Changes

  • Prevent execution of enum_recv from SQL (Tom Lane)

    The function was misdeclared, allowing a simple SQL command to crash the server. In principle an attacker might be able to use it to examine the contents of server memory. Our thanks to Sumit Soni (via Secunia SVCRP) for reporting this issue. (CVE-2013-0255)

  • Fix multiple problems in detection of when a consistent database state has been reached during WAL replay (Fujii Masao, Heikki Linnakangas, Simon Riggs, Andres Freund)

  • Update minimum recovery point when truncating a relation file (Heikki Linnakangas)

    Once data has been discarded, it's no longer safe to stop recovery at an earlier point in the timeline.

  • Fix recycling of WAL segments after changing recovery target timeline (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Fix missing cancellations in hot standby mode (Noah Misch, Simon Riggs)

    The need to cancel conflicting hot-standby queries would sometimes be missed, allowing those queries to see inconsistent data.

  • Prevent recovery pause feature from pausing before users can connect (Tom Lane)

  • Fix SQL grammar to allow subscripting or field selection from a sub-SELECT result (Tom Lane)

  • Fix performance problems with autovacuum truncation in busy workloads (Jan Wieck)

    Truncation of empty pages at the end of a table requires exclusive lock, but autovacuum was coded to fail (and release the table lock) when there are conflicting lock requests. Under load, it is easily possible that truncation would never occur, resulting in table bloat. Fix by performing a partial truncation, releasing the lock, then attempting to re-acquire the lock and continue. This fix also greatly reduces the average time before autovacuum releases the lock after a conflicting request arrives.

  • Protect against race conditions when scanning pg_tablespace (Stephen Frost, Tom Lane)

    CREATE DATABASE and DROP DATABASE could misbehave if there were concurrent updates of pg_tablespace entries.

  • Prevent DROP OWNED from trying to drop whole databases or tablespaces (Álvaro Herrera)

    For safety, ownership of these objects must be reassigned, not dropped.

  • Fix error in vacuum_freeze_table_age implementation (Andres Freund)

    In installations that have existed for more than vacuum_freeze_min_age transactions, this mistake prevented autovacuum from using partial-table scans, so that a full-table scan would always happen instead.

  • Prevent misbehavior when a RowExpr or XmlExpr is parse-analyzed twice (Andres Freund, Tom Lane)

    This mistake could be user-visible in contexts such as CREATE TABLE LIKE INCLUDING INDEXES.

  • Improve defenses against integer overflow in hashtable sizing calculations (Jeff Davis)

  • Fix failure to ignore leftover temporary tables after a server crash (Tom Lane)

  • Reject out-of-range dates in to_date() (Hitoshi Harada)

  • Fix pg_extension_config_dump() to handle extension-update cases properly (Tom Lane)

    This function will now replace any existing entry for the target table, making it usable in extension update scripts.

  • Fix PL/Python's handling of functions used as triggers on multiple tables (Andres Freund)

  • Ensure that non-ASCII prompt strings are translated to the correct code page on Windows (Alexander Law, Noah Misch)

    This bug affected psql and some other client programs.

  • Fix possible crash in psql's \? command when not connected to a database (Meng Qingzhong)

  • Fix possible error if a relation file is removed while pg_basebackup is running (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Make pg_dump exclude data of unlogged tables when running on a hot-standby server (Magnus Hagander)

    This would fail anyway because the data is not available on the standby server, so it seems most convenient to assume --no-unlogged-table-data automatically.

  • Fix pg_upgrade to deal with invalid indexes safely (Bruce Momjian)

  • Fix one-byte buffer overrun in libpq's PQprintTuples (Xi Wang)

    This ancient function is not used anywhere by PostgreSQL itself, but it might still be used by some client code.

  • Make ecpglib use translated messages properly (Chen Huajun)

  • Properly install ecpg_compat and pgtypes libraries on MSVC (Jiang Guiqing)

  • Include our version of isinf() in libecpg if it's not provided by the system (Jiang Guiqing)

  • Rearrange configure's tests for supplied functions so it is not fooled by bogus exports from libedit/libreadline (Christoph Berg)

  • Ensure Windows build number increases over time (Magnus Hagander)

  • Make pgxs build executables with the right .exe suffix when cross-compiling for Windows (Zoltan Boszormenyi)

  • Add new timezone abbreviation FET (Tom Lane)

    This is now used in some eastern-European time zones.

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Release 9.1.9 | Up | Release 9.1.7


Release 9.1.7

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.13. Release 9.1.7

Release Date: 2012-12-06

This release contains a variety of fixes from 9.1.6. For information about new features in the 9.1 major release, see Section E.20.

E.13.1. Migration to Version 9.1.7

A dump/restore is not required for those running 9.1.X.

However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 9.1.6, see Section E.14.

E.13.2. Changes

  • Fix multiple bugs associated with CREATE INDEX CONCURRENTLY (Andres Freund, Tom Lane)

    Fix CREATE INDEX CONCURRENTLY to use in-place updates when changing the state of an index's pg_index row. This prevents race conditions that could cause concurrent sessions to miss updating the target index, thus resulting in corrupt concurrently-created indexes.

    Also, fix various other operations to ensure that they ignore invalid indexes resulting from a failed CREATE INDEX CONCURRENTLY command. The most important of these is VACUUM, because an auto-vacuum could easily be launched on the table before corrective action can be taken to fix or remove the invalid index.

  • Fix buffer locking during WAL replay (Tom Lane)

    The WAL replay code was insufficiently careful about locking buffers when replaying WAL records that affect more than one page. This could result in hot standby queries transiently seeing inconsistent states, resulting in wrong answers or unexpected failures.

  • Fix an error in WAL generation logic for GIN indexes (Tom Lane)

    This could result in index corruption, if a torn-page failure occurred.

  • Properly remove startup process's virtual XID lock when promoting a hot standby server to normal running (Simon Riggs)

    This oversight could prevent subsequent execution of certain operations such as CREATE INDEX CONCURRENTLY.

  • Avoid bogus "out-of-sequence timeline ID" errors in standby mode (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Prevent the postmaster from launching new child processes after it's received a shutdown signal (Tom Lane)

    This mistake could result in shutdown taking longer than it should, or even never completing at all without additional user action.

  • Avoid corruption of internal hash tables when out of memory (Hitoshi Harada)

  • Prevent file descriptors for dropped tables from being held open past transaction end (Tom Lane)

    This should reduce problems with long-since-dropped tables continuing to occupy disk space.

  • Prevent database-wide crash and restart when a new child process is unable to create a pipe for its latch (Tom Lane)

    Although the new process must fail, there is no good reason to force a database-wide restart, so avoid that. This improves robustness when the kernel is nearly out of file descriptors.

  • Fix planning of non-strict equivalence clauses above outer joins (Tom Lane)

    The planner could derive incorrect constraints from a clause equating a non-strict construct to something else, for example WHERE COALESCE(foo, 0) = 0 when foo is coming from the nullable side of an outer join.

  • Fix SELECT DISTINCT with index-optimized MIN/MAX on an inheritance tree (Tom Lane)

    The planner would fail with "failed to re-find MinMaxAggInfo record" given this combination of factors.

  • Improve planner's ability to prove exclusion constraints from equivalence classes (Tom Lane)

  • Fix partial-row matching in hashed subplans to handle cross-type cases correctly (Tom Lane)

    This affects multicolumn NOT IN subplans, such as WHERE (a, b) NOT IN (SELECT x, y FROM ...) when for instance b and y are int4 and int8 respectively. This mistake led to wrong answers or crashes depending on the specific datatypes involved.

  • Acquire buffer lock when re-fetching the old tuple for an AFTER ROW UPDATE/DELETE trigger (Andres Freund)

    In very unusual circumstances, this oversight could result in passing incorrect data to a trigger WHEN condition, or to the precheck logic for a foreign-key enforcement trigger. That could result in a crash, or in an incorrect decision about whether to fire the trigger.

  • Fix ALTER COLUMN TYPE to handle inherited check constraints properly (Pavan Deolasee)

    This worked correctly in pre-8.4 releases, and now works correctly in 8.4 and later.

  • Fix ALTER EXTENSION SET SCHEMA's failure to move some subsidiary objects into the new schema (Álvaro Herrera, Dimitri Fontaine)

  • Fix REASSIGN OWNED to handle grants on tablespaces (Álvaro Herrera)

  • Ignore incorrect pg_attribute entries for system columns for views (Tom Lane)

    Views do not have any system columns. However, we forgot to remove such entries when converting a table to a view. That's fixed properly for 9.3 and later, but in previous branches we need to defend against existing mis-converted views.

  • Fix rule printing to dump INSERT INTO table DEFAULT VALUES correctly (Tom Lane)

  • Guard against stack overflow when there are too many UNION/INTERSECT/EXCEPT clauses in a query (Tom Lane)

  • Prevent platform-dependent failures when dividing the minimum possible integer value by -1 (Xi Wang, Tom Lane)

  • Fix possible access past end of string in date parsing (Hitoshi Harada)

  • Fix failure to advance XID epoch if XID wraparound happens during a checkpoint and wal_level is hot_standby (Tom Lane, Andres Freund)

    While this mistake had no particular impact on PostgreSQL itself, it was bad for applications that rely on txid_current() and related functions: the TXID value would appear to go backwards.

  • Fix display of pg_stat_replication.sync_state at a page boundary (Kyotaro Horiguchi)

  • Produce an understandable error message if the length of the path name for a Unix-domain socket exceeds the platform-specific limit (Tom Lane, Andrew Dunstan)

    Formerly, this would result in something quite unhelpful, such as "Non-recoverable failure in name resolution".

  • Fix memory leaks when sending composite column values to the client (Tom Lane)

  • Make pg_ctl more robust about reading the postmaster.pid file (Heikki Linnakangas)

    Fix race conditions and possible file descriptor leakage.

  • Fix possible crash in psql if incorrectly-encoded data is presented and the client_encoding setting is a client-only encoding, such as SJIS (Jiang Guiqing)

  • Make pg_dump dump SEQUENCE SET items in the data not pre-data section of the archive (Tom Lane)

    This change fixes dumping of sequences that are marked as extension configuration tables.

  • Fix bugs in the restore.sql script emitted by pg_dump in tar output format (Tom Lane)

    The script would fail outright on tables whose names include upper-case characters. Also, make the script capable of restoring data in --inserts mode as well as the regular COPY mode.

  • Fix pg_restore to accept POSIX-conformant tar files (Brian Weaver, Tom Lane)

    The original coding of pg_dump's tar output mode produced files that are not fully conformant with the POSIX standard. This has been corrected for version 9.3. This patch updates previous branches so that they will accept both the incorrect and the corrected formats, in hopes of avoiding compatibility problems when 9.3 comes out.

  • Fix tar files emitted by pg_basebackup to be POSIX conformant (Brian Weaver, Tom Lane)

  • Fix pg_resetxlog to locate postmaster.pid correctly when given a relative path to the data directory (Tom Lane)

    This mistake could lead to pg_resetxlog not noticing that there is an active postmaster using the data directory.

  • Fix libpq's lo_import() and lo_export() functions to report file I/O errors properly (Tom Lane)

  • Fix ecpg's processing of nested structure pointer variables (Muhammad Usama)

  • Fix ecpg's ecpg_get_data function to handle arrays properly (Michael Meskes)

  • Make contrib/pageinspect's btree page inspection functions take buffer locks while examining pages (Tom Lane)

  • Ensure that make install for an extension creates the extension installation directory (Cédric Villemain)

    Previously, this step was missed if MODULEDIR was set in the extension's Makefile.

  • Fix pgxs support for building loadable modules on AIX (Tom Lane)

    Building modules outside the original source tree didn't work on AIX.

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2012j for DST law changes in Cuba, Israel, Jordan, Libya, Palestine, Western Samoa, and portions of Brazil.

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Release 9.1.8 | Up | Release 9.1.6


Release 9.1.6

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E.14. Release 9.1.6

Release Date: 2012-09-24

This release contains a variety of fixes from 9.1.5. For information about new features in the 9.1 major release, see Section E.20.

E.14.1. Migration to Version 9.1.6

A dump/restore is not required for those running 9.1.X.

However, you may need to perform REINDEX operations to recover from the effects of the data corruption bug described in the first changelog item below.

Also, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 9.1.4, see Section E.16.

E.14.2. Changes

  • Fix persistence marking of shared buffers during WAL replay (Jeff Davis)

    This mistake can result in buffers not being written out during checkpoints, resulting in data corruption if the server later crashes without ever having written those buffers. Corruption can occur on any server following crash recovery, but it is significantly more likely to occur on standby slave servers since those perform much more WAL replay. There is a low probability of corruption of btree and GIN indexes. There is a much higher probability of corruption of table "visibility maps". Fortunately, visibility maps are non-critical data in 9.1, so the worst consequence of such corruption in 9.1 installations is transient inefficiency of vacuuming. Table data proper cannot be corrupted by this bug.

    While no index corruption due to this bug is known to have occurred in the field, as a precautionary measure it is recommended that production installations REINDEX all btree and GIN indexes at a convenient time after upgrading to 9.1.6.

    Also, if you intend to do an in-place upgrade to 9.2.X, before doing so it is recommended to perform a VACUUM of all tables while having vacuum_freeze_table_age set to zero. This will ensure that any lingering wrong data in the visibility maps is corrected before 9.2.X can depend on it. vacuum_cost_delay can be adjusted to reduce the performance impact of vacuuming, while causing it to take longer to finish.

  • Fix planner's assignment of executor parameters, and fix executor's rescan logic for CTE plan nodes (Tom Lane)

    These errors could result in wrong answers from queries that scan the same WITH subquery multiple times.

  • Fix misbehavior when default_transaction_isolation is set to serializable (Kevin Grittner, Tom Lane, Heikki Linnakangas)

    Symptoms include crashes at process start on Windows, and crashes in hot standby operation.

  • Improve selectivity estimation for text search queries involving prefixes, i.e. word:* patterns (Tom Lane)

  • Improve page-splitting decisions in GiST indexes (Alexander Korotkov, Robert Haas, Tom Lane)

    Multi-column GiST indexes might suffer unexpected bloat due to this error.

  • Fix cascading privilege revoke to stop if privileges are still held (Tom Lane)

    If we revoke a grant option from some role X, but X still holds that option via a grant from someone else, we should not recursively revoke the corresponding privilege from role(s) Y that X had granted it to.

  • Disallow extensions from containing the schema they are assigned to (Thom Brown)

    This situation creates circular dependencies that confuse pg_dump and probably other things. It's confusing for humans too, so disallow it.

  • Improve error messages for Hot Standby misconfiguration errors (Gurjeet Singh)

  • Make configure probe for mbstowcs_l (Tom Lane)

    This fixes build failures on some versions of AIX.

  • Fix handling of SIGFPE when PL/Perl is in use (Andres Freund)

    Perl resets the process's SIGFPE handler to SIG_IGN, which could result in crashes later on. Restore the normal Postgres signal handler after initializing PL/Perl.

  • Prevent PL/Perl from crashing if a recursive PL/Perl function is redefined while being executed (Tom Lane)

  • Work around possible misoptimization in PL/Perl (Tom Lane)

    Some Linux distributions contain an incorrect version of pthread.h that results in incorrect compiled code in PL/Perl, leading to crashes if a PL/Perl function calls another one that throws an error.

  • Fix bugs in contrib/pg_trgm's LIKE pattern analysis code (Fujii Masao)

    LIKE queries using a trigram index could produce wrong results if the pattern contained LIKE escape characters.

  • Fix pg_upgrade's handling of line endings on Windows (Andrew Dunstan)

    Previously, pg_upgrade might add or remove carriage returns in places such as function bodies.

  • On Windows, make pg_upgrade use backslash path separators in the scripts it emits (Andrew Dunstan)

  • Remove unnecessary dependency on pg_config from pg_upgrade (Peter Eisentraut)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2012f for DST law changes in Fiji

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Release 9.1.7 | Up | Release 9.1.5


Release 9.1.5

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.15. Release 9.1.5

Release Date: 2012-08-17

This release contains a variety of fixes from 9.1.4. For information about new features in the 9.1 major release, see Section E.20.

E.15.1. Migration to Version 9.1.5

A dump/restore is not required for those running 9.1.X.

However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 9.1.4, see Section E.16.

E.15.2. Changes

  • Prevent access to external files/URLs via XML entity references (Noah Misch, Tom Lane)

    xml_parse() would attempt to fetch external files or URLs as needed to resolve DTD and entity references in an XML value, thus allowing unprivileged database users to attempt to fetch data with the privileges of the database server. While the external data wouldn't get returned directly to the user, portions of it could be exposed in error messages if the data didn't parse as valid XML; and in any case the mere ability to check existence of a file might be useful to an attacker. (CVE-2012-3489)

  • Prevent access to external files/URLs via contrib/xml2's xslt_process() (Peter Eisentraut)

    libxslt offers the ability to read and write both files and URLs through stylesheet commands, thus allowing unprivileged database users to both read and write data with the privileges of the database server. Disable that through proper use of libxslt's security options. (CVE-2012-3488)

    Also, remove xslt_process()'s ability to fetch documents and stylesheets from external files/URLs. While this was a documented "feature", it was long regarded as a bad idea. The fix for CVE-2012-3489 broke that capability, and rather than expend effort on trying to fix it, we're just going to summarily remove it.

  • Prevent too-early recycling of btree index pages (Noah Misch)

    When we allowed read-only transactions to skip assigning XIDs, we introduced the possibility that a deleted btree page could be recycled while a read-only transaction was still in flight to it. This would result in incorrect index search results. The probability of such an error occurring in the field seems very low because of the timing requirements, but nonetheless it should be fixed.

  • Fix crash-safety bug with newly-created-or-reset sequences (Tom Lane)

    If ALTER SEQUENCE was executed on a freshly created or reset sequence, and then precisely one nextval() call was made on it, and then the server crashed, WAL replay would restore the sequence to a state in which it appeared that no nextval() had been done, thus allowing the first sequence value to be returned again by the next nextval() call. In particular this could manifest for serial columns, since creation of a serial column's sequence includes an ALTER SEQUENCE OWNED BY step.

  • Fix race condition in enum-type value comparisons (Robert Haas, Tom Lane)

    Comparisons could fail when encountering an enum value added since the current query started.

  • Fix txid_current() to report the correct epoch when not in hot standby (Heikki Linnakangas)

    This fixes a regression introduced in the previous minor release.

  • Prevent selection of unsuitable replication connections as the synchronous standby (Fujii Masao)

    The master might improperly choose pseudo-servers such as pg_receivexlog or pg_basebackup as the synchronous standby, and then wait indefinitely for them.

  • Fix bug in startup of Hot Standby when a master transaction has many subtransactions (Andres Freund)

    This mistake led to failures reported as "out-of-order XID insertion in KnownAssignedXids".

  • Ensure the backup_label file is fsync'd after pg_start_backup() (Dave Kerr)

  • Fix timeout handling in walsender processes (Tom Lane)

    WAL sender background processes neglected to establish a SIGALRM handler, meaning they would wait forever in some corner cases where a timeout ought to happen.

  • Wake walsenders after each background flush by walwriter (Andres Freund, Simon Riggs)

    This greatly reduces replication delay when the workload contains only asynchronously-committed transactions.

  • Fix LISTEN/NOTIFY to cope better with I/O problems, such as out of disk space (Tom Lane)

    After a write failure, all subsequent attempts to send more NOTIFY messages would fail with messages like "Could not read from file "pg_notify/nnnn" at offset nnnnn: Success".

  • Only allow autovacuum to be auto-canceled by a directly blocked process (Tom Lane)

    The original coding could allow inconsistent behavior in some cases; in particular, an autovacuum could get canceled after less than deadlock_timeout grace period.

  • Improve logging of autovacuum cancels (Robert Haas)

  • Fix log collector so that log_truncate_on_rotation works during the very first log rotation after server start (Tom Lane)

  • Fix WITH attached to a nested set operation (UNION/INTERSECT/EXCEPT) (Tom Lane)

  • Ensure that a whole-row reference to a subquery doesn't include any extra GROUP BY or ORDER BY columns (Tom Lane)

  • Fix dependencies generated during ALTER TABLE ... ADD CONSTRAINT USING INDEX (Tom Lane)

    This command left behind a redundant pg_depend entry for the index, which could confuse later operations, notably ALTER TABLE ... ALTER COLUMN TYPE on one of the indexed columns.

  • Fix REASSIGN OWNED to work on extensions (Alvaro Herrera)

  • Disallow copying whole-row references in CHECK constraints and index definitions during CREATE TABLE (Tom Lane)

    This situation can arise in CREATE TABLE with LIKE or INHERITS. The copied whole-row variable was incorrectly labeled with the row type of the original table not the new one. Rejecting the case seems reasonable for LIKE, since the row types might well diverge later. For INHERITS we should ideally allow it, with an implicit coercion to the parent table's row type; but that will require more work than seems safe to back-patch.

  • Fix memory leak in ARRAY(SELECT ...) subqueries (Heikki Linnakangas, Tom Lane)

  • Fix planner to pass correct collation to operator selectivity estimators (Tom Lane)

    This was not previously required by any core selectivity estimation function, but third-party code might need it.

  • Fix extraction of common prefixes from regular expressions (Tom Lane)

    The code could get confused by quantified parenthesized subexpressions, such as ^(foo)?bar. This would lead to incorrect index optimization of searches for such patterns.

  • Fix bugs with parsing signed hh:mm and hh:mm:ss fields in interval constants (Amit Kapila, Tom Lane)

  • Fix pg_dump to better handle views containing partial GROUP BY lists (Tom Lane)

    A view that lists only a primary key column in GROUP BY, but uses other table columns as if they were grouped, gets marked as depending on the primary key. Improper handling of such primary key dependencies in pg_dump resulted in poorly-ordered dumps, which at best would be inefficient to restore and at worst could result in outright failure of a parallel pg_restore run.

  • In PL/Perl, avoid setting UTF8 flag when in SQL_ASCII encoding (Alex Hunsaker, Kyotaro Horiguchi, Alvaro Herrera)

  • Use Postgres' encoding conversion functions, not Python's, when converting a Python Unicode string to the server encoding in PL/Python (Jan Urbanski)

    This avoids some corner-case problems, notably that Python doesn't support all the encodings Postgres does. A notable functional change is that if the server encoding is SQL_ASCII, you will get the UTF-8 representation of the string; formerly, any non-ASCII characters in the string would result in an error.

  • Fix mapping of PostgreSQL encodings to Python encodings in PL/Python (Jan Urbanski)

  • Report errors properly in contrib/xml2's xslt_process() (Tom Lane)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2012e for DST law changes in Morocco and Tokelau

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Release 9.1.6 | Up | Release 9.1.4


Release 9.1.4

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.16. Release 9.1.4

Release Date: 2012-06-04

This release contains a variety of fixes from 9.1.3. For information about new features in the 9.1 major release, see Section E.20.

E.16.1. Migration to Version 9.1.4

A dump/restore is not required for those running 9.1.X.

However, if you use the citext data type, and you upgraded from a previous major release by running pg_upgrade, you should run CREATE EXTENSION citext FROM unpackaged to avoid collation-related failures in citext operations. The same is necessary if you restore a dump from a pre-9.1 database that contains an instance of the citext data type. If you've already run the CREATE EXTENSION command before upgrading to 9.1.4, you will instead need to do manual catalog updates as explained in the third changelog item below.

Also, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 9.1.2, see Section E.18.

E.16.2. Changes

  • Fix incorrect password transformation in contrib/pgcrypto's DES crypt() function (Solar Designer)

    If a password string contained the byte value 0x80, the remainder of the password was ignored, causing the password to be much weaker than it appeared. With this fix, the rest of the string is properly included in the DES hash. Any stored password values that are affected by this bug will thus no longer match, so the stored values may need to be updated. (CVE-2012-2143)

  • Ignore SECURITY DEFINER and SET attributes for a procedural language's call handler (Tom Lane)

    Applying such attributes to a call handler could crash the server. (CVE-2012-2655)

  • Make contrib/citext's upgrade script fix collations of citext arrays and domains over citext (Tom Lane)

    Release 9.1.2 provided a fix for collations of citext columns and indexes in databases upgraded or reloaded from pre-9.1 installations, but that fix was incomplete: it neglected to handle arrays and domains over citext. This release extends the module's upgrade script to handle these cases. As before, if you have already run the upgrade script, you'll need to run the collation update commands by hand instead. See the 9.1.2 release notes for more information about doing this.

  • Allow numeric timezone offsets in timestamp input to be up to 16 hours away from UTC (Tom Lane)

    Some historical time zones have offsets larger than 15 hours, the previous limit. This could result in dumped data values being rejected during reload.

  • Fix timestamp conversion to cope when the given time is exactly the last DST transition time for the current timezone (Tom Lane)

    This oversight has been there a long time, but was not noticed previously because most DST-using zones are presumed to have an indefinite sequence of future DST transitions.

  • Fix text to name and char to name casts to perform string truncation correctly in multibyte encodings (Karl Schnaitter)

  • Fix memory copying bug in to_tsquery() (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Ensure txid_current() reports the correct epoch when executed in hot standby (Simon Riggs)

  • Fix planner's handling of outer PlaceHolderVars within subqueries (Tom Lane)

    This bug concerns sub-SELECTs that reference variables coming from the nullable side of an outer join of the surrounding query. In 9.1, queries affected by this bug would fail with "ERROR: Upper-level PlaceHolderVar found where not expected". But in 9.0 and 8.4, you'd silently get possibly-wrong answers, since the value transmitted into the subquery wouldn't go to null when it should.

  • Fix planning of UNION ALL subqueries with output columns that are not simple variables (Tom Lane)

    Planning of such cases got noticeably worse in 9.1 as a result of a misguided fix for "MergeAppend child's targetlist doesn't match MergeAppend" errors. Revert that fix and do it another way.

  • Fix slow session startup when pg_attribute is very large (Tom Lane)

    If pg_attribute exceeds one-fourth of shared_buffers, cache rebuilding code that is sometimes needed during session start would trigger the synchronized-scan logic, causing it to take many times longer than normal. The problem was particularly acute if many new sessions were starting at once.

  • Ensure sequential scans check for query cancel reasonably often (Merlin Moncure)

    A scan encountering many consecutive pages that contain no live tuples would not respond to interrupts meanwhile.

  • Ensure the Windows implementation of PGSemaphoreLock() clears ImmediateInterruptOK before returning (Tom Lane)

    This oversight meant that a query-cancel interrupt received later in the same query could be accepted at an unsafe time, with unpredictable but not good consequences.

  • Show whole-row variables safely when printing views or rules (Abbas Butt, Tom Lane)

    Corner cases involving ambiguous names (that is, the name could be either a table or column name of the query) were printed in an ambiguous way, risking that the view or rule would be interpreted differently after dump and reload. Avoid the ambiguous case by attaching a no-op cast.

  • Fix COPY FROM to properly handle null marker strings that correspond to invalid encoding (Tom Lane)

    A null marker string such as E'\\0' should work, and did work in the past, but the case got broken in 8.4.

  • Fix EXPLAIN VERBOSE for writable CTEs containing RETURNING clauses (Tom Lane)

  • Fix PREPARE TRANSACTION to work correctly in the presence of advisory locks (Tom Lane)

    Historically, PREPARE TRANSACTION has simply ignored any session-level advisory locks the session holds, but this case was accidentally broken in 9.1.

  • Fix truncation of unlogged tables (Robert Haas)

  • Ignore missing schemas during non-interactive assignments of search_path (Tom Lane)

    This re-aligns 9.1's behavior with that of older branches. Previously 9.1 would throw an error for nonexistent schemas mentioned in search_path settings obtained from places such as ALTER DATABASE SET.

  • Fix bugs with temporary or transient tables used in extension scripts (Tom Lane)

    This includes cases such as a rewriting ALTER TABLE within an extension update script, since that uses a transient table behind the scenes.

  • Ensure autovacuum worker processes perform stack depth checking properly (Heikki Linnakangas)

    Previously, infinite recursion in a function invoked by auto-ANALYZE could crash worker processes.

  • Fix logging collector to not lose log coherency under high load (Andrew Dunstan)

    The collector previously could fail to reassemble large messages if it got too busy.

  • Fix logging collector to ensure it will restart file rotation after receiving SIGHUP (Tom Lane)

  • Fix "too many LWLocks taken" failure in GiST indexes (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Fix WAL replay logic for GIN indexes to not fail if the index was subsequently dropped (Tom Lane)

  • Correctly detect SSI conflicts of prepared transactions after a crash (Dan Ports)

  • Avoid synchronous replication delay when committing a transaction that only modified temporary tables (Heikki Linnakangas)

    In such a case the transaction's commit record need not be flushed to standby servers, but some of the code didn't know that and waited for it to happen anyway.

  • Fix error handling in pg_basebackup (Thomas Ogrisegg, Fujii Masao)

  • Fix walsender to not go into a busy loop if connection is terminated (Fujii Masao)

  • Fix memory leak in PL/pgSQL's RETURN NEXT command (Joe Conway)

  • Fix PL/pgSQL's GET DIAGNOSTICS command when the target is the function's first variable (Tom Lane)

  • Ensure that PL/Perl package-qualifies the _TD variable (Alex Hunsaker)

    This bug caused trigger invocations to fail when they are nested within a function invocation that changes the current package.

  • Fix PL/Python functions returning composite types to accept a string for their result value (Jan Urbanski)

    This case was accidentally broken by the 9.1 additions to allow a composite result value to be supplied in other formats, such as dictionaries.

  • Fix potential access off the end of memory in psql's expanded display (\x) mode (Peter Eisentraut)

  • Fix several performance problems in pg_dump when the database contains many objects (Jeff Janes, Tom Lane)

    pg_dump could get very slow if the database contained many schemas, or if many objects are in dependency loops, or if there are many owned sequences.

  • Fix memory and file descriptor leaks in pg_restore when reading a directory-format archive (Peter Eisentraut)

  • Fix pg_upgrade for the case that a database stored in a non-default tablespace contains a table in the cluster's default tablespace (Bruce Momjian)

  • In ecpg, fix rare memory leaks and possible overwrite of one byte after the sqlca_t structure (Peter Eisentraut)

  • Fix contrib/dblink's dblink_exec() to not leak temporary database connections upon error (Tom Lane)

  • Fix contrib/dblink to report the correct connection name in error messages (Kyotaro Horiguchi)

  • Fix contrib/vacuumlo to use multiple transactions when dropping many large objects (Tim Lewis, Robert Haas, Tom Lane)

    This change avoids exceeding max_locks_per_transaction when many objects need to be dropped. The behavior can be adjusted with the new -l (limit) option.

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2012c for DST law changes in Antarctica, Armenia, Chile, Cuba, Falkland Islands, Gaza, Haiti, Hebron, Morocco, Syria, and Tokelau Islands; also historical corrections for Canada.

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Release 9.1.5 | Up | Release 9.1.3


Release 9.1.3

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.17. Release 9.1.3

Release Date: 2012-02-27

This release contains a variety of fixes from 9.1.2. For information about new features in the 9.1 major release, see Section E.20.

E.17.1. Migration to Version 9.1.3

A dump/restore is not required for those running 9.1.X.

However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 9.1.2, see Section E.18.

E.17.2. Changes

  • Require execute permission on the trigger function for CREATE TRIGGER (Robert Haas)

    This missing check could allow another user to execute a trigger function with forged input data, by installing it on a table he owns. This is only of significance for trigger functions marked SECURITY DEFINER, since otherwise trigger functions run as the table owner anyway. (CVE-2012-0866)

  • Remove arbitrary limitation on length of common name in SSL certificates (Heikki Linnakangas)

    Both libpq and the server truncated the common name extracted from an SSL certificate at 32 bytes. Normally this would cause nothing worse than an unexpected verification failure, but there are some rather-implausible scenarios in which it might allow one certificate holder to impersonate another. The victim would have to have a common name exactly 32 bytes long, and the attacker would have to persuade a trusted CA to issue a certificate in which the common name has that string as a prefix. Impersonating a server would also require some additional exploit to redirect client connections. (CVE-2012-0867)

  • Convert newlines to spaces in names written in pg_dump comments (Robert Haas)

    pg_dump was incautious about sanitizing object names that are emitted within SQL comments in its output script. A name containing a newline would at least render the script syntactically incorrect. Maliciously crafted object names could present a SQL injection risk when the script is reloaded. (CVE-2012-0868)

  • Fix btree index corruption from insertions concurrent with vacuuming (Tom Lane)

    An index page split caused by an insertion could sometimes cause a concurrently-running VACUUM to miss removing index entries that it should remove. After the corresponding table rows are removed, the dangling index entries would cause errors (such as "could not read block N in file ...") or worse, silently wrong query results after unrelated rows are re-inserted at the now-free table locations. This bug has been present since release 8.2, but occurs so infrequently that it was not diagnosed until now. If you have reason to suspect that it has happened in your database, reindexing the affected index will fix things.

  • Fix transient zeroing of shared buffers during WAL replay (Tom Lane)

    The replay logic would sometimes zero and refill a shared buffer, so that the contents were transiently invalid. In hot standby mode this can result in a query that's executing in parallel seeing garbage data. Various symptoms could result from that, but the most common one seems to be "invalid memory alloc request size".

  • Fix handling of data-modifying WITH subplans in READ COMMITTED rechecking (Tom Lane)

    A WITH clause containing INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE would crash if the parent UPDATE or DELETE command needed to be re-evaluated at one or more rows due to concurrent updates in READ COMMITTED mode.

  • Fix corner case in SSI transaction cleanup (Dan Ports)

    When finishing up a read-write serializable transaction, a crash could occur if all remaining active serializable transactions are read-only.

  • Fix postmaster to attempt restart after a hot-standby crash (Tom Lane)

    A logic error caused the postmaster to terminate, rather than attempt to restart the cluster, if any backend process crashed while operating in hot standby mode.

  • Fix CLUSTER/VACUUM FULL handling of toast values owned by recently-updated rows (Tom Lane)

    This oversight could lead to "duplicate key value violates unique constraint" errors being reported against the toast table's index during one of these commands.

  • Update per-column permissions, not only per-table permissions, when changing table owner (Tom Lane)

    Failure to do this meant that any previously granted column permissions were still shown as having been granted by the old owner. This meant that neither the new owner nor a superuser could revoke the now-untraceable-to-table-owner permissions.

  • Support foreign data wrappers and foreign servers in REASSIGN OWNED (Alvaro Herrera)

    This command failed with "unexpected classid" errors if it needed to change the ownership of any such objects.

  • Allow non-existent values for some settings in ALTER USER/DATABASE SET (Heikki Linnakangas)

    Allow default_text_search_config, default_tablespace, and temp_tablespaces to be set to names that are not known. This is because they might be known in another database where the setting is intended to be used, or for the tablespace cases because the tablespace might not be created yet. The same issue was previously recognized for search_path, and these settings now act like that one.

  • Fix "unsupported node type" error caused by COLLATE in an INSERT expression (Tom Lane)

  • Avoid crashing when we have problems deleting table files post-commit (Tom Lane)

    Dropping a table should lead to deleting the underlying disk files only after the transaction commits. In event of failure then (for instance, because of wrong file permissions) the code is supposed to just emit a warning message and go on, since it's too late to abort the transaction. This logic got broken as of release 8.4, causing such situations to result in a PANIC and an unrestartable database.

  • Recover from errors occurring during WAL replay of DROP TABLESPACE (Tom Lane)

    Replay will attempt to remove the tablespace's directories, but there are various reasons why this might fail (for example, incorrect ownership or permissions on those directories). Formerly the replay code would panic, rendering the database unrestartable without manual intervention. It seems better to log the problem and continue, since the only consequence of failure to remove the directories is some wasted disk space.

  • Fix race condition in logging AccessExclusiveLocks for hot standby (Simon Riggs)

    Sometimes a lock would be logged as being held by "transaction zero". This is at least known to produce assertion failures on slave servers, and might be the cause of more serious problems.

  • Track the OID counter correctly during WAL replay, even when it wraps around (Tom Lane)

    Previously the OID counter would remain stuck at a high value until the system exited replay mode. The practical consequences of that are usually nil, but there are scenarios wherein a standby server that's been promoted to master might take a long time to advance the OID counter to a reasonable value once values are needed.

  • Prevent emitting misleading "consistent recovery state reached" log message at the beginning of crash recovery (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Fix initial value of pg_stat_replication.replay_location (Fujii Masao)

    Previously, the value shown would be wrong until at least one WAL record had been replayed.

  • Fix regular expression back-references with * attached (Tom Lane)

    Rather than enforcing an exact string match, the code would effectively accept any string that satisfies the pattern sub-expression referenced by the back-reference symbol.

    A similar problem still afflicts back-references that are embedded in a larger quantified expression, rather than being the immediate subject of the quantifier. This will be addressed in a future PostgreSQL release.

  • Fix recently-introduced memory leak in processing of inet/cidr values (Heikki Linnakangas)

    A patch in the December 2011 releases of PostgreSQL caused memory leakage in these operations, which could be significant in scenarios such as building a btree index on such a column.

  • Fix planner's ability to push down index-expression restrictions through UNION ALL (Tom Lane)

    This type of optimization was inadvertently disabled by a fix for another problem in 9.1.2.

  • Fix planning of WITH clauses referenced in UPDATE/DELETE on an inherited table (Tom Lane)

    This bug led to "could not find plan for CTE" failures.

  • Fix GIN cost estimation to handle column IN (...) index conditions (Marti Raudsepp)

    This oversight would usually lead to crashes if such a condition could be used with a GIN index.

  • Prevent assertion failure when exiting a session with an open, failed transaction (Tom Lane)

    This bug has no impact on normal builds with asserts not enabled.

  • Fix dangling pointer after CREATE TABLE AS/SELECT INTO in a SQL-language function (Tom Lane)

    In most cases this only led to an assertion failure in assert-enabled builds, but worse consequences seem possible.

  • Avoid double close of file handle in syslogger on Windows (MauMau)

    Ordinarily this error was invisible, but it would cause an exception when running on a debug version of Windows.

  • Fix I/O-conversion-related memory leaks in plpgsql (Andres Freund, Jan Urbanski, Tom Lane)

    Certain operations would leak memory until the end of the current function.

  • Work around bug in perl's SvPVutf8() function (Andrew Dunstan)

    This function crashes when handed a typeglob or certain read-only objects such as $^V. Make plperl avoid passing those to it.

  • In pg_dump, don't dump contents of an extension's configuration tables if the extension itself is not being dumped (Tom Lane)

  • Improve pg_dump's handling of inherited table columns (Tom Lane)

    pg_dump mishandled situations where a child column has a different default expression than its parent column. If the default is textually identical to the parent's default, but not actually the same (for instance, because of schema search path differences) it would not be recognized as different, so that after dump and restore the child would be allowed to inherit the parent's default. Child columns that are NOT NULL where their parent is not could also be restored subtly incorrectly.

  • Fix pg_restore's direct-to-database mode for INSERT-style table data (Tom Lane)

    Direct-to-database restores from archive files made with --inserts or --column-inserts options fail when using pg_restore from a release dated September or December 2011, as a result of an oversight in a fix for another problem. The archive file itself is not at fault, and text-mode output is okay.

  • Teach pg_upgrade to handle renaming of plpython's shared library (Bruce Momjian)

    Upgrading a pre-9.1 database that included plpython would fail because of this oversight.

  • Allow pg_upgrade to process tables containing regclass columns (Bruce Momjian)

    Since pg_upgrade now takes care to preserve pg_class OIDs, there was no longer any reason for this restriction.

  • Make libpq ignore ENOTDIR errors when looking for an SSL client certificate file (Magnus Hagander)

    This allows SSL connections to be established, though without a certificate, even when the user's home directory is set to something like /dev/null.

  • Fix some more field alignment issues in ecpg's SQLDA area (Zoltan Boszormenyi)

  • Allow AT option in ecpg DEALLOCATE statements (Michael Meskes)

    The infrastructure to support this has been there for awhile, but through an oversight there was still an error check rejecting the case.

  • Do not use the variable name when defining a varchar structure in ecpg (Michael Meskes)

  • Fix contrib/auto_explain's JSON output mode to produce valid JSON (Andrew Dunstan)

    The output used brackets at the top level, when it should have used braces.

  • Fix error in contrib/intarray's int[] & int[] operator (Guillaume Lelarge)

    If the smallest integer the two input arrays have in common is 1, and there are smaller values in either array, then 1 would be incorrectly omitted from the result.

  • Fix error detection in contrib/pgcrypto's encrypt_iv() and decrypt_iv() (Marko Kreen)

    These functions failed to report certain types of invalid-input errors, and would instead return random garbage values for incorrect input.

  • Fix one-byte buffer overrun in contrib/test_parser (Paul Guyot)

    The code would try to read one more byte than it should, which would crash in corner cases. Since contrib/test_parser is only example code, this is not a security issue in itself, but bad example code is still bad.

  • Use __sync_lock_test_and_set() for spinlocks on ARM, if available (Martin Pitt)

    This function replaces our previous use of the SWPB instruction, which is deprecated and not available on ARMv6 and later. Reports suggest that the old code doesn't fail in an obvious way on recent ARM boards, but simply doesn't interlock concurrent accesses, leading to bizarre failures in multiprocess operation.

  • Use -fexcess-precision=standard option when building with gcc versions that accept it (Andrew Dunstan)

    This prevents assorted scenarios wherein recent versions of gcc will produce creative results.

  • Allow use of threaded Python on FreeBSD (Chris Rees)

    Our configure script previously believed that this combination wouldn't work; but FreeBSD fixed the problem, so remove that error check.

  • Allow MinGW builds to use standardly-named OpenSSL libraries (Tomasz Ostrowski)

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Release 9.1.2

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E.18. Release 9.1.2

Release Date: 2011-12-05

This release contains a variety of fixes from 9.1.1. For information about new features in the 9.1 major release, see Section E.20.

E.18.1. Migration to Version 9.1.2

A dump/restore is not required for those running 9.1.X.

However, a longstanding error was discovered in the definition of the information_schema.referential_constraints view. If you rely on correct results from that view, you should replace its definition as explained in the first changelog item below.

Also, if you use the citext data type, and you upgraded from a previous major release by running pg_upgrade, you should run CREATE EXTENSION citext FROM unpackaged to avoid collation-related failures in citext operations. The same is necessary if you restore a dump from a pre-9.1 database that contains an instance of the citext data type. If you've already run the CREATE EXTENSION command before upgrading to 9.1.2, you will instead need to do manual catalog updates as explained in the second changelog item.

E.18.2. Changes

  • Fix bugs in information_schema.referential_constraints view (Tom Lane)

    This view was being insufficiently careful about matching the foreign-key constraint to the depended-on primary or unique key constraint. That could result in failure to show a foreign key constraint at all, or showing it multiple times, or claiming that it depends on a different constraint than the one it really does.

    Since the view definition is installed by initdb, merely upgrading will not fix the problem. If you need to fix this in an existing installation, you can (as a superuser) drop the information_schema schema then re-create it by sourcing SHAREDIR/information_schema.sql. (Run pg_config --sharedir if you're uncertain where SHAREDIR is.) This must be repeated in each database to be fixed.

  • Make contrib/citext's upgrade script fix collations of citext columns and indexes (Tom Lane)

    Existing citext columns and indexes aren't correctly marked as being of a collatable data type during pg_upgrade from a pre-9.1 server, or when a pre-9.1 dump containing the citext type is loaded into a 9.1 server. That leads to operations on these columns failing with errors such as "could not determine which collation to use for string comparison". This change allows them to be fixed by the same script that upgrades the citext module into a proper 9.1 extension during CREATE EXTENSION citext FROM unpackaged.

    If you have a previously-upgraded database that is suffering from this problem, and you already ran the CREATE EXTENSION command, you can manually run (as superuser) the UPDATE commands found at the end of SHAREDIR/extension/citext--unpackaged--1.0.sql. (Run pg_config --sharedir if you're uncertain where SHAREDIR is.) There is no harm in doing this again if unsure.

  • Fix possible crash during UPDATE or DELETE that joins to the output of a scalar-returning function (Tom Lane)

    A crash could only occur if the target row had been concurrently updated, so this problem surfaced only intermittently.

  • Fix incorrect replay of WAL records for GIN index updates (Tom Lane)

    This could result in transiently failing to find index entries after a crash, or on a hot-standby server. The problem would be repaired by the next VACUUM of the index, however.

  • Fix TOAST-related data corruption during CREATE TABLE dest AS SELECT * FROM src or INSERT INTO dest SELECT * FROM src (Tom Lane)

    If a table has been modified by ALTER TABLE ADD COLUMN, attempts to copy its data verbatim to another table could produce corrupt results in certain corner cases. The problem can only manifest in this precise form in 8.4 and later, but we patched earlier versions as well in case there are other code paths that could trigger the same bug.

  • Fix possible failures during hot standby startup (Simon Riggs)

  • Start hot standby faster when initial snapshot is incomplete (Simon Riggs)

  • Fix race condition during toast table access from stale syscache entries (Tom Lane)

    The typical symptom was transient errors like "missing chunk number 0 for toast value NNNNN in pg_toast_2619", where the cited toast table would always belong to a system catalog.

  • Track dependencies of functions on items used in parameter default expressions (Tom Lane)

    Previously, a referenced object could be dropped without having dropped or modified the function, leading to misbehavior when the function was used. Note that merely installing this update will not fix the missing dependency entries; to do that, you'd need to CREATE OR REPLACE each such function afterwards. If you have functions whose defaults depend on non-built-in objects, doing so is recommended.

  • Fix incorrect management of placeholder variables in nestloop joins (Tom Lane)

    This bug is known to lead to "variable not found in subplan target list" planner errors, and could possibly result in wrong query output when outer joins are involved.

  • Fix window functions that sort by expressions involving aggregates (Tom Lane)

    Previously these could fail with "could not find pathkey item to sort" planner errors.

  • Fix "MergeAppend child's targetlist doesn't match MergeAppend" planner errors (Tom Lane)

  • Fix index matching for operators with both collatable and noncollatable inputs (Tom Lane)

    In 9.1.0, an indexable operator that has a non-collatable left-hand input type and a collatable right-hand input type would not be recognized as matching the left-hand column's index. An example is the hstore ? text operator.

  • Allow inlining of set-returning SQL functions with multiple OUT parameters (Tom Lane)

  • Don't trust deferred-unique indexes for join removal (Tom Lane and Marti Raudsepp)

    A deferred uniqueness constraint might not hold intra-transaction, so assuming that it does could give incorrect query results.

  • Make DatumGetInetP() unpack inet datums that have a 1-byte header, and add a new macro, DatumGetInetPP(), that does not (Heikki Linnakangas)

    This change affects no core code, but might prevent crashes in add-on code that expects DatumGetInetP() to produce an unpacked datum as per usual convention.

  • Improve locale support in money type's input and output (Tom Lane)

    Aside from not supporting all standard lc_monetary formatting options, the input and output functions were inconsistent, meaning there were locales in which dumped money values could not be re-read.

  • Don't let transform_null_equals affect CASE foo WHEN NULL ... constructs (Heikki Linnakangas)

    transform_null_equals is only supposed to affect foo = NULL expressions written directly by the user, not equality checks generated internally by this form of CASE.

  • Change foreign-key trigger creation order to better support self-referential foreign keys (Tom Lane)

    For a cascading foreign key that references its own table, a row update will fire both the ON UPDATE trigger and the CHECK trigger as one event. The ON UPDATE trigger must execute first, else the CHECK will check a non-final state of the row and possibly throw an inappropriate error. However, the firing order of these triggers is determined by their names, which generally sort in creation order since the triggers have auto-generated names following the convention "RI_ConstraintTrigger_NNNN". A proper fix would require modifying that convention, which we will do in 9.2, but it seems risky to change it in existing releases. So this patch just changes the creation order of the triggers. Users encountering this type of error should drop and re-create the foreign key constraint to get its triggers into the right order.

  • Fix IF EXISTS to work correctly in DROP OPERATOR FAMILY (Robert Haas)

  • Disallow dropping of an extension from within its own script (Tom Lane)

    This prevents odd behavior in case of incorrect management of extension dependencies.

  • Don't mark auto-generated types as extension members (Robert Haas)

    Relation rowtypes and automatically-generated array types do not need to have their own extension membership entries in pg_depend, and creating such entries complicates matters for extension upgrades.

  • Cope with invalid pre-existing search_path settings during CREATE EXTENSION (Tom Lane)

  • Avoid floating-point underflow while tracking buffer allocation rate (Greg Matthews)

    While harmless in itself, on certain platforms this would result in annoying kernel log messages.

  • Prevent autovacuum transactions from running in serializable mode (Tom Lane)

    Autovacuum formerly used the cluster-wide default transaction isolation level, but there is no need for it to use anything higher than READ COMMITTED, and using SERIALIZABLE could result in unnecessary delays for other processes.

  • Ensure walsender processes respond promptly to SIGTERM (Magnus Hagander)

  • Exclude postmaster.opts from base backups (Magnus Hagander)

  • Preserve configuration file name and line number values when starting child processes under Windows (Tom Lane)

    Formerly, these would not be displayed correctly in the pg_settings view.

  • Fix incorrect field alignment in ecpg's SQLDA area (Zoltan Boszormenyi)

  • Preserve blank lines within commands in psql's command history (Robert Haas)

    The former behavior could cause problems if an empty line was removed from within a string literal, for example.

  • Avoid platform-specific infinite loop in pg_dump (Steve Singer)

  • Fix compression of plain-text output format in pg_dump (Adrian Klaver and Tom Lane)

    pg_dump has historically understood -Z with no -F switch to mean that it should emit a gzip-compressed version of its plain text output. Restore that behavior.

  • Fix pg_dump to dump user-defined casts between auto-generated types, such as table rowtypes (Tom Lane)

  • Fix missed quoting of foreign server names in pg_dump (Tom Lane)

  • Assorted fixes for pg_upgrade (Bruce Momjian)

    Handle exclusion constraints correctly, avoid failures on Windows, don't complain about mismatched toast table names in 8.4 databases.

  • In PL/pgSQL, allow foreign tables to define row types (Alexander Soudakov)

  • Fix up conversions of PL/Perl functions' results (Alex Hunsaker and Tom Lane)

    Restore the pre-9.1 behavior that PL/Perl functions returning void ignore the result value of their last Perl statement; 9.1.0 would throw an error if that statement returned a reference. Also, make sure it works to return a string value for a composite type, so long as the string meets the type's input format. In addition, throw errors for attempts to return Perl arrays or hashes when the function's declared result type is not an array or composite type, respectively. (Pre-9.1 versions rather uselessly returned strings like ARRAY(0x221a9a0) or HASH(0x221aa90) in such cases.)

  • Ensure PL/Perl strings are always correctly UTF8-encoded (Amit Khandekar and Alex Hunsaker)

  • Use the preferred version of xsubpp to build PL/Perl, not necessarily the operating system's main copy (David Wheeler and Alex Hunsaker)

  • Correctly propagate SQLSTATE in PL/Python exceptions (Mika Eloranta and Jan Urbanski)

  • Do not install PL/Python extension files for Python major versions other than the one built against (Peter Eisentraut)

  • Change all the contrib extension script files to report a useful error message if they are fed to psql (Andrew Dunstan and Tom Lane)

    This should help teach people about the new method of using CREATE EXTENSION to load these files. In most cases, sourcing the scripts directly would fail anyway, but with harder-to-interpret messages.

  • Fix incorrect coding in contrib/dict_int and contrib/dict_xsyn (Tom Lane)

    Some functions incorrectly assumed that memory returned by palloc() is guaranteed zeroed.

  • Remove contrib/sepgsql tests from the regular regression test mechanism (Tom Lane)

    Since these tests require root privileges for setup, they're impractical to run automatically. Switch over to a manual approach instead, and provide a testing script to help with that.

  • Fix assorted errors in contrib/unaccent's configuration file parsing (Tom Lane)

  • Honor query cancel interrupts promptly in pgstatindex() (Robert Haas)

  • Fix incorrect quoting of log file name in Mac OS X start script (Sidar Lopez)

  • Revert unintentional enabling of WAL_DEBUG (Robert Haas)

    Fortunately, as debugging tools go, this one is pretty cheap; but it's not intended to be enabled by default, so revert.

  • Ensure VPATH builds properly install all server header files (Peter Eisentraut)

  • Shorten file names reported in verbose error messages (Peter Eisentraut)

    Regular builds have always reported just the name of the C file containing the error message call, but VPATH builds formerly reported an absolute path name.

  • Fix interpretation of Windows timezone names for Central America (Tom Lane)

    Map "Central America Standard Time" to CST6, not CST6CDT, because DST is generally not observed anywhere in Central America.

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2011n for DST law changes in Brazil, Cuba, Fiji, Palestine, Russia, and Samoa; also historical corrections for Alaska and British East Africa.

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Release 9.1.1

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E.19. Release 9.1.1

Release Date: 2011-09-26

This release contains a small number of fixes from 9.1.0. For information about new features in the 9.1 major release, see Section E.20.

E.19.1. Migration to Version 9.1.1

A dump/restore is not required for those running 9.1.X.

E.19.2. Changes

  • Make pg_options_to_table return NULL for an option with no value (Tom Lane)

    Previously such cases would result in a server crash.

  • Fix memory leak at end of a GiST index scan (Tom Lane)

    Commands that perform many separate GiST index scans, such as verification of a new GiST-based exclusion constraint on a table already containing many rows, could transiently require large amounts of memory due to this leak.

  • Fix explicit reference to pg_temp schema in CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE (Robert Haas)

    This used to be allowed, but failed in 9.1.0.

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Release 9.1

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E.20. Release 9.1

Release Date: 2011-09-12

E.20.1. Overview

This release shows PostgreSQL moving beyond the traditional relational-database feature set with new, ground-breaking functionality that is unique to PostgreSQL. The streaming replication feature introduced in release 9.0 is significantly enhanced by adding a synchronous-replication option, streaming backups, and monitoring improvements. Major enhancements include:

  • Allow synchronous replication

  • Add support for foreign tables

  • Add per-column collation support

  • Add extensions which simplify packaging of additions to PostgreSQL

  • Add a true serializable isolation level

  • Support unlogged tables using the UNLOGGED option in CREATE TABLE

  • Allow data-modification commands (INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE) in WITH clauses

  • Add nearest-neighbor (order-by-operator) searching to GiST indexes

  • Add a SECURITY LABEL command and support for SELinux permissions control

  • Update the PL/Python server-side language

The above items are explained in more detail in the sections below.

E.20.2. Migration to Version 9.1

A dump/restore using pg_dump, or use of pg_upgrade, is required for those wishing to migrate data from any previous release.

Version 9.1 contains a number of changes that may affect compatibility with previous releases. Observe the following incompatibilities:

E.20.2.1. Strings

  • Change the default value of standard_conforming_strings to on (Robert Haas)

    By default, backslashes are now ordinary characters in string literals, not escape characters. This change removes a long-standing incompatibility with the SQL standard. escape_string_warning has produced warnings about this usage for years. E'' strings are the proper way to embed backslash escapes in strings and are unaffected by this change.

    Warning

    This change can break applications that are not expecting it and do their own string escaping according to the old rules. The consequences could be as severe as introducing SQL-injection security holes. Be sure to test applications that are exposed to untrusted input, to ensure that they correctly handle single quotes and backslashes in text strings.

E.20.2.2. Casting

  • Disallow function-style and attribute-style data type casts for composite types (Tom Lane)

    For example, disallow composite_value.text and text(composite_value). Unintentional uses of this syntax have frequently resulted in bug reports; although it was not a bug, it seems better to go back to rejecting such expressions. The CAST and :: syntaxes are still available for use when a cast of an entire composite value is actually intended.

  • Tighten casting checks for domains based on arrays (Tom Lane)

    When a domain is based on an array type, it is allowed to "look through" the domain type to access the array elements, including subscripting the domain value to fetch or assign an element. Assignment to an element of such a domain value, for instance via UPDATE ... SET domaincol[5] = ..., will now result in rechecking the domain type's constraints, whereas before the checks were skipped.

E.20.2.3. Arrays

  • Change string_to_array() to return an empty array for a zero-length string (Pavel Stehule)

    Previously this returned a null value.

  • Change string_to_array() so a NULL separator splits the string into characters (Pavel Stehule)

    Previously this returned a null value.

E.20.2.4. Object Modification

  • Fix improper checks for before/after triggers (Tom Lane)

    Triggers can now be fired in three cases: BEFORE, AFTER, or INSTEAD OF some action. Trigger function authors should verify that their logic behaves sanely in all three cases.

  • Require superuser or CREATEROLE permissions in order to set comments on roles (Tom Lane)

E.20.2.5. Server Settings

  • Change pg_last_xlog_receive_location() so it never moves backwards (Fujii Masao)

    Previously, the value of pg_last_xlog_receive_location() could move backward when streaming replication is restarted.

  • Have logging of replication connections honor log_connections (Magnus Hagander)

    Previously, replication connections were always logged.

E.20.2.6. PL/pgSQL Server-Side Language

  • Change PL/pgSQL's RAISE command without parameters to be catchable by the attached exception block (Piyush Newe)

    Previously RAISE in a code block was always scoped to an attached exception block, so it was uncatchable at the same scope.

  • Adjust PL/pgSQL's error line numbering code to be consistent with other PLs (Pavel Stehule)

    Previously, PL/pgSQL would ignore (not count) an empty line at the start of the function body. Since this was inconsistent with all other languages, the special case was removed.

  • Make PL/pgSQL complain about conflicting IN and OUT parameter names (Tom Lane)

    Formerly, the collision was not detected, and the name would just silently refer to only the OUT parameter.

  • Type modifiers of PL/pgSQL variables are now visible to the SQL parser (Tom Lane)

    A type modifier (such as a varchar length limit) attached to a PL/pgSQL variable was formerly enforced during assignments, but was ignored for all other purposes. Such variables will now behave more like table columns declared with the same modifier. This is not expected to make any visible difference in most cases, but it could result in subtle changes for some SQL commands issued by PL/pgSQL functions.

E.20.2.7. Contrib

  • All contrib modules are now installed with CREATE EXTENSION rather than by manually invoking their SQL scripts (Dimitri Fontaine, Tom Lane)

    To update an existing database containing the 9.0 version of a contrib module, use CREATE EXTENSION ... FROM unpackaged to wrap the existing contrib module's objects into an extension. When updating from a pre-9.0 version, drop the contrib module's objects using its old uninstall script, then use CREATE EXTENSION.

E.20.2.8. Other Incompatibilities

  • Make pg_stat_reset() reset all database-level statistics (Tomas Vondra)

    Some pg_stat_database counters were not being reset.

  • Fix some information_schema.triggers column names to match the new SQL-standard names (Dean Rasheed)

  • Treat ECPG cursor names as case-insensitive (Zoltan Boszormenyi)

E.20.3. Changes

Below you will find a detailed account of the changes between PostgreSQL 9.1 and the previous major release.

E.20.3.1. Server

E.20.3.1.1. Performance

  • Support unlogged tables using the UNLOGGED option in CREATE TABLE (Robert Haas)

    Such tables provide better update performance than regular tables, but are not crash-safe: their contents are automatically cleared in case of a server crash. Their contents do not propagate to replication slaves, either.

  • Allow FULL OUTER JOIN to be implemented as a hash join, and allow either side of a LEFT OUTER JOIN or RIGHT OUTER JOIN to be hashed (Tom Lane)

    Previously FULL OUTER JOIN could only be implemented as a merge join, and LEFT OUTER JOIN and RIGHT OUTER JOIN could hash only the nullable side of the join. These changes provide additional query optimization possibilities.

  • Merge duplicate fsync requests (Robert Haas, Greg Smith)

    This greatly improves performance under heavy write loads.

  • Improve performance of commit_siblings (Greg Smith)

    This allows the use of commit_siblings with less overhead.

  • Reduce the memory requirement for large ispell dictionaries (Pavel Stehule, Tom Lane)

  • Avoid leaving data files open after "blind writes" (Alvaro Herrera)

    This fixes scenarios in which backends might hold files open long after they were deleted, preventing the kernel from reclaiming disk space.

E.20.3.1.2. Optimizer

  • Allow inheritance table scans to return meaningfully-sorted results (Greg Stark, Hans-Jurgen Schonig, Robert Haas, Tom Lane)

    This allows better optimization of queries that use ORDER BY, LIMIT, or MIN/MAX with inherited tables.

  • Improve GIN index scan cost estimation (Teodor Sigaev)

  • Improve cost estimation for aggregates and window functions (Tom Lane)

E.20.3.1.3. Authentication

  • Support host names and host suffixes (e.g. .example.com) in pg_hba.conf (Peter Eisentraut)

    Previously only host IP addresses and CIDR values were supported.

  • Support the key word all in the host column of pg_hba.conf (Peter Eisentraut)

    Previously people used 0.0.0.0/0 or ::/0 for this.

  • Reject local lines in pg_hba.conf on platforms that don't support Unix-socket connections (Magnus Hagander)

    Formerly, such lines were silently ignored, which could be surprising. This makes the behavior more like other unsupported cases.

  • Allow GSSAPI to be used to authenticate to servers via SSPI (Christian Ullrich)

    Specifically this allows Unix-based GSSAPI clients to do SSPI authentication with Windows servers.

  • ident authentication over local sockets is now known as peer (Magnus Hagander)

    The old term is still accepted for backward compatibility, but since the two methods are fundamentally different, it seemed better to adopt different names for them.

  • Rewrite peer authentication to avoid use of credential control messages (Tom Lane)

    This change makes the peer authentication code simpler and better-performing. However, it requires the platform to provide the getpeereid function or an equivalent socket operation. So far as is known, the only platform for which peer authentication worked before and now will not is pre-5.0 NetBSD.

E.20.3.1.4. Monitoring

  • Add details to the logging of restartpoints and checkpoints, which is controlled by log_checkpoints (Fujii Masao, Greg Smith)

    New details include WAL file and sync activity.

  • Add log_file_mode which controls the permissions on log files created by the logging collector (Martin Pihlak)

  • Reduce the default maximum line length for syslog logging to 900 bytes plus prefixes (Noah Misch)

    This avoids truncation of long log lines on syslog implementations that have a 1KB length limit, rather than the more common 2KB.

E.20.3.1.5. Statistical Views

  • Add client_hostname column to pg_stat_activity (Peter Eisentraut)

    Previously only the client address was reported.

  • Add pg_stat_xact_* statistics functions and views (Joel Jacobson)

    These are like the database-wide statistics counter views, but reflect counts for only the current transaction.

  • Add time of last reset in database-level and background writer statistics views (Tomas Vondra)

  • Add columns showing the number of vacuum and analyze operations in pg_stat_*_tables views (Magnus Hagander)

  • Add buffers_backend_fsync column to pg_stat_bgwriter (Greg Smith)

    This new column counts the number of times a backend fsyncs a buffer.

E.20.3.1.6. Server Settings

  • Provide auto-tuning of wal_buffers (Greg Smith)

    By default, the value of wal_buffers is now chosen automatically based on the value of shared_buffers.

  • Increase the maximum values for deadlock_timeout, log_min_duration_statement, and log_autovacuum_min_duration (Peter Eisentraut)

    The maximum value for each of these parameters was previously only about 35 minutes. Much larger values are now allowed.

E.20.3.2. Replication and Recovery

E.20.3.2.1. Streaming Replication and Continuous Archiving

  • Allow synchronous replication (Simon Riggs, Fujii Masao)

    This allows the primary server to wait for a standby to write a transaction's information to disk before acknowledging the commit. One standby at a time can take the role of the synchronous standby, as controlled by the synchronous_standby_names setting. Synchronous replication can be enabled or disabled on a per-transaction basis using the synchronous_commit setting.

  • Add protocol support for sending file system backups to standby servers using the streaming replication network connection (Magnus Hagander, Heikki Linnakangas)

    This avoids the requirement of manually transferring a file system backup when setting up a standby server.

  • Add replication_timeout setting (Fujii Masao, Heikki Linnakangas)

    Replication connections that are idle for more than the replication_timeout interval will be terminated automatically. Formerly, a failed connection was typically not detected until the TCP timeout elapsed, which is inconveniently long in many situations.

  • Add command-line tool pg_basebackup for creating a new standby server or database backup (Magnus Hagander)

  • Add a replication permission for roles (Magnus Hagander)

    This is a read-only permission used for streaming replication. It allows a non-superuser role to be used for replication connections. Previously only superusers could initiate replication connections; superusers still have this permission by default.

E.20.3.2.2. Replication Monitoring

  • Add system view pg_stat_replication which displays activity of WAL sender processes (Itagaki Takahiro, Simon Riggs)

    This reports the status of all connected standby servers.

  • Add monitoring function pg_last_xact_replay_timestamp() (Fujii Masao)

    This returns the time at which the primary generated the most recent commit or abort record applied on the standby.

E.20.3.2.3. Hot Standby

  • Add configuration parameter hot_standby_feedback to enable standbys to postpone cleanup of old row versions on the primary (Simon Riggs)

    This helps avoid canceling long-running queries on the standby.

  • Add the pg_stat_database_conflicts system view to show queries that have been canceled and the reason (Magnus Hagander)

    Cancellations can occur because of dropped tablespaces, lock timeouts, old snapshots, pinned buffers, and deadlocks.

  • Add a conflicts count to pg_stat_database (Magnus Hagander)

    This is the number of conflicts that occurred in the database.

  • Increase the maximum values for max_standby_archive_delay and max_standby_streaming_delay

    The maximum value for each of these parameters was previously only about 35 minutes. Much larger values are now allowed.

  • Add ERRCODE_T_R_DATABASE_DROPPED error code to report recovery conflicts due to dropped databases (Tatsuo Ishii)

    This is useful for connection pooling software.

E.20.3.2.4. Recovery Control

  • Add functions to control streaming replication replay (Simon Riggs)

    The new functions are pg_xlog_replay_pause(),
pg_xlog_replay_resume(),
and the status function pg_is_xlog_replay_paused().

  • Add recovery.conf setting pause_at_recovery_target to pause recovery at target (Simon Riggs)

    This allows a recovery server to be queried to check whether the recovery point is the one desired.

  • Add the ability to create named restore points using pg_create_restore_point() (Jaime Casanova)

    These named restore points can be specified as recovery targets using the new recovery.conf setting recovery_target_name.

  • Allow standby recovery to switch to a new timeline automatically (Heikki Linnakangas)

    Now standby servers scan the archive directory for new timelines periodically.

  • Add restart_after_crash setting which disables automatic server restart after a backend crash (Robert Haas)

    This allows external cluster management software to control whether the database server restarts or not.

  • Allow recovery.conf to use the same quoting behavior as postgresql.conf (Dimitri Fontaine)

    Previously all values had to be quoted.

E.20.3.3. Queries

  • Add a true serializable isolation level (Kevin Grittner, Dan Ports)

    Previously, asking for serializable isolation guaranteed only that a single MVCC snapshot would be used for the entire transaction, which allowed certain documented anomalies. The old snapshot isolation behavior is still available by requesting the REPEATABLE READ isolation level.

  • Allow data-modification commands (INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE) in WITH clauses (Marko Tiikkaja, Hitoshi Harada)

    These commands can use RETURNING to pass data up to the containing query.

  • Allow WITH clauses to be attached to INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE statements (Marko Tiikkaja, Hitoshi Harada)

  • Allow non-GROUP BY columns in the query target list when the primary key is specified in the GROUP BY clause (Peter Eisentraut)

    The SQL standard allows this behavior, and because of the primary key, the result is unambiguous.

  • Allow use of the key word DISTINCT in UNION/INTERSECT/EXCEPT clauses (Tom Lane)

    DISTINCT is the default behavior so use of this key word is redundant, but the SQL standard allows it.

  • Fix ordinary queries with rules to use the same snapshot behavior as EXPLAIN ANALYZE (Marko Tiikkaja)

    Previously EXPLAIN ANALYZE used slightly different snapshot timing for queries involving rules. The EXPLAIN ANALYZE behavior was judged to be more logical.

E.20.3.3.1. Strings

  • Add per-column collation support (Peter Eisentraut, Tom Lane)

    Previously collation (the sort ordering of text strings) could only be chosen at database creation. Collation can now be set per column, domain, index, or expression, via the SQL-standard COLLATE clause.

E.20.3.4. Object Manipulation

  • Add extensions which simplify packaging of additions to PostgreSQL (Dimitri Fontaine, Tom Lane)

    Extensions are controlled by the new CREATE/ALTER/DROP EXTENSION commands. This replaces ad-hoc methods of grouping objects that are added to a PostgreSQL installation.

  • Add support for foreign tables (Shigeru Hanada, Robert Haas, Jan Urbanski, Heikki Linnakangas)

    This allows data stored outside the database to be used like native PostgreSQL-stored data. Foreign tables are currently read-only, however.

  • Allow new values to be added to an existing enum type via ALTER TYPE (Andrew Dunstan)

  • Add ALTER TYPE ... ADD/DROP/ALTER/RENAME ATTRIBUTE (Peter Eisentraut)

    This allows modification of composite types.

E.20.3.4.1. ALTER Object

  • Add RESTRICT/CASCADE to ALTER TYPE operations on typed tables (Peter Eisentraut)

    This controls ADD/DROP/ALTER/RENAME ATTRIBUTE cascading behavior.

  • Support ALTER TABLE name {OF | NOT OF} type (Noah Misch)

    This syntax allows a standalone table to be made into a typed table, or a typed table to be made standalone.

  • Add support for more object types in ALTER ... SET SCHEMA commands (Dimitri Fontaine)

    This command is now supported for conversions, operators, operator classes, operator families, text search configurations, text search dictionaries, text search parsers, and text search templates.

E.20.3.4.2. CREATE/ALTER TABLE

  • Add ALTER TABLE ... ADD UNIQUE/PRIMARY KEY USING INDEX (Gurjeet Singh)

    This allows a primary key or unique constraint to be defined using an existing unique index, including a concurrently created unique index.

  • Allow ALTER TABLE to add foreign keys without validation (Simon Riggs)

    The new option is called NOT VALID. The constraint's state can later be modified to VALIDATED and validation checks performed. Together these allow you to add a foreign key with minimal impact on read and write operations.

  • Allow ALTER TABLE ... SET DATA TYPE to avoid table rewrites in appropriate cases (Noah Misch, Robert Haas)

    For example, converting a varchar column to text no longer requires a rewrite of the table. However, increasing the length constraint on a varchar column still requires a table rewrite.

  • Add CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS syntax (Robert Haas)

    This allows table creation without causing an error if the table already exists.

  • Fix possible "tuple concurrently updated" error when two backends attempt to add an inheritance child to the same table at the same time (Robert Haas)

    ALTER TABLE now takes a stronger lock on the parent table, so that the sessions cannot try to update it simultaneously.

E.20.3.4.3. Object Permissions

  • Add a SECURITY LABEL command (KaiGai Kohei)

    This allows security labels to be assigned to objects.

E.20.3.5. Utility Operations

  • Add transaction-level advisory locks (Marko Tiikkaja)

    These are similar to the existing session-level advisory locks, but such locks are automatically released at transaction end.

  • Make TRUNCATE ... RESTART IDENTITY restart sequences transactionally (Steve Singer)

    Previously the counter could have been left out of sync if a backend crashed between the on-commit truncation activity and commit completion.

E.20.3.5.1. COPY

  • Add ENCODING option to COPY TO/FROM (Hitoshi Harada, Itagaki Takahiro)

    This allows the encoding of the COPY file to be specified separately from client encoding.

  • Add bidirectional COPY protocol support (Fujii Masao)

    This is currently only used by streaming replication.

E.20.3.5.2. EXPLAIN

  • Make EXPLAIN VERBOSE show the function call expression in a FunctionScan node (Tom Lane)

E.20.3.5.3. VACUUM

  • Add additional details to the output of VACUUM FULL VERBOSE and CLUSTER VERBOSE (Itagaki Takahiro)

    New information includes the live and dead tuple count and whether CLUSTER is using an index to rebuild.

  • Prevent autovacuum from waiting if it cannot acquire a table lock (Robert Haas)

    It will try to vacuum that table later.

E.20.3.5.4. CLUSTER

  • Allow CLUSTER to sort the table rather than scanning the index when it seems likely to be cheaper (Leonardo Francalanci)

E.20.3.5.5. Indexes

  • Add nearest-neighbor (order-by-operator) searching to GiST indexes (Teodor Sigaev, Tom Lane)

    This allows GiST indexes to quickly return the N closest values in a query with LIMIT. For example

    SELECT * FROM places ORDER BY location <-> point '(101,456)' LIMIT 10;

    finds the ten places closest to a given target point.

  • Allow GIN indexes to index null and empty values (Tom Lane)

    This allows full GIN index scans, and fixes various corner cases in which GIN scans would fail.

  • Allow GIN indexes to better recognize duplicate search entries (Tom Lane)

    This reduces the cost of index scans, especially in cases where it avoids unnecessary full index scans.

  • Fix GiST indexes to be fully crash-safe (Heikki Linnakangas)

    Previously there were rare cases where a REINDEX would be required (you would be informed).

E.20.3.6. Data Types

  • Allow numeric to use a more compact, two-byte header in common cases (Robert Haas)

    Previously all numeric values had four-byte headers; this change saves on disk storage.

  • Add support for dividing money by money (Andy Balholm)

  • Allow binary I/O on type void (Radoslaw Smogura)

  • Improve hypotenuse calculations for geometric operators (Paul Matthews)

    This avoids unnecessary overflows, and may also be more accurate.

  • Support hashing array values (Tom Lane)

    This provides additional query optimization possibilities.

  • Don't treat a composite type as sortable unless all its column types are sortable (Tom Lane)

    This avoids possible "could not identify a comparison function" failures at runtime, if it is possible to implement the query without sorting. Also, ANALYZE won't try to use inappropriate statistics-gathering methods for columns of such composite types.

E.20.3.6.1. Casting

  • Add support for casting between money and numeric (Andy Balholm)

  • Add support for casting from int4 and int8 to money (Joey Adams)

  • Allow casting a table's row type to the table's supertype if it's a typed table (Peter Eisentraut)

    This is analogous to the existing facility that allows casting a row type to a supertable's row type.

E.20.3.6.2. XML

  • Add XML function XMLEXISTS and xpath_exists() functions (Mike Fowler)

    These are used for XPath matching.

  • Add XML functions xml_is_well_formed(),
xml_is_well_formed_document(),
xml_is_well_formed_content()
(Mike Fowler)

    These check whether the input is properly-formed XML. They provide functionality that was previously available only in the deprecated contrib/xml2 module.

E.20.3.7. Functions

  • Add SQL function format(text, ...), which behaves analogously to C's printf() (Pavel Stehule, Robert Haas)

    It currently supports formats for strings, SQL literals, and SQL identifiers.

  • Add string functions concat(),
concat_ws(),
left(),
right(),
and reverse()
(Pavel Stehule)

    These improve compatibility with other database products.

  • Add function pg_read_binary_file() to read binary files (Dimitri Fontaine, Itagaki Takahiro)

  • Add a single-parameter version of function pg_read_file() to read an entire file (Dimitri Fontaine, Itagaki Takahiro)

  • Add three-parameter forms of array_to_string() and string_to_array() for null value processing control (Pavel Stehule)

E.20.3.7.1. Object Information Functions

  • Add the pg_describe_object() function (Alvaro Herrera)

    This function is used to obtain a human-readable string describing an object, based on the pg_class OID, object OID, and sub-object ID. It can be used to help interpret the contents of pg_depend.

  • Update comments for built-in operators and their underlying functions (Tom Lane)

    Functions that are meant to be used via an associated operator are now commented as such.

  • Add variable quote_all_identifiers to force the quoting of all identifiers in EXPLAIN and in system catalog functions like pg_get_viewdef() (Robert Haas)

    This makes exporting schemas to tools and other databases with different quoting rules easier.

  • Add columns to the information_schema.sequences system view (Peter Eisentraut)

    Previously, though the view existed, the columns about the sequence parameters were unimplemented.

  • Allow public as a pseudo-role name in has_table_privilege() and related functions (Alvaro Herrera)

    This allows checking for public permissions.

E.20.3.7.2. Function and Trigger Creation

  • Support INSTEAD OF triggers on views (Dean Rasheed)

    This feature can be used to implement fully updatable views.

E.20.3.8. Server-Side Languages

E.20.3.8.1. PL/pgSQL Server-Side Language

  • Add FOREACH IN ARRAY to PL/pgSQL (Pavel Stehule)

    This is more efficient and readable than previous methods of iterating through the elements of an array value.

  • Allow RAISE without parameters to be caught in the same places that could catch a RAISE ERROR from the same location (Piyush Newe)

    The previous coding threw the error from the block containing the active exception handler. The new behavior is more consistent with other DBMS products.

E.20.3.8.2. PL/Perl Server-Side Language

  • Allow generic record arguments to PL/Perl functions (Andrew Dunstan)

    PL/Perl functions can now be declared to accept type record. The behavior is the same as for any named composite type.

  • Convert PL/Perl array arguments to Perl arrays (Alexey Klyukin, Alex Hunsaker)

    String representations are still available.

  • Convert PL/Perl composite-type arguments to Perl hashes (Alexey Klyukin, Alex Hunsaker)

    String representations are still available.

E.20.3.8.3. PL/Python Server-Side Language

  • Add table function support for PL/Python (Jan Urbanski)

    PL/Python can now return multiple OUT parameters and record sets.

  • Add a validator to PL/Python (Jan Urbanski)

    This allows PL/Python functions to be syntax-checked at function creation time.

  • Allow exceptions for SQL queries in PL/Python (Jan Urbanski)

    This allows access to SQL-generated exception error codes from PL/Python exception blocks.

  • Add explicit subtransactions to PL/Python (Jan Urbanski)

  • Add PL/Python functions for quoting strings (Jan Urbanski)

    These functions are plpy.quote_ident, plpy.quote_literal, and plpy.quote_nullable.

  • Add traceback information to PL/Python errors (Jan Urbanski)

  • Report PL/Python errors from iterators with PLy_elog (Jan Urbanski)

  • Fix exception handling with Python 3 (Jan Urbanski)

    Exception classes were previously not available in plpy under Python 3.

E.20.3.9. Client Applications

  • Mark createlang and droplang as deprecated now that they just invoke extension commands (Tom Lane)

E.20.3.9.1. psql

  • Add psql command \conninfo to show current connection information (David Christensen)

  • Add psql command \sf to show a function's definition (Pavel Stehule)

  • Add psql command \dL to list languages (Fernando Ike)

  • Add the S ("system") option to psql's \dn (list schemas) command (Tom Lane)

    \dn without S now suppresses system schemas.

  • Allow psql's \e and \ef commands to accept a line number to be used to position the cursor in the editor (Pavel Stehule)

    This is passed to the editor according to the PSQL_EDITOR_LINENUMBER_ARG environment variable.

  • Have psql set the client encoding from the operating system locale by default (Heikki Linnakangas)

    This only happens if the PGCLIENTENCODING environment variable is not set.

  • Make \d distinguish between unique indexes and unique constraints (Josh Kupershmidt)

  • Make \dt+ report pg_table_size instead of pg_relation_size when talking to 9.0 or later servers (Bernd Helmle)

    This is a more useful measure of table size, but note that it is not identical to what was previously reported in the same display.

  • Additional tab completion support (Itagaki Takahiro, Pavel Stehule, Andrey Popp, Christoph Berg, David Fetter, Josh Kupershmidt)

E.20.3.9.2. pg_dump

  • Add pg_dump and pg_dumpall option --quote-all-identifiers to force quoting of all identifiers (Robert Haas)

  • Add directory format to pg_dump (Joachim Wieland, Heikki Linnakangas)

    This is internally similar to the tar pg_dump format.

E.20.3.9.3. pg_ctl

  • Fix pg_ctl so it no longer incorrectly reports that the server is not running (Bruce Momjian)

    Previously this could happen if the server was running but pg_ctl could not authenticate.

  • Improve pg_ctl start's "wait" (-w) option (Bruce Momjian, Tom Lane)

    The wait mode is now significantly more robust. It will not get confused by non-default postmaster port numbers, non-default Unix-domain socket locations, permission problems, or stale postmaster lock files.

  • Add promote option to pg_ctl to switch a standby server to primary (Fujii Masao)

E.20.3.10. Development Tools

E.20.3.10.1. libpq

  • Add a libpq connection option client_encoding which behaves like the PGCLIENTENCODING environment variable (Heikki Linnakangas)

    The value auto sets the client encoding based on the operating system locale.

  • Add PQlibVersion() function which returns the libpq library version (Magnus Hagander)

    libpq already had PQserverVersion() which returns the server version.

  • Allow libpq-using clients to check the user name of the server process when connecting via Unix-domain sockets, with the new requirepeer connection option (Peter Eisentraut)

    PostgreSQL already allowed servers to check the client user name when connecting via Unix-domain sockets.

  • Add PQping() and PQpingParams() to libpq (Bruce Momjian, Tom Lane)

    These functions allow detection of the server's status without trying to open a new session.

E.20.3.10.2. ECPG

  • Allow ECPG to accept dynamic cursor names even in WHERE CURRENT OF clauses (Zoltan Boszormenyi)

  • Make ecpglib write double values with a precision of 15 digits, not 14 as formerly (Akira Kurosawa)

E.20.3.11. Build Options

  • Use +Olibmerrno compile flag with HP-UX C compilers that accept it (Ibrar Ahmed)

    This avoids possible misbehavior of math library calls on recent HP platforms.

E.20.3.11.1. Makefiles

  • Improved parallel make support (Peter Eisentraut)

    This allows for faster compiles. Also, make -k now works more consistently.

  • Require GNU make 3.80 or newer (Peter Eisentraut)

    This is necessary because of the parallel-make improvements.

  • Add make maintainer-check target (Peter Eisentraut)

    This target performs various source code checks that are not appropriate for either the build or the regression tests. Currently: duplicate_oids, SGML syntax and tabs check, NLS syntax check.

  • Support make check in contrib (Peter Eisentraut)

    Formerly only make installcheck worked, but now there is support for testing in a temporary installation. The top-level make check-world target now includes testing contrib this way.

E.20.3.11.2. Windows

  • On Windows, allow pg_ctl to register the service as auto-start or start-on-demand (Quan Zongliang)

  • Add support for collecting crash dumps on Windows (Craig Ringer, Magnus Hagander)

    minidumps can now be generated by non-debug Windows binaries and analyzed by standard debugging tools.

  • Enable building with the MinGW64 compiler (Andrew Dunstan)

    This allows building 64-bit Windows binaries even on non-Windows platforms via cross-compiling.

E.20.3.12. Source Code

  • Revise the API for GUC variable assign hooks (Tom Lane)

    The previous functions of assign hooks are now split between check hooks and assign hooks, where the former can fail but the latter shouldn't. This change will impact add-on modules that define custom GUC parameters.

  • Add latches to the source code to support waiting for events (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Centralize data modification permissions-checking logic (KaiGai Kohei)

  • Add missing get_object_oid() functions, for consistency (Robert Haas)

  • Improve ability to use C++ compilers for compiling add-on modules by removing conflicting key words (Tom Lane)

  • Add support for DragonFly BSD (Rumko)

  • Expose quote_literal_cstr() for backend use (Robert Haas)

  • Run regression tests in the default encoding (Peter Eisentraut)

    Regression tests were previously always run with SQL_ASCII encoding.

  • Add src/tools/git_changelog to replace cvs2cl and pgcvslog (Robert Haas, Tom Lane)

  • Add git-external-diff script to src/tools (Bruce Momjian)

    This is used to generate context diffs from git.

  • Improve support for building with Clang (Peter Eisentraut)

E.20.3.12.1. Server Hooks

  • Add source code hooks to check permissions (Robert Haas, Stephen Frost)

  • Add post-object-creation function hooks for use by security frameworks (KaiGai Kohei)

  • Add a client authentication hook (KaiGai Kohei)

E.20.3.13. Contrib

  • Modify contrib modules and procedural languages to install via the new extension mechanism (Tom Lane, Dimitri Fontaine)

  • Add contrib/file_fdw foreign-data wrapper (Shigeru Hanada)

    Foreign tables using this foreign data wrapper can read flat files in a manner very similar to COPY.

  • Add nearest-neighbor search support to contrib/pg_trgm and contrib/btree_gist (Teodor Sigaev)

  • Add contrib/btree_gist support for searching on not-equals (Jeff Davis)

  • Fix contrib/fuzzystrmatch's levenshtein() function to handle multibyte characters (Alexander Korotkov)

  • Add ssl_cipher() and ssl_version() functions to contrib/sslinfo (Robert Haas)

  • Fix contrib/intarray and contrib/hstore to give consistent results with indexed empty arrays (Tom Lane)

    Previously an empty-array query that used an index might return different results from one that used a sequential scan.

  • Allow contrib/intarray to work properly on multidimensional arrays (Tom Lane)

  • In contrib/intarray, avoid errors complaining about the presence of nulls in cases where no nulls are actually present (Tom Lane)

  • In contrib/intarray, fix behavior of containment operators with respect to empty arrays (Tom Lane)

    Empty arrays are now correctly considered to be contained in any other array.

  • Remove contrib/xml2's arbitrary limit on the number of parameter=value pairs that can be handled by xslt_process() (Pavel Stehule)

    The previous limit was 10.

  • In contrib/pageinspect, fix heap_page_item to return infomasks as 32-bit values (Alvaro Herrera)

    This avoids returning negative values, which was confusing. The underlying value is a 16-bit unsigned integer.

E.20.3.13.1. Security

  • Add contrib/sepgsql to interface permission checks with SELinux (KaiGai Kohei)

    This uses the new SECURITY LABEL facility.

  • Add contrib module auth_delay (KaiGai Kohei)

    This causes the server to pause before returning authentication failure; it is designed to make brute force password attacks more difficult.

  • Add dummy_seclabel contrib module (KaiGai Kohei)

    This is used for permission regression testing.

E.20.3.13.2. Performance

  • Add support for LIKE and ILIKE index searches to contrib/pg_trgm (Alexander Korotkov)

  • Add levenshtein_less_equal() function to contrib/fuzzystrmatch, which is optimized for small distances (Alexander Korotkov)

  • Improve performance of index lookups on contrib/seg columns (Alexander Korotkov)

  • Improve performance of pg_upgrade for databases with many relations (Bruce Momjian)

  • Add flag to contrib/pgbench to report per-statement latencies (Florian Pflug)

E.20.3.13.3. Fsync Testing

  • Move src/tools/test_fsync to contrib/pg_test_fsync (Bruce Momjian, Tom Lane)

  • Add O_DIRECT support to contrib/pg_test_fsync (Bruce Momjian)

    This matches the use of O_DIRECT by wal_sync_method.

  • Add new tests to contrib/pg_test_fsync (Bruce Momjian)

E.20.3.14. Documentation

  • Extensive ECPG documentation improvements (Satoshi Nagayasu)

  • Extensive proofreading and documentation improvements (Thom Brown, Josh Kupershmidt, Susanne Ebrecht)

  • Add documentation for exit_on_error (Robert Haas)

    This parameter causes sessions to exit on any error.

  • Add documentation for pg_options_to_table() (Josh Berkus)

    This function shows table storage options in a readable form.

  • Document that it is possible to access all composite type fields using (compositeval).* syntax (Peter Eisentraut)

  • Document that translate() removes characters in from that don't have a corresponding to character (Josh Kupershmidt)

  • Merge documentation for CREATE CONSTRAINT TRIGGER and CREATE TRIGGER (Alvaro Herrera)

  • Centralize permission and upgrade documentation (Bruce Momjian)

  • Add kernel tuning documentation for Solaris 10 (Josh Berkus)

    Previously only Solaris 9 kernel tuning was documented.

  • Handle non-ASCII characters consistently in HISTORY file (Peter Eisentraut)

    While the HISTORY file is in English, we do have to deal with non-ASCII letters in contributor names. These are now transliterated so that they are reasonably legible without assumptions about character set.

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Release 9.1.1 | Up | Release 9.0.23


Release 9.0.23

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.21. Release 9.0.23

Release Date: 2015-10-08

This release contains a variety of fixes from 9.0.22. For information about new features in the 9.0 major release, see Section E.44.

This is expected to be the last PostgreSQL release in the 9.0.X series. Users are encouraged to update to a newer release branch soon.

E.21.1. Migration to Version 9.0.23

A dump/restore is not required for those running 9.0.X.

However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 9.0.18, see Section E.26.

E.21.2. Changes

  • Fix contrib/pgcrypto to detect and report too-short crypt() salts (Josh Kupershmidt)

    Certain invalid salt arguments crashed the server or disclosed a few bytes of server memory. We have not ruled out the viability of attacks that arrange for presence of confidential information in the disclosed bytes, but they seem unlikely. (CVE-2015-5288)

  • Fix subtransaction cleanup after a portal (cursor) belonging to an outer subtransaction fails (Tom Lane, Michael Paquier)

    A function executed in an outer-subtransaction cursor could cause an assertion failure or crash by referencing a relation created within an inner subtransaction.

  • Fix insertion of relations into the relation cache "init file" (Tom Lane)

    An oversight in a patch in the most recent minor releases caused pg_trigger_tgrelid_tgname_index to be omitted from the init file. Subsequent sessions detected this, then deemed the init file to be broken and silently ignored it, resulting in a significant degradation in session startup time. In addition to fixing the bug, install some guards so that any similar future mistake will be more obvious.

  • Avoid O(N^2) behavior when inserting many tuples into a SPI query result (Neil Conway)

  • Improve LISTEN startup time when there are many unread notifications (Matt Newell)

  • Disable SSL renegotiation by default (Michael Paquier, Andres Freund)

    While use of SSL renegotiation is a good idea in theory, we have seen too many bugs in practice, both in the underlying OpenSSL library and in our usage of it. Renegotiation will be removed entirely in 9.5 and later. In the older branches, just change the default value of ssl_renegotiation_limit to zero (disabled).

  • Lower the minimum values of the *_freeze_max_age parameters (Andres Freund)

    This is mainly to make tests of related behavior less time-consuming, but it may also be of value for installations with limited disk space.

  • Limit the maximum value of wal_buffers to 2GB to avoid server crashes (Josh Berkus)

  • Fix rare internal overflow in multiplication of numeric values (Dean Rasheed)

  • Guard against hard-to-reach stack overflows involving record types, range types, json, jsonb, tsquery, ltxtquery and query_int (Noah Misch)

  • Fix handling of DOW and DOY in datetime input (Greg Stark)

    These tokens aren't meant to be used in datetime values, but previously they resulted in opaque internal error messages rather than "invalid input syntax".

  • Add more query-cancel checks to regular expression matching (Tom Lane)

  • Add recursion depth protections to regular expression, SIMILAR TO, and LIKE matching (Tom Lane)

    Suitable search patterns and a low stack depth limit could lead to stack-overrun crashes.

  • Fix potential infinite loop in regular expression execution (Tom Lane)

    A search pattern that can apparently match a zero-length string, but actually doesn't match because of a back reference, could lead to an infinite loop.

  • Fix low-memory failures in regular expression compilation (Andreas Seltenreich)

  • Fix low-probability memory leak during regular expression execution (Tom Lane)

  • Fix rare low-memory failure in lock cleanup during transaction abort (Tom Lane)

  • Fix "unexpected out-of-memory situation during sort" errors when using tuplestores with small work_mem settings (Tom Lane)

  • Fix very-low-probability stack overrun in qsort (Tom Lane)

  • Fix "invalid memory alloc request size" failure in hash joins with large work_mem settings (Tomas Vondra, Tom Lane)

  • Fix assorted planner bugs (Tom Lane)

    These mistakes could lead to incorrect query plans that would give wrong answers, or to assertion failures in assert-enabled builds, or to odd planner errors such as "could not devise a query plan for the given query", "could not find pathkey item to sort", "plan should not reference subplan's variable", or "failed to assign all NestLoopParams to plan nodes". Thanks are due to Andreas Seltenreich and Piotr Stefaniak for fuzz testing that exposed these problems.

  • Use fuzzy path cost tiebreaking rule in all supported branches (Tom Lane)

    This change is meant to avoid platform-specific behavior when alternative plan choices have effectively-identical estimated costs.

  • During postmaster shutdown, ensure that per-socket lock files are removed and listen sockets are closed before we remove the postmaster.pid file (Tom Lane)

    This avoids race-condition failures if an external script attempts to start a new postmaster as soon as pg_ctl stop returns.

  • Fix postmaster's handling of a startup-process crash during crash recovery (Tom Lane)

    If, during a crash recovery cycle, the startup process crashes without having restored database consistency, we'd try to launch a new startup process, which typically would just crash again, leading to an infinite loop.

  • Do not print a WARNING when an autovacuum worker is already gone when we attempt to signal it, and reduce log verbosity for such signals (Tom Lane)

  • Prevent autovacuum launcher from sleeping unduly long if the server clock is moved backwards a large amount (Álvaro Herrera)

  • Ensure that cleanup of a GIN index's pending-insertions list is interruptable by cancel requests (Jeff Janes)

  • Allow all-zeroes pages in GIN indexes to be reused (Heikki Linnakangas)

    Such a page might be left behind after a crash.

  • Fix off-by-one error that led to otherwise-harmless warnings about "apparent wraparound" in subtrans/multixact truncation (Thomas Munro)

  • Fix misreporting of CONTINUE and MOVE statement types in PL/pgSQL's error context messages (Pavel Stehule, Tom Lane)

  • Fix some places in PL/Tcl that neglected to check for failure of malloc() calls (Michael Paquier, Álvaro Herrera)

  • Improve libpq's handling of out-of-memory conditions (Michael Paquier, Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Fix memory leaks and missing out-of-memory checks in ecpg (Michael Paquier)

  • Fix psql's code for locale-aware formatting of numeric output (Tom Lane)

    The formatting code invoked by \pset numericlocale on did the wrong thing for some uncommon cases such as numbers with an exponent but no decimal point. It could also mangle already-localized output from the money data type.

  • Prevent crash in psql's \c command when there is no current connection (Noah Misch)

  • Ensure that temporary files created during a pg_dump run with tar-format output are not world-readable (Michael Paquier)

  • Fix pg_dump and pg_upgrade to support cases where the postgres or template1 database is in a non-default tablespace (Marti Raudsepp, Bruce Momjian)

  • Fix pg_dump to handle object privileges sanely when dumping from a server too old to have a particular privilege type (Tom Lane)

    When dumping functions or procedural languages from pre-7.3 servers, pg_dump would produce GRANT/REVOKE commands that revoked the owner's grantable privileges and instead granted all privileges to PUBLIC. Since the privileges involved are just USAGE and EXECUTE, this isn't a security problem, but it's certainly a surprising representation of the older systems' behavior. Fix it to leave the default privilege state alone in these cases.

  • Fix pg_dump to dump shell types (Tom Lane)

    Shell types (that is, not-yet-fully-defined types) aren't useful for much, but nonetheless pg_dump should dump them.

  • Fix spinlock assembly code for PPC hardware to be compatible with AIX's native assembler (Tom Lane)

    Building with gcc didn't work if gcc had been configured to use the native assembler, which is becoming more common.

  • On AIX, test the -qlonglong compiler option rather than just assuming it's safe to use (Noah Misch)

  • On AIX, use -Wl,-brtllib link option to allow symbols to be resolved at runtime (Noah Misch)

    Perl relies on this ability in 5.8.0 and later.

  • Avoid use of inline functions when compiling with 32-bit xlc, due to compiler bugs (Noah Misch)

  • Use librt for sched_yield() when necessary, which it is on some Solaris versions (Oskari Saarenmaa)

  • Fix Windows install.bat script to handle target directory names that contain spaces (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Make the numeric form of the PostgreSQL version number (e.g., 90405) readily available to extension Makefiles, as a variable named VERSION_NUM (Michael Paquier)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2015g for DST law changes in Cayman Islands, Fiji, Moldova, Morocco, Norfolk Island, North Korea, Turkey, and Uruguay. There is a new zone name America/Fort_Nelson for the Canadian Northern Rockies.

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Release 9.0.22

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E.22. Release 9.0.22

Release Date: 2015-06-12

This release contains a small number of fixes from 9.0.21. For information about new features in the 9.0 major release, see Section E.44.

The PostgreSQL community will stop releasing updates for the 9.0.X release series in September 2015. Users are encouraged to update to a newer release branch soon.

E.22.1. Migration to Version 9.0.22

A dump/restore is not required for those running 9.0.X.

However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 9.0.18, see Section E.26.

E.22.2. Changes

  • Fix rare failure to invalidate relation cache init file (Tom Lane)

    With just the wrong timing of concurrent activity, a VACUUM FULL on a system catalog might fail to update the "init file" that's used to avoid cache-loading work for new sessions. This would result in later sessions being unable to access that catalog at all. This is a very ancient bug, but it's so hard to trigger that no reproducible case had been seen until recently.

  • Avoid deadlock between incoming sessions and CREATE/DROP DATABASE (Tom Lane)

    A new session starting in a database that is the target of a DROP DATABASE command, or is the template for a CREATE DATABASE command, could cause the command to wait for five seconds and then fail, even if the new session would have exited before that.

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Release 9.0.21

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E.23. Release 9.0.21

Release Date: 2015-06-04

This release contains a small number of fixes from 9.0.20. For information about new features in the 9.0 major release, see Section E.44.

The PostgreSQL community will stop releasing updates for the 9.0.X release series in September 2015. Users are encouraged to update to a newer release branch soon.

E.23.1. Migration to Version 9.0.21

A dump/restore is not required for those running 9.0.X.

However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 9.0.18, see Section E.26.

E.23.2. Changes

  • Avoid failures while fsync'ing data directory during crash restart (Abhijit Menon-Sen, Tom Lane)

    In the previous minor releases we added a patch to fsync everything in the data directory after a crash. Unfortunately its response to any error condition was to fail, thereby preventing the server from starting up, even when the problem was quite harmless. An example is that an unwritable file in the data directory would prevent restart on some platforms; but it is common to make SSL certificate files unwritable by the server. Revise this behavior so that permissions failures are ignored altogether, and other types of failures are logged but do not prevent continuing.

  • Remove configure's check prohibiting linking to a threaded libpython on OpenBSD (Tom Lane)

    The failure this restriction was meant to prevent seems to not be a problem anymore on current OpenBSD versions.

  • Allow libpq to use TLS protocol versions beyond v1 (Noah Misch)

    For a long time, libpq was coded so that the only SSL protocol it would allow was TLS v1. Now that newer TLS versions are becoming popular, allow it to negotiate the highest commonly-supported TLS version with the server. (PostgreSQL servers were already capable of such negotiation, so no change is needed on the server side.) This is a back-patch of a change already released in 9.4.0.

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Release 9.0.20

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E.24. Release 9.0.20

Release Date: 2015-05-22

This release contains a variety of fixes from 9.0.19. For information about new features in the 9.0 major release, see Section E.44.

The PostgreSQL community will stop releasing updates for the 9.0.X release series in September 2015. Users are encouraged to update to a newer release branch soon.

E.24.1. Migration to Version 9.0.20

A dump/restore is not required for those running 9.0.X.

However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 9.0.18, see Section E.26.

E.24.2. Changes

  • Avoid possible crash when client disconnects just before the authentication timeout expires (Benkocs Norbert Attila)

    If the timeout interrupt fired partway through the session shutdown sequence, SSL-related state would be freed twice, typically causing a crash and hence denial of service to other sessions. Experimentation shows that an unauthenticated remote attacker could trigger the bug somewhat consistently, hence treat as security issue. (CVE-2015-3165)

  • Improve detection of system-call failures (Noah Misch)

    Our replacement implementation of snprintf() failed to check for errors reported by the underlying system library calls; the main case that might be missed is out-of-memory situations. In the worst case this might lead to information exposure, due to our code assuming that a buffer had been overwritten when it hadn't been. Also, there were a few places in which security-relevant calls of other system library functions did not check for failure.

    It remains possible that some calls of the *printf() family of functions are vulnerable to information disclosure if an out-of-memory error occurs at just the wrong time. We judge the risk to not be large, but will continue analysis in this area. (CVE-2015-3166)

  • In contrib/pgcrypto, uniformly report decryption failures as "Wrong key or corrupt data" (Noah Misch)

    Previously, some cases of decryption with an incorrect key could report other error message texts. It has been shown that such variance in error reports can aid attackers in recovering keys from other systems. While it's unknown whether pgcrypto's specific behaviors are likewise exploitable, it seems better to avoid the risk by using a one-size-fits-all message. (CVE-2015-3167)

  • Fix incorrect checking of deferred exclusion constraints after a HOT update (Tom Lane)

    If a new row that potentially violates a deferred exclusion constraint is HOT-updated (that is, no indexed columns change and the row can be stored back onto the same table page) later in the same transaction, the exclusion constraint would be reported as violated when the check finally occurred, even if the row(s) the new row originally conflicted with had been deleted.

  • Prevent improper reordering of antijoins (NOT EXISTS joins) versus other outer joins (Tom Lane)

    This oversight in the planner has been observed to cause "could not find RelOptInfo for given relids" errors, but it seems possible that sometimes an incorrect query plan might get past that consistency check and result in silently-wrong query output.

  • Fix incorrect matching of subexpressions in outer-join plan nodes (Tom Lane)

    Previously, if textually identical non-strict subexpressions were used both above and below an outer join, the planner might try to re-use the value computed below the join, which would be incorrect because the executor would force the value to NULL in case of an unmatched outer row.

  • Fix GEQO planner to cope with failure of its join order heuristic (Tom Lane)

    This oversight has been seen to lead to "failed to join all relations together" errors in queries involving LATERAL, and that might happen in other cases as well.

  • Fix possible deadlock at startup when max_prepared_transactions is too small (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Don't archive useless preallocated WAL files after a timeline switch (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Avoid "cannot GetMultiXactIdMembers() during recovery" error (Álvaro Herrera)

  • Recursively fsync() the data directory after a crash (Abhijit Menon-Sen, Robert Haas)

    This ensures consistency if another crash occurs shortly later. (The second crash would have to be a system-level crash, not just a database crash, for there to be a problem.)

  • Fix autovacuum launcher's possible failure to shut down, if an error occurs after it receives SIGTERM (Álvaro Herrera)

  • Cope with unexpected signals in LockBufferForCleanup() (Andres Freund)

    This oversight could result in spurious errors about "multiple backends attempting to wait for pincount 1".

  • Avoid waiting for WAL flush or synchronous replication during commit of a transaction that was read-only so far as the user is concerned (Andres Freund)

    Previously, a delay could occur at commit in transactions that had written WAL due to HOT page pruning, leading to undesirable effects such as sessions getting stuck at startup if all synchronous replicas are down. Sessions have also been observed to get stuck in catchup interrupt processing when using synchronous replication; this will fix that problem as well.

  • Fix crash when manipulating hash indexes on temporary tables (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Fix possible failure during hash index bucket split, if other processes are modifying the index concurrently (Tom Lane)

  • Check for interrupts while analyzing index expressions (Jeff Janes)

    ANALYZE executes index expressions many times; if there are slow functions in such an expression, it's desirable to be able to cancel the ANALYZE before that loop finishes.

  • Add the name of the target server to object description strings for foreign-server user mappings (Álvaro Herrera)

  • Recommend setting include_realm to 1 when using Kerberos/GSSAPI/SSPI authentication (Stephen Frost)

    Without this, identically-named users from different realms cannot be distinguished. For the moment this is only a documentation change, but it will become the default setting in PostgreSQL 9.5.

  • Remove code for matching IPv4 pg_hba.conf entries to IPv4-in-IPv6 addresses (Tom Lane)

    This hack was added in 2003 in response to a report that some Linux kernels of the time would report IPv4 connections as having IPv4-in-IPv6 addresses. However, the logic was accidentally broken in 9.0. The lack of any field complaints since then shows that it's not needed anymore. Now we have reports that the broken code causes crashes on some systems, so let's just remove it rather than fix it. (Had we chosen to fix it, that would make for a subtle and potentially security-sensitive change in the effective meaning of IPv4 pg_hba.conf entries, which does not seem like a good thing to do in minor releases.)

  • While shutting down service on Windows, periodically send status updates to the Service Control Manager to prevent it from killing the service too soon; and ensure that pg_ctl will wait for shutdown (Krystian Bigaj)

  • Reduce risk of network deadlock when using libpq's non-blocking mode (Heikki Linnakangas)

    When sending large volumes of data, it's important to drain the input buffer every so often, in case the server has sent enough response data to cause it to block on output. (A typical scenario is that the server is sending a stream of NOTICE messages during COPY FROM STDIN.) This worked properly in the normal blocking mode, but not so much in non-blocking mode. We've modified libpq to opportunistically drain input when it can, but a full defense against this problem requires application cooperation: the application should watch for socket read-ready as well as write-ready conditions, and be sure to call PQconsumeInput() upon read-ready.

  • Fix array handling in ecpg (Michael Meskes)

  • Fix psql to sanely handle URIs and conninfo strings as the first parameter to \connect (David Fetter, Andrew Dunstan, Álvaro Herrera)

    This syntax has been accepted (but undocumented) for a long time, but previously some parameters might be taken from the old connection instead of the given string, which was agreed to be undesirable.

  • Suppress incorrect complaints from psql on some platforms that it failed to write ~/.psql_history at exit (Tom Lane)

    This misbehavior was caused by a workaround for a bug in very old (pre-2006) versions of libedit. We fixed it by removing the workaround, which will cause a similar failure to appear for anyone still using such versions of libedit. Recommendation: upgrade that library, or use libreadline.

  • Fix pg_dump's rule for deciding which casts are system-provided casts that should not be dumped (Tom Lane)

  • Fix dumping of views that are just VALUES(...) but have column aliases (Tom Lane)

  • In pg_upgrade, force timeline 1 in the new cluster (Bruce Momjian)

    This change prevents upgrade failures caused by bogus complaints about missing WAL history files.

  • In pg_upgrade, check for improperly non-connectable databases before proceeding (Bruce Momjian)

  • In pg_upgrade, quote directory paths properly in the generated delete_old_cluster script (Bruce Momjian)

  • In pg_upgrade, preserve database-level freezing info properly (Bruce Momjian)

    This oversight could cause missing-clog-file errors for tables within the postgres and template1 databases.

  • Run pg_upgrade and pg_resetxlog with restricted privileges on Windows, so that they don't fail when run by an administrator (Muhammad Asif Naeem)

  • Fix slow sorting algorithm in contrib/intarray (Tom Lane)

  • Fix compile failure on Sparc V8 machines (Rob Rowan)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2015d for DST law changes in Egypt, Mongolia, and Palestine, plus historical changes in Canada and Chile. Also adopt revised zone abbreviations for the America/Adak zone (HST/HDT not HAST/HADT).

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Release 9.0.19

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E.25. Release 9.0.19

Release Date: 2015-02-05

This release contains a variety of fixes from 9.0.18. For information about new features in the 9.0 major release, see Section E.44.

E.25.1. Migration to Version 9.0.19

A dump/restore is not required for those running 9.0.X.

However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 9.0.18, see Section E.26.

E.25.2. Changes

  • Fix buffer overruns in to_char() (Bruce Momjian)

    When to_char() processes a numeric formatting template calling for a large number of digits, PostgreSQL would read past the end of a buffer. When processing a crafted timestamp formatting template, PostgreSQL would write past the end of a buffer. Either case could crash the server. We have not ruled out the possibility of attacks that lead to privilege escalation, though they seem unlikely. (CVE-2015-0241)

  • Fix buffer overrun in replacement *printf() functions (Tom Lane)

    PostgreSQL includes a replacement implementation of printf and related functions. This code will overrun a stack buffer when formatting a floating point number (conversion specifiers e, E, f, F, g or G) with requested precision greater than about 500. This will crash the server, and we have not ruled out the possibility of attacks that lead to privilege escalation. A database user can trigger such a buffer overrun through the to_char() SQL function. While that is the only affected core PostgreSQL functionality, extension modules that use printf-family functions may be at risk as well.

    This issue primarily affects PostgreSQL on Windows. PostgreSQL uses the system implementation of these functions where adequate, which it is on other modern platforms. (CVE-2015-0242)

  • Fix buffer overruns in contrib/pgcrypto (Marko Tiikkaja, Noah Misch)

    Errors in memory size tracking within the pgcrypto module permitted stack buffer overruns and improper dependence on the contents of uninitialized memory. The buffer overrun cases can crash the server, and we have not ruled out the possibility of attacks that lead to privilege escalation. (CVE-2015-0243)

  • Fix possible loss of frontend/backend protocol synchronization after an error (Heikki Linnakangas)

    If any error occurred while the server was in the middle of reading a protocol message from the client, it could lose synchronization and incorrectly try to interpret part of the message's data as a new protocol message. An attacker able to submit crafted binary data within a command parameter might succeed in injecting his own SQL commands this way. Statement timeout and query cancellation are the most likely sources of errors triggering this scenario. Particularly vulnerable are applications that use a timeout and also submit arbitrary user-crafted data as binary query parameters. Disabling statement timeout will reduce, but not eliminate, the risk of exploit. Our thanks to Emil Lenngren for reporting this issue. (CVE-2015-0244)

  • Fix information leak via constraint-violation error messages (Stephen Frost)

    Some server error messages show the values of columns that violate a constraint, such as a unique constraint. If the user does not have SELECT privilege on all columns of the table, this could mean exposing values that the user should not be able to see. Adjust the code so that values are displayed only when they came from the SQL command or could be selected by the user. (CVE-2014-8161)

  • Lock down regression testing's temporary installations on Windows (Noah Misch)

    Use SSPI authentication to allow connections only from the OS user who launched the test suite. This closes on Windows the same vulnerability previously closed on other platforms, namely that other users might be able to connect to the test postmaster. (CVE-2014-0067)

  • Avoid possible data corruption if ALTER DATABASE SET TABLESPACE is used to move a database to a new tablespace and then shortly later move it back to its original tablespace (Tom Lane)

  • Avoid corrupting tables when ANALYZE inside a transaction is rolled back (Andres Freund, Tom Lane, Michael Paquier)

    If the failing transaction had earlier removed the last index, rule, or trigger from the table, the table would be left in a corrupted state with the relevant pg_class flags not set though they should be.

  • Fix use-of-already-freed-memory problem in EvalPlanQual processing (Tom Lane)

    In READ COMMITTED mode, queries that lock or update recently-updated rows could crash as a result of this bug.

  • Fix planning of SELECT FOR UPDATE when using a partial index on a child table (Kyotaro Horiguchi)

    In READ COMMITTED mode, SELECT FOR UPDATE must also recheck the partial index's WHERE condition when rechecking a recently-updated row to see if it still satisfies the query's WHERE condition. This requirement was missed if the index belonged to an inheritance child table, so that it was possible to incorrectly return rows that no longer satisfy the query condition.

  • Fix corner case wherein SELECT FOR UPDATE could return a row twice, and possibly miss returning other rows (Tom Lane)

    In READ COMMITTED mode, a SELECT FOR UPDATE that is scanning an inheritance tree could incorrectly return a row from a prior child table instead of the one it should return from a later child table.

  • Reject duplicate column names in the referenced-columns list of a FOREIGN KEY declaration (David Rowley)

    This restriction is per SQL standard. Previously we did not reject the case explicitly, but later on the code would fail with bizarre-looking errors.

  • Fix bugs in raising a numeric value to a large integral power (Tom Lane)

    The previous code could get a wrong answer, or consume excessive amounts of time and memory before realizing that the answer must overflow.

  • In numeric_recv(), truncate away any fractional digits that would be hidden according to the value's dscale field (Tom Lane)

    A numeric value's display scale (dscale) should never be less than the number of nonzero fractional digits; but apparently there's at least one broken client application that transmits binary numeric values in which that's true. This leads to strange behavior since the extra digits are taken into account by arithmetic operations even though they aren't printed. The least risky fix seems to be to truncate away such "hidden" digits on receipt, so that the value is indeed what it prints as.

  • Reject out-of-range numeric timezone specifications (Tom Lane)

    Simple numeric timezone specifications exceeding +/- 168 hours (one week) would be accepted, but could then cause null-pointer dereference crashes in certain operations. There's no use-case for such large UTC offsets, so reject them.

  • Fix bugs in tsquery @> tsquery operator (Heikki Linnakangas)

    Two different terms would be considered to match if they had the same CRC. Also, if the second operand had more terms than the first, it would be assumed not to be contained in the first; which is wrong since it might contain duplicate terms.

  • Improve ispell dictionary's defenses against bad affix files (Tom Lane)

  • Allow more than 64K phrases in a thesaurus dictionary (David Boutin)

    The previous coding could crash on an oversize dictionary, so this was deemed a back-patchable bug fix rather than a feature addition.

  • Fix namespace handling in xpath() (Ali Akbar)

    Previously, the xml value resulting from an xpath() call would not have namespace declarations if the namespace declarations were attached to an ancestor element in the input xml value, rather than to the specific element being returned. Propagate the ancestral declaration so that the result is correct when considered in isolation.

  • Fix planner problems with nested append relations, such as inherited tables within UNION ALL subqueries (Tom Lane)

  • Fail cleanly when a GiST index tuple doesn't fit on a page, rather than going into infinite recursion (Andrew Gierth)

  • Exempt tables that have per-table cost_limit and/or cost_delay settings from autovacuum's global cost balancing rules (Álvaro Herrera)

    The previous behavior resulted in basically ignoring these per-table settings, which was unintended. Now, a table having such settings will be vacuumed using those settings, independently of what is going on in other autovacuum workers. This may result in heavier total I/O load than before, so such settings should be re-examined for sanity.

  • Avoid wholesale autovacuuming when autovacuum is nominally off (Tom Lane)

    Even when autovacuum is nominally off, we will still launch autovacuum worker processes to vacuum tables that are at risk of XID wraparound. However, such a worker process then proceeded to vacuum all tables in the target database, if they met the usual thresholds for autovacuuming. This is at best pretty unexpected; at worst it delays response to the wraparound threat. Fix it so that if autovacuum is turned off, workers only do anti-wraparound vacuums and not any other work.

  • Fix race condition between hot standby queries and replaying a full-page image (Heikki Linnakangas)

    This mistake could result in transient errors in queries being executed in hot standby.

  • Fix several cases where recovery logic improperly ignored WAL records for COMMIT/ABORT PREPARED (Heikki Linnakangas)

    The most notable oversight was that recovery_min_apply_delay failed to delay application of a two-phase commit.

  • Avoid creating unnecessary .ready marker files for timeline history files (Fujii Masao)

  • Fix possible null pointer dereference when an empty prepared statement is used and the log_statement setting is mod or ddl (Fujii Masao)

  • Change "pgstat wait timeout" warning message to be LOG level, and rephrase it to be more understandable (Tom Lane)

    This message was originally thought to be essentially a can't-happen case, but it occurs often enough on our slower buildfarm members to be a nuisance. Reduce it to LOG level, and expend a bit more effort on the wording: it now reads "using stale statistics instead of current ones because stats collector is not responding".

  • Fix SPARC spinlock implementation to ensure correctness if the CPU is being run in a non-TSO coherency mode, as some non-Solaris kernels do (Andres Freund)

  • Warn if OS X's setlocale() starts an unwanted extra thread inside the postmaster (Noah Misch)

  • Fix processing of repeated dbname parameters in PQconnectdbParams() (Alex Shulgin)

    Unexpected behavior ensued if the first occurrence of dbname contained a connection string or URI to be expanded.

  • Ensure that libpq reports a suitable error message on unexpected socket EOF (Marko Tiikkaja, Tom Lane)

    Depending on kernel behavior, libpq might return an empty error string rather than something useful when the server unexpectedly closed the socket.

  • Clear any old error message during PQreset() (Heikki Linnakangas)

    If PQreset() is called repeatedly, and the connection cannot be re-established, error messages from the failed connection attempts kept accumulating in the PGconn's error string.

  • Properly handle out-of-memory conditions while parsing connection options in libpq (Alex Shulgin, Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Fix array overrun in ecpg's version of ParseDateTime() (Michael Paquier)

  • In initdb, give a clearer error message if a password file is specified but is empty (Mats Erik Andersson)

  • Fix psql's \s command to work nicely with libedit, and add pager support (Stepan Rutz, Tom Lane)

    When using libedit rather than readline, \s printed the command history in a fairly unreadable encoded format, and on recent libedit versions might fail altogether. Fix that by printing the history ourselves rather than having the library do it. A pleasant side-effect is that the pager is used if appropriate.

    This patch also fixes a bug that caused newline encoding to be applied inconsistently when saving the command history with libedit. Multiline history entries written by older psql versions will be read cleanly with this patch, but perhaps not vice versa, depending on the exact libedit versions involved.

  • Improve consistency of parsing of psql's special variables (Tom Lane)

    Allow variant spellings of on and off (such as 1/0) for ECHO_HIDDEN and ON_ERROR_ROLLBACK. Report a warning for unrecognized values for COMP_KEYWORD_CASE, ECHO, ECHO_HIDDEN, HISTCONTROL, ON_ERROR_ROLLBACK, and VERBOSITY. Recognize all values for all these variables case-insensitively; previously there was a mishmash of case-sensitive and case-insensitive behaviors.

  • Fix psql's expanded-mode display to work consistently when using border = 3 and linestyle = ascii or unicode (Stephen Frost)

  • Fix possible deadlock during parallel restore of a schema-only dump (Robert Haas, Tom Lane)

  • Fix core dump in pg_dump --binary-upgrade on zero-column composite type (Rushabh Lathia)

  • Fix block number checking in contrib/pageinspect's get_raw_page() (Tom Lane)

    The incorrect checking logic could prevent access to some pages in non-main relation forks.

  • Fix contrib/pgcrypto's pgp_sym_decrypt() to not fail on messages whose length is 6 less than a power of 2 (Marko Tiikkaja)

  • Handle unexpected query results, especially NULLs, safely in contrib/tablefunc's connectby() (Michael Paquier)

    connectby() previously crashed if it encountered a NULL key value. It now prints that row but doesn't recurse further.

  • Avoid a possible crash in contrib/xml2's xslt_process() (Mark Simonetti)

    libxslt seems to have an undocumented dependency on the order in which resources are freed; reorder our calls to avoid a crash.

  • Numerous cleanups of warnings from Coverity static code analyzer (Andres Freund, Tatsuo Ishii, Marko Kreen, Tom Lane, Michael Paquier)

    These changes are mostly cosmetic but in some cases fix corner-case bugs, for example a crash rather than a proper error report after an out-of-memory failure. None are believed to represent security issues.

  • Detect incompatible OpenLDAP versions during build (Noah Misch)

    With OpenLDAP versions 2.4.24 through 2.4.31, inclusive, PostgreSQL backends can crash at exit. Raise a warning during configure based on the compile-time OpenLDAP version number, and test the crashing scenario in the contrib/dblink regression test.

  • In non-MSVC Windows builds, ensure libpq.dll is installed with execute permissions (Noah Misch)

  • Make pg_regress remove any temporary installation it created upon successful exit (Tom Lane)

    This results in a very substantial reduction in disk space usage during make check-world, since that sequence involves creation of numerous temporary installations.

  • Support time zone abbreviations that change UTC offset from time to time (Tom Lane)

    Previously, PostgreSQL assumed that the UTC offset associated with a time zone abbreviation (such as EST) never changes in the usage of any particular locale. However this assumption fails in the real world, so introduce the ability for a zone abbreviation to represent a UTC offset that sometimes changes. Update the zone abbreviation definition files to make use of this feature in timezone locales that have changed the UTC offset of their abbreviations since 1970 (according to the IANA timezone database). In such timezones, PostgreSQL will now associate the correct UTC offset with the abbreviation depending on the given date.

  • Update time zone abbreviations lists (Tom Lane)

    Add CST (China Standard Time) to our lists. Remove references to ADT as "Arabia Daylight Time", an abbreviation that's been out of use since 2007; therefore, claiming there is a conflict with "Atlantic Daylight Time" doesn't seem especially helpful. Fix entirely incorrect GMT offsets for CKT (Cook Islands), FJT, and FJST (Fiji); we didn't even have them on the proper side of the date line.

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2015a.

    The IANA timezone database has adopted abbreviations of the form AxST/AxDT for all Australian time zones, reflecting what they believe to be current majority practice Down Under. These names do not conflict with usage elsewhere (other than ACST for Acre Summer Time, which has been in disuse since 1994). Accordingly, adopt these names into our "Default" timezone abbreviation set. The "Australia" abbreviation set now contains only CST, EAST, EST, SAST, SAT, and WST, all of which are thought to be mostly historical usage. Note that SAST has also been changed to be South Africa Standard Time in the "Default" abbreviation set.

    Also, add zone abbreviations SRET (Asia/Srednekolymsk) and XJT (Asia/Urumqi), and use WSST/WSDT for western Samoa. Also, there were DST law changes in Chile, Mexico, the Turks & Caicos Islands (America/Grand_Turk), and Fiji. There is a new zone Pacific/Bougainville for portions of Papua New Guinea. Also, numerous corrections for historical (pre-1970) time zone data.

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Release 9.0.18

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.26. Release 9.0.18

Release Date: 2014-07-24

This release contains a variety of fixes from 9.0.17. For information about new features in the 9.0 major release, see Section E.44.

E.26.1. Migration to Version 9.0.18

A dump/restore is not required for those running 9.0.X.

However, this release corrects an index corruption problem in some GiST indexes. See the first changelog entry below to find out whether your installation has been affected and what steps you should take if so.

Also, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 9.0.15, see Section E.29.

E.26.2. Changes

  • Correctly initialize padding bytes in contrib/btree_gist indexes on bit columns (Heikki Linnakangas)

    This error could result in incorrect query results due to values that should compare equal not being seen as equal. Users with GiST indexes on bit or bit varying columns should REINDEX those indexes after installing this update.

  • Protect against torn pages when deleting GIN list pages (Heikki Linnakangas)

    This fix prevents possible index corruption if a system crash occurs while the page update is being written to disk.

  • Don't clear the right-link of a GiST index page while replaying updates from WAL (Heikki Linnakangas)

    This error could lead to transiently wrong answers from GiST index scans performed in Hot Standby.

  • Fix possibly-incorrect cache invalidation during nested calls to ReceiveSharedInvalidMessages (Andres Freund)

  • Don't assume a subquery's output is unique if there's a set-returning function in its targetlist (David Rowley)

    This oversight could lead to misoptimization of constructs like WHERE x IN (SELECT y, generate_series(1,10) FROM t GROUP BY y).

  • Fix failure to detoast fields in composite elements of structured types (Tom Lane)

    This corrects cases where TOAST pointers could be copied into other tables without being dereferenced. If the original data is later deleted, it would lead to errors like "missing chunk number 0 for toast value ..." when the now-dangling pointer is used.

  • Fix "record type has not been registered" failures with whole-row references to the output of Append plan nodes (Tom Lane)

  • Fix possible crash when invoking a user-defined function while rewinding a cursor (Tom Lane)

  • Fix query-lifespan memory leak while evaluating the arguments for a function in FROM (Tom Lane)

  • Fix session-lifespan memory leaks in regular-expression processing (Tom Lane, Arthur O'Dwyer, Greg Stark)

  • Fix data encoding error in hungarian.stop (Tom Lane)

  • Fix liveness checks for rows that were inserted in the current transaction and then deleted by a now-rolled-back subtransaction (Andres Freund)

    This could cause problems (at least spurious warnings, and at worst an infinite loop) if CREATE INDEX or CLUSTER were done later in the same transaction.

  • Clear pg_stat_activity.xact_start during PREPARE TRANSACTION (Andres Freund)

    After the PREPARE, the originating session is no longer in a transaction, so it should not continue to display a transaction start time.

  • Fix REASSIGN OWNED to not fail for text search objects (Álvaro Herrera)

  • Block signals during postmaster startup (Tom Lane)

    This ensures that the postmaster will properly clean up after itself if, for example, it receives SIGINT while still starting up.

  • Secure Unix-domain sockets of temporary postmasters started during make check (Noah Misch)

    Any local user able to access the socket file could connect as the server's bootstrap superuser, then proceed to execute arbitrary code as the operating-system user running the test, as we previously noted in CVE-2014-0067. This change defends against that risk by placing the server's socket in a temporary, mode 0700 subdirectory of /tmp. The hazard remains however on platforms where Unix sockets are not supported, notably Windows, because then the temporary postmaster must accept local TCP connections.

    A useful side effect of this change is to simplify make check testing in builds that override DEFAULT_PGSOCKET_DIR. Popular non-default values like /var/run/postgresql are often not writable by the build user, requiring workarounds that will no longer be necessary.

  • Fix tablespace creation WAL replay to work on Windows (MauMau)

  • Fix detection of socket creation failures on Windows (Bruce Momjian)

  • On Windows, allow new sessions to absorb values of PGC_BACKEND parameters (such as log_connections) from the configuration file (Amit Kapila)

    Previously, if such a parameter were changed in the file post-startup, the change would have no effect.

  • Properly quote executable path names on Windows (Nikhil Deshpande)

    This oversight could cause initdb and pg_upgrade to fail on Windows, if the installation path contained both spaces and @ signs.

  • Fix linking of libpython on OS X (Tom Lane)

    The method we previously used can fail with the Python library supplied by Xcode 5.0 and later.

  • Avoid buffer bloat in libpq when the server consistently sends data faster than the client can absorb it (Shin-ichi Morita, Tom Lane)

    libpq could be coerced into enlarging its input buffer until it runs out of memory (which would be reported misleadingly as "lost synchronization with server"). Under ordinary circumstances it's quite far-fetched that data could be continuously transmitted more quickly than the recv() loop can absorb it, but this has been observed when the client is artificially slowed by scheduler constraints.

  • Ensure that LDAP lookup attempts in libpq time out as intended (Laurenz Albe)

  • Fix ecpg to do the right thing when an array of char * is the target for a FETCH statement returning more than one row, as well as some other array-handling fixes (Ashutosh Bapat)

  • Fix pg_restore's processing of old-style large object comments (Tom Lane)

    A direct-to-database restore from an archive file generated by a pre-9.0 version of pg_dump would usually fail if the archive contained more than a few comments for large objects.

  • In contrib/pgcrypto functions, ensure sensitive information is cleared from stack variables before returning (Marko Kreen)

  • In contrib/uuid-ossp, cache the state of the OSSP UUID library across calls (Tom Lane)

    This improves the efficiency of UUID generation and reduces the amount of entropy drawn from /dev/urandom, on platforms that have that.

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2014e for DST law changes in Crimea, Egypt, and Morocco.

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Release 9.0.19 | Up | Release 9.0.17


Release 9.0.17

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.27. Release 9.0.17

Release Date: 2014-03-20

This release contains a variety of fixes from 9.0.16. For information about new features in the 9.0 major release, see Section E.44.

E.27.1. Migration to Version 9.0.17

A dump/restore is not required for those running 9.0.X.

However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 9.0.15, see Section E.29.

E.27.2. Changes

  • Restore GIN metapages unconditionally to avoid torn-page risk (Heikki Linnakangas)

    Although this oversight could theoretically result in a corrupted index, it is unlikely to have caused any problems in practice, since the active part of a GIN metapage is smaller than a standard 512-byte disk sector.

  • Avoid race condition in checking transaction commit status during receipt of a NOTIFY message (Marko Tiikkaja)

    This prevents a scenario wherein a sufficiently fast client might respond to a notification before database updates made by the notifier have become visible to the recipient.

  • Allow regular-expression operators to be terminated early by query cancel requests (Tom Lane)

    This prevents scenarios wherein a pathological regular expression could lock up a server process uninterruptably for a long time.

  • Remove incorrect code that tried to allow OVERLAPS with single-element row arguments (Joshua Yanovski)

    This code never worked correctly, and since the case is neither specified by the SQL standard nor documented, it seemed better to remove it than fix it.

  • Avoid getting more than AccessShareLock when de-parsing a rule or view (Dean Rasheed)

    This oversight resulted in pg_dump unexpectedly acquiring RowExclusiveLock locks on tables mentioned as the targets of INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE commands in rules. While usually harmless, that could interfere with concurrent transactions that tried to acquire, for example, ShareLock on those tables.

  • Improve performance of index endpoint probes during planning (Tom Lane)

    This change fixes a significant performance problem that occurred when there were many not-yet-committed rows at the end of the index, which is a common situation for indexes on sequentially-assigned values such as timestamps or sequence-generated identifiers.

  • Fix test to see if hot standby connections can be allowed immediately after a crash (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Prevent interrupts while reporting non-ERROR messages (Tom Lane)

    This guards against rare server-process freezeups due to recursive entry to syslog(), and perhaps other related problems.

  • Prevent intermittent "could not reserve shared memory region" failures on recent Windows versions (MauMau)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2014a for DST law changes in Fiji and Turkey, plus historical changes in Israel and Ukraine.

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Release 9.0.16

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.28. Release 9.0.16

Release Date: 2014-02-20

This release contains a variety of fixes from 9.0.15. For information about new features in the 9.0 major release, see Section E.44.

E.28.1. Migration to Version 9.0.16

A dump/restore is not required for those running 9.0.X.

However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 9.0.15, see Section E.29.

E.28.2. Changes

  • Shore up GRANT ... WITH ADMIN OPTION restrictions (Noah Misch)

    Granting a role without ADMIN OPTION is supposed to prevent the grantee from adding or removing members from the granted role, but this restriction was easily bypassed by doing SET ROLE first. The security impact is mostly that a role member can revoke the access of others, contrary to the wishes of his grantor. Unapproved role member additions are a lesser concern, since an uncooperative role member could provide most of his rights to others anyway by creating views or SECURITY DEFINER functions. (CVE-2014-0060)

  • Prevent privilege escalation via manual calls to PL validator functions (Andres Freund)

    The primary role of PL validator functions is to be called implicitly during CREATE FUNCTION, but they are also normal SQL functions that a user can call explicitly. Calling a validator on a function actually written in some other language was not checked for and could be exploited for privilege-escalation purposes. The fix involves adding a call to a privilege-checking function in each validator function. Non-core procedural languages will also need to make this change to their own validator functions, if any. (CVE-2014-0061)

  • Avoid multiple name lookups during table and index DDL (Robert Haas, Andres Freund)

    If the name lookups come to different conclusions due to concurrent activity, we might perform some parts of the DDL on a different table than other parts. At least in the case of CREATE INDEX, this can be used to cause the permissions checks to be performed against a different table than the index creation, allowing for a privilege escalation attack. (CVE-2014-0062)

  • Prevent buffer overrun with long datetime strings (Noah Misch)

    The MAXDATELEN constant was too small for the longest possible value of type interval, allowing a buffer overrun in interval_out(). Although the datetime input functions were more careful about avoiding buffer overrun, the limit was short enough to cause them to reject some valid inputs, such as input containing a very long timezone name. The ecpg library contained these vulnerabilities along with some of its own. (CVE-2014-0063)

  • Prevent buffer overrun due to integer overflow in size calculations (Noah Misch, Heikki Linnakangas)

    Several functions, mostly type input functions, calculated an allocation size without checking for overflow. If overflow did occur, a too-small buffer would be allocated and then written past. (CVE-2014-0064)

  • Prevent overruns of fixed-size buffers (Peter Eisentraut, Jozef Mlich)

    Use strlcpy() and related functions to provide a clear guarantee that fixed-size buffers are not overrun. Unlike the preceding items, it is unclear whether these cases really represent live issues, since in most cases there appear to be previous constraints on the size of the input string. Nonetheless it seems prudent to silence all Coverity warnings of this type. (CVE-2014-0065)

  • Avoid crashing if crypt() returns NULL (Honza Horak, Bruce Momjian)

    There are relatively few scenarios in which crypt() could return NULL, but contrib/chkpass would crash if it did. One practical case in which this could be an issue is if libc is configured to refuse to execute unapproved hashing algorithms (e.g., "FIPS mode"). (CVE-2014-0066)

  • Document risks of make check in the regression testing instructions (Noah Misch, Tom Lane)

    Since the temporary server started by make check uses "trust" authentication, another user on the same machine could connect to it as database superuser, and then potentially exploit the privileges of the operating-system user who started the tests. A future release will probably incorporate changes in the testing procedure to prevent this risk, but some public discussion is needed first. So for the moment, just warn people against using make check when there are untrusted users on the same machine. (CVE-2014-0067)

  • Fix possible mis-replay of WAL records when some segments of a relation aren't full size (Greg Stark, Tom Lane)

    The WAL update could be applied to the wrong page, potentially many pages past where it should have been. Aside from corrupting data, this error has been observed to result in significant "bloat" of standby servers compared to their masters, due to updates being applied far beyond where the end-of-file should have been. This failure mode does not appear to be a significant risk during crash recovery, only when initially synchronizing a standby created from a base backup taken from a quickly-changing master.

  • Fix bug in determining when recovery has reached consistency (Tomonari Katsumata, Heikki Linnakangas)

    In some cases WAL replay would mistakenly conclude that the database was already consistent at the start of replay, thus possibly allowing hot-standby queries before the database was really consistent. Other symptoms such as "PANIC: WAL contains references to invalid pages" were also possible.

  • Fix improper locking of btree index pages while replaying a VACUUM operation in hot-standby mode (Andres Freund, Heikki Linnakangas, Tom Lane)

    This error could result in "PANIC: WAL contains references to invalid pages" failures.

  • Ensure that insertions into non-leaf GIN index pages write a full-page WAL record when appropriate (Heikki Linnakangas)

    The previous coding risked index corruption in the event of a partial-page write during a system crash.

  • Fix race conditions during server process exit (Robert Haas)

    Ensure that signal handlers don't attempt to use the process's MyProc pointer after it's no longer valid.

  • Fix unsafe references to errno within error reporting logic (Christian Kruse)

    This would typically lead to odd behaviors such as missing or inappropriate HINT fields.

  • Fix possible crashes from using ereport() too early during server startup (Tom Lane)

    The principal case we've seen in the field is a crash if the server is started in a directory it doesn't have permission to read.

  • Clear retry flags properly in OpenSSL socket write function (Alexander Kukushkin)

    This omission could result in a server lockup after unexpected loss of an SSL-encrypted connection.

  • Fix length checking for Unicode identifiers (U&"..." syntax) containing escapes (Tom Lane)

    A spurious truncation warning would be printed for such identifiers if the escaped form of the identifier was too long, but the identifier actually didn't need truncation after de-escaping.

  • Allow keywords that are type names to be used in lists of roles (Stephen Frost)

    A previous patch allowed such keywords to be used without quoting in places such as role identifiers; but it missed cases where a list of role identifiers was permitted, such as DROP ROLE.

  • Fix possible crash due to invalid plan for nested sub-selects, such as WHERE (... x IN (SELECT ...) ...) IN (SELECT ...) (Tom Lane)

  • Ensure that ANALYZE creates statistics for a table column even when all the values in it are "too wide" (Tom Lane)

    ANALYZE intentionally omits very wide values from its histogram and most-common-values calculations, but it neglected to do something sane in the case that all the sampled entries are too wide.

  • In ALTER TABLE ... SET TABLESPACE, allow the database's default tablespace to be used without a permissions check (Stephen Frost)

    CREATE TABLE has always allowed such usage, but ALTER TABLE didn't get the memo.

  • Fix "cannot accept a set" error when some arms of a CASE return a set and others don't (Tom Lane)

  • Fix checks for all-zero client addresses in pgstat functions (Kevin Grittner)

  • Fix possible misclassification of multibyte characters by the text search parser (Tom Lane)

    Non-ASCII characters could be misclassified when using C locale with a multibyte encoding. On Cygwin, non-C locales could fail as well.

  • Fix possible misbehavior in plainto_tsquery() (Heikki Linnakangas)

    Use memmove() not memcpy() for copying overlapping memory regions. There have been no field reports of this actually causing trouble, but it's certainly risky.

  • Accept SHIFT_JIS as an encoding name for locale checking purposes (Tatsuo Ishii)

  • Fix misbehavior of PQhost() on Windows (Fujii Masao)

    It should return localhost if no host has been specified.

  • Improve error handling in libpq and psql for failures during COPY TO STDOUT/FROM STDIN (Tom Lane)

    In particular this fixes an infinite loop that could occur in 9.2 and up if the server connection was lost during COPY FROM STDIN. Variants of that scenario might be possible in older versions, or with other client applications.

  • Fix misaligned descriptors in ecpg (MauMau)

  • In ecpg, handle lack of a hostname in the connection parameters properly (Michael Meskes)

  • Fix performance regression in contrib/dblink connection startup (Joe Conway)

    Avoid an unnecessary round trip when client and server encodings match.

  • In contrib/isn, fix incorrect calculation of the check digit for ISMN values (Fabien Coelho)

  • Ensure client-code-only installation procedure works as documented (Peter Eisentraut)

  • In Mingw and Cygwin builds, install the libpq DLL in the bin directory (Andrew Dunstan)

    This duplicates what the MSVC build has long done. It should fix problems with programs like psql failing to start because they can't find the DLL.

  • Avoid using the deprecated dllwrap tool in Cygwin builds (Marco Atzeri)

  • Don't generate plain-text HISTORY and src/test/regress/README files anymore (Tom Lane)

    These text files duplicated the main HTML and PDF documentation formats. The trouble involved in maintaining them greatly outweighs the likely audience for plain-text format. Distribution tarballs will still contain files by these names, but they'll just be stubs directing the reader to consult the main documentation. The plain-text INSTALL file will still be maintained, as there is arguably a use-case for that.

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2013i for DST law changes in Jordan and historical changes in Cuba.

    In addition, the zones Asia/Riyadh87, Asia/Riyadh88, and Asia/Riyadh89 have been removed, as they are no longer maintained by IANA, and never represented actual civil timekeeping practice.

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Release 9.0.15

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.29. Release 9.0.15

Release Date: 2013-12-05

This release contains a variety of fixes from 9.0.14. For information about new features in the 9.0 major release, see Section E.44.

E.29.1. Migration to Version 9.0.15

A dump/restore is not required for those running 9.0.X.

However, this release corrects a number of potential data corruption issues. See the first two changelog entries below to find out whether your installation has been affected and what steps you can take if so.

Also, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 9.0.13, see Section E.31.

E.29.2. Changes

  • Fix VACUUM's tests to see whether it can update relfrozenxid (Andres Freund)

    In some cases VACUUM (either manual or autovacuum) could incorrectly advance a table's relfrozenxid value, allowing tuples to escape freezing, causing those rows to become invisible once 2^31 transactions have elapsed. The probability of data loss is fairly low since multiple incorrect advancements would need to happen before actual loss occurs, but it's not zero. Users upgrading from releases 9.0.4 or 8.4.8 or earlier are not affected, but all later versions contain the bug.

    The issue can be ameliorated by, after upgrading, vacuuming all tables in all databases while having vacuum_freeze_table_age set to zero. This will fix any latent corruption but will not be able to fix all pre-existing data errors. However, an installation can be presumed safe after performing this vacuuming if it has executed fewer than 2^31 update transactions in its lifetime (check this with SELECT txid_current() < 2^31).

  • Fix initialization of pg_clog and pg_subtrans during hot standby startup (Andres Freund, Heikki Linnakangas)

    This bug can cause data loss on standby servers at the moment they start to accept hot-standby queries, by marking committed transactions as uncommitted. The likelihood of such corruption is small unless, at the time of standby startup, the primary server has executed many updating transactions since its last checkpoint. Symptoms include missing rows, rows that should have been deleted being still visible, and obsolete versions of updated rows being still visible alongside their newer versions.

    This bug was introduced in versions 9.3.0, 9.2.5, 9.1.10, and 9.0.14. Standby servers that have only been running earlier releases are not at risk. It's recommended that standby servers that have ever run any of the buggy releases be re-cloned from the primary (e.g., with a new base backup) after upgrading.

  • Truncate pg_multixact contents during WAL replay (Andres Freund)

    This avoids ever-increasing disk space consumption in standby servers.

  • Fix race condition in GIN index posting tree page deletion (Heikki Linnakangas)

    This could lead to transient wrong answers or query failures.

  • Avoid flattening a subquery whose SELECT list contains a volatile function wrapped inside a sub-SELECT (Tom Lane)

    This avoids unexpected results due to extra evaluations of the volatile function.

  • Fix planner's processing of non-simple-variable subquery outputs nested within outer joins (Tom Lane)

    This error could lead to incorrect plans for queries involving multiple levels of subqueries within JOIN syntax.

  • Fix premature deletion of temporary files (Andres Freund)

  • Fix possible read past end of memory in rule printing (Peter Eisentraut)

  • Fix array slicing of int2vector and oidvector values (Tom Lane)

    Expressions of this kind are now implicitly promoted to regular int2 or oid arrays.

  • Fix incorrect behaviors when using a SQL-standard, simple GMT offset timezone (Tom Lane)

    In some cases, the system would use the simple GMT offset value when it should have used the regular timezone setting that had prevailed before the simple offset was selected. This change also causes the timeofday function to honor the simple GMT offset zone.

  • Prevent possible misbehavior when logging translations of Windows error codes (Tom Lane)

  • Properly quote generated command lines in pg_ctl (Naoya Anzai and Tom Lane)

    This fix applies only to Windows.

  • Fix pg_dumpall to work when a source database sets default_transaction_read_only via ALTER DATABASE SET (Kevin Grittner)

    Previously, the generated script would fail during restore.

  • Fix ecpg's processing of lists of variables declared varchar (Zoltán Böszörményi)

  • Make contrib/lo defend against incorrect trigger definitions (Marc Cousin)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2013h for DST law changes in Argentina, Brazil, Jordan, Libya, Liechtenstein, Morocco, and Palestine. Also, new timezone abbreviations WIB, WIT, WITA for Indonesia.

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Release 9.0.14

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.30. Release 9.0.14

Release Date: 2013-10-10

This release contains a variety of fixes from 9.0.13. For information about new features in the 9.0 major release, see Section E.44.

E.30.1. Migration to Version 9.0.14

A dump/restore is not required for those running 9.0.X.

However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 9.0.13, see Section E.31.

E.30.2. Changes

  • Prevent corruption of multi-byte characters when attempting to case-fold identifiers (Andrew Dunstan)

    PostgreSQL case-folds non-ASCII characters only when using a single-byte server encoding.

  • Fix checkpoint memory leak in background writer when wal_level = hot_standby (Naoya Anzai)

  • Fix memory leak caused by lo_open() failure (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Fix memory overcommit bug when work_mem is using more than 24GB of memory (Stephen Frost)

  • Fix deadlock bug in libpq when using SSL (Stephen Frost)

  • Fix possible SSL state corruption in threaded libpq applications (Nick Phillips, Stephen Frost)

  • Properly compute row estimates for boolean columns containing many NULL values (Andrew Gierth)

    Previously tests like col IS NOT TRUE and col IS NOT FALSE did not properly factor in NULL values when estimating plan costs.

  • Prevent pushing down WHERE clauses into unsafe UNION/INTERSECT subqueries (Tom Lane)

    Subqueries of a UNION or INTERSECT that contain set-returning functions or volatile functions in their SELECT lists could be improperly optimized, leading to run-time errors or incorrect query results.

  • Fix rare case of "failed to locate grouping columns" planner failure (Tom Lane)

  • Improve view dumping code's handling of dropped columns in referenced tables (Tom Lane)

  • Properly record index comments created using UNIQUE and PRIMARY KEY syntax (Andres Freund)

    This fixes a parallel pg_restore failure.

  • Fix REINDEX TABLE and REINDEX DATABASE to properly revalidate constraints and mark invalidated indexes as valid (Noah Misch)

    REINDEX INDEX has always worked properly.

  • Fix possible deadlock during concurrent CREATE INDEX CONCURRENTLY operations (Tom Lane)

  • Fix regexp_matches() handling of zero-length matches (Jeevan Chalke)

    Previously, zero-length matches like '^' could return too many matches.

  • Fix crash for overly-complex regular expressions (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Fix regular expression match failures for back references combined with non-greedy quantifiers (Jeevan Chalke)

  • Prevent CREATE FUNCTION from checking SET variables unless function body checking is enabled (Tom Lane)

  • Allow ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES to operate on schemas without requiring CREATE permission (Tom Lane)

  • Loosen restriction on keywords used in queries (Tom Lane)

    Specifically, lessen keyword restrictions for role names, language names, EXPLAIN and COPY options, and SET values. This allows COPY ... (FORMAT BINARY) to work as expected; previously BINARY needed to be quoted.

  • Fix pgp_pub_decrypt() so it works for secret keys with passwords (Marko Kreen)

  • Remove rare inaccurate warning during vacuum of index-less tables (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Ensure that VACUUM ANALYZE still runs the ANALYZE phase if its attempt to truncate the file is cancelled due to lock conflicts (Kevin Grittner)

  • Avoid possible failure when performing transaction control commands (e.g ROLLBACK) in prepared queries (Tom Lane)

  • Ensure that floating-point data input accepts standard spellings of "infinity" on all platforms (Tom Lane)

    The C99 standard says that allowable spellings are inf, +inf, -inf, infinity, +infinity, and -infinity. Make sure we recognize these even if the platform's strtod function doesn't.

  • Expand ability to compare rows to records and arrays (Rafal Rzepecki, Tom Lane)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2013d for DST law changes in Israel, Morocco, Palestine, and Paraguay. Also, historical zone data corrections for Macquarie Island.

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Release 9.0.15 | Up | Release 9.0.13


Release 9.0.13

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.31. Release 9.0.13

Release Date: 2013-04-04

This release contains a variety of fixes from 9.0.12. For information about new features in the 9.0 major release, see Section E.44.

E.31.1. Migration to Version 9.0.13

A dump/restore is not required for those running 9.0.X.

However, this release corrects several errors in management of GiST indexes. After installing this update, it is advisable to REINDEX any GiST indexes that meet one or more of the conditions described below.

Also, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 9.0.6, see Section E.38.

E.31.2. Changes

  • Fix insecure parsing of server command-line switches (Mitsumasa Kondo, Kyotaro Horiguchi)

    A connection request containing a database name that begins with "-" could be crafted to damage or destroy files within the server's data directory, even if the request is eventually rejected. (CVE-2013-1899)

  • Reset OpenSSL randomness state in each postmaster child process (Marko Kreen)

    This avoids a scenario wherein random numbers generated by contrib/pgcrypto functions might be relatively easy for another database user to guess. The risk is only significant when the postmaster is configured with ssl = on but most connections don't use SSL encryption. (CVE-2013-1900)

  • Fix GiST indexes to not use "fuzzy" geometric comparisons when it's not appropriate to do so (Alexander Korotkov)

    The core geometric types perform comparisons using "fuzzy" equality, but gist_box_same must do exact comparisons, else GiST indexes using it might become inconsistent. After installing this update, users should REINDEX any GiST indexes on box, polygon, circle, or point columns, since all of these use gist_box_same.

  • Fix erroneous range-union and penalty logic in GiST indexes that use contrib/btree_gist for variable-width data types, that is text, bytea, bit, and numeric columns (Tom Lane)

    These errors could result in inconsistent indexes in which some keys that are present would not be found by searches, and also in useless index bloat. Users are advised to REINDEX such indexes after installing this update.

  • Fix bugs in GiST page splitting code for multi-column indexes (Tom Lane)

    These errors could result in inconsistent indexes in which some keys that are present would not be found by searches, and also in indexes that are unnecessarily inefficient to search. Users are advised to REINDEX multi-column GiST indexes after installing this update.

  • Fix gist_point_consistent to handle fuzziness consistently (Alexander Korotkov)

    Index scans on GiST indexes on point columns would sometimes yield results different from a sequential scan, because gist_point_consistent disagreed with the underlying operator code about whether to do comparisons exactly or fuzzily.

  • Fix buffer leak in WAL replay (Heikki Linnakangas)

    This bug could result in "incorrect local pin count" errors during replay, making recovery impossible.

  • Fix race condition in DELETE RETURNING (Tom Lane)

    Under the right circumstances, DELETE RETURNING could attempt to fetch data from a shared buffer that the current process no longer has any pin on. If some other process changed the buffer meanwhile, this would lead to garbage RETURNING output, or even a crash.

  • Fix infinite-loop risk in regular expression compilation (Tom Lane, Don Porter)

  • Fix potential null-pointer dereference in regular expression compilation (Tom Lane)

  • Fix to_char() to use ASCII-only case-folding rules where appropriate (Tom Lane)

    This fixes misbehavior of some template patterns that should be locale-independent, but mishandled "I" and "i" in Turkish locales.

  • Fix unwanted rejection of timestamp 1999-12-31 24:00:00 (Tom Lane)

  • Fix logic error when a single transaction does UNLISTEN then LISTEN (Tom Lane)

    The session wound up not listening for notify events at all, though it surely should listen in this case.

  • Remove useless "picksplit doesn't support secondary split" log messages (Josh Hansen, Tom Lane)

    This message seems to have been added in expectation of code that was never written, and probably never will be, since GiST's default handling of secondary splits is actually pretty good. So stop nagging end users about it.

  • Fix possible failure to send a session's last few transaction commit/abort counts to the statistics collector (Tom Lane)

  • Eliminate memory leaks in PL/Perl's spi_prepare() function (Alex Hunsaker, Tom Lane)

  • Fix pg_dumpall to handle database names containing "=" correctly (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Avoid crash in pg_dump when an incorrect connection string is given (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Ignore invalid indexes in pg_dump and pg_upgrade (Michael Paquier, Bruce Momjian)

    Dumping invalid indexes can cause problems at restore time, for example if the reason the index creation failed was because it tried to enforce a uniqueness condition not satisfied by the table's data. Also, if the index creation is in fact still in progress, it seems reasonable to consider it to be an uncommitted DDL change, which pg_dump wouldn't be expected to dump anyway. pg_upgrade now also skips invalid indexes rather than failing.

  • Fix contrib/pg_trgm's similarity() function to return zero for trigram-less strings (Tom Lane)

    Previously it returned NaN due to internal division by zero.

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2013b for DST law changes in Chile, Haiti, Morocco, Paraguay, and some Russian areas. Also, historical zone data corrections for numerous places.

    Also, update the time zone abbreviation files for recent changes in Russia and elsewhere: CHOT, GET, IRKT, KGT, KRAT, MAGT, MAWT, MSK, NOVT, OMST, TKT, VLAT, WST, YAKT, YEKT now follow their current meanings, and VOLT (Europe/Volgograd) and MIST (Antarctica/Macquarie) are added to the default abbreviations list.

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Release 9.0.12

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E.32. Release 9.0.12

Release Date: 2013-02-07

This release contains a variety of fixes from 9.0.11. For information about new features in the 9.0 major release, see Section E.44.

E.32.1. Migration to Version 9.0.12

A dump/restore is not required for those running 9.0.X.

However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 9.0.6, see Section E.38.

E.32.2. Changes

  • Prevent execution of enum_recv from SQL (Tom Lane)

    The function was misdeclared, allowing a simple SQL command to crash the server. In principle an attacker might be able to use it to examine the contents of server memory. Our thanks to Sumit Soni (via Secunia SVCRP) for reporting this issue. (CVE-2013-0255)

  • Fix multiple problems in detection of when a consistent database state has been reached during WAL replay (Fujii Masao, Heikki Linnakangas, Simon Riggs, Andres Freund)

  • Update minimum recovery point when truncating a relation file (Heikki Linnakangas)

    Once data has been discarded, it's no longer safe to stop recovery at an earlier point in the timeline.

  • Fix missing cancellations in hot standby mode (Noah Misch, Simon Riggs)

    The need to cancel conflicting hot-standby queries would sometimes be missed, allowing those queries to see inconsistent data.

  • Fix SQL grammar to allow subscripting or field selection from a sub-SELECT result (Tom Lane)

  • Fix performance problems with autovacuum truncation in busy workloads (Jan Wieck)

    Truncation of empty pages at the end of a table requires exclusive lock, but autovacuum was coded to fail (and release the table lock) when there are conflicting lock requests. Under load, it is easily possible that truncation would never occur, resulting in table bloat. Fix by performing a partial truncation, releasing the lock, then attempting to re-acquire the lock and continue. This fix also greatly reduces the average time before autovacuum releases the lock after a conflicting request arrives.

  • Protect against race conditions when scanning pg_tablespace (Stephen Frost, Tom Lane)

    CREATE DATABASE and DROP DATABASE could misbehave if there were concurrent updates of pg_tablespace entries.

  • Prevent DROP OWNED from trying to drop whole databases or tablespaces (Álvaro Herrera)

    For safety, ownership of these objects must be reassigned, not dropped.

  • Fix error in vacuum_freeze_table_age implementation (Andres Freund)

    In installations that have existed for more than vacuum_freeze_min_age transactions, this mistake prevented autovacuum from using partial-table scans, so that a full-table scan would always happen instead.

  • Prevent misbehavior when a RowExpr or XmlExpr is parse-analyzed twice (Andres Freund, Tom Lane)

    This mistake could be user-visible in contexts such as CREATE TABLE LIKE INCLUDING INDEXES.

  • Improve defenses against integer overflow in hashtable sizing calculations (Jeff Davis)

  • Reject out-of-range dates in to_date() (Hitoshi Harada)

  • Ensure that non-ASCII prompt strings are translated to the correct code page on Windows (Alexander Law, Noah Misch)

    This bug affected psql and some other client programs.

  • Fix possible crash in psql's \? command when not connected to a database (Meng Qingzhong)

  • Fix pg_upgrade to deal with invalid indexes safely (Bruce Momjian)

  • Fix one-byte buffer overrun in libpq's PQprintTuples (Xi Wang)

    This ancient function is not used anywhere by PostgreSQL itself, but it might still be used by some client code.

  • Make ecpglib use translated messages properly (Chen Huajun)

  • Properly install ecpg_compat and pgtypes libraries on MSVC (Jiang Guiqing)

  • Include our version of isinf() in libecpg if it's not provided by the system (Jiang Guiqing)

  • Rearrange configure's tests for supplied functions so it is not fooled by bogus exports from libedit/libreadline (Christoph Berg)

  • Ensure Windows build number increases over time (Magnus Hagander)

  • Make pgxs build executables with the right .exe suffix when cross-compiling for Windows (Zoltan Boszormenyi)

  • Add new timezone abbreviation FET (Tom Lane)

    This is now used in some eastern-European time zones.

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Release 9.0.11

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.33. Release 9.0.11

Release Date: 2012-12-06

This release contains a variety of fixes from 9.0.10. For information about new features in the 9.0 major release, see Section E.44.

E.33.1. Migration to Version 9.0.11

A dump/restore is not required for those running 9.0.X.

However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 9.0.6, see Section E.38.

E.33.2. Changes

  • Fix multiple bugs associated with CREATE INDEX CONCURRENTLY (Andres Freund, Tom Lane)

    Fix CREATE INDEX CONCURRENTLY to use in-place updates when changing the state of an index's pg_index row. This prevents race conditions that could cause concurrent sessions to miss updating the target index, thus resulting in corrupt concurrently-created indexes.

    Also, fix various other operations to ensure that they ignore invalid indexes resulting from a failed CREATE INDEX CONCURRENTLY command. The most important of these is VACUUM, because an auto-vacuum could easily be launched on the table before corrective action can be taken to fix or remove the invalid index.

  • Fix buffer locking during WAL replay (Tom Lane)

    The WAL replay code was insufficiently careful about locking buffers when replaying WAL records that affect more than one page. This could result in hot standby queries transiently seeing inconsistent states, resulting in wrong answers or unexpected failures.

  • Fix an error in WAL generation logic for GIN indexes (Tom Lane)

    This could result in index corruption, if a torn-page failure occurred.

  • Properly remove startup process's virtual XID lock when promoting a hot standby server to normal running (Simon Riggs)

    This oversight could prevent subsequent execution of certain operations such as CREATE INDEX CONCURRENTLY.

  • Avoid bogus "out-of-sequence timeline ID" errors in standby mode (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Prevent the postmaster from launching new child processes after it's received a shutdown signal (Tom Lane)

    This mistake could result in shutdown taking longer than it should, or even never completing at all without additional user action.

  • Avoid corruption of internal hash tables when out of memory (Hitoshi Harada)

  • Fix planning of non-strict equivalence clauses above outer joins (Tom Lane)

    The planner could derive incorrect constraints from a clause equating a non-strict construct to something else, for example WHERE COALESCE(foo, 0) = 0 when foo is coming from the nullable side of an outer join.

  • Improve planner's ability to prove exclusion constraints from equivalence classes (Tom Lane)

  • Fix partial-row matching in hashed subplans to handle cross-type cases correctly (Tom Lane)

    This affects multicolumn NOT IN subplans, such as WHERE (a, b) NOT IN (SELECT x, y FROM ...) when for instance b and y are int4 and int8 respectively. This mistake led to wrong answers or crashes depending on the specific datatypes involved.

  • Acquire buffer lock when re-fetching the old tuple for an AFTER ROW UPDATE/DELETE trigger (Andres Freund)

    In very unusual circumstances, this oversight could result in passing incorrect data to the precheck logic for a foreign-key enforcement trigger. That could result in a crash, or in an incorrect decision about whether to fire the trigger.

  • Fix ALTER COLUMN TYPE to handle inherited check constraints properly (Pavan Deolasee)

    This worked correctly in pre-8.4 releases, and now works correctly in 8.4 and later.

  • Fix REASSIGN OWNED to handle grants on tablespaces (Álvaro Herrera)

  • Ignore incorrect pg_attribute entries for system columns for views (Tom Lane)

    Views do not have any system columns. However, we forgot to remove such entries when converting a table to a view. That's fixed properly for 9.3 and later, but in previous branches we need to defend against existing mis-converted views.

  • Fix rule printing to dump INSERT INTO table DEFAULT VALUES correctly (Tom Lane)

  • Guard against stack overflow when there are too many UNION/INTERSECT/EXCEPT clauses in a query (Tom Lane)

  • Prevent platform-dependent failures when dividing the minimum possible integer value by -1 (Xi Wang, Tom Lane)

  • Fix possible access past end of string in date parsing (Hitoshi Harada)

  • Fix failure to advance XID epoch if XID wraparound happens during a checkpoint and wal_level is hot_standby (Tom Lane, Andres Freund)

    While this mistake had no particular impact on PostgreSQL itself, it was bad for applications that rely on txid_current() and related functions: the TXID value would appear to go backwards.

  • Produce an understandable error message if the length of the path name for a Unix-domain socket exceeds the platform-specific limit (Tom Lane, Andrew Dunstan)

    Formerly, this would result in something quite unhelpful, such as "Non-recoverable failure in name resolution".

  • Fix memory leaks when sending composite column values to the client (Tom Lane)

  • Make pg_ctl more robust about reading the postmaster.pid file (Heikki Linnakangas)

    Fix race conditions and possible file descriptor leakage.

  • Fix possible crash in psql if incorrectly-encoded data is presented and the client_encoding setting is a client-only encoding, such as SJIS (Jiang Guiqing)

  • Fix bugs in the restore.sql script emitted by pg_dump in tar output format (Tom Lane)

    The script would fail outright on tables whose names include upper-case characters. Also, make the script capable of restoring data in --inserts mode as well as the regular COPY mode.

  • Fix pg_restore to accept POSIX-conformant tar files (Brian Weaver, Tom Lane)

    The original coding of pg_dump's tar output mode produced files that are not fully conformant with the POSIX standard. This has been corrected for version 9.3. This patch updates previous branches so that they will accept both the incorrect and the corrected formats, in hopes of avoiding compatibility problems when 9.3 comes out.

  • Fix pg_resetxlog to locate postmaster.pid correctly when given a relative path to the data directory (Tom Lane)

    This mistake could lead to pg_resetxlog not noticing that there is an active postmaster using the data directory.

  • Fix libpq's lo_import() and lo_export() functions to report file I/O errors properly (Tom Lane)

  • Fix ecpg's processing of nested structure pointer variables (Muhammad Usama)

  • Fix ecpg's ecpg_get_data function to handle arrays properly (Michael Meskes)

  • Make contrib/pageinspect's btree page inspection functions take buffer locks while examining pages (Tom Lane)

  • Fix pgxs support for building loadable modules on AIX (Tom Lane)

    Building modules outside the original source tree didn't work on AIX.

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2012j for DST law changes in Cuba, Israel, Jordan, Libya, Palestine, Western Samoa, and portions of Brazil.

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Release 9.0.10

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.34. Release 9.0.10

Release Date: 2012-09-24

This release contains a variety of fixes from 9.0.9. For information about new features in the 9.0 major release, see Section E.44.

E.34.1. Migration to Version 9.0.10

A dump/restore is not required for those running 9.0.X.

However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 9.0.6, see Section E.38.

E.34.2. Changes

  • Fix planner's assignment of executor parameters, and fix executor's rescan logic for CTE plan nodes (Tom Lane)

    These errors could result in wrong answers from queries that scan the same WITH subquery multiple times.

  • Improve page-splitting decisions in GiST indexes (Alexander Korotkov, Robert Haas, Tom Lane)

    Multi-column GiST indexes might suffer unexpected bloat due to this error.

  • Fix cascading privilege revoke to stop if privileges are still held (Tom Lane)

    If we revoke a grant option from some role X, but X still holds that option via a grant from someone else, we should not recursively revoke the corresponding privilege from role(s) Y that X had granted it to.

  • Improve error messages for Hot Standby misconfiguration errors (Gurjeet Singh)

  • Fix handling of SIGFPE when PL/Perl is in use (Andres Freund)

    Perl resets the process's SIGFPE handler to SIG_IGN, which could result in crashes later on. Restore the normal Postgres signal handler after initializing PL/Perl.

  • Prevent PL/Perl from crashing if a recursive PL/Perl function is redefined while being executed (Tom Lane)

  • Work around possible misoptimization in PL/Perl (Tom Lane)

    Some Linux distributions contain an incorrect version of pthread.h that results in incorrect compiled code in PL/Perl, leading to crashes if a PL/Perl function calls another one that throws an error.

  • Fix pg_upgrade's handling of line endings on Windows (Andrew Dunstan)

    Previously, pg_upgrade might add or remove carriage returns in places such as function bodies.

  • On Windows, make pg_upgrade use backslash path separators in the scripts it emits (Andrew Dunstan)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2012f for DST law changes in Fiji

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Release 9.0.11 | Up | Release 9.0.9


Release 9.0.9

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.35. Release 9.0.9

Release Date: 2012-08-17

This release contains a variety of fixes from 9.0.8. For information about new features in the 9.0 major release, see Section E.44.

E.35.1. Migration to Version 9.0.9

A dump/restore is not required for those running 9.0.X.

However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 9.0.6, see Section E.38.

E.35.2. Changes

  • Prevent access to external files/URLs via XML entity references (Noah Misch, Tom Lane)

    xml_parse() would attempt to fetch external files or URLs as needed to resolve DTD and entity references in an XML value, thus allowing unprivileged database users to attempt to fetch data with the privileges of the database server. While the external data wouldn't get returned directly to the user, portions of it could be exposed in error messages if the data didn't parse as valid XML; and in any case the mere ability to check existence of a file might be useful to an attacker. (CVE-2012-3489)

  • Prevent access to external files/URLs via contrib/xml2's xslt_process() (Peter Eisentraut)

    libxslt offers the ability to read and write both files and URLs through stylesheet commands, thus allowing unprivileged database users to both read and write data with the privileges of the database server. Disable that through proper use of libxslt's security options. (CVE-2012-3488)

    Also, remove xslt_process()'s ability to fetch documents and stylesheets from external files/URLs. While this was a documented "feature", it was long regarded as a bad idea. The fix for CVE-2012-3489 broke that capability, and rather than expend effort on trying to fix it, we're just going to summarily remove it.

  • Prevent too-early recycling of btree index pages (Noah Misch)

    When we allowed read-only transactions to skip assigning XIDs, we introduced the possibility that a deleted btree page could be recycled while a read-only transaction was still in flight to it. This would result in incorrect index search results. The probability of such an error occurring in the field seems very low because of the timing requirements, but nonetheless it should be fixed.

  • Fix crash-safety bug with newly-created-or-reset sequences (Tom Lane)

    If ALTER SEQUENCE was executed on a freshly created or reset sequence, and then precisely one nextval() call was made on it, and then the server crashed, WAL replay would restore the sequence to a state in which it appeared that no nextval() had been done, thus allowing the first sequence value to be returned again by the next nextval() call. In particular this could manifest for serial columns, since creation of a serial column's sequence includes an ALTER SEQUENCE OWNED BY step.

  • Fix txid_current() to report the correct epoch when not in hot standby (Heikki Linnakangas)

    This fixes a regression introduced in the previous minor release.

  • Fix bug in startup of Hot Standby when a master transaction has many subtransactions (Andres Freund)

    This mistake led to failures reported as "out-of-order XID insertion in KnownAssignedXids".

  • Ensure the backup_label file is fsync'd after pg_start_backup() (Dave Kerr)

  • Fix timeout handling in walsender processes (Tom Lane)

    WAL sender background processes neglected to establish a SIGALRM handler, meaning they would wait forever in some corner cases where a timeout ought to happen.

  • Back-patch 9.1 improvement to compress the fsync request queue (Robert Haas)

    This improves performance during checkpoints. The 9.1 change has now seen enough field testing to seem safe to back-patch.

  • Fix LISTEN/NOTIFY to cope better with I/O problems, such as out of disk space (Tom Lane)

    After a write failure, all subsequent attempts to send more NOTIFY messages would fail with messages like "Could not read from file "pg_notify/nnnn" at offset nnnnn: Success".

  • Only allow autovacuum to be auto-canceled by a directly blocked process (Tom Lane)

    The original coding could allow inconsistent behavior in some cases; in particular, an autovacuum could get canceled after less than deadlock_timeout grace period.

  • Improve logging of autovacuum cancels (Robert Haas)

  • Fix log collector so that log_truncate_on_rotation works during the very first log rotation after server start (Tom Lane)

  • Fix WITH attached to a nested set operation (UNION/INTERSECT/EXCEPT) (Tom Lane)

  • Ensure that a whole-row reference to a subquery doesn't include any extra GROUP BY or ORDER BY columns (Tom Lane)

  • Disallow copying whole-row references in CHECK constraints and index definitions during CREATE TABLE (Tom Lane)

    This situation can arise in CREATE TABLE with LIKE or INHERITS. The copied whole-row variable was incorrectly labeled with the row type of the original table not the new one. Rejecting the case seems reasonable for LIKE, since the row types might well diverge later. For INHERITS we should ideally allow it, with an implicit coercion to the parent table's row type; but that will require more work than seems safe to back-patch.

  • Fix memory leak in ARRAY(SELECT ...) subqueries (Heikki Linnakangas, Tom Lane)

  • Fix extraction of common prefixes from regular expressions (Tom Lane)

    The code could get confused by quantified parenthesized subexpressions, such as ^(foo)?bar. This would lead to incorrect index optimization of searches for such patterns.

  • Fix bugs with parsing signed hh:mm and hh:mm:ss fields in interval constants (Amit Kapila, Tom Lane)

  • Use Postgres' encoding conversion functions, not Python's, when converting a Python Unicode string to the server encoding in PL/Python (Jan Urbanski)

    This avoids some corner-case problems, notably that Python doesn't support all the encodings Postgres does. A notable functional change is that if the server encoding is SQL_ASCII, you will get the UTF-8 representation of the string; formerly, any non-ASCII characters in the string would result in an error.

  • Fix mapping of PostgreSQL encodings to Python encodings in PL/Python (Jan Urbanski)

  • Report errors properly in contrib/xml2's xslt_process() (Tom Lane)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2012e for DST law changes in Morocco and Tokelau

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Release 9.0.10 | Up | Release 9.0.8


Release 9.0.8

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.36. Release 9.0.8

Release Date: 2012-06-04

This release contains a variety of fixes from 9.0.7. For information about new features in the 9.0 major release, see Section E.44.

E.36.1. Migration to Version 9.0.8

A dump/restore is not required for those running 9.0.X.

However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 9.0.6, see Section E.38.

E.36.2. Changes

  • Fix incorrect password transformation in contrib/pgcrypto's DES crypt() function (Solar Designer)

    If a password string contained the byte value 0x80, the remainder of the password was ignored, causing the password to be much weaker than it appeared. With this fix, the rest of the string is properly included in the DES hash. Any stored password values that are affected by this bug will thus no longer match, so the stored values may need to be updated. (CVE-2012-2143)

  • Ignore SECURITY DEFINER and SET attributes for a procedural language's call handler (Tom Lane)

    Applying such attributes to a call handler could crash the server. (CVE-2012-2655)

  • Allow numeric timezone offsets in timestamp input to be up to 16 hours away from UTC (Tom Lane)

    Some historical time zones have offsets larger than 15 hours, the previous limit. This could result in dumped data values being rejected during reload.

  • Fix timestamp conversion to cope when the given time is exactly the last DST transition time for the current timezone (Tom Lane)

    This oversight has been there a long time, but was not noticed previously because most DST-using zones are presumed to have an indefinite sequence of future DST transitions.

  • Fix text to name and char to name casts to perform string truncation correctly in multibyte encodings (Karl Schnaitter)

  • Fix memory copying bug in to_tsquery() (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Ensure txid_current() reports the correct epoch when executed in hot standby (Simon Riggs)

  • Fix planner's handling of outer PlaceHolderVars within subqueries (Tom Lane)

    This bug concerns sub-SELECTs that reference variables coming from the nullable side of an outer join of the surrounding query. In 9.1, queries affected by this bug would fail with "ERROR: Upper-level PlaceHolderVar found where not expected". But in 9.0 and 8.4, you'd silently get possibly-wrong answers, since the value transmitted into the subquery wouldn't go to null when it should.

  • Fix slow session startup when pg_attribute is very large (Tom Lane)

    If pg_attribute exceeds one-fourth of shared_buffers, cache rebuilding code that is sometimes needed during session start would trigger the synchronized-scan logic, causing it to take many times longer than normal. The problem was particularly acute if many new sessions were starting at once.

  • Ensure sequential scans check for query cancel reasonably often (Merlin Moncure)

    A scan encountering many consecutive pages that contain no live tuples would not respond to interrupts meanwhile.

  • Ensure the Windows implementation of PGSemaphoreLock() clears ImmediateInterruptOK before returning (Tom Lane)

    This oversight meant that a query-cancel interrupt received later in the same query could be accepted at an unsafe time, with unpredictable but not good consequences.

  • Show whole-row variables safely when printing views or rules (Abbas Butt, Tom Lane)

    Corner cases involving ambiguous names (that is, the name could be either a table or column name of the query) were printed in an ambiguous way, risking that the view or rule would be interpreted differently after dump and reload. Avoid the ambiguous case by attaching a no-op cast.

  • Fix COPY FROM to properly handle null marker strings that correspond to invalid encoding (Tom Lane)

    A null marker string such as E'\\0' should work, and did work in the past, but the case got broken in 8.4.

  • Ensure autovacuum worker processes perform stack depth checking properly (Heikki Linnakangas)

    Previously, infinite recursion in a function invoked by auto-ANALYZE could crash worker processes.

  • Fix logging collector to not lose log coherency under high load (Andrew Dunstan)

    The collector previously could fail to reassemble large messages if it got too busy.

  • Fix logging collector to ensure it will restart file rotation after receiving SIGHUP (Tom Lane)

  • Fix WAL replay logic for GIN indexes to not fail if the index was subsequently dropped (Tom Lane)

  • Fix memory leak in PL/pgSQL's RETURN NEXT command (Joe Conway)

  • Fix PL/pgSQL's GET DIAGNOSTICS command when the target is the function's first variable (Tom Lane)

  • Fix potential access off the end of memory in psql's expanded display (\x) mode (Peter Eisentraut)

  • Fix several performance problems in pg_dump when the database contains many objects (Jeff Janes, Tom Lane)

    pg_dump could get very slow if the database contained many schemas, or if many objects are in dependency loops, or if there are many owned sequences.

  • Fix pg_upgrade for the case that a database stored in a non-default tablespace contains a table in the cluster's default tablespace (Bruce Momjian)

  • In ecpg, fix rare memory leaks and possible overwrite of one byte after the sqlca_t structure (Peter Eisentraut)

  • Fix contrib/dblink's dblink_exec() to not leak temporary database connections upon error (Tom Lane)

  • Fix contrib/dblink to report the correct connection name in error messages (Kyotaro Horiguchi)

  • Fix contrib/vacuumlo to use multiple transactions when dropping many large objects (Tim Lewis, Robert Haas, Tom Lane)

    This change avoids exceeding max_locks_per_transaction when many objects need to be dropped. The behavior can be adjusted with the new -l (limit) option.

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2012c for DST law changes in Antarctica, Armenia, Chile, Cuba, Falkland Islands, Gaza, Haiti, Hebron, Morocco, Syria, and Tokelau Islands; also historical corrections for Canada.

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Release 9.0.9 | Up | Release 9.0.7


Release 9.0.7

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.37. Release 9.0.7

Release Date: 2012-02-27

This release contains a variety of fixes from 9.0.6. For information about new features in the 9.0 major release, see Section E.44.

E.37.1. Migration to Version 9.0.7

A dump/restore is not required for those running 9.0.X.

However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 9.0.6, see Section E.38.

E.37.2. Changes

  • Require execute permission on the trigger function for CREATE TRIGGER (Robert Haas)

    This missing check could allow another user to execute a trigger function with forged input data, by installing it on a table he owns. This is only of significance for trigger functions marked SECURITY DEFINER, since otherwise trigger functions run as the table owner anyway. (CVE-2012-0866)

  • Remove arbitrary limitation on length of common name in SSL certificates (Heikki Linnakangas)

    Both libpq and the server truncated the common name extracted from an SSL certificate at 32 bytes. Normally this would cause nothing worse than an unexpected verification failure, but there are some rather-implausible scenarios in which it might allow one certificate holder to impersonate another. The victim would have to have a common name exactly 32 bytes long, and the attacker would have to persuade a trusted CA to issue a certificate in which the common name has that string as a prefix. Impersonating a server would also require some additional exploit to redirect client connections. (CVE-2012-0867)

  • Convert newlines to spaces in names written in pg_dump comments (Robert Haas)

    pg_dump was incautious about sanitizing object names that are emitted within SQL comments in its output script. A name containing a newline would at least render the script syntactically incorrect. Maliciously crafted object names could present a SQL injection risk when the script is reloaded. (CVE-2012-0868)

  • Fix btree index corruption from insertions concurrent with vacuuming (Tom Lane)

    An index page split caused by an insertion could sometimes cause a concurrently-running VACUUM to miss removing index entries that it should remove. After the corresponding table rows are removed, the dangling index entries would cause errors (such as "could not read block N in file ...") or worse, silently wrong query results after unrelated rows are re-inserted at the now-free table locations. This bug has been present since release 8.2, but occurs so infrequently that it was not diagnosed until now. If you have reason to suspect that it has happened in your database, reindexing the affected index will fix things.

  • Fix transient zeroing of shared buffers during WAL replay (Tom Lane)

    The replay logic would sometimes zero and refill a shared buffer, so that the contents were transiently invalid. In hot standby mode this can result in a query that's executing in parallel seeing garbage data. Various symptoms could result from that, but the most common one seems to be "invalid memory alloc request size".

  • Fix postmaster to attempt restart after a hot-standby crash (Tom Lane)

    A logic error caused the postmaster to terminate, rather than attempt to restart the cluster, if any backend process crashed while operating in hot standby mode.

  • Fix CLUSTER/VACUUM FULL handling of toast values owned by recently-updated rows (Tom Lane)

    This oversight could lead to "duplicate key value violates unique constraint" errors being reported against the toast table's index during one of these commands.

  • Update per-column permissions, not only per-table permissions, when changing table owner (Tom Lane)

    Failure to do this meant that any previously granted column permissions were still shown as having been granted by the old owner. This meant that neither the new owner nor a superuser could revoke the now-untraceable-to-table-owner permissions.

  • Support foreign data wrappers and foreign servers in REASSIGN OWNED (Alvaro Herrera)

    This command failed with "unexpected classid" errors if it needed to change the ownership of any such objects.

  • Allow non-existent values for some settings in ALTER USER/DATABASE SET (Heikki Linnakangas)

    Allow default_text_search_config, default_tablespace, and temp_tablespaces to be set to names that are not known. This is because they might be known in another database where the setting is intended to be used, or for the tablespace cases because the tablespace might not be created yet. The same issue was previously recognized for search_path, and these settings now act like that one.

  • Avoid crashing when we have problems deleting table files post-commit (Tom Lane)

    Dropping a table should lead to deleting the underlying disk files only after the transaction commits. In event of failure then (for instance, because of wrong file permissions) the code is supposed to just emit a warning message and go on, since it's too late to abort the transaction. This logic got broken as of release 8.4, causing such situations to result in a PANIC and an unrestartable database.

  • Recover from errors occurring during WAL replay of DROP TABLESPACE (Tom Lane)

    Replay will attempt to remove the tablespace's directories, but there are various reasons why this might fail (for example, incorrect ownership or permissions on those directories). Formerly the replay code would panic, rendering the database unrestartable without manual intervention. It seems better to log the problem and continue, since the only consequence of failure to remove the directories is some wasted disk space.

  • Fix race condition in logging AccessExclusiveLocks for hot standby (Simon Riggs)

    Sometimes a lock would be logged as being held by "transaction zero". This is at least known to produce assertion failures on slave servers, and might be the cause of more serious problems.

  • Track the OID counter correctly during WAL replay, even when it wraps around (Tom Lane)

    Previously the OID counter would remain stuck at a high value until the system exited replay mode. The practical consequences of that are usually nil, but there are scenarios wherein a standby server that's been promoted to master might take a long time to advance the OID counter to a reasonable value once values are needed.

  • Prevent emitting misleading "consistent recovery state reached" log message at the beginning of crash recovery (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Fix initial value of pg_stat_replication.replay_location (Fujii Masao)

    Previously, the value shown would be wrong until at least one WAL record had been replayed.

  • Fix regular expression back-references with * attached (Tom Lane)

    Rather than enforcing an exact string match, the code would effectively accept any string that satisfies the pattern sub-expression referenced by the back-reference symbol.

    A similar problem still afflicts back-references that are embedded in a larger quantified expression, rather than being the immediate subject of the quantifier. This will be addressed in a future PostgreSQL release.

  • Fix recently-introduced memory leak in processing of inet/cidr values (Heikki Linnakangas)

    A patch in the December 2011 releases of PostgreSQL caused memory leakage in these operations, which could be significant in scenarios such as building a btree index on such a column.

  • Fix dangling pointer after CREATE TABLE AS/SELECT INTO in a SQL-language function (Tom Lane)

    In most cases this only led to an assertion failure in assert-enabled builds, but worse consequences seem possible.

  • Avoid double close of file handle in syslogger on Windows (MauMau)

    Ordinarily this error was invisible, but it would cause an exception when running on a debug version of Windows.

  • Fix I/O-conversion-related memory leaks in plpgsql (Andres Freund, Jan Urbanski, Tom Lane)

    Certain operations would leak memory until the end of the current function.

  • Improve pg_dump's handling of inherited table columns (Tom Lane)

    pg_dump mishandled situations where a child column has a different default expression than its parent column. If the default is textually identical to the parent's default, but not actually the same (for instance, because of schema search path differences) it would not be recognized as different, so that after dump and restore the child would be allowed to inherit the parent's default. Child columns that are NOT NULL where their parent is not could also be restored subtly incorrectly.

  • Fix pg_restore's direct-to-database mode for INSERT-style table data (Tom Lane)

    Direct-to-database restores from archive files made with --inserts or --column-inserts options fail when using pg_restore from a release dated September or December 2011, as a result of an oversight in a fix for another problem. The archive file itself is not at fault, and text-mode output is okay.

  • Allow pg_upgrade to process tables containing regclass columns (Bruce Momjian)

    Since pg_upgrade now takes care to preserve pg_class OIDs, there was no longer any reason for this restriction.

  • Make libpq ignore ENOTDIR errors when looking for an SSL client certificate file (Magnus Hagander)

    This allows SSL connections to be established, though without a certificate, even when the user's home directory is set to something like /dev/null.

  • Fix some more field alignment issues in ecpg's SQLDA area (Zoltan Boszormenyi)

  • Allow AT option in ecpg DEALLOCATE statements (Michael Meskes)

    The infrastructure to support this has been there for awhile, but through an oversight there was still an error check rejecting the case.

  • Do not use the variable name when defining a varchar structure in ecpg (Michael Meskes)

  • Fix contrib/auto_explain's JSON output mode to produce valid JSON (Andrew Dunstan)

    The output used brackets at the top level, when it should have used braces.

  • Fix error in contrib/intarray's int[] & int[] operator (Guillaume Lelarge)

    If the smallest integer the two input arrays have in common is 1, and there are smaller values in either array, then 1 would be incorrectly omitted from the result.

  • Fix error detection in contrib/pgcrypto's encrypt_iv() and decrypt_iv() (Marko Kreen)

    These functions failed to report certain types of invalid-input errors, and would instead return random garbage values for incorrect input.

  • Fix one-byte buffer overrun in contrib/test_parser (Paul Guyot)

    The code would try to read one more byte than it should, which would crash in corner cases. Since contrib/test_parser is only example code, this is not a security issue in itself, but bad example code is still bad.

  • Use __sync_lock_test_and_set() for spinlocks on ARM, if available (Martin Pitt)

    This function replaces our previous use of the SWPB instruction, which is deprecated and not available on ARMv6 and later. Reports suggest that the old code doesn't fail in an obvious way on recent ARM boards, but simply doesn't interlock concurrent accesses, leading to bizarre failures in multiprocess operation.

  • Use -fexcess-precision=standard option when building with gcc versions that accept it (Andrew Dunstan)

    This prevents assorted scenarios wherein recent versions of gcc will produce creative results.

  • Allow use of threaded Python on FreeBSD (Chris Rees)

    Our configure script previously believed that this combination wouldn't work; but FreeBSD fixed the problem, so remove that error check.

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Release 9.0.8 | Up | Release 9.0.6


Release 9.0.6

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.38. Release 9.0.6

Release Date: 2011-12-05

This release contains a variety of fixes from 9.0.5. For information about new features in the 9.0 major release, see Section E.44.

E.38.1. Migration to Version 9.0.6

A dump/restore is not required for those running 9.0.X.

However, a longstanding error was discovered in the definition of the information_schema.referential_constraints view. If you rely on correct results from that view, you should replace its definition as explained in the first changelog item below.

Also, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 9.0.4, see Section E.40.

E.38.2. Changes

  • Fix bugs in information_schema.referential_constraints view (Tom Lane)

    This view was being insufficiently careful about matching the foreign-key constraint to the depended-on primary or unique key constraint. That could result in failure to show a foreign key constraint at all, or showing it multiple times, or claiming that it depends on a different constraint than the one it really does.

    Since the view definition is installed by initdb, merely upgrading will not fix the problem. If you need to fix this in an existing installation, you can (as a superuser) drop the information_schema schema then re-create it by sourcing SHAREDIR/information_schema.sql. (Run pg_config --sharedir if you're uncertain where SHAREDIR is.) This must be repeated in each database to be fixed.

  • Fix possible crash during UPDATE or DELETE that joins to the output of a scalar-returning function (Tom Lane)

    A crash could only occur if the target row had been concurrently updated, so this problem surfaced only intermittently.

  • Fix incorrect replay of WAL records for GIN index updates (Tom Lane)

    This could result in transiently failing to find index entries after a crash, or on a hot-standby server. The problem would be repaired by the next VACUUM of the index, however.

  • Fix TOAST-related data corruption during CREATE TABLE dest AS SELECT * FROM src or INSERT INTO dest SELECT * FROM src (Tom Lane)

    If a table has been modified by ALTER TABLE ADD COLUMN, attempts to copy its data verbatim to another table could produce corrupt results in certain corner cases. The problem can only manifest in this precise form in 8.4 and later, but we patched earlier versions as well in case there are other code paths that could trigger the same bug.

  • Fix possible failures during hot standby startup (Simon Riggs)

  • Start hot standby faster when initial snapshot is incomplete (Simon Riggs)

  • Fix race condition during toast table access from stale syscache entries (Tom Lane)

    The typical symptom was transient errors like "missing chunk number 0 for toast value NNNNN in pg_toast_2619", where the cited toast table would always belong to a system catalog.

  • Track dependencies of functions on items used in parameter default expressions (Tom Lane)

    Previously, a referenced object could be dropped without having dropped or modified the function, leading to misbehavior when the function was used. Note that merely installing this update will not fix the missing dependency entries; to do that, you'd need to CREATE OR REPLACE each such function afterwards. If you have functions whose defaults depend on non-built-in objects, doing so is recommended.

  • Allow inlining of set-returning SQL functions with multiple OUT parameters (Tom Lane)

  • Don't trust deferred-unique indexes for join removal (Tom Lane and Marti Raudsepp)

    A deferred uniqueness constraint might not hold intra-transaction, so assuming that it does could give incorrect query results.

  • Make DatumGetInetP() unpack inet datums that have a 1-byte header, and add a new macro, DatumGetInetPP(), that does not (Heikki Linnakangas)

    This change affects no core code, but might prevent crashes in add-on code that expects DatumGetInetP() to produce an unpacked datum as per usual convention.

  • Improve locale support in money type's input and output (Tom Lane)

    Aside from not supporting all standard lc_monetary formatting options, the input and output functions were inconsistent, meaning there were locales in which dumped money values could not be re-read.

  • Don't let transform_null_equals affect CASE foo WHEN NULL ... constructs (Heikki Linnakangas)

    transform_null_equals is only supposed to affect foo = NULL expressions written directly by the user, not equality checks generated internally by this form of CASE.

  • Change foreign-key trigger creation order to better support self-referential foreign keys (Tom Lane)

    For a cascading foreign key that references its own table, a row update will fire both the ON UPDATE trigger and the CHECK trigger as one event. The ON UPDATE trigger must execute first, else the CHECK will check a non-final state of the row and possibly throw an inappropriate error. However, the firing order of these triggers is determined by their names, which generally sort in creation order since the triggers have auto-generated names following the convention "RI_ConstraintTrigger_NNNN". A proper fix would require modifying that convention, which we will do in 9.2, but it seems risky to change it in existing releases. So this patch just changes the creation order of the triggers. Users encountering this type of error should drop and re-create the foreign key constraint to get its triggers into the right order.

  • Avoid floating-point underflow while tracking buffer allocation rate (Greg Matthews)

    While harmless in itself, on certain platforms this would result in annoying kernel log messages.

  • Preserve configuration file name and line number values when starting child processes under Windows (Tom Lane)

    Formerly, these would not be displayed correctly in the pg_settings view.

  • Fix incorrect field alignment in ecpg's SQLDA area (Zoltan Boszormenyi)

  • Preserve blank lines within commands in psql's command history (Robert Haas)

    The former behavior could cause problems if an empty line was removed from within a string literal, for example.

  • Fix pg_dump to dump user-defined casts between auto-generated types, such as table rowtypes (Tom Lane)

  • Assorted fixes for pg_upgrade (Bruce Momjian)

    Handle exclusion constraints correctly, avoid failures on Windows, don't complain about mismatched toast table names in 8.4 databases.

  • Use the preferred version of xsubpp to build PL/Perl, not necessarily the operating system's main copy (David Wheeler and Alex Hunsaker)

  • Fix incorrect coding in contrib/dict_int and contrib/dict_xsyn (Tom Lane)

    Some functions incorrectly assumed that memory returned by palloc() is guaranteed zeroed.

  • Fix assorted errors in contrib/unaccent's configuration file parsing (Tom Lane)

  • Honor query cancel interrupts promptly in pgstatindex() (Robert Haas)

  • Fix incorrect quoting of log file name in Mac OS X start script (Sidar Lopez)

  • Ensure VPATH builds properly install all server header files (Peter Eisentraut)

  • Shorten file names reported in verbose error messages (Peter Eisentraut)

    Regular builds have always reported just the name of the C file containing the error message call, but VPATH builds formerly reported an absolute path name.

  • Fix interpretation of Windows timezone names for Central America (Tom Lane)

    Map "Central America Standard Time" to CST6, not CST6CDT, because DST is generally not observed anywhere in Central America.

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2011n for DST law changes in Brazil, Cuba, Fiji, Palestine, Russia, and Samoa; also historical corrections for Alaska and British East Africa.

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Release 9.0.7 | Up | Release 9.0.5


Release 9.0.5

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.39. Release 9.0.5

Release Date: 2011-09-26

This release contains a variety of fixes from 9.0.4. For information about new features in the 9.0 major release, see Section E.44.

E.39.1. Migration to Version 9.0.5

A dump/restore is not required for those running 9.0.X.

However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 9.0.4, see Section E.40.

E.39.2. Changes

  • Fix catalog cache invalidation after a VACUUM FULL or CLUSTER on a system catalog (Tom Lane)

    In some cases the relocation of a system catalog row to another place would not be recognized by concurrent server processes, allowing catalog corruption to occur if they then tried to update that row. The worst-case outcome could be as bad as complete loss of a table.

  • Fix incorrect order of operations during sinval reset processing, and ensure that TOAST OIDs are preserved in system catalogs (Tom Lane)

    These mistakes could lead to transient failures after a VACUUM FULL or CLUSTER on a system catalog.

  • Fix bugs in indexing of in-doubt HOT-updated tuples (Tom Lane)

    These bugs could result in index corruption after reindexing a system catalog. They are not believed to affect user indexes.

  • Fix multiple bugs in GiST index page split processing (Heikki Linnakangas)

    The probability of occurrence was low, but these could lead to index corruption.

  • Fix possible buffer overrun in tsvector_concat() (Tom Lane)

    The function could underestimate the amount of memory needed for its result, leading to server crashes.

  • Fix crash in xml_recv when processing a "standalone" parameter (Tom Lane)

  • Make pg_options_to_table return NULL for an option with no value (Tom Lane)

    Previously such cases would result in a server crash.

  • Avoid possibly accessing off the end of memory in ANALYZE and in SJIS-2004 encoding conversion (Noah Misch)

    This fixes some very-low-probability server crash scenarios.

  • Protect pg_stat_reset_shared() against NULL input (Magnus Hagander)

  • Fix possible failure when a recovery conflict deadlock is detected within a sub-transaction (Tom Lane)

  • Avoid spurious conflicts while recycling btree index pages during hot standby (Noah Misch, Simon Riggs)

  • Shut down WAL receiver if it's still running at end of recovery (Heikki Linnakangas)

    The postmaster formerly panicked in this situation, but it's actually a legitimate case.

  • Fix race condition in relcache init file invalidation (Tom Lane)

    There was a window wherein a new backend process could read a stale init file but miss the inval messages that would tell it the data is stale. The result would be bizarre failures in catalog accesses, typically "could not read block 0 in file ..." later during startup.

  • Fix memory leak at end of a GiST index scan (Tom Lane)

    Commands that perform many separate GiST index scans, such as verification of a new GiST-based exclusion constraint on a table already containing many rows, could transiently require large amounts of memory due to this leak.

  • Fix memory leak when encoding conversion has to be done on incoming command strings and LISTEN is active (Tom Lane)

  • Fix incorrect memory accounting (leading to possible memory bloat) in tuplestores supporting holdable cursors and plpgsql's RETURN NEXT command (Tom Lane)

  • Fix trigger WHEN conditions when both BEFORE and AFTER triggers exist (Tom Lane)

    Evaluation of WHEN conditions for AFTER ROW UPDATE triggers could crash if there had been a BEFORE ROW trigger fired for the same update.

  • Fix performance problem when constructing a large, lossy bitmap (Tom Lane)

  • Fix join selectivity estimation for unique columns (Tom Lane)

    This fixes an erroneous planner heuristic that could lead to poor estimates of the result size of a join.

  • Fix nested PlaceHolderVar expressions that appear only in sub-select target lists (Tom Lane)

    This mistake could result in outputs of an outer join incorrectly appearing as NULL.

  • Allow the planner to assume that empty parent tables really are empty (Tom Lane)

    Normally an empty table is assumed to have a certain minimum size for planning purposes; but this heuristic seems to do more harm than good for the parent table of an inheritance hierarchy, which often is permanently empty.

  • Allow nested EXISTS queries to be optimized properly (Tom Lane)

  • Fix array- and path-creating functions to ensure padding bytes are zeroes (Tom Lane)

    This avoids some situations where the planner will think that semantically-equal constants are not equal, resulting in poor optimization.

  • Fix EXPLAIN to handle gating Result nodes within inner-indexscan subplans (Tom Lane)

    The usual symptom of this oversight was "bogus varno" errors.

  • Fix btree preprocessing of indexedcol IS NULL conditions (Dean Rasheed)

    Such a condition is unsatisfiable if combined with any other type of btree-indexable condition on the same index column. The case was handled incorrectly in 9.0.0 and later, leading to query output where there should be none.

  • Work around gcc 4.6.0 bug that breaks WAL replay (Tom Lane)

    This could lead to loss of committed transactions after a server crash.

  • Fix dump bug for VALUES in a view (Tom Lane)

  • Disallow SELECT FOR UPDATE/SHARE on sequences (Tom Lane)

    This operation doesn't work as expected and can lead to failures.

  • Fix VACUUM so that it always updates pg_class.reltuples/relpages (Tom Lane)

    This fixes some scenarios where autovacuum could make increasingly poor decisions about when to vacuum tables.

  • Defend against integer overflow when computing size of a hash table (Tom Lane)

  • Fix cases where CLUSTER might attempt to access already-removed TOAST data (Tom Lane)

  • Fix premature timeout failures during initial authentication transaction (Tom Lane)

  • Fix portability bugs in use of credentials control messages for "peer" authentication (Tom Lane)

  • Fix SSPI login when multiple roundtrips are required (Ahmed Shinwari, Magnus Hagander)

    The typical symptom of this problem was "The function requested is not supported" errors during SSPI login.

  • Fix failure when adding a new variable of a custom variable class to postgresql.conf (Tom Lane)

  • Throw an error if pg_hba.conf contains hostssl but SSL is disabled (Tom Lane)

    This was concluded to be more user-friendly than the previous behavior of silently ignoring such lines.

  • Fix failure when DROP OWNED BY attempts to remove default privileges on sequences (Shigeru Hanada)

  • Fix typo in pg_srand48 seed initialization (Andres Freund)

    This led to failure to use all bits of the provided seed. This function is not used on most platforms (only those without srandom), and the potential security exposure from a less-random-than-expected seed seems minimal in any case.

  • Avoid integer overflow when the sum of LIMIT and OFFSET values exceeds 2^63 (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Add overflow checks to int4 and int8 versions of generate_series() (Robert Haas)

  • Fix trailing-zero removal in to_char() (Marti Raudsepp)

    In a format with FM and no digit positions after the decimal point, zeroes to the left of the decimal point could be removed incorrectly.

  • Fix pg_size_pretty() to avoid overflow for inputs close to 2^63 (Tom Lane)

  • Weaken plpgsql's check for typmod matching in record values (Tom Lane)

    An overly enthusiastic check could lead to discarding length modifiers that should have been kept.

  • Correctly handle quotes in locale names during initdb (Heikki Linnakangas)

    The case can arise with some Windows locales, such as "People's Republic of China".

  • In pg_upgrade, avoid dumping orphaned temporary tables (Bruce Momjian)

    This prevents situations wherein table OID assignments could get out of sync between old and new installations.

  • Fix pg_upgrade to preserve toast tables' relfrozenxids during an upgrade from 8.3 (Bruce Momjian)

    Failure to do this could lead to pg_clog files being removed too soon after the upgrade.

  • In pg_upgrade, fix the -l (log) option to work on Windows (Bruce Momjian)

  • In pg_ctl, support silent mode for service registrations on Windows (MauMau)

  • Fix psql's counting of script file line numbers during COPY from a different file (Tom Lane)

  • Fix pg_restore's direct-to-database mode for standard_conforming_strings (Tom Lane)

    pg_restore could emit incorrect commands when restoring directly to a database server from an archive file that had been made with standard_conforming_strings set to on.

  • Be more user-friendly about unsupported cases for parallel pg_restore (Tom Lane)

    This change ensures that such cases are detected and reported before any restore actions have been taken.

  • Fix write-past-buffer-end and memory leak in libpq's LDAP service lookup code (Albe Laurenz)

  • In libpq, avoid failures when using nonblocking I/O and an SSL connection (Martin Pihlak, Tom Lane)

  • Improve libpq's handling of failures during connection startup (Tom Lane)

    In particular, the response to a server report of fork() failure during SSL connection startup is now saner.

  • Improve libpq's error reporting for SSL failures (Tom Lane)

  • Fix PQsetvalue() to avoid possible crash when adding a new tuple to a PGresult originally obtained from a server query (Andrew Chernow)

  • Make ecpglib write double values with 15 digits precision (Akira Kurosawa)

  • In ecpglib, be sure LC_NUMERIC setting is restored after an error (Michael Meskes)

  • Apply upstream fix for blowfish signed-character bug (CVE-2011-2483) (Tom Lane)

    contrib/pg_crypto's blowfish encryption code could give wrong results on platforms where char is signed (which is most), leading to encrypted passwords being weaker than they should be.

  • Fix memory leak in contrib/seg (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Fix pgstatindex() to give consistent results for empty indexes (Tom Lane)

  • Allow building with perl 5.14 (Alex Hunsaker)

  • Fix assorted issues with build and install file paths containing spaces (Tom Lane)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2011i for DST law changes in Canada, Egypt, Russia, Samoa, and South Sudan.

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Release 9.0.4

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.40. Release 9.0.4

Release Date: 2011-04-18

This release contains a variety of fixes from 9.0.3. For information about new features in the 9.0 major release, see Section E.44.

E.40.1. Migration to Version 9.0.4

A dump/restore is not required for those running 9.0.X.

However, if your installation was upgraded from a previous major release by running pg_upgrade, you should take action to prevent possible data loss due to a now-fixed bug in pg_upgrade. The recommended solution is to run VACUUM FREEZE on all TOAST tables. More information is available at http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/20110408pg_upgrade_fix.

E.40.2. Changes

  • Fix pg_upgrade's handling of TOAST tables (Bruce Momjian)

    The pg_class.relfrozenxid value for TOAST tables was not correctly copied into the new installation during pg_upgrade. This could later result in pg_clog files being discarded while they were still needed to validate tuples in the TOAST tables, leading to "could not access status of transaction" failures.

    This error poses a significant risk of data loss for installations that have been upgraded with pg_upgrade. This patch corrects the problem for future uses of pg_upgrade, but does not in itself cure the issue in installations that have been processed with a buggy version of pg_upgrade.

  • Suppress incorrect "PD_ALL_VISIBLE flag was incorrectly set" warning (Heikki Linnakangas)

    VACUUM would sometimes issue this warning in cases that are actually valid.

  • Use better SQLSTATE error codes for hot standby conflict cases (Tatsuo Ishii and Simon Riggs)

    All retryable conflict errors now have an error code that indicates that a retry is possible. Also, session closure due to the database being dropped on the master is now reported as ERRCODE_DATABASE_DROPPED, rather than ERRCODE_ADMIN_SHUTDOWN, so that connection poolers can handle the situation correctly.

  • Prevent intermittent hang in interactions of startup process with bgwriter process (Simon Riggs)

    This affected recovery in non-hot-standby cases.

  • Disallow including a composite type in itself (Tom Lane)

    This prevents scenarios wherein the server could recurse infinitely while processing the composite type. While there are some possible uses for such a structure, they don't seem compelling enough to justify the effort required to make sure it always works safely.

  • Avoid potential deadlock during catalog cache initialization (Nikhil Sontakke)

    In some cases the cache loading code would acquire share lock on a system index before locking the index's catalog. This could deadlock against processes trying to acquire exclusive locks in the other, more standard order.

  • Fix dangling-pointer problem in BEFORE ROW UPDATE trigger handling when there was a concurrent update to the target tuple (Tom Lane)

    This bug has been observed to result in intermittent "cannot extract system attribute from virtual tuple" failures while trying to do UPDATE RETURNING ctid. There is a very small probability of more serious errors, such as generating incorrect index entries for the updated tuple.

  • Disallow DROP TABLE when there are pending deferred trigger events for the table (Tom Lane)

    Formerly the DROP would go through, leading to "could not open relation with OID nnn" errors when the triggers were eventually fired.

  • Allow "replication" as a user name in pg_hba.conf (Andrew Dunstan)

    "replication" is special in the database name column, but it was mistakenly also treated as special in the user name column.

  • Prevent crash triggered by constant-false WHERE conditions during GEQO optimization (Tom Lane)

  • Improve planner's handling of semi-join and anti-join cases (Tom Lane)

  • Fix handling of SELECT FOR UPDATE in a sub-SELECT (Tom Lane)

    This bug typically led to "cannot extract system attribute from virtual tuple" errors.

  • Fix selectivity estimation for text search to account for NULLs (Jesper Krogh)

  • Fix get_actual_variable_range() to support hypothetical indexes injected by an index adviser plugin (Gurjeet Singh)

  • Fix PL/Python memory leak involving array slices (Daniel Popowich)

  • Allow libpq's SSL initialization to succeed when user's home directory is unavailable (Tom Lane)

    If the SSL mode is such that a root certificate file is not required, there is no need to fail. This change restores the behavior to what it was in pre-9.0 releases.

  • Fix libpq to return a useful error message for errors detected in conninfo_array_parse (Joseph Adams)

    A typo caused the library to return NULL, rather than the PGconn structure containing the error message, to the application.

  • Fix ecpg preprocessor's handling of float constants (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Fix parallel pg_restore to handle comments on POST_DATA items correctly (Arnd Hannemann)

  • Fix pg_restore to cope with long lines (over 1KB) in TOC files (Tom Lane)

  • Put in more safeguards against crashing due to division-by-zero with overly enthusiastic compiler optimization (Aurelien Jarno)

  • Support use of dlopen() in FreeBSD and OpenBSD on MIPS (Tom Lane)

    There was a hard-wired assumption that this system function was not available on MIPS hardware on these systems. Use a compile-time test instead, since more recent versions have it.

  • Fix compilation failures on HP-UX (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Avoid crash when trying to write to the Windows console very early in process startup (Rushabh Lathia)

  • Support building with MinGW 64 bit compiler for Windows (Andrew Dunstan)

  • Fix version-incompatibility problem with libintl on Windows (Hiroshi Inoue)

  • Fix usage of xcopy in Windows build scripts to work correctly under Windows 7 (Andrew Dunstan)

    This affects the build scripts only, not installation or usage.

  • Fix path separator used by pg_regress on Cygwin (Andrew Dunstan)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2011f for DST law changes in Chile, Cuba, Falkland Islands, Morocco, Samoa, and Turkey; also historical corrections for South Australia, Alaska, and Hawaii.

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Release 9.0.3

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E.41. Release 9.0.3

Release Date: 2011-01-31

This release contains a variety of fixes from 9.0.2. For information about new features in the 9.0 major release, see Section E.44.

E.41.1. Migration to Version 9.0.3

A dump/restore is not required for those running 9.0.X.

E.41.2. Changes

  • Before exiting walreceiver, ensure all the received WAL is fsync'd to disk (Heikki Linnakangas)

    Otherwise the standby server could replay some un-synced WAL, conceivably leading to data corruption if the system crashes just at that point.

  • Avoid excess fsync activity in walreceiver (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Make ALTER TABLE revalidate uniqueness and exclusion constraints when needed (Noah Misch)

    This was broken in 9.0 by a change that was intended to suppress revalidation during VACUUM FULL and CLUSTER, but unintentionally affected ALTER TABLE as well.

  • Fix EvalPlanQual for UPDATE of an inheritance tree in which the tables are not all alike (Tom Lane)

    Any variation in the table row types (including dropped columns present in only some child tables) would confuse the EvalPlanQual code, leading to misbehavior or even crashes. Since EvalPlanQual is only executed during concurrent updates to the same row, the problem was only seen intermittently.

  • Avoid failures when EXPLAIN tries to display a simple-form CASE expression (Tom Lane)

    If the CASE's test expression was a constant, the planner could simplify the CASE into a form that confused the expression-display code, resulting in "unexpected CASE WHEN clause" errors.

  • Fix assignment to an array slice that is before the existing range of subscripts (Tom Lane)

    If there was a gap between the newly added subscripts and the first pre-existing subscript, the code miscalculated how many entries needed to be copied from the old array's null bitmap, potentially leading to data corruption or crash.

  • Avoid unexpected conversion overflow in planner for very distant date values (Tom Lane)

    The date type supports a wider range of dates than can be represented by the timestamp types, but the planner assumed it could always convert a date to timestamp with impunity.

  • Fix PL/Python crash when an array contains null entries (Alex Hunsaker)

  • Remove ecpg's fixed length limit for constants defining an array dimension (Michael Meskes)

  • Fix erroneous parsing of tsquery values containing ... & !(subexpression) | ... (Tom Lane)

    Queries containing this combination of operators were not executed correctly. The same error existed in contrib/intarray's query_int type and contrib/ltree's ltxtquery type.

  • Fix buffer overrun in contrib/intarray's input function for the query_int type (Apple)

    This bug is a security risk since the function's return address could be overwritten. Thanks to Apple Inc's security team for reporting this issue and supplying the fix. (CVE-2010-4015)

  • Fix bug in contrib/seg's GiST picksplit algorithm (Alexander Korotkov)

    This could result in considerable inefficiency, though not actually incorrect answers, in a GiST index on a seg column. If you have such an index, consider REINDEXing it after installing this update. (This is identical to the bug that was fixed in contrib/cube in the previous update.)

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Release 9.0.2

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E.42. Release 9.0.2

Release Date: 2010-12-16

This release contains a variety of fixes from 9.0.1. For information about new features in the 9.0 major release, see Section E.44.

E.42.1. Migration to Version 9.0.2

A dump/restore is not required for those running 9.0.X.

E.42.2. Changes

  • Force the default wal_sync_method to be fdatasync on Linux (Tom Lane, Marti Raudsepp)

    The default on Linux has actually been fdatasync for many years, but recent kernel changes caused PostgreSQL to choose open_datasync instead. This choice did not result in any performance improvement, and caused outright failures on certain filesystems, notably ext4 with the data=journal mount option.

  • Fix "too many KnownAssignedXids" error during Hot Standby replay (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Fix race condition in lock acquisition during Hot Standby (Simon Riggs)

  • Avoid unnecessary conflicts during Hot Standby (Simon Riggs)

    This fixes some cases where replay was considered to conflict with standby queries (causing delay of replay or possibly cancellation of the queries), but there was no real conflict.

  • Fix assorted bugs in WAL replay logic for GIN indexes (Tom Lane)

    This could result in "bad buffer id: 0" failures or corruption of index contents during replication.

  • Fix recovery from base backup when the starting checkpoint WAL record is not in the same WAL segment as its redo point (Jeff Davis)

  • Fix corner-case bug when streaming replication is enabled immediately after creating the master database cluster (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Fix persistent slowdown of autovacuum workers when multiple workers remain active for a long time (Tom Lane)

    The effective vacuum_cost_limit for an autovacuum worker could drop to nearly zero if it processed enough tables, causing it to run extremely slowly.

  • Fix long-term memory leak in autovacuum launcher (Alvaro Herrera)

  • Avoid failure when trying to report an impending transaction wraparound condition from outside a transaction (Tom Lane)

    This oversight prevented recovery after transaction wraparound got too close, because database startup processing would fail.

  • Add support for detecting register-stack overrun on IA64 (Tom Lane)

    The IA64 architecture has two hardware stacks. Full prevention of stack-overrun failures requires checking both.

  • Add a check for stack overflow in copyObject() (Tom Lane)

    Certain code paths could crash due to stack overflow given a sufficiently complex query.

  • Fix detection of page splits in temporary GiST indexes (Heikki Linnakangas)

    It is possible to have a "concurrent" page split in a temporary index, if for example there is an open cursor scanning the index when an insertion is done. GiST failed to detect this case and hence could deliver wrong results when execution of the cursor continued.

  • Fix error checking during early connection processing (Tom Lane)

    The check for too many child processes was skipped in some cases, possibly leading to postmaster crash when attempting to add the new child process to fixed-size arrays.

  • Improve efficiency of window functions (Tom Lane)

    Certain cases where a large number of tuples needed to be read in advance, but work_mem was large enough to allow them all to be held in memory, were unexpectedly slow. percent_rank(), cume_dist() and ntile() in particular were subject to this problem.

  • Avoid memory leakage while ANALYZE'ing complex index expressions (Tom Lane)

  • Ensure an index that uses a whole-row Var still depends on its table (Tom Lane)

    An index declared like create index i on t (foo(t.*)) would not automatically get dropped when its table was dropped.

  • Add missing support in DROP OWNED BY for removing foreign data wrapper/server privileges belonging to a user (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Do not "inline" a SQL function with multiple OUT parameters (Tom Lane)

    This avoids a possible crash due to loss of information about the expected result rowtype.

  • Fix crash when inline-ing a set-returning function whose argument list contains a reference to an inline-able user function (Tom Lane)

  • Behave correctly if ORDER BY, LIMIT, FOR UPDATE, or WITH is attached to the VALUES part of INSERT ... VALUES (Tom Lane)

  • Make the OFF keyword unreserved (Heikki Linnakangas)

    This prevents problems with using off as a variable name in PL/pgSQL. That worked before 9.0, but was now broken because PL/pgSQL now treats all core reserved words as reserved.

  • Fix constant-folding of COALESCE() expressions (Tom Lane)

    The planner would sometimes attempt to evaluate sub-expressions that in fact could never be reached, possibly leading to unexpected errors.

  • Fix "could not find pathkey item to sort" planner failure with comparison of whole-row Vars (Tom Lane)

  • Fix postmaster crash when connection acceptance (accept() or one of the calls made immediately after it) fails, and the postmaster was compiled with GSSAPI support (Alexander Chernikov)

  • Retry after receiving an invalid response packet from a RADIUS authentication server (Magnus Hagander)

    This fixes a low-risk potential denial of service condition.

  • Fix missed unlink of temporary files when log_temp_files is active (Tom Lane)

    If an error occurred while attempting to emit the log message, the unlink was not done, resulting in accumulation of temp files.

  • Add print functionality for InhRelation nodes (Tom Lane)

    This avoids a failure when debug_print_parse is enabled and certain types of query are executed.

  • Fix incorrect calculation of distance from a point to a horizontal line segment (Tom Lane)

    This bug affected several different geometric distance-measurement operators.

  • Fix incorrect calculation of transaction status in ecpg (Itagaki Takahiro)

  • Fix errors in psql's Unicode-escape support (Tom Lane)

  • Speed up parallel pg_restore when the archive contains many large objects (blobs) (Tom Lane)

  • Fix PL/pgSQL's handling of "simple" expressions to not fail in recursion or error-recovery cases (Tom Lane)

  • Fix PL/pgSQL's error reporting for no-such-column cases (Tom Lane)

    As of 9.0, it would sometimes report "missing FROM-clause entry for table foo" when "record foo has no field bar" would be more appropriate.

  • Fix PL/Python to honor typmod (i.e., length or precision restrictions) when assigning to tuple fields (Tom Lane)

    This fixes a regression from 8.4.

  • Fix PL/Python's handling of set-returning functions (Jan Urbanski)

    Attempts to call SPI functions within the iterator generating a set result would fail.

  • Fix bug in contrib/cube's GiST picksplit algorithm (Alexander Korotkov)

    This could result in considerable inefficiency, though not actually incorrect answers, in a GiST index on a cube column. If you have such an index, consider REINDEXing it after installing this update.

  • Don't emit "identifier will be truncated" notices in contrib/dblink except when creating new connections (Itagaki Takahiro)

  • Fix potential coredump on missing public key in contrib/pgcrypto (Marti Raudsepp)

  • Fix buffer overrun in contrib/pg_upgrade (Hernan Gonzalez)

  • Fix memory leak in contrib/xml2's XPath query functions (Tom Lane)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2010o for DST law changes in Fiji and Samoa; also historical corrections for Hong Kong.

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Release 9.0.1

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E.43. Release 9.0.1

Release Date: 2010-10-04

This release contains a variety of fixes from 9.0.0. For information about new features in the 9.0 major release, see Section E.44.

E.43.1. Migration to Version 9.0.1

A dump/restore is not required for those running 9.0.X.

E.43.2. Changes

  • Use a separate interpreter for each calling SQL userid in PL/Perl and PL/Tcl (Tom Lane)

    This change prevents security problems that can be caused by subverting Perl or Tcl code that will be executed later in the same session under another SQL user identity (for example, within a SECURITY DEFINER function). Most scripting languages offer numerous ways that that might be done, such as redefining standard functions or operators called by the target function. Without this change, any SQL user with Perl or Tcl language usage rights can do essentially anything with the SQL privileges of the target function's owner.

    The cost of this change is that intentional communication among Perl and Tcl functions becomes more difficult. To provide an escape hatch, PL/PerlU and PL/TclU functions continue to use only one interpreter per session. This is not considered a security issue since all such functions execute at the trust level of a database superuser already.

    It is likely that third-party procedural languages that claim to offer trusted execution have similar security issues. We advise contacting the authors of any PL you are depending on for security-critical purposes.

    Our thanks to Tim Bunce for pointing out this issue (CVE-2010-3433).

  • Improve pg_get_expr() security fix so that the function can still be used on the output of a sub-select (Tom Lane)

  • Fix incorrect placement of placeholder evaluation (Tom Lane)

    This bug could result in query outputs being non-null when they should be null, in cases where the inner side of an outer join is a sub-select with non-strict expressions in its output list.

  • Fix join removal's handling of placeholder expressions (Tom Lane)

  • Fix possible duplicate scans of UNION ALL member relations (Tom Lane)

  • Prevent infinite loop in ProcessIncomingNotify() after unlistening (Jeff Davis)

  • Prevent show_session_authorization() from crashing within autovacuum processes (Tom Lane)

  • Re-allow input of Julian dates prior to 0001-01-01 AD (Tom Lane)

    Input such as 'J100000'::date worked before 8.4, but was unintentionally broken by added error-checking.

  • Make psql recognize DISCARD ALL as a command that should not be encased in a transaction block in autocommit-off mode (Itagaki Takahiro)

  • Update build infrastructure and documentation to reflect the source code repository's move from CVS to Git (Magnus Hagander and others)

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Release 9.0

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E.44. Release 9.0

Release Date: 2010-09-20

E.44.1. Overview

This release of PostgreSQL adds features that have been requested for years, such as easy-to-use replication, a mass permission-changing facility, and anonymous code blocks. While past major releases have been conservative in their scope, this release shows a bold new desire to provide facilities that new and existing users of PostgreSQL will embrace. This has all been done with few incompatibilities. Major enhancements include:

  • Built-in replication based on log shipping. This advance consists of two features: Streaming Replication, allowing continuous archive (WAL) files to be streamed over a network connection to a standby server, and Hot Standby, allowing continuous archive standby servers to execute read-only queries. The net effect is to support a single master with multiple read-only slave servers.

  • Easier database object permissions management. GRANT/REVOKE IN SCHEMA supports mass permissions changes on existing objects, while ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES allows control of privileges for objects created in the future. Large objects (BLOBs) now support permissions management as well.

  • Broadly enhanced stored procedure support. The DO statement supports ad-hoc or "anonymous" code blocks. Functions can now be called using named parameters. PL/pgSQL is now installed by default, and PL/Perl and PL/Python have been enhanced in several ways, including support for Python3.

  • Full support for 64-bit Windows.

  • More advanced reporting queries, including additional windowing options (PRECEDING and FOLLOWING) and the ability to control the order in which values are fed to aggregate functions.

  • New trigger features, including SQL-standard-compliant per-column triggers and conditional trigger execution.

  • Deferrable unique constraints. Mass updates to unique keys are now possible without trickery.

  • Exclusion constraints. These provide a generalized version of unique constraints, allowing enforcement of complex conditions.

  • New and enhanced security features, including RADIUS authentication, LDAP authentication improvements, and a new contrib module passwordcheck for testing password strength.

  • New high-performance implementation of the LISTEN/NOTIFY feature. Pending events are now stored in a memory-based queue rather than a table. Also, a "payload" string can be sent with each event, rather than transmitting just an event name as before.

  • New implementation of VACUUM FULL. This command now rewrites the entire table and indexes, rather than moving individual rows to compact space. It is substantially faster in most cases, and no longer results in index bloat.

  • New contrib module pg_upgrade to support in-place upgrades from 8.3 or 8.4 to 9.0.

  • Multiple performance enhancements for specific types of queries, including elimination of unnecessary joins. This helps optimize some automatically-generated queries, such as those produced by object-relational mappers (ORMs).

  • EXPLAIN enhancements. The output is now available in JSON, XML, or YAML format, and includes buffer utilization and other data not previously available.

  • hstore improvements, including new functions and greater data capacity.

The above items are explained in more detail in the sections below.

E.44.2. Migration to Version 9.0

A dump/restore using pg_dump, or use of pg_upgrade, is required for those wishing to migrate data from any previous release.

Version 9.0 contains a number of changes that selectively break backwards compatibility in order to support new features and code quality improvements. In particular, users who make extensive use of PL/pgSQL, Point-In-Time Recovery (PITR), or Warm Standby should test their applications because of slight user-visible changes in those areas. Observe the following incompatibilities:

E.44.2.1. Server Settings

  • Remove server parameter add_missing_from, which was defaulted to off for many years (Tom Lane)

  • Remove server parameter regex_flavor, which was defaulted to advanced for many years (Tom Lane)

  • archive_mode now only affects archive_command; a new setting, wal_level, affects the contents of the write-ahead log (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • log_temp_files now uses default file size units of kilobytes (Robert Haas)

E.44.2.2. Queries

  • When querying a parent table, do not do any separate permission checks on child tables scanned as part of the query (Peter Eisentraut)

    The SQL standard specifies this behavior, and it is also much more convenient in practice than the former behavior of checking permissions on each child as well as the parent.

E.44.2.3. Data Types

  • bytea output now appears in hex format by default (Peter Eisentraut)

    The server parameter bytea_output can be used to select the traditional output format if needed for compatibility.

  • Array input now considers only plain ASCII whitespace characters to be potentially ignorable; it will never ignore non-ASCII characters, even if they are whitespace according to some locales (Tom Lane)

    This avoids some corner cases where array values could be interpreted differently depending on the server's locale settings.

  • Improve standards compliance of SIMILAR TO patterns and SQL-style substring() patterns (Tom Lane)

    This includes treating ? and {...} as pattern metacharacters, while they were simple literal characters before; that corresponds to new features added in SQL:2008. Also, ^ and $ are now treated as simple literal characters; formerly they were treated as metacharacters, as if the pattern were following POSIX rather than SQL rules. Also, in SQL-standard substring(), use of parentheses for nesting no longer interferes with capturing of a substring. Also, processing of bracket expressions (character classes) is now more standards-compliant.

  • Reject negative length values in 3-parameter substring() for bit strings, per the SQL standard (Tom Lane)

  • Make date_trunc truncate rather than round when reducing precision of fractional seconds (Tom Lane)

    The code always acted this way for integer-based dates/times. Now float-based dates/times behave similarly.

E.44.2.4. Object Renaming

  • Tighten enforcement of column name consistency during RENAME when a child table inherits the same column from multiple unrelated parents (KaiGai Kohei)

  • No longer automatically rename indexes and index columns when the underlying table columns are renamed (Tom Lane)

    Administrators can still rename such indexes and columns manually. This change will require an update of the JDBC driver, and possibly other drivers, so that unique indexes are correctly recognized after a rename.

  • CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION can no longer change the declared names of function parameters (Pavel Stehule)

    In order to avoid creating ambiguity in named-parameter calls, it is no longer allowed to change the aliases for input parameters in the declaration of an existing function (although names can still be assigned to previously unnamed parameters). You now have to DROP and recreate the function to do that.

E.44.2.5. PL/pgSQL

  • PL/pgSQL now throws an error if a variable name conflicts with a column name used in a query (Tom Lane)

    The former behavior was to bind ambiguous names to PL/pgSQL variables in preference to query columns, which often resulted in surprising misbehavior. Throwing an error allows easy detection of ambiguous situations. Although it's recommended that functions encountering this type of error be modified to remove the conflict, the old behavior can be restored if necessary via the configuration parameter plpgsql.variable_conflict, or via the per-function option #variable_conflict.

  • PL/pgSQL no longer allows variable names that match certain SQL reserved words (Tom Lane)

    This is a consequence of aligning the PL/pgSQL parser to match the core SQL parser more closely. If necessary, variable names can be double-quoted to avoid this restriction.

  • PL/pgSQL now requires columns of composite results to match the expected type modifier as well as base type (Pavel Stehule, Tom Lane)

    For example, if a column of the result type is declared as NUMERIC(30,2), it is no longer acceptable to return a NUMERIC of some other precision in that column. Previous versions neglected to check the type modifier and would thus allow result rows that didn't actually conform to the declared restrictions.

  • PL/pgSQL now treats selection into composite fields more consistently (Tom Lane)

    Formerly, a statement like SELECT ... INTO rec.fld FROM ... was treated as a scalar assignment even if the record field fld was of composite type. Now it is treated as a record assignment, the same as when the INTO target is a regular variable of composite type. So the values to be assigned to the field's subfields should be written as separate columns of the SELECT list, not as a ROW(...) construct as in previous versions.

    If you need to do this in a way that will work in both 9.0 and previous releases, you can write something like rec.fld := ROW(...) FROM ....

  • Remove PL/pgSQL's RENAME declaration (Tom Lane)

    Instead of RENAME, use ALIAS, which can now create an alias for any variable, not only dollar sign parameter names (such as $1) as before.

E.44.2.6. Other Incompatibilities

  • Deprecate use of => as an operator name (Robert Haas)

    Future versions of PostgreSQL will probably reject this operator name entirely, in order to support the SQL-standard notation for named function parameters. For the moment, it is still allowed, but a warning is emitted when such an operator is defined.

  • Remove support for platforms that don't have a working 64-bit integer data type (Tom Lane)

    It is believed all still-supported platforms have working 64-bit integer data types.

E.44.3. Changes

Version 9.0 has an unprecedented number of new major features, and over 200 enhancements, improvements, new commands, new functions, and other changes.

E.44.3.1. Server

E.44.3.1.1. Continuous Archiving and Streaming Replication

PostgreSQL's existing standby-server capability has been expanded both to support read-only queries on standby servers and to greatly reduce the lag between master and standby servers. For many users, this will be a useful and low-administration form of replication, either for high availability or for horizontal scalability.

  • Allow a standby server to accept read-only queries (Simon Riggs, Heikki Linnakangas)

    This feature is called Hot Standby. There are new postgresql.conf and recovery.conf settings to control this feature, as well as extensive documentation.

  • Allow write-ahead log (WAL) data to be streamed to a standby server (Fujii Masao, Heikki Linnakangas)

    This feature is called Streaming Replication. Previously WAL data could be sent to standby servers only in units of entire WAL files (normally 16 megabytes each). Streaming Replication eliminates this inefficiency and allows updates on the master to be propagated to standby servers with very little delay. There are new postgresql.conf and recovery.conf settings to control this feature, as well as extensive documentation.

  • Add pg_last_xlog_receive_location() and pg_last_xlog_replay_location(), which can be used to monitor standby server WAL activity (Simon Riggs, Fujii Masao, Heikki Linnakangas)

E.44.3.1.2. Performance

  • Allow per-tablespace values to be set for sequential and random page cost estimates (seq_page_cost/random_page_cost) via ALTER TABLESPACE ... SET/RESET (Robert Haas)

  • Improve performance and reliability of EvalPlanQual rechecks in join queries (Tom Lane)

    UPDATE, DELETE, and SELECT FOR UPDATE/SHARE queries that involve joins will now behave much better when encountering freshly-updated rows.

  • Improve performance of TRUNCATE when the table was created or truncated earlier in the same transaction (Tom Lane)

  • Improve performance of finding inheritance child tables (Tom Lane)

E.44.3.1.3. Optimizer

  • Remove unnecessary outer joins (Robert Haas)

    Outer joins where the inner side is unique and not referenced above the join are unnecessary and are therefore now removed. This will accelerate many automatically generated queries, such as those created by object-relational mappers (ORMs).

  • Allow IS NOT NULL restrictions to use indexes (Tom Lane)

    This is particularly useful for finding MAX()/MIN() values in indexes that contain many null values.

  • Improve the optimizer's choices about when to use materialize nodes, and when to use sorting versus hashing for DISTINCT (Tom Lane)

  • Improve the optimizer's equivalence detection for expressions involving boolean <> operators (Tom Lane)

E.44.3.1.4. GEQO

  • Use the same random seed every time GEQO plans a query (Andres Freund)

    While the Genetic Query Optimizer (GEQO) still selects random plans, it now always selects the same random plans for identical queries, thus giving more consistent performance. You can modify geqo_seed to experiment with alternative plans.

  • Improve GEQO plan selection (Tom Lane)

    This avoids the rare error "failed to make a valid plan", and should also improve planning speed.

E.44.3.1.5. Optimizer Statistics

  • Improve ANALYZE to support inheritance-tree statistics (Tom Lane)

    This is particularly useful for partitioned tables. However, autovacuum does not yet automatically re-analyze parent tables when child tables change.

  • Improve autovacuum's detection of when re-analyze is necessary (Tom Lane)

  • Improve optimizer's estimation for greater/less-than comparisons (Tom Lane)

    When looking up statistics for greater/less-than comparisons, if the comparison value is in the first or last histogram bucket, use an index (if available) to fetch the current actual column minimum or maximum. This greatly improves the accuracy of estimates for comparison values near the ends of the data range, particularly if the range is constantly changing due to addition of new data.

  • Allow setting of number-of-distinct-values statistics using ALTER TABLE (Robert Haas)

    This allows users to override the estimated number or percentage of distinct values for a column. This statistic is normally computed by ANALYZE, but the estimate can be poor, especially on tables with very large numbers of rows.

E.44.3.1.6. Authentication

  • Add support for RADIUS (Remote Authentication Dial In User Service) authentication (Magnus Hagander)

  • Allow LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) authentication to operate in "search/bind" mode (Robert Fleming, Magnus Hagander)

    This allows the user to be looked up first, then the system uses the DN (Distinguished Name) returned for that user.

  • Add samehost and samenet designations to pg_hba.conf (Stef Walter)

    These match the server's IP address and subnet address respectively.

  • Pass trusted SSL root certificate names to the client so the client can return an appropriate client certificate (Craig Ringer)

E.44.3.1.7. Monitoring

  • Add the ability for clients to set an application name, which is displayed in pg_stat_activity (Dave Page)

    This allows administrators to characterize database traffic and troubleshoot problems by source application.

  • Add a SQLSTATE option (%e) to log_line_prefix (Guillaume Smet)

    This allows users to compile statistics on errors and messages by error code number.

  • Write to the Windows event log in UTF16 encoding (Itagaki Takahiro)

    Now there is true multilingual support for PostgreSQL log messages on Windows.

E.44.3.1.8. Statistics Counters

  • Add pg_stat_reset_shared('bgwriter') to reset the cluster-wide shared statistics for the background writer (Greg Smith)

  • Add pg_stat_reset_single_table_counters() and pg_stat_reset_single_function_counters() to allow resetting the statistics counters for individual tables and functions (Magnus Hagander)

E.44.3.1.9. Server Settings

  • Allow setting of configuration parameters based on database/role combinations (Alvaro Herrera)

    Previously only per-database and per-role settings were possible, not combinations. All role and database settings are now stored in the new pg_db_role_setting system catalog. A new psql command \drds shows these settings. The legacy system views pg_roles, pg_shadow, and pg_user do not show combination settings, and therefore no longer completely represent the configuration for a user or database.

  • Add server parameter bonjour, which controls whether a Bonjour-enabled server advertises itself via Bonjour (Tom Lane)

    The default is off, meaning it does not advertise. This allows packagers to distribute Bonjour-enabled builds without worrying that individual users might not want the feature.

  • Add server parameter enable_material, which controls the use of materialize nodes in the optimizer (Robert Haas)

    The default is on. When off, the optimizer will not add materialize nodes purely for performance reasons, though they will still be used when necessary for correctness.

  • Change server parameter log_temp_files to use default file size units of kilobytes (Robert Haas)

    Previously this setting was interpreted in bytes if no units were specified.

  • Log changes of parameter values when postgresql.conf is reloaded (Peter Eisentraut)

    This lets administrators and security staff audit changes of database settings, and is also very convenient for checking the effects of postgresql.conf edits.

  • Properly enforce superuser permissions for custom server parameters (Tom Lane)

    Non-superusers can no longer issue ALTER ROLE/DATABASE SET for parameters that are not currently known to the server. This allows the server to correctly check that superuser-only parameters are only set by superusers. Previously, the SET would be allowed and then ignored at session start, making superuser-only custom parameters much less useful than they should be.

E.44.3.2. Queries

  • Perform SELECT FOR UPDATE/SHARE processing after applying LIMIT, so the number of rows returned is always predictable (Tom Lane)

    Previously, changes made by concurrent transactions could cause a SELECT FOR UPDATE to unexpectedly return fewer rows than specified by its LIMIT. FOR UPDATE in combination with ORDER BY can still produce surprising results, but that can be corrected by placing FOR UPDATE in a subquery.

  • Allow mixing of traditional and SQL-standard LIMIT/OFFSET syntax (Tom Lane)

  • Extend the supported frame options in window functions (Hitoshi Harada)

    Frames can now start with CURRENT ROW, and the ROWS n PRECEDING/FOLLOWING options are now supported.

  • Make SELECT INTO and CREATE TABLE AS return row counts to the client in their command tags (Boszormenyi Zoltan)

    This can save an entire round-trip to the client, allowing result counts and pagination to be calculated without an additional COUNT query.

E.44.3.2.1. Unicode Strings

  • Support Unicode surrogate pairs (dual 16-bit representation) in U& strings and identifiers (Peter Eisentraut)

  • Support Unicode escapes in E'...' strings (Marko Kreen)

E.44.3.3. Object Manipulation

  • Speed up CREATE DATABASE by deferring flushes to disk (Andres Freund, Greg Stark)

  • Allow comments on columns of tables, views, and composite types only, not other relation types such as indexes and TOAST tables (Tom Lane)

  • Allow the creation of enumerated types containing no values (Bruce Momjian)

  • Let values of columns having storage type MAIN remain on the main heap page unless the row cannot fit on a page (Kevin Grittner)

    Previously MAIN values were forced out to TOAST tables until the row size was less than one-quarter of the page size.

E.44.3.3.1. ALTER TABLE

  • Implement IF EXISTS for ALTER TABLE DROP COLUMN and ALTER TABLE DROP CONSTRAINT (Andres Freund)

  • Allow ALTER TABLE commands that rewrite tables to skip WAL logging (Itagaki Takahiro)

    Such operations either produce a new copy of the table or are rolled back, so WAL archiving can be skipped, unless running in continuous archiving mode. This reduces I/O overhead and improves performance.

  • Fix failure of ALTER TABLE table ADD COLUMN col serial when done by non-owner of table (Tom Lane)

E.44.3.3.2. CREATE TABLE

  • Add support for copying COMMENTS and STORAGE settings in CREATE TABLE ... LIKE commands (Itagaki Takahiro)

  • Add a shortcut for copying all properties in CREATE TABLE ... LIKE commands (Itagaki Takahiro)

  • Add the SQL-standard CREATE TABLE ... OF type command (Peter Eisentraut)

    This allows creation of a table that matches an existing composite type. Additional constraints and defaults can be specified in the command.

E.44.3.3.3. Constraints

  • Add deferrable unique constraints (Dean Rasheed)

    This allows mass updates, such as UPDATE tab SET col = col + 1, to work reliably on columns that have unique indexes or are marked as primary keys. If the constraint is specified as DEFERRABLE it will be checked at the end of the statement, rather than after each row is updated. The constraint check can also be deferred until the end of the current transaction, allowing such updates to be spread over multiple SQL commands.

  • Add exclusion constraints (Jeff Davis)

    Exclusion constraints generalize uniqueness constraints by allowing arbitrary comparison operators, not just equality. They are created with the CREATE TABLE CONSTRAINT ... EXCLUDE clause. The most common use of exclusion constraints is to specify that column entries must not overlap, rather than simply not be equal. This is useful for time periods and other ranges, as well as arrays. This feature enhances checking of data integrity for many calendaring, time-management, and scientific applications.

  • Improve uniqueness-constraint violation error messages to report the values causing the failure (Itagaki Takahiro)

    For example, a uniqueness constraint violation might now report Key (x)=(2) already exists.

E.44.3.3.4. Object Permissions

  • Add the ability to make mass permission changes across a whole schema using the new GRANT/REVOKE IN SCHEMA clause (Petr Jelinek)

    This simplifies management of object permissions and makes it easier to utilize database roles for application data security.

  • Add ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES command to control privileges of objects created later (Petr Jelinek)

    This greatly simplifies the assignment of object privileges in a complex database application. Default privileges can be set for tables, views, sequences, and functions. Defaults may be assigned on a per-schema basis, or database-wide.

  • Add the ability to control large object (BLOB) permissions with GRANT/REVOKE (KaiGai Kohei)

    Formerly, any database user could read or modify any large object. Read and write permissions can now be granted and revoked per large object, and the ownership of large objects is tracked.

E.44.3.4. Utility Operations

  • Make LISTEN/NOTIFY store pending events in a memory queue, rather than in a system table (Joachim Wieland)

    This substantially improves performance, while retaining the existing features of transactional support and guaranteed delivery.

  • Allow NOTIFY to pass an optional "payload" string to listeners (Joachim Wieland)

    This greatly improves the usefulness of LISTEN/NOTIFY as a general-purpose event queue system.

  • Allow CLUSTER on all per-database system catalogs (Tom Lane)

    Shared catalogs still cannot be clustered.

E.44.3.4.1. COPY

  • Accept COPY ... CSV FORCE QUOTE * (Itagaki Takahiro)

    Now * can be used as shorthand for "all columns" in the FORCE QUOTE clause.

  • Add new COPY syntax that allows options to be specified inside parentheses (Robert Haas, Emmanuel Cecchet)

    This allows greater flexibility for future COPY options. The old syntax is still supported, but only for pre-existing options.

E.44.3.4.2. EXPLAIN

  • Allow EXPLAIN to output in XML, JSON, or YAML format (Robert Haas, Greg Sabino Mullane)

    The new output formats are easily machine-readable, supporting the development of new tools for analysis of EXPLAIN output.

  • Add new BUFFERS option to report query buffer usage during EXPLAIN ANALYZE (Itagaki Takahiro)

    This allows better query profiling for individual queries. Buffer usage is no longer reported in the output for log_statement_stats and related settings.

  • Add hash usage information to EXPLAIN output (Robert Haas)

  • Add new EXPLAIN syntax that allows options to be specified inside parentheses (Robert Haas)

    This allows greater flexibility for future EXPLAIN options. The old syntax is still supported, but only for pre-existing options.

E.44.3.4.3. VACUUM

  • Change VACUUM FULL to rewrite the entire table and rebuild its indexes, rather than moving individual rows around to compact space (Itagaki Takahiro, Tom Lane)

    The previous method was usually slower and caused index bloat. Note that the new method will use more disk space transiently during VACUUM FULL; potentially as much as twice the space normally occupied by the table and its indexes.

  • Add new VACUUM syntax that allows options to be specified inside parentheses (Itagaki Takahiro)

    This allows greater flexibility for future VACUUM options. The old syntax is still supported, but only for pre-existing options.

E.44.3.4.4. Indexes

  • Allow an index to be named automatically by omitting the index name in CREATE INDEX (Tom Lane)

  • By default, multicolumn indexes are now named after all their columns; and index expression columns are now named based on their expressions (Tom Lane)

  • Reindexing shared system catalogs is now fully transactional and crash-safe (Tom Lane)

    Formerly, reindexing a shared index was only allowed in standalone mode, and a crash during the operation could leave the index in worse condition than it was before.

  • Add point_ops operator class for GiST (Teodor Sigaev)

    This feature permits GiST indexing of point columns. The index can be used for several types of queries such as point <@ polygon (point is in polygon). This should make many PostGIS queries faster.

  • Use red-black binary trees for GIN index creation (Teodor Sigaev)

    Red-black trees are self-balancing. This avoids slowdowns in cases where the input is in nonrandom order.

E.44.3.5. Data Types

  • Allow bytea values to be written in hex notation (Peter Eisentraut)

    The server parameter bytea_output controls whether hex or traditional format is used for bytea output. Libpq's PQescapeByteaConn() function automatically uses the hex format when connected to PostgreSQL 9.0 or newer servers. However, pre-9.0 libpq versions will not correctly process hex format from newer servers.

    The new hex format will be directly compatible with more applications that use binary data, allowing them to store and retrieve it without extra conversion. It is also significantly faster to read and write than the traditional format.

  • Allow server parameter extra_float_digits to be increased to 3 (Tom Lane)

    The previous maximum extra_float_digits setting was 2. There are cases where 3 digits are needed to dump and restore float4 values exactly. pg_dump will now use the setting of 3 when dumping from a server that allows it.

  • Tighten input checking for int2vector values (Caleb Welton)

E.44.3.5.1. Full Text Search

  • Add prefix support in synonym dictionaries (Teodor Sigaev)

  • Add filtering dictionaries (Teodor Sigaev)

    Filtering dictionaries allow tokens to be modified then passed to subsequent dictionaries.

  • Allow underscores in email-address tokens (Teodor Sigaev)

  • Use more standards-compliant rules for parsing URL tokens (Tom Lane)

E.44.3.6. Functions

  • Allow function calls to supply parameter names and match them to named parameters in the function definition (Pavel Stehule)

    For example, if a function is defined to take parameters a and b, it can be called with func(a := 7, b := 12) or func(b := 12, a := 7).

  • Support locale-specific regular expression processing with UTF-8 server encoding (Tom Lane)

    Locale-specific regular expression functionality includes case-insensitive matching and locale-specific character classes. Previously, these features worked correctly for non-ASCII characters only if the database used a single-byte server encoding (such as LATIN1). They will still misbehave in multi-byte encodings other than UTF-8.

  • Add support for scientific notation in to_char() (EEEE specification) (Pavel Stehule, Brendan Jurd)

  • Make to_char() honor FM (fill mode) in Y, YY, and YYY specifications (Bruce Momjian, Tom Lane)

    It was already honored by YYYY.

  • Fix to_char() to output localized numeric and monetary strings in the correct encoding on Windows (Hiroshi Inoue, Itagaki Takahiro, Bruce Momjian)

  • Correct calculations of "overlaps" and "contains" operations for polygons (Teodor Sigaev)

    The polygon && (overlaps) operator formerly just checked to see if the two polygons' bounding boxes overlapped. It now does a more correct check. The polygon @> and <@ (contains/contained by) operators formerly checked to see if one polygon's vertexes were all contained in the other; this can wrongly report "true" for some non-convex polygons. Now they check that all line segments of one polygon are contained in the other.

E.44.3.6.1. Aggregates

  • Allow aggregate functions to use ORDER BY (Andrew Gierth)

    For example, this is now supported: array_agg(a ORDER BY b). This is useful with aggregates for which the order of input values is significant, and eliminates the need to use a nonstandard subquery to determine the ordering.

  • Multi-argument aggregate functions can now use DISTINCT (Andrew Gierth)

  • Add the string_agg() aggregate function to combine values into a single string (Pavel Stehule)

  • Aggregate functions that are called with DISTINCT are now passed NULL values if the aggregate transition function is not marked as STRICT (Andrew Gierth)

    For example, agg(DISTINCT x) might pass a NULL x value to agg(). This is more consistent with the behavior in non-DISTINCT cases.

E.44.3.6.2. Bit Strings

  • Add get_bit() and set_bit() functions for bit strings, mirroring those for bytea (Leonardo F)

  • Implement OVERLAY() (replace) for bit strings and bytea (Leonardo F)

E.44.3.6.3. Object Information Functions

  • Add pg_table_size()
and pg_indexes_size() to provide a more
user-friendly interface to the pg_relation_size()
function (Bernd Helmle)

  • Add has_sequence_privilege() for sequence permission checking (Abhijit Menon-Sen)

  • Update the information_schema views to conform to SQL:2008 (Peter Eisentraut)

  • Make the information_schema views correctly display maximum octet lengths for char and varchar columns (Peter Eisentraut)

  • Speed up information_schema privilege views (Joachim Wieland)

E.44.3.6.4. Function and Trigger Creation

  • Support execution of anonymous code blocks using the DO statement (Petr Jelinek, Joshua Tolley, Hannu Valtonen)

    This allows execution of server-side code without the need to create and delete a temporary function definition. Code can be executed in any language for which the user has permissions to define a function.

  • Implement SQL-standard-compliant per-column triggers (Itagaki Takahiro)

    Such triggers are fired only when the specified column(s) are affected by the query, e.g. appear in an UPDATE's SET list.

  • Add the WHEN clause to CREATE TRIGGER to allow control over whether a trigger is fired (Itagaki Takahiro)

    While the same type of check can always be performed inside the trigger, doing it in an external WHEN clause can have performance benefits.

E.44.3.7. Server-Side Languages

  • Add the OR REPLACE clause to CREATE LANGUAGE (Tom Lane)

    This is helpful to optionally install a language if it does not already exist, and is particularly helpful now that PL/pgSQL is installed by default.

E.44.3.7.1. PL/pgSQL Server-Side Language

  • Install PL/pgSQL by default (Bruce Momjian)

    The language can still be removed from a particular database if the administrator has security or performance concerns about making it available.

  • Improve handling of cases where PL/pgSQL variable names conflict with identifiers used in queries within a function (Tom Lane)

    The default behavior is now to throw an error when there is a conflict, so as to avoid surprising behaviors. This can be modified, via the configuration parameter plpgsql.variable_conflict or the per-function option #variable_conflict, to allow either the variable or the query-supplied column to be used. In any case PL/pgSQL will no longer attempt to substitute variables in places where they would not be syntactically valid.

  • Make PL/pgSQL use the main lexer, rather than its own version (Tom Lane)

    This ensures accurate tracking of the main system's behavior for details such as string escaping. Some user-visible details, such as the set of keywords considered reserved in PL/pgSQL, have changed in consequence.

  • Avoid throwing an unnecessary error for an invalid record reference (Tom Lane)

    An error is now thrown only if the reference is actually fetched, rather than whenever the enclosing expression is reached. For example, many people have tried to do this in triggers:

    if TG_OP = 'INSERT' and NEW.col1 = ... then

    This will now actually work as expected.

  • Improve PL/pgSQL's ability to handle row types with dropped columns (Pavel Stehule)

  • Allow input parameters to be assigned values within PL/pgSQL functions (Steve Prentice)

    Formerly, input parameters were treated as being declared CONST, so the function's code could not change their values. This restriction has been removed to simplify porting of functions from other DBMSes that do not impose the equivalent restriction. An input parameter now acts like a local variable initialized to the passed-in value.

  • Improve error location reporting in PL/pgSQL (Tom Lane)

  • Add count and ALL options to MOVE FORWARD/BACKWARD in PL/pgSQL (Pavel Stehule)

  • Allow PL/pgSQL's WHERE CURRENT OF to use a cursor variable (Tom Lane)

  • Allow PL/pgSQL's OPEN cursor FOR EXECUTE to use parameters (Pavel Stehule, Itagaki Takahiro)

    This is accomplished with a new USING clause.

E.44.3.7.2. PL/Perl Server-Side Language

  • Add new PL/Perl functions: quote_literal(),
quote_nullable(), quote_ident(),
encode_bytea(), decode_bytea(),
looks_like_number(),
encode_array_literal(),
encode_array_constructor() (Tim Bunce)

  • Add server parameter plperl.on_init to specify a PL/Perl initialization function (Tim Bunce)

    plperl.on_plperl_init and plperl.on_plperlu_init are also available for initialization that is specific to the trusted or untrusted language respectively.

  • Support END blocks in PL/Perl (Tim Bunce)

    END blocks do not currently allow database access.

  • Allow use strict in PL/Perl (Tim Bunce)

    Perl strict checks can also be globally enabled with the new server parameter plperl.use_strict.

  • Allow require in PL/Perl (Tim Bunce)

    This basically tests to see if the module is loaded, and if not, generates an error. It will not allow loading of modules that the administrator has not preloaded via the initialization parameters.

  • Allow use feature in PL/Perl if Perl version 5.10 or later is used (Tim Bunce)

  • Verify that PL/Perl return values are valid in the server encoding (Andrew Dunstan)

E.44.3.7.3. PL/Python Server-Side Language

  • Add Unicode support in PL/Python (Peter Eisentraut)

    Strings are automatically converted from/to the server encoding as necessary.

  • Improve bytea support in PL/Python (Caleb Welton)

    Bytea values passed into PL/Python are now represented as binary, rather than the PostgreSQL bytea text format. Bytea values containing null bytes are now also output properly from PL/Python. Passing of boolean, integer, and float values was also improved.

  • Support arrays as parameters and return values in PL/Python (Peter Eisentraut)

  • Improve mapping of SQL domains to Python types (Peter Eisentraut)

  • Add Python 3 support to PL/Python (Peter Eisentraut)

    The new server-side language is called plpython3u. This cannot be used in the same session with the Python 2 server-side language.

  • Improve error location and exception reporting in PL/Python (Peter Eisentraut)

E.44.3.8. Client Applications

  • Add an --analyze-only option to vacuumdb, to analyze without vacuuming (Bruce Momjian)

E.44.3.8.1. psql

  • Add support for quoting/escaping the values of psql variables as SQL strings or identifiers (Pavel Stehule, Robert Haas)

    For example, :'var' will produce the value of var quoted and properly escaped as a literal string, while :"var" will produce its value quoted and escaped as an identifier.

  • Ignore a leading UTF-8-encoded Unicode byte-order marker in script files read by psql (Itagaki Takahiro)

    This is enabled when the client encoding is UTF-8. It improves compatibility with certain editors, mostly on Windows, that insist on inserting such markers.

  • Fix psql --file - to properly honor --single-transaction (Bruce Momjian)

  • Avoid overwriting of psql's command-line history when two psql sessions are run concurrently (Tom Lane)

  • Improve psql's tab completion support (Itagaki Takahiro)

  • Show \timing output when it is enabled, regardless of "quiet" mode (Peter Eisentraut)

E.44.3.8.1.1. psql Display

  • Improve display of wrapped columns in psql (Roger Leigh)

    This behavior is now the default. The previous formatting is available by using \pset linestyle old-ascii.

  • Allow psql to use fancy Unicode line-drawing characters via \pset linestyle unicode (Roger Leigh)

E.44.3.8.1.2. psql \d Commands

  • Make \d show child tables that inherit from the specified parent (Damien Clochard)

    \d shows only the number of child tables, while \d+ shows the names of all child tables.

  • Show definitions of index columns in \d index_name (Khee Chin)

    The definition is useful for expression indexes.

  • Show a view's defining query only in \d+, not in \d (Peter Eisentraut)

    Always including the query was deemed overly verbose.

E.44.3.8.2. pg_dump

  • Make pg_dump/pg_restore --clean also remove large objects (Itagaki Takahiro)

  • Fix pg_dump to properly dump large objects when standard_conforming_strings is enabled (Tom Lane)

    The previous coding could fail when dumping to an archive file and then generating script output from pg_restore.

  • pg_restore now emits large-object data in hex format when generating script output (Tom Lane)

    This could cause compatibility problems if the script is then loaded into a pre-9.0 server. To work around that, restore directly to the server, instead.

  • Allow pg_dump to dump comments attached to columns of composite types (Taro Minowa (Higepon))

  • Make pg_dump --verbose output the pg_dump and server versions in text output mode (Jim Cox, Tom Lane)

    These were already provided in custom output mode.

  • pg_restore now complains if any command-line arguments remain after the switches and optional file name (Tom Lane)

    Previously, it silently ignored any such arguments.

E.44.3.8.3. pg_ctl

  • Allow pg_ctl to be used safely to start the postmaster during a system reboot (Tom Lane)

    Previously, pg_ctl's parent process could have been mistakenly identified as a running postmaster based on a stale postmaster lock file, resulting in a transient failure to start the database.

  • Give pg_ctl the ability to initialize the database (by invoking initdb) (Zdenek Kotala)

E.44.3.9. Development Tools

E.44.3.9.1. libpq

  • Add new libpq functions PQconnectdbParams() and PQconnectStartParams() (Guillaume Lelarge)

    These functions are similar to PQconnectdb() and PQconnectStart() except that they accept a null-terminated array of connection options, rather than requiring all options to be provided in a single string.

  • Add libpq functions PQescapeLiteral() and PQescapeIdentifier() (Robert Haas)

    These functions return appropriately quoted and escaped SQL string literals and identifiers. The caller is not required to pre-allocate the string result, as is required by PQescapeStringConn().

  • Add support for a per-user service file (.pg_service.conf), which is checked before the site-wide service file (Peter Eisentraut)

  • Properly report an error if the specified libpq service cannot be found (Peter Eisentraut)

  • Add TCP keepalive settings in libpq (Tollef Fog Heen, Fujii Masao, Robert Haas)

    Keepalive settings were already supported on the server end of TCP connections.

  • Avoid extra system calls to block and unblock SIGPIPE in libpq, on platforms that offer alternative methods (Jeremy Kerr)

  • When a .pgpass-supplied password fails, mention where the password came from in the error message (Bruce Momjian)

  • Load all SSL certificates given in the client certificate file (Tom Lane)

    This improves support for indirectly-signed SSL certificates.

E.44.3.9.2. ecpg

  • Add SQLDA (SQL Descriptor Area) support to ecpg (Boszormenyi Zoltan)

  • Add the DESCRIBE [ OUTPUT ] statement to ecpg (Boszormenyi Zoltan)

  • Add an ECPGtransactionStatus function to return the current transaction status (Bernd Helmle)

  • Add the string data type in ecpg Informix-compatibility mode (Boszormenyi Zoltan)

  • Allow ecpg to use new and old variable names without restriction (Michael Meskes)

  • Allow ecpg to use variable names in free() (Michael Meskes)

  • Make ecpg_dynamic_type() return zero for non-SQL3 data types (Michael Meskes)

    Previously it returned the negative of the data type OID. This could be confused with valid type OIDs, however.

  • Support long long types on platforms that already have 64-bit long (Michael Meskes)

E.44.3.9.2.1. ecpg Cursors

  • Add out-of-scope cursor support in ecpg's native mode (Boszormenyi Zoltan)

    This allows DECLARE to use variables that are not in scope when OPEN is called. This facility already existed in ecpg's Informix-compatibility mode.

  • Allow dynamic cursor names in ecpg (Boszormenyi Zoltan)

  • Allow ecpg to use noise words FROM and IN in FETCH and MOVE (Boszormenyi Zoltan)

E.44.3.10. Build Options

  • Enable client thread safety by default (Bruce Momjian)

    The thread-safety option can be disabled with configure --disable-thread-safety.

  • Add support for controlling the Linux out-of-memory killer (Alex Hunsaker, Tom Lane)

    Now that /proc/self/oom_adj allows disabling of the Linux out-of-memory (OOM) killer, it's recommendable to disable OOM kills for the postmaster. It may then be desirable to re-enable OOM kills for the postmaster's child processes. The new compile-time option LINUX_OOM_ADJ allows the killer to be reactivated for child processes.

E.44.3.10.1. Makefiles

  • New Makefile targets world, install-world, and installcheck-world (Andrew Dunstan)

    These are similar to the existing all, install, and installcheck targets, but they also build the HTML documentation, build and test contrib, and test server-side languages and ecpg.

  • Add data and documentation installation location control to PGXS Makefiles (Mark Cave-Ayland)

  • Add Makefile rules to build the PostgreSQL documentation as a single HTML file or as a single plain-text file (Peter Eisentraut, Bruce Momjian)

E.44.3.10.2. Windows

  • Support compiling on 64-bit Windows and running in 64-bit mode (Tsutomu Yamada, Magnus Hagander)

    This allows for large shared memory sizes on Windows.

  • Support server builds using Visual Studio 2008 (Magnus Hagander)

E.44.3.11. Source Code

  • Distribute prebuilt documentation in a subdirectory tree, rather than as tar archive files inside the distribution tarball (Peter Eisentraut)

    For example, the prebuilt HTML documentation is now in doc/src/sgml/html/; the manual pages are packaged similarly.

  • Make the server's lexer reentrant (Tom Lane)

    This was needed for use of the lexer by PL/pgSQL.

  • Improve speed of memory allocation (Tom Lane, Greg Stark)

  • User-defined constraint triggers now have entries in pg_constraint as well as pg_trigger (Tom Lane)

    Because of this change, pg_constraint.pgconstrname is now redundant and has been removed.

  • Add system catalog columns pg_constraint.conindid and pg_trigger.tgconstrindid to better document the use of indexes for constraint enforcement (Tom Lane)

  • Allow multiple conditions to be communicated to backends using a single operating system signal (Fujii Masao)

    This allows new features to be added without a platform-specific constraint on the number of signal conditions.

  • Improve source code test coverage, including contrib, PL/Python, and PL/Perl (Peter Eisentraut, Andrew Dunstan)

  • Remove the use of flat files for system table bootstrapping (Tom Lane, Alvaro Herrera)

    This improves performance when using many roles or databases, and eliminates some possible failure conditions.

  • Automatically generate the initial contents of pg_attribute for "bootstrapped" catalogs (John Naylor)

    This greatly simplifies changes to these catalogs.

  • Split the processing of INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE operations out of execMain.c (Marko Tiikkaja)

    Updates are now executed in a separate ModifyTable node. This change is necessary infrastructure for future improvements.

  • Simplify translation of psql's SQL help text (Peter Eisentraut)

  • Reduce the lengths of some file names so that all file paths in the distribution tarball are less than 100 characters (Tom Lane)

    Some decompression programs have problems with longer file paths.

  • Add a new ERRCODE_INVALID_PASSWORD SQLSTATE error code (Bruce Momjian)

  • With authors' permissions, remove the few remaining personal source code copyright notices (Bruce Momjian)

    The personal copyright notices were insignificant but the community occasionally had to answer questions about them.

  • Add new documentation section about running PostgreSQL in non-durable mode to improve performance (Bruce Momjian)

  • Restructure the HTML documentation Makefile rules to make their dependency checks work correctly, avoiding unnecessary rebuilds (Peter Eisentraut)

  • Use DocBook XSL stylesheets for man page building, rather than Docbook2X (Peter Eisentraut)

    This changes the set of tools needed to build the man pages.

  • Improve PL/Perl code structure (Tim Bunce)

  • Improve error context reports in PL/Perl (Alexey Klyukin)

E.44.3.11.1. New Build Requirements

Note that these requirements do not apply when building from a distribution tarball, since tarballs include the files that these programs are used to build.

  • Require Autoconf 2.63 to build configure (Peter Eisentraut)

  • Require Flex 2.5.31 or later to build from a CVS checkout (Tom Lane)

  • Require Perl version 5.8 or later to build from a CVS checkout (John Naylor, Andrew Dunstan)

E.44.3.11.2. Portability

  • Use a more modern API for Bonjour (Tom Lane)

    Bonjour support now requires OS X 10.3 or later. The older API has been deprecated by Apple.

  • Add spinlock support for the SuperH architecture (Nobuhiro Iwamatsu)

  • Allow non-GCC compilers to use inline functions if they support them (Kurt Harriman)

  • Remove support for platforms that don't have a working 64-bit integer data type (Tom Lane)

  • Restructure use of LDFLAGS to be more consistent across platforms (Tom Lane)

    LDFLAGS is now used for linking both executables and shared libraries, and we add on LDFLAGS_EX when linking executables, or LDFLAGS_SL when linking shared libraries.

E.44.3.11.3. Server Programming

  • Make backend header files safe to include in C++ (Kurt Harriman, Peter Eisentraut)

    These changes remove keyword conflicts that previously made C++ usage difficult in backend code. However, there are still other complexities when using C++ for backend functions. extern "C" { } is still necessary in appropriate places, and memory management and error handling are still problematic.

  • Add AggCheckCallContext() for use in detecting if a C function is being called as an aggregate (Hitoshi Harada)

  • Change calling convention for SearchSysCache() and related functions to avoid hard-wiring the maximum number of cache keys (Robert Haas)

    Existing calls will still work for the moment, but can be expected to break in 9.1 or later if not converted to the new style.

  • Require calls of fastgetattr() and heap_getattr() backend macros to provide a non-NULL fourth argument (Robert Haas)

  • Custom typanalyze functions should no longer rely on VacAttrStats.attr to determine the type of data they will be passed (Tom Lane)

    This was changed to allow collection of statistics on index columns for which the storage type is different from the underlying column data type. There are new fields that tell the actual datatype being analyzed.

E.44.3.11.4. Server Hooks

  • Add parser hooks for processing ColumnRef and ParamRef nodes (Tom Lane)

  • Add a ProcessUtility hook so loadable modules can control utility commands (Itagaki Takahiro)

E.44.3.11.5. Binary Upgrade Support

  • Add contrib/pg_upgrade to support in-place upgrades (Bruce Momjian)

    This avoids the requirement of dumping/reloading the database when upgrading to a new major release of PostgreSQL, thus reducing downtime by orders of magnitude. It supports upgrades to 9.0 from PostgreSQL 8.3 and 8.4.

  • Add support for preserving relation relfilenode values during binary upgrades (Bruce Momjian)

  • Add support for preserving pg_type and pg_enum OIDs during binary upgrades (Bruce Momjian)

  • Move data files within tablespaces into PostgreSQL-version-specific subdirectories (Bruce Momjian)

    This simplifies binary upgrades.

E.44.3.12. Contrib

  • Add multithreading option (-j) to contrib/pgbench (Itagaki Takahiro)

    This allows multiple CPUs to be used by pgbench, reducing the risk of pgbench itself becoming the test bottleneck.

  • Add \shell and \setshell meta commands to contrib/pgbench (Michael Paquier)

  • New features for contrib/dict_xsyn (Sergey Karpov)

    The new options are matchorig, matchsynonyms, and keepsynonyms.

  • Add full text dictionary contrib/unaccent (Teodor Sigaev)

    This filtering dictionary removes accents from letters, which makes full-text searches over multiple languages much easier.

  • Add dblink_get_notify() to contrib/dblink (Marcus Kempe)

    This allows asynchronous notifications in dblink.

  • Improve contrib/dblink's handling of dropped columns (Tom Lane)

    This affects dblink_build_sql_insert() and related functions. These functions now number columns according to logical not physical column numbers.

  • Greatly increase contrib/hstore's data length limit, and add B-tree and hash support so GROUP BY and DISTINCT operations are possible on hstore columns (Andrew Gierth)

    New functions and operators were also added. These improvements make hstore a full-function key-value store embedded in PostgreSQL.

  • Add contrib/passwordcheck to support site-specific password strength policies (Laurenz Albe)

    The source code of this module should be modified to implement site-specific password policies.

  • Add contrib/pg_archivecleanup tool (Simon Riggs)

    This is designed to be used in the archive_cleanup_command server parameter, to remove no-longer-needed archive files.

  • Add query text to contrib/auto_explain output (Andrew Dunstan)

  • Add buffer access counters to contrib/pg_stat_statements (Itagaki Takahiro)

  • Update contrib/start-scripts/linux to use /proc/self/oom_adj to disable the Linux out-of-memory (OOM) killer (Alex Hunsaker, Tom Lane)

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Release 9.0.1 | Up | Release 8.4.22


Release 8.4.22

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.45. Release 8.4.22

Release Date: 2014-07-24

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.4.21. For information about new features in the 8.4 major release, see Section E.67.

This is expected to be the last PostgreSQL release in the 8.4.X series. Users are encouraged to update to a newer release branch soon.

E.45.1. Migration to Version 8.4.22

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.4.X.

However, this release corrects an index corruption problem in some GiST indexes. See the first changelog entry below to find out whether your installation has been affected and what steps you should take if so.

Also, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.4.19, see Section E.48.

E.45.2. Changes

  • Correctly initialize padding bytes in contrib/btree_gist indexes on bit columns (Heikki Linnakangas)

    This error could result in incorrect query results due to values that should compare equal not being seen as equal. Users with GiST indexes on bit or bit varying columns should REINDEX those indexes after installing this update.

  • Protect against torn pages when deleting GIN list pages (Heikki Linnakangas)

    This fix prevents possible index corruption if a system crash occurs while the page update is being written to disk.

  • Fix possibly-incorrect cache invalidation during nested calls to ReceiveSharedInvalidMessages (Andres Freund)

  • Don't assume a subquery's output is unique if there's a set-returning function in its targetlist (David Rowley)

    This oversight could lead to misoptimization of constructs like WHERE x IN (SELECT y, generate_series(1,10) FROM t GROUP BY y).

  • Fix failure to detoast fields in composite elements of structured types (Tom Lane)

    This corrects cases where TOAST pointers could be copied into other tables without being dereferenced. If the original data is later deleted, it would lead to errors like "missing chunk number 0 for toast value ..." when the now-dangling pointer is used.

  • Fix "record type has not been registered" failures with whole-row references to the output of Append plan nodes (Tom Lane)

  • Fix possible crash when invoking a user-defined function while rewinding a cursor (Tom Lane)

  • Fix query-lifespan memory leak while evaluating the arguments for a function in FROM (Tom Lane)

  • Fix session-lifespan memory leaks in regular-expression processing (Tom Lane, Arthur O'Dwyer, Greg Stark)

  • Fix data encoding error in hungarian.stop (Tom Lane)

  • Fix liveness checks for rows that were inserted in the current transaction and then deleted by a now-rolled-back subtransaction (Andres Freund)

    This could cause problems (at least spurious warnings, and at worst an infinite loop) if CREATE INDEX or CLUSTER were done later in the same transaction.

  • Clear pg_stat_activity.xact_start during PREPARE TRANSACTION (Andres Freund)

    After the PREPARE, the originating session is no longer in a transaction, so it should not continue to display a transaction start time.

  • Fix REASSIGN OWNED to not fail for text search objects (Álvaro Herrera)

  • Block signals during postmaster startup (Tom Lane)

    This ensures that the postmaster will properly clean up after itself if, for example, it receives SIGINT while still starting up.

  • Secure Unix-domain sockets of temporary postmasters started during make check (Noah Misch)

    Any local user able to access the socket file could connect as the server's bootstrap superuser, then proceed to execute arbitrary code as the operating-system user running the test, as we previously noted in CVE-2014-0067. This change defends against that risk by placing the server's socket in a temporary, mode 0700 subdirectory of /tmp. The hazard remains however on platforms where Unix sockets are not supported, notably Windows, because then the temporary postmaster must accept local TCP connections.

    A useful side effect of this change is to simplify make check testing in builds that override DEFAULT_PGSOCKET_DIR. Popular non-default values like /var/run/postgresql are often not writable by the build user, requiring workarounds that will no longer be necessary.

  • On Windows, allow new sessions to absorb values of PGC_BACKEND parameters (such as log_connections) from the configuration file (Amit Kapila)

    Previously, if such a parameter were changed in the file post-startup, the change would have no effect.

  • Properly quote executable path names on Windows (Nikhil Deshpande)

    This oversight could cause initdb and pg_upgrade to fail on Windows, if the installation path contained both spaces and @ signs.

  • Fix linking of libpython on OS X (Tom Lane)

    The method we previously used can fail with the Python library supplied by Xcode 5.0 and later.

  • Avoid buffer bloat in libpq when the server consistently sends data faster than the client can absorb it (Shin-ichi Morita, Tom Lane)

    libpq could be coerced into enlarging its input buffer until it runs out of memory (which would be reported misleadingly as "lost synchronization with server"). Under ordinary circumstances it's quite far-fetched that data could be continuously transmitted more quickly than the recv() loop can absorb it, but this has been observed when the client is artificially slowed by scheduler constraints.

  • Ensure that LDAP lookup attempts in libpq time out as intended (Laurenz Albe)

  • Fix pg_restore's processing of old-style large object comments (Tom Lane)

    A direct-to-database restore from an archive file generated by a pre-9.0 version of pg_dump would usually fail if the archive contained more than a few comments for large objects.

  • In contrib/pgcrypto functions, ensure sensitive information is cleared from stack variables before returning (Marko Kreen)

  • In contrib/uuid-ossp, cache the state of the OSSP UUID library across calls (Tom Lane)

    This improves the efficiency of UUID generation and reduces the amount of entropy drawn from /dev/urandom, on platforms that have that.

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2014e for DST law changes in Crimea, Egypt, and Morocco.

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Release 9.0 | Up | Release 8.4.21


Release 8.4.21

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E.46. Release 8.4.21

Release Date: 2014-03-20

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.4.20. For information about new features in the 8.4 major release, see Section E.67.

The PostgreSQL community will stop releasing updates for the 8.4.X release series in July 2014. Users are encouraged to update to a newer release branch soon.

E.46.1. Migration to Version 8.4.21

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.4.X.

However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.4.19, see Section E.48.

E.46.2. Changes

  • Restore GIN metapages unconditionally to avoid torn-page risk (Heikki Linnakangas)

    Although this oversight could theoretically result in a corrupted index, it is unlikely to have caused any problems in practice, since the active part of a GIN metapage is smaller than a standard 512-byte disk sector.

  • Allow regular-expression operators to be terminated early by query cancel requests (Tom Lane)

    This prevents scenarios wherein a pathological regular expression could lock up a server process uninterruptably for a long time.

  • Remove incorrect code that tried to allow OVERLAPS with single-element row arguments (Joshua Yanovski)

    This code never worked correctly, and since the case is neither specified by the SQL standard nor documented, it seemed better to remove it than fix it.

  • Avoid getting more than AccessShareLock when de-parsing a rule or view (Dean Rasheed)

    This oversight resulted in pg_dump unexpectedly acquiring RowExclusiveLock locks on tables mentioned as the targets of INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE commands in rules. While usually harmless, that could interfere with concurrent transactions that tried to acquire, for example, ShareLock on those tables.

  • Prevent interrupts while reporting non-ERROR messages (Tom Lane)

    This guards against rare server-process freezeups due to recursive entry to syslog(), and perhaps other related problems.

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2014a for DST law changes in Fiji and Turkey, plus historical changes in Israel and Ukraine.

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Release 8.4.22 | Up | Release 8.4.20


Release 8.4.20

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.47. Release 8.4.20

Release Date: 2014-02-20

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.4.19. For information about new features in the 8.4 major release, see Section E.67.

The PostgreSQL community will stop releasing updates for the 8.4.X release series in July 2014. Users are encouraged to update to a newer release branch soon.

E.47.1. Migration to Version 8.4.20

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.4.X.

However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.4.19, see Section E.48.

E.47.2. Changes

  • Shore up GRANT ... WITH ADMIN OPTION restrictions (Noah Misch)

    Granting a role without ADMIN OPTION is supposed to prevent the grantee from adding or removing members from the granted role, but this restriction was easily bypassed by doing SET ROLE first. The security impact is mostly that a role member can revoke the access of others, contrary to the wishes of his grantor. Unapproved role member additions are a lesser concern, since an uncooperative role member could provide most of his rights to others anyway by creating views or SECURITY DEFINER functions. (CVE-2014-0060)

  • Prevent privilege escalation via manual calls to PL validator functions (Andres Freund)

    The primary role of PL validator functions is to be called implicitly during CREATE FUNCTION, but they are also normal SQL functions that a user can call explicitly. Calling a validator on a function actually written in some other language was not checked for and could be exploited for privilege-escalation purposes. The fix involves adding a call to a privilege-checking function in each validator function. Non-core procedural languages will also need to make this change to their own validator functions, if any. (CVE-2014-0061)

  • Avoid multiple name lookups during table and index DDL (Robert Haas, Andres Freund)

    If the name lookups come to different conclusions due to concurrent activity, we might perform some parts of the DDL on a different table than other parts. At least in the case of CREATE INDEX, this can be used to cause the permissions checks to be performed against a different table than the index creation, allowing for a privilege escalation attack. (CVE-2014-0062)

  • Prevent buffer overrun with long datetime strings (Noah Misch)

    The MAXDATELEN constant was too small for the longest possible value of type interval, allowing a buffer overrun in interval_out(). Although the datetime input functions were more careful about avoiding buffer overrun, the limit was short enough to cause them to reject some valid inputs, such as input containing a very long timezone name. The ecpg library contained these vulnerabilities along with some of its own. (CVE-2014-0063)

  • Prevent buffer overrun due to integer overflow in size calculations (Noah Misch, Heikki Linnakangas)

    Several functions, mostly type input functions, calculated an allocation size without checking for overflow. If overflow did occur, a too-small buffer would be allocated and then written past. (CVE-2014-0064)

  • Prevent overruns of fixed-size buffers (Peter Eisentraut, Jozef Mlich)

    Use strlcpy() and related functions to provide a clear guarantee that fixed-size buffers are not overrun. Unlike the preceding items, it is unclear whether these cases really represent live issues, since in most cases there appear to be previous constraints on the size of the input string. Nonetheless it seems prudent to silence all Coverity warnings of this type. (CVE-2014-0065)

  • Avoid crashing if crypt() returns NULL (Honza Horak, Bruce Momjian)

    There are relatively few scenarios in which crypt() could return NULL, but contrib/chkpass would crash if it did. One practical case in which this could be an issue is if libc is configured to refuse to execute unapproved hashing algorithms (e.g., "FIPS mode"). (CVE-2014-0066)

  • Document risks of make check in the regression testing instructions (Noah Misch, Tom Lane)

    Since the temporary server started by make check uses "trust" authentication, another user on the same machine could connect to it as database superuser, and then potentially exploit the privileges of the operating-system user who started the tests. A future release will probably incorporate changes in the testing procedure to prevent this risk, but some public discussion is needed first. So for the moment, just warn people against using make check when there are untrusted users on the same machine. (CVE-2014-0067)

  • Fix possible mis-replay of WAL records when some segments of a relation aren't full size (Greg Stark, Tom Lane)

    The WAL update could be applied to the wrong page, potentially many pages past where it should have been. Aside from corrupting data, this error has been observed to result in significant "bloat" of standby servers compared to their masters, due to updates being applied far beyond where the end-of-file should have been. This failure mode does not appear to be a significant risk during crash recovery, only when initially synchronizing a standby created from a base backup taken from a quickly-changing master.

  • Ensure that insertions into non-leaf GIN index pages write a full-page WAL record when appropriate (Heikki Linnakangas)

    The previous coding risked index corruption in the event of a partial-page write during a system crash.

  • Fix race conditions during server process exit (Robert Haas)

    Ensure that signal handlers don't attempt to use the process's MyProc pointer after it's no longer valid.

  • Fix unsafe references to errno within error reporting logic (Christian Kruse)

    This would typically lead to odd behaviors such as missing or inappropriate HINT fields.

  • Fix possible crashes from using ereport() too early during server startup (Tom Lane)

    The principal case we've seen in the field is a crash if the server is started in a directory it doesn't have permission to read.

  • Clear retry flags properly in OpenSSL socket write function (Alexander Kukushkin)

    This omission could result in a server lockup after unexpected loss of an SSL-encrypted connection.

  • Fix length checking for Unicode identifiers (U&"..." syntax) containing escapes (Tom Lane)

    A spurious truncation warning would be printed for such identifiers if the escaped form of the identifier was too long, but the identifier actually didn't need truncation after de-escaping.

  • Fix possible crash due to invalid plan for nested sub-selects, such as WHERE (... x IN (SELECT ...) ...) IN (SELECT ...) (Tom Lane)

  • Ensure that ANALYZE creates statistics for a table column even when all the values in it are "too wide" (Tom Lane)

    ANALYZE intentionally omits very wide values from its histogram and most-common-values calculations, but it neglected to do something sane in the case that all the sampled entries are too wide.

  • In ALTER TABLE ... SET TABLESPACE, allow the database's default tablespace to be used without a permissions check (Stephen Frost)

    CREATE TABLE has always allowed such usage, but ALTER TABLE didn't get the memo.

  • Fix "cannot accept a set" error when some arms of a CASE return a set and others don't (Tom Lane)

  • Fix checks for all-zero client addresses in pgstat functions (Kevin Grittner)

  • Fix possible misclassification of multibyte characters by the text search parser (Tom Lane)

    Non-ASCII characters could be misclassified when using C locale with a multibyte encoding. On Cygwin, non-C locales could fail as well.

  • Fix possible misbehavior in plainto_tsquery() (Heikki Linnakangas)

    Use memmove() not memcpy() for copying overlapping memory regions. There have been no field reports of this actually causing trouble, but it's certainly risky.

  • Accept SHIFT_JIS as an encoding name for locale checking purposes (Tatsuo Ishii)

  • Fix misbehavior of PQhost() on Windows (Fujii Masao)

    It should return localhost if no host has been specified.

  • Improve error handling in libpq and psql for failures during COPY TO STDOUT/FROM STDIN (Tom Lane)

    In particular this fixes an infinite loop that could occur in 9.2 and up if the server connection was lost during COPY FROM STDIN. Variants of that scenario might be possible in older versions, or with other client applications.

  • Fix misaligned descriptors in ecpg (MauMau)

  • In ecpg, handle lack of a hostname in the connection parameters properly (Michael Meskes)

  • Fix performance regression in contrib/dblink connection startup (Joe Conway)

    Avoid an unnecessary round trip when client and server encodings match.

  • In contrib/isn, fix incorrect calculation of the check digit for ISMN values (Fabien Coelho)

  • Ensure client-code-only installation procedure works as documented (Peter Eisentraut)

  • In Mingw and Cygwin builds, install the libpq DLL in the bin directory (Andrew Dunstan)

    This duplicates what the MSVC build has long done. It should fix problems with programs like psql failing to start because they can't find the DLL.

  • Don't generate plain-text HISTORY and src/test/regress/README files anymore (Tom Lane)

    These text files duplicated the main HTML and PDF documentation formats. The trouble involved in maintaining them greatly outweighs the likely audience for plain-text format. Distribution tarballs will still contain files by these names, but they'll just be stubs directing the reader to consult the main documentation. The plain-text INSTALL file will still be maintained, as there is arguably a use-case for that.

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2013i for DST law changes in Jordan and historical changes in Cuba.

    In addition, the zones Asia/Riyadh87, Asia/Riyadh88, and Asia/Riyadh89 have been removed, as they are no longer maintained by IANA, and never represented actual civil timekeeping practice.

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Release 8.4.19

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.48. Release 8.4.19

Release Date: 2013-12-05

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.4.18. For information about new features in the 8.4 major release, see Section E.67.

E.48.1. Migration to Version 8.4.19

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.4.X.

However, this release corrects a potential data corruption issue. See the first changelog entry below to find out whether your installation has been affected and what steps you can take if so.

Also, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.4.17, see Section E.50.

E.48.2. Changes

  • Fix VACUUM's tests to see whether it can update relfrozenxid (Andres Freund)

    In some cases VACUUM (either manual or autovacuum) could incorrectly advance a table's relfrozenxid value, allowing tuples to escape freezing, causing those rows to become invisible once 2^31 transactions have elapsed. The probability of data loss is fairly low since multiple incorrect advancements would need to happen before actual loss occurs, but it's not zero. Users upgrading from release 8.4.8 or earlier are not affected, but all later versions contain the bug.

    The issue can be ameliorated by, after upgrading, vacuuming all tables in all databases while having vacuum_freeze_table_age set to zero. This will fix any latent corruption but will not be able to fix all pre-existing data errors. However, an installation can be presumed safe after performing this vacuuming if it has executed fewer than 2^31 update transactions in its lifetime (check this with SELECT txid_current() < 2^31).

  • Fix race condition in GIN index posting tree page deletion (Heikki Linnakangas)

    This could lead to transient wrong answers or query failures.

  • Avoid flattening a subquery whose SELECT list contains a volatile function wrapped inside a sub-SELECT (Tom Lane)

    This avoids unexpected results due to extra evaluations of the volatile function.

  • Fix planner's processing of non-simple-variable subquery outputs nested within outer joins (Tom Lane)

    This error could lead to incorrect plans for queries involving multiple levels of subqueries within JOIN syntax.

  • Fix premature deletion of temporary files (Andres Freund)

  • Fix possible read past end of memory in rule printing (Peter Eisentraut)

  • Fix array slicing of int2vector and oidvector values (Tom Lane)

    Expressions of this kind are now implicitly promoted to regular int2 or oid arrays.

  • Fix incorrect behaviors when using a SQL-standard, simple GMT offset timezone (Tom Lane)

    In some cases, the system would use the simple GMT offset value when it should have used the regular timezone setting that had prevailed before the simple offset was selected. This change also causes the timeofday function to honor the simple GMT offset zone.

  • Prevent possible misbehavior when logging translations of Windows error codes (Tom Lane)

  • Properly quote generated command lines in pg_ctl (Naoya Anzai and Tom Lane)

    This fix applies only to Windows.

  • Fix pg_dumpall to work when a source database sets default_transaction_read_only via ALTER DATABASE SET (Kevin Grittner)

    Previously, the generated script would fail during restore.

  • Fix ecpg's processing of lists of variables declared varchar (Zoltán Böszörményi)

  • Make contrib/lo defend against incorrect trigger definitions (Marc Cousin)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2013h for DST law changes in Argentina, Brazil, Jordan, Libya, Liechtenstein, Morocco, and Palestine. Also, new timezone abbreviations WIB, WIT, WITA for Indonesia.

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Release 8.4.20 | Up | Release 8.4.18


Release 8.4.18

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.49. Release 8.4.18

Release Date: 2013-10-10

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.4.17. For information about new features in the 8.4 major release, see Section E.67.

E.49.1. Migration to Version 8.4.18

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.4.X.

However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.4.17, see Section E.50.

E.49.2. Changes

  • Prevent corruption of multi-byte characters when attempting to case-fold identifiers (Andrew Dunstan)

    PostgreSQL case-folds non-ASCII characters only when using a single-byte server encoding.

  • Fix memory leak caused by lo_open() failure (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Fix memory overcommit bug when work_mem is using more than 24GB of memory (Stephen Frost)

  • Fix deadlock bug in libpq when using SSL (Stephen Frost)

  • Properly compute row estimates for boolean columns containing many NULL values (Andrew Gierth)

    Previously tests like col IS NOT TRUE and col IS NOT FALSE did not properly factor in NULL values when estimating plan costs.

  • Prevent pushing down WHERE clauses into unsafe UNION/INTERSECT subqueries (Tom Lane)

    Subqueries of a UNION or INTERSECT that contain set-returning functions or volatile functions in their SELECT lists could be improperly optimized, leading to run-time errors or incorrect query results.

  • Fix rare case of "failed to locate grouping columns" planner failure (Tom Lane)

  • Improve view dumping code's handling of dropped columns in referenced tables (Tom Lane)

  • Fix possible deadlock during concurrent CREATE INDEX CONCURRENTLY operations (Tom Lane)

  • Fix regexp_matches() handling of zero-length matches (Jeevan Chalke)

    Previously, zero-length matches like '^' could return too many matches.

  • Fix crash for overly-complex regular expressions (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Fix regular expression match failures for back references combined with non-greedy quantifiers (Jeevan Chalke)

  • Prevent CREATE FUNCTION from checking SET variables unless function body checking is enabled (Tom Lane)

  • Fix pgp_pub_decrypt() so it works for secret keys with passwords (Marko Kreen)

  • Remove rare inaccurate warning during vacuum of index-less tables (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Avoid possible failure when performing transaction control commands (e.g ROLLBACK) in prepared queries (Tom Lane)

  • Ensure that floating-point data input accepts standard spellings of "infinity" on all platforms (Tom Lane)

    The C99 standard says that allowable spellings are inf, +inf, -inf, infinity, +infinity, and -infinity. Make sure we recognize these even if the platform's strtod function doesn't.

  • Expand ability to compare rows to records and arrays (Rafal Rzepecki, Tom Lane)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2013d for DST law changes in Israel, Morocco, Palestine, and Paraguay. Also, historical zone data corrections for Macquarie Island.

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Release 8.4.19 | Up | Release 8.4.17


Release 8.4.17

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.50. Release 8.4.17

Release Date: 2013-04-04

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.4.16. For information about new features in the 8.4 major release, see Section E.67.

E.50.1. Migration to Version 8.4.17

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.4.X.

However, this release corrects several errors in management of GiST indexes. After installing this update, it is advisable to REINDEX any GiST indexes that meet one or more of the conditions described below.

Also, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.4.10, see Section E.57.

E.50.2. Changes

  • Reset OpenSSL randomness state in each postmaster child process (Marko Kreen)

    This avoids a scenario wherein random numbers generated by contrib/pgcrypto functions might be relatively easy for another database user to guess. The risk is only significant when the postmaster is configured with ssl = on but most connections don't use SSL encryption. (CVE-2013-1900)

  • Fix GiST indexes to not use "fuzzy" geometric comparisons when it's not appropriate to do so (Alexander Korotkov)

    The core geometric types perform comparisons using "fuzzy" equality, but gist_box_same must do exact comparisons, else GiST indexes using it might become inconsistent. After installing this update, users should REINDEX any GiST indexes on box, polygon, circle, or point columns, since all of these use gist_box_same.

  • Fix erroneous range-union and penalty logic in GiST indexes that use contrib/btree_gist for variable-width data types, that is text, bytea, bit, and numeric columns (Tom Lane)

    These errors could result in inconsistent indexes in which some keys that are present would not be found by searches, and also in useless index bloat. Users are advised to REINDEX such indexes after installing this update.

  • Fix bugs in GiST page splitting code for multi-column indexes (Tom Lane)

    These errors could result in inconsistent indexes in which some keys that are present would not be found by searches, and also in indexes that are unnecessarily inefficient to search. Users are advised to REINDEX multi-column GiST indexes after installing this update.

  • Fix infinite-loop risk in regular expression compilation (Tom Lane, Don Porter)

  • Fix potential null-pointer dereference in regular expression compilation (Tom Lane)

  • Fix to_char() to use ASCII-only case-folding rules where appropriate (Tom Lane)

    This fixes misbehavior of some template patterns that should be locale-independent, but mishandled "I" and "i" in Turkish locales.

  • Fix unwanted rejection of timestamp 1999-12-31 24:00:00 (Tom Lane)

  • Remove useless "picksplit doesn't support secondary split" log messages (Josh Hansen, Tom Lane)

    This message seems to have been added in expectation of code that was never written, and probably never will be, since GiST's default handling of secondary splits is actually pretty good. So stop nagging end users about it.

  • Fix possible failure to send a session's last few transaction commit/abort counts to the statistics collector (Tom Lane)

  • Eliminate memory leaks in PL/Perl's spi_prepare() function (Alex Hunsaker, Tom Lane)

  • Fix pg_dumpall to handle database names containing "=" correctly (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Avoid crash in pg_dump when an incorrect connection string is given (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Ignore invalid indexes in pg_dump (Michael Paquier)

    Dumping invalid indexes can cause problems at restore time, for example if the reason the index creation failed was because it tried to enforce a uniqueness condition not satisfied by the table's data. Also, if the index creation is in fact still in progress, it seems reasonable to consider it to be an uncommitted DDL change, which pg_dump wouldn't be expected to dump anyway.

  • Fix contrib/pg_trgm's similarity() function to return zero for trigram-less strings (Tom Lane)

    Previously it returned NaN due to internal division by zero.

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2013b for DST law changes in Chile, Haiti, Morocco, Paraguay, and some Russian areas. Also, historical zone data corrections for numerous places.

    Also, update the time zone abbreviation files for recent changes in Russia and elsewhere: CHOT, GET, IRKT, KGT, KRAT, MAGT, MAWT, MSK, NOVT, OMST, TKT, VLAT, WST, YAKT, YEKT now follow their current meanings, and VOLT (Europe/Volgograd) and MIST (Antarctica/Macquarie) are added to the default abbreviations list.

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Release 8.4.18 | Up | Release 8.4.16


Release 8.4.16

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.51. Release 8.4.16

Release Date: 2013-02-07

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.4.15. For information about new features in the 8.4 major release, see Section E.67.

E.51.1. Migration to Version 8.4.16

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.4.X.

However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.4.10, see Section E.57.

E.51.2. Changes

  • Prevent execution of enum_recv from SQL (Tom Lane)

    The function was misdeclared, allowing a simple SQL command to crash the server. In principle an attacker might be able to use it to examine the contents of server memory. Our thanks to Sumit Soni (via Secunia SVCRP) for reporting this issue. (CVE-2013-0255)

  • Update minimum recovery point when truncating a relation file (Heikki Linnakangas)

    Once data has been discarded, it's no longer safe to stop recovery at an earlier point in the timeline.

  • Fix SQL grammar to allow subscripting or field selection from a sub-SELECT result (Tom Lane)

  • Protect against race conditions when scanning pg_tablespace (Stephen Frost, Tom Lane)

    CREATE DATABASE and DROP DATABASE could misbehave if there were concurrent updates of pg_tablespace entries.

  • Prevent DROP OWNED from trying to drop whole databases or tablespaces (Álvaro Herrera)

    For safety, ownership of these objects must be reassigned, not dropped.

  • Fix error in vacuum_freeze_table_age implementation (Andres Freund)

    In installations that have existed for more than vacuum_freeze_min_age transactions, this mistake prevented autovacuum from using partial-table scans, so that a full-table scan would always happen instead.

  • Prevent misbehavior when a RowExpr or XmlExpr is parse-analyzed twice (Andres Freund, Tom Lane)

    This mistake could be user-visible in contexts such as CREATE TABLE LIKE INCLUDING INDEXES.

  • Improve defenses against integer overflow in hashtable sizing calculations (Jeff Davis)

  • Reject out-of-range dates in to_date() (Hitoshi Harada)

  • Ensure that non-ASCII prompt strings are translated to the correct code page on Windows (Alexander Law, Noah Misch)

    This bug affected psql and some other client programs.

  • Fix possible crash in psql's \? command when not connected to a database (Meng Qingzhong)

  • Fix one-byte buffer overrun in libpq's PQprintTuples (Xi Wang)

    This ancient function is not used anywhere by PostgreSQL itself, but it might still be used by some client code.

  • Make ecpglib use translated messages properly (Chen Huajun)

  • Properly install ecpg_compat and pgtypes libraries on MSVC (Jiang Guiqing)

  • Rearrange configure's tests for supplied functions so it is not fooled by bogus exports from libedit/libreadline (Christoph Berg)

  • Ensure Windows build number increases over time (Magnus Hagander)

  • Make pgxs build executables with the right .exe suffix when cross-compiling for Windows (Zoltan Boszormenyi)

  • Add new timezone abbreviation FET (Tom Lane)

    This is now used in some eastern-European time zones.

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Release 8.4.15

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.52. Release 8.4.15

Release Date: 2012-12-06

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.4.14. For information about new features in the 8.4 major release, see Section E.67.

E.52.1. Migration to Version 8.4.15

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.4.X.

However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.4.10, see Section E.57.

E.52.2. Changes

  • Fix multiple bugs associated with CREATE INDEX CONCURRENTLY (Andres Freund, Tom Lane)

    Fix CREATE INDEX CONCURRENTLY to use in-place updates when changing the state of an index's pg_index row. This prevents race conditions that could cause concurrent sessions to miss updating the target index, thus resulting in corrupt concurrently-created indexes.

    Also, fix various other operations to ensure that they ignore invalid indexes resulting from a failed CREATE INDEX CONCURRENTLY command. The most important of these is VACUUM, because an auto-vacuum could easily be launched on the table before corrective action can be taken to fix or remove the invalid index.

  • Avoid corruption of internal hash tables when out of memory (Hitoshi Harada)

  • Fix planning of non-strict equivalence clauses above outer joins (Tom Lane)

    The planner could derive incorrect constraints from a clause equating a non-strict construct to something else, for example WHERE COALESCE(foo, 0) = 0 when foo is coming from the nullable side of an outer join.

  • Improve planner's ability to prove exclusion constraints from equivalence classes (Tom Lane)

  • Fix partial-row matching in hashed subplans to handle cross-type cases correctly (Tom Lane)

    This affects multicolumn NOT IN subplans, such as WHERE (a, b) NOT IN (SELECT x, y FROM ...) when for instance b and y are int4 and int8 respectively. This mistake led to wrong answers or crashes depending on the specific datatypes involved.

  • Acquire buffer lock when re-fetching the old tuple for an AFTER ROW UPDATE/DELETE trigger (Andres Freund)

    In very unusual circumstances, this oversight could result in passing incorrect data to the precheck logic for a foreign-key enforcement trigger. That could result in a crash, or in an incorrect decision about whether to fire the trigger.

  • Fix ALTER COLUMN TYPE to handle inherited check constraints properly (Pavan Deolasee)

    This worked correctly in pre-8.4 releases, and now works correctly in 8.4 and later.

  • Fix REASSIGN OWNED to handle grants on tablespaces (Álvaro Herrera)

  • Ignore incorrect pg_attribute entries for system columns for views (Tom Lane)

    Views do not have any system columns. However, we forgot to remove such entries when converting a table to a view. That's fixed properly for 9.3 and later, but in previous branches we need to defend against existing mis-converted views.

  • Fix rule printing to dump INSERT INTO table DEFAULT VALUES correctly (Tom Lane)

  • Guard against stack overflow when there are too many UNION/INTERSECT/EXCEPT clauses in a query (Tom Lane)

  • Prevent platform-dependent failures when dividing the minimum possible integer value by -1 (Xi Wang, Tom Lane)

  • Fix possible access past end of string in date parsing (Hitoshi Harada)

  • Produce an understandable error message if the length of the path name for a Unix-domain socket exceeds the platform-specific limit (Tom Lane, Andrew Dunstan)

    Formerly, this would result in something quite unhelpful, such as "Non-recoverable failure in name resolution".

  • Fix memory leaks when sending composite column values to the client (Tom Lane)

  • Make pg_ctl more robust about reading the postmaster.pid file (Heikki Linnakangas)

    Fix race conditions and possible file descriptor leakage.

  • Fix possible crash in psql if incorrectly-encoded data is presented and the client_encoding setting is a client-only encoding, such as SJIS (Jiang Guiqing)

  • Fix bugs in the restore.sql script emitted by pg_dump in tar output format (Tom Lane)

    The script would fail outright on tables whose names include upper-case characters. Also, make the script capable of restoring data in --inserts mode as well as the regular COPY mode.

  • Fix pg_restore to accept POSIX-conformant tar files (Brian Weaver, Tom Lane)

    The original coding of pg_dump's tar output mode produced files that are not fully conformant with the POSIX standard. This has been corrected for version 9.3. This patch updates previous branches so that they will accept both the incorrect and the corrected formats, in hopes of avoiding compatibility problems when 9.3 comes out.

  • Fix pg_resetxlog to locate postmaster.pid correctly when given a relative path to the data directory (Tom Lane)

    This mistake could lead to pg_resetxlog not noticing that there is an active postmaster using the data directory.

  • Fix libpq's lo_import() and lo_export() functions to report file I/O errors properly (Tom Lane)

  • Fix ecpg's processing of nested structure pointer variables (Muhammad Usama)

  • Make contrib/pageinspect's btree page inspection functions take buffer locks while examining pages (Tom Lane)

  • Fix pgxs support for building loadable modules on AIX (Tom Lane)

    Building modules outside the original source tree didn't work on AIX.

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2012j for DST law changes in Cuba, Israel, Jordan, Libya, Palestine, Western Samoa, and portions of Brazil.

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Release 8.4.16 | Up | Release 8.4.14


Release 8.4.14

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.53. Release 8.4.14

Release Date: 2012-09-24

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.4.13. For information about new features in the 8.4 major release, see Section E.67.

E.53.1. Migration to Version 8.4.14

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.4.X.

However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.4.10, see Section E.57.

E.53.2. Changes

  • Fix planner's assignment of executor parameters, and fix executor's rescan logic for CTE plan nodes (Tom Lane)

    These errors could result in wrong answers from queries that scan the same WITH subquery multiple times.

  • Improve page-splitting decisions in GiST indexes (Alexander Korotkov, Robert Haas, Tom Lane)

    Multi-column GiST indexes might suffer unexpected bloat due to this error.

  • Fix cascading privilege revoke to stop if privileges are still held (Tom Lane)

    If we revoke a grant option from some role X, but X still holds that option via a grant from someone else, we should not recursively revoke the corresponding privilege from role(s) Y that X had granted it to.

  • Fix handling of SIGFPE when PL/Perl is in use (Andres Freund)

    Perl resets the process's SIGFPE handler to SIG_IGN, which could result in crashes later on. Restore the normal Postgres signal handler after initializing PL/Perl.

  • Prevent PL/Perl from crashing if a recursive PL/Perl function is redefined while being executed (Tom Lane)

  • Work around possible misoptimization in PL/Perl (Tom Lane)

    Some Linux distributions contain an incorrect version of pthread.h that results in incorrect compiled code in PL/Perl, leading to crashes if a PL/Perl function calls another one that throws an error.

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2012f for DST law changes in Fiji

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Release 8.4.15 | Up | Release 8.4.13


Release 8.4.13

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.54. Release 8.4.13

Release Date: 2012-08-17

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.4.12. For information about new features in the 8.4 major release, see Section E.67.

E.54.1. Migration to Version 8.4.13

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.4.X.

However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.4.10, see Section E.57.

E.54.2. Changes

  • Prevent access to external files/URLs via XML entity references (Noah Misch, Tom Lane)

    xml_parse() would attempt to fetch external files or URLs as needed to resolve DTD and entity references in an XML value, thus allowing unprivileged database users to attempt to fetch data with the privileges of the database server. While the external data wouldn't get returned directly to the user, portions of it could be exposed in error messages if the data didn't parse as valid XML; and in any case the mere ability to check existence of a file might be useful to an attacker. (CVE-2012-3489)

  • Prevent access to external files/URLs via contrib/xml2's xslt_process() (Peter Eisentraut)

    libxslt offers the ability to read and write both files and URLs through stylesheet commands, thus allowing unprivileged database users to both read and write data with the privileges of the database server. Disable that through proper use of libxslt's security options. (CVE-2012-3488)

    Also, remove xslt_process()'s ability to fetch documents and stylesheets from external files/URLs. While this was a documented "feature", it was long regarded as a bad idea. The fix for CVE-2012-3489 broke that capability, and rather than expend effort on trying to fix it, we're just going to summarily remove it.

  • Prevent too-early recycling of btree index pages (Noah Misch)

    When we allowed read-only transactions to skip assigning XIDs, we introduced the possibility that a deleted btree page could be recycled while a read-only transaction was still in flight to it. This would result in incorrect index search results. The probability of such an error occurring in the field seems very low because of the timing requirements, but nonetheless it should be fixed.

  • Fix crash-safety bug with newly-created-or-reset sequences (Tom Lane)

    If ALTER SEQUENCE was executed on a freshly created or reset sequence, and then precisely one nextval() call was made on it, and then the server crashed, WAL replay would restore the sequence to a state in which it appeared that no nextval() had been done, thus allowing the first sequence value to be returned again by the next nextval() call. In particular this could manifest for serial columns, since creation of a serial column's sequence includes an ALTER SEQUENCE OWNED BY step.

  • Ensure the backup_label file is fsync'd after pg_start_backup() (Dave Kerr)

  • Back-patch 9.1 improvement to compress the fsync request queue (Robert Haas)

    This improves performance during checkpoints. The 9.1 change has now seen enough field testing to seem safe to back-patch.

  • Only allow autovacuum to be auto-canceled by a directly blocked process (Tom Lane)

    The original coding could allow inconsistent behavior in some cases; in particular, an autovacuum could get canceled after less than deadlock_timeout grace period.

  • Improve logging of autovacuum cancels (Robert Haas)

  • Fix log collector so that log_truncate_on_rotation works during the very first log rotation after server start (Tom Lane)

  • Fix WITH attached to a nested set operation (UNION/INTERSECT/EXCEPT) (Tom Lane)

  • Ensure that a whole-row reference to a subquery doesn't include any extra GROUP BY or ORDER BY columns (Tom Lane)

  • Disallow copying whole-row references in CHECK constraints and index definitions during CREATE TABLE (Tom Lane)

    This situation can arise in CREATE TABLE with LIKE or INHERITS. The copied whole-row variable was incorrectly labeled with the row type of the original table not the new one. Rejecting the case seems reasonable for LIKE, since the row types might well diverge later. For INHERITS we should ideally allow it, with an implicit coercion to the parent table's row type; but that will require more work than seems safe to back-patch.

  • Fix memory leak in ARRAY(SELECT ...) subqueries (Heikki Linnakangas, Tom Lane)

  • Fix extraction of common prefixes from regular expressions (Tom Lane)

    The code could get confused by quantified parenthesized subexpressions, such as ^(foo)?bar. This would lead to incorrect index optimization of searches for such patterns.

  • Fix bugs with parsing signed hh:mm and hh:mm:ss fields in interval constants (Amit Kapila, Tom Lane)

  • Report errors properly in contrib/xml2's xslt_process() (Tom Lane)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2012e for DST law changes in Morocco and Tokelau

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Release 8.4.14 | Up | Release 8.4.12


Release 8.4.12

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.55. Release 8.4.12

Release Date: 2012-06-04

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.4.11. For information about new features in the 8.4 major release, see Section E.67.

E.55.1. Migration to Version 8.4.12

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.4.X.

However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.4.10, see Section E.57.

E.55.2. Changes

  • Fix incorrect password transformation in contrib/pgcrypto's DES crypt() function (Solar Designer)

    If a password string contained the byte value 0x80, the remainder of the password was ignored, causing the password to be much weaker than it appeared. With this fix, the rest of the string is properly included in the DES hash. Any stored password values that are affected by this bug will thus no longer match, so the stored values may need to be updated. (CVE-2012-2143)

  • Ignore SECURITY DEFINER and SET attributes for a procedural language's call handler (Tom Lane)

    Applying such attributes to a call handler could crash the server. (CVE-2012-2655)

  • Allow numeric timezone offsets in timestamp input to be up to 16 hours away from UTC (Tom Lane)

    Some historical time zones have offsets larger than 15 hours, the previous limit. This could result in dumped data values being rejected during reload.

  • Fix timestamp conversion to cope when the given time is exactly the last DST transition time for the current timezone (Tom Lane)

    This oversight has been there a long time, but was not noticed previously because most DST-using zones are presumed to have an indefinite sequence of future DST transitions.

  • Fix text to name and char to name casts to perform string truncation correctly in multibyte encodings (Karl Schnaitter)

  • Fix memory copying bug in to_tsquery() (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Fix planner's handling of outer PlaceHolderVars within subqueries (Tom Lane)

    This bug concerns sub-SELECTs that reference variables coming from the nullable side of an outer join of the surrounding query. In 9.1, queries affected by this bug would fail with "ERROR: Upper-level PlaceHolderVar found where not expected". But in 9.0 and 8.4, you'd silently get possibly-wrong answers, since the value transmitted into the subquery wouldn't go to null when it should.

  • Fix slow session startup when pg_attribute is very large (Tom Lane)

    If pg_attribute exceeds one-fourth of shared_buffers, cache rebuilding code that is sometimes needed during session start would trigger the synchronized-scan logic, causing it to take many times longer than normal. The problem was particularly acute if many new sessions were starting at once.

  • Ensure sequential scans check for query cancel reasonably often (Merlin Moncure)

    A scan encountering many consecutive pages that contain no live tuples would not respond to interrupts meanwhile.

  • Ensure the Windows implementation of PGSemaphoreLock() clears ImmediateInterruptOK before returning (Tom Lane)

    This oversight meant that a query-cancel interrupt received later in the same query could be accepted at an unsafe time, with unpredictable but not good consequences.

  • Show whole-row variables safely when printing views or rules (Abbas Butt, Tom Lane)

    Corner cases involving ambiguous names (that is, the name could be either a table or column name of the query) were printed in an ambiguous way, risking that the view or rule would be interpreted differently after dump and reload. Avoid the ambiguous case by attaching a no-op cast.

  • Fix COPY FROM to properly handle null marker strings that correspond to invalid encoding (Tom Lane)

    A null marker string such as E'\\0' should work, and did work in the past, but the case got broken in 8.4.

  • Ensure autovacuum worker processes perform stack depth checking properly (Heikki Linnakangas)

    Previously, infinite recursion in a function invoked by auto-ANALYZE could crash worker processes.

  • Fix logging collector to not lose log coherency under high load (Andrew Dunstan)

    The collector previously could fail to reassemble large messages if it got too busy.

  • Fix logging collector to ensure it will restart file rotation after receiving SIGHUP (Tom Lane)

  • Fix WAL replay logic for GIN indexes to not fail if the index was subsequently dropped (Tom Lane)

  • Fix memory leak in PL/pgSQL's RETURN NEXT command (Joe Conway)

  • Fix PL/pgSQL's GET DIAGNOSTICS command when the target is the function's first variable (Tom Lane)

  • Fix potential access off the end of memory in psql's expanded display (\x) mode (Peter Eisentraut)

  • Fix several performance problems in pg_dump when the database contains many objects (Jeff Janes, Tom Lane)

    pg_dump could get very slow if the database contained many schemas, or if many objects are in dependency loops, or if there are many owned sequences.

  • Fix contrib/dblink's dblink_exec() to not leak temporary database connections upon error (Tom Lane)

  • Fix contrib/dblink to report the correct connection name in error messages (Kyotaro Horiguchi)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2012c for DST law changes in Antarctica, Armenia, Chile, Cuba, Falkland Islands, Gaza, Haiti, Hebron, Morocco, Syria, and Tokelau Islands; also historical corrections for Canada.

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Release 8.4.13 | Up | Release 8.4.11


Release 8.4.11

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.56. Release 8.4.11

Release Date: 2012-02-27

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.4.10. For information about new features in the 8.4 major release, see Section E.67.

E.56.1. Migration to Version 8.4.11

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.4.X.

However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.4.10, see Section E.57.

E.56.2. Changes

  • Require execute permission on the trigger function for CREATE TRIGGER (Robert Haas)

    This missing check could allow another user to execute a trigger function with forged input data, by installing it on a table he owns. This is only of significance for trigger functions marked SECURITY DEFINER, since otherwise trigger functions run as the table owner anyway. (CVE-2012-0866)

  • Remove arbitrary limitation on length of common name in SSL certificates (Heikki Linnakangas)

    Both libpq and the server truncated the common name extracted from an SSL certificate at 32 bytes. Normally this would cause nothing worse than an unexpected verification failure, but there are some rather-implausible scenarios in which it might allow one certificate holder to impersonate another. The victim would have to have a common name exactly 32 bytes long, and the attacker would have to persuade a trusted CA to issue a certificate in which the common name has that string as a prefix. Impersonating a server would also require some additional exploit to redirect client connections. (CVE-2012-0867)

  • Convert newlines to spaces in names written in pg_dump comments (Robert Haas)

    pg_dump was incautious about sanitizing object names that are emitted within SQL comments in its output script. A name containing a newline would at least render the script syntactically incorrect. Maliciously crafted object names could present a SQL injection risk when the script is reloaded. (CVE-2012-0868)

  • Fix btree index corruption from insertions concurrent with vacuuming (Tom Lane)

    An index page split caused by an insertion could sometimes cause a concurrently-running VACUUM to miss removing index entries that it should remove. After the corresponding table rows are removed, the dangling index entries would cause errors (such as "could not read block N in file ...") or worse, silently wrong query results after unrelated rows are re-inserted at the now-free table locations. This bug has been present since release 8.2, but occurs so infrequently that it was not diagnosed until now. If you have reason to suspect that it has happened in your database, reindexing the affected index will fix things.

  • Update per-column permissions, not only per-table permissions, when changing table owner (Tom Lane)

    Failure to do this meant that any previously granted column permissions were still shown as having been granted by the old owner. This meant that neither the new owner nor a superuser could revoke the now-untraceable-to-table-owner permissions.

  • Allow non-existent values for some settings in ALTER USER/DATABASE SET (Heikki Linnakangas)

    Allow default_text_search_config, default_tablespace, and temp_tablespaces to be set to names that are not known. This is because they might be known in another database where the setting is intended to be used, or for the tablespace cases because the tablespace might not be created yet. The same issue was previously recognized for search_path, and these settings now act like that one.

  • Avoid crashing when we have problems deleting table files post-commit (Tom Lane)

    Dropping a table should lead to deleting the underlying disk files only after the transaction commits. In event of failure then (for instance, because of wrong file permissions) the code is supposed to just emit a warning message and go on, since it's too late to abort the transaction. This logic got broken as of release 8.4, causing such situations to result in a PANIC and an unrestartable database.

  • Track the OID counter correctly during WAL replay, even when it wraps around (Tom Lane)

    Previously the OID counter would remain stuck at a high value until the system exited replay mode. The practical consequences of that are usually nil, but there are scenarios wherein a standby server that's been promoted to master might take a long time to advance the OID counter to a reasonable value once values are needed.

  • Fix regular expression back-references with * attached (Tom Lane)

    Rather than enforcing an exact string match, the code would effectively accept any string that satisfies the pattern sub-expression referenced by the back-reference symbol.

    A similar problem still afflicts back-references that are embedded in a larger quantified expression, rather than being the immediate subject of the quantifier. This will be addressed in a future PostgreSQL release.

  • Fix recently-introduced memory leak in processing of inet/cidr values (Heikki Linnakangas)

    A patch in the December 2011 releases of PostgreSQL caused memory leakage in these operations, which could be significant in scenarios such as building a btree index on such a column.

  • Fix dangling pointer after CREATE TABLE AS/SELECT INTO in a SQL-language function (Tom Lane)

    In most cases this only led to an assertion failure in assert-enabled builds, but worse consequences seem possible.

  • Avoid double close of file handle in syslogger on Windows (MauMau)

    Ordinarily this error was invisible, but it would cause an exception when running on a debug version of Windows.

  • Fix I/O-conversion-related memory leaks in plpgsql (Andres Freund, Jan Urbanski, Tom Lane)

    Certain operations would leak memory until the end of the current function.

  • Improve pg_dump's handling of inherited table columns (Tom Lane)

    pg_dump mishandled situations where a child column has a different default expression than its parent column. If the default is textually identical to the parent's default, but not actually the same (for instance, because of schema search path differences) it would not be recognized as different, so that after dump and restore the child would be allowed to inherit the parent's default. Child columns that are NOT NULL where their parent is not could also be restored subtly incorrectly.

  • Fix pg_restore's direct-to-database mode for INSERT-style table data (Tom Lane)

    Direct-to-database restores from archive files made with --inserts or --column-inserts options fail when using pg_restore from a release dated September or December 2011, as a result of an oversight in a fix for another problem. The archive file itself is not at fault, and text-mode output is okay.

  • Allow AT option in ecpg DEALLOCATE statements (Michael Meskes)

    The infrastructure to support this has been there for awhile, but through an oversight there was still an error check rejecting the case.

  • Fix error in contrib/intarray's int[] & int[] operator (Guillaume Lelarge)

    If the smallest integer the two input arrays have in common is 1, and there are smaller values in either array, then 1 would be incorrectly omitted from the result.

  • Fix error detection in contrib/pgcrypto's encrypt_iv() and decrypt_iv() (Marko Kreen)

    These functions failed to report certain types of invalid-input errors, and would instead return random garbage values for incorrect input.

  • Fix one-byte buffer overrun in contrib/test_parser (Paul Guyot)

    The code would try to read one more byte than it should, which would crash in corner cases. Since contrib/test_parser is only example code, this is not a security issue in itself, but bad example code is still bad.

  • Use __sync_lock_test_and_set() for spinlocks on ARM, if available (Martin Pitt)

    This function replaces our previous use of the SWPB instruction, which is deprecated and not available on ARMv6 and later. Reports suggest that the old code doesn't fail in an obvious way on recent ARM boards, but simply doesn't interlock concurrent accesses, leading to bizarre failures in multiprocess operation.

  • Use -fexcess-precision=standard option when building with gcc versions that accept it (Andrew Dunstan)

    This prevents assorted scenarios wherein recent versions of gcc will produce creative results.

  • Allow use of threaded Python on FreeBSD (Chris Rees)

    Our configure script previously believed that this combination wouldn't work; but FreeBSD fixed the problem, so remove that error check.

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Release 8.4.12 | Up | Release 8.4.10


Release 8.4.10

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.57. Release 8.4.10

Release Date: 2011-12-05

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.4.9. For information about new features in the 8.4 major release, see Section E.67.

E.57.1. Migration to Version 8.4.10

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.4.X.

However, a longstanding error was discovered in the definition of the information_schema.referential_constraints view. If you rely on correct results from that view, you should replace its definition as explained in the first changelog item below.

Also, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.4.8, see Section E.59.

E.57.2. Changes

  • Fix bugs in information_schema.referential_constraints view (Tom Lane)

    This view was being insufficiently careful about matching the foreign-key constraint to the depended-on primary or unique key constraint. That could result in failure to show a foreign key constraint at all, or showing it multiple times, or claiming that it depends on a different constraint than the one it really does.

    Since the view definition is installed by initdb, merely upgrading will not fix the problem. If you need to fix this in an existing installation, you can (as a superuser) drop the information_schema schema then re-create it by sourcing SHAREDIR/information_schema.sql. (Run pg_config --sharedir if you're uncertain where SHAREDIR is.) This must be repeated in each database to be fixed.

  • Fix incorrect replay of WAL records for GIN index updates (Tom Lane)

    This could result in transiently failing to find index entries after a crash, or on a hot-standby server. The problem would be repaired by the next VACUUM of the index, however.

  • Fix TOAST-related data corruption during CREATE TABLE dest AS SELECT * FROM src or INSERT INTO dest SELECT * FROM src (Tom Lane)

    If a table has been modified by ALTER TABLE ADD COLUMN, attempts to copy its data verbatim to another table could produce corrupt results in certain corner cases. The problem can only manifest in this precise form in 8.4 and later, but we patched earlier versions as well in case there are other code paths that could trigger the same bug.

  • Fix race condition during toast table access from stale syscache entries (Tom Lane)

    The typical symptom was transient errors like "missing chunk number 0 for toast value NNNNN in pg_toast_2619", where the cited toast table would always belong to a system catalog.

  • Track dependencies of functions on items used in parameter default expressions (Tom Lane)

    Previously, a referenced object could be dropped without having dropped or modified the function, leading to misbehavior when the function was used. Note that merely installing this update will not fix the missing dependency entries; to do that, you'd need to CREATE OR REPLACE each such function afterwards. If you have functions whose defaults depend on non-built-in objects, doing so is recommended.

  • Allow inlining of set-returning SQL functions with multiple OUT parameters (Tom Lane)

  • Make DatumGetInetP() unpack inet datums that have a 1-byte header, and add a new macro, DatumGetInetPP(), that does not (Heikki Linnakangas)

    This change affects no core code, but might prevent crashes in add-on code that expects DatumGetInetP() to produce an unpacked datum as per usual convention.

  • Improve locale support in money type's input and output (Tom Lane)

    Aside from not supporting all standard lc_monetary formatting options, the input and output functions were inconsistent, meaning there were locales in which dumped money values could not be re-read.

  • Don't let transform_null_equals affect CASE foo WHEN NULL ... constructs (Heikki Linnakangas)

    transform_null_equals is only supposed to affect foo = NULL expressions written directly by the user, not equality checks generated internally by this form of CASE.

  • Change foreign-key trigger creation order to better support self-referential foreign keys (Tom Lane)

    For a cascading foreign key that references its own table, a row update will fire both the ON UPDATE trigger and the CHECK trigger as one event. The ON UPDATE trigger must execute first, else the CHECK will check a non-final state of the row and possibly throw an inappropriate error. However, the firing order of these triggers is determined by their names, which generally sort in creation order since the triggers have auto-generated names following the convention "RI_ConstraintTrigger_NNNN". A proper fix would require modifying that convention, which we will do in 9.2, but it seems risky to change it in existing releases. So this patch just changes the creation order of the triggers. Users encountering this type of error should drop and re-create the foreign key constraint to get its triggers into the right order.

  • Avoid floating-point underflow while tracking buffer allocation rate (Greg Matthews)

    While harmless in itself, on certain platforms this would result in annoying kernel log messages.

  • Preserve configuration file name and line number values when starting child processes under Windows (Tom Lane)

    Formerly, these would not be displayed correctly in the pg_settings view.

  • Preserve blank lines within commands in psql's command history (Robert Haas)

    The former behavior could cause problems if an empty line was removed from within a string literal, for example.

  • Fix pg_dump to dump user-defined casts between auto-generated types, such as table rowtypes (Tom Lane)

  • Use the preferred version of xsubpp to build PL/Perl, not necessarily the operating system's main copy (David Wheeler and Alex Hunsaker)

  • Fix incorrect coding in contrib/dict_int and contrib/dict_xsyn (Tom Lane)

    Some functions incorrectly assumed that memory returned by palloc() is guaranteed zeroed.

  • Honor query cancel interrupts promptly in pgstatindex() (Robert Haas)

  • Ensure VPATH builds properly install all server header files (Peter Eisentraut)

  • Shorten file names reported in verbose error messages (Peter Eisentraut)

    Regular builds have always reported just the name of the C file containing the error message call, but VPATH builds formerly reported an absolute path name.

  • Fix interpretation of Windows timezone names for Central America (Tom Lane)

    Map "Central America Standard Time" to CST6, not CST6CDT, because DST is generally not observed anywhere in Central America.

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2011n for DST law changes in Brazil, Cuba, Fiji, Palestine, Russia, and Samoa; also historical corrections for Alaska and British East Africa.

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Release 8.4.11 | Up | Release 8.4.9


Release 8.4.9

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E.58. Release 8.4.9

Release Date: 2011-09-26

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.4.8. For information about new features in the 8.4 major release, see Section E.67.

E.58.1. Migration to Version 8.4.9

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.4.X.

However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.4.8, see Section E.59.

E.58.2. Changes

  • Fix bugs in indexing of in-doubt HOT-updated tuples (Tom Lane)

    These bugs could result in index corruption after reindexing a system catalog. They are not believed to affect user indexes.

  • Fix multiple bugs in GiST index page split processing (Heikki Linnakangas)

    The probability of occurrence was low, but these could lead to index corruption.

  • Fix possible buffer overrun in tsvector_concat() (Tom Lane)

    The function could underestimate the amount of memory needed for its result, leading to server crashes.

  • Fix crash in xml_recv when processing a "standalone" parameter (Tom Lane)

  • Make pg_options_to_table return NULL for an option with no value (Tom Lane)

    Previously such cases would result in a server crash.

  • Avoid possibly accessing off the end of memory in ANALYZE and in SJIS-2004 encoding conversion (Noah Misch)

    This fixes some very-low-probability server crash scenarios.

  • Prevent intermittent hang in interactions of startup process with bgwriter process (Simon Riggs)

    This affected recovery in non-hot-standby cases.

  • Fix race condition in relcache init file invalidation (Tom Lane)

    There was a window wherein a new backend process could read a stale init file but miss the inval messages that would tell it the data is stale. The result would be bizarre failures in catalog accesses, typically "could not read block 0 in file ..." later during startup.

  • Fix memory leak at end of a GiST index scan (Tom Lane)

    Commands that perform many separate GiST index scans, such as verification of a new GiST-based exclusion constraint on a table already containing many rows, could transiently require large amounts of memory due to this leak.

  • Fix incorrect memory accounting (leading to possible memory bloat) in tuplestores supporting holdable cursors and plpgsql's RETURN NEXT command (Tom Lane)

  • Fix performance problem when constructing a large, lossy bitmap (Tom Lane)

  • Fix join selectivity estimation for unique columns (Tom Lane)

    This fixes an erroneous planner heuristic that could lead to poor estimates of the result size of a join.

  • Fix nested PlaceHolderVar expressions that appear only in sub-select target lists (Tom Lane)

    This mistake could result in outputs of an outer join incorrectly appearing as NULL.

  • Allow nested EXISTS queries to be optimized properly (Tom Lane)

  • Fix array- and path-creating functions to ensure padding bytes are zeroes (Tom Lane)

    This avoids some situations where the planner will think that semantically-equal constants are not equal, resulting in poor optimization.

  • Fix EXPLAIN to handle gating Result nodes within inner-indexscan subplans (Tom Lane)

    The usual symptom of this oversight was "bogus varno" errors.

  • Work around gcc 4.6.0 bug that breaks WAL replay (Tom Lane)

    This could lead to loss of committed transactions after a server crash.

  • Fix dump bug for VALUES in a view (Tom Lane)

  • Disallow SELECT FOR UPDATE/SHARE on sequences (Tom Lane)

    This operation doesn't work as expected and can lead to failures.

  • Fix VACUUM so that it always updates pg_class.reltuples/relpages (Tom Lane)

    This fixes some scenarios where autovacuum could make increasingly poor decisions about when to vacuum tables.

  • Defend against integer overflow when computing size of a hash table (Tom Lane)

  • Fix cases where CLUSTER might attempt to access already-removed TOAST data (Tom Lane)

  • Fix portability bugs in use of credentials control messages for "peer" authentication (Tom Lane)

  • Fix SSPI login when multiple roundtrips are required (Ahmed Shinwari, Magnus Hagander)

    The typical symptom of this problem was "The function requested is not supported" errors during SSPI login.

  • Throw an error if pg_hba.conf contains hostssl but SSL is disabled (Tom Lane)

    This was concluded to be more user-friendly than the previous behavior of silently ignoring such lines.

  • Fix typo in pg_srand48 seed initialization (Andres Freund)

    This led to failure to use all bits of the provided seed. This function is not used on most platforms (only those without srandom), and the potential security exposure from a less-random-than-expected seed seems minimal in any case.

  • Avoid integer overflow when the sum of LIMIT and OFFSET values exceeds 2^63 (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Add overflow checks to int4 and int8 versions of generate_series() (Robert Haas)

  • Fix trailing-zero removal in to_char() (Marti Raudsepp)

    In a format with FM and no digit positions after the decimal point, zeroes to the left of the decimal point could be removed incorrectly.

  • Fix pg_size_pretty() to avoid overflow for inputs close to 2^63 (Tom Lane)

  • Weaken plpgsql's check for typmod matching in record values (Tom Lane)

    An overly enthusiastic check could lead to discarding length modifiers that should have been kept.

  • Correctly handle quotes in locale names during initdb (Heikki Linnakangas)

    The case can arise with some Windows locales, such as "People's Republic of China".

  • Fix pg_upgrade to preserve toast tables' relfrozenxids during an upgrade from 8.3 (Bruce Momjian)

    Failure to do this could lead to pg_clog files being removed too soon after the upgrade.

  • In pg_ctl, support silent mode for service registrations on Windows (MauMau)

  • Fix psql's counting of script file line numbers during COPY from a different file (Tom Lane)

  • Fix pg_restore's direct-to-database mode for standard_conforming_strings (Tom Lane)

    pg_restore could emit incorrect commands when restoring directly to a database server from an archive file that had been made with standard_conforming_strings set to on.

  • Be more user-friendly about unsupported cases for parallel pg_restore (Tom Lane)

    This change ensures that such cases are detected and reported before any restore actions have been taken.

  • Fix write-past-buffer-end and memory leak in libpq's LDAP service lookup code (Albe Laurenz)

  • In libpq, avoid failures when using nonblocking I/O and an SSL connection (Martin Pihlak, Tom Lane)

  • Improve libpq's handling of failures during connection startup (Tom Lane)

    In particular, the response to a server report of fork() failure during SSL connection startup is now saner.

  • Improve libpq's error reporting for SSL failures (Tom Lane)

  • Fix PQsetvalue() to avoid possible crash when adding a new tuple to a PGresult originally obtained from a server query (Andrew Chernow)

  • Make ecpglib write double values with 15 digits precision (Akira Kurosawa)

  • In ecpglib, be sure LC_NUMERIC setting is restored after an error (Michael Meskes)

  • Apply upstream fix for blowfish signed-character bug (CVE-2011-2483) (Tom Lane)

    contrib/pg_crypto's blowfish encryption code could give wrong results on platforms where char is signed (which is most), leading to encrypted passwords being weaker than they should be.

  • Fix memory leak in contrib/seg (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Fix pgstatindex() to give consistent results for empty indexes (Tom Lane)

  • Allow building with perl 5.14 (Alex Hunsaker)

  • Update configure script's method for probing existence of system functions (Tom Lane)

    The version of autoconf we used in 8.3 and 8.2 could be fooled by compilers that perform link-time optimization.

  • Fix assorted issues with build and install file paths containing spaces (Tom Lane)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2011i for DST law changes in Canada, Egypt, Russia, Samoa, and South Sudan.

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Release 8.4.10 | Up | Release 8.4.8


Release 8.4.8

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E.59. Release 8.4.8

Release Date: 2011-04-18

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.4.7. For information about new features in the 8.4 major release, see Section E.67.

E.59.1. Migration to Version 8.4.8

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.4.X.

However, if your installation was upgraded from a previous major release by running pg_upgrade, you should take action to prevent possible data loss due to a now-fixed bug in pg_upgrade. The recommended solution is to run VACUUM FREEZE on all TOAST tables. More information is available at http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/20110408pg_upgrade_fix.

Also, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.4.2, see Section E.65.

E.59.2. Changes

  • Fix pg_upgrade's handling of TOAST tables (Bruce Momjian)

    The pg_class.relfrozenxid value for TOAST tables was not correctly copied into the new installation during pg_upgrade. This could later result in pg_clog files being discarded while they were still needed to validate tuples in the TOAST tables, leading to "could not access status of transaction" failures.

    This error poses a significant risk of data loss for installations that have been upgraded with pg_upgrade. This patch corrects the problem for future uses of pg_upgrade, but does not in itself cure the issue in installations that have been processed with a buggy version of pg_upgrade.

  • Suppress incorrect "PD_ALL_VISIBLE flag was incorrectly set" warning (Heikki Linnakangas)

    VACUUM would sometimes issue this warning in cases that are actually valid.

  • Disallow including a composite type in itself (Tom Lane)

    This prevents scenarios wherein the server could recurse infinitely while processing the composite type. While there are some possible uses for such a structure, they don't seem compelling enough to justify the effort required to make sure it always works safely.

  • Avoid potential deadlock during catalog cache initialization (Nikhil Sontakke)

    In some cases the cache loading code would acquire share lock on a system index before locking the index's catalog. This could deadlock against processes trying to acquire exclusive locks in the other, more standard order.

  • Fix dangling-pointer problem in BEFORE ROW UPDATE trigger handling when there was a concurrent update to the target tuple (Tom Lane)

    This bug has been observed to result in intermittent "cannot extract system attribute from virtual tuple" failures while trying to do UPDATE RETURNING ctid. There is a very small probability of more serious errors, such as generating incorrect index entries for the updated tuple.

  • Disallow DROP TABLE when there are pending deferred trigger events for the table (Tom Lane)

    Formerly the DROP would go through, leading to "could not open relation with OID nnn" errors when the triggers were eventually fired.

  • Prevent crash triggered by constant-false WHERE conditions during GEQO optimization (Tom Lane)

  • Improve planner's handling of semi-join and anti-join cases (Tom Lane)

  • Fix selectivity estimation for text search to account for NULLs (Jesper Krogh)

  • Improve PL/pgSQL's ability to handle row types with dropped columns (Pavel Stehule)

    This is a back-patch of fixes previously made in 9.0.

  • Fix PL/Python memory leak involving array slices (Daniel Popowich)

  • Fix pg_restore to cope with long lines (over 1KB) in TOC files (Tom Lane)

  • Put in more safeguards against crashing due to division-by-zero with overly enthusiastic compiler optimization (Aurelien Jarno)

  • Support use of dlopen() in FreeBSD and OpenBSD on MIPS (Tom Lane)

    There was a hard-wired assumption that this system function was not available on MIPS hardware on these systems. Use a compile-time test instead, since more recent versions have it.

  • Fix compilation failures on HP-UX (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Fix version-incompatibility problem with libintl on Windows (Hiroshi Inoue)

  • Fix usage of xcopy in Windows build scripts to work correctly under Windows 7 (Andrew Dunstan)

    This affects the build scripts only, not installation or usage.

  • Fix path separator used by pg_regress on Cygwin (Andrew Dunstan)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2011f for DST law changes in Chile, Cuba, Falkland Islands, Morocco, Samoa, and Turkey; also historical corrections for South Australia, Alaska, and Hawaii.

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Release 8.4.9 | Up | Release 8.4.7


Release 8.4.7

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E.60. Release 8.4.7

Release Date: 2011-01-31

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.4.6. For information about new features in the 8.4 major release, see Section E.67.

E.60.1. Migration to Version 8.4.7

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.4.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.4.2, see Section E.65.

E.60.2. Changes

  • Avoid failures when EXPLAIN tries to display a simple-form CASE expression (Tom Lane)

    If the CASE's test expression was a constant, the planner could simplify the CASE into a form that confused the expression-display code, resulting in "unexpected CASE WHEN clause" errors.

  • Fix assignment to an array slice that is before the existing range of subscripts (Tom Lane)

    If there was a gap between the newly added subscripts and the first pre-existing subscript, the code miscalculated how many entries needed to be copied from the old array's null bitmap, potentially leading to data corruption or crash.

  • Avoid unexpected conversion overflow in planner for very distant date values (Tom Lane)

    The date type supports a wider range of dates than can be represented by the timestamp types, but the planner assumed it could always convert a date to timestamp with impunity.

  • Fix pg_restore's text output for large objects (BLOBs) when standard_conforming_strings is on (Tom Lane)

    Although restoring directly to a database worked correctly, string escaping was incorrect if pg_restore was asked for SQL text output and standard_conforming_strings had been enabled in the source database.

  • Fix erroneous parsing of tsquery values containing ... & !(subexpression) | ... (Tom Lane)

    Queries containing this combination of operators were not executed correctly. The same error existed in contrib/intarray's query_int type and contrib/ltree's ltxtquery type.

  • Fix buffer overrun in contrib/intarray's input function for the query_int type (Apple)

    This bug is a security risk since the function's return address could be overwritten. Thanks to Apple Inc's security team for reporting this issue and supplying the fix. (CVE-2010-4015)

  • Fix bug in contrib/seg's GiST picksplit algorithm (Alexander Korotkov)

    This could result in considerable inefficiency, though not actually incorrect answers, in a GiST index on a seg column. If you have such an index, consider REINDEXing it after installing this update. (This is identical to the bug that was fixed in contrib/cube in the previous update.)

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Release 8.4.8 | Up | Release 8.4.6


Release 8.4.6

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E.61. Release 8.4.6

Release Date: 2010-12-16

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.4.5. For information about new features in the 8.4 major release, see Section E.67.

E.61.1. Migration to Version 8.4.6

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.4.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.4.2, see Section E.65.

E.61.2. Changes

  • Force the default wal_sync_method to be fdatasync on Linux (Tom Lane, Marti Raudsepp)

    The default on Linux has actually been fdatasync for many years, but recent kernel changes caused PostgreSQL to choose open_datasync instead. This choice did not result in any performance improvement, and caused outright failures on certain filesystems, notably ext4 with the data=journal mount option.

  • Fix assorted bugs in WAL replay logic for GIN indexes (Tom Lane)

    This could result in "bad buffer id: 0" failures or corruption of index contents during replication.

  • Fix recovery from base backup when the starting checkpoint WAL record is not in the same WAL segment as its redo point (Jeff Davis)

  • Fix persistent slowdown of autovacuum workers when multiple workers remain active for a long time (Tom Lane)

    The effective vacuum_cost_limit for an autovacuum worker could drop to nearly zero if it processed enough tables, causing it to run extremely slowly.

  • Add support for detecting register-stack overrun on IA64 (Tom Lane)

    The IA64 architecture has two hardware stacks. Full prevention of stack-overrun failures requires checking both.

  • Add a check for stack overflow in copyObject() (Tom Lane)

    Certain code paths could crash due to stack overflow given a sufficiently complex query.

  • Fix detection of page splits in temporary GiST indexes (Heikki Linnakangas)

    It is possible to have a "concurrent" page split in a temporary index, if for example there is an open cursor scanning the index when an insertion is done. GiST failed to detect this case and hence could deliver wrong results when execution of the cursor continued.

  • Fix error checking during early connection processing (Tom Lane)

    The check for too many child processes was skipped in some cases, possibly leading to postmaster crash when attempting to add the new child process to fixed-size arrays.

  • Improve efficiency of window functions (Tom Lane)

    Certain cases where a large number of tuples needed to be read in advance, but work_mem was large enough to allow them all to be held in memory, were unexpectedly slow. percent_rank(), cume_dist() and ntile() in particular were subject to this problem.

  • Avoid memory leakage while ANALYZE'ing complex index expressions (Tom Lane)

  • Ensure an index that uses a whole-row Var still depends on its table (Tom Lane)

    An index declared like create index i on t (foo(t.*)) would not automatically get dropped when its table was dropped.

  • Do not "inline" a SQL function with multiple OUT parameters (Tom Lane)

    This avoids a possible crash due to loss of information about the expected result rowtype.

  • Behave correctly if ORDER BY, LIMIT, FOR UPDATE, or WITH is attached to the VALUES part of INSERT ... VALUES (Tom Lane)

  • Fix constant-folding of COALESCE() expressions (Tom Lane)

    The planner would sometimes attempt to evaluate sub-expressions that in fact could never be reached, possibly leading to unexpected errors.

  • Fix postmaster crash when connection acceptance (accept() or one of the calls made immediately after it) fails, and the postmaster was compiled with GSSAPI support (Alexander Chernikov)

  • Fix missed unlink of temporary files when log_temp_files is active (Tom Lane)

    If an error occurred while attempting to emit the log message, the unlink was not done, resulting in accumulation of temp files.

  • Add print functionality for InhRelation nodes (Tom Lane)

    This avoids a failure when debug_print_parse is enabled and certain types of query are executed.

  • Fix incorrect calculation of distance from a point to a horizontal line segment (Tom Lane)

    This bug affected several different geometric distance-measurement operators.

  • Fix incorrect calculation of transaction status in ecpg (Itagaki Takahiro)

  • Fix PL/pgSQL's handling of "simple" expressions to not fail in recursion or error-recovery cases (Tom Lane)

  • Fix PL/Python's handling of set-returning functions (Jan Urbanski)

    Attempts to call SPI functions within the iterator generating a set result would fail.

  • Fix bug in contrib/cube's GiST picksplit algorithm (Alexander Korotkov)

    This could result in considerable inefficiency, though not actually incorrect answers, in a GiST index on a cube column. If you have such an index, consider REINDEXing it after installing this update.

  • Don't emit "identifier will be truncated" notices in contrib/dblink except when creating new connections (Itagaki Takahiro)

  • Fix potential coredump on missing public key in contrib/pgcrypto (Marti Raudsepp)

  • Fix memory leak in contrib/xml2's XPath query functions (Tom Lane)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2010o for DST law changes in Fiji and Samoa; also historical corrections for Hong Kong.

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Release 8.4.7 | Up | Release 8.4.5


Release 8.4.5

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.62. Release 8.4.5

Release Date: 2010-10-04

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.4.4. For information about new features in the 8.4 major release, see Section E.67.

E.62.1. Migration to Version 8.4.5

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.4.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.4.2, see Section E.65.

E.62.2. Changes

  • Use a separate interpreter for each calling SQL userid in PL/Perl and PL/Tcl (Tom Lane)

    This change prevents security problems that can be caused by subverting Perl or Tcl code that will be executed later in the same session under another SQL user identity (for example, within a SECURITY DEFINER function). Most scripting languages offer numerous ways that that might be done, such as redefining standard functions or operators called by the target function. Without this change, any SQL user with Perl or Tcl language usage rights can do essentially anything with the SQL privileges of the target function's owner.

    The cost of this change is that intentional communication among Perl and Tcl functions becomes more difficult. To provide an escape hatch, PL/PerlU and PL/TclU functions continue to use only one interpreter per session. This is not considered a security issue since all such functions execute at the trust level of a database superuser already.

    It is likely that third-party procedural languages that claim to offer trusted execution have similar security issues. We advise contacting the authors of any PL you are depending on for security-critical purposes.

    Our thanks to Tim Bunce for pointing out this issue (CVE-2010-3433).

  • Prevent possible crashes in pg_get_expr() by disallowing it from being called with an argument that is not one of the system catalog columns it's intended to be used with (Heikki Linnakangas, Tom Lane)

  • Treat exit code 128 (ERROR_WAIT_NO_CHILDREN) as non-fatal on Windows (Magnus Hagander)

    Under high load, Windows processes will sometimes fail at startup with this error code. Formerly the postmaster treated this as a panic condition and restarted the whole database, but that seems to be an overreaction.

  • Fix incorrect placement of placeholder evaluation (Tom Lane)

    This bug could result in query outputs being non-null when they should be null, in cases where the inner side of an outer join is a sub-select with non-strict expressions in its output list.

  • Fix possible duplicate scans of UNION ALL member relations (Tom Lane)

  • Fix "cannot handle unplanned sub-select" error (Tom Lane)

    This occurred when a sub-select contains a join alias reference that expands into an expression containing another sub-select.

  • Fix mishandling of whole-row Vars that reference a view or sub-select and appear within a nested sub-select (Tom Lane)

  • Fix mishandling of cross-type IN comparisons (Tom Lane)

    This could result in failures if the planner tried to implement an IN join with a sort-then-unique-then-plain-join plan.

  • Fix computation of ANALYZE statistics for tsvector columns (Jan Urbanski)

    The original coding could produce incorrect statistics, leading to poor plan choices later.

  • Improve planner's estimate of memory used by array_agg(), string_agg(), and similar aggregate functions (Hitoshi Harada)

    The previous drastic underestimate could lead to out-of-memory failures due to inappropriate choice of a hash-aggregation plan.

  • Fix failure to mark cached plans as transient (Tom Lane)

    If a plan is prepared while CREATE INDEX CONCURRENTLY is in progress for one of the referenced tables, it is supposed to be re-planned once the index is ready for use. This was not happening reliably.

  • Reduce PANIC to ERROR in some occasionally-reported btree failure cases, and provide additional detail in the resulting error messages (Tom Lane)

    This should improve the system's robustness with corrupted indexes.

  • Fix incorrect search logic for partial-match queries with GIN indexes (Tom Lane)

    Cases involving AND/OR combination of several GIN index conditions didn't always give the right answer, and were sometimes much slower than necessary.

  • Prevent show_session_authorization() from crashing within autovacuum processes (Tom Lane)

  • Defend against functions returning setof record where not all the returned rows are actually of the same rowtype (Tom Lane)

  • Fix possible corruption of pending trigger event lists during subtransaction rollback (Tom Lane)

    This could lead to a crash or incorrect firing of triggers.

  • Fix possible failure when hashing a pass-by-reference function result (Tao Ma, Tom Lane)

  • Improve merge join's handling of NULLs in the join columns (Tom Lane)

    A merge join can now stop entirely upon reaching the first NULL, if the sort order is such that NULLs sort high.

  • Take care to fsync the contents of lockfiles (both postmaster.pid and the socket lockfile) while writing them (Tom Lane)

    This omission could result in corrupted lockfile contents if the machine crashes shortly after postmaster start. That could in turn prevent subsequent attempts to start the postmaster from succeeding, until the lockfile is manually removed.

  • Avoid recursion while assigning XIDs to heavily-nested subtransactions (Andres Freund, Robert Haas)

    The original coding could result in a crash if there was limited stack space.

  • Avoid holding open old WAL segments in the walwriter process (Magnus Hagander, Heikki Linnakangas)

    The previous coding would prevent removal of no-longer-needed segments.

  • Fix log_line_prefix's %i escape, which could produce junk early in backend startup (Tom Lane)

  • Prevent misinterpretation of partially-specified relation options for TOAST tables (Itagaki Takahiro)

    In particular, fillfactor would be read as zero if any other reloption had been set for the table, leading to serious bloat.

  • Fix inheritance count tracking in ALTER TABLE ... ADD CONSTRAINT (Robert Haas)

  • Fix possible data corruption in ALTER TABLE ... SET TABLESPACE when archiving is enabled (Jeff Davis)

  • Allow CREATE DATABASE and ALTER DATABASE ... SET TABLESPACE to be interrupted by query-cancel (Guillaume Lelarge)

  • Improve CREATE INDEX's checking of whether proposed index expressions are immutable (Tom Lane)

  • Fix REASSIGN OWNED to handle operator classes and families (Asko Tiidumaa)

  • Fix possible core dump when comparing two empty tsquery values (Tom Lane)

  • Fix LIKE's handling of patterns containing % followed by _ (Tom Lane)

    We've fixed this before, but there were still some incorrectly-handled cases.

  • Re-allow input of Julian dates prior to 0001-01-01 AD (Tom Lane)

    Input such as 'J100000'::date worked before 8.4, but was unintentionally broken by added error-checking.

  • Fix PL/pgSQL to throw an error, not crash, if a cursor is closed within a FOR loop that is iterating over that cursor (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • In PL/Python, defend against null pointer results from PyCObject_AsVoidPtr and PyCObject_FromVoidPtr (Peter Eisentraut)

  • In libpq, fix full SSL certificate verification for the case where both host and hostaddr are specified (Tom Lane)

  • Make psql recognize DISCARD ALL as a command that should not be encased in a transaction block in autocommit-off mode (Itagaki Takahiro)

  • Fix some issues in pg_dump's handling of SQL/MED objects (Tom Lane)

    Notably, pg_dump would always fail if run by a non-superuser, which was not intended.

  • Improve pg_dump and pg_restore's handling of non-seekable archive files (Tom Lane, Robert Haas)

    This is important for proper functioning of parallel restore.

  • Improve parallel pg_restore's ability to cope with selective restore (-L option) (Tom Lane)

    The original code tended to fail if the -L file commanded a non-default restore ordering.

  • Fix ecpg to process data from RETURNING clauses correctly (Michael Meskes)

  • Fix some memory leaks in ecpg (Zoltan Boszormenyi)

  • Improve contrib/dblink's handling of tables containing dropped columns (Tom Lane)

  • Fix connection leak after "duplicate connection name" errors in contrib/dblink (Itagaki Takahiro)

  • Fix contrib/dblink to handle connection names longer than 62 bytes correctly (Itagaki Takahiro)

  • Add hstore(text, text) function to contrib/hstore (Robert Haas)

    This function is the recommended substitute for the now-deprecated => operator. It was back-patched so that future-proofed code can be used with older server versions. Note that the patch will be effective only after contrib/hstore is installed or reinstalled in a particular database. Users might prefer to execute the CREATE FUNCTION command by hand, instead.

  • Update build infrastructure and documentation to reflect the source code repository's move from CVS to Git (Magnus Hagander and others)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2010l for DST law changes in Egypt and Palestine; also historical corrections for Finland.

    This change also adds new names for two Micronesian timezones: Pacific/Chuuk is now preferred over Pacific/Truk (and the preferred abbreviation is CHUT not TRUT) and Pacific/Pohnpei is preferred over Pacific/Ponape.

  • Make Windows' "N. Central Asia Standard Time" timezone map to Asia/Novosibirsk, not Asia/Almaty (Magnus Hagander)

    Microsoft changed the DST behavior of this zone in the timezone update from KB976098. Asia/Novosibirsk is a better match to its new behavior.

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Release 8.4.6 | Up | Release 8.4.4


Release 8.4.4

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.63. Release 8.4.4

Release Date: 2010-05-17

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.4.3. For information about new features in the 8.4 major release, see Section E.67.

E.63.1. Migration to Version 8.4.4

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.4.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.4.2, see Section E.65.

E.63.2. Changes

  • Enforce restrictions in plperl using an opmask applied to the whole interpreter, instead of using Safe.pm (Tim Bunce, Andrew Dunstan)

    Recent developments have convinced us that Safe.pm is too insecure to rely on for making plperl trustable. This change removes use of Safe.pm altogether, in favor of using a separate interpreter with an opcode mask that is always applied. Pleasant side effects of the change include that it is now possible to use Perl's strict pragma in a natural way in plperl, and that Perl's $a and $b variables work as expected in sort routines, and that function compilation is significantly faster. (CVE-2010-1169)

  • Prevent PL/Tcl from executing untrustworthy code from pltcl_modules (Tom)

    PL/Tcl's feature for autoloading Tcl code from a database table could be exploited for trojan-horse attacks, because there was no restriction on who could create or insert into that table. This change disables the feature unless pltcl_modules is owned by a superuser. (However, the permissions on the table are not checked, so installations that really need a less-than-secure modules table can still grant suitable privileges to trusted non-superusers.) Also, prevent loading code into the unrestricted "normal" Tcl interpreter unless we are really going to execute a pltclu function. (CVE-2010-1170)

  • Fix data corruption during WAL replay of ALTER ... SET TABLESPACE (Tom)

    When archive_mode is on, ALTER ... SET TABLESPACE generates a WAL record whose replay logic was incorrect. It could write the data to the wrong place, leading to possibly-unrecoverable data corruption. Data corruption would be observed on standby slaves, and could occur on the master as well if a database crash and recovery occurred after committing the ALTER and before the next checkpoint.

  • Fix possible crash if a cache reset message is received during rebuild of a relcache entry (Heikki)

    This error was introduced in 8.4.3 while fixing a related failure.

  • Apply per-function GUC settings while running the language validator for the function (Itagaki Takahiro)

    This avoids failures if the function's code is invalid without the setting; an example is that SQL functions may not parse if the search_path is not correct.

  • Do constraint exclusion for inherited UPDATE and DELETE target tables when constraint_exclusion = partition (Tom)

    Due to an oversight, this setting previously only caused constraint exclusion to be checked in SELECT commands.

  • Do not allow an unprivileged user to reset superuser-only parameter settings (Alvaro)

    Previously, if an unprivileged user ran ALTER USER ... RESET ALL for himself, or ALTER DATABASE ... RESET ALL for a database he owns, this would remove all special parameter settings for the user or database, even ones that are only supposed to be changeable by a superuser. Now, the ALTER will only remove the parameters that the user has permission to change.

  • Avoid possible crash during backend shutdown if shutdown occurs when a CONTEXT addition would be made to log entries (Tom)

    In some cases the context-printing function would fail because the current transaction had already been rolled back when it came time to print a log message.

  • Fix erroneous handling of %r parameter in recovery_end_command (Heikki)

    The value always came out zero.

  • Ensure the archiver process responds to changes in archive_command as soon as possible (Tom)

  • Fix pl/pgsql's CASE statement to not fail when the case expression is a query that returns no rows (Tom)

  • Update pl/perl's ppport.h for modern Perl versions (Andrew)

  • Fix assorted memory leaks in pl/python (Andreas Freund, Tom)

  • Handle empty-string connect parameters properly in ecpg (Michael)

  • Prevent infinite recursion in psql when expanding a variable that refers to itself (Tom)

  • Fix psql's \copy to not add spaces around a dot within \copy (select ...) (Tom)

    Addition of spaces around the decimal point in a numeric literal would result in a syntax error.

  • Avoid formatting failure in psql when running in a locale context that doesn't match the client_encoding (Tom)

  • Fix unnecessary "GIN indexes do not support whole-index scans" errors for unsatisfiable queries using contrib/intarray operators (Tom)

  • Ensure that contrib/pgstattuple functions respond to cancel interrupts promptly (Tatsuhito Kasahara)

  • Make server startup deal properly with the case that shmget() returns EINVAL for an existing shared memory segment (Tom)

    This behavior has been observed on BSD-derived kernels including OS X. It resulted in an entirely-misleading startup failure complaining that the shared memory request size was too large.

  • Avoid possible crashes in syslogger process on Windows (Heikki)

  • Deal more robustly with incomplete time zone information in the Windows registry (Magnus)

  • Update the set of known Windows time zone names (Magnus)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2010j for DST law changes in Argentina, Australian Antarctic, Bangladesh, Mexico, Morocco, Pakistan, Palestine, Russia, Syria, Tunisia; also historical corrections for Taiwan.

    Also, add PKST (Pakistan Summer Time) to the default set of timezone abbreviations.

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Release 8.4.5 | Up | Release 8.4.3


Release 8.4.3

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.64. Release 8.4.3

Release Date: 2010-03-15

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.4.2. For information about new features in the 8.4 major release, see Section E.67.

E.64.1. Migration to Version 8.4.3

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.4.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.4.2, see Section E.65.

E.64.2. Changes

  • Add new configuration parameter ssl_renegotiation_limit to control how often we do session key renegotiation for an SSL connection (Magnus)

    This can be set to zero to disable renegotiation completely, which may be required if a broken SSL library is used. In particular, some vendors are shipping stopgap patches for CVE-2009-3555 that cause renegotiation attempts to fail.

  • Fix possible deadlock during backend startup (Tom)

  • Fix possible crashes due to not handling errors during relcache reload cleanly (Tom)

  • Fix possible crash due to use of dangling pointer to a cached plan (Tatsuo)

  • Fix possible crash due to overenthusiastic invalidation of cached plan for ROLLBACK (Tom)

  • Fix possible crashes when trying to recover from a failure in subtransaction start (Tom)

  • Fix server memory leak associated with use of savepoints and a client encoding different from server's encoding (Tom)

  • Fix incorrect WAL data emitted during end-of-recovery cleanup of a GIST index page split (Yoichi Hirai)

    This would result in index corruption, or even more likely an error during WAL replay, if we were unlucky enough to crash during end-of-recovery cleanup after having completed an incomplete GIST insertion.

  • Fix bug in WAL redo cleanup method for GIN indexes (Heikki)

  • Fix incorrect comparison of scan key in GIN index search (Teodor)

  • Make substring() for bit types treat any negative length as meaning "all the rest of the string" (Tom)

    The previous coding treated only -1 that way, and would produce an invalid result value for other negative values, possibly leading to a crash (CVE-2010-0442).

  • Fix integer-to-bit-string conversions to handle the first fractional byte correctly when the output bit width is wider than the given integer by something other than a multiple of 8 bits (Tom)

  • Fix some cases of pathologically slow regular expression matching (Tom)

  • Fix bug occurring when trying to inline a SQL function that returns a set of a composite type that contains dropped columns (Tom)

  • Fix bug with trying to update a field of an element of a composite-type array column (Tom)

  • Avoid failure when EXPLAIN has to print a FieldStore or assignment ArrayRef expression (Tom)

    These cases can arise now that EXPLAIN VERBOSE tries to print plan node target lists.

  • Avoid an unnecessary coercion failure in some cases where an undecorated literal string appears in a subquery within UNION/INTERSECT/EXCEPT (Tom)

    This fixes a regression for some cases that worked before 8.4.

  • Avoid undesirable rowtype compatibility check failures in some cases where a whole-row Var has a rowtype that contains dropped columns (Tom)

  • Fix the STOP WAL LOCATION entry in backup history files to report the next WAL segment's name when the end location is exactly at a segment boundary (Itagaki Takahiro)

  • Always pass the catalog ID to an option validator function specified in CREATE FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER (Martin Pihlak)

  • Fix some more cases of temporary-file leakage (Heikki)

    This corrects a problem introduced in the previous minor release. One case that failed is when a plpgsql function returning set is called within another function's exception handler.

  • Add support for doing FULL JOIN ON FALSE (Tom)

    This prevents a regression from pre-8.4 releases for some queries that can now be simplified to a constant-false join condition.

  • Improve constraint exclusion processing of boolean-variable cases, in particular make it possible to exclude a partition that has a "bool_column = false" constraint (Tom)

  • Prevent treating an INOUT cast as representing binary compatibility (Heikki)

  • Include column name in the message when warning about inability to grant or revoke column-level privileges (Stephen Frost)

    This is more useful than before and helps to prevent confusion when a REVOKE generates multiple messages, which formerly appeared to be duplicates.

  • When reading pg_hba.conf and related files, do not treat @something as a file inclusion request if the @ appears inside quote marks; also, never treat @ by itself as a file inclusion request (Tom)

    This prevents erratic behavior if a role or database name starts with @. If you need to include a file whose path name contains spaces, you can still do so, but you must write @"/path to/file" rather than putting the quotes around the whole construct.

  • Prevent infinite loop on some platforms if a directory is named as an inclusion target in pg_hba.conf and related files (Tom)

  • Fix possible infinite loop if SSL_read or SSL_write fails without setting errno (Tom)

    This is reportedly possible with some Windows versions of openssl.

  • Disallow GSSAPI authentication on local connections, since it requires a hostname to function correctly (Magnus)

  • Protect ecpg against applications freeing strings unexpectedly (Michael)

  • Make ecpg report the proper SQLSTATE if the connection disappears (Michael)

  • Fix translation of cell contents in psql \d output (Heikki)

  • Fix psql's numericlocale option to not format strings it shouldn't in latex and troff output formats (Heikki)

  • Fix a small per-query memory leak in psql (Tom)

  • Make psql return the correct exit status (3) when ON_ERROR_STOP and --single-transaction are both specified and an error occurs during the implied COMMIT (Bruce)

  • Fix pg_dump's output of permissions for foreign servers (Heikki)

  • Fix possible crash in parallel pg_restore due to out-of-range dependency IDs (Tom)

  • Fix plpgsql failure in one case where a composite column is set to NULL (Tom)

  • Fix possible failure when calling PL/Perl functions from PL/PerlU or vice versa (Tim Bunce)

  • Add volatile markings in PL/Python to avoid possible compiler-specific misbehavior (Zdenek Kotala)

  • Ensure PL/Tcl initializes the Tcl interpreter fully (Tom)

    The only known symptom of this oversight is that the Tcl clock command misbehaves if using Tcl 8.5 or later.

  • Prevent ExecutorEnd from being run on portals created within a failed transaction or subtransaction (Tom)

    This is known to cause issues when using contrib/auto_explain.

  • Prevent crash in contrib/dblink when too many key columns are specified to a dblink_build_sql_* function (Rushabh Lathia, Joe Conway)

  • Allow zero-dimensional arrays in contrib/ltree operations (Tom)

    This case was formerly rejected as an error, but it's more convenient to treat it the same as a zero-element array. In particular this avoids unnecessary failures when an ltree operation is applied to the result of ARRAY(SELECT ...) and the sub-select returns no rows.

  • Fix assorted crashes in contrib/xml2 caused by sloppy memory management (Tom)

  • Make building of contrib/xml2 more robust on Windows (Andrew)

  • Fix race condition in Windows signal handling (Radu Ilie)

    One known symptom of this bug is that rows in pg_listener could be dropped under heavy load.

  • Make the configure script report failure if the C compiler does not provide a working 64-bit integer datatype (Tom)

    This case has been broken for some time, and no longer seems worth supporting, so just reject it at configure time instead.

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2010e for DST law changes in Bangladesh, Chile, Fiji, Mexico, Paraguay, Samoa.

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Release 8.4.4 | Up | Release 8.4.2


Release 8.4.2

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.65. Release 8.4.2

Release Date: 2009-12-14

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.4.1. For information about new features in the 8.4 major release, see Section E.67.

E.65.1. Migration to Version 8.4.2

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.4.X. However, if you have any hash indexes, you should REINDEX them after updating to 8.4.2, to repair possible damage.

E.65.2. Changes

  • Protect against indirect security threats caused by index functions changing session-local state (Gurjeet Singh, Tom)

    This change prevents allegedly-immutable index functions from possibly subverting a superuser's session (CVE-2009-4136).

  • Reject SSL certificates containing an embedded null byte in the common name (CN) field (Magnus)

    This prevents unintended matching of a certificate to a server or client name during SSL validation (CVE-2009-4034).

  • Fix hash index corruption (Tom)

    The 8.4 change that made hash indexes keep entries sorted by hash value failed to update the bucket splitting and compaction routines to preserve the ordering. So application of either of those operations could lead to permanent corruption of an index, in the sense that searches might fail to find entries that are present. To deal with this, it is recommended to REINDEX any hash indexes you may have after installing this update.

  • Fix possible crash during backend-startup-time cache initialization (Tom)

  • Avoid crash on empty thesaurus dictionary (Tom)

  • Prevent signals from interrupting VACUUM at unsafe times (Alvaro)

    This fix prevents a PANIC if a VACUUM FULL is canceled after it's already committed its tuple movements, as well as transient errors if a plain VACUUM is interrupted after having truncated the table.

  • Fix possible crash due to integer overflow in hash table size calculation (Tom)

    This could occur with extremely large planner estimates for the size of a hashjoin's result.

  • Fix crash if a DROP is attempted on an internally-dependent object (Tom)

  • Fix very rare crash in inet/cidr comparisons (Chris Mikkelson)

  • Ensure that shared tuple-level locks held by prepared transactions are not ignored (Heikki)

  • Fix premature drop of temporary files used for a cursor that is accessed within a subtransaction (Heikki)

  • Fix memory leak in syslogger process when rotating to a new CSV logfile (Tom)

  • Fix memory leak in postmaster when re-parsing pg_hba.conf (Tom)

  • Fix Windows permission-downgrade logic (Jesse Morris)

    This fixes some cases where the database failed to start on Windows, often with misleading error messages such as "could not locate matching postgres executable".

  • Make FOR UPDATE/SHARE in the primary query not propagate into WITH queries (Tom)

    For example, in

    WITH w AS (SELECT * FROM foo) SELECT * FROM w, bar ... FOR UPDATE

    the FOR UPDATE will now affect bar but not foo. This is more useful and consistent than the original 8.4 behavior, which tried to propagate FOR UPDATE into the WITH query but always failed due to assorted implementation restrictions. It also follows the design rule that WITH queries are executed as if independent of the main query.

  • Fix bug with a WITH RECURSIVE query immediately inside another one (Tom)

  • Fix concurrency bug in hash indexes (Tom)

    Concurrent insertions could cause index scans to transiently report wrong results.

  • Fix incorrect logic for GiST index page splits, when the split depends on a non-first column of the index (Paul Ramsey)

  • Fix wrong search results for a multi-column GIN index with fastupdate enabled (Teodor)

  • Fix bugs in WAL entry creation for GIN indexes (Tom)

    These bugs were masked when full_page_writes was on, but with it off a WAL replay failure was certain if a crash occurred before the next checkpoint.

  • Don't error out if recycling or removing an old WAL file fails at the end of checkpoint (Heikki)

    It's better to treat the problem as non-fatal and allow the checkpoint to complete. Future checkpoints will retry the removal. Such problems are not expected in normal operation, but have been seen to be caused by misdesigned Windows anti-virus and backup software.

  • Ensure WAL files aren't repeatedly archived on Windows (Heikki)

    This is another symptom that could happen if some other process interfered with deletion of a no-longer-needed file.

  • Fix PAM password processing to be more robust (Tom)

    The previous code is known to fail with the combination of the Linux pam_krb5 PAM module with Microsoft Active Directory as the domain controller. It might have problems elsewhere too, since it was making unjustified assumptions about what arguments the PAM stack would pass to it.

  • Raise the maximum authentication token (Kerberos ticket) size in GSSAPI and SSPI authentication methods (Ian Turner)

    While the old 2000-byte limit was more than enough for Unix Kerberos implementations, tickets issued by Windows Domain Controllers can be much larger.

  • Ensure that domain constraints are enforced in constructs like ARRAY[...]::domain, where the domain is over an array type (Heikki)

  • Fix foreign-key logic for some cases involving composite-type columns as foreign keys (Tom)

  • Ensure that a cursor's snapshot is not modified after it is created (Alvaro)

    This could lead to a cursor delivering wrong results if later operations in the same transaction modify the data the cursor is supposed to return.

  • Fix CREATE TABLE to properly merge default expressions coming from different inheritance parent tables (Tom)

    This used to work but was broken in 8.4.

  • Re-enable collection of access statistics for sequences (Akira Kurosawa)

    This used to work but was broken in 8.3.

  • Fix processing of ownership dependencies during CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION (Tom)

  • Fix incorrect handling of WHERE x=x conditions (Tom)

    In some cases these could get ignored as redundant, but they aren't — they're equivalent to x IS NOT NULL.

  • Fix incorrect plan construction when using hash aggregation to implement DISTINCT for textually identical volatile expressions (Tom)

  • Fix Assert failure for a volatile SELECT DISTINCT ON expression (Tom)

  • Fix ts_stat() to not fail on an empty tsvector value (Tom)

  • Make text search parser accept underscores in XML attributes (Peter)

  • Fix encoding handling in xml binary input (Heikki)

    If the XML header doesn't specify an encoding, we now assume UTF-8 by default; the previous handling was inconsistent.

  • Fix bug with calling plperl from plperlu or vice versa (Tom)

    An error exit from the inner function could result in crashes due to failure to re-select the correct Perl interpreter for the outer function.

  • Fix session-lifespan memory leak when a PL/Perl function is redefined (Tom)

  • Ensure that Perl arrays are properly converted to PostgreSQL arrays when returned by a set-returning PL/Perl function (Andrew Dunstan, Abhijit Menon-Sen)

    This worked correctly already for non-set-returning functions.

  • Fix rare crash in exception processing in PL/Python (Peter)

  • Fix ecpg problem with comments in DECLARE CURSOR statements (Michael)

  • Fix ecpg to not treat recently-added keywords as reserved words (Tom)

    This affected the keywords CALLED, CATALOG, DEFINER, ENUM, FOLLOWING, INVOKER, OPTIONS, PARTITION, PRECEDING, RANGE, SECURITY, SERVER, UNBOUNDED, and WRAPPER.

  • Re-allow regular expression special characters in psql's \df function name parameter (Tom)

  • In contrib/fuzzystrmatch, correct the calculation of levenshtein distances with non-default costs (Marcin Mank)

  • In contrib/pg_standby, disable triggering failover with a signal on Windows (Fujii Masao)

    This never did anything useful, because Windows doesn't have Unix-style signals, but recent changes made it actually crash.

  • Put FREEZE and VERBOSE options in the right order in the VACUUM command that contrib/vacuumdb produces (Heikki)

  • Fix possible leak of connections when contrib/dblink encounters an error (Tatsuhito Kasahara)

  • Ensure psql's flex module is compiled with the correct system header definitions (Tom)

    This fixes build failures on platforms where --enable-largefile causes incompatible changes in the generated code.

  • Make the postmaster ignore any application_name parameter in connection request packets, to improve compatibility with future libpq versions (Tom)

  • Update the timezone abbreviation files to match current reality (Joachim Wieland)

    This includes adding IDT to the default timezone abbreviation set.

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2009s for DST law changes in Antarctica, Argentina, Bangladesh, Fiji, Novokuznetsk, Pakistan, Palestine, Samoa, Syria; also historical corrections for Hong Kong.

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Release 8.4.3 | Up | Release 8.4.1


Release 8.4.1

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.66. Release 8.4.1

Release Date: 2009-09-09

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.4. For information about new features in the 8.4 major release, see Section E.67.

E.66.1. Migration to Version 8.4.1

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.4.X.

E.66.2. Changes

  • Fix WAL page header initialization at the end of archive recovery (Heikki)

    This could lead to failure to process the WAL in a subsequent archive recovery.

  • Fix "cannot make new WAL entries during recovery" error (Tom)

  • Fix problem that could make expired rows visible after a crash (Tom)

    This bug involved a page status bit potentially not being set correctly after a server crash.

  • Disallow RESET ROLE and RESET SESSION AUTHORIZATION inside security-definer functions (Tom, Heikki)

    This covers a case that was missed in the previous patch that disallowed SET ROLE and SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION inside security-definer functions. (See CVE-2007-6600)

  • Make LOAD of an already-loaded loadable module into a no-op (Tom)

    Formerly, LOAD would attempt to unload and re-load the module, but this is unsafe and not all that useful.

  • Make window function PARTITION BY and ORDER BY items always be interpreted as simple expressions (Tom)

    In 8.4.0 these lists were parsed following the rules used for top-level GROUP BY and ORDER BY lists. But this was not correct per the SQL standard, and it led to possible circularity.

  • Fix several errors in planning of semi-joins (Tom)

    These led to wrong query results in some cases where IN or EXISTS was used together with another join.

  • Fix handling of whole-row references to subqueries that are within an outer join (Tom)

    An example is SELECT COUNT(ss.*) FROM ... LEFT JOIN (SELECT ...) ss ON .... Here, ss.* would be treated as ROW(NULL,NULL,...) for null-extended join rows, which is not the same as a simple NULL. Now it is treated as a simple NULL.

  • Fix Windows shared-memory allocation code (Tsutomu Yamada, Magnus)

    This bug led to the often-reported "could not reattach to shared memory" error message.

  • Fix locale handling with plperl (Heikki)

    This bug could cause the server's locale setting to change when a plperl function is called, leading to data corruption.

  • Fix handling of reloptions to ensure setting one option doesn't force default values for others (Itagaki Takahiro)

  • Ensure that a "fast shutdown" request will forcibly terminate open sessions, even if a "smart shutdown" was already in progress (Fujii Masao)

  • Avoid memory leak for array_agg() in GROUP BY queries (Tom)

  • Treat to_char(..., 'TH') as an uppercase ordinal suffix with 'HH'/'HH12' (Heikki)

    It was previously handled as 'th' (lowercase).

  • Include the fractional part in the result of EXTRACT(second) and EXTRACT(milliseconds) for time and time with time zone inputs (Tom)

    This has always worked for floating-point datetime configurations, but was broken in the integer datetime code.

  • Fix overflow for INTERVAL 'x ms' when x is more than 2 million and integer datetimes are in use (Alex Hunsaker)

  • Improve performance when processing toasted values in index scans (Tom)

    This is particularly useful for PostGIS.

  • Fix a typo that disabled commit_delay (Jeff Janes)

  • Output early-startup messages to postmaster.log if the server is started in silent mode (Tom)

    Previously such error messages were discarded, leading to difficulty in debugging.

  • Remove translated FAQs (Peter)

    They are now on the wiki. The main FAQ was moved to the wiki some time ago.

  • Fix pg_ctl to not go into an infinite loop if postgresql.conf is empty (Jeff Davis)

  • Fix several errors in pg_dump's --binary-upgrade mode (Bruce, Tom)

    pg_dump --binary-upgrade is used by pg_migrator.

  • Fix contrib/xml2's xslt_process() to properly handle the maximum number of parameters (twenty) (Tom)

  • Improve robustness of libpq's code to recover from errors during COPY FROM STDIN (Tom)

  • Avoid including conflicting readline and editline header files when both libraries are installed (Zdenek Kotala)

  • Work around gcc bug that causes "floating-point exception" instead of "division by zero" on some platforms (Tom)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2009l for DST law changes in Bangladesh, Egypt, Mauritius.

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Release 8.4.2 | Up | Release 8.4


Release 8.4

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.67. Release 8.4

Release Date: 2009-07-01

E.67.1. Overview

After many years of development, PostgreSQL has become feature-complete in many areas. This release shows a targeted approach to adding features (e.g., authentication, monitoring, space reuse), and adds capabilities defined in the later SQL standards. The major areas of enhancement are:

  • Windowing Functions

  • Common Table Expressions and Recursive Queries

  • Default and variadic parameters for functions

  • Parallel Restore

  • Column Permissions

  • Per-database locale settings

  • Improved hash indexes

  • Improved join performance for EXISTS and NOT EXISTS queries

  • Easier-to-use Warm Standby

  • Automatic sizing of the Free Space Map

  • Visibility Map (greatly reduces vacuum overhead for slowly-changing tables)

  • Version-aware psql (backslash commands work against older servers)

  • Support SSL certificates for user authentication

  • Per-function runtime statistics

  • Easy editing of functions in psql

  • New contrib modules: pg_stat_statements, auto_explain, citext, btree_gin

The above items are explained in more detail in the sections below.

E.67.2. Migration to Version 8.4

A dump/restore using pg_dump is required for those wishing to migrate data from any previous release.

Observe the following incompatibilities:

E.67.2.1. General

  • Use 64-bit integer datetimes by default (Neil Conway)

    Previously this was selected by configure's --enable-integer-datetimes option. To retain the old behavior, build with --disable-integer-datetimes.

  • Remove ipcclean utility command (Bruce)

    The utility only worked on a few platforms. Users should use their operating system tools instead.

E.67.2.2. Server Settings

  • Change default setting for log_min_messages to warning (previously it was notice) to reduce log file volume (Tom)

  • Change default setting for max_prepared_transactions to zero (previously it was 5) (Tom)

  • Make debug_print_parse, debug_print_rewritten, and debug_print_plan output appear at LOG message level, not DEBUG1 as formerly (Tom)

  • Make debug_pretty_print default to on (Tom)

  • Remove explain_pretty_print parameter (no longer needed) (Tom)

  • Make log_temp_files settable by superusers only, like other logging options (Simon Riggs)

  • Remove automatic appending of the epoch timestamp when no % escapes are present in log_filename (Robert Haas)

    This change was made because some users wanted a fixed log filename, for use with an external log rotation tool.

  • Remove log_restartpoints from recovery.conf; instead use log_checkpoints (Simon)

  • Remove krb_realm and krb_server_hostname; these are now set in pg_hba.conf instead (Magnus)

  • There are also significant changes in pg_hba.conf, as described below.

E.67.2.3. Queries

  • Change TRUNCATE and LOCK to apply to child tables of the specified table(s) (Peter)

    These commands now accept an ONLY option that prevents processing child tables; this option must be used if the old behavior is needed.

  • SELECT DISTINCT and UNION/INTERSECT/EXCEPT no longer always produce sorted output (Tom)

    Previously, these types of queries always removed duplicate rows by means of Sort/Unique processing (i.e., sort then remove adjacent duplicates). Now they can be implemented by hashing, which will not produce sorted output. If an application relied on the output being in sorted order, the recommended fix is to add an ORDER BY clause. As a short-term workaround, the previous behavior can be restored by disabling enable_hashagg, but that is a very performance-expensive fix. SELECT DISTINCT ON never uses hashing, however, so its behavior is unchanged.

  • Force child tables to inherit CHECK constraints from parents (Alex Hunsaker, Nikhil Sontakke, Tom)

    Formerly it was possible to drop such a constraint from a child table, allowing rows that violate the constraint to be visible when scanning the parent table. This was deemed inconsistent, as well as contrary to SQL standard.

  • Disallow negative LIMIT or OFFSET values, rather than treating them as zero (Simon)

  • Disallow LOCK TABLE outside a transaction block (Tom)

    Such an operation is useless because the lock would be released immediately.

  • Sequences now contain an additional start_value column (Zoltan Boszormenyi)

    This supports ALTER SEQUENCE ... RESTART.

E.67.2.4. Functions and Operators

  • Make numeric zero raised to a fractional power return 0, rather than throwing an error, and make numeric zero raised to the zero power return 1, rather than error (Bruce)

    This matches the longstanding float8 behavior.

  • Allow unary minus of floating-point values to produce minus zero (Tom)

    The changed behavior is more IEEE-standard compliant.

  • Throw an error if an escape character is the last character in a LIKE pattern (i.e., it has nothing to escape) (Tom)

    Previously, such an escape character was silently ignored, thus possibly masking application logic errors.

  • Remove ~=~ and ~<>~ operators formerly used for LIKE index comparisons (Tom)

    Pattern indexes now use the regular equality operator.

  • xpath() now passes its arguments to libxml without any changes (Andrew)

    This means that the XML argument must be a well-formed XML document. The previous coding attempted to allow XML fragments, but it did not work well.

  • Make xmlelement() format attribute values just like content values (Peter)

    Previously, attribute values were formatted according to the normal SQL output behavior, which is sometimes at odds with XML rules.

  • Rewrite memory management for libxml-using functions (Tom)

    This change should avoid some compatibility problems with use of libxml in PL/Perl and other add-on code.

  • Adopt a faster algorithm for hash functions (Kenneth Marshall, based on work of Bob Jenkins)

    Many of the built-in hash functions now deliver different results on little-endian and big-endian platforms.

E.67.2.4.1. Temporal Functions and Operators

  • DateStyle no longer controls interval output formatting; instead there is a new variable IntervalStyle (Ron Mayer)

  • Improve consistency of handling of fractional seconds in timestamp and interval output (Ron Mayer)

    This may result in displaying a different number of fractional digits than before, or rounding instead of truncating.

  • Make to_char()'s localized month/day names depend on LC_TIME, not LC_MESSAGES (Euler Taveira de Oliveira)

  • Cause to_date() and to_timestamp() to more consistently report errors for invalid input (Brendan Jurd)

    Previous versions would often ignore or silently misread input that did not match the format string. Such cases will now result in an error.

  • Fix to_timestamp() to not require upper/lower case matching for meridian (AM/PM) and era (BC/AD) format designations (Brendan Jurd)

    For example, input value ad now matches the format string AD.

E.67.3. Changes

Below you will find a detailed account of the changes between PostgreSQL 8.4 and the previous major release.

E.67.3.1. Performance

  • Improve optimizer statistics calculations (Jan Urbanski, Tom)

    In particular, estimates for full-text-search operators are greatly improved.

  • Allow SELECT DISTINCT and UNION/INTERSECT/EXCEPT to use hashing (Tom)

    This means that these types of queries no longer automatically produce sorted output.

  • Create explicit concepts of semi-joins and anti-joins (Tom)

    This work formalizes our previous ad-hoc treatment of IN (SELECT ...) clauses, and extends it to EXISTS and NOT EXISTS clauses. It should result in significantly better planning of EXISTS and NOT EXISTS queries. In general, logically equivalent IN and EXISTS clauses should now have similar performance, whereas previously IN often won.

  • Improve optimization of sub-selects beneath outer joins (Tom)

    Formerly, a sub-select or view could not be optimized very well if it appeared within the nullable side of an outer join and contained non-strict expressions (for instance, constants) in its result list.

  • Improve the performance of text_position() and related functions by using Boyer-Moore-Horspool searching (David Rowley)

    This is particularly helpful for long search patterns.

  • Reduce I/O load of writing the statistics collection file by writing the file only when requested (Martin Pihlak)

  • Improve performance for bulk inserts (Robert Haas, Simon)

  • Increase the default value of default_statistics_target from 10 to 100 (Greg Sabino Mullane, Tom)

    The maximum value was also increased from 1000 to 10000.

  • Perform constraint_exclusion checking by default in queries involving inheritance or UNION ALL (Tom)

    A new constraint_exclusion setting, partition, was added to specify this behavior.

  • Allow I/O read-ahead for bitmap index scans (Greg Stark)

    The amount of read-ahead is controlled by effective_io_concurrency. This feature is available only if the kernel has posix_fadvise() support.

  • Inline simple set-returning SQL functions in FROM clauses (Richard Rowell)

  • Improve performance of multi-batch hash joins by providing a special case for join key values that are especially common in the outer relation (Bryce Cutt, Ramon Lawrence)

  • Reduce volume of temporary data in multi-batch hash joins by suppressing "physical tlist" optimization (Michael Henderson, Ramon Lawrence)

  • Avoid waiting for idle-in-transaction sessions during CREATE INDEX CONCURRENTLY (Simon)

  • Improve performance of shared cache invalidation (Tom)

E.67.3.2. Server

E.67.3.2.1. Settings

  • Convert many postgresql.conf settings to enumerated values so that pg_settings can display the valid values (Magnus)

  • Add cursor_tuple_fraction parameter to control the fraction of a cursor's rows that the planner assumes will be fetched (Robert Hell)

  • Allow underscores in the names of custom variable classes in postgresql.conf (Tom)

E.67.3.2.2. Authentication and security

  • Remove support for the (insecure) crypt authentication method (Magnus)

    This effectively obsoletes pre-PostgreSQL 7.2 client libraries, as there is no longer any non-plaintext password method that they can use.

  • Support regular expressions in pg_ident.conf (Magnus)

  • Allow Kerberos/GSSAPI parameters to be changed without restarting the postmaster (Magnus)

  • Support SSL certificate chains in server certificate file (Andrew Gierth)

    Including the full certificate chain makes the client able to verify the certificate without having all intermediate CA certificates present in the local store, which is often the case for commercial CAs.

  • Report appropriate error message for combination of MD5 authentication and db_user_namespace enabled (Bruce)

E.67.3.2.3. pg_hba.conf

  • Change all authentication options to use name=value syntax (Magnus)

    This makes incompatible changes to the ldap, pam and ident authentication methods. All pg_hba.conf entries with these methods need to be rewritten using the new format.

  • Remove the ident sameuser option, instead making that behavior the default if no usermap is specified (Magnus)

  • Allow a usermap parameter for all external authentication methods (Magnus)

    Previously a usermap was only supported for ident authentication.

  • Add clientcert option to control requesting of a client certificate (Magnus)

    Previously this was controlled by the presence of a root certificate file in the server's data directory.

  • Add cert authentication method to allow user authentication via SSL certificates (Magnus)

    Previously SSL certificates could only verify that the client had access to a certificate, not authenticate a user.

  • Allow krb5, gssapi and sspi realm and krb5 host settings to be specified in pg_hba.conf (Magnus)

    These override the settings in postgresql.conf.

  • Add include_realm parameter for krb5, gssapi, and sspi methods (Magnus)

    This allows identical usernames from different realms to be authenticated as different database users using usermaps.

  • Parse pg_hba.conf fully when it is loaded, so that errors are reported immediately (Magnus)

    Previously, most errors in the file wouldn't be detected until clients tried to connect, so an erroneous file could render the system unusable. With the new behavior, if an error is detected during reload then the bad file is rejected and the postmaster continues to use its old copy.

  • Show all parsing errors in pg_hba.conf instead of aborting after the first one (Selena Deckelmann)

  • Support ident authentication over Unix-domain sockets on Solaris (Garick Hamlin)

E.67.3.2.4. Continuous Archiving

  • Provide an option to pg_start_backup() to force its implied checkpoint to finish as quickly as possible (Tom)

    The default behavior avoids excess I/O consumption, but that is pointless if no concurrent query activity is going on.

  • Make pg_stop_backup() wait for modified WAL files to be archived (Simon)

    This guarantees that the backup is valid at the time pg_stop_backup() completes.

  • When archiving is enabled, rotate the last WAL segment at shutdown so that all transactions can be archived immediately (Guillaume Smet, Heikki)

  • Delay "smart" shutdown while a continuous archiving base backup is in progress (Laurenz Albe)

  • Cancel a continuous archiving base backup if "fast" shutdown is requested (Laurenz Albe)

  • Allow recovery.conf boolean variables to take the same range of string values as postgresql.conf boolean variables (Bruce)

E.67.3.2.5. Monitoring

  • Add pg_conf_load_time() to report when the PostgreSQL configuration files were last loaded (George Gensure)

  • Add pg_terminate_backend() to safely terminate a backend (the SIGTERM signal works also) (Tom, Bruce)

    While it's always been possible to SIGTERM a single backend, this was previously considered unsupported; and testing of the case found some bugs that are now fixed.

  • Add ability to track user-defined functions' call counts and runtimes (Martin Pihlak)

    Function statistics appear in a new system view, pg_stat_user_functions. Tracking is controlled by the new parameter track_functions.

  • Allow specification of the maximum query string size in pg_stat_activity via new track_activity_query_size parameter (Thomas Lee)

  • Increase the maximum line length sent to syslog, in hopes of improving performance (Tom)

  • Add read-only configuration variables segment_size, wal_block_size, and wal_segment_size (Bernd Helmle)

  • When reporting a deadlock, report the text of all queries involved in the deadlock to the server log (Itagaki Takahiro)

  • Add pg_stat_get_activity(pid) function to return information about a specific process id (Magnus)

  • Allow the location of the server's statistics file to be specified via stats_temp_directory (Magnus)

    This allows the statistics file to be placed in a RAM-resident directory to reduce I/O requirements. On startup/shutdown, the file is copied to its traditional location ($PGDATA/global/) so it is preserved across restarts.

E.67.3.3. Queries

  • Add support for WINDOW functions (Hitoshi Harada)

  • Add support for WITH clauses (CTEs), including WITH RECURSIVE (Yoshiyuki Asaba, Tatsuo Ishii, Tom)

  • Add TABLE command (Peter)

    TABLE tablename is a SQL standard short-hand for SELECT * FROM tablename.

  • Allow AS to be optional when specifying a SELECT (or RETURNING) column output label (Hiroshi Saito)

    This works so long as the column label is not any PostgreSQL keyword; otherwise AS is still needed.

  • Support set-returning functions in SELECT result lists even for functions that return their result via a tuplestore (Tom)

    In particular, this means that functions written in PL/pgSQL and other PL languages can now be called this way.

  • Support set-returning functions in the output of aggregation and grouping queries (Tom)

  • Allow SELECT FOR UPDATE/SHARE to work on inheritance trees (Tom)

  • Add infrastructure for SQL/MED (Martin Pihlak, Peter)

    There are no remote or external SQL/MED capabilities yet, but this change provides a standardized and future-proof system for managing connection information for modules like dblink and plproxy.

  • Invalidate cached plans when referenced schemas, functions, operators, or operator classes are modified (Martin Pihlak, Tom)

    This improves the system's ability to respond to on-the-fly DDL changes.

  • Allow comparison of composite types and allow arrays of anonymous composite types (Tom)

    This allows constructs such as row(1, 1.1) = any (array[row(7, 7.7), row(1, 1.0)]). This is particularly useful in recursive queries.

  • Add support for Unicode string literal and identifier specifications using code points, e.g. U&'d\0061t\+000061' (Peter)

  • Reject \000 in string literals and COPY data (Tom)

    Previously, this was accepted but had the effect of terminating the string contents.

  • Improve the parser's ability to report error locations (Tom)

    An error location is now reported for many semantic errors, such as mismatched datatypes, that previously could not be localized.

E.67.3.3.1. TRUNCATE

  • Support statement-level ON TRUNCATE triggers (Simon)

  • Add RESTART/CONTINUE IDENTITY options for TRUNCATE TABLE (Zoltan Boszormenyi)

    The start value of a sequence can be changed by ALTER SEQUENCE START WITH.

  • Allow TRUNCATE tab1, tab1 to succeed (Bruce)

  • Add a separate TRUNCATE permission (Robert Haas)

E.67.3.3.2. EXPLAIN

  • Make EXPLAIN VERBOSE show the output columns of each plan node (Tom)

    Previously EXPLAIN VERBOSE output an internal representation of the query plan. (That behavior is now available via debug_print_plan.)

  • Make EXPLAIN identify subplans and initplans with individual labels (Tom)

  • Make EXPLAIN honor debug_print_plan (Tom)

  • Allow EXPLAIN on CREATE TABLE AS (Peter)

E.67.3.3.3. LIMIT/OFFSET

  • Allow sub-selects in LIMIT and OFFSET (Tom)

  • Add SQL-standard syntax for LIMIT/OFFSET capabilities (Peter)

    To wit, OFFSET num {ROW|ROWS} FETCH {FIRST|NEXT} [num] {ROW|ROWS} ONLY.

E.67.3.4. Object Manipulation

  • Add support for column-level privileges (Stephen Frost, KaiGai Kohei)

  • Refactor multi-object DROP operations to reduce the need for CASCADE (Alex Hunsaker)

    For example, if table B has a dependency on table A, the command DROP TABLE A, B no longer requires the CASCADE option.

  • Fix various problems with concurrent DROP commands by ensuring that locks are taken before we begin to drop dependencies of an object (Tom)

  • Improve reporting of dependencies during DROP commands (Tom)

  • Add WITH [NO] DATA clause to CREATE TABLE AS, per the SQL standard (Peter, Tom)

  • Add support for user-defined I/O conversion casts (Heikki)

  • Allow CREATE AGGREGATE to use an internal transition datatype (Tom)

  • Add LIKE clause to CREATE TYPE (Tom)

    This simplifies creation of data types that use the same internal representation as an existing type.

  • Allow specification of the type category and "preferred" status for user-defined base types (Tom)

    This allows more control over the coercion behavior of user-defined types.

  • Allow CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW to add columns to the end of a view (Robert Haas)

E.67.3.4.1. ALTER

  • Add ALTER TYPE RENAME (Petr Jelinek)

  • Add ALTER SEQUENCE ... RESTART (with no parameter) to reset a sequence to its initial value (Zoltan Boszormenyi)

  • Modify the ALTER TABLE syntax to allow all reasonable combinations for tables, indexes, sequences, and views (Tom)

    This change allows the following new syntaxes:

    • ALTER SEQUENCE OWNER TO

    • ALTER VIEW ALTER COLUMN SET/DROP DEFAULT

    • ALTER VIEW OWNER TO

    • ALTER VIEW SET SCHEMA

    There is no actual new functionality here, but formerly you had to say ALTER TABLE to do these things, which was confusing.

  • Add support for the syntax ALTER TABLE ... ALTER COLUMN ... SET DATA TYPE (Peter)

    This is SQL-standard syntax for functionality that was already supported.

  • Make ALTER TABLE SET WITHOUT OIDS rewrite the table to physically remove OID values (Tom)

    Also, add ALTER TABLE SET WITH OIDS to rewrite the table to add OIDs.

E.67.3.4.2. Database Manipulation

  • Improve reporting of CREATE/DROP/RENAME DATABASE failure when uncommitted prepared transactions are the cause (Tom)

  • Make LC_COLLATE and LC_CTYPE into per-database settings (Radek Strnad, Heikki)

    This makes collation similar to encoding, which was always configurable per database.

  • Improve checks that the database encoding, collation (LC_COLLATE), and character classes (LC_CTYPE) match (Heikki, Tom)

    Note in particular that a new database's encoding and locale settings can be changed only when copying from template0. This prevents possibly copying data that doesn't match the settings.

  • Add ALTER DATABASE SET TABLESPACE to move a database to a new tablespace (Guillaume Lelarge, Bernd Helmle)

E.67.3.5. Utility Operations

  • Add a VERBOSE option to the CLUSTER command and clusterdb (Jim Cox)

  • Decrease memory requirements for recording pending trigger events (Tom)

E.67.3.5.1. Indexes

  • Dramatically improve the speed of building and accessing hash indexes (Tom Raney, Shreya Bhargava)

    This allows hash indexes to be sometimes faster than btree indexes. However, hash indexes are still not crash-safe.

  • Make hash indexes store only the hash code, not the full value of the indexed column (Xiao Meng)

    This greatly reduces the size of hash indexes for long indexed values, improving performance.

  • Implement fast update option for GIN indexes (Teodor, Oleg)

    This option greatly improves update speed at a small penalty in search speed.

  • xxx_pattern_ops indexes can now be used for simple equality comparisons, not only for LIKE (Tom)

E.67.3.5.2. Full Text Indexes

  • Remove the requirement to use @@@ when doing GIN weighted lookups on full text indexes (Tom, Teodor)

    The normal @@ text search operator can be used instead.

  • Add an optimizer selectivity function for @@ text search operations (Jan Urbanski)

  • Allow prefix matching in full text searches (Teodor Sigaev, Oleg Bartunov)

  • Support multi-column GIN indexes (Teodor Sigaev)

  • Improve support for Nepali language and Devanagari alphabet (Teodor)

E.67.3.5.3. VACUUM

  • Track free space in separate per-relation "fork" files (Heikki)

    Free space discovered by VACUUM is now recorded in *_fsm files, rather than in a fixed-sized shared memory area. The max_fsm_pages and max_fsm_relations settings have been removed, greatly simplifying administration of free space management.

  • Add a visibility map to track pages that do not require vacuuming (Heikki)

    This allows VACUUM to avoid scanning all of a table when only a portion of the table needs vacuuming. The visibility map is stored in per-relation "fork" files.

  • Add vacuum_freeze_table_age parameter to control when VACUUM should ignore the visibility map and do a full table scan to freeze tuples (Heikki)

  • Track transaction snapshots more carefully (Alvaro)

    This improves VACUUM's ability to reclaim space in the presence of long-running transactions.

  • Add ability to specify per-relation autovacuum and TOAST parameters in CREATE TABLE (Alvaro, Euler Taveira de Oliveira)

    Autovacuum options used to be stored in a system table.

  • Add --freeze option to vacuumdb (Bruce)

E.67.3.6. Data Types

  • Add a CaseSensitive option for text search synonym dictionaries (Simon)

  • Improve the precision of NUMERIC division (Tom)

  • Add basic arithmetic operators for int2 with int8 (Tom)

    This eliminates the need for explicit casting in some situations.

  • Allow UUID input to accept an optional hyphen after every fourth digit (Robert Haas)

  • Allow on/off as input for the boolean data type (Itagaki Takahiro)

  • Allow spaces around NaN in the input string for type numeric (Sam Mason)

E.67.3.6.1. Temporal Data Types

  • Reject year 0 BC and years 000 and 0000 (Tom)

    Previously these were interpreted as 1 BC. (Note: years 0 and 00 are still assumed to be the year 2000.)

  • Include SGT (Singapore time) in the default list of known time zone abbreviations (Tom)

  • Support infinity and -infinity as values of type date (Tom)

  • Make parsing of interval literals more standard-compliant (Tom, Ron Mayer)

    For example, INTERVAL '1' YEAR now does what it's supposed to.

  • Allow interval fractional-seconds precision to be specified after the second keyword, for SQL standard compliance (Tom)

    Formerly the precision had to be specified after the keyword interval. (For backwards compatibility, this syntax is still supported, though deprecated.) Data type definitions will now be output using the standard format.

  • Support the IS0 8601 interval syntax (Ron Mayer, Kevin Grittner)

    For example, INTERVAL 'P1Y2M3DT4H5M6.7S' is now supported.

  • Add IntervalStyle parameter which controls how interval values are output (Ron Mayer)

    Valid values are: postgres, postgres_verbose, sql_standard, iso_8601. This setting also controls the handling of negative interval input when only some fields have positive/negative designations.

  • Improve consistency of handling of fractional seconds in timestamp and interval output (Ron Mayer)

E.67.3.6.2. Arrays

  • Improve the handling of casts applied to ARRAY[] constructs, such as ARRAY[...]::integer[] (Brendan Jurd)

    Formerly PostgreSQL attempted to determine a data type for the ARRAY[] construct without reference to the ensuing cast. This could fail unnecessarily in many cases, in particular when the ARRAY[] construct was empty or contained only ambiguous entries such as NULL. Now the cast is consulted to determine the type that the array elements must be.

  • Make SQL-syntax ARRAY dimensions optional to match the SQL standard (Peter)

  • Add array_ndims() to return the number of dimensions of an array (Robert Haas)

  • Add array_length() to return the length of an array for a specified dimension (Jim Nasby, Robert Haas, Peter Eisentraut)

  • Add aggregate function array_agg(), which returns all aggregated values as a single array (Robert Haas, Jeff Davis, Peter)

  • Add unnest(), which converts an array to individual row values (Tom)

    This is the opposite of array_agg().

  • Add array_fill() to create arrays initialized with a value (Pavel Stehule)

  • Add generate_subscripts() to simplify generating the range of an array's subscripts (Pavel Stehule)

E.67.3.6.3. Wide-Value Storage (TOAST)

  • Consider TOAST compression on values as short as 32 bytes (previously 256 bytes) (Greg Stark)

  • Require 25% minimum space savings before using TOAST compression (previously 20% for small values and any-savings-at-all for large values) (Greg)

  • Improve TOAST heuristics for rows that have a mix of large and small toastable fields, so that we prefer to push large values out of line and don't compress small values unnecessarily (Greg, Tom)

E.67.3.7. Functions

  • Document that setseed() allows values from -1 to 1 (not just 0 to 1), and enforce the valid range (Kris Jurka)

  • Add server-side function lo_import(filename, oid) (Tatsuo)

  • Add quote_nullable(), which behaves like quote_literal() but returns the string NULL for a null argument (Brendan Jurd)

  • Improve full text search headline() function to allow extracting several fragments of text (Sushant Sinha)

  • Add suppress_redundant_updates_trigger() trigger function to avoid overhead for non-data-changing updates (Andrew)

  • Add div(numeric, numeric) to perform numeric division without rounding (Tom)

  • Add timestamp and timestamptz versions of generate_series() (Hitoshi Harada)

E.67.3.7.1. Object Information Functions

  • Implement current_query() for use by functions that need to know the currently running query (Tomas Doran)

  • Add pg_get_keywords() to return a list of the parser keywords (Dave Page)

  • Add pg_get_functiondef() to see a function's definition (Abhijit Menon-Sen)

  • Allow the second argument of pg_get_expr() to be zero when deparsing an expression that does not contain variables (Tom)

  • Modify pg_relation_size() to use regclass (Heikki)

    pg_relation_size(data_type_name) no longer works.

  • Add boot_val and reset_val columns to pg_settings output (Greg Smith)

  • Add source file name and line number columns to pg_settings output for variables set in a configuration file (Magnus, Alvaro)

    For security reasons, these columns are only visible to superusers.

  • Add support for CURRENT_CATALOG, CURRENT_SCHEMA, SET CATALOG, SET SCHEMA (Peter)

    These provide SQL-standard syntax for existing features.

  • Add pg_typeof() which returns the data type of any value (Brendan Jurd)

  • Make version() return information about whether the server is a 32- or 64-bit binary (Bruce)

  • Fix the behavior of information schema columns is_insertable_into and is_updatable to be consistent (Peter)

  • Improve the behavior of information schema datetime_precision columns (Peter)

    These columns now show zero for date columns, and 6 (the default precision) for time, timestamp, and interval without a declared precision, rather than showing null as formerly.

  • Convert remaining builtin set-returning functions to use OUT parameters (Jaime Casanova)

    This makes it possible to call these functions without specifying
a column list:  pg_show_all_settings(),
pg_lock_status(), pg_prepared_xact(),
pg_prepared_statement(), pg_cursor()

  • Make pg_*_is_visible() and has_*_privilege() functions return NULL for invalid OIDs, rather than reporting an error (Tom)

  • Extend has_*_privilege() functions to allow inquiring about the OR of multiple privileges in one call (Stephen Frost, Tom)

  • Add has_column_privilege() and has_any_column_privilege() functions (Stephen Frost, Tom)

E.67.3.7.2. Function Creation

  • Support variadic functions (functions with a variable number of arguments) (Pavel Stehule)

    Only trailing arguments can be optional, and they all must be of the same data type.

  • Support default values for function arguments (Pavel Stehule)

  • Add CREATE FUNCTION ... RETURNS TABLE clause (Pavel Stehule)

  • Allow SQL-language functions to return the output of an INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE RETURNING clause (Tom)

E.67.3.7.3. PL/pgSQL Server-Side Language

  • Support EXECUTE USING for easier insertion of data values into a dynamic query string (Pavel Stehule)

  • Allow looping over the results of a cursor using a FOR loop (Pavel Stehule)

  • Support RETURN QUERY EXECUTE (Pavel Stehule)

  • Improve the RAISE command (Pavel Stehule)

    • Support DETAIL and HINT fields

    • Support specification of the SQLSTATE error code

    • Support an exception name parameter

    • Allow RAISE without parameters in an exception block to re-throw the current error

  • Allow specification of SQLSTATE codes in EXCEPTION lists (Pavel Stehule)

    This is useful for handling custom SQLSTATE codes.

  • Support the CASE statement (Pavel Stehule)

  • Make RETURN QUERY set the special FOUND and GET DIAGNOSTICS ROW_COUNT variables (Pavel Stehule)

  • Make FETCH and MOVE set the GET DIAGNOSTICS ROW_COUNT variable (Andrew Gierth)

  • Make EXIT without a label always exit the innermost loop (Tom)

    Formerly, if there were a BEGIN block more closely nested than any loop, it would exit that block instead. The new behavior matches Oracle(TM) and is also what was previously stated by our own documentation.

  • Make processing of string literals and nested block comments match the main SQL parser's processing (Tom)

    In particular, the format string in RAISE now works the same as any other string literal, including being subject to standard_conforming_strings. This change also fixes other cases in which valid commands would fail when standard_conforming_strings is on.

  • Avoid memory leakage when the same function is called at varying exception-block nesting depths (Tom)

E.67.3.8. Client Applications

  • Fix pg_ctl restart to preserve command-line arguments (Bruce)

  • Add -w/--no-password option that prevents password prompting in all utilities that have a -W/--password option (Peter)

  • Remove -q (quiet) option of createdb, createuser, dropdb, dropuser (Peter)

    These options have had no effect since PostgreSQL 8.3.

E.67.3.8.1. psql

  • Remove verbose startup banner; now just suggest help (Joshua Drake)

  • Make help show common backslash commands (Greg Sabino Mullane)

  • Add \pset format wrapped mode to wrap output to the screen width, or file/pipe output too if \pset columns is set (Bryce Nesbitt)

  • Allow all supported spellings of boolean values in \pset, rather than just on and off (Bruce)

    Formerly, any string other than "off" was silently taken to mean true. psql will now complain about unrecognized spellings (but still take them as true).

  • Use the pager for wide output (Bruce)

  • Require a space between a one-letter backslash command and its first argument (Bernd Helmle)

    This removes a historical source of ambiguity.

  • Improve tab completion support for schema-qualified and quoted identifiers (Greg Sabino Mullane)

  • Add optional on/off argument for \timing (David Fetter)

  • Display access control rights on multiple lines (Brendan Jurd, Andreas Scherbaum)

  • Make \l show database access privileges (Andrew Gilligan)

  • Make \l+ show database sizes, if permissions allow (Andrew Gilligan)

  • Add the \ef command to edit function definitions (Abhijit Menon-Sen)

E.67.3.8.2. psql \d* commands

  • Make \d* commands that do not have a pattern argument show system objects only if the S modifier is specified (Greg Sabino Mullane, Bruce)

    The former behavior was inconsistent across different variants of \d, and in most cases it provided no easy way to see just user objects.

  • Improve \d* commands to work with older PostgreSQL server versions (back to 7.4), not only the current server version (Guillaume Lelarge)

  • Make \d show foreign-key constraints that reference the selected table (Kenneth D'Souza)

  • Make \d on a sequence show its column values (Euler Taveira de Oliveira)

  • Add column storage type and other relation options to the \d+ display (Gregory Stark, Euler Taveira de Oliveira)

  • Show relation size in \dt+ output (Dickson S. Guedes)

  • Show the possible values of enum types in \dT+ (David Fetter)

  • Allow \dC to accept a wildcard pattern, which matches either datatype involved in the cast (Tom)

  • Add a function type column to \df's output, and add options to list only selected types of functions (David Fetter)

  • Make \df not hide functions that take or return type cstring (Tom)

    Previously, such functions were hidden because most of them are datatype I/O functions, which were deemed uninteresting. The new policy about hiding system functions by default makes this wart unnecessary.

E.67.3.8.3. pg_dump

  • Add a --no-tablespaces option to pg_dump/pg_dumpall/pg_restore so that dumps can be restored to clusters that have non-matching tablespace layouts (Gavin Roy)

  • Remove -d and -D options from pg_dump and pg_dumpall (Tom)

    These options were too frequently confused with the option to select a database name in other PostgreSQL client applications. The functionality is still available, but you must now spell out the long option name --inserts or --column-inserts.

  • Remove -i/--ignore-version option from pg_dump and pg_dumpall (Tom)

    Use of this option does not throw an error, but it has no effect. This option was removed because the version checks are necessary for safety.

  • Disable statement_timeout during dump and restore (Joshua Drake)

  • Add pg_dump/pg_dumpall option --lock-wait-timeout (David Gould)

    This allows dumps to fail if unable to acquire a shared lock within the specified amount of time.

  • Reorder pg_dump --data-only output to dump tables referenced by foreign keys before the referencing tables (Tom)

    This allows data loads when foreign keys are already present. If circular references make a safe ordering impossible, a NOTICE is issued.

  • Allow pg_dump, pg_dumpall, and pg_restore to use a specified role (Benedek László)

  • Allow pg_restore to use multiple concurrent connections to do the restore (Andrew)

    The number of concurrent connections is controlled by the option --jobs. This is supported only for custom-format archives.

E.67.3.9. Programming Tools

E.67.3.9.1. libpq

  • Allow the OID to be specified when importing a large object, via new function lo_import_with_oid() (Tatsuo)

  • Add "events" support (Andrew Chernow, Merlin Moncure)

    This adds the ability to register callbacks to manage private data associated with PGconn and PGresult objects.

  • Improve error handling to allow the return of multiple error messages as multi-line error reports (Magnus)

  • Make PQexecParams() and related functions return PGRES_EMPTY_QUERY for an empty query (Tom)

    They previously returned PGRES_COMMAND_OK.

  • Document how to avoid the overhead of WSACleanup() on Windows (Andrew Chernow)

  • Do not rely on Kerberos tickets to determine the default database username (Magnus)

    Previously, a Kerberos-capable build of libpq would use the principal name from any available Kerberos ticket as default database username, even if the connection wasn't using Kerberos authentication. This was deemed inconsistent and confusing. The default username is now determined the same way with or without Kerberos. Note however that the database username must still match the ticket when Kerberos authentication is used.

E.67.3.9.2. libpq SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) support

  • Fix certificate validation for SSL connections (Magnus)

    libpq now supports verifying both the certificate and the name of the server when making SSL connections. If a root certificate is not available to use for verification, SSL connections will fail. The sslmode parameter is used to enable certificate verification and set the level of checking. The default is still not to do any verification, allowing connections to SSL-enabled servers without requiring a root certificate on the client.

  • Support wildcard server certificates (Magnus)

    If a certificate CN starts with *, it will be treated as a wildcard when matching the hostname, allowing the use of the same certificate for multiple servers.

  • Allow the file locations for client certificates to be specified (Mark Woodward, Alvaro, Magnus)

  • Add a PQinitOpenSSL function to allow greater control over OpenSSL/libcrypto initialization (Andrew Chernow)

  • Make libpq unregister its OpenSSL callbacks when no database connections remain open (Bruce, Magnus, Russell Smith)

    This is required for applications that unload the libpq library, otherwise invalid OpenSSL callbacks will remain.

E.67.3.9.3. ecpg

  • Add localization support for messages (Euler Taveira de Oliveira)

  • ecpg parser is now automatically generated from the server parser (Michael)

    Previously the ecpg parser was hand-maintained.

E.67.3.9.4. Server Programming Interface (SPI)

  • Add support for single-use plans with out-of-line parameters (Tom)

  • Add new SPI_OK_REWRITTEN return code for SPI_execute() (Heikki)

    This is used when a command is rewritten to another type of command.

  • Remove unnecessary inclusions from executor/spi.h (Tom)

    SPI-using modules might need to add some #include lines if they were depending on spi.h to include things for them.

E.67.3.10. Build Options

  • Update build system to use Autoconf 2.61 (Peter)

  • Require GNU bison for source code builds (Peter)

    This has effectively been required for several years, but now there is no infrastructure claiming to support other parser tools.

  • Add pg_config --htmldir option (Peter)

  • Pass float4 by value inside the server (Zoltan Boszormenyi)

    Add configure option --disable-float4-byval to use the old behavior. External C functions that use old-style (version 0) call convention and pass or return float4 values will be broken by this change, so you may need the configure option if you have such functions and don't want to update them.

  • Pass float8, int8, and related datatypes by value inside the server on 64-bit platforms (Zoltan Boszormenyi)

    Add configure option --disable-float8-byval to use the old behavior. As above, this change might break old-style external C functions.

  • Add configure options --with-segsize, --with-blocksize, --with-wal-blocksize, --with-wal-segsize (Zdenek Kotala, Tom)

    This simplifies build-time control over several constants that previously could only be changed by editing pg_config_manual.h.

  • Allow threaded builds on Solaris 2.5 (Bruce)

  • Use the system's getopt_long() on Solaris (Zdenek Kotala, Tom)

    This makes option processing more consistent with what Solaris users expect.

  • Add support for the Sun Studio compiler on Linux (Julius Stroffek)

  • Append the major version number to the backend gettext domain, and the soname major version number to libraries' gettext domain (Peter)

    This simplifies parallel installations of multiple versions.

  • Add support for code coverage testing with gcov (Michelle Caisse)

  • Allow out-of-tree builds on Mingw and Cygwin (Richard Evans)

  • Fix the use of Mingw as a cross-compiling source platform (Peter)

E.67.3.11. Source Code

  • Support 64-bit time zone data files (Heikki)

    This adds support for daylight saving time (DST) calculations beyond the year 2038.

  • Deprecate use of platform's time_t data type (Tom)

    Some platforms have migrated to 64-bit time_t, some have not, and Windows can't make up its mind what it's doing. Define pg_time_t to have the same meaning as time_t, but always be 64 bits (unless the platform has no 64-bit integer type), and use that type in all module APIs and on-disk data formats.

  • Fix bug in handling of the time zone database when cross-compiling (Richard Evans)

  • Link backend object files in one step, rather than in stages (Peter)

  • Improve gettext support to allow better translation of plurals (Peter)

  • Add message translation support to the PL languages (Alvaro, Peter)

  • Add more DTrace probes (Robert Lor)

  • Enable DTrace support on Mac OS X Leopard and other non-Solaris platforms (Robert Lor)

  • Simplify and standardize conversions between C strings and text datums, by providing common functions for the purpose (Brendan Jurd, Tom)

  • Clean up the include/catalog/ header files so that frontend programs can include them without including postgres.h (Zdenek Kotala)

  • Make name char-aligned, and suppress zero-padding of name entries in indexes (Tom)

  • Recover better if dynamically-loaded code executes exit() (Tom)

  • Add a hook to let plug-ins monitor the executor (Itagaki Takahiro)

  • Add a hook to allow the planner's statistics lookup behavior to be overridden (Simon Riggs)

  • Add shmem_startup_hook() for custom shared memory requirements (Tom)

  • Replace the index access method amgetmulti entry point with amgetbitmap, and extend the API for amgettuple to support run-time determination of operator lossiness (Heikki, Tom, Teodor)

    The API for GIN and GiST opclass consistent functions has been extended as well.

  • Add support for partial-match searches in GIN indexes (Teodor Sigaev, Oleg Bartunov)

  • Replace pg_class column reltriggers with boolean relhastriggers (Simon)

    Also remove unused pg_class columns relukeys, relfkeys, and relrefs.

  • Add a relistemp column to pg_class to ease identification of temporary tables (Tom)

  • Move platform FAQs into the main documentation (Peter)

  • Prevent parser input files from being built with any conflicts (Peter)

  • Add support for the KOI8U (Ukrainian) encoding (Peter)

  • Add Japanese message translations (Japan PostgreSQL Users Group)

    This used to be maintained as a separate project.

  • Fix problem when setting LC_MESSAGES on MSVC-built systems (Hiroshi Inoue, Hiroshi Saito, Magnus)

E.67.3.12. Contrib

  • Add contrib/auto_explain to automatically run EXPLAIN on queries exceeding a specified duration (Itagaki Takahiro, Tom)

  • Add contrib/btree_gin to allow GIN indexes to handle more datatypes (Oleg, Teodor)

  • Add contrib/citext to provide a case-insensitive, multibyte-aware text data type (David Wheeler)

  • Add contrib/pg_stat_statements for server-wide tracking of statement execution statistics (Itagaki Takahiro)

  • Add duration and query mode options to contrib/pgbench (Itagaki Takahiro)

  • Make contrib/pgbench use table names pgbench_accounts, pgbench_branches, pgbench_history, and pgbench_tellers, rather than just accounts, branches, history, and tellers (Tom)

    This is to reduce the risk of accidentally destroying real data by running pgbench.

  • Fix contrib/pgstattuple to handle tables and indexes with over 2 billion pages (Tatsuhito Kasahara)

  • In contrib/fuzzystrmatch, add a version of the Levenshtein string-distance function that allows the user to specify the costs of insertion, deletion, and substitution (Volkan Yazici)

  • Make contrib/ltree support multibyte encodings (laser)

  • Enable contrib/dblink to use connection information stored in the SQL/MED catalogs (Joe Conway)

  • Improve contrib/dblink's reporting of errors from the remote server (Joe Conway)

  • Make contrib/dblink set client_encoding to match the local database's encoding (Joe Conway)

    This prevents encoding problems when communicating with a remote database that uses a different encoding.

  • Make sure contrib/dblink uses a password supplied by the user, and not accidentally taken from the server's .pgpass file (Joe Conway)

    This is a minor security enhancement.

  • Add fsm_page_contents() to contrib/pageinspect (Heikki)

  • Modify get_raw_page() to support free space map (*_fsm) files. Also update contrib/pg_freespacemap.

  • Add support for multibyte encodings to contrib/pg_trgm (Teodor)

  • Rewrite contrib/intagg to use new functions array_agg() and unnest() (Tom)

  • Make contrib/pg_standby recover all available WAL before failover (Fujii Masao, Simon, Heikki)

    To make this work safely, you now need to set the new recovery_end_command option in recovery.conf to clean up the trigger file after failover. pg_standby will no longer remove the trigger file itself.

  • contrib/pg_standby's -l option is now a no-op, because it is unsafe to use a symlink (Simon)

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Release 8.3.23

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E.68. Release 8.3.23

Release Date: 2013-02-07

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.3.22. For information about new features in the 8.3 major release, see Section E.91.

This is expected to be the last PostgreSQL release in the 8.3.X series. Users are encouraged to update to a newer release branch soon.

E.68.1. Migration to Version 8.3.23

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.3.X.

However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.3.17, see Section E.74.

E.68.2. Changes

  • Prevent execution of enum_recv from SQL (Tom Lane)

    The function was misdeclared, allowing a simple SQL command to crash the server. In principle an attacker might be able to use it to examine the contents of server memory. Our thanks to Sumit Soni (via Secunia SVCRP) for reporting this issue. (CVE-2013-0255)

  • Fix SQL grammar to allow subscripting or field selection from a sub-SELECT result (Tom Lane)

  • Protect against race conditions when scanning pg_tablespace (Stephen Frost, Tom Lane)

    CREATE DATABASE and DROP DATABASE could misbehave if there were concurrent updates of pg_tablespace entries.

  • Prevent DROP OWNED from trying to drop whole databases or tablespaces (Álvaro Herrera)

    For safety, ownership of these objects must be reassigned, not dropped.

  • Prevent misbehavior when a RowExpr or XmlExpr is parse-analyzed twice (Andres Freund, Tom Lane)

    This mistake could be user-visible in contexts such as CREATE TABLE LIKE INCLUDING INDEXES.

  • Improve defenses against integer overflow in hashtable sizing calculations (Jeff Davis)

  • Ensure that non-ASCII prompt strings are translated to the correct code page on Windows (Alexander Law, Noah Misch)

    This bug affected psql and some other client programs.

  • Fix possible crash in psql's \? command when not connected to a database (Meng Qingzhong)

  • Fix one-byte buffer overrun in libpq's PQprintTuples (Xi Wang)

    This ancient function is not used anywhere by PostgreSQL itself, but it might still be used by some client code.

  • Rearrange configure's tests for supplied functions so it is not fooled by bogus exports from libedit/libreadline (Christoph Berg)

  • Ensure Windows build number increases over time (Magnus Hagander)

  • Make pgxs build executables with the right .exe suffix when cross-compiling for Windows (Zoltan Boszormenyi)

  • Add new timezone abbreviation FET (Tom Lane)

    This is now used in some eastern-European time zones.

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Release 8.4 | Up | Release 8.3.22


Release 8.3.22

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E.69. Release 8.3.22

Release Date: 2012-12-06

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.3.21. For information about new features in the 8.3 major release, see Section E.91.

The PostgreSQL community will stop releasing updates for the 8.3.X release series in February 2013. Users are encouraged to update to a newer release branch soon.

E.69.1. Migration to Version 8.3.22

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.3.X.

However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.3.17, see Section E.74.

E.69.2. Changes

  • Fix multiple bugs associated with CREATE INDEX CONCURRENTLY (Andres Freund, Tom Lane)

    Fix CREATE INDEX CONCURRENTLY to use in-place updates when changing the state of an index's pg_index row. This prevents race conditions that could cause concurrent sessions to miss updating the target index, thus resulting in corrupt concurrently-created indexes.

    Also, fix various other operations to ensure that they ignore invalid indexes resulting from a failed CREATE INDEX CONCURRENTLY command. The most important of these is VACUUM, because an auto-vacuum could easily be launched on the table before corrective action can be taken to fix or remove the invalid index.

  • Avoid corruption of internal hash tables when out of memory (Hitoshi Harada)

  • Fix planning of non-strict equivalence clauses above outer joins (Tom Lane)

    The planner could derive incorrect constraints from a clause equating a non-strict construct to something else, for example WHERE COALESCE(foo, 0) = 0 when foo is coming from the nullable side of an outer join.

  • Improve planner's ability to prove exclusion constraints from equivalence classes (Tom Lane)

  • Fix partial-row matching in hashed subplans to handle cross-type cases correctly (Tom Lane)

    This affects multicolumn NOT IN subplans, such as WHERE (a, b) NOT IN (SELECT x, y FROM ...) when for instance b and y are int4 and int8 respectively. This mistake led to wrong answers or crashes depending on the specific datatypes involved.

  • Acquire buffer lock when re-fetching the old tuple for an AFTER ROW UPDATE/DELETE trigger (Andres Freund)

    In very unusual circumstances, this oversight could result in passing incorrect data to the precheck logic for a foreign-key enforcement trigger. That could result in a crash, or in an incorrect decision about whether to fire the trigger.

  • Fix REASSIGN OWNED to handle grants on tablespaces (Álvaro Herrera)

  • Ignore incorrect pg_attribute entries for system columns for views (Tom Lane)

    Views do not have any system columns. However, we forgot to remove such entries when converting a table to a view. That's fixed properly for 9.3 and later, but in previous branches we need to defend against existing mis-converted views.

  • Fix rule printing to dump INSERT INTO table DEFAULT VALUES correctly (Tom Lane)

  • Guard against stack overflow when there are too many UNION/INTERSECT/EXCEPT clauses in a query (Tom Lane)

  • Prevent platform-dependent failures when dividing the minimum possible integer value by -1 (Xi Wang, Tom Lane)

  • Fix possible access past end of string in date parsing (Hitoshi Harada)

  • Produce an understandable error message if the length of the path name for a Unix-domain socket exceeds the platform-specific limit (Tom Lane, Andrew Dunstan)

    Formerly, this would result in something quite unhelpful, such as "Non-recoverable failure in name resolution".

  • Fix memory leaks when sending composite column values to the client (Tom Lane)

  • Make pg_ctl more robust about reading the postmaster.pid file (Heikki Linnakangas)

    Fix race conditions and possible file descriptor leakage.

  • Fix possible crash in psql if incorrectly-encoded data is presented and the client_encoding setting is a client-only encoding, such as SJIS (Jiang Guiqing)

  • Fix bugs in the restore.sql script emitted by pg_dump in tar output format (Tom Lane)

    The script would fail outright on tables whose names include upper-case characters. Also, make the script capable of restoring data in --inserts mode as well as the regular COPY mode.

  • Fix pg_restore to accept POSIX-conformant tar files (Brian Weaver, Tom Lane)

    The original coding of pg_dump's tar output mode produced files that are not fully conformant with the POSIX standard. This has been corrected for version 9.3. This patch updates previous branches so that they will accept both the incorrect and the corrected formats, in hopes of avoiding compatibility problems when 9.3 comes out.

  • Fix pg_resetxlog to locate postmaster.pid correctly when given a relative path to the data directory (Tom Lane)

    This mistake could lead to pg_resetxlog not noticing that there is an active postmaster using the data directory.

  • Fix libpq's lo_import() and lo_export() functions to report file I/O errors properly (Tom Lane)

  • Fix ecpg's processing of nested structure pointer variables (Muhammad Usama)

  • Make contrib/pageinspect's btree page inspection functions take buffer locks while examining pages (Tom Lane)

  • Fix pgxs support for building loadable modules on AIX (Tom Lane)

    Building modules outside the original source tree didn't work on AIX.

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2012j for DST law changes in Cuba, Israel, Jordan, Libya, Palestine, Western Samoa, and portions of Brazil.

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Release 8.3.23 | Up | Release 8.3.21


Release 8.3.21

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.70. Release 8.3.21

Release Date: 2012-09-24

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.3.20. For information about new features in the 8.3 major release, see Section E.91.

The PostgreSQL community will stop releasing updates for the 8.3.X release series in February 2013. Users are encouraged to update to a newer release branch soon.

E.70.1. Migration to Version 8.3.21

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.3.X.

However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.3.17, see Section E.74.

E.70.2. Changes

  • Improve page-splitting decisions in GiST indexes (Alexander Korotkov, Robert Haas, Tom Lane)

    Multi-column GiST indexes might suffer unexpected bloat due to this error.

  • Fix cascading privilege revoke to stop if privileges are still held (Tom Lane)

    If we revoke a grant option from some role X, but X still holds that option via a grant from someone else, we should not recursively revoke the corresponding privilege from role(s) Y that X had granted it to.

  • Fix handling of SIGFPE when PL/Perl is in use (Andres Freund)

    Perl resets the process's SIGFPE handler to SIG_IGN, which could result in crashes later on. Restore the normal Postgres signal handler after initializing PL/Perl.

  • Prevent PL/Perl from crashing if a recursive PL/Perl function is redefined while being executed (Tom Lane)

  • Work around possible misoptimization in PL/Perl (Tom Lane)

    Some Linux distributions contain an incorrect version of pthread.h that results in incorrect compiled code in PL/Perl, leading to crashes if a PL/Perl function calls another one that throws an error.

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2012f for DST law changes in Fiji

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Release 8.3.20

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.71. Release 8.3.20

Release Date: 2012-08-17

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.3.19. For information about new features in the 8.3 major release, see Section E.91.

The PostgreSQL community will stop releasing updates for the 8.3.X release series in February 2013. Users are encouraged to update to a newer release branch soon.

E.71.1. Migration to Version 8.3.20

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.3.X.

However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.3.17, see Section E.74.

E.71.2. Changes

  • Prevent access to external files/URLs via XML entity references (Noah Misch, Tom Lane)

    xml_parse() would attempt to fetch external files or URLs as needed to resolve DTD and entity references in an XML value, thus allowing unprivileged database users to attempt to fetch data with the privileges of the database server. While the external data wouldn't get returned directly to the user, portions of it could be exposed in error messages if the data didn't parse as valid XML; and in any case the mere ability to check existence of a file might be useful to an attacker. (CVE-2012-3489)

  • Prevent access to external files/URLs via contrib/xml2's xslt_process() (Peter Eisentraut)

    libxslt offers the ability to read and write both files and URLs through stylesheet commands, thus allowing unprivileged database users to both read and write data with the privileges of the database server. Disable that through proper use of libxslt's security options. (CVE-2012-3488)

    Also, remove xslt_process()'s ability to fetch documents and stylesheets from external files/URLs. While this was a documented "feature", it was long regarded as a bad idea. The fix for CVE-2012-3489 broke that capability, and rather than expend effort on trying to fix it, we're just going to summarily remove it.

  • Prevent too-early recycling of btree index pages (Noah Misch)

    When we allowed read-only transactions to skip assigning XIDs, we introduced the possibility that a deleted btree page could be recycled while a read-only transaction was still in flight to it. This would result in incorrect index search results. The probability of such an error occurring in the field seems very low because of the timing requirements, but nonetheless it should be fixed.

  • Fix crash-safety bug with newly-created-or-reset sequences (Tom Lane)

    If ALTER SEQUENCE was executed on a freshly created or reset sequence, and then precisely one nextval() call was made on it, and then the server crashed, WAL replay would restore the sequence to a state in which it appeared that no nextval() had been done, thus allowing the first sequence value to be returned again by the next nextval() call. In particular this could manifest for serial columns, since creation of a serial column's sequence includes an ALTER SEQUENCE OWNED BY step.

  • Ensure the backup_label file is fsync'd after pg_start_backup() (Dave Kerr)

  • Back-patch 9.1 improvement to compress the fsync request queue (Robert Haas)

    This improves performance during checkpoints. The 9.1 change has now seen enough field testing to seem safe to back-patch.

  • Only allow autovacuum to be auto-canceled by a directly blocked process (Tom Lane)

    The original coding could allow inconsistent behavior in some cases; in particular, an autovacuum could get canceled after less than deadlock_timeout grace period.

  • Improve logging of autovacuum cancels (Robert Haas)

  • Fix log collector so that log_truncate_on_rotation works during the very first log rotation after server start (Tom Lane)

  • Ensure that a whole-row reference to a subquery doesn't include any extra GROUP BY or ORDER BY columns (Tom Lane)

  • Disallow copying whole-row references in CHECK constraints and index definitions during CREATE TABLE (Tom Lane)

    This situation can arise in CREATE TABLE with LIKE or INHERITS. The copied whole-row variable was incorrectly labeled with the row type of the original table not the new one. Rejecting the case seems reasonable for LIKE, since the row types might well diverge later. For INHERITS we should ideally allow it, with an implicit coercion to the parent table's row type; but that will require more work than seems safe to back-patch.

  • Fix memory leak in ARRAY(SELECT ...) subqueries (Heikki Linnakangas, Tom Lane)

  • Fix extraction of common prefixes from regular expressions (Tom Lane)

    The code could get confused by quantified parenthesized subexpressions, such as ^(foo)?bar. This would lead to incorrect index optimization of searches for such patterns.

  • Report errors properly in contrib/xml2's xslt_process() (Tom Lane)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2012e for DST law changes in Morocco and Tokelau

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Release 8.3.21 | Up | Release 8.3.19


Release 8.3.19

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.72. Release 8.3.19

Release Date: 2012-06-04

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.3.18. For information about new features in the 8.3 major release, see Section E.91.

E.72.1. Migration to Version 8.3.19

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.3.X.

However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.3.17, see Section E.74.

E.72.2. Changes

  • Fix incorrect password transformation in contrib/pgcrypto's DES crypt() function (Solar Designer)

    If a password string contained the byte value 0x80, the remainder of the password was ignored, causing the password to be much weaker than it appeared. With this fix, the rest of the string is properly included in the DES hash. Any stored password values that are affected by this bug will thus no longer match, so the stored values may need to be updated. (CVE-2012-2143)

  • Ignore SECURITY DEFINER and SET attributes for a procedural language's call handler (Tom Lane)

    Applying such attributes to a call handler could crash the server. (CVE-2012-2655)

  • Allow numeric timezone offsets in timestamp input to be up to 16 hours away from UTC (Tom Lane)

    Some historical time zones have offsets larger than 15 hours, the previous limit. This could result in dumped data values being rejected during reload.

  • Fix timestamp conversion to cope when the given time is exactly the last DST transition time for the current timezone (Tom Lane)

    This oversight has been there a long time, but was not noticed previously because most DST-using zones are presumed to have an indefinite sequence of future DST transitions.

  • Fix text to name and char to name casts to perform string truncation correctly in multibyte encodings (Karl Schnaitter)

  • Fix memory copying bug in to_tsquery() (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Fix slow session startup when pg_attribute is very large (Tom Lane)

    If pg_attribute exceeds one-fourth of shared_buffers, cache rebuilding code that is sometimes needed during session start would trigger the synchronized-scan logic, causing it to take many times longer than normal. The problem was particularly acute if many new sessions were starting at once.

  • Ensure sequential scans check for query cancel reasonably often (Merlin Moncure)

    A scan encountering many consecutive pages that contain no live tuples would not respond to interrupts meanwhile.

  • Ensure the Windows implementation of PGSemaphoreLock() clears ImmediateInterruptOK before returning (Tom Lane)

    This oversight meant that a query-cancel interrupt received later in the same query could be accepted at an unsafe time, with unpredictable but not good consequences.

  • Show whole-row variables safely when printing views or rules (Abbas Butt, Tom Lane)

    Corner cases involving ambiguous names (that is, the name could be either a table or column name of the query) were printed in an ambiguous way, risking that the view or rule would be interpreted differently after dump and reload. Avoid the ambiguous case by attaching a no-op cast.

  • Ensure autovacuum worker processes perform stack depth checking properly (Heikki Linnakangas)

    Previously, infinite recursion in a function invoked by auto-ANALYZE could crash worker processes.

  • Fix logging collector to not lose log coherency under high load (Andrew Dunstan)

    The collector previously could fail to reassemble large messages if it got too busy.

  • Fix logging collector to ensure it will restart file rotation after receiving SIGHUP (Tom Lane)

  • Fix PL/pgSQL's GET DIAGNOSTICS command when the target is the function's first variable (Tom Lane)

  • Fix several performance problems in pg_dump when the database contains many objects (Jeff Janes, Tom Lane)

    pg_dump could get very slow if the database contained many schemas, or if many objects are in dependency loops, or if there are many owned sequences.

  • Fix contrib/dblink's dblink_exec() to not leak temporary database connections upon error (Tom Lane)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2012c for DST law changes in Antarctica, Armenia, Chile, Cuba, Falkland Islands, Gaza, Haiti, Hebron, Morocco, Syria, and Tokelau Islands; also historical corrections for Canada.

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Release 8.3.20 | Up | Release 8.3.18


Release 8.3.18

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.73. Release 8.3.18

Release Date: 2012-02-27

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.3.17. For information about new features in the 8.3 major release, see Section E.91.

E.73.1. Migration to Version 8.3.18

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.3.X.

However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.3.17, see Section E.74.

E.73.2. Changes

  • Require execute permission on the trigger function for CREATE TRIGGER (Robert Haas)

    This missing check could allow another user to execute a trigger function with forged input data, by installing it on a table he owns. This is only of significance for trigger functions marked SECURITY DEFINER, since otherwise trigger functions run as the table owner anyway. (CVE-2012-0866)

  • Convert newlines to spaces in names written in pg_dump comments (Robert Haas)

    pg_dump was incautious about sanitizing object names that are emitted within SQL comments in its output script. A name containing a newline would at least render the script syntactically incorrect. Maliciously crafted object names could present a SQL injection risk when the script is reloaded. (CVE-2012-0868)

  • Fix btree index corruption from insertions concurrent with vacuuming (Tom Lane)

    An index page split caused by an insertion could sometimes cause a concurrently-running VACUUM to miss removing index entries that it should remove. After the corresponding table rows are removed, the dangling index entries would cause errors (such as "could not read block N in file ...") or worse, silently wrong query results after unrelated rows are re-inserted at the now-free table locations. This bug has been present since release 8.2, but occurs so infrequently that it was not diagnosed until now. If you have reason to suspect that it has happened in your database, reindexing the affected index will fix things.

  • Allow non-existent values for some settings in ALTER USER/DATABASE SET (Heikki Linnakangas)

    Allow default_text_search_config, default_tablespace, and temp_tablespaces to be set to names that are not known. This is because they might be known in another database where the setting is intended to be used, or for the tablespace cases because the tablespace might not be created yet. The same issue was previously recognized for search_path, and these settings now act like that one.

  • Track the OID counter correctly during WAL replay, even when it wraps around (Tom Lane)

    Previously the OID counter would remain stuck at a high value until the system exited replay mode. The practical consequences of that are usually nil, but there are scenarios wherein a standby server that's been promoted to master might take a long time to advance the OID counter to a reasonable value once values are needed.

  • Fix regular expression back-references with * attached (Tom Lane)

    Rather than enforcing an exact string match, the code would effectively accept any string that satisfies the pattern sub-expression referenced by the back-reference symbol.

    A similar problem still afflicts back-references that are embedded in a larger quantified expression, rather than being the immediate subject of the quantifier. This will be addressed in a future PostgreSQL release.

  • Fix recently-introduced memory leak in processing of inet/cidr values (Heikki Linnakangas)

    A patch in the December 2011 releases of PostgreSQL caused memory leakage in these operations, which could be significant in scenarios such as building a btree index on such a column.

  • Avoid double close of file handle in syslogger on Windows (MauMau)

    Ordinarily this error was invisible, but it would cause an exception when running on a debug version of Windows.

  • Fix I/O-conversion-related memory leaks in plpgsql (Andres Freund, Jan Urbanski, Tom Lane)

    Certain operations would leak memory until the end of the current function.

  • Improve pg_dump's handling of inherited table columns (Tom Lane)

    pg_dump mishandled situations where a child column has a different default expression than its parent column. If the default is textually identical to the parent's default, but not actually the same (for instance, because of schema search path differences) it would not be recognized as different, so that after dump and restore the child would be allowed to inherit the parent's default. Child columns that are NOT NULL where their parent is not could also be restored subtly incorrectly.

  • Fix pg_restore's direct-to-database mode for INSERT-style table data (Tom Lane)

    Direct-to-database restores from archive files made with --inserts or --column-inserts options fail when using pg_restore from a release dated September or December 2011, as a result of an oversight in a fix for another problem. The archive file itself is not at fault, and text-mode output is okay.

  • Fix error in contrib/intarray's int[] & int[] operator (Guillaume Lelarge)

    If the smallest integer the two input arrays have in common is 1, and there are smaller values in either array, then 1 would be incorrectly omitted from the result.

  • Fix error detection in contrib/pgcrypto's encrypt_iv() and decrypt_iv() (Marko Kreen)

    These functions failed to report certain types of invalid-input errors, and would instead return random garbage values for incorrect input.

  • Fix one-byte buffer overrun in contrib/test_parser (Paul Guyot)

    The code would try to read one more byte than it should, which would crash in corner cases. Since contrib/test_parser is only example code, this is not a security issue in itself, but bad example code is still bad.

  • Use __sync_lock_test_and_set() for spinlocks on ARM, if available (Martin Pitt)

    This function replaces our previous use of the SWPB instruction, which is deprecated and not available on ARMv6 and later. Reports suggest that the old code doesn't fail in an obvious way on recent ARM boards, but simply doesn't interlock concurrent accesses, leading to bizarre failures in multiprocess operation.

  • Use -fexcess-precision=standard option when building with gcc versions that accept it (Andrew Dunstan)

    This prevents assorted scenarios wherein recent versions of gcc will produce creative results.

  • Allow use of threaded Python on FreeBSD (Chris Rees)

    Our configure script previously believed that this combination wouldn't work; but FreeBSD fixed the problem, so remove that error check.

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Release 8.3.19 | Up | Release 8.3.17


Release 8.3.17

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.74. Release 8.3.17

Release Date: 2011-12-05

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.3.16. For information about new features in the 8.3 major release, see Section E.91.

E.74.1. Migration to Version 8.3.17

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.3.X.

However, a longstanding error was discovered in the definition of the information_schema.referential_constraints view. If you rely on correct results from that view, you should replace its definition as explained in the first changelog item below.

Also, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.3.8, see Section E.83.

E.74.2. Changes

  • Fix bugs in information_schema.referential_constraints view (Tom Lane)

    This view was being insufficiently careful about matching the foreign-key constraint to the depended-on primary or unique key constraint. That could result in failure to show a foreign key constraint at all, or showing it multiple times, or claiming that it depends on a different constraint than the one it really does.

    Since the view definition is installed by initdb, merely upgrading will not fix the problem. If you need to fix this in an existing installation, you can (as a superuser) drop the information_schema schema then re-create it by sourcing SHAREDIR/information_schema.sql. (Run pg_config --sharedir if you're uncertain where SHAREDIR is.) This must be repeated in each database to be fixed.

  • Fix TOAST-related data corruption during CREATE TABLE dest AS SELECT * FROM src or INSERT INTO dest SELECT * FROM src (Tom Lane)

    If a table has been modified by ALTER TABLE ADD COLUMN, attempts to copy its data verbatim to another table could produce corrupt results in certain corner cases. The problem can only manifest in this precise form in 8.4 and later, but we patched earlier versions as well in case there are other code paths that could trigger the same bug.

  • Fix race condition during toast table access from stale syscache entries (Tom Lane)

    The typical symptom was transient errors like "missing chunk number 0 for toast value NNNNN in pg_toast_2619", where the cited toast table would always belong to a system catalog.

  • Make DatumGetInetP() unpack inet datums that have a 1-byte header, and add a new macro, DatumGetInetPP(), that does not (Heikki Linnakangas)

    This change affects no core code, but might prevent crashes in add-on code that expects DatumGetInetP() to produce an unpacked datum as per usual convention.

  • Improve locale support in money type's input and output (Tom Lane)

    Aside from not supporting all standard lc_monetary formatting options, the input and output functions were inconsistent, meaning there were locales in which dumped money values could not be re-read.

  • Don't let transform_null_equals affect CASE foo WHEN NULL ... constructs (Heikki Linnakangas)

    transform_null_equals is only supposed to affect foo = NULL expressions written directly by the user, not equality checks generated internally by this form of CASE.

  • Change foreign-key trigger creation order to better support self-referential foreign keys (Tom Lane)

    For a cascading foreign key that references its own table, a row update will fire both the ON UPDATE trigger and the CHECK trigger as one event. The ON UPDATE trigger must execute first, else the CHECK will check a non-final state of the row and possibly throw an inappropriate error. However, the firing order of these triggers is determined by their names, which generally sort in creation order since the triggers have auto-generated names following the convention "RI_ConstraintTrigger_NNNN". A proper fix would require modifying that convention, which we will do in 9.2, but it seems risky to change it in existing releases. So this patch just changes the creation order of the triggers. Users encountering this type of error should drop and re-create the foreign key constraint to get its triggers into the right order.

  • Avoid floating-point underflow while tracking buffer allocation rate (Greg Matthews)

    While harmless in itself, on certain platforms this would result in annoying kernel log messages.

  • Preserve blank lines within commands in psql's command history (Robert Haas)

    The former behavior could cause problems if an empty line was removed from within a string literal, for example.

  • Fix pg_dump to dump user-defined casts between auto-generated types, such as table rowtypes (Tom Lane)

  • Use the preferred version of xsubpp to build PL/Perl, not necessarily the operating system's main copy (David Wheeler and Alex Hunsaker)

  • Fix incorrect coding in contrib/dict_int and contrib/dict_xsyn (Tom Lane)

    Some functions incorrectly assumed that memory returned by palloc() is guaranteed zeroed.

  • Honor query cancel interrupts promptly in pgstatindex() (Robert Haas)

  • Ensure VPATH builds properly install all server header files (Peter Eisentraut)

  • Shorten file names reported in verbose error messages (Peter Eisentraut)

    Regular builds have always reported just the name of the C file containing the error message call, but VPATH builds formerly reported an absolute path name.

  • Fix interpretation of Windows timezone names for Central America (Tom Lane)

    Map "Central America Standard Time" to CST6, not CST6CDT, because DST is generally not observed anywhere in Central America.

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2011n for DST law changes in Brazil, Cuba, Fiji, Palestine, Russia, and Samoa; also historical corrections for Alaska and British East Africa.

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Release 8.3.18 | Up | Release 8.3.16


Release 8.3.16

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.75. Release 8.3.16

Release Date: 2011-09-26

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.3.15. For information about new features in the 8.3 major release, see Section E.91.

E.75.1. Migration to Version 8.3.16

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.3.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.3.8, see Section E.83.

E.75.2. Changes

  • Fix bugs in indexing of in-doubt HOT-updated tuples (Tom Lane)

    These bugs could result in index corruption after reindexing a system catalog. They are not believed to affect user indexes.

  • Fix multiple bugs in GiST index page split processing (Heikki Linnakangas)

    The probability of occurrence was low, but these could lead to index corruption.

  • Fix possible buffer overrun in tsvector_concat() (Tom Lane)

    The function could underestimate the amount of memory needed for its result, leading to server crashes.

  • Fix crash in xml_recv when processing a "standalone" parameter (Tom Lane)

  • Avoid possibly accessing off the end of memory in ANALYZE and in SJIS-2004 encoding conversion (Noah Misch)

    This fixes some very-low-probability server crash scenarios.

  • Fix race condition in relcache init file invalidation (Tom Lane)

    There was a window wherein a new backend process could read a stale init file but miss the inval messages that would tell it the data is stale. The result would be bizarre failures in catalog accesses, typically "could not read block 0 in file ..." later during startup.

  • Fix memory leak at end of a GiST index scan (Tom Lane)

    Commands that perform many separate GiST index scans, such as verification of a new GiST-based exclusion constraint on a table already containing many rows, could transiently require large amounts of memory due to this leak.

  • Fix performance problem when constructing a large, lossy bitmap (Tom Lane)

  • Fix array- and path-creating functions to ensure padding bytes are zeroes (Tom Lane)

    This avoids some situations where the planner will think that semantically-equal constants are not equal, resulting in poor optimization.

  • Work around gcc 4.6.0 bug that breaks WAL replay (Tom Lane)

    This could lead to loss of committed transactions after a server crash.

  • Fix dump bug for VALUES in a view (Tom Lane)

  • Disallow SELECT FOR UPDATE/SHARE on sequences (Tom Lane)

    This operation doesn't work as expected and can lead to failures.

  • Defend against integer overflow when computing size of a hash table (Tom Lane)

  • Fix cases where CLUSTER might attempt to access already-removed TOAST data (Tom Lane)

  • Fix portability bugs in use of credentials control messages for "peer" authentication (Tom Lane)

  • Fix SSPI login when multiple roundtrips are required (Ahmed Shinwari, Magnus Hagander)

    The typical symptom of this problem was "The function requested is not supported" errors during SSPI login.

  • Fix typo in pg_srand48 seed initialization (Andres Freund)

    This led to failure to use all bits of the provided seed. This function is not used on most platforms (only those without srandom), and the potential security exposure from a less-random-than-expected seed seems minimal in any case.

  • Avoid integer overflow when the sum of LIMIT and OFFSET values exceeds 2^63 (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Add overflow checks to int4 and int8 versions of generate_series() (Robert Haas)

  • Fix trailing-zero removal in to_char() (Marti Raudsepp)

    In a format with FM and no digit positions after the decimal point, zeroes to the left of the decimal point could be removed incorrectly.

  • Fix pg_size_pretty() to avoid overflow for inputs close to 2^63 (Tom Lane)

  • In pg_ctl, support silent mode for service registrations on Windows (MauMau)

  • Fix psql's counting of script file line numbers during COPY from a different file (Tom Lane)

  • Fix pg_restore's direct-to-database mode for standard_conforming_strings (Tom Lane)

    pg_restore could emit incorrect commands when restoring directly to a database server from an archive file that had been made with standard_conforming_strings set to on.

  • Fix write-past-buffer-end and memory leak in libpq's LDAP service lookup code (Albe Laurenz)

  • In libpq, avoid failures when using nonblocking I/O and an SSL connection (Martin Pihlak, Tom Lane)

  • Improve libpq's handling of failures during connection startup (Tom Lane)

    In particular, the response to a server report of fork() failure during SSL connection startup is now saner.

  • Improve libpq's error reporting for SSL failures (Tom Lane)

  • Make ecpglib write double values with 15 digits precision (Akira Kurosawa)

  • In ecpglib, be sure LC_NUMERIC setting is restored after an error (Michael Meskes)

  • Apply upstream fix for blowfish signed-character bug (CVE-2011-2483) (Tom Lane)

    contrib/pg_crypto's blowfish encryption code could give wrong results on platforms where char is signed (which is most), leading to encrypted passwords being weaker than they should be.

  • Fix memory leak in contrib/seg (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Fix pgstatindex() to give consistent results for empty indexes (Tom Lane)

  • Allow building with perl 5.14 (Alex Hunsaker)

  • Update configure script's method for probing existence of system functions (Tom Lane)

    The version of autoconf we used in 8.3 and 8.2 could be fooled by compilers that perform link-time optimization.

  • Fix assorted issues with build and install file paths containing spaces (Tom Lane)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2011i for DST law changes in Canada, Egypt, Russia, Samoa, and South Sudan.

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Release 8.3.17 | Up | Release 8.3.15


Release 8.3.15

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.76. Release 8.3.15

Release Date: 2011-04-18

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.3.14. For information about new features in the 8.3 major release, see Section E.91.

E.76.1. Migration to Version 8.3.15

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.3.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.3.8, see Section E.83.

E.76.2. Changes

  • Disallow including a composite type in itself (Tom Lane)

    This prevents scenarios wherein the server could recurse infinitely while processing the composite type. While there are some possible uses for such a structure, they don't seem compelling enough to justify the effort required to make sure it always works safely.

  • Avoid potential deadlock during catalog cache initialization (Nikhil Sontakke)

    In some cases the cache loading code would acquire share lock on a system index before locking the index's catalog. This could deadlock against processes trying to acquire exclusive locks in the other, more standard order.

  • Fix dangling-pointer problem in BEFORE ROW UPDATE trigger handling when there was a concurrent update to the target tuple (Tom Lane)

    This bug has been observed to result in intermittent "cannot extract system attribute from virtual tuple" failures while trying to do UPDATE RETURNING ctid. There is a very small probability of more serious errors, such as generating incorrect index entries for the updated tuple.

  • Disallow DROP TABLE when there are pending deferred trigger events for the table (Tom Lane)

    Formerly the DROP would go through, leading to "could not open relation with OID nnn" errors when the triggers were eventually fired.

  • Fix PL/Python memory leak involving array slices (Daniel Popowich)

  • Fix pg_restore to cope with long lines (over 1KB) in TOC files (Tom Lane)

  • Put in more safeguards against crashing due to division-by-zero with overly enthusiastic compiler optimization (Aurelien Jarno)

  • Support use of dlopen() in FreeBSD and OpenBSD on MIPS (Tom Lane)

    There was a hard-wired assumption that this system function was not available on MIPS hardware on these systems. Use a compile-time test instead, since more recent versions have it.

  • Fix compilation failures on HP-UX (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Fix version-incompatibility problem with libintl on Windows (Hiroshi Inoue)

  • Fix usage of xcopy in Windows build scripts to work correctly under Windows 7 (Andrew Dunstan)

    This affects the build scripts only, not installation or usage.

  • Fix path separator used by pg_regress on Cygwin (Andrew Dunstan)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2011f for DST law changes in Chile, Cuba, Falkland Islands, Morocco, Samoa, and Turkey; also historical corrections for South Australia, Alaska, and Hawaii.

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Release 8.3.16 | Up | Release 8.3.14


Release 8.3.14

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.77. Release 8.3.14

Release Date: 2011-01-31

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.3.13. For information about new features in the 8.3 major release, see Section E.91.

E.77.1. Migration to Version 8.3.14

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.3.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.3.8, see Section E.83.

E.77.2. Changes

  • Avoid failures when EXPLAIN tries to display a simple-form CASE expression (Tom Lane)

    If the CASE's test expression was a constant, the planner could simplify the CASE into a form that confused the expression-display code, resulting in "unexpected CASE WHEN clause" errors.

  • Fix assignment to an array slice that is before the existing range of subscripts (Tom Lane)

    If there was a gap between the newly added subscripts and the first pre-existing subscript, the code miscalculated how many entries needed to be copied from the old array's null bitmap, potentially leading to data corruption or crash.

  • Avoid unexpected conversion overflow in planner for very distant date values (Tom Lane)

    The date type supports a wider range of dates than can be represented by the timestamp types, but the planner assumed it could always convert a date to timestamp with impunity.

  • Fix pg_restore's text output for large objects (BLOBs) when standard_conforming_strings is on (Tom Lane)

    Although restoring directly to a database worked correctly, string escaping was incorrect if pg_restore was asked for SQL text output and standard_conforming_strings had been enabled in the source database.

  • Fix erroneous parsing of tsquery values containing ... & !(subexpression) | ... (Tom Lane)

    Queries containing this combination of operators were not executed correctly. The same error existed in contrib/intarray's query_int type and contrib/ltree's ltxtquery type.

  • Fix buffer overrun in contrib/intarray's input function for the query_int type (Apple)

    This bug is a security risk since the function's return address could be overwritten. Thanks to Apple Inc's security team for reporting this issue and supplying the fix. (CVE-2010-4015)

  • Fix bug in contrib/seg's GiST picksplit algorithm (Alexander Korotkov)

    This could result in considerable inefficiency, though not actually incorrect answers, in a GiST index on a seg column. If you have such an index, consider REINDEXing it after installing this update. (This is identical to the bug that was fixed in contrib/cube in the previous update.)

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Release 8.3.15 | Up | Release 8.3.13


Release 8.3.13

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.78. Release 8.3.13

Release Date: 2010-12-16

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.3.12. For information about new features in the 8.3 major release, see Section E.91.

E.78.1. Migration to Version 8.3.13

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.3.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.3.8, see Section E.83.

E.78.2. Changes

  • Force the default wal_sync_method to be fdatasync on Linux (Tom Lane, Marti Raudsepp)

    The default on Linux has actually been fdatasync for many years, but recent kernel changes caused PostgreSQL to choose open_datasync instead. This choice did not result in any performance improvement, and caused outright failures on certain filesystems, notably ext4 with the data=journal mount option.

  • Fix assorted bugs in WAL replay logic for GIN indexes (Tom Lane)

    This could result in "bad buffer id: 0" failures or corruption of index contents during replication.

  • Fix recovery from base backup when the starting checkpoint WAL record is not in the same WAL segment as its redo point (Jeff Davis)

  • Fix persistent slowdown of autovacuum workers when multiple workers remain active for a long time (Tom Lane)

    The effective vacuum_cost_limit for an autovacuum worker could drop to nearly zero if it processed enough tables, causing it to run extremely slowly.

  • Add support for detecting register-stack overrun on IA64 (Tom Lane)

    The IA64 architecture has two hardware stacks. Full prevention of stack-overrun failures requires checking both.

  • Add a check for stack overflow in copyObject() (Tom Lane)

    Certain code paths could crash due to stack overflow given a sufficiently complex query.

  • Fix detection of page splits in temporary GiST indexes (Heikki Linnakangas)

    It is possible to have a "concurrent" page split in a temporary index, if for example there is an open cursor scanning the index when an insertion is done. GiST failed to detect this case and hence could deliver wrong results when execution of the cursor continued.

  • Avoid memory leakage while ANALYZE'ing complex index expressions (Tom Lane)

  • Ensure an index that uses a whole-row Var still depends on its table (Tom Lane)

    An index declared like create index i on t (foo(t.*)) would not automatically get dropped when its table was dropped.

  • Do not "inline" a SQL function with multiple OUT parameters (Tom Lane)

    This avoids a possible crash due to loss of information about the expected result rowtype.

  • Behave correctly if ORDER BY, LIMIT, FOR UPDATE, or WITH is attached to the VALUES part of INSERT ... VALUES (Tom Lane)

  • Fix constant-folding of COALESCE() expressions (Tom Lane)

    The planner would sometimes attempt to evaluate sub-expressions that in fact could never be reached, possibly leading to unexpected errors.

  • Fix postmaster crash when connection acceptance (accept() or one of the calls made immediately after it) fails, and the postmaster was compiled with GSSAPI support (Alexander Chernikov)

  • Fix missed unlink of temporary files when log_temp_files is active (Tom Lane)

    If an error occurred while attempting to emit the log message, the unlink was not done, resulting in accumulation of temp files.

  • Add print functionality for InhRelation nodes (Tom Lane)

    This avoids a failure when debug_print_parse is enabled and certain types of query are executed.

  • Fix incorrect calculation of distance from a point to a horizontal line segment (Tom Lane)

    This bug affected several different geometric distance-measurement operators.

  • Fix PL/pgSQL's handling of "simple" expressions to not fail in recursion or error-recovery cases (Tom Lane)

  • Fix PL/Python's handling of set-returning functions (Jan Urbanski)

    Attempts to call SPI functions within the iterator generating a set result would fail.

  • Fix bug in contrib/cube's GiST picksplit algorithm (Alexander Korotkov)

    This could result in considerable inefficiency, though not actually incorrect answers, in a GiST index on a cube column. If you have such an index, consider REINDEXing it after installing this update.

  • Don't emit "identifier will be truncated" notices in contrib/dblink except when creating new connections (Itagaki Takahiro)

  • Fix potential coredump on missing public key in contrib/pgcrypto (Marti Raudsepp)

  • Fix memory leak in contrib/xml2's XPath query functions (Tom Lane)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2010o for DST law changes in Fiji and Samoa; also historical corrections for Hong Kong.

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Release 8.3.14 | Up | Release 8.3.12


Release 8.3.12

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.79. Release 8.3.12

Release Date: 2010-10-04

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.3.11. For information about new features in the 8.3 major release, see Section E.91.

E.79.1. Migration to Version 8.3.12

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.3.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.3.8, see Section E.83.

E.79.2. Changes

  • Use a separate interpreter for each calling SQL userid in PL/Perl and PL/Tcl (Tom Lane)

    This change prevents security problems that can be caused by subverting Perl or Tcl code that will be executed later in the same session under another SQL user identity (for example, within a SECURITY DEFINER function). Most scripting languages offer numerous ways that that might be done, such as redefining standard functions or operators called by the target function. Without this change, any SQL user with Perl or Tcl language usage rights can do essentially anything with the SQL privileges of the target function's owner.

    The cost of this change is that intentional communication among Perl and Tcl functions becomes more difficult. To provide an escape hatch, PL/PerlU and PL/TclU functions continue to use only one interpreter per session. This is not considered a security issue since all such functions execute at the trust level of a database superuser already.

    It is likely that third-party procedural languages that claim to offer trusted execution have similar security issues. We advise contacting the authors of any PL you are depending on for security-critical purposes.

    Our thanks to Tim Bunce for pointing out this issue (CVE-2010-3433).

  • Prevent possible crashes in pg_get_expr() by disallowing it from being called with an argument that is not one of the system catalog columns it's intended to be used with (Heikki Linnakangas, Tom Lane)

  • Treat exit code 128 (ERROR_WAIT_NO_CHILDREN) as non-fatal on Windows (Magnus Hagander)

    Under high load, Windows processes will sometimes fail at startup with this error code. Formerly the postmaster treated this as a panic condition and restarted the whole database, but that seems to be an overreaction.

  • Fix incorrect usage of non-strict OR joinclauses in Append indexscans (Tom Lane)

    This is a back-patch of an 8.4 fix that was missed in the 8.3 branch. This corrects an error introduced in 8.3.8 that could cause incorrect results for outer joins when the inner relation is an inheritance tree or UNION ALL subquery.

  • Fix possible duplicate scans of UNION ALL member relations (Tom Lane)

  • Fix "cannot handle unplanned sub-select" error (Tom Lane)

    This occurred when a sub-select contains a join alias reference that expands into an expression containing another sub-select.

  • Fix failure to mark cached plans as transient (Tom Lane)

    If a plan is prepared while CREATE INDEX CONCURRENTLY is in progress for one of the referenced tables, it is supposed to be re-planned once the index is ready for use. This was not happening reliably.

  • Reduce PANIC to ERROR in some occasionally-reported btree failure cases, and provide additional detail in the resulting error messages (Tom Lane)

    This should improve the system's robustness with corrupted indexes.

  • Prevent show_session_authorization() from crashing within autovacuum processes (Tom Lane)

  • Defend against functions returning setof record where not all the returned rows are actually of the same rowtype (Tom Lane)

  • Fix possible failure when hashing a pass-by-reference function result (Tao Ma, Tom Lane)

  • Improve merge join's handling of NULLs in the join columns (Tom Lane)

    A merge join can now stop entirely upon reaching the first NULL, if the sort order is such that NULLs sort high.

  • Take care to fsync the contents of lockfiles (both postmaster.pid and the socket lockfile) while writing them (Tom Lane)

    This omission could result in corrupted lockfile contents if the machine crashes shortly after postmaster start. That could in turn prevent subsequent attempts to start the postmaster from succeeding, until the lockfile is manually removed.

  • Avoid recursion while assigning XIDs to heavily-nested subtransactions (Andres Freund, Robert Haas)

    The original coding could result in a crash if there was limited stack space.

  • Avoid holding open old WAL segments in the walwriter process (Magnus Hagander, Heikki Linnakangas)

    The previous coding would prevent removal of no-longer-needed segments.

  • Fix log_line_prefix's %i escape, which could produce junk early in backend startup (Tom Lane)

  • Fix possible data corruption in ALTER TABLE ... SET TABLESPACE when archiving is enabled (Jeff Davis)

  • Allow CREATE DATABASE and ALTER DATABASE ... SET TABLESPACE to be interrupted by query-cancel (Guillaume Lelarge)

  • Fix REASSIGN OWNED to handle operator classes and families (Asko Tiidumaa)

  • Fix possible core dump when comparing two empty tsquery values (Tom Lane)

  • Fix LIKE's handling of patterns containing % followed by _ (Tom Lane)

    We've fixed this before, but there were still some incorrectly-handled cases.

  • In PL/Python, defend against null pointer results from PyCObject_AsVoidPtr and PyCObject_FromVoidPtr (Peter Eisentraut)

  • Make psql recognize DISCARD ALL as a command that should not be encased in a transaction block in autocommit-off mode (Itagaki Takahiro)

  • Fix ecpg to process data from RETURNING clauses correctly (Michael Meskes)

  • Improve contrib/dblink's handling of tables containing dropped columns (Tom Lane)

  • Fix connection leak after "duplicate connection name" errors in contrib/dblink (Itagaki Takahiro)

  • Fix contrib/dblink to handle connection names longer than 62 bytes correctly (Itagaki Takahiro)

  • Add hstore(text, text) function to contrib/hstore (Robert Haas)

    This function is the recommended substitute for the now-deprecated => operator. It was back-patched so that future-proofed code can be used with older server versions. Note that the patch will be effective only after contrib/hstore is installed or reinstalled in a particular database. Users might prefer to execute the CREATE FUNCTION command by hand, instead.

  • Update build infrastructure and documentation to reflect the source code repository's move from CVS to Git (Magnus Hagander and others)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2010l for DST law changes in Egypt and Palestine; also historical corrections for Finland.

    This change also adds new names for two Micronesian timezones: Pacific/Chuuk is now preferred over Pacific/Truk (and the preferred abbreviation is CHUT not TRUT) and Pacific/Pohnpei is preferred over Pacific/Ponape.

  • Make Windows' "N. Central Asia Standard Time" timezone map to Asia/Novosibirsk, not Asia/Almaty (Magnus Hagander)

    Microsoft changed the DST behavior of this zone in the timezone update from KB976098. Asia/Novosibirsk is a better match to its new behavior.

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Release 8.3.13 | Up | Release 8.3.11


Release 8.3.11

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.80. Release 8.3.11

Release Date: 2010-05-17

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.3.10. For information about new features in the 8.3 major release, see Section E.91.

E.80.1. Migration to Version 8.3.11

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.3.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.3.8, see Section E.83.

E.80.2. Changes

  • Enforce restrictions in plperl using an opmask applied to the whole interpreter, instead of using Safe.pm (Tim Bunce, Andrew Dunstan)

    Recent developments have convinced us that Safe.pm is too insecure to rely on for making plperl trustable. This change removes use of Safe.pm altogether, in favor of using a separate interpreter with an opcode mask that is always applied. Pleasant side effects of the change include that it is now possible to use Perl's strict pragma in a natural way in plperl, and that Perl's $a and $b variables work as expected in sort routines, and that function compilation is significantly faster. (CVE-2010-1169)

  • Prevent PL/Tcl from executing untrustworthy code from pltcl_modules (Tom)

    PL/Tcl's feature for autoloading Tcl code from a database table could be exploited for trojan-horse attacks, because there was no restriction on who could create or insert into that table. This change disables the feature unless pltcl_modules is owned by a superuser. (However, the permissions on the table are not checked, so installations that really need a less-than-secure modules table can still grant suitable privileges to trusted non-superusers.) Also, prevent loading code into the unrestricted "normal" Tcl interpreter unless we are really going to execute a pltclu function. (CVE-2010-1170)

  • Fix possible crash if a cache reset message is received during rebuild of a relcache entry (Heikki)

    This error was introduced in 8.3.10 while fixing a related failure.

  • Apply per-function GUC settings while running the language validator for the function (Itagaki Takahiro)

    This avoids failures if the function's code is invalid without the setting; an example is that SQL functions may not parse if the search_path is not correct.

  • Do not allow an unprivileged user to reset superuser-only parameter settings (Alvaro)

    Previously, if an unprivileged user ran ALTER USER ... RESET ALL for himself, or ALTER DATABASE ... RESET ALL for a database he owns, this would remove all special parameter settings for the user or database, even ones that are only supposed to be changeable by a superuser. Now, the ALTER will only remove the parameters that the user has permission to change.

  • Avoid possible crash during backend shutdown if shutdown occurs when a CONTEXT addition would be made to log entries (Tom)

    In some cases the context-printing function would fail because the current transaction had already been rolled back when it came time to print a log message.

  • Ensure the archiver process responds to changes in archive_command as soon as possible (Tom)

  • Update pl/perl's ppport.h for modern Perl versions (Andrew)

  • Fix assorted memory leaks in pl/python (Andreas Freund, Tom)

  • Prevent infinite recursion in psql when expanding a variable that refers to itself (Tom)

  • Fix psql's \copy to not add spaces around a dot within \copy (select ...) (Tom)

    Addition of spaces around the decimal point in a numeric literal would result in a syntax error.

  • Fix unnecessary "GIN indexes do not support whole-index scans" errors for unsatisfiable queries using contrib/intarray operators (Tom)

  • Ensure that contrib/pgstattuple functions respond to cancel interrupts promptly (Tatsuhito Kasahara)

  • Make server startup deal properly with the case that shmget() returns EINVAL for an existing shared memory segment (Tom)

    This behavior has been observed on BSD-derived kernels including OS X. It resulted in an entirely-misleading startup failure complaining that the shared memory request size was too large.

  • Avoid possible crashes in syslogger process on Windows (Heikki)

  • Deal more robustly with incomplete time zone information in the Windows registry (Magnus)

  • Update the set of known Windows time zone names (Magnus)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2010j for DST law changes in Argentina, Australian Antarctic, Bangladesh, Mexico, Morocco, Pakistan, Palestine, Russia, Syria, Tunisia; also historical corrections for Taiwan.

    Also, add PKST (Pakistan Summer Time) to the default set of timezone abbreviations.

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Release 8.3.12 | Up | Release 8.3.10


Release 8.3.10

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.81. Release 8.3.10

Release Date: 2010-03-15

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.3.9. For information about new features in the 8.3 major release, see Section E.91.

E.81.1. Migration to Version 8.3.10

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.3.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.3.8, see Section E.83.

E.81.2. Changes

  • Add new configuration parameter ssl_renegotiation_limit to control how often we do session key renegotiation for an SSL connection (Magnus)

    This can be set to zero to disable renegotiation completely, which may be required if a broken SSL library is used. In particular, some vendors are shipping stopgap patches for CVE-2009-3555 that cause renegotiation attempts to fail.

  • Fix possible deadlock during backend startup (Tom)

  • Fix possible crashes due to not handling errors during relcache reload cleanly (Tom)

  • Fix possible crash due to use of dangling pointer to a cached plan (Tatsuo)

  • Fix possible crashes when trying to recover from a failure in subtransaction start (Tom)

  • Fix server memory leak associated with use of savepoints and a client encoding different from server's encoding (Tom)

  • Fix incorrect WAL data emitted during end-of-recovery cleanup of a GIST index page split (Yoichi Hirai)

    This would result in index corruption, or even more likely an error during WAL replay, if we were unlucky enough to crash during end-of-recovery cleanup after having completed an incomplete GIST insertion.

  • Make substring() for bit types treat any negative length as meaning "all the rest of the string" (Tom)

    The previous coding treated only -1 that way, and would produce an invalid result value for other negative values, possibly leading to a crash (CVE-2010-0442).

  • Fix integer-to-bit-string conversions to handle the first fractional byte correctly when the output bit width is wider than the given integer by something other than a multiple of 8 bits (Tom)

  • Fix some cases of pathologically slow regular expression matching (Tom)

  • Fix assorted crashes in xml processing caused by sloppy memory management (Tom)

    This is a back-patch of changes first applied in 8.4. The 8.3 code was known buggy, but the new code was sufficiently different to not want to back-patch it until it had gotten some field testing.

  • Fix bug with trying to update a field of an element of a composite-type array column (Tom)

  • Fix the STOP WAL LOCATION entry in backup history files to report the next WAL segment's name when the end location is exactly at a segment boundary (Itagaki Takahiro)

  • Fix some more cases of temporary-file leakage (Heikki)

    This corrects a problem introduced in the previous minor release. One case that failed is when a plpgsql function returning set is called within another function's exception handler.

  • Improve constraint exclusion processing of boolean-variable cases, in particular make it possible to exclude a partition that has a "bool_column = false" constraint (Tom)

  • When reading pg_hba.conf and related files, do not treat @something as a file inclusion request if the @ appears inside quote marks; also, never treat @ by itself as a file inclusion request (Tom)

    This prevents erratic behavior if a role or database name starts with @. If you need to include a file whose path name contains spaces, you can still do so, but you must write @"/path to/file" rather than putting the quotes around the whole construct.

  • Prevent infinite loop on some platforms if a directory is named as an inclusion target in pg_hba.conf and related files (Tom)

  • Fix possible infinite loop if SSL_read or SSL_write fails without setting errno (Tom)

    This is reportedly possible with some Windows versions of openssl.

  • Disallow GSSAPI authentication on local connections, since it requires a hostname to function correctly (Magnus)

  • Make ecpg report the proper SQLSTATE if the connection disappears (Michael)

  • Fix psql's numericlocale option to not format strings it shouldn't in latex and troff output formats (Heikki)

  • Make psql return the correct exit status (3) when ON_ERROR_STOP and --single-transaction are both specified and an error occurs during the implied COMMIT (Bruce)

  • Fix plpgsql failure in one case where a composite column is set to NULL (Tom)

  • Fix possible failure when calling PL/Perl functions from PL/PerlU or vice versa (Tim Bunce)

  • Add volatile markings in PL/Python to avoid possible compiler-specific misbehavior (Zdenek Kotala)

  • Ensure PL/Tcl initializes the Tcl interpreter fully (Tom)

    The only known symptom of this oversight is that the Tcl clock command misbehaves if using Tcl 8.5 or later.

  • Prevent crash in contrib/dblink when too many key columns are specified to a dblink_build_sql_* function (Rushabh Lathia, Joe Conway)

  • Allow zero-dimensional arrays in contrib/ltree operations (Tom)

    This case was formerly rejected as an error, but it's more convenient to treat it the same as a zero-element array. In particular this avoids unnecessary failures when an ltree operation is applied to the result of ARRAY(SELECT ...) and the sub-select returns no rows.

  • Fix assorted crashes in contrib/xml2 caused by sloppy memory management (Tom)

  • Make building of contrib/xml2 more robust on Windows (Andrew)

  • Fix race condition in Windows signal handling (Radu Ilie)

    One known symptom of this bug is that rows in pg_listener could be dropped under heavy load.

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2010e for DST law changes in Bangladesh, Chile, Fiji, Mexico, Paraguay, Samoa.

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Release 8.3.11 | Up | Release 8.3.9


Release 8.3.9

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.82. Release 8.3.9

Release Date: 2009-12-14

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.3.8. For information about new features in the 8.3 major release, see Section E.91.

E.82.1. Migration to Version 8.3.9

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.3.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.3.8, see Section E.83.

E.82.2. Changes

  • Protect against indirect security threats caused by index functions changing session-local state (Gurjeet Singh, Tom)

    This change prevents allegedly-immutable index functions from possibly subverting a superuser's session (CVE-2009-4136).

  • Reject SSL certificates containing an embedded null byte in the common name (CN) field (Magnus)

    This prevents unintended matching of a certificate to a server or client name during SSL validation (CVE-2009-4034).

  • Fix possible crash during backend-startup-time cache initialization (Tom)

  • Avoid crash on empty thesaurus dictionary (Tom)

  • Prevent signals from interrupting VACUUM at unsafe times (Alvaro)

    This fix prevents a PANIC if a VACUUM FULL is canceled after it's already committed its tuple movements, as well as transient errors if a plain VACUUM is interrupted after having truncated the table.

  • Fix possible crash due to integer overflow in hash table size calculation (Tom)

    This could occur with extremely large planner estimates for the size of a hashjoin's result.

  • Fix very rare crash in inet/cidr comparisons (Chris Mikkelson)

  • Ensure that shared tuple-level locks held by prepared transactions are not ignored (Heikki)

  • Fix premature drop of temporary files used for a cursor that is accessed within a subtransaction (Heikki)

  • Fix memory leak in syslogger process when rotating to a new CSV logfile (Tom)

  • Fix Windows permission-downgrade logic (Jesse Morris)

    This fixes some cases where the database failed to start on Windows, often with misleading error messages such as "could not locate matching postgres executable".

  • Fix incorrect logic for GiST index page splits, when the split depends on a non-first column of the index (Paul Ramsey)

  • Don't error out if recycling or removing an old WAL file fails at the end of checkpoint (Heikki)

    It's better to treat the problem as non-fatal and allow the checkpoint to complete. Future checkpoints will retry the removal. Such problems are not expected in normal operation, but have been seen to be caused by misdesigned Windows anti-virus and backup software.

  • Ensure WAL files aren't repeatedly archived on Windows (Heikki)

    This is another symptom that could happen if some other process interfered with deletion of a no-longer-needed file.

  • Fix PAM password processing to be more robust (Tom)

    The previous code is known to fail with the combination of the Linux pam_krb5 PAM module with Microsoft Active Directory as the domain controller. It might have problems elsewhere too, since it was making unjustified assumptions about what arguments the PAM stack would pass to it.

  • Raise the maximum authentication token (Kerberos ticket) size in GSSAPI and SSPI authentication methods (Ian Turner)

    While the old 2000-byte limit was more than enough for Unix Kerberos implementations, tickets issued by Windows Domain Controllers can be much larger.

  • Re-enable collection of access statistics for sequences (Akira Kurosawa)

    This used to work but was broken in 8.3.

  • Fix processing of ownership dependencies during CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION (Tom)

  • Fix incorrect handling of WHERE x=x conditions (Tom)

    In some cases these could get ignored as redundant, but they aren't — they're equivalent to x IS NOT NULL.

  • Make text search parser accept underscores in XML attributes (Peter)

  • Fix encoding handling in xml binary input (Heikki)

    If the XML header doesn't specify an encoding, we now assume UTF-8 by default; the previous handling was inconsistent.

  • Fix bug with calling plperl from plperlu or vice versa (Tom)

    An error exit from the inner function could result in crashes due to failure to re-select the correct Perl interpreter for the outer function.

  • Fix session-lifespan memory leak when a PL/Perl function is redefined (Tom)

  • Ensure that Perl arrays are properly converted to PostgreSQL arrays when returned by a set-returning PL/Perl function (Andrew Dunstan, Abhijit Menon-Sen)

    This worked correctly already for non-set-returning functions.

  • Fix rare crash in exception processing in PL/Python (Peter)

  • In contrib/pg_standby, disable triggering failover with a signal on Windows (Fujii Masao)

    This never did anything useful, because Windows doesn't have Unix-style signals, but recent changes made it actually crash.

  • Ensure psql's flex module is compiled with the correct system header definitions (Tom)

    This fixes build failures on platforms where --enable-largefile causes incompatible changes in the generated code.

  • Make the postmaster ignore any application_name parameter in connection request packets, to improve compatibility with future libpq versions (Tom)

  • Update the timezone abbreviation files to match current reality (Joachim Wieland)

    This includes adding IDT and SGT to the default timezone abbreviation set.

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2009s for DST law changes in Antarctica, Argentina, Bangladesh, Fiji, Novokuznetsk, Pakistan, Palestine, Samoa, Syria; also historical corrections for Hong Kong.

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Release 8.3.10 | Up | Release 8.3.8


Release 8.3.8

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.83. Release 8.3.8

Release Date: 2009-09-09

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.3.7. For information about new features in the 8.3 major release, see Section E.91.

E.83.1. Migration to Version 8.3.8

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.3.X. However, if you have any hash indexes on interval columns, you must REINDEX them after updating to 8.3.8. Also, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.3.5, see Section E.86.

E.83.2. Changes

  • Fix Windows shared-memory allocation code (Tsutomu Yamada, Magnus)

    This bug led to the often-reported "could not reattach to shared memory" error message.

  • Force WAL segment switch during pg_start_backup() (Heikki)

    This avoids corner cases that could render a base backup unusable.

  • Disallow RESET ROLE and RESET SESSION AUTHORIZATION inside security-definer functions (Tom, Heikki)

    This covers a case that was missed in the previous patch that disallowed SET ROLE and SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION inside security-definer functions. (See CVE-2007-6600)

  • Make LOAD of an already-loaded loadable module into a no-op (Tom)

    Formerly, LOAD would attempt to unload and re-load the module, but this is unsafe and not all that useful.

  • Disallow empty passwords during LDAP authentication (Magnus)

  • Fix handling of sub-SELECTs appearing in the arguments of an outer-level aggregate function (Tom)

  • Fix bugs associated with fetching a whole-row value from the output of a Sort or Materialize plan node (Tom)

  • Prevent synchronize_seqscans from changing the results of scrollable and WITH HOLD cursors (Tom)

  • Revert planner change that disabled partial-index and constraint exclusion optimizations when there were more than 100 clauses in an AND or OR list (Tom)

  • Fix hash calculation for data type interval (Tom)

    This corrects wrong results for hash joins on interval values. It also changes the contents of hash indexes on interval columns. If you have any such indexes, you must REINDEX them after updating.

  • Treat to_char(..., 'TH') as an uppercase ordinal suffix with 'HH'/'HH12' (Heikki)

    It was previously handled as 'th' (lowercase).

  • Fix overflow for INTERVAL 'x ms' when x is more than 2 million and integer datetimes are in use (Alex Hunsaker)

  • Fix calculation of distance between a point and a line segment (Tom)

    This led to incorrect results from a number of geometric operators.

  • Fix money data type to work in locales where currency amounts have no fractional digits, e.g. Japan (Itagaki Takahiro)

  • Fix LIKE for case where pattern contains %_ (Tom)

  • Properly round datetime input like 00:12:57.9999999999999999999999999999 (Tom)

  • Fix memory leaks in XML operations (Tom)

  • Fix poor choice of page split point in GiST R-tree operator classes (Teodor)

  • Ensure that a "fast shutdown" request will forcibly terminate open sessions, even if a "smart shutdown" was already in progress (Fujii Masao)

  • Avoid performance degradation in bulk inserts into GIN indexes when the input values are (nearly) in sorted order (Tom)

  • Correctly enforce NOT NULL domain constraints in some contexts in PL/pgSQL (Tom)

  • Fix portability issues in plperl initialization (Andrew Dunstan)

  • Fix pg_ctl to not go into an infinite loop if postgresql.conf is empty (Jeff Davis)

  • Improve pg_dump's efficiency when there are many large objects (Tamas Vincze)

  • Use SIGUSR1, not SIGQUIT, as the failover signal for pg_standby (Heikki)

  • Make pg_standby's maxretries option behave as documented (Fujii Masao)

  • Make contrib/hstore throw an error when a key or value is too long to fit in its data structure, rather than silently truncating it (Andrew Gierth)

  • Fix contrib/xml2's xslt_process() to properly handle the maximum number of parameters (twenty) (Tom)

  • Improve robustness of libpq's code to recover from errors during COPY FROM STDIN (Tom)

  • Avoid including conflicting readline and editline header files when both libraries are installed (Zdenek Kotala)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2009l for DST law changes in Bangladesh, Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, Argentina/San_Luis, Cuba, Jordan (historical correction only), Mauritius, Morocco, Palestine, Syria, Tunisia.

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Release 8.3.9 | Up | Release 8.3.7


Release 8.3.7

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.84. Release 8.3.7

Release Date: 2009-03-16

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.3.6. For information about new features in the 8.3 major release, see Section E.91.

E.84.1. Migration to Version 8.3.7

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.3.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.3.5, see Section E.86.

E.84.2. Changes

  • Prevent error recursion crashes when encoding conversion fails (Tom)

    This change extends fixes made in the last two minor releases for related failure scenarios. The previous fixes were narrowly tailored for the original problem reports, but we have now recognized that any error thrown by an encoding conversion function could potentially lead to infinite recursion while trying to report the error. The solution therefore is to disable translation and encoding conversion and report the plain-ASCII form of any error message, if we find we have gotten into a recursive error reporting situation. (CVE-2009-0922)

  • Disallow CREATE CONVERSION with the wrong encodings for the specified conversion function (Heikki)

    This prevents one possible scenario for encoding conversion failure. The previous change is a backstop to guard against other kinds of failures in the same area.

  • Fix xpath() to not modify the path expression unless necessary, and to make a saner attempt at it when necessary (Andrew)

    The SQL standard suggests that xpath should work on data that is a document fragment, but libxml doesn't support that, and indeed it's not clear that this is sensible according to the XPath standard. xpath attempted to work around this mismatch by modifying both the data and the path expression, but the modification was buggy and could cause valid searches to fail. Now, xpath checks whether the data is in fact a well-formed document, and if so invokes libxml with no change to the data or path expression. Otherwise, a different modification method that is somewhat less likely to fail is used.

    Note: The new modification method is still not 100% satisfactory, and it seems likely that no real solution is possible. This patch should therefore be viewed as a band-aid to keep from breaking existing applications unnecessarily. It is likely that PostgreSQL 8.4 will simply reject use of xpath on data that is not a well-formed document.

  • Fix core dump when to_char() is given format codes that are inappropriate for the type of the data argument (Tom)

  • Fix possible failure in text search when C locale is used with a multi-byte encoding (Teodor)

    Crashes were possible on platforms where wchar_t is narrower than int; Windows in particular.

  • Fix extreme inefficiency in text search parser's handling of an email-like string containing multiple @ characters (Heikki)

  • Fix planner problem with sub-SELECT in the output list of a larger subquery (Tom)

    The known symptom of this bug is a "failed to locate grouping columns" error that is dependent on the datatype involved; but there could be other issues as well.

  • Fix decompilation of CASE WHEN with an implicit coercion (Tom)

    This mistake could lead to Assert failures in an Assert-enabled build, or an "unexpected CASE WHEN clause" error message in other cases, when trying to examine or dump a view.

  • Fix possible misassignment of the owner of a TOAST table's rowtype (Tom)

    If CLUSTER or a rewriting variant of ALTER TABLE were executed by someone other than the table owner, the pg_type entry for the table's TOAST table would end up marked as owned by that someone. This caused no immediate problems, since the permissions on the TOAST rowtype aren't examined by any ordinary database operation. However, it could lead to unexpected failures if one later tried to drop the role that issued the command (in 8.1 or 8.2), or "owner of data type appears to be invalid" warnings from pg_dump after having done so (in 8.3).

  • Change UNLISTEN to exit quickly if the current session has never executed any LISTEN command (Tom)

    Most of the time this is not a particularly useful optimization, but since DISCARD ALL invokes UNLISTEN, the previous coding caused a substantial performance problem for applications that made heavy use of DISCARD ALL.

  • Fix PL/pgSQL to not treat INTO after INSERT as an INTO-variables clause anywhere in the string, not only at the start; in particular, don't fail for INSERT INTO within CREATE RULE (Tom)

  • Clean up PL/pgSQL error status variables fully at block exit (Ashesh Vashi and Dave Page)

    This is not a problem for PL/pgSQL itself, but the omission could cause the PL/pgSQL Debugger to crash while examining the state of a function.

  • Retry failed calls to CallNamedPipe() on Windows (Steve Marshall, Magnus)

    It appears that this function can sometimes fail transiently; we previously treated any failure as a hard error, which could confuse LISTEN/NOTIFY as well as other operations.

  • Add MUST (Mauritius Island Summer Time) to the default list of known timezone abbreviations (Xavier Bugaud)

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Release 8.3.8 | Up | Release 8.3.6


Release 8.3.6

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.85. Release 8.3.6

Release Date: 2009-02-02

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.3.5. For information about new features in the 8.3 major release, see Section E.91.

E.85.1. Migration to Version 8.3.6

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.3.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.3.5, see Section E.86.

E.85.2. Changes

  • Make DISCARD ALL release advisory locks, in addition to everything it already did (Tom)

    This was decided to be the most appropriate behavior. This could affect existing applications, however.

  • Fix whole-index GiST scans to work correctly (Teodor)

    This error could cause rows to be lost if a table is clustered on a GiST index.

  • Fix crash of xmlconcat(NULL) (Peter)

  • Fix possible crash in ispell dictionary if high-bit-set characters are used as flags (Teodor)

    This is known to be done by one widely available Norwegian dictionary, and the same condition may exist in others.

  • Fix misordering of pg_dump output for composite types (Tom)

    The most likely problem was for user-defined operator classes to be dumped after indexes or views that needed them.

  • Improve handling of URLs in headline() function (Teodor)

  • Improve handling of overlength headlines in headline() function (Teodor)

  • Prevent possible Assert failure or misconversion if an encoding conversion is created with the wrong conversion function for the specified pair of encodings (Tom, Heikki)

  • Fix possible Assert failure if a statement executed in PL/pgSQL is rewritten into another kind of statement, for example if an INSERT is rewritten into an UPDATE (Heikki)

  • Ensure that a snapshot is available to datatype input functions (Tom)

    This primarily affects domains that are declared with CHECK constraints involving user-defined stable or immutable functions. Such functions typically fail if no snapshot has been set.

  • Make it safer for SPI-using functions to be used within datatype I/O; in particular, to be used in domain check constraints (Tom)

  • Avoid unnecessary locking of small tables in VACUUM (Heikki)

  • Fix a problem that sometimes kept ALTER TABLE ENABLE/DISABLE RULE from being recognized by active sessions (Tom)

  • Fix a problem that made UPDATE RETURNING tableoid return zero instead of the correct OID (Tom)

  • Allow functions declared as taking ANYARRAY to work on the pg_statistic columns of that type (Tom)

    This used to work, but was unintentionally broken in 8.3.

  • Fix planner misestimation of selectivity when transitive equality is applied to an outer-join clause (Tom)

    This could result in bad plans for queries like ... from a left join b on a.a1 = b.b1 where a.a1 = 42 ...

  • Improve optimizer's handling of long IN lists (Tom)

    This change avoids wasting large amounts of time on such lists when constraint exclusion is enabled.

  • Prevent synchronous scan during GIN index build (Tom)

    Because GIN is optimized for inserting tuples in increasing TID order, choosing to use a synchronous scan could slow the build by a factor of three or more.

  • Ensure that the contents of a holdable cursor don't depend on the contents of TOAST tables (Tom)

    Previously, large field values in a cursor result might be represented as TOAST pointers, which would fail if the referenced table got dropped before the cursor is read, or if the large value is deleted and then vacuumed away. This cannot happen with an ordinary cursor, but it could with a cursor that is held past its creating transaction.

  • Fix memory leak when a set-returning function is terminated without reading its whole result (Tom)

  • Fix encoding conversion problems in XML functions when the database encoding isn't UTF-8 (Tom)

  • Fix contrib/dblink's dblink_get_result(text,bool) function (Joe)

  • Fix possible garbage output from contrib/sslinfo functions (Tom)

  • Fix incorrect behavior of contrib/tsearch2 compatibility trigger when it's fired more than once in a command (Teodor)

  • Fix possible mis-signaling in autovacuum (Heikki)

  • Support running as a service on Windows 7 beta (Dave and Magnus)

  • Fix ecpg's handling of varchar structs (Michael)

  • Fix configure script to properly report failure when unable to obtain linkage information for PL/Perl (Andrew)

  • Make all documentation reference pgsql-bugs and/or pgsql-hackers as appropriate, instead of the now-decommissioned pgsql-ports and pgsql-patches mailing lists (Tom)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2009a (for Kathmandu and historical DST corrections in Switzerland, Cuba)

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Release 8.3.7 | Up | Release 8.3.5


Release 8.3.5

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E.86. Release 8.3.5

Release Date: 2008-11-03

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.3.4. For information about new features in the 8.3 major release, see Section E.91.

E.86.1. Migration to Version 8.3.5

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.3.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.3.1, see Section E.90. Also, if you were running a previous 8.3.X release, it is recommended to REINDEX all GiST indexes after the upgrade.

E.86.2. Changes

  • Fix GiST index corruption due to marking the wrong index entry "dead" after a deletion (Teodor)

    This would result in index searches failing to find rows they should have found. Corrupted indexes can be fixed with REINDEX.

  • Fix backend crash when the client encoding cannot represent a localized error message (Tom)

    We have addressed similar issues before, but it would still fail if the "character has no equivalent" message itself couldn't be converted. The fix is to disable localization and send the plain ASCII error message when we detect such a situation.

  • Fix possible crash in bytea-to-XML mapping (Michael McMaster)

  • Fix possible crash when deeply nested functions are invoked from a trigger (Tom)

  • Improve optimization of expression IN (expression-list) queries (Tom, per an idea from Robert Haas)

    Cases in which there are query variables on the right-hand side had been handled less efficiently in 8.2.x and 8.3.x than in prior versions. The fix restores 8.1 behavior for such cases.

  • Fix mis-expansion of rule queries when a sub-SELECT appears in a function call in FROM, a multi-row VALUES list, or a RETURNING list (Tom)

    The usual symptom of this problem is an "unrecognized node type" error.

  • Fix Assert failure during rescan of an IS NULL search of a GiST index (Teodor)

  • Fix memory leak during rescan of a hashed aggregation plan (Neil)

  • Ensure an error is reported when a newly-defined PL/pgSQL trigger function is invoked as a normal function (Tom)

  • Force a checkpoint before CREATE DATABASE starts to copy files (Heikki)

    This prevents a possible failure if files had recently been deleted in the source database.

  • Prevent possible collision of relfilenode numbers when moving a table to another tablespace with ALTER SET TABLESPACE (Heikki)

    The command tried to re-use the existing filename, instead of picking one that is known unused in the destination directory.

  • Fix incorrect text search headline generation when single query item matches first word of text (Sushant Sinha)

  • Fix improper display of fractional seconds in interval values when using a non-ISO datestyle in an --enable-integer-datetimes build (Ron Mayer)

  • Make ILIKE compare characters case-insensitively even when they're escaped (Andrew)

  • Ensure DISCARD is handled properly by statement logging (Tom)

  • Fix incorrect logging of last-completed-transaction time during PITR recovery (Tom)

  • Ensure SPI_getvalue and SPI_getbinval behave correctly when the passed tuple and tuple descriptor have different numbers of columns (Tom)

    This situation is normal when a table has had columns added or removed, but these two functions didn't handle it properly. The only likely consequence is an incorrect error indication.

  • Mark SessionReplicationRole as PGDLLIMPORT so it can be used by Slony on Windows (Magnus)

  • Fix small memory leak when using libpq's gsslib parameter (Magnus)

    The space used by the parameter string was not freed at connection close.

  • Ensure libgssapi is linked into libpq if needed (Markus Schaaf)

  • Fix ecpg's parsing of CREATE ROLE (Michael)

  • Fix recent breakage of pg_ctl restart (Tom)

  • Ensure pg_control is opened in binary mode (Itagaki Takahiro)

    pg_controldata and pg_resetxlog did this incorrectly, and so could fail on Windows.

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2008i (for DST law changes in Argentina, Brazil, Mauritius, Syria)

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Release 8.3.4

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E.87. Release 8.3.4

Release Date: 2008-09-22

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.3.3. For information about new features in the 8.3 major release, see Section E.91.

E.87.1. Migration to Version 8.3.4

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.3.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.3.1, see Section E.90.

E.87.2. Changes

  • Fix bug in btree WAL recovery code (Heikki)

    Recovery failed if the WAL ended partway through a page split operation.

  • Fix potential use of wrong cutoff XID for HOT page pruning (Alvaro)

    This error created a risk of corruption in system catalogs that are consulted by VACUUM: dead tuple versions might be removed too soon. The impact of this on actual database operations would be minimal, since the system doesn't follow MVCC rules while examining catalogs, but it might result in transiently wrong output from pg_dump or other client programs.

  • Fix potential miscalculation of datfrozenxid (Alvaro)

    This error may explain some recent reports of failure to remove old pg_clog data.

  • Fix incorrect HOT updates after pg_class is reindexed (Tom)

    Corruption of pg_class could occur if REINDEX TABLE pg_class was followed in the same session by an ALTER TABLE RENAME or ALTER TABLE SET SCHEMA command.

  • Fix missed "combo cid" case (Karl Schnaitter)

    This error made rows incorrectly invisible to a transaction in which they had been deleted by multiple subtransactions that all aborted.

  • Prevent autovacuum from crashing if the table it's currently checking is deleted at just the wrong time (Alvaro)

  • Widen local lock counters from 32 to 64 bits (Tom)

    This responds to reports that the counters could overflow in sufficiently long transactions, leading to unexpected "lock is already held" errors.

  • Fix possible duplicate output of tuples during a GiST index scan (Teodor)

  • Regenerate foreign key checking queries from scratch when either table is modified (Tom)

    Previously, 8.3 would attempt to replan the query, but would work from previously generated query text. This led to failures if a table or column was renamed.

  • Fix missed permissions checks when a view contains a simple UNION ALL construct (Heikki)

    Permissions for the referenced tables were checked properly, but not permissions for the view itself.

  • Add checks in executor startup to ensure that the tuples produced by an INSERT or UPDATE will match the target table's current rowtype (Tom)

    This situation is believed to be impossible in 8.3, but it can happen in prior releases, so a check seems prudent.

  • Fix possible repeated drops during DROP OWNED (Tom)

    This would typically result in strange errors such as "cache lookup failed for relation NNN".

  • Fix several memory leaks in XML operations (Kris Jurka, Tom)

  • Fix xmlserialize() to raise error properly for unacceptable target data type (Tom)

  • Fix a couple of places that mis-handled multibyte characters in text search configuration file parsing (Tom)

    Certain characters occurring in configuration files would always cause "invalid byte sequence for encoding" failures.

  • Provide file name and line number location for all errors reported in text search configuration files (Tom)

  • Fix AT TIME ZONE to first try to interpret its timezone argument as a timezone abbreviation, and only try it as a full timezone name if that fails, rather than the other way around as formerly (Tom)

    The timestamp input functions have always resolved ambiguous zone names in this order. Making AT TIME ZONE do so as well improves consistency, and fixes a compatibility bug introduced in 8.1: in ambiguous cases we now behave the same as 8.0 and before did, since in the older versions AT TIME ZONE accepted only abbreviations.

  • Fix datetime input functions to correctly detect integer overflow when running on a 64-bit platform (Tom)

  • Prevent integer overflows during units conversion when displaying a configuration parameter that has units (Tom)

  • Improve performance of writing very long log messages to syslog (Tom)

  • Allow spaces in the suffix part of an LDAP URL in pg_hba.conf (Tom)

  • Fix bug in backwards scanning of a cursor on a SELECT DISTINCT ON query (Tom)

  • Fix planner bug that could improperly push down IS NULL tests below an outer join (Tom)

    This was triggered by occurrence of IS NULL tests for the same relation in all arms of an upper OR clause.

  • Fix planner bug with nested sub-select expressions (Tom)

    If the outer sub-select has no direct dependency on the parent query, but the inner one does, the outer value might not get recalculated for new parent query rows.

  • Fix planner to estimate that GROUP BY expressions yielding boolean results always result in two groups, regardless of the expressions' contents (Tom)

    This is very substantially more accurate than the regular GROUP BY estimate for certain boolean tests like col IS NULL.

  • Fix PL/pgSQL to not fail when a FOR loop's target variable is a record containing composite-type fields (Tom)

  • Fix PL/Tcl to behave correctly with Tcl 8.5, and to be more careful about the encoding of data sent to or from Tcl (Tom)

  • Improve performance of PQescapeBytea() (Rudolf Leitgeb)

  • On Windows, work around a Microsoft bug by preventing libpq from trying to send more than 64kB per system call (Magnus)

  • Fix ecpg to handle variables properly in SET commands (Michael)

  • Improve pg_dump and pg_restore's error reporting after failure to send a SQL command (Tom)

  • Fix pg_ctl to properly preserve postmaster command-line arguments across a restart (Bruce)

  • Fix erroneous WAL file cutoff point calculation in pg_standby (Simon)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2008f (for DST law changes in Argentina, Bahamas, Brazil, Mauritius, Morocco, Pakistan, Palestine, and Paraguay)

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Release 8.3.3

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E.88. Release 8.3.3

Release Date: 2008-06-12

This release contains one serious and one minor bug fix over 8.3.2. For information about new features in the 8.3 major release, see Section E.91.

E.88.1. Migration to Version 8.3.3

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.3.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.3.1, see Section E.90.

E.88.2. Changes

  • Make pg_get_ruledef() parenthesize negative constants (Tom)

    Before this fix, a negative constant in a view or rule might be dumped as, say, -42::integer, which is subtly incorrect: it should be (-42)::integer due to operator precedence rules. Usually this would make little difference, but it could interact with another recent patch to cause PostgreSQL to reject what had been a valid SELECT DISTINCT view query. Since this could result in pg_dump output failing to reload, it is being treated as a high-priority fix. The only released versions in which dump output is actually incorrect are 8.3.1 and 8.2.7.

  • Make ALTER AGGREGATE ... OWNER TO update pg_shdepend (Tom)

    This oversight could lead to problems if the aggregate was later involved in a DROP OWNED or REASSIGN OWNED operation.

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Release 8.3.2

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E.89. Release 8.3.2

Release Date: never released

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.3.1. For information about new features in the 8.3 major release, see Section E.91.

E.89.1. Migration to Version 8.3.2

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.3.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.3.1, see Section E.90.

E.89.2. Changes

  • Fix ERRORDATA_STACK_SIZE exceeded crash that occurred on Windows when using UTF-8 database encoding and a different client encoding (Tom)

  • Fix incorrect archive truncation point calculation for the %r macro in recovery_command parameters (Simon)

    This could lead to data loss if a warm-standby script relied on %r to decide when to throw away WAL segment files.

  • Fix ALTER TABLE ADD COLUMN ... PRIMARY KEY so that the new column is correctly checked to see if it's been initialized to all non-nulls (Brendan Jurd)

    Previous versions neglected to check this requirement at all.

  • Fix REASSIGN OWNED so that it works on procedural languages too (Alvaro)

  • Fix problems with SELECT FOR UPDATE/SHARE occurring as a subquery in a query with a non-SELECT top-level operation (Tom)

  • Fix possible CREATE TABLE failure when inheriting the "same" constraint from multiple parent relations that inherited that constraint from a common ancestor (Tom)

  • Fix pg_get_ruledef() to show the alias, if any, attached to the target table of an UPDATE or DELETE (Tom)

  • Restore the pre-8.3 behavior that an out-of-range block number in a TID being used in a TidScan plan results in silently not matching any rows (Tom)

    8.3.0 and 8.3.1 threw an error instead.

  • Fix GIN bug that could result in a too many LWLocks taken failure (Teodor)

  • Fix broken GiST comparison function for tsquery (Teodor)

  • Fix tsvector_update_trigger() and ts_stat() to accept domains over the types they expect to work with (Tom)

  • Fix failure to support enum data types as foreign keys (Tom)

  • Avoid possible crash when decompressing corrupted data (Zdenek Kotala)

  • Fix race conditions between delayed unlinks and DROP DATABASE (Heikki)

    In the worst case this could result in deleting a newly created table in a new database that happened to get the same OID as the recently-dropped one; but of course that is an extremely low-probability scenario.

  • Repair two places where SIGTERM exit of a backend could leave corrupted state in shared memory (Tom)

    Neither case is very important if SIGTERM is used to shut down the whole database cluster together, but there was a problem if someone tried to SIGTERM individual backends.

  • Fix possible crash due to incorrect plan generated for an x IN (SELECT y FROM ...) clause when x and y have different data types; and make sure the behavior is semantically correct when the conversion from y's type to x's type is lossy (Tom)

  • Fix oversight that prevented the planner from substituting known Param values as if they were constants (Tom)

    This mistake partially disabled optimization of unnamed extended-Query statements in 8.3.0 and 8.3.1: in particular the LIKE-to-indexscan optimization would never be applied if the LIKE pattern was passed as a parameter, and constraint exclusion depending on a parameter value didn't work either.

  • Fix planner failure when an indexable MIN or MAX aggregate is used with DISTINCT or ORDER BY (Tom)

  • Fix planner to ensure it never uses a "physical tlist" for a plan node that is feeding a Sort node (Tom)

    This led to the sort having to push around more data than it really needed to, since unused column values were included in the sorted data.

  • Avoid unnecessary copying of query strings (Tom)

    This fixes a performance problem introduced in 8.3.0 when a very large number of commands are submitted as a single query string.

  • Make TransactionIdIsCurrentTransactionId() use binary search instead of linear search when checking child-transaction XIDs (Heikki)

    This fixes some cases in which 8.3.0 was significantly slower than earlier releases.

  • Fix conversions between ISO-8859-5 and other encodings to handle Cyrillic "Yo" characters (e and E with two dots) (Sergey Burladyan)

  • Fix several datatype input functions, notably array_in(), that were allowing unused bytes in their results to contain uninitialized, unpredictable values (Tom)

    This could lead to failures in which two apparently identical literal values were not seen as equal, resulting in the parser complaining about unmatched ORDER BY and DISTINCT expressions.

  • Fix a corner case in regular-expression substring matching (substring(string from pattern)) (Tom)

    The problem occurs when there is a match to the pattern overall but the user has specified a parenthesized subexpression and that subexpression hasn't got a match. An example is substring('foo' from 'foo(bar)?'). This should return NULL, since (bar) isn't matched, but it was mistakenly returning the whole-pattern match instead (ie, foo).

  • Prevent cancellation of an auto-vacuum that was launched to prevent XID wraparound (Alvaro)

  • Improve ANALYZE's handling of in-doubt tuples (those inserted or deleted by a not-yet-committed transaction) so that the counts it reports to the stats collector are more likely to be correct (Pavan Deolasee)

  • Fix initdb to reject a relative path for its --xlogdir (-X) option (Tom)

  • Make psql print tab characters as an appropriate number of spaces, rather than \x09 as was done in 8.3.0 and 8.3.1 (Bruce)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2008c (for DST law changes in Morocco, Iraq, Choibalsan, Pakistan, Syria, Cuba, and Argentina/San_Luis)

  • Add ECPGget_PGconn() function to ecpglib (Michael)

  • Fix incorrect result from ecpg's PGTYPEStimestamp_sub() function (Michael)

  • Fix handling of continuation line markers in ecpg (Michael)

  • Fix possible crashes in contrib/cube functions (Tom)

  • Fix core dump in contrib/xml2's xpath_table() function when the input query returns a NULL value (Tom)

  • Fix contrib/xml2's makefile to not override CFLAGS, and make it auto-configure properly for libxslt present or not (Tom)

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Release 8.3.3 | Up | Release 8.3.1


Release 8.3.1

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E.90. Release 8.3.1

Release Date: 2008-03-17

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.3.0. For information about new features in the 8.3 major release, see Section E.91.

E.90.1. Migration to Version 8.3.1

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.3.X. However, you might need to REINDEX indexes on textual columns after updating, if you are affected by the Windows locale issue described below.

E.90.2. Changes

  • Fix character string comparison for Windows locales that consider different character combinations as equal (Tom)

    This fix applies only on Windows and only when using UTF-8 database encoding. The same fix was made for all other cases over two years ago, but Windows with UTF-8 uses a separate code path that was not updated. If you are using a locale that considers some non-identical strings as equal, you may need to REINDEX to fix existing indexes on textual columns.

  • Repair corner-case bugs in VACUUM FULL (Tom)

    A potential deadlock between concurrent VACUUM FULL operations on different system catalogs was introduced in 8.2. This has now been corrected. 8.3 made this worse because the deadlock could occur within a critical code section, making it a PANIC rather than just ERROR condition.

    Also, a VACUUM FULL that failed partway through vacuuming a system catalog could result in cache corruption in concurrent database sessions.

    Another VACUUM FULL bug introduced in 8.3 could result in a crash or out-of-memory report when dealing with pages containing no live tuples.

  • Fix misbehavior of foreign key checks involving character or bit columns (Tom)

    If the referencing column were of a different but compatible type (for instance varchar), the constraint was enforced incorrectly.

  • Avoid needless deadlock failures in no-op foreign-key checks (Stephan Szabo, Tom)

  • Fix possible core dump when re-planning a prepared query (Tom)

    This bug affected only protocol-level prepare operations, not SQL PREPARE, and so tended to be seen only with JDBC, DBI, and other client-side drivers that use prepared statements heavily.

  • Fix possible failure when re-planning a query that calls an SPI-using function (Tom)

  • Fix failure in row-wise comparisons involving columns of different datatypes (Tom)

  • Fix longstanding LISTEN/NOTIFY race condition (Tom)

    In rare cases a session that had just executed a LISTEN might not get a notification, even though one would be expected because the concurrent transaction executing NOTIFY was observed to commit later.

    A side effect of the fix is that a transaction that has executed a not-yet-committed LISTEN command will not see any row in pg_listener for the LISTEN, should it choose to look; formerly it would have. This behavior was never documented one way or the other, but it is possible that some applications depend on the old behavior.

  • Disallow LISTEN and UNLISTEN within a prepared transaction (Tom)

    This was formerly allowed but trying to do it had various unpleasant consequences, notably that the originating backend could not exit as long as an UNLISTEN remained uncommitted.

  • Disallow dropping a temporary table within a prepared transaction (Heikki)

    This was correctly disallowed by 8.1, but the check was inadvertently broken in 8.2 and 8.3.

  • Fix rare crash when an error occurs during a query using a hash index (Heikki)

  • Fix incorrect comparison of tsquery values (Teodor)

  • Fix incorrect behavior of LIKE with non-ASCII characters in single-byte encodings (Rolf Jentsch)

  • Disable xmlvalidate (Tom)

    This function should have been removed before 8.3 release, but was inadvertently left in the source code. It poses a small security risk since unprivileged users could use it to read the first few characters of any file accessible to the server.

  • Fix memory leaks in certain usages of set-returning functions (Neil)

  • Make encode(bytea, 'escape') convert all high-bit-set byte values into \nnn octal escape sequences (Tom)

    This is necessary to avoid encoding problems when the database encoding is multi-byte. This change could pose compatibility issues for applications that are expecting specific results from encode.

  • Fix input of datetime values for February 29 in years BC (Tom)

    The former coding was mistaken about which years were leap years.

  • Fix "unrecognized node type" error in some variants of ALTER OWNER (Tom)

  • Avoid tablespace permissions errors in CREATE TABLE LIKE INCLUDING INDEXES (Tom)

  • Ensure pg_stat_activity.waiting flag is cleared when a lock wait is aborted (Tom)

  • Fix handling of process permissions on Windows Vista (Dave, Magnus)

    In particular, this fix allows starting the server as the Administrator user.

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2008a (in particular, recent Chile changes); adjust timezone abbreviation VET (Venezuela) to mean UTC-4:30, not UTC-4:00 (Tom)

  • Fix ecpg problems with arrays (Michael)

  • Fix pg_ctl to correctly extract the postmaster's port number from command-line options (Itagaki Takahiro, Tom)

    Previously, pg_ctl start -w could try to contact the postmaster on the wrong port, leading to bogus reports of startup failure.

  • Use -fwrapv to defend against possible misoptimization in recent gcc versions (Tom)

    This is known to be necessary when building PostgreSQL with gcc 4.3 or later.

  • Enable building contrib/uuid-ossp with MSVC (Hiroshi Saito)

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Release 8.3.2 | Up | Release 8.3


Release 8.3

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.91. Release 8.3

Release Date: 2008-02-04

E.91.1. Overview

With significant new functionality and performance enhancements, this release represents a major leap forward for PostgreSQL. This was made possible by a growing community that has dramatically accelerated the pace of development. This release adds the following major features:

  • Full text search is integrated into the core database system

  • Support for the SQL/XML standard, including new operators and an XML data type

  • Enumerated data types (ENUM)

  • Arrays of composite types

  • Universally Unique Identifier (UUID) data type

  • Add control over whether NULLs sort first or last

  • Updatable cursors

  • Server configuration parameters can now be set on a per-function basis

  • User-defined types can now have type modifiers

  • Automatically re-plan cached queries when table definitions change or statistics are updated

  • Numerous improvements in logging and statistics collection

  • Support Security Service Provider Interface (SSPI) for authentication on Windows

  • Support multiple concurrent autovacuum processes, and other autovacuum improvements

  • Allow the whole PostgreSQL distribution to be compiled with Microsoft Visual C++

Major performance improvements are listed below. Most of these enhancements are automatic and do not require user changes or tuning:

  • Asynchronous commit delays writes to WAL during transaction commit

  • Checkpoint writes can be spread over a longer time period to smooth the I/O spike during each checkpoint

  • Heap-Only Tuples (HOT) accelerate space reuse for most UPDATEs and DELETEs

  • Just-in-time background writer strategy improves disk write efficiency

  • Using non-persistent transaction IDs for read-only transactions reduces overhead and VACUUM requirements

  • Per-field and per-row storage overhead has been reduced

  • Large sequential scans no longer force out frequently used cached pages

  • Concurrent large sequential scans can now share disk reads

  • ORDER BY ... LIMIT can be done without sorting

The above items are explained in more detail in the sections below.

E.91.2. Migration to Version 8.3

A dump/restore using pg_dump is required for those wishing to migrate data from any previous release.

Observe the following incompatibilities:

E.91.2.1. General

  • Non-character data types are no longer automatically cast to TEXT (Peter, Tom)

    Previously, if a non-character value was supplied to an operator or function that requires text input, it was automatically cast to text, for most (though not all) built-in data types. This no longer happens: an explicit cast to text is now required for all non-character-string types. For example, these expressions formerly worked:

    substr(current_date, 1, 4)
23 LIKE '2%'

    but will now draw "function does not exist" and "operator does not exist" errors respectively. Use an explicit cast instead:

    substr(current_date::text, 1, 4)
23::text LIKE '2%'

    (Of course, you can use the more verbose CAST() syntax too.) The reason for the change is that these automatic casts too often caused surprising behavior. An example is that in previous releases, this expression was accepted but did not do what was expected:

    current_date < 2017-11-17

    This is actually comparing a date to an integer, which should be (and now is) rejected — but in the presence of automatic casts both sides were cast to text and a textual comparison was done, because the text < text operator was able to match the expression when no other < operator could.

    Types char(n) and varchar(n) still cast to text automatically. Also, automatic casting to text still works for inputs to the concatenation (||) operator, so long as least one input is a character-string type.

  • Full text search features from contrib/tsearch2 have been moved into the core server, with some minor syntax changes

    contrib/tsearch2 now contains a compatibility interface.

  • ARRAY(SELECT ...), where the SELECT returns no rows, now returns an empty array, rather than NULL (Tom)

  • The array type name for a base data type is no longer always the base type's name with an underscore prefix

    The old naming convention is still honored when possible, but application code should no longer depend on it. Instead use the new pg_type.typarray column to identify the array data type associated with a given type.

  • ORDER BY ... USING operator must now use a less-than or greater-than operator that is defined in a btree operator class

    This restriction was added to prevent inconsistent results.

  • SET LOCAL changes now persist until the end of the outermost transaction, unless rolled back (Tom)

    Previously SET LOCAL's effects were lost after subtransaction commit (RELEASE SAVEPOINT or exit from a PL/pgSQL exception block).

  • Commands rejected in transaction blocks are now also rejected in multiple-statement query strings (Tom)

    For example, "BEGIN; DROP DATABASE; COMMIT" will now be rejected even if submitted as a single query message.

  • ROLLBACK outside a transaction block now issues NOTICE instead of WARNING (Bruce)

  • Prevent NOTIFY/LISTEN/UNLISTEN from accepting schema-qualified names (Bruce)

    Formerly, these commands accepted schema.relation but ignored the schema part, which was confusing.

  • ALTER SEQUENCE no longer affects the sequence's currval() state (Tom)

  • Foreign keys now must match indexable conditions for cross-data-type references (Tom)

    This improves semantic consistency and helps avoid performance problems.

  • Restrict object size functions to users who have reasonable permissions to view such information (Tom)

    For example, pg_database_size() now requires CONNECT permission, which is granted to everyone by default. pg_tablespace_size() requires CREATE permission in the tablespace, or is allowed if the tablespace is the default tablespace for the database.

  • Remove the undocumented !!= (not in) operator (Tom)

    NOT IN (SELECT ...) is the proper way to perform this operation.

  • Internal hashing functions are now more uniformly-distributed (Tom)

    If application code was computing and storing hash values using internal PostgreSQL hashing functions, the hash values must be regenerated.

  • C-code conventions for handling variable-length data values have changed (Greg Stark, Tom)

    The new SET_VARSIZE() macro must be used to set the length of generated varlena values. Also, it might be necessary to expand ("de-TOAST") input values in more cases.

  • Continuous archiving no longer reports each successful archive operation to the server logs unless DEBUG level is used (Simon)

E.91.2.2. Configuration Parameters

  • Numerous changes in administrative server parameters

    bgwriter_lru_percent, bgwriter_all_percent, bgwriter_all_maxpages, stats_start_collector, and stats_reset_on_server_start are removed. redirect_stderr is renamed to logging_collector. stats_command_string is renamed to track_activities. stats_block_level and stats_row_level are merged into track_counts. A new boolean configuration parameter, archive_mode, controls archiving. Autovacuum's default settings have changed.

  • Remove stats_start_collector parameter (Tom)

    We now always start the collector process, unless UDP socket creation fails.

  • Remove stats_reset_on_server_start parameter (Tom)

    This was removed because pg_stat_reset() can be used for this purpose.

  • Commenting out a parameter in postgresql.conf now causes it to revert to its default value (Joachim Wieland)

    Previously, commenting out an entry left the parameter's value unchanged until the next server restart.

E.91.2.3. Character Encodings

  • Add more checks for invalidly-encoded data (Andrew)

    This change plugs some holes that existed in literal backslash escape string processing and COPY escape processing. Now the de-escaped string is rechecked to see if the result created an invalid multi-byte character.

  • Disallow database encodings that are inconsistent with the server's locale setting (Tom)

    On most platforms, C locale is the only locale that will work with any database encoding. Other locale settings imply a specific encoding and will misbehave if the database encoding is something different. (Typical symptoms include bogus textual sort order and wrong results from upper() or lower().) The server now rejects attempts to create databases that have an incompatible encoding.

  • Ensure that chr() cannot create invalidly-encoded values (Andrew)

    In UTF8-encoded databases the argument of chr() is now treated as a Unicode code point. In other multi-byte encodings chr()'s argument must designate a 7-bit ASCII character. Zero is no longer accepted. ascii() has been adjusted to match.

  • Adjust convert() behavior to ensure encoding validity (Andrew)

    The two argument form of convert() has been removed. The three argument form now takes a bytea first argument and returns a bytea. To cover the loss of functionality, three new functions have been added:

    • convert_from(bytea, name) returns text — converts the first argument from the named encoding to the database encoding

    • convert_to(text, name) returns bytea — converts the first argument from the database encoding to the named encoding

    • length(bytea, name) returns integer — gives the length of the first argument in characters in the named encoding

  • Remove convert(argument USING conversion_name) (Andrew)

    Its behavior did not match the SQL standard.

  • Make JOHAB encoding client-only (Tatsuo)

    JOHAB is not safe as a server-side encoding.

E.91.3. Changes

Below you will find a detailed account of the changes between PostgreSQL 8.3 and the previous major release.

E.91.3.1. Performance

  • Asynchronous commit delays writes to WAL during transaction commit (Simon)

    This feature dramatically increases performance for short data-modifying transactions. The disadvantage is that because disk writes are delayed, if the database or operating system crashes before data is written to the disk, committed data will be lost. This feature is useful for applications that can accept some data loss. Unlike turning off fsync, using asynchronous commit does not put database consistency at risk; the worst case is that after a crash the last few reportedly-committed transactions might not be committed after all. This feature is enabled by turning off synchronous_commit (which can be done per-session or per-transaction, if some transactions are critical and others are not). wal_writer_delay can be adjusted to control the maximum delay before transactions actually reach disk.

  • Checkpoint writes can be spread over a longer time period to smooth the I/O spike during each checkpoint (Itagaki Takahiro and Heikki Linnakangas)

    Previously all modified buffers were forced to disk as quickly as possible during a checkpoint, causing an I/O spike that decreased server performance. This new approach spreads out disk writes during checkpoints, reducing peak I/O usage. (User-requested and shutdown checkpoints are still written as quickly as possible.)

  • Heap-Only Tuples (HOT) accelerate space reuse for most UPDATEs and DELETEs (Pavan Deolasee, with ideas from many others)

    UPDATEs and DELETEs leave dead tuples behind, as do failed INSERTs. Previously only VACUUM could reclaim space taken by dead tuples. With HOT dead tuple space can be automatically reclaimed at the time of INSERT or UPDATE if no changes are made to indexed columns. This allows for more consistent performance. Also, HOT avoids adding duplicate index entries.

  • Just-in-time background writer strategy improves disk write efficiency (Greg Smith, Itagaki Takahiro)

    This greatly reduces the need for manual tuning of the background writer.

  • Per-field and per-row storage overhead have been reduced (Greg Stark, Heikki Linnakangas)

    Variable-length data types with data values less than 128 bytes long will see a storage decrease of 3 to 6 bytes. For example, two adjacent char(1) fields now use 4 bytes instead of 16. Row headers are also 4 bytes shorter than before.

  • Using non-persistent transaction IDs for read-only transactions reduces overhead and VACUUM requirements (Florian Pflug)

    Non-persistent transaction IDs do not increment the global transaction counter. Therefore, they reduce the load on pg_clog and increase the time between forced vacuums to prevent transaction ID wraparound. Other performance improvements were also made that should improve concurrency.

  • Avoid incrementing the command counter after a read-only command (Tom)

    There was formerly a hard limit of 232 (4 billion) commands per transaction. Now only commands that actually changed the database count, so while this limit still exists, it should be significantly less annoying.

  • Create a dedicated WAL writer process to off-load work from backends (Simon)

  • Skip unnecessary WAL writes for CLUSTER and COPY (Simon)

    Unless WAL archiving is enabled, the system now avoids WAL writes for CLUSTER and just fsync()s the table at the end of the command. It also does the same for COPY if the table was created in the same transaction.

  • Large sequential scans no longer force out frequently used cached pages (Simon, Heikki, Tom)

  • Concurrent large sequential scans can now share disk reads (Jeff Davis)

    This is accomplished by starting the new sequential scan in the middle of the table (where another sequential scan is already in-progress) and wrapping around to the beginning to finish. This can affect the order of returned rows in a query that does not specify ORDER BY. The synchronize_seqscans configuration parameter can be used to disable this if necessary.

  • ORDER BY ... LIMIT can be done without sorting (Greg Stark)

    This is done by sequentially scanning the table and tracking just the "top N" candidate rows, rather than performing a full sort of the entire table. This is useful when there is no matching index and the LIMIT is not large.

  • Put a rate limit on messages sent to the statistics collector by backends (Tom)

    This reduces overhead for short transactions, but might sometimes increase the delay before statistics are tallied.

  • Improve hash join performance for cases with many NULLs (Tom)

  • Speed up operator lookup for cases with non-exact datatype matches (Tom)

E.91.3.2. Server

  • Autovacuum is now enabled by default (Alvaro)

    Several changes were made to eliminate disadvantages of having autovacuum enabled, thereby justifying the change in default. Several other autovacuum parameter defaults were also modified.

  • Support multiple concurrent autovacuum processes (Alvaro, Itagaki Takahiro)

    This allows multiple vacuums to run concurrently. This prevents vacuuming of a large table from delaying vacuuming of smaller tables.

  • Automatically re-plan cached queries when table definitions change or statistics are updated (Tom)

    Previously PL/pgSQL functions that referenced temporary tables would fail if the temporary table was dropped and recreated between function invocations, unless EXECUTE was used. This improvement fixes that problem and many related issues.

  • Add a temp_tablespaces parameter to control the tablespaces for temporary tables and files (Jaime Casanova, Albert Cervera, Bernd Helmle)

    This parameter defines a list of tablespaces to be used. This enables spreading the I/O load across multiple tablespaces. A random tablespace is chosen each time a temporary object is created. Temporary files are no longer stored in per-database pgsql_tmp/ directories but in per-tablespace directories.

  • Place temporary tables' TOAST tables in special schemas named pg_toast_temp_nnn (Tom)

    This allows low-level code to recognize these tables as temporary, which enables various optimizations such as not WAL-logging changes and using local rather than shared buffers for access. This also fixes a bug wherein backends unexpectedly held open file references to temporary TOAST tables.

  • Fix problem that a constant flow of new connection requests could indefinitely delay the postmaster from completing a shutdown or a crash restart (Tom)

  • Guard against a very-low-probability data loss scenario by preventing re-use of a deleted table's relfilenode until after the next checkpoint (Heikki)

  • Fix CREATE CONSTRAINT TRIGGER to convert old-style foreign key trigger definitions into regular foreign key constraints (Tom)

    This will ease porting of foreign key constraints carried forward from pre-7.3 databases, if they were never converted using contrib/adddepend.

  • Fix DEFAULT NULL to override inherited defaults (Tom)

    DEFAULT NULL was formerly considered a noise phrase, but it should (and now does) override non-null defaults that would otherwise be inherited from a parent table or domain.

  • Add new encodings EUC_JIS_2004 and SHIFT_JIS_2004 (Tatsuo)

    These new encodings can be converted to and from UTF-8.

  • Change server startup log message from "database system is ready" to "database system is ready to accept connections", and adjust its timing

    The message now appears only when the postmaster is really ready to accept connections.

E.91.3.3. Monitoring

  • Add log_autovacuum_min_duration parameter to support configurable logging of autovacuum activity (Simon, Alvaro)

  • Add log_lock_waits parameter to log lock waiting (Simon)

  • Add log_temp_files parameter to log temporary file usage (Bill Moran)

  • Add log_checkpoints parameter to improve logging of checkpoints (Greg Smith, Heikki)

  • log_line_prefix now supports %s and %c escapes in all processes (Andrew)

    Previously these escapes worked only for user sessions, not for background database processes.

  • Add log_restartpoints to control logging of point-in-time recovery restart points (Simon)

  • Last transaction end time is now logged at end of recovery and at each logged restart point (Simon)

  • Autovacuum now reports its activity start time in pg_stat_activity (Tom)

  • Allow server log output in comma-separated value (CSV) format (Arul Shaji, Greg Smith, Andrew Dunstan)

    CSV-format log files can easily be loaded into a database table for subsequent analysis.

  • Use PostgreSQL-supplied timezone support for formatting timestamps displayed in the server log (Tom)

    This avoids Windows-specific problems with localized time zone names that are in the wrong encoding. There is a new log_timezone parameter that controls the timezone used in log messages, independently of the client-visible timezone parameter.

  • New system view pg_stat_bgwriter displays statistics about background writer activity (Magnus)

  • Add new columns for database-wide tuple statistics to pg_stat_database (Magnus)

  • Add an xact_start (transaction start time) column to pg_stat_activity (Neil)

    This makes it easier to identify long-running transactions.

  • Add n_live_tuples and n_dead_tuples columns to pg_stat_all_tables and related views (Glen Parker)

  • Merge stats_block_level and stats_row_level parameters into a single parameter track_counts, which controls all messages sent to the statistics collector process (Tom)

  • Rename stats_command_string parameter to track_activities (Tom)

  • Fix statistical counting of live and dead tuples to recognize that committed and aborted transactions have different effects (Tom)

E.91.3.4. Authentication

  • Support Security Service Provider Interface (SSPI) for authentication on Windows (Magnus)

  • Support GSSAPI authentication (Henry Hotz, Magnus)

    This should be preferred to native Kerberos authentication because GSSAPI is an industry standard.

  • Support a global SSL configuration file (Victor Wagner)

  • Add ssl_ciphers parameter to control accepted SSL ciphers (Victor Wagner)

  • Add a Kerberos realm parameter, krb_realm (Magnus)

E.91.3.5. Write-Ahead Log (WAL) and Continuous Archiving

  • Change the timestamps recorded in transaction WAL records from time_t to TimestampTz representation (Tom)

    This provides sub-second resolution in WAL, which can be useful for point-in-time recovery.

  • Reduce WAL disk space needed by warm standby servers (Simon)

    This change allows a warm standby server to pass the name of the earliest still-needed WAL file to the recovery script, allowing automatic removal of no-longer-needed WAL files. This is done using %r in the restore_command parameter of recovery.conf.

  • New boolean configuration parameter, archive_mode, controls archiving (Simon)

    Previously setting archive_command to an empty string turned off archiving. Now archive_mode turns archiving on and off, independently of archive_command. This is useful for stopping archiving temporarily.

E.91.3.6. Queries

  • Full text search is integrated into the core database system (Teodor, Oleg)

    Text search has been improved, moved into the core code, and is now installed by default. contrib/tsearch2 now contains a compatibility interface.

  • Add control over whether NULLs sort first or last (Teodor, Tom)

    The syntax is ORDER BY ... NULLS FIRST/LAST.

  • Allow per-column ascending/descending (ASC/DESC) ordering options for indexes (Teodor, Tom)

    Previously a query using ORDER BY with mixed ASC/DESC specifiers could not fully use an index. Now an index can be fully used in such cases if the index was created with matching ASC/DESC specifications. NULL sort order within an index can be controlled, too.

  • Allow col IS NULL to use an index (Teodor)

  • Updatable cursors (Arul Shaji, Tom)

    This eliminates the need to reference a primary key to UPDATE or DELETE rows returned by a cursor. The syntax is UPDATE/DELETE WHERE CURRENT OF.

  • Allow FOR UPDATE in cursors (Arul Shaji, Tom)

  • Create a general mechanism that supports casts to and from the standard string types (TEXT, VARCHAR, CHAR) for every datatype, by invoking the datatype's I/O functions (Tom)

    Previously, such casts were available only for types that had specialized function(s) for the purpose. These new casts are assignment-only in the to-string direction, explicit-only in the other direction, and therefore should create no surprising behavior.

  • Allow UNION and related constructs to return a domain type, when all inputs are of that domain type (Tom)

    Formerly, the output would be considered to be of the domain's base type.

  • Allow limited hashing when using two different data types (Tom)

    This allows hash joins, hash indexes, hashed subplans, and hash aggregation to be used in situations involving cross-data-type comparisons, if the data types have compatible hash functions. Currently, cross-data-type hashing support exists for smallint/integer/bigint, and for float4/float8.

  • Improve optimizer logic for detecting when variables are equal in a WHERE clause (Tom)

    This allows mergejoins to work with descending sort orders, and improves recognition of redundant sort columns.

  • Improve performance when planning large inheritance trees in cases where most tables are excluded by constraints (Tom)

E.91.3.7. Object Manipulation

  • Arrays of composite types (David Fetter, Andrew, Tom)

    In addition to arrays of explicitly-declared composite types, arrays of the rowtypes of regular tables and views are now supported, except for rowtypes of system catalogs, sequences, and TOAST tables.

  • Server configuration parameters can now be set on a per-function basis (Tom)

    For example, functions can now set their own search_path to prevent unexpected behavior if a different search_path exists at run-time. Security definer functions should set search_path to avoid security loopholes.

  • CREATE/ALTER FUNCTION now supports COST and ROWS options (Tom)

    COST allows specification of the cost of a function call. ROWS allows specification of the average number or rows returned by a set-returning function. These values are used by the optimizer in choosing the best plan.

  • Implement CREATE TABLE LIKE ... INCLUDING INDEXES (Trevor Hardcastle, Nikhil Sontakke, Neil)

  • Allow CREATE INDEX CONCURRENTLY to ignore transactions in other databases (Simon)

  • Add ALTER VIEW ... RENAME TO and ALTER SEQUENCE ... RENAME TO (David Fetter, Neil)

    Previously this could only be done via ALTER TABLE ... RENAME TO.

  • Make CREATE/DROP/RENAME DATABASE wait briefly for conflicting backends to exit before failing (Tom)

    This increases the likelihood that these commands will succeed.

  • Allow triggers and rules to be deactivated in groups using a configuration parameter, for replication purposes (Jan)

    This allows replication systems to disable triggers and rewrite rules as a group without modifying the system catalogs directly. The behavior is controlled by ALTER TABLE and a new parameter session_replication_role.

  • User-defined types can now have type modifiers (Teodor, Tom)

    This allows a user-defined type to take a modifier, like ssnum(7). Previously only built-in data types could have modifiers.

E.91.3.8. Utility Commands

  • Non-superuser database owners now are able to add trusted procedural languages to their databases by default (Jeremy Drake)

    While this is reasonably safe, some administrators might wish to revoke the privilege. It is controlled by pg_pltemplate.tmpldbacreate.

  • Allow a session's current parameter setting to be used as the default for future sessions (Tom)

    This is done with SET ... FROM CURRENT in CREATE/ALTER FUNCTION, ALTER DATABASE, or ALTER ROLE.

  • Implement new commands DISCARD ALL, DISCARD PLANS, DISCARD TEMPORARY, CLOSE ALL, and DEALLOCATE ALL (Marko Kreen, Neil)

    These commands simplify resetting a database session to its initial state, and are particularly useful for connection-pooling software.

  • Make CLUSTER MVCC-safe (Heikki Linnakangas)

    Formerly, CLUSTER would discard all tuples that were committed dead, even if there were still transactions that should be able to see them under MVCC visibility rules.

  • Add new CLUSTER syntax: CLUSTER table USING index (Holger Schurig)

    The old CLUSTER syntax is still supported, but the new form is considered more logical.

  • Fix EXPLAIN so it can show complex plans more accurately (Tom)

    References to subplan outputs are now always shown correctly, instead of using ?columnN? for complicated cases.

  • Limit the amount of information reported when a user is dropped (Alvaro)

    Previously, dropping (or attempting to drop) a user who owned many objects could result in large NOTICE or ERROR messages listing all these objects; this caused problems for some client applications. The length of the message is now limited, although a full list is still sent to the server log.

E.91.3.9. Data Types

  • Support for the SQL/XML standard, including new operators and an XML data type (Nikolay Samokhvalov, Pavel Stehule, Peter)

  • Enumerated data types (ENUM) (Tom Dunstan)

    This feature provides convenient support for fields that have a small, fixed set of allowed values. An example of creating an ENUM type is CREATE TYPE mood AS ENUM ('sad', 'ok', 'happy').

  • Universally Unique Identifier (UUID) data type (Gevik Babakhani, Neil)

    This closely matches RFC 4122.

  • Widen the MONEY data type to 64 bits (D'Arcy Cain)

    This greatly increases the range of supported MONEY values.

  • Fix float4/float8 to handle Infinity and NAN (Not A Number) consistently (Bruce)

    The code formerly was not consistent about distinguishing Infinity from overflow conditions.

  • Allow leading and trailing whitespace during input of boolean values (Neil)

  • Prevent COPY from using digits and lowercase letters as delimiters (Tom)

E.91.3.10. Functions

  • Add new regular expression functions
regexp_matches(),
regexp_split_to_array(), and
regexp_split_to_table() (Jeremy Drake, Neil)

    These functions provide extraction of regular expression subexpressions and allow splitting a string using a POSIX regular expression.

  • Add lo_truncate() for large object truncation (Kris Jurka)

  • Implement width_bucket() for the float8 data type (Neil)

  • Add pg_stat_clear_snapshot() to discard statistics snapshots collected during the current transaction (Tom)

    The first request for statistics in a transaction takes a statistics snapshot that does not change during the transaction. This function allows the snapshot to be discarded and a new snapshot loaded during the next statistics query. This is particularly useful for PL/pgSQL functions, which are confined to a single transaction.

  • Add isodow option to EXTRACT() and date_part() (Bruce)

    This returns the day of the week, with Sunday as seven. (dow returns Sunday as zero.)

  • Add ID (ISO day of week) and IDDD (ISO day of year) format codes for to_char(), to_date(), and to_timestamp() (Brendan Jurd)

  • Make to_timestamp() and to_date() assume TM (trim) option for potentially variable-width fields (Bruce)

    This matches Oracle's behavior.

  • Fix off-by-one conversion error in to_date()/to_timestamp() D (non-ISO day of week) fields (Bruce)

  • Make setseed() return void, rather than a useless integer value (Neil)

  • Add a hash function for NUMERIC (Neil)

    This allows hash indexes and hash-based plans to be used with NUMERIC columns.

  • Improve efficiency of LIKE/ILIKE, especially for multi-byte character sets like UTF-8 (Andrew, Itagaki Takahiro)

  • Make currtid() functions require SELECT privileges on the target table (Tom)

  • Add several txid_*() functions to query active transaction IDs (Jan)

    This is useful for various replication solutions.

E.91.3.11. PL/pgSQL Server-Side Language

  • Add scrollable cursor support, including directional control in FETCH (Pavel Stehule)

  • Allow IN as an alternative to FROM in PL/pgSQL's FETCH statement, for consistency with the backend's FETCH command (Pavel Stehule)

  • Add MOVE to PL/pgSQL (Magnus, Pavel Stehule, Neil)

  • Implement RETURN QUERY (Pavel Stehule, Neil)

    This adds convenient syntax for PL/pgSQL set-returning functions that want to return the result of a query. RETURN QUERY is easier and more efficient than a loop around RETURN NEXT.

  • Allow function parameter names to be qualified with the function's name (Tom)

    For example, myfunc.myvar. This is particularly useful for specifying variables in a query where the variable name might match a column name.

  • Make qualification of variables with block labels work properly (Tom)

    Formerly, outer-level block labels could unexpectedly interfere with recognition of inner-level record or row references.

  • Tighten requirements for FOR loop STEP values (Tom)

    Prevent non-positive STEP values, and handle loop overflows.

  • Improve accuracy when reporting syntax error locations (Tom)

E.91.3.12. Other Server-Side Languages

  • Allow type-name arguments to PL/Perl spi_prepare() to be data type aliases in addition to names found in pg_type (Andrew)

  • Allow type-name arguments to PL/Python plpy.prepare() to be data type aliases in addition to names found in pg_type (Andrew)

  • Allow type-name arguments to PL/Tcl spi_prepare to be data type aliases in addition to names found in pg_type (Andrew)

  • Enable PL/PythonU to compile on Python 2.5 (Marko Kreen)

  • Support a true PL/Python boolean type in compatible Python versions (Python 2.3 and later) (Marko Kreen)

  • Fix PL/Tcl problems with thread-enabled libtcl spawning multiple threads within the backend (Steve Marshall, Paul Bayer, Doug Knight)

    This caused all sorts of unpleasantness.

E.91.3.13. psql

  • List disabled triggers separately in \d output (Brendan Jurd)

  • In \d patterns, always match $ literally (Tom)

  • Show aggregate return types in \da output (Greg Sabino Mullane)

  • Add the function's volatility status to the output of \df+ (Neil)

  • Add \prompt capability (Chad Wagner)

  • Allow \pset, \t, and \x to specify on or off, rather than just toggling (Chad Wagner)

  • Add \sleep capability (Jan)

  • Enable \timing output for \copy (Andrew)

  • Improve \timing resolution on Windows (Itagaki Takahiro)

  • Flush \o output after each backslash command (Tom)

  • Correctly detect and report errors while reading a -f input file (Peter)

  • Remove -u option (this option has long been deprecated) (Tom)

E.91.3.14. pg_dump

  • Add --tablespaces-only and --roles-only options to pg_dumpall (Dave Page)

  • Add an output file option to pg_dumpall (Dave Page)

    This is primarily useful on Windows, where output redirection of child pg_dump processes does not work.

  • Allow pg_dumpall to accept an initial-connection database name rather than the default template1 (Dave Page)

  • In -n and -t switches, always match $ literally (Tom)

  • Improve performance when a database has thousands of objects (Tom)

  • Remove -u option (this option has long been deprecated) (Tom)

E.91.3.15. Other Client Applications

  • In initdb, allow the location of the pg_xlog directory to be specified (Euler Taveira de Oliveira)

  • Enable server core dump generation in pg_regress on supported operating systems (Andrew)

  • Add a -t (timeout) parameter to pg_ctl (Bruce)

    This controls how long pg_ctl will wait when waiting for server startup or shutdown. Formerly the timeout was hard-wired as 60 seconds.

  • Add a pg_ctl option to control generation of server core dumps (Andrew)

  • Allow Control-C to cancel clusterdb, reindexdb, and vacuumdb (Itagaki Takahiro, Magnus)

  • Suppress command tag output for createdb, createuser, dropdb, and dropuser (Peter)

    The --quiet option is ignored and will be removed in 8.4. Progress messages when acting on all databases now go to stdout instead of stderr because they are not actually errors.

E.91.3.16. libpq

  • Interpret the dbName parameter of PQsetdbLogin() as a conninfo string if it contains an equals sign (Andrew)

    This allows use of conninfo strings in client programs that still use PQsetdbLogin().

  • Support a global SSL configuration file (Victor Wagner)

  • Add environment variable PGSSLKEY to control SSL hardware keys (Victor Wagner)

  • Add lo_truncate() for large object truncation (Kris Jurka)

  • Add PQconnectionNeedsPassword() that returns true if the server required a password but none was supplied (Joe Conway, Tom)

    If this returns true after a failed connection attempt, a client application should prompt the user for a password. In the past applications have had to check for a specific error message string to decide whether a password is needed; that approach is now deprecated.

  • Add PQconnectionUsedPassword() that returns true if the supplied password was actually used (Joe Conway, Tom)

    This is useful in some security contexts where it is important to know whether a user-supplied password is actually valid.

E.91.3.17. ecpg

  • Use V3 frontend/backend protocol (Michael)

    This adds support for server-side prepared statements.

  • Use native threads, instead of pthreads, on Windows (Magnus)

  • Improve thread-safety of ecpglib (Itagaki Takahiro)

  • Make the ecpg libraries export only necessary API symbols (Michael)

E.91.3.18. Windows Port

  • Allow the whole PostgreSQL distribution to be compiled with Microsoft Visual C++ (Magnus and others)

    This allows Windows-based developers to use familiar development and debugging tools. Windows executables made with Visual C++ might also have better stability and performance than those made with other tool sets. The client-only Visual C++ build scripts have been removed.

  • Drastically reduce postmaster's memory usage when it has many child processes (Magnus)

  • Allow regression tests to be started by an administrative user (Magnus)

  • Add native shared memory implementation (Magnus)

E.91.3.19. Server Programming Interface (SPI)

  • Add cursor-related functionality in SPI (Pavel Stehule)

    Allow access to the cursor-related planning options, and add FETCH/MOVE routines.

  • Allow execution of cursor commands through SPI_execute (Tom)

    The macro SPI_ERROR_CURSOR still exists but will never be returned.

  • SPI plan pointers are now declared as SPIPlanPtr instead of void * (Tom)

    This does not break application code, but switching is recommended to help catch simple programming mistakes.

E.91.3.20. Build Options

  • Add configure option --enable-profiling to enable code profiling (works only with gcc) (Korry Douglas and Nikhil Sontakke)

  • Add configure option --with-system-tzdata to use the operating system's time zone database (Peter)

  • Fix PGXS so extensions can be built against PostgreSQL installations whose pg_config program does not appear first in the PATH (Tom)

  • Support gmake draft when building the SGML documentation (Bruce)

    Unless draft is used, the documentation build will now be repeated if necessary to ensure the index is up-to-date.

E.91.3.21. Source Code

  • Rename macro DLLIMPORT to PGDLLIMPORT to avoid conflicting with third party includes (like Tcl) that define DLLIMPORT (Magnus)

  • Create "operator families" to improve planning of queries involving cross-data-type comparisons (Tom)

  • Update GIN extractQuery() API to allow signalling that nothing can satisfy the query (Teodor)

  • Move NAMEDATALEN definition from postgres_ext.h to pg_config_manual.h (Peter)

  • Provide strlcpy() and
strlcat() on all platforms, and replace
error-prone uses of strncpy(),
strncat(), etc (Peter)

  • Create hooks to let an external plugin monitor (or even replace) the planner and create plans for hypothetical situations (Gurjeet Singh, Tom)

  • Create a function variable join_search_hook to let plugins override the join search order portion of the planner (Julius Stroffek)

  • Add tas() support for Renesas' M32R processor (Kazuhiro Inaoka)

  • quote_identifier() and pg_dump no longer quote keywords that are unreserved according to the grammar (Tom)

  • Change the on-disk representation of the NUMERIC data type so that the sign_dscale word comes before the weight (Tom)

  • Use SYSV semaphores rather than POSIX on Darwin >= 6.0, i.e., OS X 10.2 and up (Chris Marcellino)

  • Add acronym and NFS documentation sections (Bruce)

  • "Postgres" is now documented as an accepted alias for "PostgreSQL" (Peter)

  • Add documentation about preventing database server spoofing when the server is down (Bruce)

E.91.3.22. Contrib

  • Move contrib README content into the main PostgreSQL documentation (Albert Cervera i Areny)

  • Add contrib/pageinspect module for low-level page inspection (Simon, Heikki)

  • Add contrib/pg_standby module for controlling warm standby operation (Simon)

  • Add contrib/uuid-ossp module for generating UUID values using the OSSP UUID library (Peter)

    Use configure --with-ossp-uuid to activate. This takes advantage of the new UUID builtin type.

  • Add contrib/dict_int, contrib/dict_xsyn, and contrib/test_parser modules to provide sample add-on text search dictionary templates and parsers (Sergey Karpov)

  • Allow contrib/pgbench to set the fillfactor (Pavan Deolasee)

  • Add timestamps to contrib/pgbench -l (Greg Smith)

  • Add usage count statistics to contrib/pgbuffercache (Greg Smith)

  • Add GIN support for contrib/hstore (Teodor)

  • Add GIN support for contrib/pg_trgm (Guillaume Smet, Teodor)

  • Update OS/X startup scripts in contrib/start-scripts (Mark Cotner, David Fetter)

  • Restrict pgrowlocks() and dblink_get_pkey() to users who have SELECT privilege on the target table (Tom)

  • Restrict contrib/pgstattuple functions to superusers (Tom)

  • contrib/xml2 is deprecated and planned for removal in 8.4 (Peter)

    The new XML support in core PostgreSQL supersedes this module.

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Release 8.3.1 | Up | Release 8.2.23


Release 8.2.23

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E.92. Release 8.2.23

Release Date: 2011-12-05

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.2.22. For information about new features in the 8.2 major release, see Section E.115.

This is expected to be the last PostgreSQL release in the 8.2.X series. Users are encouraged to update to a newer release branch soon.

E.92.1. Migration to Version 8.2.23

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.2.X.

However, a longstanding error was discovered in the definition of the information_schema.referential_constraints view. If you rely on correct results from that view, you should replace its definition as explained in the first changelog item below.

Also, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.2.14, see Section E.101.

E.92.2. Changes

  • Fix bugs in information_schema.referential_constraints view (Tom Lane)

    This view was being insufficiently careful about matching the foreign-key constraint to the depended-on primary or unique key constraint. That could result in failure to show a foreign key constraint at all, or showing it multiple times, or claiming that it depends on a different constraint than the one it really does.

    Since the view definition is installed by initdb, merely upgrading will not fix the problem. If you need to fix this in an existing installation, you can (as a superuser) drop the information_schema schema then re-create it by sourcing SHAREDIR/information_schema.sql. (Run pg_config --sharedir if you're uncertain where SHAREDIR is.) This must be repeated in each database to be fixed.

  • Fix TOAST-related data corruption during CREATE TABLE dest AS SELECT * FROM src or INSERT INTO dest SELECT * FROM src (Tom Lane)

    If a table has been modified by ALTER TABLE ADD COLUMN, attempts to copy its data verbatim to another table could produce corrupt results in certain corner cases. The problem can only manifest in this precise form in 8.4 and later, but we patched earlier versions as well in case there are other code paths that could trigger the same bug.

  • Fix race condition during toast table access from stale syscache entries (Tom Lane)

    The typical symptom was transient errors like "missing chunk number 0 for toast value NNNNN in pg_toast_2619", where the cited toast table would always belong to a system catalog.

  • Improve locale support in money type's input and output (Tom Lane)

    Aside from not supporting all standard lc_monetary formatting options, the input and output functions were inconsistent, meaning there were locales in which dumped money values could not be re-read.

  • Don't let transform_null_equals affect CASE foo WHEN NULL ... constructs (Heikki Linnakangas)

    transform_null_equals is only supposed to affect foo = NULL expressions written directly by the user, not equality checks generated internally by this form of CASE.

  • Change foreign-key trigger creation order to better support self-referential foreign keys (Tom Lane)

    For a cascading foreign key that references its own table, a row update will fire both the ON UPDATE trigger and the CHECK trigger as one event. The ON UPDATE trigger must execute first, else the CHECK will check a non-final state of the row and possibly throw an inappropriate error. However, the firing order of these triggers is determined by their names, which generally sort in creation order since the triggers have auto-generated names following the convention "RI_ConstraintTrigger_NNNN". A proper fix would require modifying that convention, which we will do in 9.2, but it seems risky to change it in existing releases. So this patch just changes the creation order of the triggers. Users encountering this type of error should drop and re-create the foreign key constraint to get its triggers into the right order.

  • Preserve blank lines within commands in psql's command history (Robert Haas)

    The former behavior could cause problems if an empty line was removed from within a string literal, for example.

  • Use the preferred version of xsubpp to build PL/Perl, not necessarily the operating system's main copy (David Wheeler and Alex Hunsaker)

  • Honor query cancel interrupts promptly in pgstatindex() (Robert Haas)

  • Ensure VPATH builds properly install all server header files (Peter Eisentraut)

  • Shorten file names reported in verbose error messages (Peter Eisentraut)

    Regular builds have always reported just the name of the C file containing the error message call, but VPATH builds formerly reported an absolute path name.

  • Fix interpretation of Windows timezone names for Central America (Tom Lane)

    Map "Central America Standard Time" to CST6, not CST6CDT, because DST is generally not observed anywhere in Central America.

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2011n for DST law changes in Brazil, Cuba, Fiji, Palestine, Russia, and Samoa; also historical corrections for Alaska and British East Africa.

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Release 8.2.22

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E.93. Release 8.2.22

Release Date: 2011-09-26

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.2.21. For information about new features in the 8.2 major release, see Section E.115.

The PostgreSQL community will stop releasing updates for the 8.2.X release series in December 2011. Users are encouraged to update to a newer release branch soon.

E.93.1. Migration to Version 8.2.22

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.2.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.2.14, see Section E.101.

E.93.2. Changes

  • Fix multiple bugs in GiST index page split processing (Heikki Linnakangas)

    The probability of occurrence was low, but these could lead to index corruption.

  • Avoid possibly accessing off the end of memory in ANALYZE (Noah Misch)

    This fixes a very-low-probability server crash scenario.

  • Fix race condition in relcache init file invalidation (Tom Lane)

    There was a window wherein a new backend process could read a stale init file but miss the inval messages that would tell it the data is stale. The result would be bizarre failures in catalog accesses, typically "could not read block 0 in file ..." later during startup.

  • Fix memory leak at end of a GiST index scan (Tom Lane)

    Commands that perform many separate GiST index scans, such as verification of a new GiST-based exclusion constraint on a table already containing many rows, could transiently require large amounts of memory due to this leak.

  • Fix performance problem when constructing a large, lossy bitmap (Tom Lane)

  • Fix array- and path-creating functions to ensure padding bytes are zeroes (Tom Lane)

    This avoids some situations where the planner will think that semantically-equal constants are not equal, resulting in poor optimization.

  • Work around gcc 4.6.0 bug that breaks WAL replay (Tom Lane)

    This could lead to loss of committed transactions after a server crash.

  • Fix dump bug for VALUES in a view (Tom Lane)

  • Disallow SELECT FOR UPDATE/SHARE on sequences (Tom Lane)

    This operation doesn't work as expected and can lead to failures.

  • Defend against integer overflow when computing size of a hash table (Tom Lane)

  • Fix portability bugs in use of credentials control messages for "peer" authentication (Tom Lane)

  • Fix typo in pg_srand48 seed initialization (Andres Freund)

    This led to failure to use all bits of the provided seed. This function is not used on most platforms (only those without srandom), and the potential security exposure from a less-random-than-expected seed seems minimal in any case.

  • Avoid integer overflow when the sum of LIMIT and OFFSET values exceeds 2^63 (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Add overflow checks to int4 and int8 versions of generate_series() (Robert Haas)

  • Fix trailing-zero removal in to_char() (Marti Raudsepp)

    In a format with FM and no digit positions after the decimal point, zeroes to the left of the decimal point could be removed incorrectly.

  • Fix pg_size_pretty() to avoid overflow for inputs close to 2^63 (Tom Lane)

  • Fix psql's counting of script file line numbers during COPY from a different file (Tom Lane)

  • Fix pg_restore's direct-to-database mode for standard_conforming_strings (Tom Lane)

    pg_restore could emit incorrect commands when restoring directly to a database server from an archive file that had been made with standard_conforming_strings set to on.

  • Fix write-past-buffer-end and memory leak in libpq's LDAP service lookup code (Albe Laurenz)

  • In libpq, avoid failures when using nonblocking I/O and an SSL connection (Martin Pihlak, Tom Lane)

  • Improve libpq's handling of failures during connection startup (Tom Lane)

    In particular, the response to a server report of fork() failure during SSL connection startup is now saner.

  • Make ecpglib write double values with 15 digits precision (Akira Kurosawa)

  • Apply upstream fix for blowfish signed-character bug (CVE-2011-2483) (Tom Lane)

    contrib/pg_crypto's blowfish encryption code could give wrong results on platforms where char is signed (which is most), leading to encrypted passwords being weaker than they should be.

  • Fix memory leak in contrib/seg (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Fix pgstatindex() to give consistent results for empty indexes (Tom Lane)

  • Allow building with perl 5.14 (Alex Hunsaker)

  • Update configure script's method for probing existence of system functions (Tom Lane)

    The version of autoconf we used in 8.3 and 8.2 could be fooled by compilers that perform link-time optimization.

  • Fix assorted issues with build and install file paths containing spaces (Tom Lane)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2011i for DST law changes in Canada, Egypt, Russia, Samoa, and South Sudan.

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Release 8.2.23 | Up | Release 8.2.21


Release 8.2.21

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E.94. Release 8.2.21

Release Date: 2011-04-18

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.2.20. For information about new features in the 8.2 major release, see Section E.115.

E.94.1. Migration to Version 8.2.21

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.2.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.2.14, see Section E.101.

E.94.2. Changes

  • Avoid potential deadlock during catalog cache initialization (Nikhil Sontakke)

    In some cases the cache loading code would acquire share lock on a system index before locking the index's catalog. This could deadlock against processes trying to acquire exclusive locks in the other, more standard order.

  • Fix dangling-pointer problem in BEFORE ROW UPDATE trigger handling when there was a concurrent update to the target tuple (Tom Lane)

    This bug has been observed to result in intermittent "cannot extract system attribute from virtual tuple" failures while trying to do UPDATE RETURNING ctid. There is a very small probability of more serious errors, such as generating incorrect index entries for the updated tuple.

  • Disallow DROP TABLE when there are pending deferred trigger events for the table (Tom Lane)

    Formerly the DROP would go through, leading to "could not open relation with OID nnn" errors when the triggers were eventually fired.

  • Fix PL/Python memory leak involving array slices (Daniel Popowich)

  • Fix pg_restore to cope with long lines (over 1KB) in TOC files (Tom Lane)

  • Put in more safeguards against crashing due to division-by-zero with overly enthusiastic compiler optimization (Aurelien Jarno)

  • Support use of dlopen() in FreeBSD and OpenBSD on MIPS (Tom Lane)

    There was a hard-wired assumption that this system function was not available on MIPS hardware on these systems. Use a compile-time test instead, since more recent versions have it.

  • Fix compilation failures on HP-UX (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Fix path separator used by pg_regress on Cygwin (Andrew Dunstan)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2011f for DST law changes in Chile, Cuba, Falkland Islands, Morocco, Samoa, and Turkey; also historical corrections for South Australia, Alaska, and Hawaii.

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Release 8.2.22 | Up | Release 8.2.20


Release 8.2.20

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E.95. Release 8.2.20

Release Date: 2011-01-31

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.2.19. For information about new features in the 8.2 major release, see Section E.115.

E.95.1. Migration to Version 8.2.20

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.2.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.2.14, see Section E.101.

E.95.2. Changes

  • Avoid failures when EXPLAIN tries to display a simple-form CASE expression (Tom Lane)

    If the CASE's test expression was a constant, the planner could simplify the CASE into a form that confused the expression-display code, resulting in "unexpected CASE WHEN clause" errors.

  • Fix assignment to an array slice that is before the existing range of subscripts (Tom Lane)

    If there was a gap between the newly added subscripts and the first pre-existing subscript, the code miscalculated how many entries needed to be copied from the old array's null bitmap, potentially leading to data corruption or crash.

  • Avoid unexpected conversion overflow in planner for very distant date values (Tom Lane)

    The date type supports a wider range of dates than can be represented by the timestamp types, but the planner assumed it could always convert a date to timestamp with impunity.

  • Fix pg_restore's text output for large objects (BLOBs) when standard_conforming_strings is on (Tom Lane)

    Although restoring directly to a database worked correctly, string escaping was incorrect if pg_restore was asked for SQL text output and standard_conforming_strings had been enabled in the source database.

  • Fix erroneous parsing of tsquery values containing ... & !(subexpression) | ... (Tom Lane)

    Queries containing this combination of operators were not executed correctly. The same error existed in contrib/intarray's query_int type and contrib/ltree's ltxtquery type.

  • Fix buffer overrun in contrib/intarray's input function for the query_int type (Apple)

    This bug is a security risk since the function's return address could be overwritten. Thanks to Apple Inc's security team for reporting this issue and supplying the fix. (CVE-2010-4015)

  • Fix bug in contrib/seg's GiST picksplit algorithm (Alexander Korotkov)

    This could result in considerable inefficiency, though not actually incorrect answers, in a GiST index on a seg column. If you have such an index, consider REINDEXing it after installing this update. (This is identical to the bug that was fixed in contrib/cube in the previous update.)

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Release 8.2.21 | Up | Release 8.2.19


Release 8.2.19

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.96. Release 8.2.19

Release Date: 2010-12-16

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.2.18. For information about new features in the 8.2 major release, see Section E.115.

E.96.1. Migration to Version 8.2.19

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.2.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.2.14, see Section E.101.

E.96.2. Changes

  • Force the default wal_sync_method to be fdatasync on Linux (Tom Lane, Marti Raudsepp)

    The default on Linux has actually been fdatasync for many years, but recent kernel changes caused PostgreSQL to choose open_datasync instead. This choice did not result in any performance improvement, and caused outright failures on certain filesystems, notably ext4 with the data=journal mount option.

  • Fix assorted bugs in WAL replay logic for GIN indexes (Tom Lane)

    This could result in "bad buffer id: 0" failures or corruption of index contents during replication.

  • Fix recovery from base backup when the starting checkpoint WAL record is not in the same WAL segment as its redo point (Jeff Davis)

  • Add support for detecting register-stack overrun on IA64 (Tom Lane)

    The IA64 architecture has two hardware stacks. Full prevention of stack-overrun failures requires checking both.

  • Add a check for stack overflow in copyObject() (Tom Lane)

    Certain code paths could crash due to stack overflow given a sufficiently complex query.

  • Fix detection of page splits in temporary GiST indexes (Heikki Linnakangas)

    It is possible to have a "concurrent" page split in a temporary index, if for example there is an open cursor scanning the index when an insertion is done. GiST failed to detect this case and hence could deliver wrong results when execution of the cursor continued.

  • Avoid memory leakage while ANALYZE'ing complex index expressions (Tom Lane)

  • Ensure an index that uses a whole-row Var still depends on its table (Tom Lane)

    An index declared like create index i on t (foo(t.*)) would not automatically get dropped when its table was dropped.

  • Do not "inline" a SQL function with multiple OUT parameters (Tom Lane)

    This avoids a possible crash due to loss of information about the expected result rowtype.

  • Behave correctly if ORDER BY, LIMIT, FOR UPDATE, or WITH is attached to the VALUES part of INSERT ... VALUES (Tom Lane)

  • Fix constant-folding of COALESCE() expressions (Tom Lane)

    The planner would sometimes attempt to evaluate sub-expressions that in fact could never be reached, possibly leading to unexpected errors.

  • Add print functionality for InhRelation nodes (Tom Lane)

    This avoids a failure when debug_print_parse is enabled and certain types of query are executed.

  • Fix incorrect calculation of distance from a point to a horizontal line segment (Tom Lane)

    This bug affected several different geometric distance-measurement operators.

  • Fix PL/pgSQL's handling of "simple" expressions to not fail in recursion or error-recovery cases (Tom Lane)

  • Fix PL/Python's handling of set-returning functions (Jan Urbanski)

    Attempts to call SPI functions within the iterator generating a set result would fail.

  • Fix bug in contrib/cube's GiST picksplit algorithm (Alexander Korotkov)

    This could result in considerable inefficiency, though not actually incorrect answers, in a GiST index on a cube column. If you have such an index, consider REINDEXing it after installing this update.

  • Don't emit "identifier will be truncated" notices in contrib/dblink except when creating new connections (Itagaki Takahiro)

  • Fix potential coredump on missing public key in contrib/pgcrypto (Marti Raudsepp)

  • Fix memory leak in contrib/xml2's XPath query functions (Tom Lane)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2010o for DST law changes in Fiji and Samoa; also historical corrections for Hong Kong.

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Release 8.2.20 | Up | Release 8.2.18


Release 8.2.18

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E.97. Release 8.2.18

Release Date: 2010-10-04

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.2.17. For information about new features in the 8.2 major release, see Section E.115.

E.97.1. Migration to Version 8.2.18

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.2.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.2.14, see Section E.101.

E.97.2. Changes

  • Use a separate interpreter for each calling SQL userid in PL/Perl and PL/Tcl (Tom Lane)

    This change prevents security problems that can be caused by subverting Perl or Tcl code that will be executed later in the same session under another SQL user identity (for example, within a SECURITY DEFINER function). Most scripting languages offer numerous ways that that might be done, such as redefining standard functions or operators called by the target function. Without this change, any SQL user with Perl or Tcl language usage rights can do essentially anything with the SQL privileges of the target function's owner.

    The cost of this change is that intentional communication among Perl and Tcl functions becomes more difficult. To provide an escape hatch, PL/PerlU and PL/TclU functions continue to use only one interpreter per session. This is not considered a security issue since all such functions execute at the trust level of a database superuser already.

    It is likely that third-party procedural languages that claim to offer trusted execution have similar security issues. We advise contacting the authors of any PL you are depending on for security-critical purposes.

    Our thanks to Tim Bunce for pointing out this issue (CVE-2010-3433).

  • Prevent possible crashes in pg_get_expr() by disallowing it from being called with an argument that is not one of the system catalog columns it's intended to be used with (Heikki Linnakangas, Tom Lane)

  • Fix Windows shared-memory allocation code (Tsutomu Yamada, Magnus Hagander)

    This bug led to the often-reported "could not reattach to shared memory" error message. This is a back-patch of a fix that was applied to newer branches some time ago.

  • Treat exit code 128 (ERROR_WAIT_NO_CHILDREN) as non-fatal on Windows (Magnus Hagander)

    Under high load, Windows processes will sometimes fail at startup with this error code. Formerly the postmaster treated this as a panic condition and restarted the whole database, but that seems to be an overreaction.

  • Fix possible duplicate scans of UNION ALL member relations (Tom Lane)

  • Fix "cannot handle unplanned sub-select" error (Tom Lane)

    This occurred when a sub-select contains a join alias reference that expands into an expression containing another sub-select.

  • Reduce PANIC to ERROR in some occasionally-reported btree failure cases, and provide additional detail in the resulting error messages (Tom Lane)

    This should improve the system's robustness with corrupted indexes.

  • Prevent show_session_authorization() from crashing within autovacuum processes (Tom Lane)

  • Defend against functions returning setof record where not all the returned rows are actually of the same rowtype (Tom Lane)

  • Fix possible failure when hashing a pass-by-reference function result (Tao Ma, Tom Lane)

  • Take care to fsync the contents of lockfiles (both postmaster.pid and the socket lockfile) while writing them (Tom Lane)

    This omission could result in corrupted lockfile contents if the machine crashes shortly after postmaster start. That could in turn prevent subsequent attempts to start the postmaster from succeeding, until the lockfile is manually removed.

  • Avoid recursion while assigning XIDs to heavily-nested subtransactions (Andres Freund, Robert Haas)

    The original coding could result in a crash if there was limited stack space.

  • Fix log_line_prefix's %i escape, which could produce junk early in backend startup (Tom Lane)

  • Fix possible data corruption in ALTER TABLE ... SET TABLESPACE when archiving is enabled (Jeff Davis)

  • Allow CREATE DATABASE and ALTER DATABASE ... SET TABLESPACE to be interrupted by query-cancel (Guillaume Lelarge)

  • In PL/Python, defend against null pointer results from PyCObject_AsVoidPtr and PyCObject_FromVoidPtr (Peter Eisentraut)

  • Improve contrib/dblink's handling of tables containing dropped columns (Tom Lane)

  • Fix connection leak after "duplicate connection name" errors in contrib/dblink (Itagaki Takahiro)

  • Fix contrib/dblink to handle connection names longer than 62 bytes correctly (Itagaki Takahiro)

  • Add hstore(text, text) function to contrib/hstore (Robert Haas)

    This function is the recommended substitute for the now-deprecated => operator. It was back-patched so that future-proofed code can be used with older server versions. Note that the patch will be effective only after contrib/hstore is installed or reinstalled in a particular database. Users might prefer to execute the CREATE FUNCTION command by hand, instead.

  • Update build infrastructure and documentation to reflect the source code repository's move from CVS to Git (Magnus Hagander and others)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2010l for DST law changes in Egypt and Palestine; also historical corrections for Finland.

    This change also adds new names for two Micronesian timezones: Pacific/Chuuk is now preferred over Pacific/Truk (and the preferred abbreviation is CHUT not TRUT) and Pacific/Pohnpei is preferred over Pacific/Ponape.

  • Make Windows' "N. Central Asia Standard Time" timezone map to Asia/Novosibirsk, not Asia/Almaty (Magnus Hagander)

    Microsoft changed the DST behavior of this zone in the timezone update from KB976098. Asia/Novosibirsk is a better match to its new behavior.

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Release 8.2.19 | Up | Release 8.2.17


Release 8.2.17

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E.98. Release 8.2.17

Release Date: 2010-05-17

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.2.16. For information about new features in the 8.2 major release, see Section E.115.

E.98.1. Migration to Version 8.2.17

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.2.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.2.14, see Section E.101.

E.98.2. Changes

  • Enforce restrictions in plperl using an opmask applied to the whole interpreter, instead of using Safe.pm (Tim Bunce, Andrew Dunstan)

    Recent developments have convinced us that Safe.pm is too insecure to rely on for making plperl trustable. This change removes use of Safe.pm altogether, in favor of using a separate interpreter with an opcode mask that is always applied. Pleasant side effects of the change include that it is now possible to use Perl's strict pragma in a natural way in plperl, and that Perl's $a and $b variables work as expected in sort routines, and that function compilation is significantly faster. (CVE-2010-1169)

  • Prevent PL/Tcl from executing untrustworthy code from pltcl_modules (Tom)

    PL/Tcl's feature for autoloading Tcl code from a database table could be exploited for trojan-horse attacks, because there was no restriction on who could create or insert into that table. This change disables the feature unless pltcl_modules is owned by a superuser. (However, the permissions on the table are not checked, so installations that really need a less-than-secure modules table can still grant suitable privileges to trusted non-superusers.) Also, prevent loading code into the unrestricted "normal" Tcl interpreter unless we are really going to execute a pltclu function. (CVE-2010-1170)

  • Fix possible crash if a cache reset message is received during rebuild of a relcache entry (Heikki)

    This error was introduced in 8.2.16 while fixing a related failure.

  • Do not allow an unprivileged user to reset superuser-only parameter settings (Alvaro)

    Previously, if an unprivileged user ran ALTER USER ... RESET ALL for himself, or ALTER DATABASE ... RESET ALL for a database he owns, this would remove all special parameter settings for the user or database, even ones that are only supposed to be changeable by a superuser. Now, the ALTER will only remove the parameters that the user has permission to change.

  • Avoid possible crash during backend shutdown if shutdown occurs when a CONTEXT addition would be made to log entries (Tom)

    In some cases the context-printing function would fail because the current transaction had already been rolled back when it came time to print a log message.

  • Update pl/perl's ppport.h for modern Perl versions (Andrew)

  • Fix assorted memory leaks in pl/python (Andreas Freund, Tom)

  • Prevent infinite recursion in psql when expanding a variable that refers to itself (Tom)

  • Fix psql's \copy to not add spaces around a dot within \copy (select ...) (Tom)

    Addition of spaces around the decimal point in a numeric literal would result in a syntax error.

  • Ensure that contrib/pgstattuple functions respond to cancel interrupts promptly (Tatsuhito Kasahara)

  • Make server startup deal properly with the case that shmget() returns EINVAL for an existing shared memory segment (Tom)

    This behavior has been observed on BSD-derived kernels including OS X. It resulted in an entirely-misleading startup failure complaining that the shared memory request size was too large.

  • Avoid possible crashes in syslogger process on Windows (Heikki)

  • Deal more robustly with incomplete time zone information in the Windows registry (Magnus)

  • Update the set of known Windows time zone names (Magnus)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2010j for DST law changes in Argentina, Australian Antarctic, Bangladesh, Mexico, Morocco, Pakistan, Palestine, Russia, Syria, Tunisia; also historical corrections for Taiwan.

    Also, add PKST (Pakistan Summer Time) to the default set of timezone abbreviations.

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Release 8.2.18 | Up | Release 8.2.16


Release 8.2.16

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.99. Release 8.2.16

Release Date: 2010-03-15

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.2.15. For information about new features in the 8.2 major release, see Section E.115.

E.99.1. Migration to Version 8.2.16

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.2.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.2.14, see Section E.101.

E.99.2. Changes

  • Add new configuration parameter ssl_renegotiation_limit to control how often we do session key renegotiation for an SSL connection (Magnus)

    This can be set to zero to disable renegotiation completely, which may be required if a broken SSL library is used. In particular, some vendors are shipping stopgap patches for CVE-2009-3555 that cause renegotiation attempts to fail.

  • Fix possible deadlock during backend startup (Tom)

  • Fix possible crashes due to not handling errors during relcache reload cleanly (Tom)

  • Fix possible crashes when trying to recover from a failure in subtransaction start (Tom)

  • Fix server memory leak associated with use of savepoints and a client encoding different from server's encoding (Tom)

  • Fix incorrect WAL data emitted during end-of-recovery cleanup of a GIST index page split (Yoichi Hirai)

    This would result in index corruption, or even more likely an error during WAL replay, if we were unlucky enough to crash during end-of-recovery cleanup after having completed an incomplete GIST insertion.

  • Make substring() for bit types treat any negative length as meaning "all the rest of the string" (Tom)

    The previous coding treated only -1 that way, and would produce an invalid result value for other negative values, possibly leading to a crash (CVE-2010-0442).

  • Fix integer-to-bit-string conversions to handle the first fractional byte correctly when the output bit width is wider than the given integer by something other than a multiple of 8 bits (Tom)

  • Fix some cases of pathologically slow regular expression matching (Tom)

  • Fix the STOP WAL LOCATION entry in backup history files to report the next WAL segment's name when the end location is exactly at a segment boundary (Itagaki Takahiro)

  • Fix some more cases of temporary-file leakage (Heikki)

    This corrects a problem introduced in the previous minor release. One case that failed is when a plpgsql function returning set is called within another function's exception handler.

  • Improve constraint exclusion processing of boolean-variable cases, in particular make it possible to exclude a partition that has a "bool_column = false" constraint (Tom)

  • When reading pg_hba.conf and related files, do not treat @something as a file inclusion request if the @ appears inside quote marks; also, never treat @ by itself as a file inclusion request (Tom)

    This prevents erratic behavior if a role or database name starts with @. If you need to include a file whose path name contains spaces, you can still do so, but you must write @"/path to/file" rather than putting the quotes around the whole construct.

  • Prevent infinite loop on some platforms if a directory is named as an inclusion target in pg_hba.conf and related files (Tom)

  • Fix possible infinite loop if SSL_read or SSL_write fails without setting errno (Tom)

    This is reportedly possible with some Windows versions of openssl.

  • Fix psql's numericlocale option to not format strings it shouldn't in latex and troff output formats (Heikki)

  • Make psql return the correct exit status (3) when ON_ERROR_STOP and --single-transaction are both specified and an error occurs during the implied COMMIT (Bruce)

  • Fix plpgsql failure in one case where a composite column is set to NULL (Tom)

  • Fix possible failure when calling PL/Perl functions from PL/PerlU or vice versa (Tim Bunce)

  • Add volatile markings in PL/Python to avoid possible compiler-specific misbehavior (Zdenek Kotala)

  • Ensure PL/Tcl initializes the Tcl interpreter fully (Tom)

    The only known symptom of this oversight is that the Tcl clock command misbehaves if using Tcl 8.5 or later.

  • Prevent crash in contrib/dblink when too many key columns are specified to a dblink_build_sql_* function (Rushabh Lathia, Joe Conway)

  • Fix assorted crashes in contrib/xml2 caused by sloppy memory management (Tom)

  • Make building of contrib/xml2 more robust on Windows (Andrew)

  • Fix race condition in Windows signal handling (Radu Ilie)

    One known symptom of this bug is that rows in pg_listener could be dropped under heavy load.

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2010e for DST law changes in Bangladesh, Chile, Fiji, Mexico, Paraguay, Samoa.

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Release 8.2.15

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E.100. Release 8.2.15

Release Date: 2009-12-14

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.2.14. For information about new features in the 8.2 major release, see Section E.115.

E.100.1. Migration to Version 8.2.15

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.2.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.2.14, see Section E.101.

E.100.2. Changes

  • Protect against indirect security threats caused by index functions changing session-local state (Gurjeet Singh, Tom)

    This change prevents allegedly-immutable index functions from possibly subverting a superuser's session (CVE-2009-4136).

  • Reject SSL certificates containing an embedded null byte in the common name (CN) field (Magnus)

    This prevents unintended matching of a certificate to a server or client name during SSL validation (CVE-2009-4034).

  • Fix possible crash during backend-startup-time cache initialization (Tom)

  • Prevent signals from interrupting VACUUM at unsafe times (Alvaro)

    This fix prevents a PANIC if a VACUUM FULL is canceled after it's already committed its tuple movements, as well as transient errors if a plain VACUUM is interrupted after having truncated the table.

  • Fix possible crash due to integer overflow in hash table size calculation (Tom)

    This could occur with extremely large planner estimates for the size of a hashjoin's result.

  • Fix very rare crash in inet/cidr comparisons (Chris Mikkelson)

  • Ensure that shared tuple-level locks held by prepared transactions are not ignored (Heikki)

  • Fix premature drop of temporary files used for a cursor that is accessed within a subtransaction (Heikki)

  • Fix incorrect logic for GiST index page splits, when the split depends on a non-first column of the index (Paul Ramsey)

  • Don't error out if recycling or removing an old WAL file fails at the end of checkpoint (Heikki)

    It's better to treat the problem as non-fatal and allow the checkpoint to complete. Future checkpoints will retry the removal. Such problems are not expected in normal operation, but have been seen to be caused by misdesigned Windows anti-virus and backup software.

  • Ensure WAL files aren't repeatedly archived on Windows (Heikki)

    This is another symptom that could happen if some other process interfered with deletion of a no-longer-needed file.

  • Fix PAM password processing to be more robust (Tom)

    The previous code is known to fail with the combination of the Linux pam_krb5 PAM module with Microsoft Active Directory as the domain controller. It might have problems elsewhere too, since it was making unjustified assumptions about what arguments the PAM stack would pass to it.

  • Fix processing of ownership dependencies during CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION (Tom)

  • Fix bug with calling plperl from plperlu or vice versa (Tom)

    An error exit from the inner function could result in crashes due to failure to re-select the correct Perl interpreter for the outer function.

  • Fix session-lifespan memory leak when a PL/Perl function is redefined (Tom)

  • Ensure that Perl arrays are properly converted to PostgreSQL arrays when returned by a set-returning PL/Perl function (Andrew Dunstan, Abhijit Menon-Sen)

    This worked correctly already for non-set-returning functions.

  • Fix rare crash in exception processing in PL/Python (Peter)

  • Ensure psql's flex module is compiled with the correct system header definitions (Tom)

    This fixes build failures on platforms where --enable-largefile causes incompatible changes in the generated code.

  • Make the postmaster ignore any application_name parameter in connection request packets, to improve compatibility with future libpq versions (Tom)

  • Update the timezone abbreviation files to match current reality (Joachim Wieland)

    This includes adding IDT and SGT to the default timezone abbreviation set.

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2009s for DST law changes in Antarctica, Argentina, Bangladesh, Fiji, Novokuznetsk, Pakistan, Palestine, Samoa, Syria; also historical corrections for Hong Kong.

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Release 8.2.14

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E.101. Release 8.2.14

Release Date: 2009-09-09

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.2.13. For information about new features in the 8.2 major release, see Section E.115.

E.101.1. Migration to Version 8.2.14

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.2.X. However, if you have any hash indexes on interval columns, you must REINDEX them after updating to 8.2.14. Also, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.2.11, see Section E.104.

E.101.2. Changes

  • Force WAL segment switch during pg_start_backup() (Heikki)

    This avoids corner cases that could render a base backup unusable.

  • Disallow RESET ROLE and RESET SESSION AUTHORIZATION inside security-definer functions (Tom, Heikki)

    This covers a case that was missed in the previous patch that disallowed SET ROLE and SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION inside security-definer functions. (See CVE-2007-6600)

  • Make LOAD of an already-loaded loadable module into a no-op (Tom)

    Formerly, LOAD would attempt to unload and re-load the module, but this is unsafe and not all that useful.

  • Disallow empty passwords during LDAP authentication (Magnus)

  • Fix handling of sub-SELECTs appearing in the arguments of an outer-level aggregate function (Tom)

  • Fix bugs associated with fetching a whole-row value from the output of a Sort or Materialize plan node (Tom)

  • Revert planner change that disabled partial-index and constraint exclusion optimizations when there were more than 100 clauses in an AND or OR list (Tom)

  • Fix hash calculation for data type interval (Tom)

    This corrects wrong results for hash joins on interval values. It also changes the contents of hash indexes on interval columns. If you have any such indexes, you must REINDEX them after updating.

  • Treat to_char(..., 'TH') as an uppercase ordinal suffix with 'HH'/'HH12' (Heikki)

    It was previously handled as 'th' (lowercase).

  • Fix overflow for INTERVAL 'x ms' when x is more than 2 million and integer datetimes are in use (Alex Hunsaker)

  • Fix calculation of distance between a point and a line segment (Tom)

    This led to incorrect results from a number of geometric operators.

  • Fix money data type to work in locales where currency amounts have no fractional digits, e.g. Japan (Itagaki Takahiro)

  • Properly round datetime input like 00:12:57.9999999999999999999999999999 (Tom)

  • Fix poor choice of page split point in GiST R-tree operator classes (Teodor)

  • Avoid performance degradation in bulk inserts into GIN indexes when the input values are (nearly) in sorted order (Tom)

  • Correctly enforce NOT NULL domain constraints in some contexts in PL/pgSQL (Tom)

  • Fix portability issues in plperl initialization (Andrew Dunstan)

  • Fix pg_ctl to not go into an infinite loop if postgresql.conf is empty (Jeff Davis)

  • Make contrib/hstore throw an error when a key or value is too long to fit in its data structure, rather than silently truncating it (Andrew Gierth)

  • Fix contrib/xml2's xslt_process() to properly handle the maximum number of parameters (twenty) (Tom)

  • Improve robustness of libpq's code to recover from errors during COPY FROM STDIN (Tom)

  • Avoid including conflicting readline and editline header files when both libraries are installed (Zdenek Kotala)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2009l for DST law changes in Bangladesh, Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, Argentina/San_Luis, Cuba, Jordan (historical correction only), Mauritius, Morocco, Palestine, Syria, Tunisia.

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Release 8.2.13

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E.102. Release 8.2.13

Release Date: 2009-03-16

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.2.12. For information about new features in the 8.2 major release, see Section E.115.

E.102.1. Migration to Version 8.2.13

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.2.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.2.11, see Section E.104.

E.102.2. Changes

  • Prevent error recursion crashes when encoding conversion fails (Tom)

    This change extends fixes made in the last two minor releases for related failure scenarios. The previous fixes were narrowly tailored for the original problem reports, but we have now recognized that any error thrown by an encoding conversion function could potentially lead to infinite recursion while trying to report the error. The solution therefore is to disable translation and encoding conversion and report the plain-ASCII form of any error message, if we find we have gotten into a recursive error reporting situation. (CVE-2009-0922)

  • Disallow CREATE CONVERSION with the wrong encodings for the specified conversion function (Heikki)

    This prevents one possible scenario for encoding conversion failure. The previous change is a backstop to guard against other kinds of failures in the same area.

  • Fix core dump when to_char() is given format codes that are inappropriate for the type of the data argument (Tom)

  • Fix possible failure in contrib/tsearch2 when C locale is used with a multi-byte encoding (Teodor)

    Crashes were possible on platforms where wchar_t is narrower than int; Windows in particular.

  • Fix extreme inefficiency in contrib/tsearch2 parser's handling of an email-like string containing multiple @ characters (Heikki)

  • Fix decompilation of CASE WHEN with an implicit coercion (Tom)

    This mistake could lead to Assert failures in an Assert-enabled build, or an "unexpected CASE WHEN clause" error message in other cases, when trying to examine or dump a view.

  • Fix possible misassignment of the owner of a TOAST table's rowtype (Tom)

    If CLUSTER or a rewriting variant of ALTER TABLE were executed by someone other than the table owner, the pg_type entry for the table's TOAST table would end up marked as owned by that someone. This caused no immediate problems, since the permissions on the TOAST rowtype aren't examined by any ordinary database operation. However, it could lead to unexpected failures if one later tried to drop the role that issued the command (in 8.1 or 8.2), or "owner of data type appears to be invalid" warnings from pg_dump after having done so (in 8.3).

  • Fix PL/pgSQL to not treat INTO after INSERT as an INTO-variables clause anywhere in the string, not only at the start; in particular, don't fail for INSERT INTO within CREATE RULE (Tom)

  • Clean up PL/pgSQL error status variables fully at block exit (Ashesh Vashi and Dave Page)

    This is not a problem for PL/pgSQL itself, but the omission could cause the PL/pgSQL Debugger to crash while examining the state of a function.

  • Retry failed calls to CallNamedPipe() on Windows (Steve Marshall, Magnus)

    It appears that this function can sometimes fail transiently; we previously treated any failure as a hard error, which could confuse LISTEN/NOTIFY as well as other operations.

  • Add MUST (Mauritius Island Summer Time) to the default list of known timezone abbreviations (Xavier Bugaud)

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Release 8.2.12

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E.103. Release 8.2.12

Release Date: 2009-02-02

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.2.11. For information about new features in the 8.2 major release, see Section E.115.

E.103.1. Migration to Version 8.2.12

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.2.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.2.11, see Section E.104.

E.103.2. Changes

  • Improve handling of URLs in headline() function (Teodor)

  • Improve handling of overlength headlines in headline() function (Teodor)

  • Prevent possible Assert failure or misconversion if an encoding conversion is created with the wrong conversion function for the specified pair of encodings (Tom, Heikki)

  • Fix possible Assert failure if a statement executed in PL/pgSQL is rewritten into another kind of statement, for example if an INSERT is rewritten into an UPDATE (Heikki)

  • Ensure that a snapshot is available to datatype input functions (Tom)

    This primarily affects domains that are declared with CHECK constraints involving user-defined stable or immutable functions. Such functions typically fail if no snapshot has been set.

  • Make it safer for SPI-using functions to be used within datatype I/O; in particular, to be used in domain check constraints (Tom)

  • Avoid unnecessary locking of small tables in VACUUM (Heikki)

  • Fix a problem that made UPDATE RETURNING tableoid return zero instead of the correct OID (Tom)

  • Fix planner misestimation of selectivity when transitive equality is applied to an outer-join clause (Tom)

    This could result in bad plans for queries like ... from a left join b on a.a1 = b.b1 where a.a1 = 42 ...

  • Improve optimizer's handling of long IN lists (Tom)

    This change avoids wasting large amounts of time on such lists when constraint exclusion is enabled.

  • Ensure that the contents of a holdable cursor don't depend on the contents of TOAST tables (Tom)

    Previously, large field values in a cursor result might be represented as TOAST pointers, which would fail if the referenced table got dropped before the cursor is read, or if the large value is deleted and then vacuumed away. This cannot happen with an ordinary cursor, but it could with a cursor that is held past its creating transaction.

  • Fix memory leak when a set-returning function is terminated without reading its whole result (Tom)

  • Fix contrib/dblink's dblink_get_result(text,bool) function (Joe)

  • Fix possible garbage output from contrib/sslinfo functions (Tom)

  • Fix configure script to properly report failure when unable to obtain linkage information for PL/Perl (Andrew)

  • Make all documentation reference pgsql-bugs and/or pgsql-hackers as appropriate, instead of the now-decommissioned pgsql-ports and pgsql-patches mailing lists (Tom)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2009a (for Kathmandu and historical DST corrections in Switzerland, Cuba)

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Release 8.2.11

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E.104. Release 8.2.11

Release Date: 2008-11-03

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.2.10. For information about new features in the 8.2 major release, see Section E.115.

E.104.1. Migration to Version 8.2.11

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.2.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.2.7, see Section E.108. Also, if you were running a previous 8.2.X release, it is recommended to REINDEX all GiST indexes after the upgrade.

E.104.2. Changes

  • Fix GiST index corruption due to marking the wrong index entry "dead" after a deletion (Teodor)

    This would result in index searches failing to find rows they should have found. Corrupted indexes can be fixed with REINDEX.

  • Fix backend crash when the client encoding cannot represent a localized error message (Tom)

    We have addressed similar issues before, but it would still fail if the "character has no equivalent" message itself couldn't be converted. The fix is to disable localization and send the plain ASCII error message when we detect such a situation.

  • Fix possible crash when deeply nested functions are invoked from a trigger (Tom)

  • Improve optimization of expression IN (expression-list) queries (Tom, per an idea from Robert Haas)

    Cases in which there are query variables on the right-hand side had been handled less efficiently in 8.2.x and 8.3.x than in prior versions. The fix restores 8.1 behavior for such cases.

  • Fix mis-expansion of rule queries when a sub-SELECT appears in a function call in FROM, a multi-row VALUES list, or a RETURNING list (Tom)

    The usual symptom of this problem is an "unrecognized node type" error.

  • Fix memory leak during rescan of a hashed aggregation plan (Neil)

  • Ensure an error is reported when a newly-defined PL/pgSQL trigger function is invoked as a normal function (Tom)

  • Prevent possible collision of relfilenode numbers when moving a table to another tablespace with ALTER SET TABLESPACE (Heikki)

    The command tried to re-use the existing filename, instead of picking one that is known unused in the destination directory.

  • Fix incorrect tsearch2 headline generation when single query item matches first word of text (Sushant Sinha)

  • Fix improper display of fractional seconds in interval values when using a non-ISO datestyle in an --enable-integer-datetimes build (Ron Mayer)

  • Ensure SPI_getvalue and SPI_getbinval behave correctly when the passed tuple and tuple descriptor have different numbers of columns (Tom)

    This situation is normal when a table has had columns added or removed, but these two functions didn't handle it properly. The only likely consequence is an incorrect error indication.

  • Fix ecpg's parsing of CREATE ROLE (Michael)

  • Fix recent breakage of pg_ctl restart (Tom)

  • Ensure pg_control is opened in binary mode (Itagaki Takahiro)

    pg_controldata and pg_resetxlog did this incorrectly, and so could fail on Windows.

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2008i (for DST law changes in Argentina, Brazil, Mauritius, Syria)

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Release 8.2.10

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E.105. Release 8.2.10

Release Date: 2008-09-22

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.2.9. For information about new features in the 8.2 major release, see Section E.115.

E.105.1. Migration to Version 8.2.10

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.2.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.2.7, see Section E.108.

E.105.2. Changes

  • Fix bug in btree WAL recovery code (Heikki)

    Recovery failed if the WAL ended partway through a page split operation.

  • Fix potential miscalculation of datfrozenxid (Alvaro)

    This error may explain some recent reports of failure to remove old pg_clog data.

  • Widen local lock counters from 32 to 64 bits (Tom)

    This responds to reports that the counters could overflow in sufficiently long transactions, leading to unexpected "lock is already held" errors.

  • Fix possible duplicate output of tuples during a GiST index scan (Teodor)

  • Fix missed permissions checks when a view contains a simple UNION ALL construct (Heikki)

    Permissions for the referenced tables were checked properly, but not permissions for the view itself.

  • Add checks in executor startup to ensure that the tuples produced by an INSERT or UPDATE will match the target table's current rowtype (Tom)

    ALTER COLUMN TYPE, followed by re-use of a previously cached plan, could produce this type of situation. The check protects against data corruption and/or crashes that could ensue.

  • Fix possible repeated drops during DROP OWNED (Tom)

    This would typically result in strange errors such as "cache lookup failed for relation NNN".

  • Fix AT TIME ZONE to first try to interpret its timezone argument as a timezone abbreviation, and only try it as a full timezone name if that fails, rather than the other way around as formerly (Tom)

    The timestamp input functions have always resolved ambiguous zone names in this order. Making AT TIME ZONE do so as well improves consistency, and fixes a compatibility bug introduced in 8.1: in ambiguous cases we now behave the same as 8.0 and before did, since in the older versions AT TIME ZONE accepted only abbreviations.

  • Fix datetime input functions to correctly detect integer overflow when running on a 64-bit platform (Tom)

  • Prevent integer overflows during units conversion when displaying a configuration parameter that has units (Tom)

  • Improve performance of writing very long log messages to syslog (Tom)

  • Allow spaces in the suffix part of an LDAP URL in pg_hba.conf (Tom)

  • Fix bug in backwards scanning of a cursor on a SELECT DISTINCT ON query (Tom)

  • Fix planner bug with nested sub-select expressions (Tom)

    If the outer sub-select has no direct dependency on the parent query, but the inner one does, the outer value might not get recalculated for new parent query rows.

  • Fix planner to estimate that GROUP BY expressions yielding boolean results always result in two groups, regardless of the expressions' contents (Tom)

    This is very substantially more accurate than the regular GROUP BY estimate for certain boolean tests like col IS NULL.

  • Fix PL/pgSQL to not fail when a FOR loop's target variable is a record containing composite-type fields (Tom)

  • Fix PL/Tcl to behave correctly with Tcl 8.5, and to be more careful about the encoding of data sent to or from Tcl (Tom)

  • On Windows, work around a Microsoft bug by preventing libpq from trying to send more than 64kB per system call (Magnus)

  • Improve pg_dump and pg_restore's error reporting after failure to send a SQL command (Tom)

  • Fix pg_ctl to properly preserve postmaster command-line arguments across a restart (Bruce)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2008f (for DST law changes in Argentina, Bahamas, Brazil, Mauritius, Morocco, Pakistan, Palestine, and Paraguay)

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Release 8.2.9

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E.106. Release 8.2.9

Release Date: 2008-06-12

This release contains one serious and one minor bug fix over 8.2.8. For information about new features in the 8.2 major release, see Section E.115.

E.106.1. Migration to Version 8.2.9

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.2.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.2.7, see Section E.108.

E.106.2. Changes

  • Make pg_get_ruledef() parenthesize negative constants (Tom)

    Before this fix, a negative constant in a view or rule might be dumped as, say, -42::integer, which is subtly incorrect: it should be (-42)::integer due to operator precedence rules. Usually this would make little difference, but it could interact with another recent patch to cause PostgreSQL to reject what had been a valid SELECT DISTINCT view query. Since this could result in pg_dump output failing to reload, it is being treated as a high-priority fix. The only released versions in which dump output is actually incorrect are 8.3.1 and 8.2.7.

  • Make ALTER AGGREGATE ... OWNER TO update pg_shdepend (Tom)

    This oversight could lead to problems if the aggregate was later involved in a DROP OWNED or REASSIGN OWNED operation.

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Release 8.2.8

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E.107. Release 8.2.8

Release Date: never released

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.2.7. For information about new features in the 8.2 major release, see Section E.115.

E.107.1. Migration to Version 8.2.8

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.2.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.2.7, see Section E.108.

E.107.2. Changes

  • Fix ERRORDATA_STACK_SIZE exceeded crash that occurred on Windows when using UTF-8 database encoding and a different client encoding (Tom)

  • Fix ALTER TABLE ADD COLUMN ... PRIMARY KEY so that the new column is correctly checked to see if it's been initialized to all non-nulls (Brendan Jurd)

    Previous versions neglected to check this requirement at all.

  • Fix possible CREATE TABLE failure when inheriting the "same" constraint from multiple parent relations that inherited that constraint from a common ancestor (Tom)

  • Fix pg_get_ruledef() to show the alias, if any, attached to the target table of an UPDATE or DELETE (Tom)

  • Fix GIN bug that could result in a too many LWLocks taken failure (Teodor)

  • Avoid possible crash when decompressing corrupted data (Zdenek Kotala)

  • Repair two places where SIGTERM exit of a backend could leave corrupted state in shared memory (Tom)

    Neither case is very important if SIGTERM is used to shut down the whole database cluster together, but there was a problem if someone tried to SIGTERM individual backends.

  • Fix conversions between ISO-8859-5 and other encodings to handle Cyrillic "Yo" characters (e and E with two dots) (Sergey Burladyan)

  • Fix several datatype input functions, notably array_in(), that were allowing unused bytes in their results to contain uninitialized, unpredictable values (Tom)

    This could lead to failures in which two apparently identical literal values were not seen as equal, resulting in the parser complaining about unmatched ORDER BY and DISTINCT expressions.

  • Fix a corner case in regular-expression substring matching (substring(string from pattern)) (Tom)

    The problem occurs when there is a match to the pattern overall but the user has specified a parenthesized subexpression and that subexpression hasn't got a match. An example is substring('foo' from 'foo(bar)?'). This should return NULL, since (bar) isn't matched, but it was mistakenly returning the whole-pattern match instead (ie, foo).

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2008c (for DST law changes in Morocco, Iraq, Choibalsan, Pakistan, Syria, Cuba, and Argentina/San_Luis)

  • Fix incorrect result from ecpg's PGTYPEStimestamp_sub() function (Michael)

  • Fix broken GiST comparison function for contrib/tsearch2's tsquery type (Teodor)

  • Fix possible crashes in contrib/cube functions (Tom)

  • Fix core dump in contrib/xml2's xpath_table() function when the input query returns a NULL value (Tom)

  • Fix contrib/xml2's makefile to not override CFLAGS (Tom)

  • Fix DatumGetBool macro to not fail with gcc 4.3 (Tom)

    This problem affects "old style" (V0) C functions that return boolean. The fix is already in 8.3, but the need to back-patch it was not realized at the time.

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Release 8.2.7

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E.108. Release 8.2.7

Release Date: 2008-03-17

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.2.6. For information about new features in the 8.2 major release, see Section E.115.

E.108.1. Migration to Version 8.2.7

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.2.X. However, you might need to REINDEX indexes on textual columns after updating, if you are affected by the Windows locale issue described below.

E.108.2. Changes

  • Fix character string comparison for Windows locales that consider different character combinations as equal (Tom)

    This fix applies only on Windows and only when using UTF-8 database encoding. The same fix was made for all other cases over two years ago, but Windows with UTF-8 uses a separate code path that was not updated. If you are using a locale that considers some non-identical strings as equal, you may need to REINDEX to fix existing indexes on textual columns.

  • Repair potential deadlock between concurrent VACUUM FULL operations on different system catalogs (Tom)

  • Fix longstanding LISTEN/NOTIFY race condition (Tom)

    In rare cases a session that had just executed a LISTEN might not get a notification, even though one would be expected because the concurrent transaction executing NOTIFY was observed to commit later.

    A side effect of the fix is that a transaction that has executed a not-yet-committed LISTEN command will not see any row in pg_listener for the LISTEN, should it choose to look; formerly it would have. This behavior was never documented one way or the other, but it is possible that some applications depend on the old behavior.

  • Disallow LISTEN and UNLISTEN within a prepared transaction (Tom)

    This was formerly allowed but trying to do it had various unpleasant consequences, notably that the originating backend could not exit as long as an UNLISTEN remained uncommitted.

  • Disallow dropping a temporary table within a prepared transaction (Heikki)

    This was correctly disallowed by 8.1, but the check was inadvertently broken in 8.2.

  • Fix rare crash when an error occurs during a query using a hash index (Heikki)

  • Fix memory leaks in certain usages of set-returning functions (Neil)

  • Fix input of datetime values for February 29 in years BC (Tom)

    The former coding was mistaken about which years were leap years.

  • Fix "unrecognized node type" error in some variants of ALTER OWNER (Tom)

  • Ensure pg_stat_activity.waiting flag is cleared when a lock wait is aborted (Tom)

  • Fix handling of process permissions on Windows Vista (Dave, Magnus)

    In particular, this fix allows starting the server as the Administrator user.

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2008a (in particular, recent Chile changes); adjust timezone abbreviation VET (Venezuela) to mean UTC-4:30, not UTC-4:00 (Tom)

  • Fix pg_ctl to correctly extract the postmaster's port number from command-line options (Itagaki Takahiro, Tom)

    Previously, pg_ctl start -w could try to contact the postmaster on the wrong port, leading to bogus reports of startup failure.

  • Use -fwrapv to defend against possible misoptimization in recent gcc versions (Tom)

    This is known to be necessary when building PostgreSQL with gcc 4.3 or later.

  • Correctly enforce statement_timeout values longer than INT_MAX microseconds (about 35 minutes) (Tom)

    This bug affects only builds with --enable-integer-datetimes.

  • Fix "unexpected PARAM_SUBLINK ID" planner error when constant-folding simplifies a sub-select (Tom)

  • Fix logical errors in constraint-exclusion handling of IS NULL and NOT expressions (Tom)

    The planner would sometimes exclude partitions that should not have been excluded because of the possibility of NULL results.

  • Fix another cause of "failed to build any N-way joins" planner errors (Tom)

    This could happen in cases where a clauseless join needed to be forced before a join clause could be exploited.

  • Fix incorrect constant propagation in outer-join planning (Tom)

    The planner could sometimes incorrectly conclude that a variable could be constrained to be equal to a constant, leading to wrong query results.

  • Fix display of constant expressions in ORDER BY and GROUP BY (Tom)

    An explicitly casted constant would be shown incorrectly. This could for example lead to corruption of a view definition during dump and reload.

  • Fix libpq to handle NOTICE messages correctly during COPY OUT (Tom)

    This failure has only been observed to occur when a user-defined datatype's output routine issues a NOTICE, but there is no guarantee it couldn't happen due to other causes.

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Release 8.2.6

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.109. Release 8.2.6

Release Date: 2008-01-07

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.2.5, including fixes for significant security issues. For information about new features in the 8.2 major release, see Section E.115.

E.109.1. Migration to Version 8.2.6

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.2.X.

E.109.2. Changes

  • Prevent functions in indexes from executing with the privileges of the user running VACUUM, ANALYZE, etc (Tom)

    Functions used in index expressions and partial-index predicates are evaluated whenever a new table entry is made. It has long been understood that this poses a risk of trojan-horse code execution if one modifies a table owned by an untrustworthy user. (Note that triggers, defaults, check constraints, etc. pose the same type of risk.) But functions in indexes pose extra danger because they will be executed by routine maintenance operations such as VACUUM FULL, which are commonly performed automatically under a superuser account. For example, a nefarious user can execute code with superuser privileges by setting up a trojan-horse index definition and waiting for the next routine vacuum. The fix arranges for standard maintenance operations (including VACUUM, ANALYZE, REINDEX, and CLUSTER) to execute as the table owner rather than the calling user, using the same privilege-switching mechanism already used for SECURITY DEFINER functions. To prevent bypassing this security measure, execution of SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION and SET ROLE is now forbidden within a SECURITY DEFINER context. (CVE-2007-6600)

  • Repair assorted bugs in the regular-expression package (Tom, Will Drewry)

    Suitably crafted regular-expression patterns could cause crashes, infinite or near-infinite looping, and/or massive memory consumption, all of which pose denial-of-service hazards for applications that accept regex search patterns from untrustworthy sources. (CVE-2007-4769, CVE-2007-4772, CVE-2007-6067)

  • Require non-superusers who use /contrib/dblink to use only password authentication, as a security measure (Joe)

    The fix that appeared for this in 8.2.5 was incomplete, as it plugged the hole for only some dblink functions. (CVE-2007-6601, CVE-2007-3278)

  • Fix bugs in WAL replay for GIN indexes (Teodor)

  • Fix GIN index build to work properly when maintenance_work_mem is 4GB or more (Tom)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2007k (in particular, recent Argentina changes) (Tom)

  • Improve planner's handling of LIKE/regex estimation in non-C locales (Tom)

  • Fix planning-speed problem for deep outer-join nests, as well as possible poor choice of join order (Tom)

  • Fix planner failure in some cases of WHERE false AND var IN (SELECT ...) (Tom)

  • Make CREATE TABLE ... SERIAL and ALTER SEQUENCE ... OWNED BY not change the currval() state of the sequence (Tom)

  • Preserve the tablespace and storage parameters of indexes that are rebuilt by ALTER TABLE ... ALTER COLUMN TYPE (Tom)

  • Make archive recovery always start a new WAL timeline, rather than only when a recovery stop time was used (Simon)

    This avoids a corner-case risk of trying to overwrite an existing archived copy of the last WAL segment, and seems simpler and cleaner than the original definition.

  • Make VACUUM not use all of maintenance_work_mem when the table is too small for it to be useful (Alvaro)

  • Fix potential crash in translate() when using a multibyte database encoding (Tom)

  • Make corr() return the correct result for negative correlation values (Neil)

  • Fix overflow in extract(epoch from interval) for intervals exceeding 68 years (Tom)

  • Fix PL/Perl to not fail when a UTF-8 regular expression is used in a trusted function (Andrew)

  • Fix PL/Perl to cope when platform's Perl defines type bool as int rather than char (Tom)

    While this could theoretically happen anywhere, no standard build of Perl did things this way ... until Mac OS X 10.5.

  • Fix PL/Python to work correctly with Python 2.5 on 64-bit machines (Marko Kreen)

  • Fix PL/Python to not crash on long exception messages (Alvaro)

  • Fix pg_dump to correctly handle inheritance child tables that have default expressions different from their parent's (Tom)

  • Fix libpq crash when PGPASSFILE refers to a file that is not a plain file (Martin Pitt)

  • ecpg parser fixes (Michael)

  • Make contrib/pgcrypto defend against OpenSSL libraries that fail on keys longer than 128 bits; which is the case at least on some Solaris versions (Marko Kreen)

  • Make contrib/tablefunc's crosstab() handle NULL rowid as a category in its own right, rather than crashing (Joe)

  • Fix tsvector and tsquery output routines to escape backslashes correctly (Teodor, Bruce)

  • Fix crash of to_tsvector() on huge input strings (Teodor)

  • Require a specific version of Autoconf to be used when re-generating the configure script (Peter)

    This affects developers and packagers only. The change was made to prevent accidental use of untested combinations of Autoconf and PostgreSQL versions. You can remove the version check if you really want to use a different Autoconf version, but it's your responsibility whether the result works or not.

  • Update gettimeofday configuration check so that PostgreSQL can be built on newer versions of MinGW (Magnus)

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Release 8.2.5

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E.110. Release 8.2.5

Release Date: 2007-09-17

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.2.4. For information about new features in the 8.2 major release, see Section E.115.

E.110.1. Migration to Version 8.2.5

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.2.X.

E.110.2. Changes

  • Prevent index corruption when a transaction inserts rows and then aborts close to the end of a concurrent VACUUM on the same table (Tom)

  • Fix ALTER DOMAIN ADD CONSTRAINT for cases involving domains over domains (Tom)

  • Make CREATE DOMAIN ... DEFAULT NULL work properly (Tom)

  • Fix some planner problems with outer joins, notably poor size estimation for t1 LEFT JOIN t2 WHERE t2.col IS NULL (Tom)

  • Allow the interval data type to accept input consisting only of milliseconds or microseconds (Neil)

  • Allow timezone name to appear before the year in timestamp input (Tom)

  • Fixes for GIN indexes used by /contrib/tsearch2 (Teodor)

  • Speed up rtree index insertion (Teodor)

  • Fix excessive logging of SSL error messages (Tom)

  • Fix logging so that log messages are never interleaved when using the syslogger process (Andrew)

  • Fix crash when log_min_error_statement logging runs out of memory (Tom)

  • Fix incorrect handling of some foreign-key corner cases (Tom)

  • Fix stddev_pop(numeric) and var_pop(numeric) (Tom)

  • Prevent REINDEX and CLUSTER from failing due to attempting to process temporary tables of other sessions (Alvaro)

  • Update the time zone database rules, particularly New Zealand's upcoming changes (Tom)

  • Windows socket and semaphore improvements (Magnus)

  • Make pg_ctl -w work properly in Windows service mode (Dave Page)

  • Fix memory allocation bug when using MIT Kerberos on Windows (Magnus)

  • Suppress timezone name (%Z) in log timestamps on Windows because of possible encoding mismatches (Tom)

  • Require non-superusers who use /contrib/dblink to use only password authentication, as a security measure (Joe)

  • Restrict /contrib/pgstattuple functions to superusers, for security reasons (Tom)

  • Do not let /contrib/intarray try to make its GIN opclass the default (this caused problems at dump/restore) (Tom)

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Release 8.2.4

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E.111. Release 8.2.4

Release Date: 2007-04-23

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.2.3, including a security fix. For information about new features in the 8.2 major release, see Section E.115.

E.111.1. Migration to Version 8.2.4

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.2.X.

E.111.2. Changes

  • Support explicit placement of the temporary-table schema within search_path, and disable searching it for functions and operators (Tom)

    This is needed to allow a security-definer function to set a truly secure value of search_path. Without it, an unprivileged SQL user can use temporary objects to execute code with the privileges of the security-definer function (CVE-2007-2138). See CREATE FUNCTION for more information.

  • Fix shared_preload_libraries for Windows by forcing reload in each backend (Korry Douglas)

  • Fix to_char() so it properly upper/lower cases localized day or month names (Pavel Stehule)

  • /contrib/tsearch2 crash fixes (Teodor)

  • Require COMMIT PREPARED to be executed in the same database as the transaction was prepared in (Heikki)

  • Allow pg_dump to do binary backups larger than two gigabytes on Windows (Magnus)

  • New traditional (Taiwan) Chinese FAQ (Zhou Daojing)

  • Prevent the statistics collector from writing to disk too frequently (Tom)

  • Fix potential-data-corruption bug in how VACUUM FULL handles UPDATE chains (Tom, Pavan Deolasee)

  • Fix bug in domains that use array types (Tom)

  • Fix pg_dump so it can dump a serial column's sequence using -t when not also dumping the owning table (Tom)

  • Planner fixes, including improving outer join and bitmap scan selection logic (Tom)

  • Fix possible wrong answers or crash when a PL/pgSQL function tries to RETURN from within an EXCEPTION block (Tom)

  • Fix PANIC during enlargement of a hash index (Tom)

  • Fix POSIX-style timezone specs to follow new USA DST rules (Tom)

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Release 8.2.3

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E.112. Release 8.2.3

Release Date: 2007-02-07

This release contains two fixes from 8.2.2. For information about new features in the 8.2 major release, see Section E.115.

E.112.1. Migration to Version 8.2.3

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.2.X.

E.112.2. Changes

  • Remove overly-restrictive check for type length in constraints and functional indexes(Tom)

  • Fix optimization so MIN/MAX in subqueries can again use indexes (Tom)

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Release 8.2.2

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E.113. Release 8.2.2

Release Date: 2007-02-05

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.2.1, including a security fix. For information about new features in the 8.2 major release, see Section E.115.

E.113.1. Migration to Version 8.2.2

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.2.X.

E.113.2. Changes

  • Remove security vulnerabilities that allowed connected users to read backend memory (Tom)

    The vulnerabilities involve suppressing the normal check that a SQL function returns the data type it's declared to, and changing the data type of a table column (CVE-2007-0555, CVE-2007-0556). These errors can easily be exploited to cause a backend crash, and in principle might be used to read database content that the user should not be able to access.

  • Fix not-so-rare-anymore bug wherein btree index page splits could fail due to choosing an infeasible split point (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Fix Borland C compile scripts (L Bayuk)

  • Properly handle to_char('CC') for years ending in 00 (Tom)

    Year 2000 is in the twentieth century, not the twenty-first.

  • /contrib/tsearch2 localization improvements (Tatsuo, Teodor)

  • Fix incorrect permission check in information_schema.key_column_usage view (Tom)

    The symptom is "relation with OID nnnnn does not exist" errors. To get this fix without using initdb, use CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW to install the corrected definition found in share/information_schema.sql. Note you will need to do this in each database.

  • Improve VACUUM performance for databases with many tables (Tom)

  • Fix for rare Assert() crash triggered by UNION (Tom)

  • Fix potentially incorrect results from index searches using ROW inequality conditions (Tom)

  • Tighten security of multi-byte character processing for UTF8 sequences over three bytes long (Tom)

  • Fix bogus "permission denied" failures occurring on Windows due to attempts to fsync already-deleted files (Magnus, Tom)

  • Fix bug that could cause the statistics collector to hang on Windows (Magnus)

    This would in turn lead to autovacuum not working.

  • Fix possible crashes when an already-in-use PL/pgSQL function is updated (Tom)

  • Improve PL/pgSQL handling of domain types (Sergiy Vyshnevetskiy, Tom)

  • Fix possible errors in processing PL/pgSQL exception blocks (Tom)

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Release 8.2.1

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E.114. Release 8.2.1

Release Date: 2007-01-08

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.2. For information about new features in the 8.2 major release, see Section E.115.

E.114.1. Migration to Version 8.2.1

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.2.

E.114.2. Changes

  • Fix crash with SELECT ... LIMIT ALL (also LIMIT NULL) (Tom)

  • Several /contrib/tsearch2 fixes (Teodor)

  • On Windows, make log messages coming from the operating system use ASCII encoding (Hiroshi Saito)

    This fixes a conversion problem when there is a mismatch between the encoding of the operating system and database server.

  • Fix Windows linking of pg_dump using win32.mak (Hiroshi Saito)

  • Fix planner mistakes for outer join queries (Tom)

  • Fix several problems in queries involving sub-SELECTs (Tom)

  • Fix potential crash in SPI during subtransaction abort (Tom)

    This affects all PL functions since they all use SPI.

  • Improve build speed of PDF documentation (Peter)

  • Re-add JST (Japan) timezone abbreviation (Tom)

  • Improve optimization decisions related to index scans (Tom)

  • Have psql print multi-byte combining characters as before, rather than output as \u (Tom)

  • Improve index usage of regular expressions that use parentheses (Tom)

    This improves psql \d performance also.

  • Make pg_dumpall assume that databases have public CONNECT privilege, when dumping from a pre-8.2 server (Tom)

    This preserves the previous behavior that anyone can connect to a database if allowed by pg_hba.conf.

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Release 8.2

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E.115. Release 8.2

Release Date: 2006-12-05

E.115.1. Overview

This release adds many functionality and performance improvements that were requested by users, including:

  • Query language enhancements including INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE RETURNING, multirow VALUES lists, and optional target-table alias in UPDATE/DELETE

  • Index creation without blocking concurrent INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE operations

  • Many query optimization improvements, including support for reordering outer joins

  • Improved sorting performance with lower memory usage

  • More efficient locking with better concurrency

  • More efficient vacuuming

  • Easier administration of warm standby servers

  • New FILLFACTOR support for tables and indexes

  • Monitoring, logging, and performance tuning additions

  • More control over creating and dropping objects

  • Table inheritance relationships can be defined for and removed from pre-existing tables

  • COPY TO can copy the output of an arbitrary SELECT statement

  • Array improvements, including nulls in arrays

  • Aggregate-function improvements, including multiple-input aggregates and SQL:2003 statistical functions

  • Many contrib/ improvements

E.115.2. Migration to Version 8.2

A dump/restore using pg_dump is required for those wishing to migrate data from any previous release.

Observe the following incompatibilities:

  • Set escape_string_warning to on by default (Bruce)

    This issues a warning if backslash escapes are used in non-escape (non-E'') strings.

  • Change the row constructor syntax (ROW(...)) so that list elements foo.* will be expanded to a list of their member fields, rather than creating a nested row type field as formerly (Tom)

    The new behavior is substantially more useful since it allows, for example, triggers to check for data changes with IF row(new.*) IS DISTINCT FROM row(old.*). The old behavior is still available by omitting .*.

  • Make row comparisons follow SQL standard semantics and allow them to be used in index scans (Tom)

    Previously, row = and <> comparisons followed the standard but < <= > >= did not. A row comparison can now be used as an index constraint for a multicolumn index matching the row value.

  • Make row IS [NOT] NULL tests follow SQL standard semantics (Tom)

    The former behavior conformed to the standard for simple cases with IS NULL, but IS NOT NULL would return true if any row field was non-null, whereas the standard says it should return true only when all fields are non-null.

  • Make SET CONSTRAINT affect only one constraint (Kris Jurka)

    In previous releases, SET CONSTRAINT modified all constraints with a matching name. In this release, the schema search path is used to modify only the first matching constraint. A schema specification is also supported. This more nearly conforms to the SQL standard.

  • Remove RULE permission for tables, for security reasons (Tom)

    As of this release, only a table's owner can create or modify rules for the table. For backwards compatibility, GRANT/REVOKE RULE is still accepted, but it does nothing.

  • Array comparison improvements (Tom)

    Now array dimensions are also compared.

  • Change array concatenation to match documented behavior (Tom)

    This changes the previous behavior where concatenation would modify the array lower bound.

  • Make command-line options of postmaster and postgres identical (Peter)

    This allows the postmaster to pass arguments to each backend without using -o. Note that some options are now only available as long-form options, because there were conflicting single-letter options.

  • Deprecate use of postmaster symbolic link (Peter)

    postmaster and postgres commands now act identically, with the behavior determined by command-line options. The postmaster symbolic link is kept for compatibility, but is not really needed.

  • Change log_duration to output even if the query is not output (Tom)

    In prior releases, log_duration only printed if the query appeared earlier in the log.

  • Make to_char(time) and to_char(interval) treat HH and HH12 as 12-hour intervals

    Most applications should use HH24 unless they want a 12-hour display.

  • Zero unmasked bits in conversion from INET to CIDR (Tom)

    This ensures that the converted value is actually valid for CIDR.

  • Remove australian_timezones configuration variable (Joachim Wieland)

    This variable has been superseded by a more general facility for configuring timezone abbreviations.

  • Improve cost estimation for nested-loop index scans (Tom)

    This might eliminate the need to set unrealistically small values of random_page_cost. If you have been using a very small random_page_cost, please recheck your test cases.

  • Change behavior of pg_dump -n and -t options. (Greg Sabino Mullane)

    See the pg_dump manual page for details.

  • Change libpq PQdsplen() to return a useful value (Martijn van Oosterhout)

  • Declare libpq PQgetssl() as returning void *, rather than SSL * (Martijn van Oosterhout)

    This allows applications to use the function without including the OpenSSL headers.

  • C-language loadable modules must now include a PG_MODULE_MAGIC macro call for version compatibility checking (Martijn van Oosterhout)

  • For security's sake, modules used by a PL/PerlU function are no longer available to PL/Perl functions (Andrew)

    Note: 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.

  • In contrib/xml2/, rename xml_valid() to xml_is_well_formed() (Tom)

    xml_valid() will remain for backward compatibility, but its behavior will change to do schema checking in a future release.

  • Remove contrib/ora2pg/, now at http://www.samse.fr/GPL/ora2pg

  • Remove contrib modules that have been migrated to PgFoundry: adddepend, dbase, dbmirror, fulltextindex, mac, userlock

  • Remove abandoned contrib modules: mSQL-interface, tips

  • Remove QNX and BEOS ports (Bruce)

    These ports no longer had active maintainers.

E.115.3. Changes

Below you will find a detailed account of the changes between PostgreSQL 8.2 and the previous major release.

E.115.3.1. Performance Improvements

  • Allow the planner to reorder outer joins in some circumstances (Tom)

    In previous releases, outer joins would always be evaluated in the order written in the query. This change allows the query optimizer to consider reordering outer joins, in cases where it can determine that the join order can be changed without altering the meaning of the query. This can make a considerable performance difference for queries involving multiple outer joins or mixed inner and outer joins.

  • Improve efficiency of IN (list-of-expressions) clauses (Tom)

  • Improve sorting speed and reduce memory usage (Simon, Tom)

  • Improve subtransaction performance (Alvaro, Itagaki Takahiro, Tom)

  • Add FILLFACTOR to table and index creation (ITAGAKI Takahiro)

    This leaves extra free space in each table or index page, allowing improved performance as the database grows. This is particularly valuable to maintain clustering.

  • Increase default values for shared_buffers and max_fsm_pages (Andrew)

  • Improve locking performance by breaking the lock manager tables into sections (Tom)

    This allows locking to be more fine-grained, reducing contention.

  • Reduce locking requirements of sequential scans (Qingqing Zhou)

  • Reduce locking required for database creation and destruction (Tom)

  • Improve the optimizer's selectivity estimates for LIKE, ILIKE, and regular expression operations (Tom)

  • Improve planning of joins to inherited tables and UNION ALL views (Tom)

  • Allow constraint exclusion to be applied to inherited UPDATE and DELETE queries (Tom)

    SELECT already honored constraint exclusion.

  • Improve planning of constant WHERE clauses, such as a condition that depends only on variables inherited from an outer query level (Tom)

  • Protocol-level unnamed prepared statements are re-planned for each set of BIND values (Tom)

    This improves performance because the exact parameter values can be used in the plan.

  • Speed up vacuuming of B-Tree indexes (Heikki Linnakangas, Tom)

  • Avoid extra scan of tables without indexes during VACUUM (Greg Stark)

  • Improve multicolumn GiST indexing (Oleg, Teodor)

  • Remove dead index entries before B-Tree page split (Junji Teramoto)

E.115.3.2. Server Changes

  • Allow a forced switch to a new transaction log file (Simon, Tom)

    This is valuable for keeping warm standby slave servers in sync with the master. Transaction log file switching now also happens automatically during pg_stop_backup(). This ensures that all transaction log files needed for recovery can be archived immediately.

  • Add WAL informational functions (Simon)

    Add functions for interrogating the current transaction log insertion point and determining WAL filenames from the hex WAL locations displayed by pg_stop_backup() and related functions.

  • Improve recovery from a crash during WAL replay (Simon)

    The server now does periodic checkpoints during WAL recovery, so if there is a crash, future WAL recovery is shortened. This also eliminates the need for warm standby servers to replay the entire log since the base backup if they crash.

  • Improve reliability of long-term WAL replay (Heikki, Simon, Tom)

    Formerly, trying to roll forward through more than 2 billion transactions would not work due to XID wraparound. This meant warm standby servers had to be reloaded from fresh base backups periodically.

  • Add archive_timeout to force transaction log file switches at a given interval (Simon)

    This enforces a maximum replication delay for warm standby servers.

  • Add native LDAP authentication (Magnus Hagander)

    This is particularly useful for platforms that do not support PAM, such as Windows.

  • Add GRANT CONNECT ON DATABASE (Gevik Babakhani)

    This gives SQL-level control over database access. It works as an additional filter on top of the existing pg_hba.conf controls.

  • Add support for SSL Certificate Revocation List (CRL) files (Libor Hohoš)

    The server and libpq both recognize CRL files now.

  • GiST indexes are now clusterable (Teodor)

  • Remove routine autovacuum server log entries (Bruce)

    pg_stat_activity now shows autovacuum activity.

  • Track maximum XID age within individual tables, instead of whole databases (Alvaro)

    This reduces the overhead involved in preventing transaction ID wraparound, by avoiding unnecessary VACUUMs.

  • Add last vacuum and analyze timestamp columns to the stats collector (Larry Rosenman)

    These values now appear in the pg_stat_*_tables system views.

  • Improve performance of statistics monitoring, especially stats_command_string (Tom, Bruce)

    This release enables stats_command_string by default, now that its overhead is minimal. This means pg_stat_activity will now show all active queries by default.

  • Add a waiting column to pg_stat_activity (Tom)

    This allows pg_stat_activity to show all the information included in the ps display.

  • Add configuration parameter update_process_title to control whether the ps display is updated for every command (Bruce)

    On platforms where it is expensive to update the ps display, it might be worthwhile to turn this off and rely solely on pg_stat_activity for status information.

  • Allow units to be specified in configuration settings (Peter)

    For example, you can now set shared_buffers to 32MB rather than mentally converting sizes.

  • Add support for include directives in postgresql.conf (Joachim Wieland)

  • Improve logging of protocol-level prepare/bind/execute messages (Bruce, Tom)

    Such logging now shows statement names, bind parameter values, and the text of the query being executed. Also, the query text is properly included in logged error messages when enabled by log_min_error_statement.

  • Prevent max_stack_depth from being set to unsafe values

    On platforms where we can determine the actual kernel stack depth limit (which is most), make sure that the initial default value of max_stack_depth is safe, and reject attempts to set it to unsafely large values.

  • Enable highlighting of error location in query in more cases (Tom)

    The server is now able to report a specific error location for some semantic errors (such as unrecognized column name), rather than just for basic syntax errors as before.

  • Fix "failed to re-find parent key" errors in VACUUM (Tom)

  • Clean out pg_internal.init cache files during server restart (Simon)

    This avoids a hazard that the cache files might contain stale data after PITR recovery.

  • Fix race condition for truncation of a large relation across a gigabyte boundary by VACUUM (Tom)

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

  • Fix bugs affecting multi-gigabyte hash indexes (Tom)

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

    This allows query cancel to abort subprocesses invoked from a backend or archive/recovery process.

E.115.3.3. Query Changes

  • Add INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE RETURNING (Jonah Harris, Tom)

    This allows these commands to return values, such as the computed serial key for a new row. In the UPDATE case, values from the updated version of the row are returned.

  • Add support for multiple-row VALUES clauses, per SQL standard (Joe, Tom)

    This allows INSERT to insert multiple rows of constants, or queries to generate result sets using constants. For example, INSERT ... VALUES (...), (...), ...., and SELECT * FROM (VALUES (...), (...), ....) AS alias(f1, ...).

  • Allow UPDATE and DELETE to use an alias for the target table (Atsushi Ogawa)

    The SQL standard does not permit an alias in these commands, but many database systems allow one anyway for notational convenience.

  • Allow UPDATE to set multiple columns with a list of values (Susanne Ebrecht)

    This is basically a short-hand for assigning the columns and values in pairs. The syntax is UPDATE tab SET (column, ...) = (val, ...).

  • Make row comparisons work per standard (Tom)

    The forms <, <=, >, >= now compare rows lexicographically, that is, compare the first elements, if equal compare the second elements, and so on. Formerly they expanded to an AND condition across all the elements, which was neither standard nor very useful.

  • Add CASCADE option to TRUNCATE (Joachim Wieland)

    This causes TRUNCATE to automatically include all tables that reference the specified table(s) via foreign keys. While convenient, this is a dangerous tool — use with caution!

  • Support FOR UPDATE and FOR SHARE in the same SELECT command (Tom)

  • Add IS NOT DISTINCT FROM (Pavel Stehule)

    This operator is similar to equality (=), but evaluates to true when both left and right operands are NULL, and to false when just one is, rather than yielding NULL in these cases.

  • Improve the length output used by UNION/INTERSECT/EXCEPT (Tom)

    When all corresponding columns are of the same defined length, that length is used for the result, rather than a generic length.

  • Allow ILIKE to work for multi-byte encodings (Tom)

    Internally, ILIKE now calls lower() and then uses LIKE. Locale-specific regular expression patterns still do not work in these encodings.

  • Enable standard_conforming_strings to be turned on (Kevin Grittner)

    This allows backslash escaping in strings to be disabled, making PostgreSQL more standards-compliant. The default is off for backwards compatibility, but future releases will default this to on.

  • Do not flatten subqueries that contain volatile functions in their target lists (Jaime Casanova)

    This prevents surprising behavior due to multiple evaluation of a volatile function (such as random() or nextval()). It might cause performance degradation in the presence of functions that are unnecessarily marked as volatile.

  • Add system views pg_prepared_statements and pg_cursors to show prepared statements and open cursors (Joachim Wieland, Neil)

    These are very useful in pooled connection setups.

  • Support portal parameters in EXPLAIN and EXECUTE (Tom)

    This allows, for example, JDBC ? parameters to work in these commands.

  • If SQL-level PREPARE parameters are unspecified, infer their types from the content of the query (Neil)

    Protocol-level PREPARE already did this.

  • Allow LIMIT and OFFSET to exceed two billion (Dhanaraj M)

E.115.3.4. Object Manipulation Changes

  • Add TABLESPACE clause to CREATE TABLE AS (Neil)

    This allows a tablespace to be specified for the new table.

  • Add ON COMMIT clause to CREATE TABLE AS (Neil)

    This allows temporary tables to be truncated or dropped on transaction commit. The default behavior is for the table to remain until the session ends.

  • Add INCLUDING CONSTRAINTS to CREATE TABLE LIKE (Greg Stark)

    This allows easy copying of CHECK constraints to a new table.

  • Allow the creation of placeholder (shell) types (Martijn van Oosterhout)

    A shell type declaration creates a type name, without specifying any of the details of the type. Making a shell type is useful because it allows cleaner declaration of the type's input/output functions, which must exist before the type can be defined "for real". The syntax is CREATE TYPE typename.

  • Aggregate functions now support multiple input parameters (Sergey Koposov, Tom)

  • Add new aggregate creation syntax (Tom)

    The new syntax is CREATE AGGREGATE aggname (input_type) (parameter_list). This more naturally supports the new multi-parameter aggregate functionality. The previous syntax is still supported.

  • Add ALTER ROLE PASSWORD NULL to remove a previously set role password (Peter)

  • Add DROP object IF EXISTS for many object types (Andrew)

    This allows DROP operations on non-existent objects without generating an error.

  • Add DROP OWNED to drop all objects owned by a role (Alvaro)

  • Add REASSIGN OWNED to reassign ownership of all objects owned by a role (Alvaro)

    This, and DROP OWNED above, facilitate dropping roles.

  • Add GRANT ON SEQUENCE syntax (Bruce)

    This was added for setting sequence-specific permissions. GRANT ON TABLE for sequences is still supported for backward compatibility.

  • Add USAGE permission for sequences that allows only currval() and nextval(), not setval() (Bruce)

    USAGE permission allows more fine-grained control over sequence access. Granting USAGE allows users to increment a sequence, but prevents them from setting the sequence to an arbitrary value using setval().

  • Add ALTER TABLE [ NO ] INHERIT (Greg Stark)

    This allows inheritance to be adjusted dynamically, rather than just at table creation and destruction. This is very valuable when using inheritance to implement table partitioning.

  • Allow comments on global objects to be stored globally (Kris Jurka)

    Previously, comments attached to databases were stored in individual databases, making them ineffective, and there was no provision at all for comments on roles or tablespaces. This change adds a new shared catalog pg_shdescription and stores comments on databases, roles, and tablespaces therein.

E.115.3.5. Utility Command Changes

  • Add option to allow indexes to be created without blocking concurrent writes to the table (Greg Stark, Tom)

    The new syntax is CREATE INDEX CONCURRENTLY. The default behavior is still to block table modification while an index is being created.

  • Provide advisory locking functionality (Abhijit Menon-Sen, Tom)

    This is a new locking API designed to replace what used to be in /contrib/userlock. The userlock code is now on pgfoundry.

  • Allow COPY to dump a SELECT query (Zoltan Boszormenyi, Karel Zak)

    This allows COPY to dump arbitrary SQL queries. The syntax is COPY (SELECT ...) TO.

  • Make the COPY command return a command tag that includes the number of rows copied (Volkan YAZICI)

  • Allow VACUUM to expire rows without being affected by other concurrent VACUUM operations (Hannu Krossing, Alvaro, Tom)

  • Make initdb detect the operating system locale and set the default DateStyle accordingly (Peter)

    This makes it more likely that the installed postgresql.conf DateStyle value will be as desired.

  • Reduce number of progress messages displayed by initdb (Tom)

E.115.3.6. Date/Time Changes

  • Allow full timezone names in timestamp input values (Joachim Wieland)

    For example, '2006-05-24 21:11 America/New_York'::timestamptz.

  • Support configurable timezone abbreviations (Joachim Wieland)

    A desired set of timezone abbreviations can be chosen via the configuration parameter timezone_abbreviations.

  • Add pg_timezone_abbrevs and pg_timezone_names views to show supported timezones (Magnus Hagander)

  • Add clock_timestamp(),
statement_timestamp(),
and transaction_timestamp()
(Bruce)

    clock_timestamp() is the current wall-clock time, statement_timestamp() is the time the current statement arrived at the server, and transaction_timestamp() is an alias for now().

  • Allow to_char() to print localized month and day names (Euler Taveira de Oliveira)

  • Allow to_char(time) and to_char(interval) to output AM/PM specifications (Bruce)

    Intervals and times are treated as 24-hour periods, e.g. 25 hours is considered AM.

  • Add new function justify_interval() to adjust interval units (Mark Dilger)

  • Allow timezone offsets up to 14:59 away from GMT

    Kiribati uses GMT+14, so we'd better accept that.

  • Interval computation improvements (Michael Glaesemann, Bruce)

E.115.3.7. Other Data Type and Function Changes

  • Allow arrays to contain NULL elements (Tom)

  • Allow assignment to array elements not contiguous with the existing entries (Tom)

    The intervening array positions will be filled with nulls. This is per SQL standard.

  • New built-in operators for array-subset comparisons (@>, <@, &&) (Teodor, Tom)

    These operators can be indexed for many data types using GiST or GIN indexes.

  • Add convenient arithmetic operations on INET/CIDR values (Stephen R. van den Berg)

    The new operators are & (and), | (or), ~ (not), inet + int8, inet - int8, and inet - inet.

  • Add new aggregate functions from SQL:2003 (Neil)

    The new functions are var_pop(),
var_samp(), stddev_pop(), and
stddev_samp().  var_samp() and
stddev_samp() are merely renamings of the
existing aggregates variance() and
stddev().  The latter names remain available
for backward compatibility.

  • Add SQL:2003 statistical aggregates (Sergey Koposov)

    New functions:  regr_intercept(),
regr_slope(), regr_r2(),
corr(), covar_samp(),
covar_pop(), regr_avgx(),
regr_avgy(), regr_sxy(),
regr_sxx(), regr_syy(),
regr_count().

  • Allow domains to be based on other domains (Tom)

  • Properly enforce domain CHECK constraints everywhere (Neil, Tom)

    For example, the result of a user-defined function that is declared to return a domain type is now checked against the domain's constraints. This closes a significant hole in the domain implementation.

  • Fix problems with dumping renamed SERIAL columns (Tom)

    The fix is to dump a SERIAL column by explicitly specifying its DEFAULT and sequence elements, and reconstructing the SERIAL column on reload using a new ALTER SEQUENCE OWNED BY command. This also allows dropping a SERIAL column specification.

  • Add a server-side sleep function pg_sleep() (Joachim Wieland)

  • Add all comparison operators for the tid (tuple id) data type (Mark Kirkwood, Greg Stark, Tom)

E.115.3.8. PL/pgSQL Server-Side Language Changes

  • Add TG_table_name and TG_table_schema to trigger parameters (Andrew)

    TG_relname is now deprecated. Comparable changes have been made in the trigger parameters for the other PLs as well.

  • Allow FOR statements to return values to scalars as well as records and row types (Pavel Stehule)

  • Add a BY clause to the FOR loop, to control the iteration increment (Jaime Casanova)

  • Add STRICT to SELECT INTO (Matt Miller)

    STRICT mode throws an exception if more or less than one row is returned by the SELECT, for Oracle PL/SQL compatibility.

E.115.3.9. PL/Perl Server-Side Language Changes

  • Add table_name and table_schema to trigger parameters (Adam Sjøgren)

  • Add prepared queries (Dmitry Karasik)

  • Make $_TD trigger data a global variable (Andrew)

    Previously, it was lexical, which caused unexpected sharing violations.

  • Run PL/Perl and PL/PerlU in separate interpreters, for security reasons (Andrew)

    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 these languages can be used in any given backend process.

E.115.3.10. PL/Python Server-Side Language Changes

  • Named parameters are passed as ordinary variables, as well as in the args[] array (Sven Suursoho)

  • Add table_name and table_schema to trigger parameters (Andrew)

  • Allow returning of composite types and result sets (Sven Suursoho)

  • Return result-set as list, iterator, or generator (Sven Suursoho)

  • Allow functions to return void (Neil)

  • Python 2.5 is now supported (Tom)

E.115.3.11. psql Changes

  • Add new command \password for changing role password with client-side password encryption (Peter)

  • Allow \c to connect to a new host and port number (David, Volkan YAZICI)

  • Add tablespace display to \l+ (Philip Yarra)

  • Improve \df slash command to include the argument names and modes (OUT or INOUT) of the function (David Fetter)

  • Support binary COPY (Andreas Pflug)

  • Add option to run the entire session in a single transaction (Simon)

    Use option -1 or --single-transaction.

  • Support for automatically retrieving SELECT results in batches using a cursor (Chris Mair)

    This is enabled using \set FETCH_COUNT n. This feature allows large result sets to be retrieved in psql without attempting to buffer the entire result set in memory.

  • Make multi-line values align in the proper column (Martijn van Oosterhout)

    Field values containing newlines are now displayed in a more readable fashion.

  • Save multi-line statements as a single entry, rather than one line at a time (Sergey E. Koposov)

    This makes up-arrow recall of queries easier. (This is not available on Windows, because that platform uses the native command-line editing present in the operating system.)

  • Make the line counter 64-bit so it can handle files with more than two billion lines (David Fetter)

  • Report both the returned data and the command status tag for INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE RETURNING (Tom)

E.115.3.12. pg_dump Changes

  • Allow complex selection of objects to be included or excluded by pg_dump (Greg Sabino Mullane)

    pg_dump now supports multiple -n (schema) and -t (table) options, and adds -N and -T options to exclude objects. Also, the arguments of these switches can now be wild-card expressions rather than single object names, for example -t 'foo*', and a schema can be part of a -t or -T switch, for example -t schema1.table1.

  • Add pg_restore --no-data-for-failed-tables option to suppress loading data if table creation failed (i.e., the table already exists) (Martin Pitt)

  • Add pg_restore option to run the entire session in a single transaction (Simon)

    Use option -1 or --single-transaction.

E.115.3.13. libpq Changes

  • Add PQencryptPassword() to encrypt passwords (Tom)

    This allows passwords to be sent pre-encrypted for commands like ALTER ROLE ... PASSWORD.

  • Add function PQisthreadsafe() (Bruce)

    This allows applications to query the thread-safety status of the library.

  • Add PQdescribePrepared(), PQdescribePortal(), and related functions to return information about previously prepared statements and open cursors (Volkan YAZICI)

  • Allow LDAP lookups from pg_service.conf (Laurenz Albe)

  • Allow a hostname in ~/.pgpass to match the default socket directory (Bruce)

    A blank hostname continues to match any Unix-socket connection, but this addition allows entries that are specific to one of several postmasters on the machine.

E.115.3.14. ecpg Changes

  • Allow SHOW to put its result into a variable (Joachim Wieland)

  • Add COPY TO STDOUT (Joachim Wieland)

  • Add regression tests (Joachim Wieland, Michael)

  • Major source code cleanups (Joachim Wieland, Michael)

E.115.3.15. Windows Port

  • Allow MSVC to compile the PostgreSQL server (Magnus, Hiroshi Saito)

  • Add MSVC support for utility commands and pg_dump (Hiroshi Saito)

  • Add support for Windows code pages 1253, 1254, 1255, and 1257 (Kris Jurka)

  • Drop privileges on startup, so that the server can be started from an administrative account (Magnus)

  • Stability fixes (Qingqing Zhou, Magnus)

  • Add native semaphore implementation (Qingqing Zhou)

    The previous code mimicked SysV semaphores.

E.115.3.16. Source Code Changes

  • Add GIN (Generalized Inverted iNdex) index access method (Teodor, Oleg)

  • Remove R-tree indexing (Tom)

    Rtree has been re-implemented using GiST. Among other differences, this means that rtree indexes now have support for crash recovery via write-ahead logging (WAL).

  • Reduce libraries needlessly linked into the backend (Martijn van Oosterhout, Tom)

  • Add a configure flag to allow libedit to be preferred over GNU readline (Bruce)

    Use configure --with-libedit-preferred.

  • Allow installation into directories containing spaces (Peter)

  • Improve ability to relocate installation directories (Tom)

  • Add support for Solaris x86_64 using the Solaris compiler (Pierre Girard, Theo Schlossnagle, Bruce)

  • Add DTrace support (Robert Lor)

  • Add PG_VERSION_NUM for use by third-party applications wanting to test the backend version in C using > and < comparisons (Bruce)

  • Add XLOG_BLCKSZ as independent from BLCKSZ (Mark Wong)

  • Add LWLOCK_STATS define to report locking activity (Tom)

  • Emit warnings for unknown configure options (Martijn van Oosterhout)

  • Add server support for "plugin" libraries that can be used for add-on tasks such as debugging and performance measurement (Korry Douglas)

    This consists of two features: a table of "rendezvous variables" that allows separately-loaded shared libraries to communicate, and a new configuration parameter local_preload_libraries that allows libraries to be loaded into specific sessions without explicit cooperation from the client application. This allows external add-ons to implement features such as a PL/pgSQL debugger.

  • Rename existing configuration parameter preload_libraries to shared_preload_libraries (Tom)

    This was done for clarity in comparison to local_preload_libraries.

  • Add new configuration parameter server_version_num (Greg Sabino Mullane)

    This is like server_version, but is an integer, e.g. 80200. This allows applications to make version checks more easily.

  • Add a configuration parameter seq_page_cost (Tom)

  • Re-implement the regression test script as a C program (Magnus, Tom)

  • Allow loadable modules to allocate shared memory and lightweight locks (Marc Munro)

  • Add automatic initialization and finalization of dynamically loaded libraries (Ralf Engelschall, Tom)

    New functions _PG_init() and _PG_fini() are called if the library defines such symbols. Hence we no longer need to specify an initialization function in shared_preload_libraries; we can assume that the library used the _PG_init() convention instead.

  • Add PG_MODULE_MAGIC header block to all shared object files (Martijn van Oosterhout)

    The magic block prevents version mismatches between loadable object files and servers.

  • Add shared library support for AIX (Laurenz Albe)

  • New XML documentation section (Bruce)

E.115.3.17. Contrib Changes

  • Major tsearch2 improvements (Oleg, Teodor)

    • multibyte encoding support, including UTF8

    • query rewriting support

    • improved ranking functions

    • thesaurus dictionary support

    • Ispell dictionaries now recognize MySpell format, used by OpenOffice

    • GIN support

  • Add adminpack module containing Pgadmin administration functions (Dave)

    These functions provide additional file system access routines not present in the default PostgreSQL server.

  • Add sslinfo module (Victor Wagner)

    Reports information about the current connection's SSL certificate.

  • Add pgrowlocks module (Tatsuo)

    This shows row locking information for a specified table.

  • Add hstore module (Oleg, Teodor)

  • Add isn module, replacing isbn_issn (Jeremy Kronuz)

    This new implementation supports EAN13, UPC, ISBN (books), ISMN (music), and ISSN (serials).

  • Add index information functions to pgstattuple (ITAGAKI Takahiro, Satoshi Nagayasu)

  • Add pg_freespacemap module to display free space map information (Mark Kirkwood)

  • pgcrypto now has all planned functionality (Marko Kreen)

    • Include iMath library in pgcrypto to have the public-key encryption functions always available.

    • Add SHA224 algorithm that was missing in OpenBSD code.

    • Activate builtin code for SHA224/256/384/512 hashes on older OpenSSL to have those algorithms always available.

    • New function gen_random_bytes() that returns cryptographically strong randomness. Useful for generating encryption keys.

    • Remove digest_exists(), hmac_exists() and cipher_exists() functions.

  • Improvements to cube module (Joshua Reich)

    New functions are cube(float[]), cube(float[], float[]), and cube_subset(cube, int4[]).

  • Add async query capability to dblink (Kai Londenberg, Joe Conway)

  • New operators for array-subset comparisons (@>, <@, &&) (Tom)

    Various contrib packages already had these operators for their datatypes, but the naming wasn't consistent. We have now added consistently named array-subset comparison operators to the core code and all the contrib packages that have such functionality. (The old names remain available, but are deprecated.)

  • Add uninstall scripts for all contrib packages that have install scripts (David, Josh Drake)

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Release 8.1.23

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.116. Release 8.1.23

Release Date: 2010-12-16

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.1.22. For information about new features in the 8.1 major release, see Section E.139.

This is expected to be the last PostgreSQL release in the 8.1.X series. Users are encouraged to update to a newer release branch soon.

E.116.1. Migration to Version 8.1.23

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.1.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.1.18, see Section E.121.

E.116.2. Changes

  • Force the default wal_sync_method to be fdatasync on Linux (Tom Lane, Marti Raudsepp)

    The default on Linux has actually been fdatasync for many years, but recent kernel changes caused PostgreSQL to choose open_datasync instead. This choice did not result in any performance improvement, and caused outright failures on certain filesystems, notably ext4 with the data=journal mount option.

  • Fix recovery from base backup when the starting checkpoint WAL record is not in the same WAL segment as its redo point (Jeff Davis)

  • Add support for detecting register-stack overrun on IA64 (Tom Lane)

    The IA64 architecture has two hardware stacks. Full prevention of stack-overrun failures requires checking both.

  • Add a check for stack overflow in copyObject() (Tom Lane)

    Certain code paths could crash due to stack overflow given a sufficiently complex query.

  • Fix detection of page splits in temporary GiST indexes (Heikki Linnakangas)

    It is possible to have a "concurrent" page split in a temporary index, if for example there is an open cursor scanning the index when an insertion is done. GiST failed to detect this case and hence could deliver wrong results when execution of the cursor continued.

  • Avoid memory leakage while ANALYZE'ing complex index expressions (Tom Lane)

  • Ensure an index that uses a whole-row Var still depends on its table (Tom Lane)

    An index declared like create index i on t (foo(t.*)) would not automatically get dropped when its table was dropped.

  • Do not "inline" a SQL function with multiple OUT parameters (Tom Lane)

    This avoids a possible crash due to loss of information about the expected result rowtype.

  • Fix constant-folding of COALESCE() expressions (Tom Lane)

    The planner would sometimes attempt to evaluate sub-expressions that in fact could never be reached, possibly leading to unexpected errors.

  • Add print functionality for InhRelation nodes (Tom Lane)

    This avoids a failure when debug_print_parse is enabled and certain types of query are executed.

  • Fix incorrect calculation of distance from a point to a horizontal line segment (Tom Lane)

    This bug affected several different geometric distance-measurement operators.

  • Fix PL/pgSQL's handling of "simple" expressions to not fail in recursion or error-recovery cases (Tom Lane)

  • Fix bug in contrib/cube's GiST picksplit algorithm (Alexander Korotkov)

    This could result in considerable inefficiency, though not actually incorrect answers, in a GiST index on a cube column. If you have such an index, consider REINDEXing it after installing this update.

  • Don't emit "identifier will be truncated" notices in contrib/dblink except when creating new connections (Itagaki Takahiro)

  • Fix potential coredump on missing public key in contrib/pgcrypto (Marti Raudsepp)

  • Fix memory leak in contrib/xml2's XPath query functions (Tom Lane)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2010o for DST law changes in Fiji and Samoa; also historical corrections for Hong Kong.

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Release 8.1.22

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E.117. Release 8.1.22

Release Date: 2010-10-04

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.1.21. For information about new features in the 8.1 major release, see Section E.139.

The PostgreSQL community will stop releasing updates for the 8.1.X release series in November 2010. Users are encouraged to update to a newer release branch soon.

E.117.1. Migration to Version 8.1.22

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.1.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.1.18, see Section E.121.

E.117.2. Changes

  • Use a separate interpreter for each calling SQL userid in PL/Perl and PL/Tcl (Tom Lane)

    This change prevents security problems that can be caused by subverting Perl or Tcl code that will be executed later in the same session under another SQL user identity (for example, within a SECURITY DEFINER function). Most scripting languages offer numerous ways that that might be done, such as redefining standard functions or operators called by the target function. Without this change, any SQL user with Perl or Tcl language usage rights can do essentially anything with the SQL privileges of the target function's owner.

    The cost of this change is that intentional communication among Perl and Tcl functions becomes more difficult. To provide an escape hatch, PL/PerlU and PL/TclU functions continue to use only one interpreter per session. This is not considered a security issue since all such functions execute at the trust level of a database superuser already.

    It is likely that third-party procedural languages that claim to offer trusted execution have similar security issues. We advise contacting the authors of any PL you are depending on for security-critical purposes.

    Our thanks to Tim Bunce for pointing out this issue (CVE-2010-3433).

  • Prevent possible crashes in pg_get_expr() by disallowing it from being called with an argument that is not one of the system catalog columns it's intended to be used with (Heikki Linnakangas, Tom Lane)

  • Fix "cannot handle unplanned sub-select" error (Tom Lane)

    This occurred when a sub-select contains a join alias reference that expands into an expression containing another sub-select.

  • Prevent show_session_authorization() from crashing within autovacuum processes (Tom Lane)

  • Defend against functions returning setof record where not all the returned rows are actually of the same rowtype (Tom Lane)

  • Fix possible failure when hashing a pass-by-reference function result (Tao Ma, Tom Lane)

  • Take care to fsync the contents of lockfiles (both postmaster.pid and the socket lockfile) while writing them (Tom Lane)

    This omission could result in corrupted lockfile contents if the machine crashes shortly after postmaster start. That could in turn prevent subsequent attempts to start the postmaster from succeeding, until the lockfile is manually removed.

  • Avoid recursion while assigning XIDs to heavily-nested subtransactions (Andres Freund, Robert Haas)

    The original coding could result in a crash if there was limited stack space.

  • Fix log_line_prefix's %i escape, which could produce junk early in backend startup (Tom Lane)

  • Fix possible data corruption in ALTER TABLE ... SET TABLESPACE when archiving is enabled (Jeff Davis)

  • Allow CREATE DATABASE and ALTER DATABASE ... SET TABLESPACE to be interrupted by query-cancel (Guillaume Lelarge)

  • In PL/Python, defend against null pointer results from PyCObject_AsVoidPtr and PyCObject_FromVoidPtr (Peter Eisentraut)

  • Improve contrib/dblink's handling of tables containing dropped columns (Tom Lane)

  • Fix connection leak after "duplicate connection name" errors in contrib/dblink (Itagaki Takahiro)

  • Fix contrib/dblink to handle connection names longer than 62 bytes correctly (Itagaki Takahiro)

  • Update build infrastructure and documentation to reflect the source code repository's move from CVS to Git (Magnus Hagander and others)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2010l for DST law changes in Egypt and Palestine; also historical corrections for Finland.

    This change also adds new names for two Micronesian timezones: Pacific/Chuuk is now preferred over Pacific/Truk (and the preferred abbreviation is CHUT not TRUT) and Pacific/Pohnpei is preferred over Pacific/Ponape.

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Release 8.1.23 | Up | Release 8.1.21


Release 8.1.21

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.118. Release 8.1.21

Release Date: 2010-05-17

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.1.20. For information about new features in the 8.1 major release, see Section E.139.

E.118.1. Migration to Version 8.1.21

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.1.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.1.18, see Section E.121.

E.118.2. Changes

  • Enforce restrictions in plperl using an opmask applied to the whole interpreter, instead of using Safe.pm (Tim Bunce, Andrew Dunstan)

    Recent developments have convinced us that Safe.pm is too insecure to rely on for making plperl trustable. This change removes use of Safe.pm altogether, in favor of using a separate interpreter with an opcode mask that is always applied. Pleasant side effects of the change include that it is now possible to use Perl's strict pragma in a natural way in plperl, and that Perl's $a and $b variables work as expected in sort routines, and that function compilation is significantly faster. (CVE-2010-1169)

  • Prevent PL/Tcl from executing untrustworthy code from pltcl_modules (Tom)

    PL/Tcl's feature for autoloading Tcl code from a database table could be exploited for trojan-horse attacks, because there was no restriction on who could create or insert into that table. This change disables the feature unless pltcl_modules is owned by a superuser. (However, the permissions on the table are not checked, so installations that really need a less-than-secure modules table can still grant suitable privileges to trusted non-superusers.) Also, prevent loading code into the unrestricted "normal" Tcl interpreter unless we are really going to execute a pltclu function. (CVE-2010-1170)

  • Do not allow an unprivileged user to reset superuser-only parameter settings (Alvaro)

    Previously, if an unprivileged user ran ALTER USER ... RESET ALL for himself, or ALTER DATABASE ... RESET ALL for a database he owns, this would remove all special parameter settings for the user or database, even ones that are only supposed to be changeable by a superuser. Now, the ALTER will only remove the parameters that the user has permission to change.

  • Avoid possible crash during backend shutdown if shutdown occurs when a CONTEXT addition would be made to log entries (Tom)

    In some cases the context-printing function would fail because the current transaction had already been rolled back when it came time to print a log message.

  • Update pl/perl's ppport.h for modern Perl versions (Andrew)

  • Fix assorted memory leaks in pl/python (Andreas Freund, Tom)

  • Prevent infinite recursion in psql when expanding a variable that refers to itself (Tom)

  • Ensure that contrib/pgstattuple functions respond to cancel interrupts promptly (Tatsuhito Kasahara)

  • Make server startup deal properly with the case that shmget() returns EINVAL for an existing shared memory segment (Tom)

    This behavior has been observed on BSD-derived kernels including OS X. It resulted in an entirely-misleading startup failure complaining that the shared memory request size was too large.

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2010j for DST law changes in Argentina, Australian Antarctic, Bangladesh, Mexico, Morocco, Pakistan, Palestine, Russia, Syria, Tunisia; also historical corrections for Taiwan.

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Release 8.1.22 | Up | Release 8.1.20


Release 8.1.20

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.119. Release 8.1.20

Release Date: 2010-03-15

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.1.19. For information about new features in the 8.1 major release, see Section E.139.

E.119.1. Migration to Version 8.1.20

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.1.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.1.18, see Section E.121.

E.119.2. Changes

  • Add new configuration parameter ssl_renegotiation_limit to control how often we do session key renegotiation for an SSL connection (Magnus)

    This can be set to zero to disable renegotiation completely, which may be required if a broken SSL library is used. In particular, some vendors are shipping stopgap patches for CVE-2009-3555 that cause renegotiation attempts to fail.

  • Fix possible crashes when trying to recover from a failure in subtransaction start (Tom)

  • Fix server memory leak associated with use of savepoints and a client encoding different from server's encoding (Tom)

  • Make substring() for bit types treat any negative length as meaning "all the rest of the string" (Tom)

    The previous coding treated only -1 that way, and would produce an invalid result value for other negative values, possibly leading to a crash (CVE-2010-0442).

  • Fix integer-to-bit-string conversions to handle the first fractional byte correctly when the output bit width is wider than the given integer by something other than a multiple of 8 bits (Tom)

  • Fix some cases of pathologically slow regular expression matching (Tom)

  • Fix the STOP WAL LOCATION entry in backup history files to report the next WAL segment's name when the end location is exactly at a segment boundary (Itagaki Takahiro)

  • Fix some more cases of temporary-file leakage (Heikki)

    This corrects a problem introduced in the previous minor release. One case that failed is when a plpgsql function returning set is called within another function's exception handler.

  • When reading pg_hba.conf and related files, do not treat @something as a file inclusion request if the @ appears inside quote marks; also, never treat @ by itself as a file inclusion request (Tom)

    This prevents erratic behavior if a role or database name starts with @. If you need to include a file whose path name contains spaces, you can still do so, but you must write @"/path to/file" rather than putting the quotes around the whole construct.

  • Prevent infinite loop on some platforms if a directory is named as an inclusion target in pg_hba.conf and related files (Tom)

  • Fix psql's numericlocale option to not format strings it shouldn't in latex and troff output formats (Heikki)

  • Fix plpgsql failure in one case where a composite column is set to NULL (Tom)

  • Add volatile markings in PL/Python to avoid possible compiler-specific misbehavior (Zdenek Kotala)

  • Ensure PL/Tcl initializes the Tcl interpreter fully (Tom)

    The only known symptom of this oversight is that the Tcl clock command misbehaves if using Tcl 8.5 or later.

  • Prevent crash in contrib/dblink when too many key columns are specified to a dblink_build_sql_* function (Rushabh Lathia, Joe Conway)

  • Fix assorted crashes in contrib/xml2 caused by sloppy memory management (Tom)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2010e for DST law changes in Bangladesh, Chile, Fiji, Mexico, Paraguay, Samoa.

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Release 8.1.19

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E.120. Release 8.1.19

Release Date: 2009-12-14

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.1.18. For information about new features in the 8.1 major release, see Section E.139.

E.120.1. Migration to Version 8.1.19

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.1.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.1.18, see Section E.121.

E.120.2. Changes

  • Protect against indirect security threats caused by index functions changing session-local state (Gurjeet Singh, Tom)

    This change prevents allegedly-immutable index functions from possibly subverting a superuser's session (CVE-2009-4136).

  • Reject SSL certificates containing an embedded null byte in the common name (CN) field (Magnus)

    This prevents unintended matching of a certificate to a server or client name during SSL validation (CVE-2009-4034).

  • Fix possible crash during backend-startup-time cache initialization (Tom)

  • Prevent signals from interrupting VACUUM at unsafe times (Alvaro)

    This fix prevents a PANIC if a VACUUM FULL is canceled after it's already committed its tuple movements, as well as transient errors if a plain VACUUM is interrupted after having truncated the table.

  • Fix possible crash due to integer overflow in hash table size calculation (Tom)

    This could occur with extremely large planner estimates for the size of a hashjoin's result.

  • Fix very rare crash in inet/cidr comparisons (Chris Mikkelson)

  • Ensure that shared tuple-level locks held by prepared transactions are not ignored (Heikki)

  • Fix premature drop of temporary files used for a cursor that is accessed within a subtransaction (Heikki)

  • Fix PAM password processing to be more robust (Tom)

    The previous code is known to fail with the combination of the Linux pam_krb5 PAM module with Microsoft Active Directory as the domain controller. It might have problems elsewhere too, since it was making unjustified assumptions about what arguments the PAM stack would pass to it.

  • Fix processing of ownership dependencies during CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION (Tom)

  • Ensure that Perl arrays are properly converted to PostgreSQL arrays when returned by a set-returning PL/Perl function (Andrew Dunstan, Abhijit Menon-Sen)

    This worked correctly already for non-set-returning functions.

  • Fix rare crash in exception processing in PL/Python (Peter)

  • Ensure psql's flex module is compiled with the correct system header definitions (Tom)

    This fixes build failures on platforms where --enable-largefile causes incompatible changes in the generated code.

  • Make the postmaster ignore any application_name parameter in connection request packets, to improve compatibility with future libpq versions (Tom)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2009s for DST law changes in Antarctica, Argentina, Bangladesh, Fiji, Novokuznetsk, Pakistan, Palestine, Samoa, Syria; also historical corrections for Hong Kong.

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Release 8.1.18

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E.121. Release 8.1.18

Release Date: 2009-09-09

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.1.17. For information about new features in the 8.1 major release, see Section E.139.

E.121.1. Migration to Version 8.1.18

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.1.X. However, if you have any hash indexes on interval columns, you must REINDEX them after updating to 8.1.18. Also, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.1.15, see Section E.124.

E.121.2. Changes

  • Disallow RESET ROLE and RESET SESSION AUTHORIZATION inside security-definer functions (Tom, Heikki)

    This covers a case that was missed in the previous patch that disallowed SET ROLE and SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION inside security-definer functions. (See CVE-2007-6600)

  • Fix handling of sub-SELECTs appearing in the arguments of an outer-level aggregate function (Tom)

  • Fix hash calculation for data type interval (Tom)

    This corrects wrong results for hash joins on interval values. It also changes the contents of hash indexes on interval columns. If you have any such indexes, you must REINDEX them after updating.

  • Treat to_char(..., 'TH') as an uppercase ordinal suffix with 'HH'/'HH12' (Heikki)

    It was previously handled as 'th' (lowercase).

  • Fix overflow for INTERVAL 'x ms' when x is more than 2 million and integer datetimes are in use (Alex Hunsaker)

  • Fix calculation of distance between a point and a line segment (Tom)

    This led to incorrect results from a number of geometric operators.

  • Fix money data type to work in locales where currency amounts have no fractional digits, e.g. Japan (Itagaki Takahiro)

  • Properly round datetime input like 00:12:57.9999999999999999999999999999 (Tom)

  • Fix poor choice of page split point in GiST R-tree operator classes (Teodor)

  • Fix portability issues in plperl initialization (Andrew Dunstan)

  • Fix pg_ctl to not go into an infinite loop if postgresql.conf is empty (Jeff Davis)

  • Fix contrib/xml2's xslt_process() to properly handle the maximum number of parameters (twenty) (Tom)

  • Improve robustness of libpq's code to recover from errors during COPY FROM STDIN (Tom)

  • Avoid including conflicting readline and editline header files when both libraries are installed (Zdenek Kotala)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2009l for DST law changes in Bangladesh, Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, Argentina/San_Luis, Cuba, Jordan (historical correction only), Mauritius, Morocco, Palestine, Syria, Tunisia.

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Release 8.1.17

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E.122. Release 8.1.17

Release Date: 2009-03-16

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.1.16. For information about new features in the 8.1 major release, see Section E.139.

E.122.1. Migration to Version 8.1.17

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.1.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.1.15, see Section E.124.

E.122.2. Changes

  • Prevent error recursion crashes when encoding conversion fails (Tom)

    This change extends fixes made in the last two minor releases for related failure scenarios. The previous fixes were narrowly tailored for the original problem reports, but we have now recognized that any error thrown by an encoding conversion function could potentially lead to infinite recursion while trying to report the error. The solution therefore is to disable translation and encoding conversion and report the plain-ASCII form of any error message, if we find we have gotten into a recursive error reporting situation. (CVE-2009-0922)

  • Disallow CREATE CONVERSION with the wrong encodings for the specified conversion function (Heikki)

    This prevents one possible scenario for encoding conversion failure. The previous change is a backstop to guard against other kinds of failures in the same area.

  • Fix core dump when to_char() is given format codes that are inappropriate for the type of the data argument (Tom)

  • Fix decompilation of CASE WHEN with an implicit coercion (Tom)

    This mistake could lead to Assert failures in an Assert-enabled build, or an "unexpected CASE WHEN clause" error message in other cases, when trying to examine or dump a view.

  • Fix possible misassignment of the owner of a TOAST table's rowtype (Tom)

    If CLUSTER or a rewriting variant of ALTER TABLE were executed by someone other than the table owner, the pg_type entry for the table's TOAST table would end up marked as owned by that someone. This caused no immediate problems, since the permissions on the TOAST rowtype aren't examined by any ordinary database operation. However, it could lead to unexpected failures if one later tried to drop the role that issued the command (in 8.1 or 8.2), or "owner of data type appears to be invalid" warnings from pg_dump after having done so (in 8.3).

  • Clean up PL/pgSQL error status variables fully at block exit (Ashesh Vashi and Dave Page)

    This is not a problem for PL/pgSQL itself, but the omission could cause the PL/pgSQL Debugger to crash while examining the state of a function.

  • Add MUST (Mauritius Island Summer Time) to the default list of known timezone abbreviations (Xavier Bugaud)

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Release 8.1.16

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E.123. Release 8.1.16

Release Date: 2009-02-02

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.1.15. For information about new features in the 8.1 major release, see Section E.139.

E.123.1. Migration to Version 8.1.16

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.1.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.1.15, see Section E.124.

E.123.2. Changes

  • Fix crash in autovacuum (Alvaro)

    The crash occurs only after vacuuming a whole database for anti-transaction-wraparound purposes, which means that it occurs infrequently and is hard to track down.

  • Improve handling of URLs in headline() function (Teodor)

  • Improve handling of overlength headlines in headline() function (Teodor)

  • Prevent possible Assert failure or misconversion if an encoding conversion is created with the wrong conversion function for the specified pair of encodings (Tom, Heikki)

  • Avoid unnecessary locking of small tables in VACUUM (Heikki)

  • Ensure that the contents of a holdable cursor don't depend on the contents of TOAST tables (Tom)

    Previously, large field values in a cursor result might be represented as TOAST pointers, which would fail if the referenced table got dropped before the cursor is read, or if the large value is deleted and then vacuumed away. This cannot happen with an ordinary cursor, but it could with a cursor that is held past its creating transaction.

  • Fix uninitialized variables in contrib/tsearch2's get_covers() function (Teodor)

  • Fix configure script to properly report failure when unable to obtain linkage information for PL/Perl (Andrew)

  • Make all documentation reference pgsql-bugs and/or pgsql-hackers as appropriate, instead of the now-decommissioned pgsql-ports and pgsql-patches mailing lists (Tom)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2009a (for Kathmandu and historical DST corrections in Switzerland, Cuba)

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Release 8.1.15

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E.124. Release 8.1.15

Release Date: 2008-11-03

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.1.14. For information about new features in the 8.1 major release, see Section E.139.

E.124.1. Migration to Version 8.1.15

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.1.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.1.2, see Section E.137. Also, if you were running a previous 8.1.X release, it is recommended to REINDEX all GiST indexes after the upgrade.

E.124.2. Changes

  • Fix GiST index corruption due to marking the wrong index entry "dead" after a deletion (Teodor)

    This would result in index searches failing to find rows they should have found. Corrupted indexes can be fixed with REINDEX.

  • Fix backend crash when the client encoding cannot represent a localized error message (Tom)

    We have addressed similar issues before, but it would still fail if the "character has no equivalent" message itself couldn't be converted. The fix is to disable localization and send the plain ASCII error message when we detect such a situation.

  • Fix possible crash when deeply nested functions are invoked from a trigger (Tom)

  • Fix mis-expansion of rule queries when a sub-SELECT appears in a function call in FROM, a multi-row VALUES list, or a RETURNING list (Tom)

    The usual symptom of this problem is an "unrecognized node type" error.

  • Ensure an error is reported when a newly-defined PL/pgSQL trigger function is invoked as a normal function (Tom)

  • Prevent possible collision of relfilenode numbers when moving a table to another tablespace with ALTER SET TABLESPACE (Heikki)

    The command tried to re-use the existing filename, instead of picking one that is known unused in the destination directory.

  • Fix incorrect tsearch2 headline generation when single query item matches first word of text (Sushant Sinha)

  • Fix improper display of fractional seconds in interval values when using a non-ISO datestyle in an --enable-integer-datetimes build (Ron Mayer)

  • Ensure SPI_getvalue and SPI_getbinval behave correctly when the passed tuple and tuple descriptor have different numbers of columns (Tom)

    This situation is normal when a table has had columns added or removed, but these two functions didn't handle it properly. The only likely consequence is an incorrect error indication.

  • Fix ecpg's parsing of CREATE ROLE (Michael)

  • Fix recent breakage of pg_ctl restart (Tom)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2008i (for DST law changes in Argentina, Brazil, Mauritius, Syria)

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Release 8.1.14

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E.125. Release 8.1.14

Release Date: 2008-09-22

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.1.13. For information about new features in the 8.1 major release, see Section E.139.

E.125.1. Migration to Version 8.1.14

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.1.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.1.2, see Section E.137.

E.125.2. Changes

  • Widen local lock counters from 32 to 64 bits (Tom)

    This responds to reports that the counters could overflow in sufficiently long transactions, leading to unexpected "lock is already held" errors.

  • Fix possible duplicate output of tuples during a GiST index scan (Teodor)

  • Add checks in executor startup to ensure that the tuples produced by an INSERT or UPDATE will match the target table's current rowtype (Tom)

    ALTER COLUMN TYPE, followed by re-use of a previously cached plan, could produce this type of situation. The check protects against data corruption and/or crashes that could ensue.

  • Fix AT TIME ZONE to first try to interpret its timezone argument as a timezone abbreviation, and only try it as a full timezone name if that fails, rather than the other way around as formerly (Tom)

    The timestamp input functions have always resolved ambiguous zone names in this order. Making AT TIME ZONE do so as well improves consistency, and fixes a compatibility bug introduced in 8.1: in ambiguous cases we now behave the same as 8.0 and before did, since in the older versions AT TIME ZONE accepted only abbreviations.

  • Fix datetime input functions to correctly detect integer overflow when running on a 64-bit platform (Tom)

  • Improve performance of writing very long log messages to syslog (Tom)

  • Fix bug in backwards scanning of a cursor on a SELECT DISTINCT ON query (Tom)

  • Fix planner bug with nested sub-select expressions (Tom)

    If the outer sub-select has no direct dependency on the parent query, but the inner one does, the outer value might not get recalculated for new parent query rows.

  • Fix planner to estimate that GROUP BY expressions yielding boolean results always result in two groups, regardless of the expressions' contents (Tom)

    This is very substantially more accurate than the regular GROUP BY estimate for certain boolean tests like col IS NULL.

  • Fix PL/pgSQL to not fail when a FOR loop's target variable is a record containing composite-type fields (Tom)

  • Fix PL/Tcl to behave correctly with Tcl 8.5, and to be more careful about the encoding of data sent to or from Tcl (Tom)

  • Fix PL/Python to work with Python 2.5

    This is a back-port of fixes made during the 8.2 development cycle.

  • Improve pg_dump and pg_restore's error reporting after failure to send a SQL command (Tom)

  • Fix pg_ctl to properly preserve postmaster command-line arguments across a restart (Bruce)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2008f (for DST law changes in Argentina, Bahamas, Brazil, Mauritius, Morocco, Pakistan, Palestine, and Paraguay)

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Release 8.1.13

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E.126. Release 8.1.13

Release Date: 2008-06-12

This release contains one serious and one minor bug fix over 8.1.12. For information about new features in the 8.1 major release, see Section E.139.

E.126.1. Migration to Version 8.1.13

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.1.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.1.2, see Section E.137.

E.126.2. Changes

  • Make pg_get_ruledef() parenthesize negative constants (Tom)

    Before this fix, a negative constant in a view or rule might be dumped as, say, -42::integer, which is subtly incorrect: it should be (-42)::integer due to operator precedence rules. Usually this would make little difference, but it could interact with another recent patch to cause PostgreSQL to reject what had been a valid SELECT DISTINCT view query. Since this could result in pg_dump output failing to reload, it is being treated as a high-priority fix. The only released versions in which dump output is actually incorrect are 8.3.1 and 8.2.7.

  • Make ALTER AGGREGATE ... OWNER TO update pg_shdepend (Tom)

    This oversight could lead to problems if the aggregate was later involved in a DROP OWNED or REASSIGN OWNED operation.

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Release 8.1.12

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E.127. Release 8.1.12

Release Date: never released

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.1.11. For information about new features in the 8.1 major release, see Section E.139.

E.127.1. Migration to Version 8.1.12

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.1.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.1.2, see Section E.137.

E.127.2. Changes

  • Fix ALTER TABLE ADD COLUMN ... PRIMARY KEY so that the new column is correctly checked to see if it's been initialized to all non-nulls (Brendan Jurd)

    Previous versions neglected to check this requirement at all.

  • Fix possible CREATE TABLE failure when inheriting the "same" constraint from multiple parent relations that inherited that constraint from a common ancestor (Tom)

  • Fix conversions between ISO-8859-5 and other encodings to handle Cyrillic "Yo" characters (e and E with two dots) (Sergey Burladyan)

  • Fix a few datatype input functions that were allowing unused bytes in their results to contain uninitialized, unpredictable values (Tom)

    This could lead to failures in which two apparently identical literal values were not seen as equal, resulting in the parser complaining about unmatched ORDER BY and DISTINCT expressions.

  • Fix a corner case in regular-expression substring matching (substring(string from pattern)) (Tom)

    The problem occurs when there is a match to the pattern overall but the user has specified a parenthesized subexpression and that subexpression hasn't got a match. An example is substring('foo' from 'foo(bar)?'). This should return NULL, since (bar) isn't matched, but it was mistakenly returning the whole-pattern match instead (ie, foo).

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2008c (for DST law changes in Morocco, Iraq, Choibalsan, Pakistan, Syria, Cuba, Argentina/San_Luis, and Chile)

  • Fix incorrect result from ecpg's PGTYPEStimestamp_sub() function (Michael)

  • Fix core dump in contrib/xml2's xpath_table() function when the input query returns a NULL value (Tom)

  • Fix contrib/xml2's makefile to not override CFLAGS (Tom)

  • Fix DatumGetBool macro to not fail with gcc 4.3 (Tom)

    This problem affects "old style" (V0) C functions that return boolean. The fix is already in 8.3, but the need to back-patch it was not realized at the time.

  • Fix longstanding LISTEN/NOTIFY race condition (Tom)

    In rare cases a session that had just executed a LISTEN might not get a notification, even though one would be expected because the concurrent transaction executing NOTIFY was observed to commit later.

    A side effect of the fix is that a transaction that has executed a not-yet-committed LISTEN command will not see any row in pg_listener for the LISTEN, should it choose to look; formerly it would have. This behavior was never documented one way or the other, but it is possible that some applications depend on the old behavior.

  • Disallow LISTEN and UNLISTEN within a prepared transaction (Tom)

    This was formerly allowed but trying to do it had various unpleasant consequences, notably that the originating backend could not exit as long as an UNLISTEN remained uncommitted.

  • Fix rare crash when an error occurs during a query using a hash index (Heikki)

  • Fix input of datetime values for February 29 in years BC (Tom)

    The former coding was mistaken about which years were leap years.

  • Fix "unrecognized node type" error in some variants of ALTER OWNER (Tom)

  • Fix pg_ctl to correctly extract the postmaster's port number from command-line options (Itagaki Takahiro, Tom)

    Previously, pg_ctl start -w could try to contact the postmaster on the wrong port, leading to bogus reports of startup failure.

  • Use -fwrapv to defend against possible misoptimization in recent gcc versions (Tom)

    This is known to be necessary when building PostgreSQL with gcc 4.3 or later.

  • Fix display of constant expressions in ORDER BY and GROUP BY (Tom)

    An explicitly casted constant would be shown incorrectly. This could for example lead to corruption of a view definition during dump and reload.

  • Fix libpq to handle NOTICE messages correctly during COPY OUT (Tom)

    This failure has only been observed to occur when a user-defined datatype's output routine issues a NOTICE, but there is no guarantee it couldn't happen due to other causes.

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Release 8.1.11

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E.128. Release 8.1.11

Release Date: 2008-01-07

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.1.10, including fixes for significant security issues. For information about new features in the 8.1 major release, see Section E.139.

This is the last 8.1.X release for which the PostgreSQL community will produce binary packages for Windows. Windows users are encouraged to move to 8.2.X or later, since there are Windows-specific fixes in 8.2.X that are impractical to back-port. 8.1.X will continue to be supported on other platforms.

E.128.1. Migration to Version 8.1.11

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.1.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.1.2, see Section E.137.

E.128.2. Changes

  • Prevent functions in indexes from executing with the privileges of the user running VACUUM, ANALYZE, etc (Tom)

    Functions used in index expressions and partial-index predicates are evaluated whenever a new table entry is made. It has long been understood that this poses a risk of trojan-horse code execution if one modifies a table owned by an untrustworthy user. (Note that triggers, defaults, check constraints, etc. pose the same type of risk.) But functions in indexes pose extra danger because they will be executed by routine maintenance operations such as VACUUM FULL, which are commonly performed automatically under a superuser account. For example, a nefarious user can execute code with superuser privileges by setting up a trojan-horse index definition and waiting for the next routine vacuum. The fix arranges for standard maintenance operations (including VACUUM, ANALYZE, REINDEX, and CLUSTER) to execute as the table owner rather than the calling user, using the same privilege-switching mechanism already used for SECURITY DEFINER functions. To prevent bypassing this security measure, execution of SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION and SET ROLE is now forbidden within a SECURITY DEFINER context. (CVE-2007-6600)

  • Repair assorted bugs in the regular-expression package (Tom, Will Drewry)

    Suitably crafted regular-expression patterns could cause crashes, infinite or near-infinite looping, and/or massive memory consumption, all of which pose denial-of-service hazards for applications that accept regex search patterns from untrustworthy sources. (CVE-2007-4769, CVE-2007-4772, CVE-2007-6067)

  • Require non-superusers who use /contrib/dblink to use only password authentication, as a security measure (Joe)

    The fix that appeared for this in 8.1.10 was incomplete, as it plugged the hole for only some dblink functions. (CVE-2007-6601, CVE-2007-3278)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2007k (in particular, recent Argentina changes) (Tom)

  • Improve planner's handling of LIKE/regex estimation in non-C locales (Tom)

  • Fix planner failure in some cases of WHERE false AND var IN (SELECT ...) (Tom)

  • Preserve the tablespace of indexes that are rebuilt by ALTER TABLE ... ALTER COLUMN TYPE (Tom)

  • Make archive recovery always start a new WAL timeline, rather than only when a recovery stop time was used (Simon)

    This avoids a corner-case risk of trying to overwrite an existing archived copy of the last WAL segment, and seems simpler and cleaner than the original definition.

  • Make VACUUM not use all of maintenance_work_mem when the table is too small for it to be useful (Alvaro)

  • Fix potential crash in translate() when using a multibyte database encoding (Tom)

  • Fix overflow in extract(epoch from interval) for intervals exceeding 68 years (Tom)

  • Fix PL/Perl to not fail when a UTF-8 regular expression is used in a trusted function (Andrew)

  • Fix PL/Perl to cope when platform's Perl defines type bool as int rather than char (Tom)

    While this could theoretically happen anywhere, no standard build of Perl did things this way ... until Mac OS X 10.5.

  • Fix PL/Python to not crash on long exception messages (Alvaro)

  • Fix pg_dump to correctly handle inheritance child tables that have default expressions different from their parent's (Tom)

  • Fix libpq crash when PGPASSFILE refers to a file that is not a plain file (Martin Pitt)

  • ecpg parser fixes (Michael)

  • Make contrib/pgcrypto defend against OpenSSL libraries that fail on keys longer than 128 bits; which is the case at least on some Solaris versions (Marko Kreen)

  • Make contrib/tablefunc's crosstab() handle NULL rowid as a category in its own right, rather than crashing (Joe)

  • Fix tsvector and tsquery output routines to escape backslashes correctly (Teodor, Bruce)

  • Fix crash of to_tsvector() on huge input strings (Teodor)

  • Require a specific version of Autoconf to be used when re-generating the configure script (Peter)

    This affects developers and packagers only. The change was made to prevent accidental use of untested combinations of Autoconf and PostgreSQL versions. You can remove the version check if you really want to use a different Autoconf version, but it's your responsibility whether the result works or not.

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Release 8.1.10

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E.129. Release 8.1.10

Release Date: 2007-09-17

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.1.9. For information about new features in the 8.1 major release, see Section E.139.

E.129.1. Migration to Version 8.1.10

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.1.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.1.2, see Section E.137.

E.129.2. Changes

  • Prevent index corruption when a transaction inserts rows and then aborts close to the end of a concurrent VACUUM on the same table (Tom)

  • Make CREATE DOMAIN ... DEFAULT NULL work properly (Tom)

  • Allow the interval data type to accept input consisting only of milliseconds or microseconds (Neil)

  • Speed up rtree index insertion (Teodor)

  • Fix excessive logging of SSL error messages (Tom)

  • Fix logging so that log messages are never interleaved when using the syslogger process (Andrew)

  • Fix crash when log_min_error_statement logging runs out of memory (Tom)

  • Fix incorrect handling of some foreign-key corner cases (Tom)

  • Prevent REINDEX and CLUSTER from failing due to attempting to process temporary tables of other sessions (Alvaro)

  • Update the time zone database rules, particularly New Zealand's upcoming changes (Tom)

  • Windows socket improvements (Magnus)

  • Suppress timezone name (%Z) in log timestamps on Windows because of possible encoding mismatches (Tom)

  • Require non-superusers who use /contrib/dblink to use only password authentication, as a security measure (Joe)

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Release 8.1.9

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E.130. Release 8.1.9

Release Date: 2007-04-23

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.1.8, including a security fix. For information about new features in the 8.1 major release, see Section E.139.

E.130.1. Migration to Version 8.1.9

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.1.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.1.2, see Section E.137.

E.130.2. Changes

  • Support explicit placement of the temporary-table schema within search_path, and disable searching it for functions and operators (Tom)

    This is needed to allow a security-definer function to set a truly secure value of search_path. Without it, an unprivileged SQL user can use temporary objects to execute code with the privileges of the security-definer function (CVE-2007-2138). See CREATE FUNCTION for more information.

  • /contrib/tsearch2 crash fixes (Teodor)

  • Require COMMIT PREPARED to be executed in the same database as the transaction was prepared in (Heikki)

  • Fix potential-data-corruption bug in how VACUUM FULL handles UPDATE chains (Tom, Pavan Deolasee)

  • Planner fixes, including improving outer join and bitmap scan selection logic (Tom)

  • Fix PANIC during enlargement of a hash index (bug introduced in 8.1.6) (Tom)

  • Fix POSIX-style timezone specs to follow new USA DST rules (Tom)

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Release 8.1.10 | Up | Release 8.1.8


Release 8.1.8

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E.131. Release 8.1.8

Release Date: 2007-02-07

This release contains one fix from 8.1.7. For information about new features in the 8.1 major release, see Section E.139.

E.131.1. Migration to Version 8.1.8

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.1.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.1.2, see Section E.137.

E.131.2. Changes

  • Remove overly-restrictive check for type length in constraints and functional indexes(Tom)

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Release 8.1.7

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E.132. Release 8.1.7

Release Date: 2007-02-05

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.1.6, including a security fix. For information about new features in the 8.1 major release, see Section E.139.

E.132.1. Migration to Version 8.1.7

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.1.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.1.2, see Section E.137.

E.132.2. Changes

  • Remove security vulnerabilities that allowed connected users to read backend memory (Tom)

    The vulnerabilities involve suppressing the normal check that a SQL function returns the data type it's declared to, and changing the data type of a table column (CVE-2007-0555, CVE-2007-0556). These errors can easily be exploited to cause a backend crash, and in principle might be used to read database content that the user should not be able to access.

  • Fix rare bug wherein btree index page splits could fail due to choosing an infeasible split point (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Improve VACUUM performance for databases with many tables (Tom)

  • Fix autovacuum to avoid leaving non-permanent transaction IDs in non-connectable databases (Alvaro)

    This bug affects the 8.1 branch only.

  • Fix for rare Assert() crash triggered by UNION (Tom)

  • Tighten security of multi-byte character processing for UTF8 sequences over three bytes long (Tom)

  • Fix bogus "permission denied" failures occurring on Windows due to attempts to fsync already-deleted files (Magnus, Tom)

  • Fix possible crashes when an already-in-use PL/pgSQL function is updated (Tom)

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Release 8.1.6

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E.133. Release 8.1.6

Release Date: 2007-01-08

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.1.5. For information about new features in the 8.1 major release, see Section E.139.

E.133.1. Migration to Version 8.1.6

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.1.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.1.2, see Section E.137.

E.133.2. Changes

  • Improve handling of getaddrinfo() on AIX (Tom)

    This fixes a problem with starting the statistics collector, among other things.

  • Fix pg_restore to handle a tar-format backup that contains large objects (blobs) with comments (Tom)

  • Fix "failed to re-find parent key" errors in VACUUM (Tom)

  • Clean out pg_internal.init cache files during server restart (Simon)

    This avoids a hazard that the cache files might contain stale data after PITR recovery.

  • Fix race condition for truncation of a large relation across a gigabyte boundary by VACUUM (Tom)

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

  • Fix bugs affecting multi-gigabyte hash indexes (Tom)

  • Fix possible deadlock in Windows signal handling (Teodor)

  • Fix error when constructing an ARRAY[] made up of multiple empty elements (Tom)

  • Fix ecpg memory leak during connection (Michael)

  • Fix for Darwin (OS X) compilation (Tom)

  • to_number() and to_char(numeric) are now STABLE, not IMMUTABLE, for new initdb installs (Tom)

    This is because lc_numeric can potentially change the output of these functions.

  • Improve index usage of regular expressions that use parentheses (Tom)

    This improves psql \d performance also.

  • Update timezone database

    This affects Australian and Canadian daylight-savings rules in particular.

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Release 8.1.5

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E.134. Release 8.1.5

Release Date: 2006-10-16

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.1.4. For information about new features in the 8.1 major release, see Section E.139.

E.134.1. Migration to Version 8.1.5

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.1.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.1.2, see Section E.137.

E.134.2. Changes

  • Disallow aggregate functions in UPDATE commands, except within sub-SELECTs (Tom)

    The behavior of such an aggregate was unpredictable, and in 8.1.X could cause a crash, so it has been disabled. The SQL standard does not allow this either.

  • Fix core dump when an untyped literal is taken as ANYARRAY

  • Fix core dump in duration logging for extended query protocol when a COMMIT or ROLLBACK is executed

  • Fix mishandling of AFTER triggers when query contains a SQL function returning multiple rows (Tom)

  • Fix ALTER TABLE ... TYPE to recheck NOT NULL for USING clause (Tom)

  • Fix string_to_array() to handle overlapping matches for the separator string

    For example, string_to_array('123xx456xxx789', 'xx').

  • Fix to_timestamp() for AM/PM formats (Bruce)

  • Fix autovacuum's calculation that decides whether ANALYZE is needed (Alvaro)

  • Fix corner cases in pattern matching for psql's \d commands

  • Fix index-corrupting bugs in /contrib/ltree (Teodor)

  • Numerous robustness fixes in ecpg (Joachim Wieland)

  • Fix backslash escaping in /contrib/dbmirror

  • Minor fixes in /contrib/dblink and /contrib/tsearch2

  • Efficiency improvements in hash tables and bitmap index scans (Tom)

  • Fix instability of statistics collection on Windows (Tom, Andrew)

  • Fix statement_timeout to use the proper units on Win32 (Bruce)

    In previous Win32 8.1.X versions, the delay was off by a factor of 100.

  • Fixes for MSVC and Borland C++ compilers (Hiroshi Saito)

  • Fixes for AIX and Intel compilers (Tom)

  • Fix rare bug in continuous archiving (Tom)

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Release 8.1.4

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E.135. Release 8.1.4

Release Date: 2006-05-23

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.1.3, including patches for extremely serious security issues. For information about new features in the 8.1 major release, see Section E.139.

E.135.1. Migration to Version 8.1.4

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.1.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.1.2, see Section E.137.

Full security against the SQL-injection attacks described in CVE-2006-2313 and CVE-2006-2314 might require changes in application code. If you have applications that embed untrustworthy strings into SQL commands, you should examine them as soon as possible to ensure that they are using recommended escaping techniques. In most cases, applications should be using subroutines provided by libraries or drivers (such as libpq's PQescapeStringConn()) to perform string escaping, rather than relying on ad hoc code to do it.

E.135.2. Changes

  • Change the server to reject invalidly-encoded multibyte characters in all cases (Tatsuo, Tom)

    While PostgreSQL has been moving in this direction for some time, the checks are now applied uniformly to all encodings and all textual input, and are now always errors not merely warnings. This change defends against SQL-injection attacks of the type described in CVE-2006-2313.

  • Reject unsafe uses of \' in string literals

    As a server-side defense against SQL-injection attacks of the type described in CVE-2006-2314, the server now only accepts '' and not \' as a representation of ASCII single quote in SQL string literals. By default, \' is rejected only when client_encoding is set to a client-only encoding (SJIS, BIG5, GBK, GB18030, or UHC), which is the scenario in which SQL injection is possible. A new configuration parameter backslash_quote is available to adjust this behavior when needed. Note that full security against CVE-2006-2314 might require client-side changes; the purpose of backslash_quote is in part to make it obvious that insecure clients are insecure.

  • Modify libpq's string-escaping routines to be aware of encoding considerations and standard_conforming_strings

    This fixes libpq-using applications for the security issues described in CVE-2006-2313 and CVE-2006-2314, and also future-proofs them against the planned changeover to SQL-standard string literal syntax. Applications that use multiple PostgreSQL connections concurrently should migrate to PQescapeStringConn() and PQescapeByteaConn() to ensure that escaping is done correctly for the settings in use in each database connection. Applications that do string escaping "by hand" should be modified to rely on library routines instead.

  • Fix weak key selection in pgcrypto (Marko Kreen)

    Errors in fortuna PRNG reseeding logic could cause a predictable session key to be selected by pgp_sym_encrypt() in some cases. This only affects non-OpenSSL-using builds.

  • Fix some incorrect encoding conversion functions

    win1251_to_iso, win866_to_iso, euc_tw_to_big5, euc_tw_to_mic, mic_to_euc_tw were all broken to varying extents.

  • Clean up stray remaining uses of \' in strings (Bruce, Jan)

  • Make autovacuum visible in pg_stat_activity (Alvaro)

  • Disable full_page_writes (Tom)

    In certain cases, having full_page_writes off would cause crash recovery to fail. A proper fix will appear in 8.2; for now it's just disabled.

  • Various planner fixes, particularly for bitmap index scans and MIN/MAX optimization (Tom)

  • Fix incorrect optimization in merge join (Tom)

    Outer joins could sometimes emit multiple copies of unmatched rows.

  • Fix crash from using and modifying a plpgsql function in the same transaction

  • Fix WAL replay for case where a B-Tree index has been truncated

  • Fix SIMILAR TO for patterns involving | (Tom)

  • Fix SELECT INTO and CREATE TABLE AS to create tables in the default tablespace, not the base directory (Kris Jurka)

  • Fix server to use custom DH SSL parameters correctly (Michael Fuhr)

  • Improve qsort performance (Dann Corbit)

    Currently this code is only used on Solaris.

  • Fix for OS/X Bonjour on x86 systems (Ashley Clark)

  • Fix various minor memory leaks

  • Fix problem with password prompting on some Win32 systems (Robert Kinberg)

  • Improve pg_dump's handling of default values for domains

  • Fix pg_dumpall to handle identically-named users and groups reasonably (only possible when dumping from a pre-8.1 server) (Tom)

    The user and group will be merged into a single role with LOGIN permission. Formerly the merged role wouldn't have LOGIN permission, making it unusable as a user.

  • Fix pg_restore -n to work as documented (Tom)

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Release 8.1.3

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E.136. Release 8.1.3

Release Date: 2006-02-14

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.1.2, including one very serious security issue. For information about new features in the 8.1 major release, see Section E.139.

E.136.1. Migration to Version 8.1.3

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.1.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.1.2, see Section E.137.

E.136.2. Changes

  • Fix bug that allowed any logged-in user to SET ROLE to any other database user id (CVE-2006-0553)

    Due to inadequate validity checking, a user could exploit the special case that SET ROLE normally uses to restore the previous role setting after an error. This allowed ordinary users to acquire superuser status, for example. The escalation-of-privilege risk exists only in 8.1.0-8.1.2. However, in all releases back to 7.3 there is a related bug in SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION that allows unprivileged users to crash the server, if it has been compiled with Asserts enabled (which is not the default). Thanks to Akio Ishida for reporting this problem.

  • Fix bug with row visibility logic in self-inserted rows (Tom)

    Under rare circumstances a row inserted by the current command could be seen as already valid, when it should not be. Repairs bug created in 8.0.4, 7.4.9, and 7.3.11 releases.

  • Fix race condition that could lead to "file already exists" errors during pg_clog and pg_subtrans file creation (Tom)

  • Fix cases that could lead to crashes if a cache-invalidation message arrives at just the wrong time (Tom)

  • Properly check DOMAIN constraints for UNKNOWN parameters in prepared statements (Neil)

  • Ensure ALTER COLUMN TYPE will process FOREIGN KEY, UNIQUE, and PRIMARY KEY constraints in the proper order (Nakano Yoshihisa)

  • Fixes to allow restoring dumps that have cross-schema references to custom operators or operator classes (Tom)

  • Allow pg_restore to continue properly after a COPY failure; formerly it tried to treat the remaining COPY data as SQL commands (Stephen Frost)

  • Fix pg_ctl unregister crash when the data directory is not specified (Magnus)

  • Fix libpq PQprint HTML tags (Christoph Zwerschke)

  • Fix ecpg crash on AMD64 and PPC (Neil)

  • Allow SETOF and %TYPE to be used together in function result type declarations

  • Recover properly if error occurs during argument passing in PL/python (Neil)

  • Fix memory leak in plperl_return_next (Neil)

  • Fix PL/perl's handling of locales on Win32 to match the backend (Andrew)

  • Various optimizer fixes (Tom)

  • Fix crash when log_min_messages is set to DEBUG3 or above in postgresql.conf on Win32 (Bruce)

  • Fix pgxs -L library path specification for Win32, Cygwin, OS X, AIX (Bruce)

  • Check that SID is enabled while checking for Win32 admin privileges (Magnus)

  • Properly reject out-of-range date inputs (Kris Jurka)

  • Portability fix for testing presence of finite and isinf during configure (Tom)

  • Improve speed of COPY IN via libpq, by avoiding a kernel call per data line (Alon Goldshuv)

  • Improve speed of /contrib/tsearch2 index creation (Tom)

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Release 8.1.2

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E.137. Release 8.1.2

Release Date: 2006-01-09

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.1.1. For information about new features in the 8.1 major release, see Section E.139.

E.137.1. Migration to Version 8.1.2

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.1.X. However, you might need to REINDEX indexes on textual columns after updating, if you are affected by the locale or plperl issues described below.

E.137.2. Changes

  • Fix Windows code so that postmaster will continue rather than exit if there is no more room in ShmemBackendArray (Magnus)

    The previous behavior could lead to a denial-of-service situation if too many connection requests arrive close together. This applies only to the Windows port.

  • Fix bug introduced in 8.0 that could allow ReadBuffer to return an already-used page as new, potentially causing loss of recently-committed data (Tom)

  • Fix for protocol-level Describe messages issued outside a transaction or in a failed transaction (Tom)

  • Fix character string comparison for locales that consider different character combinations as equal, such as Hungarian (Tom)

    This might require REINDEX to fix existing indexes on textual columns.

  • Set locale environment variables during postmaster startup to ensure that plperl won't change the locale later

    This fixes a problem that occurred if the postmaster was started with environment variables specifying a different locale than what initdb had been told. Under these conditions, any use of plperl was likely to lead to corrupt indexes. You might need REINDEX to fix existing indexes on textual columns if this has happened to you.

  • Allow more flexible relocation of installation directories (Tom)

    Previous releases supported relocation only if all installation directory paths were the same except for the last component.

  • Prevent crashes caused by the use of ISO-8859-5 and ISO-8859-9 encodings (Tatsuo)

  • Fix longstanding bug in strpos() and regular expression handling in certain rarely used Asian multi-byte character sets (Tatsuo)

  • Fix bug where COPY CSV mode considered any \. to terminate the copy data

    The new code requires \. to appear alone on a line, as per documentation.

  • Make COPY CSV mode quote a literal data value of \. to ensure it cannot be interpreted as the end-of-data marker (Bruce)

  • Various fixes for functions returning RECORDs (Tom)

  • Fix processing of postgresql.conf so a final line with no newline is processed properly (Tom)

  • Fix bug in /contrib/pgcrypto gen_salt, which caused it not to use all available salt space for MD5 and XDES algorithms (Marko Kreen, Solar Designer)

    Salts for Blowfish and standard DES are unaffected.

  • Fix autovacuum crash when processing expression indexes

  • Fix /contrib/dblink to throw an error, rather than crashing, when the number of columns specified is different from what's actually returned by the query (Joe)

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Release 8.1.1

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E.138. Release 8.1.1

Release Date: 2005-12-12

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.1.0. For information about new features in the 8.1 major release, see Section E.139.

E.138.1. Migration to Version 8.1.1

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.1.X.

E.138.2. Changes

  • Fix incorrect optimizations of outer-join conditions (Tom)

  • Fix problems with wrong reported column names in cases involving sub-selects flattened by the optimizer (Tom)

  • Fix update failures in scenarios involving CHECK constraints, toasted columns, and indexes (Tom)

  • Fix bgwriter problems after recovering from errors (Tom)

    The background writer was found to leak buffer pins after write errors. While not fatal in itself, this might lead to mysterious blockages of later VACUUM commands.

  • Prevent failure if client sends Bind protocol message when current transaction is already aborted

  • /contrib/tsearch2 and /contrib/ltree fixes (Teodor)

  • Fix problems with translated error messages in languages that require word reordering, such as Turkish; also problems with unexpected truncation of output strings and wrong display of the smallest possible bigint value (Andrew, Tom)

    These problems only appeared on platforms that were using our port/snprintf.c code, which includes BSD variants if --enable-nls was given, and perhaps others. In addition, a different form of the translated-error-message problem could appear on Windows depending on which version of libintl was used.

  • Re-allow AM/PM, HH, HH12, and D format specifiers for to_char(time) and to_char(interval). (to_char(interval) should probably use HH24.) (Bruce)

  • AIX, HPUX, and MSVC compile fixes (Tom, Hiroshi Saito)

  • Optimizer improvements (Tom)

  • Retry file reads and writes after Windows NO_SYSTEM_RESOURCES error (Qingqing Zhou)

  • Prevent autovacuum from crashing during ANALYZE of expression index (Alvaro)

  • Fix problems with ON COMMIT DELETE ROWS temp tables

  • Fix problems when a trigger alters the output of a SELECT DISTINCT query

  • Add 8.1.0 release note item on how to migrate invalid UTF-8 byte sequences (Paul Lindner)

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Release 8.1

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E.139. Release 8.1

Release Date: 2005-11-08

E.139.1. Overview

Major changes in this release:

Improve concurrent access to the shared buffer cache (Tom)

Access to the shared buffer cache was identified as a significant scalability problem, particularly on multi-CPU systems. In this release, the way that locking is done in the buffer manager has been overhauled to reduce lock contention and improve scalability. The buffer manager has also been changed to use a "clock sweep" replacement policy.

Allow index scans to use an intermediate in-memory bitmap (Tom)

In previous releases, only a single index could be used to do lookups on a table. With this feature, if a query has WHERE tab.col1 = 4 and tab.col2 = 9, and there is no multicolumn index on col1 and col2, but there is an index on col1 and another on col2, it is possible to search both indexes and combine the results in memory, then do heap fetches for only the rows matching both the col1 and col2 restrictions. This is very useful in environments that have a lot of unstructured queries where it is impossible to create indexes that match all possible access conditions. Bitmap scans are useful even with a single index, as they reduce the amount of random access needed; a bitmap index scan is efficient for retrieving fairly large fractions of the complete table, whereas plain index scans are not.

Add two-phase commit (Heikki Linnakangas, Alvaro, Tom)

Two-phase commit allows transactions to be "prepared" on several computers, and once all computers have successfully prepared their transactions (none failed), all transactions can be committed. Even if a machine crashes after a prepare, the prepared transaction can be committed after the machine is restarted. New syntax includes PREPARE TRANSACTION and COMMIT/ROLLBACK PREPARED. A new system view pg_prepared_xacts has also been added.

Create a new role system that replaces users and groups (Stephen Frost)

Roles are a combination of users and groups. Like users, they can have login capability, and like groups, a role can have other roles as members. Roles basically remove the distinction between users and groups. For example, a role can:

  • Have login capability (optionally)

  • Own objects

  • Hold access permissions for database objects

  • Inherit permissions from other roles it is a member of

Once a user logs into a role, she obtains capabilities of the login role plus any inherited roles, and can use SET ROLE to switch to other roles she is a member of. This feature is a generalization of the SQL standard's concept of roles. This change also replaces pg_shadow and pg_group by new role-capable catalogs pg_authid and pg_auth_members. The old tables are redefined as read-only views on the new role tables.

Automatically use indexes for MIN() and MAX() (Tom)

In previous releases, the only way to use an index for MIN() or MAX() was to rewrite the query as SELECT col FROM tab ORDER BY col LIMIT 1. Index usage now happens automatically.

Move /contrib/pg_autovacuum into the main server (Alvaro)

Integrating autovacuum into the server allows it to be automatically started and stopped in sync with the database server, and allows autovacuum to be configured from postgresql.conf.

Add shared row level locks using SELECT ... FOR SHARE (Alvaro)

While PostgreSQL's MVCC locking allows SELECT to never be blocked by writers and therefore does not need shared row locks for typical operations, shared locks are useful for applications that require shared row locking. In particular this reduces the locking requirements imposed by referential integrity checks.

Add dependencies on shared objects, specifically roles (Alvaro)

This extension of the dependency mechanism prevents roles from being dropped while there are still database objects they own. Formerly it was possible to accidentally "orphan" objects by deleting their owner. While this could be recovered from, it was messy and unpleasant.

Improve performance for partitioned tables (Simon)

The new constraint_exclusion configuration parameter avoids lookups on child tables where constraints indicate that no matching rows exist in the child table.

This allows for a basic type of table partitioning. If child tables store separate key ranges and this is enforced using appropriate CHECK constraints, the optimizer will skip child table accesses when the constraint guarantees no matching rows exist in the child table.

E.139.2. Migration to Version 8.1

A dump/restore using pg_dump is required for those wishing to migrate data from any previous release.

The 8.0 release announced that the to_char() function for intervals would be removed in 8.1. However, since no better API has been suggested, to_char(interval) has been enhanced in 8.1 and will remain in the server.

Observe the following incompatibilities:

  • add_missing_from is now false by default (Neil)

    By default, we now generate an error if a table is used in a query without a FROM reference. The old behavior is still available, but the parameter must be set to 'true' to obtain it.

    It might be necessary to set add_missing_from to true in order to load an existing dump file, if the dump contains any views or rules created using the implicit-FROM syntax. This should be a one-time annoyance, because PostgreSQL 8.1 will convert such views and rules to standard explicit-FROM syntax. Subsequent dumps will therefore not have the problem.

  • Cause input of a zero-length string ('') for float4/float8/oid to throw an error, rather than treating it as a zero (Neil)

    This change is consistent with the current handling of zero-length strings for integers. The schedule for this change was announced in 8.0.

  • default_with_oids is now false by default (Neil)

    With this option set to false, user-created tables no longer have an OID column unless WITH OIDS is specified in CREATE TABLE. Though OIDs have existed in all releases of PostgreSQL, their use is limited because they are only four bytes long and the counter is shared across all installed databases. The preferred way of uniquely identifying rows is via sequences and the SERIAL type, which have been supported since PostgreSQL 6.4.

  • Add E'' syntax so eventually ordinary strings can treat backslashes literally (Bruce)

    Currently PostgreSQL processes a backslash in a string literal as introducing a special escape sequence, e.g. \n or \010. While this allows easy entry of special values, it is nonstandard and makes porting of applications from other databases more difficult. For this reason, the PostgreSQL project is planning to remove the special meaning of backslashes in strings. For backward compatibility and for users who want special backslash processing, a new string syntax has been created. This new string syntax is formed by writing an E immediately preceding the single quote that starts the string, e.g. E'hi\n'. While this release does not change the handling of backslashes in strings, it does add new configuration parameters to help users migrate applications for future releases:

    • standard_conforming_strings — does this release treat backslashes literally in ordinary strings?

    • escape_string_warning — warn about backslashes in ordinary (non-E) strings

    The standard_conforming_strings value is read-only. Applications can retrieve the value to know how backslashes are processed. (Presence of the parameter can also be taken as an indication that E'' string syntax is supported.) In a future release, standard_conforming_strings will be true, meaning backslashes will be treated literally in non-E strings. To prepare for this change, use E'' strings in places that need special backslash processing, and turn on escape_string_warning to find additional strings that need to be converted to use E''. Also, use two single-quotes ('') to embed a literal single-quote in a string, rather than the PostgreSQL-supported syntax of backslash single-quote (\'). The former is standards-conforming and does not require the use of the E'' string syntax. You can also use the $$ string syntax, which does not treat backslashes specially.

  • Make REINDEX DATABASE reindex all indexes in the database (Tom)

    Formerly, REINDEX DATABASE reindexed only system tables. This new behavior seems more intuitive. A new command REINDEX SYSTEM provides the old functionality of reindexing just the system tables.

  • Read-only large object descriptors now obey MVCC snapshot semantics

    When a large object is opened with INV_READ (and not INV_WRITE), the data read from the descriptor will now reflect a "snapshot" of the large object's state at the time of the transaction snapshot in use by the query that called lo_open(). To obtain the old behavior of always returning the latest committed data, include INV_WRITE in the mode flags for lo_open().

  • Add proper dependencies for arguments of sequence functions (Tom)

    In previous releases, sequence names passed to nextval(), currval(), and setval() were stored as simple text strings, meaning that renaming or dropping a sequence used in a DEFAULT clause made the clause invalid. This release stores all newly-created sequence function arguments as internal OIDs, allowing them to track sequence renaming, and adding dependency information that prevents improper sequence removal. It also makes such DEFAULT clauses immune to schema renaming and search path changes.

    Some applications might rely on the old behavior of run-time lookup for sequence names. This can still be done by explicitly casting the argument to text, for example nextval('myseq'::text).

    Pre-8.1 database dumps loaded into 8.1 will use the old text-based representation and therefore will not have the features of OID-stored arguments. However, it is possible to update a database containing text-based DEFAULT clauses. First, save this query into a file, such as fixseq.sql:

    SELECT  'ALTER TABLE ' ||
   pg_catalog.quote_ident(n.nspname) || '.' ||
   pg_catalog.quote_ident(c.relname) ||
   ' ALTER COLUMN ' || pg_catalog.quote_ident(a.attname) ||
   ' SET DEFAULT ' ||
   regexp_replace(d.adsrc,
                  $$val\(\(('[^']*')::text\)::regclass$$,
                  $$val(\1$$,
                  'g') ||
   ';'
FROM    pg_namespace n, pg_class c, pg_attribute a, pg_attrdef d
WHERE   n.oid = c.relnamespace AND
   c.oid = a.attrelid AND
   a.attrelid = d.adrelid AND
   a.attnum = d.adnum AND
   d.adsrc ~ $$val\(\('[^']*'::text\)::regclass$$;

    Next, run the query against a database to find what adjustments are required, like this for database db1:

    psql -t -f fixseq.sql db1

    This will show the ALTER TABLE commands needed to convert the database to the newer OID-based representation. If the commands look reasonable, run this to update the database:

    psql -t -f fixseq.sql db1 | psql -e db1

    This process must be repeated in each database to be updated.

  • In psql, treat unquoted \{digit}+ sequences as octal (Bruce)

    In previous releases, \{digit}+ sequences were treated as decimal, and only \0{digit}+ were treated as octal. This change was made for consistency.

  • Remove grammar productions for prefix and postfix % and ^ operators (Tom)

    These have never been documented and complicated the use of the modulus operator (%) with negative numbers.

  • Make &< and &> for polygons consistent with the box "over" operators (Tom)

  • CREATE LANGUAGE can ignore the provided arguments in favor of information from pg_pltemplate (Tom)

    A new system catalog pg_pltemplate has been defined to carry information about the preferred definitions of procedural languages (such as whether they have validator functions). When an entry exists in this catalog for the language being created, CREATE LANGUAGE will ignore all its parameters except the language name and instead use the catalog information. This measure was taken because of increasing problems with obsolete language definitions being loaded by old dump files. As of 8.1, pg_dump will dump procedural language definitions as just CREATE LANGUAGE name, relying on a template entry to exist at load time. We expect this will be a more future-proof representation.

  • Make pg_cancel_backend(int) return a boolean rather than an integer (Neil)

  • Some users are having problems loading UTF-8 data into 8.1.X. This is because previous versions allowed invalid UTF-8 byte sequences to be entered into the database, and this release properly accepts only valid UTF-8 sequences. One way to correct a dumpfile is to run the command iconv -c -f UTF-8 -t UTF-8 -o cleanfile.sql dumpfile.sql. The -c option removes invalid character sequences. A diff of the two files will show the sequences that are invalid. iconv reads the entire input file into memory so it might be necessary to use split to break up the dump into multiple smaller files for processing.

E.139.3. Additional Changes

Below you will find a detailed account of the additional changes between PostgreSQL 8.1 and the previous major release.

E.139.3.1. Performance Improvements

  • Improve GiST and R-tree index performance (Neil)

  • Improve the optimizer, including auto-resizing of hash joins (Tom)

  • Overhaul internal API in several areas

  • Change WAL record CRCs from 64-bit to 32-bit (Tom)

    We determined that the extra cost of computing 64-bit CRCs was significant, and the gain in reliability too marginal to justify it.

  • Prevent writing large empty gaps in WAL pages (Tom)

  • Improve spinlock behavior on SMP machines, particularly Opterons (Tom)

  • Allow nonconsecutive index columns to be used in a multicolumn index (Tom)

    For example, this allows an index on columns a,b,c to be used in a query with WHERE a = 4 and c = 10.

  • Skip WAL logging for CREATE TABLE AS / SELECT INTO (Simon)

    Since a crash during CREATE TABLE AS would cause the table to be dropped during recovery, there is no reason to WAL log as the table is loaded. (Logging still happens if WAL archiving is enabled, however.)

  • Allow concurrent GiST index access (Teodor, Oleg)

  • Add configuration parameter full_page_writes to control writing full pages to WAL (Bruce)

    To prevent partial disk writes from corrupting the database, PostgreSQL writes a complete copy of each database disk page to WAL the first time it is modified after a checkpoint. This option turns off that functionality for more speed. This is safe to use with battery-backed disk caches where partial page writes cannot happen.

  • Use O_DIRECT if available when using O_SYNC for wal_sync_method (Itagaki Takahiro)

    O_DIRECT causes disk writes to bypass the kernel cache, and for WAL writes, this improves performance.

  • Improve COPY FROM performance (Alon Goldshuv)

    This was accomplished by reading COPY input in larger chunks, rather than character by character.

  • Improve the performance of COUNT(),
SUM, AVG(),
STDDEV(), and
VARIANCE() (Neil, Tom)

E.139.3.2. Server Changes

  • Prevent problems due to transaction ID (XID) wraparound (Tom)

    The server will now warn when the transaction counter approaches the wraparound point. If the counter becomes too close to wraparound, the server will stop accepting queries. This ensures that data is not lost before needed vacuuming is performed.

  • Fix problems with object IDs (OIDs) conflicting with existing system objects after the OID counter has wrapped around (Tom)

  • Add warning about the need to increase max_fsm_relations and max_fsm_pages during VACUUM (Ron Mayer)

  • Add temp_buffers configuration parameter to allow users to determine the size of the local buffer area for temporary table access (Tom)

  • Add session start time and client IP address to pg_stat_activity (Magnus)

  • Adjust pg_stat views for bitmap scans (Tom)

    The meanings of some of the fields have changed slightly.

  • Enhance pg_locks view (Tom)

  • Log queries for client-side PREPARE and EXECUTE (Simon)

  • Allow Kerberos name and user name case sensitivity to be specified in postgresql.conf (Magnus)

  • Add configuration parameter krb_server_hostname so that the server host name can be specified as part of service principal (Todd Kover)

    If not set, any service principal matching an entry in the keytab can be used. This is new Kerberos matching behavior in this release.

  • Add log_line_prefix options for millisecond timestamps (%m) and remote host (%h) (Ed L.)

  • Add WAL logging for GiST indexes (Teodor, Oleg)

    GiST indexes are now safe for crash and point-in-time recovery.

  • Remove old *.backup files when we do pg_stop_backup() (Bruce)

    This prevents a large number of *.backup files from existing in pg_xlog/.

  • Add configuration parameters to control TCP/IP keep-alive times for idle, interval, and count (Oliver Jowett)

    These values can be changed to allow more rapid detection of lost client connections.

  • Add per-user and per-database connection limits (Petr Jelinek)

    Using ALTER USER and ALTER DATABASE, limits can now be enforced on the maximum number of sessions that can concurrently connect as a specific user or to a specific database. Setting the limit to zero disables user or database connections.

  • Allow more than two gigabytes of shared memory and per-backend work memory on 64-bit machines (Koichi Suzuki)

  • New system catalog pg_pltemplate allows overriding obsolete procedural-language definitions in dump files (Tom)

E.139.3.3. Query Changes

  • Add temporary views (Koju Iijima, Neil)

  • Fix HAVING without any aggregate functions or GROUP BY so that the query returns a single group (Tom)

    Previously, such a case would treat the HAVING clause the same as a WHERE clause. This was not per spec.

  • Add USING clause to allow additional tables to be specified to DELETE (Euler Taveira de Oliveira, Neil)

    In prior releases, there was no clear method for specifying additional tables to be used for joins in a DELETE statement. UPDATE already has a FROM clause for this purpose.

  • Add support for \x hex escapes in backend and ecpg strings (Bruce)

    This is just like the standard C \x escape syntax. Octal escapes were already supported.

  • Add BETWEEN SYMMETRIC query syntax (Pavel Stehule)

    This feature allows BETWEEN comparisons without requiring the first value to be less than the second. For example, 2 BETWEEN [ASYMMETRIC] 3 AND 1 returns false, while 2 BETWEEN SYMMETRIC 3 AND 1 returns true. BETWEEN ASYMMETRIC was already supported.

  • Add NOWAIT option to SELECT ... FOR UPDATE/SHARE (Hans-Juergen Schoenig)

    While the statement_timeout configuration parameter allows a query taking more than a certain amount of time to be canceled, the NOWAIT option allows a query to be canceled as soon as a SELECT ... FOR UPDATE/SHARE command cannot immediately acquire a row lock.

E.139.3.4. Object Manipulation Changes

  • Track dependencies of shared objects (Alvaro)

    PostgreSQL allows global tables (users, databases, tablespaces) to reference information in multiple databases. This addition adds dependency information for global tables, so, for example, user ownership can be tracked across databases, so a user who owns something in any database can no longer be removed. Dependency tracking already existed for database-local objects.

  • Allow limited ALTER OWNER commands to be performed by the object owner (Stephen Frost)

    Prior releases allowed only superusers to change object owners. Now, ownership can be transferred if the user executing the command owns the object and would be able to create it as the new owner (that is, the user is a member of the new owning role and that role has the CREATE permission that would be needed to create the object afresh).

  • Add ALTER object SET SCHEMA capability for some object types (tables, functions, types) (Bernd Helmle)

    This allows objects to be moved to different schemas.

  • Add ALTER TABLE ENABLE/DISABLE TRIGGER to disable triggers (Satoshi Nagayasu)

E.139.3.5. Utility Command Changes

  • Allow TRUNCATE to truncate multiple tables in a single command (Alvaro)

    Because of referential integrity checks, it is not allowed to truncate a table that is part of a referential integrity constraint. Using this new functionality, TRUNCATE can be used to truncate such tables, if both tables involved in a referential integrity constraint are truncated in a single TRUNCATE command.

  • Properly process carriage returns and line feeds in COPY CSV mode (Andrew)

    In release 8.0, carriage returns and line feeds in CSV COPY TO were processed in an inconsistent manner. (This was documented on the TODO list.)

  • Add COPY WITH CSV HEADER to allow a header line as the first line in COPY (Andrew)

    This allows handling of the common CSV usage of placing the column names on the first line of the data file. For COPY TO, the first line contains the column names, and for COPY FROM, the first line is ignored.

  • On Windows, display better sub-second precision in EXPLAIN ANALYZE (Magnus)

  • Add trigger duration display to EXPLAIN ANALYZE (Tom)

    Prior releases included trigger execution time as part of the total execution time, but did not show it separately. It is now possible to see how much time is spent in each trigger.

  • Add support for \x hex escapes in COPY (Sergey Ten)

    Previous releases only supported octal escapes.

  • Make SHOW ALL include variable descriptions (Matthias Schmidt)

    SHOW varname still only displays the variable's value and does not include the description.

  • Make initdb create a new standard database called postgres, and convert utilities to use postgres rather than template1 for standard lookups (Dave)

    In prior releases, template1 was used both as a default connection for utilities like createuser, and as a template for new databases. This caused CREATE DATABASE to sometimes fail, because a new database cannot be created if anyone else is in the template database. With this change, the default connection database is now postgres, meaning it is much less likely someone will be using template1 during CREATE DATABASE.

  • Create new reindexdb command-line utility by moving /contrib/reindexdb into the server (Euler Taveira de Oliveira)

E.139.3.6. Data Type and Function Changes

  • Add MAX() and MIN() aggregates for array types (Koju Iijima)

  • Fix to_date() and to_timestamp() to behave reasonably when CC and YY fields are both used (Karel Zak)

    If the format specification contains CC and a year specification is YYY or longer, ignore the CC. If the year specification is YY or shorter, interpret CC as the previous century.

  • Add md5(bytea) (Abhijit Menon-Sen)

    md5(text) already existed.

  • Add support for numeric ^ numeric based on power(numeric, numeric)

    The function already existed, but there was no operator assigned to it.

  • Fix NUMERIC modulus by properly truncating the quotient during computation (Bruce)

    In previous releases, modulus for large values sometimes returned negative results due to rounding of the quotient.

  • Add a function lastval() (Dennis Björklund)

    lastval() is a simplified version of currval(). It automatically determines the proper sequence name based on the most recent nextval() or setval() call performed by the current session.

  • Add to_timestamp(DOUBLE PRECISION) (Michael Glaesemann)

    Converts Unix seconds since 1970 to a TIMESTAMP WITH TIMEZONE.

  • Add pg_postmaster_start_time() function (Euler Taveira de Oliveira, Matthias Schmidt)

  • Allow the full use of time zone names in AT TIME ZONE, not just the short list previously available (Magnus)

    Previously, only a predefined list of time zone names were supported by AT TIME ZONE. Now any supported time zone name can be used, e.g.:

    SELECT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP AT TIME ZONE 'Europe/London';

    In the above query, the time zone used is adjusted based on the daylight saving time rules that were in effect on the supplied date.

  • Add GREATEST() and LEAST() variadic functions (Pavel Stehule)

    These functions take a variable number of arguments and return the greatest or least value among the arguments.

  • Add pg_column_size() (Mark Kirkwood)

    This returns storage size of a column, which might be compressed.

  • Add regexp_replace() (Atsushi Ogawa)

    This allows regular expression replacement, like sed. An optional flag argument allows selection of global (replace all) and case-insensitive modes.

  • Fix interval division and multiplication (Bruce)

    Previous versions sometimes returned unjustified results, like '4 months'::interval / 5 returning '1 mon -6 days'.

  • Fix roundoff behavior in timestamp, time, and interval output (Tom)

    This fixes some cases in which the seconds field would be shown as 60 instead of incrementing the higher-order fields.

  • Add a separate day field to type interval so a one day interval can be distinguished from a 24 hour interval (Michael Glaesemann)

    Days that contain a daylight saving time adjustment are not 24 hours long, but typically 23 or 25 hours. This change creates a conceptual distinction between intervals of "so many days" and intervals of "so many hours". Adding 1 day to a timestamp now gives the same local time on the next day even if a daylight saving time adjustment occurs between, whereas adding 24 hours will give a different local time when this happens. For example, under US DST rules:

    '2005-04-03 00:00:00-05' + '1 day' = '2005-04-04 00:00:00-04'
'2005-04-03 00:00:00-05' + '24 hours' = '2005-04-04 01:00:00-04'

  • Add justify_days() and justify_hours() (Michael Glaesemann)

    These functions, respectively, adjust days to an appropriate number of full months and days, and adjust hours to an appropriate number of full days and hours.

  • Move /contrib/dbsize into the backend, and rename some of the functions (Dave Page, Andreas Pflug)

    • pg_tablespace_size()

    • pg_database_size()

    • pg_relation_size()

    • pg_total_relation_size()

    • pg_size_pretty()

    pg_total_relation_size() includes indexes and TOAST tables.

  • Add functions for read-only file access to the cluster directory (Dave Page, Andreas Pflug)

    • pg_stat_file()

    • pg_read_file()

    • pg_ls_dir()

  • Add pg_reload_conf() to force reloading of the configuration files (Dave Page, Andreas Pflug)

  • Add pg_rotate_logfile() to force rotation of the server log file (Dave Page, Andreas Pflug)

  • Change pg_stat_* views to include TOAST tables (Tom)

E.139.3.7. Encoding and Locale Changes

  • Rename some encodings to be more consistent and to follow international standards (Bruce)

    • UNICODE is now UTF8

    • ALT is now WIN866

    • WIN is now WIN1251

    • TCVN is now WIN1258

    The original names still work.

  • Add support for WIN1252 encoding (Roland Volkmann)

  • Add support for four-byte UTF8 characters (John Hansen)

    Previously only one, two, and three-byte UTF8 characters were supported. This is particularly important for support for some Chinese character sets.

  • Allow direct conversion between EUC_JP and SJIS to improve performance (Atsushi Ogawa)

  • Allow the UTF8 encoding to work on Windows (Magnus)

    This is done by mapping UTF8 to the Windows-native UTF16 implementation.

E.139.3.8. General Server-Side Language Changes

  • Fix ALTER LANGUAGE RENAME (Sergey Yatskevich)

  • Allow function characteristics, like strictness and volatility, to be modified via ALTER FUNCTION (Neil)

  • Increase the maximum number of function arguments to 100 (Tom)

  • Allow SQL and PL/pgSQL functions to use OUT and INOUT parameters (Tom)

    OUT is an alternate way for a function to return values. Instead of using RETURN, values can be returned by assigning to parameters declared as OUT or INOUT. This is notationally simpler in some cases, particularly so when multiple values need to be returned. While returning multiple values from a function was possible in previous releases, this greatly simplifies the process. (The feature will be extended to other server-side languages in future releases.)

  • Move language handler functions into the pg_catalog schema

    This makes it easier to drop the public schema if desired.

  • Add SPI_getnspname() to SPI (Neil)

E.139.3.9. PL/pgSQL Server-Side Language Changes

  • Overhaul the memory management of PL/pgSQL functions (Neil)

    The parsetree of each function is now stored in a separate memory context. This allows this memory to be easily reclaimed when it is no longer needed.

  • Check function syntax at CREATE FUNCTION time, rather than at runtime (Neil)

    Previously, most syntax errors were reported only when the function was executed.

  • Allow OPEN to open non-SELECT queries like EXPLAIN and SHOW (Tom)

  • No longer require functions to issue a RETURN statement (Tom)

    This is a byproduct of the newly added OUT and INOUT functionality. RETURN can be omitted when it is not needed to provide the function's return value.

  • Add support for an optional INTO clause to PL/pgSQL's EXECUTE statement (Pavel Stehule, Neil)

  • Make CREATE TABLE AS set ROW_COUNT (Tom)

  • Define SQLSTATE and SQLERRM to return the SQLSTATE and error message of the current exception (Pavel Stehule, Neil)

    These variables are only defined inside exception blocks.

  • Allow the parameters to the RAISE statement to be expressions (Pavel Stehule, Neil)

  • Add a loop CONTINUE statement (Pavel Stehule, Neil)

  • Allow block and loop labels (Pavel Stehule)

E.139.3.10. PL/Perl Server-Side Language Changes

  • Allow large result sets to be returned efficiently (Abhijit Menon-Sen)

    This allows functions to use return_next() to avoid building the entire result set in memory.

  • Allow one-row-at-a-time retrieval of query results (Abhijit Menon-Sen)

    This allows functions to use spi_query() and spi_fetchrow() to avoid accumulating the entire result set in memory.

  • Force PL/Perl to handle strings as UTF8 if the server encoding is UTF8 (David Kamholz)

  • Add a validator function for PL/Perl (Andrew)

    This allows syntax errors to be reported at definition time, rather than execution time.

  • Allow PL/Perl to return a Perl array when the function returns an array type (Andrew)

    This basically maps PostgreSQL arrays to Perl arrays.

  • Allow Perl nonfatal warnings to generate NOTICE messages (Andrew)

  • Allow Perl's strict mode to be enabled (Andrew)

E.139.3.11. psql Changes

  • Add \set ON_ERROR_ROLLBACK to allow statements in a transaction to error without affecting the rest of the transaction (Greg Sabino Mullane)

    This is basically implemented by wrapping every statement in a sub-transaction.

  • Add support for \x hex strings in psql variables (Bruce)

    Octal escapes were already supported.

  • Add support for troff -ms output format (Roger Leigh)

  • Allow the history file location to be controlled by HISTFILE (Andreas Seltenreich)

    This allows configuration of per-database history storage.

  • Prevent \x (expanded mode) from affecting the output of \d tablename (Neil)

  • Add -L option to psql to log sessions (Lorne Sunley)

    This option was added because some operating systems do not have simple command-line activity logging functionality.

  • Make \d show the tablespaces of indexes (Qingqing Zhou)

  • Allow psql help (\h) to make a best guess on the proper help information (Greg Sabino Mullane)

    This allows the user to just add \h to the front of the syntax error query and get help on the supported syntax. Previously any additional query text beyond the command name had to be removed to use \h.

  • Add \pset numericlocale to allow numbers to be output in a locale-aware format (Eugen Nedelcu)

    For example, using C locale 100000 would be output as 100,000.0 while a European locale might output this value as 100.000,0.

  • Make startup banner show both server version number and psql's version number, when they are different (Bruce)

    Also, a warning will be shown if the server and psql are from different major releases.

E.139.3.12. pg_dump Changes

  • Add -n / --schema switch to pg_restore (Richard van den Berg)

    This allows just the objects in a specified schema to be restored.

  • Allow pg_dump to dump large objects even in text mode (Tom)

    With this change, large objects are now always dumped; the former -b switch is a no-op.

  • Allow pg_dump to dump a consistent snapshot of large objects (Tom)

  • Dump comments for large objects (Tom)

  • Add --encoding to pg_dump (Magnus Hagander)

    This allows a database to be dumped in an encoding that is different from the server's encoding. This is valuable when transferring the dump to a machine with a different encoding.

  • Rely on pg_pltemplate for procedural languages (Tom)

    If the call handler for a procedural language is in the pg_catalog schema, pg_dump does not dump the handler. Instead, it dumps the language using just CREATE LANGUAGE name, relying on the pg_pltemplate catalog to provide the language's creation parameters at load time.

E.139.3.13. libpq Changes

  • Add a PGPASSFILE environment variable to specify the password file's filename (Andrew)

  • Add lo_create(), that is similar to lo_creat() but allows the OID of the large object to be specified (Tom)

  • Make libpq consistently return an error to the client application on malloc() failure (Neil)

E.139.3.14. Source Code Changes

  • Fix pgxs to support building against a relocated installation

  • Add spinlock support for the Itanium processor using Intel compiler (Vikram Kalsi)

  • Add Kerberos 5 support for Windows (Magnus)

  • Add Chinese FAQ (laser@pgsqldb.com)

  • Rename Rendezvous to Bonjour to match OS/X feature renaming (Bruce)

  • Add support for fsync_writethrough on Darwin (Chris Campbell)

  • Streamline the passing of information within the server, the optimizer, and the lock system (Tom)

  • Allow pg_config to be compiled using MSVC (Andrew)

    This is required to build DBD::Pg using MSVC.

  • Remove support for Kerberos V4 (Magnus)

    Kerberos 4 had security vulnerabilities and is no longer maintained.

  • Code cleanups (Coverity static analysis performed by EnterpriseDB)

  • Modify postgresql.conf to use documentation defaults on/off rather than true/false (Bruce)

  • Enhance pg_config to be able to report more build-time values (Tom)

  • Allow libpq to be built thread-safe on Windows (Dave Page)

  • Allow IPv6 connections to be used on Windows (Andrew)

  • Add Server Administration documentation about I/O subsystem reliability (Bruce)

  • Move private declarations from gist.h to gist_private.h (Neil)

    In previous releases, gist.h contained both the public GiST API (intended for use by authors of GiST index implementations) as well as some private declarations used by the implementation of GiST itself. The latter have been moved to a separate file, gist_private.h. Most GiST index implementations should be unaffected.

  • Overhaul GiST memory management (Neil)

    GiST methods are now always invoked in a short-lived memory context. Therefore, memory allocated via palloc() will be reclaimed automatically, so GiST index implementations do not need to manually release allocated memory via pfree().

E.139.3.15. Contrib Changes

  • Add /contrib/pg_buffercache contrib module (Mark Kirkwood)

    This displays the contents of the buffer cache, for debugging and performance tuning purposes.

  • Remove /contrib/array because it is obsolete (Tom)

  • Clean up the /contrib/lo module (Tom)

  • Move /contrib/findoidjoins to /src/tools (Tom)

  • Remove the <<, >>, &<, and &> operators from /contrib/cube

    These operators were not useful.

  • Improve /contrib/btree_gist (Janko Richter)

  • Improve /contrib/pgbench (Tomoaki Sato, Tatsuo)

    There is now a facility for testing with SQL command scripts given by the user, instead of only a hard-wired command sequence.

  • Improve /contrib/pgcrypto (Marko Kreen)

    • Implementation of OpenPGP symmetric-key and public-key encryption

      Both RSA and Elgamal public-key algorithms are supported.

    • Stand alone build: include SHA256/384/512 hashes, Fortuna PRNG

    • OpenSSL build: support 3DES, use internal AES with OpenSSL < 0.9.7

    • Take build parameters (OpenSSL, zlib) from configure result

      There is no need to edit the Makefile anymore.

    • Remove support for libmhash and libmcrypt

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Release 8.1.1 | Up | Release 8.0.26


Release 8.0.26

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E.140. Release 8.0.26

Release Date: 2010-10-04

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.0.25. For information about new features in the 8.0 major release, see Section E.166.

This is expected to be the last PostgreSQL release in the 8.0.X series. Users are encouraged to update to a newer release branch soon.

E.140.1. Migration to Version 8.0.26

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.0.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.0.22, see Section E.144.

E.140.2. Changes

  • Use a separate interpreter for each calling SQL userid in PL/Perl and PL/Tcl (Tom Lane)

    This change prevents security problems that can be caused by subverting Perl or Tcl code that will be executed later in the same session under another SQL user identity (for example, within a SECURITY DEFINER function). Most scripting languages offer numerous ways that that might be done, such as redefining standard functions or operators called by the target function. Without this change, any SQL user with Perl or Tcl language usage rights can do essentially anything with the SQL privileges of the target function's owner.

    The cost of this change is that intentional communication among Perl and Tcl functions becomes more difficult. To provide an escape hatch, PL/PerlU and PL/TclU functions continue to use only one interpreter per session. This is not considered a security issue since all such functions execute at the trust level of a database superuser already.

    It is likely that third-party procedural languages that claim to offer trusted execution have similar security issues. We advise contacting the authors of any PL you are depending on for security-critical purposes.

    Our thanks to Tim Bunce for pointing out this issue (CVE-2010-3433).

  • Prevent possible crashes in pg_get_expr() by disallowing it from being called with an argument that is not one of the system catalog columns it's intended to be used with (Heikki Linnakangas, Tom Lane)

  • Fix "cannot handle unplanned sub-select" error (Tom Lane)

    This occurred when a sub-select contains a join alias reference that expands into an expression containing another sub-select.

  • Defend against functions returning setof record where not all the returned rows are actually of the same rowtype (Tom Lane)

  • Take care to fsync the contents of lockfiles (both postmaster.pid and the socket lockfile) while writing them (Tom Lane)

    This omission could result in corrupted lockfile contents if the machine crashes shortly after postmaster start. That could in turn prevent subsequent attempts to start the postmaster from succeeding, until the lockfile is manually removed.

  • Avoid recursion while assigning XIDs to heavily-nested subtransactions (Andres Freund, Robert Haas)

    The original coding could result in a crash if there was limited stack space.

  • Fix log_line_prefix's %i escape, which could produce junk early in backend startup (Tom Lane)

  • Fix possible data corruption in ALTER TABLE ... SET TABLESPACE when archiving is enabled (Jeff Davis)

  • Allow CREATE DATABASE and ALTER DATABASE ... SET TABLESPACE to be interrupted by query-cancel (Guillaume Lelarge)

  • In PL/Python, defend against null pointer results from PyCObject_AsVoidPtr and PyCObject_FromVoidPtr (Peter Eisentraut)

  • Improve contrib/dblink's handling of tables containing dropped columns (Tom Lane)

  • Fix connection leak after "duplicate connection name" errors in contrib/dblink (Itagaki Takahiro)

  • Fix contrib/dblink to handle connection names longer than 62 bytes correctly (Itagaki Takahiro)

  • Update build infrastructure and documentation to reflect the source code repository's move from CVS to Git (Magnus Hagander and others)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2010l for DST law changes in Egypt and Palestine; also historical corrections for Finland.

    This change also adds new names for two Micronesian timezones: Pacific/Chuuk is now preferred over Pacific/Truk (and the preferred abbreviation is CHUT not TRUT) and Pacific/Pohnpei is preferred over Pacific/Ponape.

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Release 8.0.25

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.141. Release 8.0.25

Release Date: 2010-05-17

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.0.24. For information about new features in the 8.0 major release, see Section E.166.

The PostgreSQL community will stop releasing updates for the 8.0.X release series in July 2010. Users are encouraged to update to a newer release branch soon.

E.141.1. Migration to Version 8.0.25

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.0.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.0.22, see Section E.144.

E.141.2. Changes

  • Enforce restrictions in plperl using an opmask applied to the whole interpreter, instead of using Safe.pm (Tim Bunce, Andrew Dunstan)

    Recent developments have convinced us that Safe.pm is too insecure to rely on for making plperl trustable. This change removes use of Safe.pm altogether, in favor of using a separate interpreter with an opcode mask that is always applied. Pleasant side effects of the change include that it is now possible to use Perl's strict pragma in a natural way in plperl, and that Perl's $a and $b variables work as expected in sort routines, and that function compilation is significantly faster. (CVE-2010-1169)

  • Prevent PL/Tcl from executing untrustworthy code from pltcl_modules (Tom)

    PL/Tcl's feature for autoloading Tcl code from a database table could be exploited for trojan-horse attacks, because there was no restriction on who could create or insert into that table. This change disables the feature unless pltcl_modules is owned by a superuser. (However, the permissions on the table are not checked, so installations that really need a less-than-secure modules table can still grant suitable privileges to trusted non-superusers.) Also, prevent loading code into the unrestricted "normal" Tcl interpreter unless we are really going to execute a pltclu function. (CVE-2010-1170)

  • Do not allow an unprivileged user to reset superuser-only parameter settings (Alvaro)

    Previously, if an unprivileged user ran ALTER USER ... RESET ALL for himself, or ALTER DATABASE ... RESET ALL for a database he owns, this would remove all special parameter settings for the user or database, even ones that are only supposed to be changeable by a superuser. Now, the ALTER will only remove the parameters that the user has permission to change.

  • Avoid possible crash during backend shutdown if shutdown occurs when a CONTEXT addition would be made to log entries (Tom)

    In some cases the context-printing function would fail because the current transaction had already been rolled back when it came time to print a log message.

  • Update pl/perl's ppport.h for modern Perl versions (Andrew)

  • Fix assorted memory leaks in pl/python (Andreas Freund, Tom)

  • Prevent infinite recursion in psql when expanding a variable that refers to itself (Tom)

  • Ensure that contrib/pgstattuple functions respond to cancel interrupts promptly (Tatsuhito Kasahara)

  • Make server startup deal properly with the case that shmget() returns EINVAL for an existing shared memory segment (Tom)

    This behavior has been observed on BSD-derived kernels including OS X. It resulted in an entirely-misleading startup failure complaining that the shared memory request size was too large.

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2010j for DST law changes in Argentina, Australian Antarctic, Bangladesh, Mexico, Morocco, Pakistan, Palestine, Russia, Syria, Tunisia; also historical corrections for Taiwan.

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Release 8.0.26 | Up | Release 8.0.24


Release 8.0.24

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E.142. Release 8.0.24

Release Date: 2010-03-15

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.0.23. For information about new features in the 8.0 major release, see Section E.166.

The PostgreSQL community will stop releasing updates for the 8.0.X release series in July 2010. Users are encouraged to update to a newer release branch soon.

E.142.1. Migration to Version 8.0.24

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.0.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.0.22, see Section E.144.

E.142.2. Changes

  • Add new configuration parameter ssl_renegotiation_limit to control how often we do session key renegotiation for an SSL connection (Magnus)

    This can be set to zero to disable renegotiation completely, which may be required if a broken SSL library is used. In particular, some vendors are shipping stopgap patches for CVE-2009-3555 that cause renegotiation attempts to fail.

  • Fix possible crashes when trying to recover from a failure in subtransaction start (Tom)

  • Fix server memory leak associated with use of savepoints and a client encoding different from server's encoding (Tom)

  • Make substring() for bit types treat any negative length as meaning "all the rest of the string" (Tom)

    The previous coding treated only -1 that way, and would produce an invalid result value for other negative values, possibly leading to a crash (CVE-2010-0442).

  • Fix integer-to-bit-string conversions to handle the first fractional byte correctly when the output bit width is wider than the given integer by something other than a multiple of 8 bits (Tom)

  • Fix some cases of pathologically slow regular expression matching (Tom)

  • Fix the STOP WAL LOCATION entry in backup history files to report the next WAL segment's name when the end location is exactly at a segment boundary (Itagaki Takahiro)

  • When reading pg_hba.conf and related files, do not treat @something as a file inclusion request if the @ appears inside quote marks; also, never treat @ by itself as a file inclusion request (Tom)

    This prevents erratic behavior if a role or database name starts with @. If you need to include a file whose path name contains spaces, you can still do so, but you must write @"/path to/file" rather than putting the quotes around the whole construct.

  • Prevent infinite loop on some platforms if a directory is named as an inclusion target in pg_hba.conf and related files (Tom)

  • Fix plpgsql failure in one case where a composite column is set to NULL (Tom)

  • Add volatile markings in PL/Python to avoid possible compiler-specific misbehavior (Zdenek Kotala)

  • Ensure PL/Tcl initializes the Tcl interpreter fully (Tom)

    The only known symptom of this oversight is that the Tcl clock command misbehaves if using Tcl 8.5 or later.

  • Prevent crash in contrib/dblink when too many key columns are specified to a dblink_build_sql_* function (Rushabh Lathia, Joe Conway)

  • Fix assorted crashes in contrib/xml2 caused by sloppy memory management (Tom)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2010e for DST law changes in Bangladesh, Chile, Fiji, Mexico, Paraguay, Samoa.

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Release 8.0.25 | Up | Release 8.0.23


Release 8.0.23

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E.143. Release 8.0.23

Release Date: 2009-12-14

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.0.22. For information about new features in the 8.0 major release, see Section E.166.

E.143.1. Migration to Version 8.0.23

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.0.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.0.22, see Section E.144.

E.143.2. Changes

  • Protect against indirect security threats caused by index functions changing session-local state (Gurjeet Singh, Tom)

    This change prevents allegedly-immutable index functions from possibly subverting a superuser's session (CVE-2009-4136).

  • Reject SSL certificates containing an embedded null byte in the common name (CN) field (Magnus)

    This prevents unintended matching of a certificate to a server or client name during SSL validation (CVE-2009-4034).

  • Fix possible crash during backend-startup-time cache initialization (Tom)

  • Prevent signals from interrupting VACUUM at unsafe times (Alvaro)

    This fix prevents a PANIC if a VACUUM FULL is canceled after it's already committed its tuple movements, as well as transient errors if a plain VACUUM is interrupted after having truncated the table.

  • Fix possible crash due to integer overflow in hash table size calculation (Tom)

    This could occur with extremely large planner estimates for the size of a hashjoin's result.

  • Fix very rare crash in inet/cidr comparisons (Chris Mikkelson)

  • Fix premature drop of temporary files used for a cursor that is accessed within a subtransaction (Heikki)

  • Fix PAM password processing to be more robust (Tom)

    The previous code is known to fail with the combination of the Linux pam_krb5 PAM module with Microsoft Active Directory as the domain controller. It might have problems elsewhere too, since it was making unjustified assumptions about what arguments the PAM stack would pass to it.

  • Fix rare crash in exception processing in PL/Python (Peter)

  • Ensure psql's flex module is compiled with the correct system header definitions (Tom)

    This fixes build failures on platforms where --enable-largefile causes incompatible changes in the generated code.

  • Make the postmaster ignore any application_name parameter in connection request packets, to improve compatibility with future libpq versions (Tom)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2009s for DST law changes in Antarctica, Argentina, Bangladesh, Fiji, Novokuznetsk, Pakistan, Palestine, Samoa, Syria; also historical corrections for Hong Kong.

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Release 8.0.22

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E.144. Release 8.0.22

Release Date: 2009-09-09

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.0.21. For information about new features in the 8.0 major release, see Section E.166.

E.144.1. Migration to Version 8.0.22

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.0.X. However, if you have any hash indexes on interval columns, you must REINDEX them after updating to 8.0.22. Also, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.0.6, see Section E.160.

E.144.2. Changes

  • Disallow RESET ROLE and RESET SESSION AUTHORIZATION inside security-definer functions (Tom, Heikki)

    This covers a case that was missed in the previous patch that disallowed SET ROLE and SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION inside security-definer functions. (See CVE-2007-6600)

  • Fix handling of sub-SELECTs appearing in the arguments of an outer-level aggregate function (Tom)

  • Fix hash calculation for data type interval (Tom)

    This corrects wrong results for hash joins on interval values. It also changes the contents of hash indexes on interval columns. If you have any such indexes, you must REINDEX them after updating.

  • Treat to_char(..., 'TH') as an uppercase ordinal suffix with 'HH'/'HH12' (Heikki)

    It was previously handled as 'th' (lowercase).

  • Fix overflow for INTERVAL 'x ms' when x is more than 2 million and integer datetimes are in use (Alex Hunsaker)

  • Fix calculation of distance between a point and a line segment (Tom)

    This led to incorrect results from a number of geometric operators.

  • Fix money data type to work in locales where currency amounts have no fractional digits, e.g. Japan (Itagaki Takahiro)

  • Properly round datetime input like 00:12:57.9999999999999999999999999999 (Tom)

  • Fix poor choice of page split point in GiST R-tree operator classes (Teodor)

  • Fix portability issues in plperl initialization (Andrew Dunstan)

  • Fix pg_ctl to not go into an infinite loop if postgresql.conf is empty (Jeff Davis)

  • Fix contrib/xml2's xslt_process() to properly handle the maximum number of parameters (twenty) (Tom)

  • Improve robustness of libpq's code to recover from errors during COPY FROM STDIN (Tom)

  • Avoid including conflicting readline and editline header files when both libraries are installed (Zdenek Kotala)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2009l for DST law changes in Bangladesh, Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, Argentina/San_Luis, Cuba, Jordan (historical correction only), Mauritius, Morocco, Palestine, Syria, Tunisia.

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Release 8.0.23 | Up | Release 8.0.21


Release 8.0.21

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E.145. Release 8.0.21

Release Date: 2009-03-16

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.0.20. For information about new features in the 8.0 major release, see Section E.166.

E.145.1. Migration to Version 8.0.21

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.0.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.0.6, see Section E.160.

E.145.2. Changes

  • Prevent error recursion crashes when encoding conversion fails (Tom)

    This change extends fixes made in the last two minor releases for related failure scenarios. The previous fixes were narrowly tailored for the original problem reports, but we have now recognized that any error thrown by an encoding conversion function could potentially lead to infinite recursion while trying to report the error. The solution therefore is to disable translation and encoding conversion and report the plain-ASCII form of any error message, if we find we have gotten into a recursive error reporting situation. (CVE-2009-0922)

  • Disallow CREATE CONVERSION with the wrong encodings for the specified conversion function (Heikki)

    This prevents one possible scenario for encoding conversion failure. The previous change is a backstop to guard against other kinds of failures in the same area.

  • Fix core dump when to_char() is given format codes that are inappropriate for the type of the data argument (Tom)

  • Add MUST (Mauritius Island Summer Time) to the default list of known timezone abbreviations (Xavier Bugaud)

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Release 8.0.22 | Up | Release 8.0.20


Release 8.0.20

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E.146. Release 8.0.20

Release Date: 2009-02-02

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.0.19. For information about new features in the 8.0 major release, see Section E.166.

E.146.1. Migration to Version 8.0.20

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.0.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.0.6, see Section E.160.

E.146.2. Changes

  • Improve handling of URLs in headline() function (Teodor)

  • Improve handling of overlength headlines in headline() function (Teodor)

  • Prevent possible Assert failure or misconversion if an encoding conversion is created with the wrong conversion function for the specified pair of encodings (Tom, Heikki)

  • Avoid unnecessary locking of small tables in VACUUM (Heikki)

  • Fix uninitialized variables in contrib/tsearch2's get_covers() function (Teodor)

  • Make all documentation reference pgsql-bugs and/or pgsql-hackers as appropriate, instead of the now-decommissioned pgsql-ports and pgsql-patches mailing lists (Tom)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2009a (for Kathmandu and historical DST corrections in Switzerland, Cuba)

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Release 8.0.21 | Up | Release 8.0.19


Release 8.0.19

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E.147. Release 8.0.19

Release Date: 2008-11-03

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.0.18. For information about new features in the 8.0 major release, see Section E.166.

E.147.1. Migration to Version 8.0.19

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.0.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.0.6, see Section E.160.

E.147.2. Changes

  • Fix backend crash when the client encoding cannot represent a localized error message (Tom)

    We have addressed similar issues before, but it would still fail if the "character has no equivalent" message itself couldn't be converted. The fix is to disable localization and send the plain ASCII error message when we detect such a situation.

  • Fix possible crash when deeply nested functions are invoked from a trigger (Tom)

  • Ensure an error is reported when a newly-defined PL/pgSQL trigger function is invoked as a normal function (Tom)

  • Fix incorrect tsearch2 headline generation when single query item matches first word of text (Sushant Sinha)

  • Fix improper display of fractional seconds in interval values when using a non-ISO datestyle in an --enable-integer-datetimes build (Ron Mayer)

  • Ensure SPI_getvalue and SPI_getbinval behave correctly when the passed tuple and tuple descriptor have different numbers of columns (Tom)

    This situation is normal when a table has had columns added or removed, but these two functions didn't handle it properly. The only likely consequence is an incorrect error indication.

  • Fix ecpg's parsing of CREATE USER (Michael)

  • Fix recent breakage of pg_ctl restart (Tom)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2008i (for DST law changes in Argentina, Brazil, Mauritius, Syria)

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Release 8.0.18

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E.148. Release 8.0.18

Release Date: 2008-09-22

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.0.17. For information about new features in the 8.0 major release, see Section E.166.

E.148.1. Migration to Version 8.0.18

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.0.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.0.6, see Section E.160.

E.148.2. Changes

  • Widen local lock counters from 32 to 64 bits (Tom)

    This responds to reports that the counters could overflow in sufficiently long transactions, leading to unexpected "lock is already held" errors.

  • Add checks in executor startup to ensure that the tuples produced by an INSERT or UPDATE will match the target table's current rowtype (Tom)

    ALTER COLUMN TYPE, followed by re-use of a previously cached plan, could produce this type of situation. The check protects against data corruption and/or crashes that could ensue.

  • Fix datetime input functions to correctly detect integer overflow when running on a 64-bit platform (Tom)

  • Improve performance of writing very long log messages to syslog (Tom)

  • Fix bug in backwards scanning of a cursor on a SELECT DISTINCT ON query (Tom)

  • Fix planner to estimate that GROUP BY expressions yielding boolean results always result in two groups, regardless of the expressions' contents (Tom)

    This is very substantially more accurate than the regular GROUP BY estimate for certain boolean tests like col IS NULL.

  • Fix PL/Tcl to behave correctly with Tcl 8.5, and to be more careful about the encoding of data sent to or from Tcl (Tom)

  • Fix PL/Python to work with Python 2.5

    This is a back-port of fixes made during the 8.2 development cycle.

  • Improve pg_dump and pg_restore's error reporting after failure to send a SQL command (Tom)

  • Fix pg_ctl to properly preserve postmaster command-line arguments across a restart (Bruce)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2008f (for DST law changes in Argentina, Bahamas, Brazil, Mauritius, Morocco, Pakistan, Palestine, and Paraguay)

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Release 8.0.19 | Up | Release 8.0.17


Release 8.0.17

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E.149. Release 8.0.17

Release Date: 2008-06-12

This release contains one serious bug fix over 8.0.16. For information about new features in the 8.0 major release, see Section E.166.

E.149.1. Migration to Version 8.0.17

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.0.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.0.6, see Section E.160.

E.149.2. Changes

  • Make pg_get_ruledef() parenthesize negative constants (Tom)

    Before this fix, a negative constant in a view or rule might be dumped as, say, -42::integer, which is subtly incorrect: it should be (-42)::integer due to operator precedence rules. Usually this would make little difference, but it could interact with another recent patch to cause PostgreSQL to reject what had been a valid SELECT DISTINCT view query. Since this could result in pg_dump output failing to reload, it is being treated as a high-priority fix. The only released versions in which dump output is actually incorrect are 8.3.1 and 8.2.7.

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Release 8.0.18 | Up | Release 8.0.16


Release 8.0.16

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E.150. Release 8.0.16

Release Date: never released

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.0.15. For information about new features in the 8.0 major release, see Section E.166.

E.150.1. Migration to Version 8.0.16

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.0.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.0.6, see Section E.160.

E.150.2. Changes

  • Fix ALTER TABLE ADD COLUMN ... PRIMARY KEY so that the new column is correctly checked to see if it's been initialized to all non-nulls (Brendan Jurd)

    Previous versions neglected to check this requirement at all.

  • Fix possible CREATE TABLE failure when inheriting the "same" constraint from multiple parent relations that inherited that constraint from a common ancestor (Tom)

  • Fix conversions between ISO-8859-5 and other encodings to handle Cyrillic "Yo" characters (e and E with two dots) (Sergey Burladyan)

  • Fix a few datatype input functions that were allowing unused bytes in their results to contain uninitialized, unpredictable values (Tom)

    This could lead to failures in which two apparently identical literal values were not seen as equal, resulting in the parser complaining about unmatched ORDER BY and DISTINCT expressions.

  • Fix a corner case in regular-expression substring matching (substring(string from pattern)) (Tom)

    The problem occurs when there is a match to the pattern overall but the user has specified a parenthesized subexpression and that subexpression hasn't got a match. An example is substring('foo' from 'foo(bar)?'). This should return NULL, since (bar) isn't matched, but it was mistakenly returning the whole-pattern match instead (ie, foo).

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2008c (for DST law changes in Morocco, Iraq, Choibalsan, Pakistan, Syria, Cuba, Argentina/San_Luis, and Chile)

  • Fix incorrect result from ecpg's PGTYPEStimestamp_sub() function (Michael)

  • Fix core dump in contrib/xml2's xpath_table() function when the input query returns a NULL value (Tom)

  • Fix contrib/xml2's makefile to not override CFLAGS (Tom)

  • Fix DatumGetBool macro to not fail with gcc 4.3 (Tom)

    This problem affects "old style" (V0) C functions that return boolean. The fix is already in 8.3, but the need to back-patch it was not realized at the time.

  • Fix longstanding LISTEN/NOTIFY race condition (Tom)

    In rare cases a session that had just executed a LISTEN might not get a notification, even though one would be expected because the concurrent transaction executing NOTIFY was observed to commit later.

    A side effect of the fix is that a transaction that has executed a not-yet-committed LISTEN command will not see any row in pg_listener for the LISTEN, should it choose to look; formerly it would have. This behavior was never documented one way or the other, but it is possible that some applications depend on the old behavior.

  • Fix rare crash when an error occurs during a query using a hash index (Heikki)

  • Fix input of datetime values for February 29 in years BC (Tom)

    The former coding was mistaken about which years were leap years.

  • Fix "unrecognized node type" error in some variants of ALTER OWNER (Tom)

  • Fix pg_ctl to correctly extract the postmaster's port number from command-line options (Itagaki Takahiro, Tom)

    Previously, pg_ctl start -w could try to contact the postmaster on the wrong port, leading to bogus reports of startup failure.

  • Use -fwrapv to defend against possible misoptimization in recent gcc versions (Tom)

    This is known to be necessary when building PostgreSQL with gcc 4.3 or later.

  • Fix display of constant expressions in ORDER BY and GROUP BY (Tom)

    An explicitly casted constant would be shown incorrectly. This could for example lead to corruption of a view definition during dump and reload.

  • Fix libpq to handle NOTICE messages correctly during COPY OUT (Tom)

    This failure has only been observed to occur when a user-defined datatype's output routine issues a NOTICE, but there is no guarantee it couldn't happen due to other causes.

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Release 8.0.15

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E.151. Release 8.0.15

Release Date: 2008-01-07

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.0.14, including fixes for significant security issues. For information about new features in the 8.0 major release, see Section E.166.

This is the last 8.0.X release for which the PostgreSQL community will produce binary packages for Windows. Windows users are encouraged to move to 8.2.X or later, since there are Windows-specific fixes in 8.2.X that are impractical to back-port. 8.0.X will continue to be supported on other platforms.

E.151.1. Migration to Version 8.0.15

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.0.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.0.6, see Section E.160.

E.151.2. Changes

  • Prevent functions in indexes from executing with the privileges of the user running VACUUM, ANALYZE, etc (Tom)

    Functions used in index expressions and partial-index predicates are evaluated whenever a new table entry is made. It has long been understood that this poses a risk of trojan-horse code execution if one modifies a table owned by an untrustworthy user. (Note that triggers, defaults, check constraints, etc. pose the same type of risk.) But functions in indexes pose extra danger because they will be executed by routine maintenance operations such as VACUUM FULL, which are commonly performed automatically under a superuser account. For example, a nefarious user can execute code with superuser privileges by setting up a trojan-horse index definition and waiting for the next routine vacuum. The fix arranges for standard maintenance operations (including VACUUM, ANALYZE, REINDEX, and CLUSTER) to execute as the table owner rather than the calling user, using the same privilege-switching mechanism already used for SECURITY DEFINER functions. To prevent bypassing this security measure, execution of SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION and SET ROLE is now forbidden within a SECURITY DEFINER context. (CVE-2007-6600)

  • Repair assorted bugs in the regular-expression package (Tom, Will Drewry)

    Suitably crafted regular-expression patterns could cause crashes, infinite or near-infinite looping, and/or massive memory consumption, all of which pose denial-of-service hazards for applications that accept regex search patterns from untrustworthy sources. (CVE-2007-4769, CVE-2007-4772, CVE-2007-6067)

  • Require non-superusers who use /contrib/dblink to use only password authentication, as a security measure (Joe)

    The fix that appeared for this in 8.0.14 was incomplete, as it plugged the hole for only some dblink functions. (CVE-2007-6601, CVE-2007-3278)

  • Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2007k (in particular, recent Argentina changes) (Tom)

  • Fix planner failure in some cases of WHERE false AND var IN (SELECT ...) (Tom)

  • Preserve the tablespace of indexes that are rebuilt by ALTER TABLE ... ALTER COLUMN TYPE (Tom)

  • Make archive recovery always start a new WAL timeline, rather than only when a recovery stop time was used (Simon)

    This avoids a corner-case risk of trying to overwrite an existing archived copy of the last WAL segment, and seems simpler and cleaner than the original definition.

  • Make VACUUM not use all of maintenance_work_mem when the table is too small for it to be useful (Alvaro)

  • Fix potential crash in translate() when using a multibyte database encoding (Tom)

  • Fix PL/Perl to cope when platform's Perl defines type bool as int rather than char (Tom)

    While this could theoretically happen anywhere, no standard build of Perl did things this way ... until Mac OS X 10.5.

  • Fix PL/Python to not crash on long exception messages (Alvaro)

  • Fix pg_dump to correctly handle inheritance child tables that have default expressions different from their parent's (Tom)

  • ecpg parser fixes (Michael)

  • Make contrib/tablefunc's crosstab() handle NULL rowid as a category in its own right, rather than crashing (Joe)

  • Fix tsvector and tsquery output routines to escape backslashes correctly (Teodor, Bruce)

  • Fix crash of to_tsvector() on huge input strings (Teodor)

  • Require a specific version of Autoconf to be used when re-generating the configure script (Peter)

    This affects developers and packagers only. The change was made to prevent accidental use of untested combinations of Autoconf and PostgreSQL versions. You can remove the version check if you really want to use a different Autoconf version, but it's your responsibility whether the result works or not.

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Release 8.0.16 | Up | Release 8.0.14


Release 8.0.14

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E.152. Release 8.0.14

Release Date: 2007-09-17

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.0.13. For information about new features in the 8.0 major release, see Section E.166.

E.152.1. Migration to Version 8.0.14

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.0.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.0.6, see Section E.160.

E.152.2. Changes

  • Prevent index corruption when a transaction inserts rows and then aborts close to the end of a concurrent VACUUM on the same table (Tom)

  • Make CREATE DOMAIN ... DEFAULT NULL work properly (Tom)

  • Fix excessive logging of SSL error messages (Tom)

  • Fix logging so that log messages are never interleaved when using the syslogger process (Andrew)

  • Fix crash when log_min_error_statement logging runs out of memory (Tom)

  • Fix incorrect handling of some foreign-key corner cases (Tom)

  • Prevent CLUSTER from failing due to attempting to process temporary tables of other sessions (Alvaro)

  • Update the time zone database rules, particularly New Zealand's upcoming changes (Tom)

  • Windows socket improvements (Magnus)

  • Suppress timezone name (%Z) in log timestamps on Windows because of possible encoding mismatches (Tom)

  • Require non-superusers who use /contrib/dblink to use only password authentication, as a security measure (Joe)

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Release 8.0.15 | Up | Release 8.0.13


Release 8.0.13

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E.153. Release 8.0.13

Release Date: 2007-04-23

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.0.12, including a security fix. For information about new features in the 8.0 major release, see Section E.166.

E.153.1. Migration to Version 8.0.13

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.0.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.0.6, see Section E.160.

E.153.2. Changes

  • Support explicit placement of the temporary-table schema within search_path, and disable searching it for functions and operators (Tom)

    This is needed to allow a security-definer function to set a truly secure value of search_path. Without it, an unprivileged SQL user can use temporary objects to execute code with the privileges of the security-definer function (CVE-2007-2138). See CREATE FUNCTION for more information.

  • /contrib/tsearch2 crash fixes (Teodor)

  • Fix potential-data-corruption bug in how VACUUM FULL handles UPDATE chains (Tom, Pavan Deolasee)

  • Fix PANIC during enlargement of a hash index (bug introduced in 8.0.10) (Tom)

  • Fix POSIX-style timezone specs to follow new USA DST rules (Tom)

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Release 8.0.14 | Up | Release 8.0.12


Release 8.0.12

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E.154. Release 8.0.12

Release Date: 2007-02-07

This release contains one fix from 8.0.11. For information about new features in the 8.0 major release, see Section E.166.

E.154.1. Migration to Version 8.0.12

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.0.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.0.6, see Section E.160.

E.154.2. Changes

  • Remove overly-restrictive check for type length in constraints and functional indexes(Tom)

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Release 8.0.13 | Up | Release 8.0.11


Release 8.0.11

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E.155. Release 8.0.11

Release Date: 2007-02-05

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.0.10, including a security fix. For information about new features in the 8.0 major release, see Section E.166.

E.155.1. Migration to Version 8.0.11

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.0.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.0.6, see Section E.160.

E.155.2. Changes

  • Remove security vulnerabilities that allowed connected users to read backend memory (Tom)

    The vulnerabilities involve suppressing the normal check that a SQL function returns the data type it's declared to, and changing the data type of a table column (CVE-2007-0555, CVE-2007-0556). These errors can easily be exploited to cause a backend crash, and in principle might be used to read database content that the user should not be able to access.

  • Fix rare bug wherein btree index page splits could fail due to choosing an infeasible split point (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Fix for rare Assert() crash triggered by UNION (Tom)

  • Tighten security of multi-byte character processing for UTF8 sequences over three bytes long (Tom)

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Release 8.0.10

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E.156. Release 8.0.10

Release Date: 2007-01-08

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.0.9. For information about new features in the 8.0 major release, see Section E.166.

E.156.1. Migration to Version 8.0.10

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.0.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.0.6, see Section E.160.

E.156.2. Changes

  • Improve handling of getaddrinfo() on AIX (Tom)

    This fixes a problem with starting the statistics collector, among other things.

  • Fix "failed to re-find parent key" errors in VACUUM (Tom)

  • Fix race condition for truncation of a large relation across a gigabyte boundary by VACUUM (Tom)

  • Fix bugs affecting multi-gigabyte hash indexes (Tom)

  • Fix possible deadlock in Windows signal handling (Teodor)

  • Fix error when constructing an ARRAY[] made up of multiple empty elements (Tom)

  • Fix ecpg memory leak during connection (Michael)

  • to_number() and to_char(numeric) are now STABLE, not IMMUTABLE, for new initdb installs (Tom)

    This is because lc_numeric can potentially change the output of these functions.

  • Improve index usage of regular expressions that use parentheses (Tom)

    This improves psql \d performance also.

  • Update timezone database

    This affects Australian and Canadian daylight-savings rules in particular.

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Release 8.0.9

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E.157. Release 8.0.9

Release Date: 2006-10-16

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.0.8. For information about new features in the 8.0 major release, see Section E.166.

E.157.1. Migration to Version 8.0.9

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.0.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.0.6, see Section E.160.

E.157.2. Changes

  • Fix crash when referencing NEW row values in rule WHERE expressions (Tom)

  • Fix core dump when an untyped literal is taken as ANYARRAY

  • Fix mishandling of AFTER triggers when query contains a SQL function returning multiple rows (Tom)

  • Fix ALTER TABLE ... TYPE to recheck NOT NULL for USING clause (Tom)

  • Fix string_to_array() to handle overlapping matches for the separator string

    For example, string_to_array('123xx456xxx789', 'xx').

  • Fix corner cases in pattern matching for psql's \d commands

  • Fix index-corrupting bugs in /contrib/ltree (Teodor)

  • Numerous robustness fixes in ecpg (Joachim Wieland)

  • Fix backslash escaping in /contrib/dbmirror

  • Fix instability of statistics collection on Win32 (Tom, Andrew)

  • Fixes for AIX and Intel compilers (Tom)

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Release 8.0.8

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E.158. Release 8.0.8

Release Date: 2006-05-23

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.0.7, including patches for extremely serious security issues. For information about new features in the 8.0 major release, see Section E.166.

E.158.1. Migration to Version 8.0.8

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.0.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.0.6, see Section E.160.

Full security against the SQL-injection attacks described in CVE-2006-2313 and CVE-2006-2314 might require changes in application code. If you have applications that embed untrustworthy strings into SQL commands, you should examine them as soon as possible to ensure that they are using recommended escaping techniques. In most cases, applications should be using subroutines provided by libraries or drivers (such as libpq's PQescapeStringConn()) to perform string escaping, rather than relying on ad hoc code to do it.

E.158.2. Changes

  • Change the server to reject invalidly-encoded multibyte characters in all cases (Tatsuo, Tom)

    While PostgreSQL has been moving in this direction for some time, the checks are now applied uniformly to all encodings and all textual input, and are now always errors not merely warnings. This change defends against SQL-injection attacks of the type described in CVE-2006-2313.

  • Reject unsafe uses of \' in string literals

    As a server-side defense against SQL-injection attacks of the type described in CVE-2006-2314, the server now only accepts '' and not \' as a representation of ASCII single quote in SQL string literals. By default, \' is rejected only when client_encoding is set to a client-only encoding (SJIS, BIG5, GBK, GB18030, or UHC), which is the scenario in which SQL injection is possible. A new configuration parameter backslash_quote is available to adjust this behavior when needed. Note that full security against CVE-2006-2314 might require client-side changes; the purpose of backslash_quote is in part to make it obvious that insecure clients are insecure.

  • Modify libpq's string-escaping routines to be aware of encoding considerations and standard_conforming_strings

    This fixes libpq-using applications for the security issues described in CVE-2006-2313 and CVE-2006-2314, and also future-proofs them against the planned changeover to SQL-standard string literal syntax. Applications that use multiple PostgreSQL connections concurrently should migrate to PQescapeStringConn() and PQescapeByteaConn() to ensure that escaping is done correctly for the settings in use in each database connection. Applications that do string escaping "by hand" should be modified to rely on library routines instead.

  • Fix some incorrect encoding conversion functions

    win1251_to_iso, alt_to_iso, euc_tw_to_big5, euc_tw_to_mic, mic_to_euc_tw were all broken to varying extents.

  • Clean up stray remaining uses of \' in strings (Bruce, Jan)

  • Fix bug that sometimes caused OR'd index scans to miss rows they should have returned

  • Fix WAL replay for case where a btree index has been truncated

  • Fix SIMILAR TO for patterns involving | (Tom)

  • Fix SELECT INTO and CREATE TABLE AS to create tables in the default tablespace, not the base directory (Kris Jurka)

  • Fix server to use custom DH SSL parameters correctly (Michael Fuhr)

  • Fix for Bonjour on Intel Macs (Ashley Clark)

  • Fix various minor memory leaks

  • Fix problem with password prompting on some Win32 systems (Robert Kinberg)

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Release 8.0.7

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E.159. Release 8.0.7

Release Date: 2006-02-14

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.0.6. For information about new features in the 8.0 major release, see Section E.166.

E.159.1. Migration to Version 8.0.7

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.0.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.0.6, see Section E.160.

E.159.2. Changes

  • Fix potential crash in SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION (CVE-2006-0553)

    An unprivileged user could crash the server process, resulting in momentary denial of service to other users, if the server has been compiled with Asserts enabled (which is not the default). Thanks to Akio Ishida for reporting this problem.

  • Fix bug with row visibility logic in self-inserted rows (Tom)

    Under rare circumstances a row inserted by the current command could be seen as already valid, when it should not be. Repairs bug created in 8.0.4, 7.4.9, and 7.3.11 releases.

  • Fix race condition that could lead to "file already exists" errors during pg_clog and pg_subtrans file creation (Tom)

  • Fix cases that could lead to crashes if a cache-invalidation message arrives at just the wrong time (Tom)

  • Properly check DOMAIN constraints for UNKNOWN parameters in prepared statements (Neil)

  • Ensure ALTER COLUMN TYPE will process FOREIGN KEY, UNIQUE, and PRIMARY KEY constraints in the proper order (Nakano Yoshihisa)

  • Fixes to allow restoring dumps that have cross-schema references to custom operators or operator classes (Tom)

  • Allow pg_restore to continue properly after a COPY failure; formerly it tried to treat the remaining COPY data as SQL commands (Stephen Frost)

  • Fix pg_ctl unregister crash when the data directory is not specified (Magnus)

  • Fix ecpg crash on AMD64 and PPC (Neil)

  • Recover properly if error occurs during argument passing in PL/python (Neil)

  • Fix PL/perl's handling of locales on Win32 to match the backend (Andrew)

  • Fix crash when log_min_messages is set to DEBUG3 or above in postgresql.conf on Win32 (Bruce)

  • Fix pgxs -L library path specification for Win32, Cygwin, OS X, AIX (Bruce)

  • Check that SID is enabled while checking for Win32 admin privileges (Magnus)

  • Properly reject out-of-range date inputs (Kris Jurka)

  • Portability fix for testing presence of finite and isinf during configure (Tom)

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Release 8.0.6

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E.160. Release 8.0.6

Release Date: 2006-01-09

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.0.5. For information about new features in the 8.0 major release, see Section E.166.

E.160.1. Migration to Version 8.0.6

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.0.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.0.3, see Section E.163. Also, you might need to REINDEX indexes on textual columns after updating, if you are affected by the locale or plperl issues described below.

E.160.2. Changes

  • Fix Windows code so that postmaster will continue rather than exit if there is no more room in ShmemBackendArray (Magnus)

    The previous behavior could lead to a denial-of-service situation if too many connection requests arrive close together. This applies only to the Windows port.

  • Fix bug introduced in 8.0 that could allow ReadBuffer to return an already-used page as new, potentially causing loss of recently-committed data (Tom)

  • Fix for protocol-level Describe messages issued outside a transaction or in a failed transaction (Tom)

  • Fix character string comparison for locales that consider different character combinations as equal, such as Hungarian (Tom)

    This might require REINDEX to fix existing indexes on textual columns.

  • Set locale environment variables during postmaster startup to ensure that plperl won't change the locale later

    This fixes a problem that occurred if the postmaster was started with environment variables specifying a different locale than what initdb had been told. Under these conditions, any use of plperl was likely to lead to corrupt indexes. You might need REINDEX to fix existing indexes on textual columns if this has happened to you.

  • Allow more flexible relocation of installation directories (Tom)

    Previous releases supported relocation only if all installation directory paths were the same except for the last component.

  • Fix longstanding bug in strpos() and regular expression handling in certain rarely used Asian multi-byte character sets (Tatsuo)

  • Various fixes for functions returning RECORDs (Tom)

  • Fix bug in /contrib/pgcrypto gen_salt, which caused it not to use all available salt space for MD5 and XDES algorithms (Marko Kreen, Solar Designer)

    Salts for Blowfish and standard DES are unaffected.

  • Fix /contrib/dblink to throw an error, rather than crashing, when the number of columns specified is different from what's actually returned by the query (Joe)

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Release 8.0.5

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E.161. Release 8.0.5

Release Date: 2005-12-12

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.0.4. For information about new features in the 8.0 major release, see Section E.166.

E.161.1. Migration to Version 8.0.5

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.0.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.0.3, see Section E.163.

E.161.2. Changes

  • Fix race condition in transaction log management

    There was a narrow window in which an I/O operation could be initiated for the wrong page, leading to an Assert failure or data corruption.

  • Fix bgwriter problems after recovering from errors (Tom)

    The background writer was found to leak buffer pins after write errors. While not fatal in itself, this might lead to mysterious blockages of later VACUUM commands.

  • Prevent failure if client sends Bind protocol message when current transaction is already aborted

  • /contrib/ltree fixes (Teodor)

  • AIX and HPUX compile fixes (Tom)

  • Retry file reads and writes after Windows NO_SYSTEM_RESOURCES error (Qingqing Zhou)

  • Fix intermittent failure when log_line_prefix includes %i

  • Fix psql performance issue with long scripts on Windows (Merlin Moncure)

  • Fix missing updates of pg_group flat file

  • Fix longstanding planning error for outer joins

    This bug sometimes caused a bogus error "RIGHT JOIN is only supported with merge-joinable join conditions".

  • Postpone timezone initialization until after postmaster.pid is created

    This avoids confusing startup scripts that expect the pid file to appear quickly.

  • Prevent core dump in pg_autovacuum when a table has been dropped

  • Fix problems with whole-row references (foo.*) to subquery results

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Release 8.0.4

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E.162. Release 8.0.4

Release Date: 2005-10-04

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.0.3. For information about new features in the 8.0 major release, see Section E.166.

E.162.1. Migration to Version 8.0.4

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.0.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.0.3, see Section E.163.

E.162.2. Changes

  • Fix error that allowed VACUUM to remove ctid chains too soon, and add more checking in code that follows ctid links

    This fixes a long-standing problem that could cause crashes in very rare circumstances.

  • Fix CHAR() to properly pad spaces to the specified length when using a multiple-byte character set (Yoshiyuki Asaba)

    In prior releases, the padding of CHAR() was incorrect because it only padded to the specified number of bytes without considering how many characters were stored.

  • Force a checkpoint before committing CREATE DATABASE

    This should fix recent reports of "index is not a btree" failures when a crash occurs shortly after CREATE DATABASE.

  • Fix the sense of the test for read-only transaction in COPY

    The code formerly prohibited COPY TO, where it should prohibit COPY FROM.

  • Handle consecutive embedded newlines in COPY CSV-mode input

  • Fix date_trunc(week) for dates near year end

  • Fix planning problem with outer-join ON clauses that reference only the inner-side relation

  • Further fixes for x FULL JOIN y ON true corner cases

  • Fix overenthusiastic optimization of x IN (SELECT DISTINCT ...) and related cases

  • Fix mis-planning of queries with small LIMIT values due to poorly thought out "fuzzy" cost comparison

  • Make array_in and array_recv more paranoid about validating their OID parameter

  • Fix missing rows in queries like UPDATE a=... WHERE a... with GiST index on column a

  • Improve robustness of datetime parsing

  • Improve checking for partially-written WAL pages

  • Improve robustness of signal handling when SSL is enabled

  • Improve MIPS and M68K spinlock code

  • Don't try to open more than max_files_per_process files during postmaster startup

  • Various memory leakage fixes

  • Various portability improvements

  • Update timezone data files

  • Improve handling of DLL load failures on Windows

  • Improve random-number generation on Windows

  • Make psql -f filename return a nonzero exit code when opening the file fails

  • Change pg_dump to handle inherited check constraints more reliably

  • Fix password prompting in pg_restore on Windows

  • Fix PL/pgSQL to handle var := var correctly when the variable is of pass-by-reference type

  • Fix PL/Perl %_SHARED so it's actually shared

  • Fix contrib/pg_autovacuum to allow sleep intervals over 2000 sec

  • Update contrib/tsearch2 to use current Snowball code

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Release 8.0.3

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E.163. Release 8.0.3

Release Date: 2005-05-09

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.0.2, including several security-related issues. For information about new features in the 8.0 major release, see Section E.166.

E.163.1. Migration to Version 8.0.3

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.0.X. However, it is one possible way of handling two significant security problems that have been found in the initial contents of 8.0.X system catalogs. A dump/initdb/reload sequence using 8.0.3's initdb will automatically correct these problems.

The larger security problem is that the built-in character set encoding conversion functions can be invoked from SQL commands by unprivileged users, but the functions were not designed for such use and are not secure against malicious choices of arguments. The fix involves changing the declared parameter list of these functions so that they can no longer be invoked from SQL commands. (This does not affect their normal use by the encoding conversion machinery.)

The lesser problem is that the contrib/tsearch2 module creates several functions that are improperly declared to return internal when they do not accept internal arguments. This breaks type safety for all functions using internal arguments.

It is strongly recommended that all installations repair these errors, either by initdb or by following the manual repair procedure given below. The errors at least allow unprivileged database users to crash their server process, and might allow unprivileged users to gain the privileges of a database superuser.

If you wish not to do an initdb, perform the same manual repair procedures shown in the 7.4.8 release notes.

E.163.2. Changes

  • Change encoding function signature to prevent misuse

  • Change contrib/tsearch2 to avoid unsafe use of INTERNAL function results

  • Guard against incorrect second parameter to record_out

  • Repair ancient race condition that allowed a transaction to be seen as committed for some purposes (eg SELECT FOR UPDATE) slightly sooner than for other purposes

    This is an extremely serious bug since it could lead to apparent data inconsistencies being briefly visible to applications.

  • Repair race condition between relation extension and VACUUM

    This could theoretically have caused loss of a page's worth of freshly-inserted data, although the scenario seems of very low probability. There are no known cases of it having caused more than an Assert failure.

  • Fix comparisons of TIME WITH TIME ZONE values

    The comparison code was wrong in the case where the --enable-integer-datetimes configuration switch had been used. NOTE: if you have an index on a TIME WITH TIME ZONE column, it will need to be REINDEXed after installing this update, because the fix corrects the sort order of column values.

  • Fix EXTRACT(EPOCH) for TIME WITH TIME ZONE values

  • Fix mis-display of negative fractional seconds in INTERVAL values

    This error only occurred when the --enable-integer-datetimes configuration switch had been used.

  • Fix pg_dump to dump trigger names containing % correctly (Neil)

  • Still more 64-bit fixes for contrib/intagg

  • Prevent incorrect optimization of functions returning RECORD

  • Prevent crash on COALESCE(NULL,NULL)

  • Fix Borland makefile for libpq

  • Fix contrib/btree_gist for timetz type (Teodor)

  • Make pg_ctl check the PID found in postmaster.pid to see if it is still a live process

  • Fix pg_dump/pg_restore problems caused by addition of dump timestamps

  • Fix interaction between materializing holdable cursors and firing deferred triggers during transaction commit

  • Fix memory leak in SQL functions returning pass-by-reference data types

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Release 8.0.2

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E.164. Release 8.0.2

Release Date: 2005-04-07

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.0.1. For information about new features in the 8.0 major release, see Section E.166.

E.164.1. Migration to Version 8.0.2

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.0.*. This release updates the major version number of the PostgreSQL libraries, so it might be necessary to re-link some user applications if they cannot find the properly-numbered shared library.

E.164.2. Changes

  • Increment the major version number of all interface libraries (Bruce)

    This should have been done in 8.0.0. It is required so 7.4.X versions of PostgreSQL client applications, like psql, can be used on the same machine as 8.0.X applications. This might require re-linking user applications that use these libraries.

  • Add Windows-only wal_sync_method setting of fsync_writethrough (Magnus, Bruce)

    This setting causes PostgreSQL to write through any disk-drive write cache when writing to WAL. This behavior was formerly called fsync, but was renamed because it acts quite differently from fsync on other platforms.

  • Enable the wal_sync_method setting of open_datasync on Windows, and make it the default for that platform (Magnus, Bruce)

    Because the default is no longer fsync_writethrough, data loss is possible during a power failure if the disk drive has write caching enabled. To turn off the write cache on Windows, from the Device Manager, choose the drive properties, then Policies.

  • New cache management algorithm 2Q replaces ARC (Tom)

    This was done to avoid a pending US patent on ARC. The 2Q code might be a few percentage points slower than ARC for some work loads. A better cache management algorithm will appear in 8.1.

  • Planner adjustments to improve behavior on freshly-created tables (Tom)

  • Allow plpgsql to assign to an element of an array that is initially NULL (Tom)

    Formerly the array would remain NULL, but now it becomes a single-element array. The main SQL engine was changed to handle UPDATE of a null array value this way in 8.0, but the similar case in plpgsql was overlooked.

  • Convert \r\n and \r to \n in plpython function bodies (Michael Fuhr)

    This prevents syntax errors when plpython code is written on a Windows or Mac client.

  • Allow SPI cursors to handle utility commands that return rows, such as EXPLAIN (Tom)

  • Fix CLUSTER failure after ALTER TABLE SET WITHOUT OIDS (Tom)

  • Reduce memory usage of ALTER TABLE ADD COLUMN (Neil)

  • Fix ALTER LANGUAGE RENAME (Tom)

  • Document the Windows-only register and unregister options of pg_ctl (Magnus)

  • Ensure operations done during backend shutdown are counted by statistics collector

    This is expected to resolve reports of pg_autovacuum not vacuuming the system catalogs often enough — it was not being told about catalog deletions caused by temporary table removal during backend exit.

  • Change the Windows default for configuration parameter log_destination to eventlog (Magnus)

    By default, a server running on Windows will now send log output to the Windows event logger rather than standard error.

  • Make Kerberos authentication work on Windows (Magnus)

  • Allow ALTER DATABASE RENAME by superusers who aren't flagged as having CREATEDB privilege (Tom)

  • Modify WAL log entries for CREATE and DROP DATABASE to not specify absolute paths (Tom)

    This allows point-in-time recovery on a different machine with possibly different database location. Note that CREATE TABLESPACE still poses a hazard in such situations.

  • Fix crash from a backend exiting with an open transaction that created a table and opened a cursor on it (Tom)

  • Fix array_map() so it can call PL functions (Tom)

  • Several contrib/tsearch2 and contrib/btree_gist fixes (Teodor)

  • Fix crash of some contrib/pgcrypto functions on some platforms (Marko Kreen)

  • Fix contrib/intagg for 64-bit platforms (Tom)

  • Fix ecpg bugs in parsing of CREATE statement (Michael)

  • Work around gcc bug on powerpc and amd64 causing problems in ecpg (Christof Petig)

  • Do not use locale-aware versions of upper(), lower(), and initcap() when the locale is C (Bruce)

    This allows these functions to work on platforms that generate errors for non-7-bit data when the locale is C.

  • Fix quote_ident() to quote names that match keywords (Tom)

  • Fix to_date() to behave reasonably when CC and YY fields are both used (Karel)

  • Prevent to_char(interval) from failing when given a zero-month interval (Tom)

  • Fix wrong week returned by date_trunc('week') (Bruce)

    date_trunc('week') returned the wrong year for the first few days of January in some years.

  • Use the correct default mask length for class D addresses in INET data types (Tom)

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Release 8.0.1

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E.165. Release 8.0.1

Release Date: 2005-01-31

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.0.0, including several security-related issues. For information about new features in the 8.0 major release, see Section E.166.

E.165.1. Migration to Version 8.0.1

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.0.0.

E.165.2. Changes

  • Disallow LOAD to non-superusers

    On platforms that will automatically execute initialization functions of a shared library (this includes at least Windows and ELF-based Unixen), LOAD can be used to make the server execute arbitrary code. Thanks to NGS Software for reporting this.

  • Check that creator of an aggregate function has the right to execute the specified transition functions

    This oversight made it possible to bypass denial of EXECUTE permission on a function.

  • Fix security and 64-bit issues in contrib/intagg

  • Add needed STRICT marking to some contrib functions (Kris Jurka)

  • Avoid buffer overrun when plpgsql cursor declaration has too many parameters (Neil)

  • Make ALTER TABLE ADD COLUMN enforce domain constraints in all cases

  • Fix planning error for FULL and RIGHT outer joins

    The result of the join was mistakenly supposed to be sorted the same as the left input. This could not only deliver mis-sorted output to the user, but in case of nested merge joins could give outright wrong answers.

  • Improve planning of grouped aggregate queries

  • ROLLBACK TO savepoint closes cursors created since the savepoint

  • Fix inadequate backend stack size on Windows

  • Avoid SHGetSpecialFolderPath() on Windows (Magnus)

  • Fix some problems in running pg_autovacuum as a Windows service (Dave Page)

  • Multiple minor bug fixes in pg_dump/pg_restore

  • Fix ecpg segfault with named structs used in typedefs (Michael)

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Release 8.0

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E.166. Release 8.0

Release Date: 2005-01-19

E.166.1. Overview

Major changes in this release:

Microsoft Windows Native Server

This is the first PostgreSQL release to run natively on Microsoft Windows® as a server. It can run as a Windows service. This release supports NT-based Windows releases like Windows 2000 SP4, Windows XP, and Windows 2003. Older releases like Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows ME are not supported because these operating systems do not have the infrastructure to support PostgreSQL. A separate installer project has been created to ease installation on Windows — see http://www.postgresql.org/ftp/win32/.

Although tested throughout our release cycle, the Windows port does not have the benefit of years of use in production environments that PostgreSQL has on Unix platforms. Therefore it should be treated with the same level of caution as you would a new product.

Previous releases required the Unix emulation toolkit Cygwin in order to run the server on Windows operating systems. PostgreSQL has supported native clients on Windows for many years.

Savepoints

Savepoints allow specific parts of a transaction to be aborted without affecting the remainder of the transaction. Prior releases had no such capability; there was no way to recover from a statement failure within a transaction except by aborting the whole transaction. This feature is valuable for application writers who require error recovery within a complex transaction.

Point-In-Time Recovery

In previous releases there was no way to recover from disk drive failure except to restore from a previous backup or use a standby replication server. Point-in-time recovery allows continuous backup of the server. You can recover either to the point of failure or to some transaction in the past.

Tablespaces

Tablespaces allow administrators to select different file systems for storage of individual tables, indexes, and databases. This improves performance and control over disk space usage. Prior releases used initlocation and manual symlink management for such tasks.

Improved Buffer Management, CHECKPOINT, VACUUM

This release has a more intelligent buffer replacement strategy, which will make better use of available shared buffers and improve performance. The performance impact of vacuum and checkpoints is also lessened.

Change Column Types

A column's data type can now be changed with ALTER TABLE.

New Perl Server-Side Language

A new version of the plperl server-side language now supports a persistent shared storage area, triggers, returning records and arrays of records, and SPI calls to access the database.

Comma-separated-value (CSV) support in COPY

COPY can now read and write comma-separated-value files. It has the flexibility to interpret nonstandard quoting and separation characters too.

E.166.2. Migration to Version 8.0

A dump/restore using pg_dump is required for those wishing to migrate data from any previous release.

Observe the following incompatibilities:

  • In READ COMMITTED serialization mode, volatile functions now see the results of concurrent transactions committed up to the beginning of each statement within the function, rather than up to the beginning of the interactive command that called the function.

  • Functions declared STABLE or IMMUTABLE always use the snapshot of the calling query, and therefore do not see the effects of actions taken after the calling query starts, whether in their own transaction or other transactions. Such a function must be read-only, too, meaning that it cannot use any SQL commands other than SELECT.

  • Nondeferred AFTER triggers are now fired immediately after completion of the triggering query, rather than upon finishing the current interactive command. This makes a difference when the triggering query occurred within a function: the trigger is invoked before the function proceeds to its next operation.

  • Server configuration parameters virtual_host and tcpip_socket have been replaced with a more general parameter listen_addresses. Also, the server now listens on localhost by default, which eliminates the need for the -i postmaster switch in many scenarios.

  • Server configuration parameters SortMem and VacuumMem have been renamed to work_mem and maintenance_work_mem to better reflect their use. The original names are still supported in SET and SHOW.

  • Server configuration parameters log_pid, log_timestamp, and log_source_port have been replaced with a more general parameter log_line_prefix.

  • Server configuration parameter syslog has been replaced with a more logical log_destination variable to control the log output destination.

  • Server configuration parameter log_statement has been changed so it can selectively log just database modification or data definition statements. Server configuration parameter log_duration now prints only when log_statement prints the query.

  • Server configuration parameter max_expr_depth parameter has been replaced with max_stack_depth which measures the physical stack size rather than the expression nesting depth. This helps prevent session termination due to stack overflow caused by recursive functions.

  • The length() function no longer counts trailing spaces in CHAR(n) values.

  • Casting an integer to BIT(N) selects the rightmost N bits of the integer, not the leftmost N bits as before.

  • Updating an element or slice of a NULL array value now produces a nonnull array result, namely an array containing just the assigned-to positions.

  • Syntax checking of array input values has been tightened up considerably. Junk that was previously allowed in odd places with odd results now causes an error. Empty-string element values must now be written as "", rather than writing nothing. Also changed behavior with respect to whitespace surrounding array elements: trailing whitespace is now ignored, for symmetry with leading whitespace (which has always been ignored).

  • Overflow in integer arithmetic operations is now detected and reported as an error.

  • The arithmetic operators associated with the single-byte "char" data type have been removed.

  • The extract() function (also called date_part) now returns the proper year for BC dates. It previously returned one less than the correct year. The function now also returns the proper values for millennium and century.

  • CIDR values now must have their nonmasked bits be zero. For example, we no longer allow 204.248.199.1/31 as a CIDR value. Such values should never have been accepted by PostgreSQL and will now be rejected.

  • EXECUTE now returns a completion tag that matches the executed statement.

  • psql's \copy command now reads or writes to the query's stdin/stdout, rather than psql's stdin/stdout. The previous behavior can be accessed via new pstdin/pstdout parameters.

  • The JDBC client interface has been removed from the core distribution, and is now hosted at http://jdbc.postgresql.org.

  • The Tcl client interface has also been removed. There are several Tcl interfaces now hosted at http://gborg.postgresql.org.

  • The server now uses its own time zone database, rather than the one supplied by the operating system. This will provide consistent behavior across all platforms. In most cases, there should be little noticeable difference in time zone behavior, except that the time zone names used by SET/SHOW TimeZone might be different from what your platform provides.

  • Configure's threading option no longer requires users to run tests or edit configuration files; threading options are now detected automatically.

  • Now that tablespaces have been implemented, initlocation has been removed.

  • The API for user-defined GiST indexes has been changed. The Union and PickSplit methods are now passed a pointer to a special GistEntryVector structure, rather than a bytea.

E.166.3. Deprecated Features

Some aspects of PostgreSQL's behavior have been determined to be suboptimal. For the sake of backward compatibility these have not been removed in 8.0, but they are considered deprecated and will be removed in the next major release.

  • The 8.1 release will remove the to_char() function for intervals.

  • The server now warns of empty strings passed to oid/float4/float8 data types, but continues to interpret them as zeroes as before. In the next major release, empty strings will be considered invalid input for these data types.

  • By default, tables in PostgreSQL 8.0 and earlier are created with OIDs. In the next release, this will not be the case: to create a table that contains OIDs, the WITH OIDS clause must be specified or the default_with_oids configuration parameter must be set. Users are encouraged to explicitly specify WITH OIDS if their tables require OIDs for compatibility with future releases of PostgreSQL.

E.166.4. Changes

Below you will find a detailed account of the changes between release 8.0 and the previous major release.

E.166.4.1. Performance Improvements

  • Support cross-data-type index usage (Tom)

    Before this change, many queries would not use an index if the data types did not match exactly. This improvement makes index usage more intuitive and consistent.

  • New buffer replacement strategy that improves caching (Jan)

    Prior releases used a least-recently-used (LRU) cache to keep recently referenced pages in memory. The LRU algorithm did not consider the number of times a specific cache entry was accessed, so large table scans could force out useful cache pages. The new cache algorithm uses four separate lists to track most recently used and most frequently used cache pages and dynamically optimize their replacement based on the work load. This should lead to much more efficient use of the shared buffer cache. Administrators who have tested shared buffer sizes in the past should retest with this new cache replacement policy.

  • Add subprocess to write dirty buffers periodically to reduce checkpoint writes (Jan)

    In previous releases, the checkpoint process, which runs every few minutes, would write all dirty buffers to the operating system's buffer cache then flush all dirty operating system buffers to disk. This resulted in a periodic spike in disk usage that often hurt performance. The new code uses a background writer to trickle disk writes at a steady pace so checkpoints have far fewer dirty pages to write to disk. Also, the new code does not issue a global sync() call, but instead fsync()s just the files written since the last checkpoint. This should improve performance and minimize degradation during checkpoints.

  • Add ability to prolong vacuum to reduce performance impact (Jan)

    On busy systems, VACUUM performs many I/O requests which can hurt performance for other users. This release allows you to slow down VACUUM to reduce its impact on other users, though this increases the total duration of VACUUM.

  • Improve B-tree index performance for duplicate keys (Dmitry Tkach, Tom)

    This improves the way indexes are scanned when many duplicate values exist in the index.

  • Use dynamically-generated table size estimates while planning (Tom)

    Formerly the planner estimated table sizes using the values seen by the last VACUUM or ANALYZE, both as to physical table size (number of pages) and number of rows. Now, the current physical table size is obtained from the kernel, and the number of rows is estimated by multiplying the table size by the row density (rows per page) seen by the last VACUUM or ANALYZE. This should produce more reliable estimates in cases where the table size has changed significantly since the last housekeeping command.

  • Improved index usage with OR clauses (Tom)

    This allows the optimizer to use indexes in statements with many OR clauses that would not have been indexed in the past. It can also use multi-column indexes where the first column is specified and the second column is part of an OR clause.

  • Improve matching of partial index clauses (Tom)

    The server is now smarter about using partial indexes in queries involving complex WHERE clauses.

  • Improve performance of the GEQO optimizer (Tom)

    The GEQO optimizer is used to plan queries involving many tables (by default, twelve or more). This release speeds up the way queries are analyzed to decrease time spent in optimization.

  • Miscellaneous optimizer improvements

    There is not room here to list all the minor improvements made, but numerous special cases work better than in prior releases.

  • Improve lookup speed for C functions (Tom)

    This release uses a hash table to lookup information for dynamically loaded C functions. This improves their speed so they perform nearly as quickly as functions that are built into the server executable.

  • Add type-specific ANALYZE statistics capability (Mark Cave-Ayland)

    This feature allows more flexibility in generating statistics for nonstandard data types.

  • ANALYZE now collects statistics for expression indexes (Tom)

    Expression indexes (also called functional indexes) allow users to index not just columns but the results of expressions and function calls. With this release, the optimizer can gather and use statistics about the contents of expression indexes. This will greatly improve the quality of planning for queries in which an expression index is relevant.

  • New two-stage sampling method for ANALYZE (Manfred Koizar)

    This gives better statistics when the density of valid rows is very different in different regions of a table.

  • Speed up TRUNCATE (Tom)

    This buys back some of the performance loss observed in 7.4, while still keeping TRUNCATE transaction-safe.

E.166.4.2. Server Changes

  • Add WAL file archiving and point-in-time recovery (Simon Riggs)

  • Add tablespaces so admins can control disk layout (Gavin)

  • Add a built-in log rotation program (Andreas Pflug)

    It is now possible to log server messages conveniently without relying on either syslog or an external log rotation program.

  • Add new read-only server configuration parameters to show server compile-time settings: block_size, integer_datetimes, max_function_args, max_identifier_length, max_index_keys (Joe)

  • Make quoting of sameuser, samegroup, and all remove special meaning of these terms in pg_hba.conf (Andrew)

  • Use clearer IPv6 name ::1/128 for localhost in default pg_hba.conf (Andrew)

  • Use CIDR format in pg_hba.conf examples (Andrew)

  • Rename server configuration parameters SortMem and VacuumMem to work_mem and maintenance_work_mem (Old names still supported) (Tom)

    This change was made to clarify that bulk operations such as index and foreign key creation use maintenance_work_mem, while work_mem is for workspaces used during query execution.

  • Allow logging of session disconnections using server configuration log_disconnections (Andrew)

  • Add new server configuration parameter log_line_prefix to allow control of information emitted in each log line (Andrew)

    Available information includes user name, database name, remote IP address, and session start time.

  • Remove server configuration parameters log_pid, log_timestamp, log_source_port; functionality superseded by log_line_prefix (Andrew)

  • Replace the virtual_host and tcpip_socket parameters with a unified listen_addresses parameter (Andrew, Tom)

    virtual_host could only specify a single IP address to listen on. listen_addresses allows multiple addresses to be specified.

  • Listen on localhost by default, which eliminates the need for the -i postmaster switch in many scenarios (Andrew)

    Listening on localhost (127.0.0.1) opens no new security holes but allows configurations like Windows and JDBC, which do not support local sockets, to work without special adjustments.

  • Remove syslog server configuration parameter, and add more logical log_destination variable to control log output location (Magnus)

  • Change server configuration parameter log_statement to take values all, mod, ddl, or none to select which queries are logged (Bruce)

    This allows administrators to log only data definition changes or only data modification statements.

  • Some logging-related configuration parameters could formerly be adjusted by ordinary users, but only in the "more verbose" direction. They are now treated more strictly: only superusers can set them. However, a superuser can use ALTER USER to provide per-user settings of these values for non-superusers. Also, it is now possible for superusers to set values of superuser-only configuration parameters via PGOPTIONS.

  • Allow configuration files to be placed outside the data directory (mlw)

    By default, configuration files are kept in the cluster's top directory. With this addition, configuration files can be placed outside the data directory, easing administration.

  • Plan prepared queries only when first executed so constants can be used for statistics (Oliver Jowett)

    Prepared statements plan queries once and execute them many times. While prepared queries avoid the overhead of re-planning on each use, the quality of the plan suffers from not knowing the exact parameters to be used in the query. In this release, planning of unnamed prepared statements is delayed until the first execution, and the actual parameter values of that execution are used as optimization hints. This allows use of out-of-line parameter passing without incurring a performance penalty.

  • Allow DECLARE CURSOR to take parameters (Oliver Jowett)

    It is now useful to issue DECLARE CURSOR in a Parse message with parameters. The parameter values sent at Bind time will be substituted into the execution of the cursor's query.

  • Fix hash joins and aggregates of inet and cidr data types (Tom)

    Release 7.4 handled hashing of mixed inet and cidr values incorrectly. (This bug did not exist in prior releases because they wouldn't try to hash either data type.)

  • Make log_duration print only when log_statement prints the query (Ed L.)

E.166.4.3. Query Changes

  • Add savepoints (nested transactions) (Alvaro)

  • Unsupported isolation levels are now accepted and promoted to the nearest supported level (Peter)

    The SQL specification states that if a database doesn't support a specific isolation level, it should use the next more restrictive level. This change complies with that recommendation.

  • Allow BEGIN WORK to specify transaction isolation levels like START TRANSACTION does (Bruce)

  • Fix table permission checking for cases in which rules generate a query type different from the originally submitted query (Tom)

  • Implement dollar quoting to simplify single-quote usage (Andrew, Tom, David Fetter)

    In previous releases, because single quotes had to be used to quote a function's body, the use of single quotes inside the function text required use of two single quotes or other error-prone notations. With this release we add the ability to use "dollar quoting" to quote a block of text. The ability to use different quoting delimiters at different nesting levels greatly simplifies the task of quoting correctly, especially in complex functions. Dollar quoting can be used anywhere quoted text is needed.

  • Make CASE val WHEN compval1 THEN ... evaluate val only once (Tom)

    CASE no longer evaluates the tested expression multiple times. This has benefits when the expression is complex or is volatile.

  • Test HAVING before computing target list of an aggregate query (Tom)

    Fixes improper failure of cases such as SELECT SUM(win)/SUM(lose) ... GROUP BY ... HAVING SUM(lose) > 0. This should work but formerly could fail with divide-by-zero.

  • Replace max_expr_depth parameter with max_stack_depth parameter, measured in kilobytes of stack size (Tom)

    This gives us a fairly bulletproof defense against crashing due to runaway recursive functions. Instead of measuring the depth of expression nesting, we now directly measure the size of the execution stack.

  • Allow arbitrary row expressions (Tom)

    This release allows SQL expressions to contain arbitrary composite types, that is, row values. It also allows functions to more easily take rows as arguments and return row values.

  • Allow LIKE/ILIKE to be used as the operator in row and subselect comparisons (Fabien Coelho)

  • Avoid locale-specific case conversion of basic ASCII letters in identifiers and keywords (Tom)

    This solves the "Turkish problem" with mangling of words containing I and i. Folding of characters outside the 7-bit-ASCII set is still locale-aware.

  • Improve syntax error reporting (Fabien, Tom)

    Syntax error reports are more useful than before.

  • Change EXECUTE to return a completion tag matching the executed statement (Kris Jurka)

    Previous releases return an EXECUTE tag for any EXECUTE call. In this release, the tag returned will reflect the command executed.

  • Avoid emitting NATURAL CROSS JOIN in rule listings (Tom)

    Such a clause makes no logical sense, but in some cases the rule decompiler formerly produced this syntax.

E.166.4.4. Object Manipulation Changes

  • Add COMMENT ON for casts, conversions, languages, operator classes, and large objects (Christopher)

  • Add new server configuration parameter default_with_oids to control whether tables are created with OIDs by default (Neil)

    This allows administrators to control whether CREATE TABLE commands create tables with or without OID columns by default. (Note: the current factory default setting for default_with_oids is TRUE, but the default will become FALSE in future releases.)

  • Add WITH / WITHOUT OIDS clause to CREATE TABLE AS (Neil)

  • Allow ALTER TABLE DROP COLUMN to drop an OID column (ALTER TABLE SET WITHOUT OIDS still works) (Tom)

  • Allow composite types as table columns (Tom)

  • Allow ALTER ... ADD COLUMN with defaults and NOT NULL constraints; works per SQL spec (Rod)

    It is now possible for ADD COLUMN to create a column that is not initially filled with NULLs, but with a specified default value.

  • Add ALTER COLUMN TYPE to change column's type (Rod)

    It is now possible to alter a column's data type without dropping and re-adding the column.

  • Allow multiple ALTER actions in a single ALTER TABLE command (Rod)

    This is particularly useful for ALTER commands that rewrite the table (which include ALTER COLUMN TYPE and ADD COLUMN with a default). By grouping ALTER commands together, the table need be rewritten only once.

  • Allow ALTER TABLE to add SERIAL columns (Tom)

    This falls out from the new capability of specifying defaults for new columns.

  • Allow changing the owners of aggregates, conversions, databases, functions, operators, operator classes, schemas, types, and tablespaces (Christopher, Euler Taveira de Oliveira)

    Previously this required modifying the system tables directly.

  • Allow temporary object creation to be limited to SECURITY DEFINER functions (Sean Chittenden)

  • Add ALTER TABLE ... SET WITHOUT CLUSTER (Christopher)

    Prior to this release, there was no way to clear an auto-cluster specification except to modify the system tables.

  • Constraint/Index/SERIAL names are now table_column_type with numbers appended to guarantee uniqueness within the schema (Tom)

    The SQL specification states that such names should be unique within a schema.

  • Add pg_get_serial_sequence() to return a SERIAL column's sequence name (Christopher)

    This allows automated scripts to reliably find the SERIAL sequence name.

  • Warn when primary/foreign key data type mismatch requires costly lookup

  • New ALTER INDEX command to allow moving of indexes between tablespaces (Gavin)

  • Make ALTER TABLE OWNER change dependent sequence ownership too (Alvaro)

E.166.4.5. Utility Command Changes

  • Allow CREATE SCHEMA to create triggers, indexes, and sequences (Neil)

  • Add ALSO keyword to CREATE RULE (Fabien Coelho)

    This allows ALSO to be added to rule creation to contrast it with INSTEAD rules.

  • Add NOWAIT option to LOCK (Tatsuo)

    This allows the LOCK command to fail if it would have to wait for the requested lock.

  • Allow COPY to read and write comma-separated-value (CSV) files (Andrew, Bruce)

  • Generate error if the COPY delimiter and NULL string conflict (Bruce)

  • GRANT/REVOKE behavior follows the SQL spec more closely

  • Avoid locking conflict between CREATE INDEX and CHECKPOINT (Tom)

    In 7.3 and 7.4, a long-running B-tree index build could block concurrent CHECKPOINTs from completing, thereby causing WAL bloat because the WAL log could not be recycled.

  • Database-wide ANALYZE does not hold locks across tables (Tom)

    This reduces the potential for deadlocks against other backends that want exclusive locks on tables. To get the benefit of this change, do not execute database-wide ANALYZE inside a transaction block (BEGIN block); it must be able to commit and start a new transaction for each table.

  • REINDEX does not exclusively lock the index's parent table anymore

    The index itself is still exclusively locked, but readers of the table can continue if they are not using the particular index being rebuilt.

  • Erase MD5 user passwords when a user is renamed (Bruce)

    PostgreSQL uses the user name as salt when encrypting passwords via MD5. When a user's name is changed, the salt will no longer match the stored MD5 password, so the stored password becomes useless. In this release a notice is generated and the password is cleared. A new password must then be assigned if the user is to be able to log in with a password.

  • New pg_ctl kill option for Windows (Andrew)

    Windows does not have a kill command to send signals to backends so this capability was added to pg_ctl.

  • Information schema improvements

  • Add --pwfile option to initdb so the initial password can be set by GUI tools (Magnus)

  • Detect locale/encoding mismatch in initdb (Peter)

  • Add register command to pg_ctl to register Windows operating system service (Dave Page)

E.166.4.6. Data Type and Function Changes

  • More complete support for composite types (row types) (Tom)

    Composite values can be used in many places where only scalar values worked before.

  • Reject nonrectangular array values as erroneous (Joe)

    Formerly, array_in would silently build a surprising result.

  • Overflow in integer arithmetic operations is now detected (Tom)

  • The arithmetic operators associated with the single-byte "char" data type have been removed.

    Formerly, the parser would select these operators in many situations where an "unable to select an operator" error would be more appropriate, such as null * null. If you actually want to do arithmetic on a "char" column, you can cast it to integer explicitly.

  • Syntax checking of array input values considerably tightened up (Joe)

    Junk that was previously allowed in odd places with odd results now causes an ERROR, for example, non-whitespace after the closing right brace.

  • Empty-string array element values must now be written as "", rather than writing nothing (Joe)

    Formerly, both ways of writing an empty-string element value were allowed, but now a quoted empty string is required. The case where nothing at all appears will probably be considered to be a NULL element value in some future release.

  • Array element trailing whitespace is now ignored (Joe)

    Formerly leading whitespace was ignored, but trailing whitespace between an element value and the delimiter or right brace was significant. Now trailing whitespace is also ignored.

  • Emit array values with explicit array bounds when lower bound is not one (Joe)

  • Accept YYYY-monthname-DD as a date string (Tom)

  • Make netmask and hostmask functions return maximum-length mask length (Tom)

  • Change factorial function to return numeric (Gavin)

    Returning numeric allows the factorial function to work for a wider range of input values.

  • to_char/to_date() date conversion improvements (Kurt Roeckx, Fabien Coelho)

  • Make length() disregard trailing spaces in CHAR(n) (Gavin)

    This change was made to improve consistency: trailing spaces are semantically insignificant in CHAR(n) data, so they should not be counted by length().

  • Warn about empty string being passed to OID/float4/float8 data types (Neil)

    8.1 will throw an error instead.

  • Allow leading or trailing whitespace in int2/int4/int8/float4/float8 input routines (Neil)

  • Better support for IEEE Infinity and NaN values in float4/float8 (Neil)

    These should now work on all platforms that support IEEE-compliant floating point arithmetic.

  • Add week option to date_trunc() (Robert Creager)

  • Fix to_char for 1 BC (previously it returned 1 AD) (Bruce)

  • Fix date_part(year) for BC dates (previously it returned one less than the correct year) (Bruce)

  • Fix date_part() to return the proper millennium and century (Fabien Coelho)

    In previous versions, the century and millennium results had a wrong number and started in the wrong year, as compared to standard reckoning of such things.

  • Add ceiling() as an alias for ceil(), and power() as an alias for pow() for standards compliance (Neil)

  • Change ln(), log(), power(), and sqrt() to emit the correct SQLSTATE error codes for certain error conditions, as specified by SQL:2003 (Neil)

  • Add width_bucket() function as defined by SQL:2003 (Neil)

  • Add generate_series() functions to simplify working with numeric sets (Joe)

  • Fix upper/lower/initcap() functions to work with multibyte encodings (Tom)

  • Add boolean and bitwise integer AND/OR aggregates (Fabien Coelho)

  • New session information functions to return network addresses for client and server (Sean Chittenden)

  • Add function to determine the area of a closed path (Sean Chittenden)

  • Add function to send cancel request to other backends (Magnus)

  • Add interval plus datetime operators (Tom)

    The reverse ordering, datetime plus interval, was already supported, but both are required by the SQL standard.

  • Casting an integer to BIT(N) selects the rightmost N bits of the integer (Tom)

    In prior releases, the leftmost N bits were selected, but this was deemed unhelpful, not to mention inconsistent with casting from bit to int.

  • Require CIDR values to have all nonmasked bits be zero (Kevin Brintnall)

E.166.4.7. Server-Side Language Changes

  • In READ COMMITTED serialization mode, volatile functions now see the results of concurrent transactions committed up to the beginning of each statement within the function, rather than up to the beginning of the interactive command that called the function.

  • Functions declared STABLE or IMMUTABLE always use the snapshot of the calling query, and therefore do not see the effects of actions taken after the calling query starts, whether in their own transaction or other transactions. Such a function must be read-only, too, meaning that it cannot use any SQL commands other than SELECT. There is a considerable performance gain from declaring a function STABLE or IMMUTABLE rather than VOLATILE.

  • Nondeferred AFTER triggers are now fired immediately after completion of the triggering query, rather than upon finishing the current interactive command. This makes a difference when the triggering query occurred within a function: the trigger is invoked before the function proceeds to its next operation. For example, if a function inserts a new row into a table, any nondeferred foreign key checks occur before proceeding with the function.

  • Allow function parameters to be declared with names (Dennis Björklund)

    This allows better documentation of functions. Whether the names actually do anything depends on the specific function language being used.

  • Allow PL/pgSQL parameter names to be referenced in the function (Dennis Björklund)

    This basically creates an automatic alias for each named parameter.

  • Do minimal syntax checking of PL/pgSQL functions at creation time (Tom)

    This allows us to catch simple syntax errors sooner.

  • More support for composite types (row and record variables) in PL/pgSQL

    For example, it now works to pass a rowtype variable to another function as a single variable.

  • Default values for PL/pgSQL variables can now reference previously declared variables

  • Improve parsing of PL/pgSQL FOR loops (Tom)

    Parsing is now driven by presence of ".." rather than data type of FOR variable. This makes no difference for correct functions, but should result in more understandable error messages when a mistake is made.

  • Major overhaul of PL/Perl server-side language (Command Prompt, Andrew Dunstan)

  • In PL/Tcl, SPI commands are now run in subtransactions. If an error occurs, the subtransaction is cleaned up and the error is reported as an ordinary Tcl error, which can be trapped with catch. Formerly, it was not possible to catch such errors.

  • Accept ELSEIF in PL/pgSQL (Neil)

    Previously PL/pgSQL only allowed ELSIF, but many people are accustomed to spelling this keyword ELSEIF.

E.166.4.8. psql Changes

  • Improve psql information display about database objects (Christopher)

  • Allow psql to display group membership in \du and \dg (Markus Bertheau)

  • Prevent psql \dn from showing temporary schemas (Bruce)

  • Allow psql to handle tilde user expansion for file names (Zach Irmen)

  • Allow psql to display fancy prompts, including color, via readline (Reece Hart, Chet Ramey)

  • Make psql \copy match COPY command syntax fully (Tom)

  • Show the location of syntax errors (Fabien Coelho, Tom)

  • Add CLUSTER information to psql \d display (Bruce)

  • Change psql \copy stdin/stdout to read from command input/output (Bruce)

  • Add pstdin/pstdout to read from psql's stdin/stdout (Mark Feit)

  • Add global psql configuration file, psqlrc.sample (Bruce)

    This allows a central file where global psql startup commands can be stored.

  • Have psql \d+ indicate if the table has an OID column (Neil)

  • On Windows, use binary mode in psql when reading files so control-Z is not seen as end-of-file

  • Have \dn+ show permissions and description for schemas (Dennis Björklund)

  • Improve tab completion support (Stefan Kaltenbrunn, Greg Sabino Mullane)

  • Allow boolean settings to be set using upper or lower case (Michael Paesold)

E.166.4.9. pg_dump Changes

  • Use dependency information to improve the reliability of pg_dump (Tom)

    This should solve the longstanding problems with related objects sometimes being dumped in the wrong order.

  • Have pg_dump output objects in alphabetical order if possible (Tom)

    This should make it easier to identify changes between dump files.

  • Allow pg_restore to ignore some SQL errors (Fabien Coelho)

    This makes pg_restore's behavior similar to the results of feeding a pg_dump output script to psql. In most cases, ignoring errors and plowing ahead is the most useful thing to do. Also added was a pg_restore option to give the old behavior of exiting on an error.

  • pg_restore -l display now includes objects' schema names

  • New begin/end markers in pg_dump text output (Bruce)

  • Add start/stop times for pg_dump/pg_dumpall in verbose mode (Bruce)

  • Allow most pg_dump options in pg_dumpall (Christopher)

  • Have pg_dump use ALTER OWNER rather than SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION by default (Christopher)

E.166.4.10. libpq Changes

  • Make libpq's SIGPIPE handling thread-safe (Bruce)

  • Add PQmbdsplen() which returns the display length of a character (Tatsuo)

  • Add thread locking to SSL and Kerberos connections (Manfred Spraul)

  • Allow PQoidValue(), PQcmdTuples(), and PQoidStatus() to work on EXECUTE commands (Neil)

  • Add PQserverVersion() to provide more convenient access to the server version number (Greg Sabino Mullane)

  • Add PQprepare/PQsendPrepared() functions to support preparing statements without necessarily specifying the data types of their parameters (Abhijit Menon-Sen)

  • Many ECPG improvements, including SET DESCRIPTOR (Michael)

E.166.4.11. Source Code Changes

  • Allow the database server to run natively on Windows (Claudio, Magnus, Andrew)

  • Shell script commands converted to C versions for Windows support (Andrew)

  • Create an extension makefile framework (Fabien Coelho, Peter)

    This simplifies the task of building extensions outside the original source tree.

  • Support relocatable installations (Bruce)

    Directory paths for installed files (such as the /share directory) are now computed relative to the actual location of the executables, so that an installation tree can be moved to another place without reconfiguring and rebuilding.

  • Use --with-docdir to choose installation location of documentation; also allow --infodir (Peter)

  • Add --without-docdir to prevent installation of documentation (Peter)

  • Upgrade to DocBook V4.2 SGML (Peter)

  • New PostgreSQL CVS tag (Marc)

    This was done to make it easier for organizations to manage their own copies of the PostgreSQL CVS repository. File version stamps from the master repository will not get munged by checking into or out of a copied repository.

  • Clarify locking code (Manfred Koizar)

  • Buffer manager cleanup (Neil)

  • Decouple platform tests from CPU spinlock code (Bruce, Tom)

  • Add inlined test-and-set code on PA-RISC for gcc (ViSolve, Tom)

  • Improve i386 spinlock code (Manfred Spraul)

  • Clean up spinlock assembly code to avoid warnings from newer gcc releases (Tom)

  • Remove JDBC from source tree; now a separate project

  • Remove the libpgtcl client interface; now a separate project

  • More accurately estimate memory and file descriptor usage (Tom)

  • Improvements to the Mac OS X startup scripts (Ray A.)

  • New fsync() test program (Bruce)

  • Major documentation improvements (Neil, Peter)

  • Remove pg_encoding; not needed anymore

  • Remove pg_id; not needed anymore

  • Remove initlocation; not needed anymore

  • Auto-detect thread flags (no more manual testing) (Bruce)

  • Use Olson's public domain timezone library (Magnus)

  • With threading enabled, use thread flags on Unixware for backend executables too (Bruce)

    Unixware cannot mix threaded and nonthreaded object files in the same executable, so everything must be compiled as threaded.

  • psql now uses a flex-generated lexical analyzer to process command strings

  • Reimplement the linked list data structure used throughout the backend (Neil)

    This improves performance by allowing list append and length operations to be more efficient.

  • Allow dynamically loaded modules to create their own server configuration parameters (Thomas Hallgren)

  • New Brazilian version of FAQ (Euler Taveira de Oliveira)

  • Add French FAQ (Guillaume Lelarge)

  • New pgevent for Windows logging

  • Make libpq and ECPG build as proper shared libraries on OS X (Tom)

E.166.4.12. Contrib Changes

  • Overhaul of contrib/dblink (Joe)

  • contrib/dbmirror improvements (Steven Singer)

  • New contrib/xml2 (John Gray, Torchbox)

  • Updated contrib/mysql

  • New version of contrib/btree_gist (Teodor)

  • New contrib/trgm, trigram matching for PostgreSQL (Teodor)

  • Many contrib/tsearch2 improvements (Teodor)

  • Add double metaphone to contrib/fuzzystrmatch (Andrew)

  • Allow contrib/pg_autovacuum to run as a Windows service (Dave Page)

  • Add functions to contrib/dbsize (Andreas Pflug)

  • Removed contrib/pg_logger: obsoleted by integrated logging subprocess

  • Removed contrib/rserv: obsoleted by various separate projects

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Release 7.4.30

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E.167. Release 7.4.30

Release Date: 2010-10-04

This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.4.29. For information about new features in the 7.4 major release, see Section E.197.

This is expected to be the last PostgreSQL release in the 7.4.X series. Users are encouraged to update to a newer release branch soon.

E.167.1. Migration to Version 7.4.30

A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.4.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 7.4.26, see Section E.171.

E.167.2. Changes

  • Use a separate interpreter for each calling SQL userid in PL/Perl and PL/Tcl (Tom Lane)

    This change prevents security problems that can be caused by subverting Perl or Tcl code that will be executed later in the same session under another SQL user identity (for example, within a SECURITY DEFINER function). Most scripting languages offer numerous ways that that might be done, such as redefining standard functions or operators called by the target function. Without this change, any SQL user with Perl or Tcl language usage rights can do essentially anything with the SQL privileges of the target function's owner.

    The cost of this change is that intentional communication among Perl and Tcl functions becomes more difficult. To provide an escape hatch, PL/PerlU and PL/TclU functions continue to use only one interpreter per session. This is not considered a security issue since all such functions execute at the trust level of a database superuser already.

    It is likely that third-party procedural languages that claim to offer trusted execution have similar security issues. We advise contacting the authors of any PL you are depending on for security-critical purposes.

    Our thanks to Tim Bunce for pointing out this issue (CVE-2010-3433).

  • Prevent possible crashes in pg_get_expr() by disallowing it from being called with an argument that is not one of the system catalog columns it's intended to be used with (Heikki Linnakangas, Tom Lane)

  • Fix "cannot handle unplanned sub-select" error (Tom Lane)

    This occurred when a sub-select contains a join alias reference that expands into an expression containing another sub-select.

  • Take care to fsync the contents of lockfiles (both postmaster.pid and the socket lockfile) while writing them (Tom Lane)

    This omission could result in corrupted lockfile contents if the machine crashes shortly after postmaster start. That could in turn prevent subsequent attempts to start the postmaster from succeeding, until the lockfile is manually removed.

  • Improve contrib/dblink's handling of tables containing dropped columns (Tom Lane)

  • Fix connection leak after "duplicate connection name" errors in contrib/dblink (Itagaki Takahiro)

  • Update build infrastructure and documentation to reflect the source code repository's move from CVS to Git (Magnus Hagander and others)

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Release 7.4.29

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E.168. Release 7.4.29

Release Date: 2010-05-17

This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.4.28. For information about new features in the 7.4 major release, see Section E.197.

The PostgreSQL community will stop releasing updates for the 7.4.X release series in July 2010. Users are encouraged to update to a newer release branch soon.

E.168.1. Migration to Version 7.4.29

A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.4.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 7.4.26, see Section E.171.

E.168.2. Changes

  • Enforce restrictions in plperl using an opmask applied to the whole interpreter, instead of using Safe.pm (Tim Bunce, Andrew Dunstan)

    Recent developments have convinced us that Safe.pm is too insecure to rely on for making plperl trustable. This change removes use of Safe.pm altogether, in favor of using a separate interpreter with an opcode mask that is always applied. Pleasant side effects of the change include that it is now possible to use Perl's strict pragma in a natural way in plperl, and that Perl's $a and $b variables work as expected in sort routines, and that function compilation is significantly faster. (CVE-2010-1169)

  • Prevent PL/Tcl from executing untrustworthy code from pltcl_modules (Tom)

    PL/Tcl's feature for autoloading Tcl code from a database table could be exploited for trojan-horse attacks, because there was no restriction on who could create or insert into that table. This change disables the feature unless pltcl_modules is owned by a superuser. (However, the permissions on the table are not checked, so installations that really need a less-than-secure modules table can still grant suitable privileges to trusted non-superusers.) Also, prevent loading code into the unrestricted "normal" Tcl interpreter unless we are really going to execute a pltclu function. (CVE-2010-1170)

  • Do not allow an unprivileged user to reset superuser-only parameter settings (Alvaro)

    Previously, if an unprivileged user ran ALTER USER ... RESET ALL for himself, or ALTER DATABASE ... RESET ALL for a database he owns, this would remove all special parameter settings for the user or database, even ones that are only supposed to be changeable by a superuser. Now, the ALTER will only remove the parameters that the user has permission to change.

  • Avoid possible crash during backend shutdown if shutdown occurs when a CONTEXT addition would be made to log entries (Tom)

    In some cases the context-printing function would fail because the current transaction had already been rolled back when it came time to print a log message.

  • Update pl/perl's ppport.h for modern Perl versions (Andrew)

  • Fix assorted memory leaks in pl/python (Andreas Freund, Tom)

  • Ensure that contrib/pgstattuple functions respond to cancel interrupts promptly (Tatsuhito Kasahara)

  • Make server startup deal properly with the case that shmget() returns EINVAL for an existing shared memory segment (Tom)

    This behavior has been observed on BSD-derived kernels including OS X. It resulted in an entirely-misleading startup failure complaining that the shared memory request size was too large.

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Release 7.4.28

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E.169. Release 7.4.28

Release Date: 2010-03-15

This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.4.27. For information about new features in the 7.4 major release, see Section E.197.

The PostgreSQL community will stop releasing updates for the 7.4.X release series in July 2010. Users are encouraged to update to a newer release branch soon.

E.169.1. Migration to Version 7.4.28

A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.4.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 7.4.26, see Section E.171.

E.169.2. Changes

  • Add new configuration parameter ssl_renegotiation_limit to control how often we do session key renegotiation for an SSL connection (Magnus)

    This can be set to zero to disable renegotiation completely, which may be required if a broken SSL library is used. In particular, some vendors are shipping stopgap patches for CVE-2009-3555 that cause renegotiation attempts to fail.

  • Make substring() for bit types treat any negative length as meaning "all the rest of the string" (Tom)

    The previous coding treated only -1 that way, and would produce an invalid result value for other negative values, possibly leading to a crash (CVE-2010-0442).

  • Fix some cases of pathologically slow regular expression matching (Tom)

  • When reading pg_hba.conf and related files, do not treat @something as a file inclusion request if the @ appears inside quote marks; also, never treat @ by itself as a file inclusion request (Tom)

    This prevents erratic behavior if a role or database name starts with @. If you need to include a file whose path name contains spaces, you can still do so, but you must write @"/path to/file" rather than putting the quotes around the whole construct.

  • Prevent infinite loop on some platforms if a directory is named as an inclusion target in pg_hba.conf and related files (Tom)

  • Ensure PL/Tcl initializes the Tcl interpreter fully (Tom)

    The only known symptom of this oversight is that the Tcl clock command misbehaves if using Tcl 8.5 or later.

  • Prevent crash in contrib/dblink when too many key columns are specified to a dblink_build_sql_* function (Rushabh Lathia, Joe Conway)

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Release 7.4.27

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E.170. Release 7.4.27

Release Date: 2009-12-14

This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.4.26. For information about new features in the 7.4 major release, see Section E.197.

E.170.1. Migration to Version 7.4.27

A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.4.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 7.4.26, see Section E.171.

E.170.2. Changes

  • Protect against indirect security threats caused by index functions changing session-local state (Gurjeet Singh, Tom)

    This change prevents allegedly-immutable index functions from possibly subverting a superuser's session (CVE-2009-4136).

  • Reject SSL certificates containing an embedded null byte in the common name (CN) field (Magnus)

    This prevents unintended matching of a certificate to a server or client name during SSL validation (CVE-2009-4034).

  • Fix possible crash during backend-startup-time cache initialization (Tom)

  • Prevent signals from interrupting VACUUM at unsafe times (Alvaro)

    This fix prevents a PANIC if a VACUUM FULL is canceled after it's already committed its tuple movements, as well as transient errors if a plain VACUUM is interrupted after having truncated the table.

  • Fix possible crash due to integer overflow in hash table size calculation (Tom)

    This could occur with extremely large planner estimates for the size of a hashjoin's result.

  • Fix very rare crash in inet/cidr comparisons (Chris Mikkelson)

  • Fix PAM password processing to be more robust (Tom)

    The previous code is known to fail with the combination of the Linux pam_krb5 PAM module with Microsoft Active Directory as the domain controller. It might have problems elsewhere too, since it was making unjustified assumptions about what arguments the PAM stack would pass to it.

  • Make the postmaster ignore any application_name parameter in connection request packets, to improve compatibility with future libpq versions (Tom)

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Release 7.4.26

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E.171. Release 7.4.26

Release Date: 2009-09-09

This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.4.25. For information about new features in the 7.4 major release, see Section E.197.

E.171.1. Migration to Version 7.4.26

A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.4.X. However, if you have any hash indexes on interval columns, you must REINDEX them after updating to 7.4.26. Also, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 7.4.11, see Section E.186.

E.171.2. Changes

  • Disallow RESET ROLE and RESET SESSION AUTHORIZATION inside security-definer functions (Tom, Heikki)

    This covers a case that was missed in the previous patch that disallowed SET ROLE and SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION inside security-definer functions. (See CVE-2007-6600)

  • Fix handling of sub-SELECTs appearing in the arguments of an outer-level aggregate function (Tom)

  • Fix hash calculation for data type interval (Tom)

    This corrects wrong results for hash joins on interval values. It also changes the contents of hash indexes on interval columns. If you have any such indexes, you must REINDEX them after updating.

  • Fix overflow for INTERVAL 'x ms' when x is more than 2 million and integer datetimes are in use (Alex Hunsaker)

  • Fix calculation of distance between a point and a line segment (Tom)

    This led to incorrect results from a number of geometric operators.

  • Fix money data type to work in locales where currency amounts have no fractional digits, e.g. Japan (Itagaki Takahiro)

  • Properly round datetime input like 00:12:57.9999999999999999999999999999 (Tom)

  • Fix poor choice of page split point in GiST R-tree operator classes (Teodor)

  • Fix portability issues in plperl initialization (Andrew Dunstan)

  • Improve robustness of libpq's code to recover from errors during COPY FROM STDIN (Tom)

  • Avoid including conflicting readline and editline header files when both libraries are installed (Zdenek Kotala)

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Release 7.4.25

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E.172. Release 7.4.25

Release Date: 2009-03-16

This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.4.24. For information about new features in the 7.4 major release, see Section E.197.

E.172.1. Migration to Version 7.4.25

A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.4.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 7.4.11, see Section E.186.

E.172.2. Changes

  • Prevent error recursion crashes when encoding conversion fails (Tom)

    This change extends fixes made in the last two minor releases for related failure scenarios. The previous fixes were narrowly tailored for the original problem reports, but we have now recognized that any error thrown by an encoding conversion function could potentially lead to infinite recursion while trying to report the error. The solution therefore is to disable translation and encoding conversion and report the plain-ASCII form of any error message, if we find we have gotten into a recursive error reporting situation. (CVE-2009-0922)

  • Disallow CREATE CONVERSION with the wrong encodings for the specified conversion function (Heikki)

    This prevents one possible scenario for encoding conversion failure. The previous change is a backstop to guard against other kinds of failures in the same area.

  • Fix core dump when to_char() is given format codes that are inappropriate for the type of the data argument (Tom)

  • Add MUST (Mauritius Island Summer Time) to the default list of known timezone abbreviations (Xavier Bugaud)

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Release 7.4.24

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E.173. Release 7.4.24

Release Date: 2009-02-02

This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.4.23. For information about new features in the 7.4 major release, see Section E.197.

E.173.1. Migration to Version 7.4.24

A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.4.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 7.4.11, see Section E.186.

E.173.2. Changes

  • Improve handling of URLs in headline() function (Teodor)

  • Improve handling of overlength headlines in headline() function (Teodor)

  • Prevent possible Assert failure or misconversion if an encoding conversion is created with the wrong conversion function for the specified pair of encodings (Tom, Heikki)

  • Avoid unnecessary locking of small tables in VACUUM (Heikki)

  • Fix uninitialized variables in contrib/tsearch2's get_covers() function (Teodor)

  • Fix bug in to_char()'s handling of TH format codes (Andreas Scherbaum)

  • Make all documentation reference pgsql-bugs and/or pgsql-hackers as appropriate, instead of the now-decommissioned pgsql-ports and pgsql-patches mailing lists (Tom)

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Release 7.4.23

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E.174. Release 7.4.23

Release Date: 2008-11-03

This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.4.22. For information about new features in the 7.4 major release, see Section E.197.

E.174.1. Migration to Version 7.4.23

A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.4.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 7.4.11, see Section E.186.

E.174.2. Changes

  • Fix backend crash when the client encoding cannot represent a localized error message (Tom)

    We have addressed similar issues before, but it would still fail if the "character has no equivalent" message itself couldn't be converted. The fix is to disable localization and send the plain ASCII error message when we detect such a situation.

  • Fix incorrect tsearch2 headline generation when single query item matches first word of text (Sushant Sinha)

  • Fix improper display of fractional seconds in interval values when using a non-ISO datestyle in an --enable-integer-datetimes build (Ron Mayer)

  • Ensure SPI_getvalue and SPI_getbinval behave correctly when the passed tuple and tuple descriptor have different numbers of columns (Tom)

    This situation is normal when a table has had columns added or removed, but these two functions didn't handle it properly. The only likely consequence is an incorrect error indication.

  • Fix ecpg's parsing of CREATE USER (Michael)

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Release 7.4.22

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E.175. Release 7.4.22

Release Date: 2008-09-22

This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.4.21. For information about new features in the 7.4 major release, see Section E.197.

E.175.1. Migration to Version 7.4.22

A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.4.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 7.4.11, see Section E.186.

E.175.2. Changes

  • Fix datetime input functions to correctly detect integer overflow when running on a 64-bit platform (Tom)

  • Improve performance of writing very long log messages to syslog (Tom)

  • Fix bug in backwards scanning of a cursor on a SELECT DISTINCT ON query (Tom)

  • Fix planner to estimate that GROUP BY expressions yielding boolean results always result in two groups, regardless of the expressions' contents (Tom)

    This is very substantially more accurate than the regular GROUP BY estimate for certain boolean tests like col IS NULL.

  • Improve pg_dump and pg_restore's error reporting after failure to send a SQL command (Tom)

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Release 7.4.21

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E.176. Release 7.4.21

Release Date: 2008-06-12

This release contains one serious bug fix over 7.4.20. For information about new features in the 7.4 major release, see Section E.197.

E.176.1. Migration to Version 7.4.21

A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.4.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 7.4.11, see Section E.186.

E.176.2. Changes

  • Make pg_get_ruledef() parenthesize negative constants (Tom)

    Before this fix, a negative constant in a view or rule might be dumped as, say, -42::integer, which is subtly incorrect: it should be (-42)::integer due to operator precedence rules. Usually this would make little difference, but it could interact with another recent patch to cause PostgreSQL to reject what had been a valid SELECT DISTINCT view query. Since this could result in pg_dump output failing to reload, it is being treated as a high-priority fix. The only released versions in which dump output is actually incorrect are 8.3.1 and 8.2.7.

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Release 7.4.20

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E.177. Release 7.4.20

Release Date: never released

This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.4.19. For information about new features in the 7.4 major release, see Section E.197.

E.177.1. Migration to Version 7.4.20

A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.4.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 7.4.11, see Section E.186.

E.177.2. Changes

  • Fix conversions between ISO-8859-5 and other encodings to handle Cyrillic "Yo" characters (e and E with two dots) (Sergey Burladyan)

  • Fix a few datatype input functions that were allowing unused bytes in their results to contain uninitialized, unpredictable values (Tom)

    This could lead to failures in which two apparently identical literal values were not seen as equal, resulting in the parser complaining about unmatched ORDER BY and DISTINCT expressions.

  • Fix a corner case in regular-expression substring matching (substring(string from pattern)) (Tom)

    The problem occurs when there is a match to the pattern overall but the user has specified a parenthesized subexpression and that subexpression hasn't got a match. An example is substring('foo' from 'foo(bar)?'). This should return NULL, since (bar) isn't matched, but it was mistakenly returning the whole-pattern match instead (ie, foo).

  • Fix incorrect result from ecpg's PGTYPEStimestamp_sub() function (Michael)

  • Fix DatumGetBool macro to not fail with gcc 4.3 (Tom)

    This problem affects "old style" (V0) C functions that return boolean. The fix is already in 8.3, but the need to back-patch it was not realized at the time.

  • Fix longstanding LISTEN/NOTIFY race condition (Tom)

    In rare cases a session that had just executed a LISTEN might not get a notification, even though one would be expected because the concurrent transaction executing NOTIFY was observed to commit later.

    A side effect of the fix is that a transaction that has executed a not-yet-committed LISTEN command will not see any row in pg_listener for the LISTEN, should it choose to look; formerly it would have. This behavior was never documented one way or the other, but it is possible that some applications depend on the old behavior.

  • Fix display of constant expressions in ORDER BY and GROUP BY (Tom)

    An explicitly casted constant would be shown incorrectly. This could for example lead to corruption of a view definition during dump and reload.

  • Fix libpq to handle NOTICE messages correctly during COPY OUT (Tom)

    This failure has only been observed to occur when a user-defined datatype's output routine issues a NOTICE, but there is no guarantee it couldn't happen due to other causes.

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Release 7.4.19

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E.178. Release 7.4.19

Release Date: 2008-01-07

This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.4.18, including fixes for significant security issues. For information about new features in the 7.4 major release, see Section E.197.

E.178.1. Migration to Version 7.4.19

A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.4.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 7.4.11, see Section E.186.

E.178.2. Changes

  • Prevent functions in indexes from executing with the privileges of the user running VACUUM, ANALYZE, etc (Tom)

    Functions used in index expressions and partial-index predicates are evaluated whenever a new table entry is made. It has long been understood that this poses a risk of trojan-horse code execution if one modifies a table owned by an untrustworthy user. (Note that triggers, defaults, check constraints, etc. pose the same type of risk.) But functions in indexes pose extra danger because they will be executed by routine maintenance operations such as VACUUM FULL, which are commonly performed automatically under a superuser account. For example, a nefarious user can execute code with superuser privileges by setting up a trojan-horse index definition and waiting for the next routine vacuum. The fix arranges for standard maintenance operations (including VACUUM, ANALYZE, REINDEX, and CLUSTER) to execute as the table owner rather than the calling user, using the same privilege-switching mechanism already used for SECURITY DEFINER functions. To prevent bypassing this security measure, execution of SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION and SET ROLE is now forbidden within a SECURITY DEFINER context. (CVE-2007-6600)

  • Repair assorted bugs in the regular-expression package (Tom, Will Drewry)

    Suitably crafted regular-expression patterns could cause crashes, infinite or near-infinite looping, and/or massive memory consumption, all of which pose denial-of-service hazards for applications that accept regex search patterns from untrustworthy sources. (CVE-2007-4769, CVE-2007-4772, CVE-2007-6067)

  • Require non-superusers who use /contrib/dblink to use only password authentication, as a security measure (Joe)

    The fix that appeared for this in 7.4.18 was incomplete, as it plugged the hole for only some dblink functions. (CVE-2007-6601, CVE-2007-3278)

  • Fix planner failure in some cases of WHERE false AND var IN (SELECT ...) (Tom)

  • Fix potential crash in translate() when using a multibyte database encoding (Tom)

  • Fix PL/Python to not crash on long exception messages (Alvaro)

  • ecpg parser fixes (Michael)

  • Make contrib/tablefunc's crosstab() handle NULL rowid as a category in its own right, rather than crashing (Joe)

  • Fix tsvector and tsquery output routines to escape backslashes correctly (Teodor, Bruce)

  • Fix crash of to_tsvector() on huge input strings (Teodor)

  • Require a specific version of Autoconf to be used when re-generating the configure script (Peter)

    This affects developers and packagers only. The change was made to prevent accidental use of untested combinations of Autoconf and PostgreSQL versions. You can remove the version check if you really want to use a different Autoconf version, but it's your responsibility whether the result works or not.

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Release 7.4.20 | Up | Release 7.4.18


Release 7.4.18

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E.179. Release 7.4.18

Release Date: 2007-09-17

This release contains fixes from 7.4.17. For information about new features in the 7.4 major release, see Section E.197.

E.179.1. Migration to Version 7.4.18

A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.4.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 7.4.11, see Section E.186.

E.179.2. Changes

  • Prevent index corruption when a transaction inserts rows and then aborts close to the end of a concurrent VACUUM on the same table (Tom)

  • Make CREATE DOMAIN ... DEFAULT NULL work properly (Tom)

  • Fix excessive logging of SSL error messages (Tom)

  • Fix crash when log_min_error_statement logging runs out of memory (Tom)

  • Prevent CLUSTER from failing due to attempting to process temporary tables of other sessions (Alvaro)

  • Require non-superusers who use /contrib/dblink to use only password authentication, as a security measure (Joe)

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Release 7.4.19 | Up | Release 7.4.17


Release 7.4.17

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E.180. Release 7.4.17

Release Date: 2007-04-23

This release contains fixes from 7.4.16, including a security fix. For information about new features in the 7.4 major release, see Section E.197.

E.180.1. Migration to Version 7.4.17

A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.4.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 7.4.11, see Section E.186.

E.180.2. Changes

  • Support explicit placement of the temporary-table schema within search_path, and disable searching it for functions and operators (Tom)

    This is needed to allow a security-definer function to set a truly secure value of search_path. Without it, an unprivileged SQL user can use temporary objects to execute code with the privileges of the security-definer function (CVE-2007-2138). See CREATE FUNCTION for more information.

  • /contrib/tsearch2 crash fixes (Teodor)

  • Fix potential-data-corruption bug in how VACUUM FULL handles UPDATE chains (Tom, Pavan Deolasee)

  • Fix PANIC during enlargement of a hash index (bug introduced in 7.4.15) (Tom)

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Release 7.4.18 | Up | Release 7.4.16


Release 7.4.16

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E.181. Release 7.4.16

Release Date: 2007-02-05

This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.4.15, including a security fix. For information about new features in the 7.4 major release, see Section E.197.

E.181.1. Migration to Version 7.4.16

A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.4.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 7.4.11, see Section E.186.

E.181.2. Changes

  • Remove security vulnerability that allowed connected users to read backend memory (Tom)

    The vulnerability involves suppressing the normal check that a SQL function returns the data type it's declared to, or changing the data type of a table column used in a SQL function (CVE-2007-0555). This error can easily be exploited to cause a backend crash, and in principle might be used to read database content that the user should not be able to access.

  • Fix rare bug wherein btree index page splits could fail due to choosing an infeasible split point (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Fix for rare Assert() crash triggered by UNION (Tom)

  • Tighten security of multi-byte character processing for UTF8 sequences over three bytes long (Tom)

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Release 7.4.17 | Up | Release 7.4.15


Release 7.4.15

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E.182. Release 7.4.15

Release Date: 2007-01-08

This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.4.14. For information about new features in the 7.4 major release, see Section E.197.

E.182.1. Migration to Version 7.4.15

A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.4.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 7.4.11, see Section E.186.

E.182.2. Changes

  • Improve handling of getaddrinfo() on AIX (Tom)

    This fixes a problem with starting the statistics collector, among other things.

  • Fix "failed to re-find parent key" errors in VACUUM (Tom)

  • Fix bugs affecting multi-gigabyte hash indexes (Tom)

  • Fix error when constructing an ARRAY[] made up of multiple empty elements (Tom)

  • to_number() and to_char(numeric) are now STABLE, not IMMUTABLE, for new initdb installs (Tom)

    This is because lc_numeric can potentially change the output of these functions.

  • Improve index usage of regular expressions that use parentheses (Tom)

    This improves psql \d performance also.

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Release 7.4.16 | Up | Release 7.4.14


Release 7.4.14

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E.183. Release 7.4.14

Release Date: 2006-10-16

This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.4.13. For information about new features in the 7.4 major release, see Section E.197.

E.183.1. Migration to Version 7.4.14

A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.4.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 7.4.11, see Section E.186.

E.183.2. Changes

  • Fix core dump when an untyped literal is taken as ANYARRAY

  • Fix string_to_array() to handle overlapping matches for the separator string

    For example, string_to_array('123xx456xxx789', 'xx').

  • Fix corner cases in pattern matching for psql's \d commands

  • Fix index-corrupting bugs in /contrib/ltree (Teodor)

  • Fix backslash escaping in /contrib/dbmirror

  • Adjust regression tests for recent changes in US DST laws

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Release 7.4.15 | Up | Release 7.4.13


Release 7.4.13

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E.184. Release 7.4.13

Release Date: 2006-05-23

This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.4.12, including patches for extremely serious security issues. For information about new features in the 7.4 major release, see Section E.197.

E.184.1. Migration to Version 7.4.13

A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.4.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 7.4.11, see Section E.186.

Full security against the SQL-injection attacks described in CVE-2006-2313 and CVE-2006-2314 might require changes in application code. If you have applications that embed untrustworthy strings into SQL commands, you should examine them as soon as possible to ensure that they are using recommended escaping techniques. In most cases, applications should be using subroutines provided by libraries or drivers (such as libpq's PQescapeStringConn()) to perform string escaping, rather than relying on ad hoc code to do it.

E.184.2. Changes

  • Change the server to reject invalidly-encoded multibyte characters in all cases (Tatsuo, Tom)

    While PostgreSQL has been moving in this direction for some time, the checks are now applied uniformly to all encodings and all textual input, and are now always errors not merely warnings. This change defends against SQL-injection attacks of the type described in CVE-2006-2313.

  • Reject unsafe uses of \' in string literals

    As a server-side defense against SQL-injection attacks of the type described in CVE-2006-2314, the server now only accepts '' and not \' as a representation of ASCII single quote in SQL string literals. By default, \' is rejected only when client_encoding is set to a client-only encoding (SJIS, BIG5, GBK, GB18030, or UHC), which is the scenario in which SQL injection is possible. A new configuration parameter backslash_quote is available to adjust this behavior when needed. Note that full security against CVE-2006-2314 might require client-side changes; the purpose of backslash_quote is in part to make it obvious that insecure clients are insecure.

  • Modify libpq's string-escaping routines to be aware of encoding considerations and standard_conforming_strings

    This fixes libpq-using applications for the security issues described in CVE-2006-2313 and CVE-2006-2314, and also future-proofs them against the planned changeover to SQL-standard string literal syntax. Applications that use multiple PostgreSQL connections concurrently should migrate to PQescapeStringConn() and PQescapeByteaConn() to ensure that escaping is done correctly for the settings in use in each database connection. Applications that do string escaping "by hand" should be modified to rely on library routines instead.

  • Fix some incorrect encoding conversion functions

    win1251_to_iso, alt_to_iso, euc_tw_to_big5, euc_tw_to_mic, mic_to_euc_tw were all broken to varying extents.

  • Clean up stray remaining uses of \' in strings (Bruce, Jan)

  • Fix bug that sometimes caused OR'd index scans to miss rows they should have returned

  • Fix WAL replay for case where a btree index has been truncated

  • Fix SIMILAR TO for patterns involving | (Tom)

  • Fix server to use custom DH SSL parameters correctly (Michael Fuhr)

  • Fix for Bonjour on Intel Macs (Ashley Clark)

  • Fix various minor memory leaks

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Release 7.4.12

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E.185. Release 7.4.12

Release Date: 2006-02-14

This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.4.11. For information about new features in the 7.4 major release, see Section E.197.

E.185.1. Migration to Version 7.4.12

A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.4.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 7.4.11, see Section E.186.

E.185.2. Changes

  • Fix potential crash in SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION (CVE-2006-0553)

    An unprivileged user could crash the server process, resulting in momentary denial of service to other users, if the server has been compiled with Asserts enabled (which is not the default). Thanks to Akio Ishida for reporting this problem.

  • Fix bug with row visibility logic in self-inserted rows (Tom)

    Under rare circumstances a row inserted by the current command could be seen as already valid, when it should not be. Repairs bug created in 7.4.9 and 7.3.11 releases.

  • Fix race condition that could lead to "file already exists" errors during pg_clog file creation (Tom)

  • Properly check DOMAIN constraints for UNKNOWN parameters in prepared statements (Neil)

  • Fix to allow restoring dumps that have cross-schema references to custom operators (Tom)

  • Portability fix for testing presence of finite and isinf during configure (Tom)

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Release 7.4.11

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E.186. Release 7.4.11

Release Date: 2006-01-09

This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.4.10. For information about new features in the 7.4 major release, see Section E.197.

E.186.1. Migration to Version 7.4.11

A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.4.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 7.4.8, see Section E.189. Also, you might need to REINDEX indexes on textual columns after updating, if you are affected by the locale or plperl issues described below.

E.186.2. Changes

  • Fix for protocol-level Describe messages issued outside a transaction or in a failed transaction (Tom)

  • Fix character string comparison for locales that consider different character combinations as equal, such as Hungarian (Tom)

    This might require REINDEX to fix existing indexes on textual columns.

  • Set locale environment variables during postmaster startup to ensure that plperl won't change the locale later

    This fixes a problem that occurred if the postmaster was started with environment variables specifying a different locale than what initdb had been told. Under these conditions, any use of plperl was likely to lead to corrupt indexes. You might need REINDEX to fix existing indexes on textual columns if this has happened to you.

  • Fix longstanding bug in strpos() and regular expression handling in certain rarely used Asian multi-byte character sets (Tatsuo)

  • Fix bug in /contrib/pgcrypto gen_salt, which caused it not to use all available salt space for MD5 and XDES algorithms (Marko Kreen, Solar Designer)

    Salts for Blowfish and standard DES are unaffected.

  • Fix /contrib/dblink to throw an error, rather than crashing, when the number of columns specified is different from what's actually returned by the query (Joe)

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Release 7.4.10

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E.187. Release 7.4.10

Release Date: 2005-12-12

This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.4.9. For information about new features in the 7.4 major release, see Section E.197.

E.187.1. Migration to Version 7.4.10

A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.4.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 7.4.8, see Section E.189.

E.187.2. Changes

  • Fix race condition in transaction log management

    There was a narrow window in which an I/O operation could be initiated for the wrong page, leading to an Assert failure or data corruption.

  • Prevent failure if client sends Bind protocol message when current transaction is already aborted

  • /contrib/ltree fixes (Teodor)

  • AIX and HPUX compile fixes (Tom)

  • Fix longstanding planning error for outer joins

    This bug sometimes caused a bogus error "RIGHT JOIN is only supported with merge-joinable join conditions".

  • Prevent core dump in pg_autovacuum when a table has been dropped

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Release 7.4.9

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E.188. Release 7.4.9

Release Date: 2005-10-04

This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.4.8. For information about new features in the 7.4 major release, see Section E.197.

E.188.1. Migration to Version 7.4.9

A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.4.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 7.4.8, see Section E.189.

E.188.2. Changes

  • Fix error that allowed VACUUM to remove ctid chains too soon, and add more checking in code that follows ctid links

    This fixes a long-standing problem that could cause crashes in very rare circumstances.

  • Fix CHAR() to properly pad spaces to the specified length when using a multiple-byte character set (Yoshiyuki Asaba)

    In prior releases, the padding of CHAR() was incorrect because it only padded to the specified number of bytes without considering how many characters were stored.

  • Fix the sense of the test for read-only transaction in COPY

    The code formerly prohibited COPY TO, where it should prohibit COPY FROM.

  • Fix planning problem with outer-join ON clauses that reference only the inner-side relation

  • Further fixes for x FULL JOIN y ON true corner cases

  • Make array_in and array_recv more paranoid about validating their OID parameter

  • Fix missing rows in queries like UPDATE a=... WHERE a... with GiST index on column a

  • Improve robustness of datetime parsing

  • Improve checking for partially-written WAL pages

  • Improve robustness of signal handling when SSL is enabled

  • Don't try to open more than max_files_per_process files during postmaster startup

  • Various memory leakage fixes

  • Various portability improvements

  • Fix PL/pgSQL to handle var := var correctly when the variable is of pass-by-reference type

  • Update contrib/tsearch2 to use current Snowball code

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Release 7.4.8

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E.189. Release 7.4.8

Release Date: 2005-05-09

This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.4.7, including several security-related issues. For information about new features in the 7.4 major release, see Section E.197.

E.189.1. Migration to Version 7.4.8

A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.4.X. However, it is one possible way of handling two significant security problems that have been found in the initial contents of 7.4.X system catalogs. A dump/initdb/reload sequence using 7.4.8's initdb will automatically correct these problems.

The larger security problem is that the built-in character set encoding conversion functions can be invoked from SQL commands by unprivileged users, but the functions were not designed for such use and are not secure against malicious choices of arguments. The fix involves changing the declared parameter list of these functions so that they can no longer be invoked from SQL commands. (This does not affect their normal use by the encoding conversion machinery.)

The lesser problem is that the contrib/tsearch2 module creates several functions that are misdeclared to return internal when they do not accept internal arguments. This breaks type safety for all functions using internal arguments.

It is strongly recommended that all installations repair these errors, either by initdb or by following the manual repair procedures given below. The errors at least allow unprivileged database users to crash their server process, and might allow unprivileged users to gain the privileges of a database superuser.

If you wish not to do an initdb, perform the following procedures instead. As the database superuser, do:

BEGIN;
UPDATE pg_proc SET proargtypes[3] = 'internal'::regtype
WHERE pronamespace = 11 AND pronargs = 5
     AND proargtypes[2] = 'cstring'::regtype;
-- The command should report having updated 90 rows;
-- if not, rollback and investigate instead of committing!
COMMIT;

Next, if you have installed contrib/tsearch2, do:

BEGIN;
UPDATE pg_proc SET proargtypes[0] = 'internal'::regtype
WHERE oid IN (
   'dex_init(text)'::regprocedure,
   'snb_en_init(text)'::regprocedure,
   'snb_ru_init(text)'::regprocedure,
   'spell_init(text)'::regprocedure,
   'syn_init(text)'::regprocedure
);
-- The command should report having updated 5 rows;
-- if not, rollback and investigate instead of committing!
COMMIT;

If this command fails with a message like "function "dex_init(text)" does not exist", then either tsearch2 is not installed in this database, or you already did the update.

The above procedures must be carried out in each database of an installation, including template1, and ideally including template0 as well. If you do not fix the template databases then any subsequently created databases will contain the same errors. template1 can be fixed in the same way as any other database, but fixing template0 requires additional steps. First, from any database issue:

UPDATE pg_database SET datallowconn = true WHERE datname = 'template0';

Next connect to template0 and perform the above repair procedures. Finally, do:

-- re-freeze template0:
VACUUM FREEZE;
-- and protect it against future alterations:
UPDATE pg_database SET datallowconn = false WHERE datname = 'template0';

E.189.2. Changes

  • Change encoding function signature to prevent misuse

  • Change contrib/tsearch2 to avoid unsafe use of INTERNAL function results

  • Repair ancient race condition that allowed a transaction to be seen as committed for some purposes (eg SELECT FOR UPDATE) slightly sooner than for other purposes

    This is an extremely serious bug since it could lead to apparent data inconsistencies being briefly visible to applications.

  • Repair race condition between relation extension and VACUUM

    This could theoretically have caused loss of a page's worth of freshly-inserted data, although the scenario seems of very low probability. There are no known cases of it having caused more than an Assert failure.

  • Fix comparisons of TIME WITH TIME ZONE values

    The comparison code was wrong in the case where the --enable-integer-datetimes configuration switch had been used. NOTE: if you have an index on a TIME WITH TIME ZONE column, it will need to be REINDEXed after installing this update, because the fix corrects the sort order of column values.

  • Fix EXTRACT(EPOCH) for TIME WITH TIME ZONE values

  • Fix mis-display of negative fractional seconds in INTERVAL values

    This error only occurred when the --enable-integer-datetimes configuration switch had been used.

  • Ensure operations done during backend shutdown are counted by statistics collector

    This is expected to resolve reports of pg_autovacuum not vacuuming the system catalogs often enough — it was not being told about catalog deletions caused by temporary table removal during backend exit.

  • Additional buffer overrun checks in plpgsql (Neil)

  • Fix pg_dump to dump trigger names containing % correctly (Neil)

  • Fix contrib/pgcrypto for newer OpenSSL builds (Marko Kreen)

  • Still more 64-bit fixes for contrib/intagg

  • Prevent incorrect optimization of functions returning RECORD

  • Prevent to_char(interval) from dumping core for month-related formats

  • Prevent crash on COALESCE(NULL,NULL)

  • Fix array_map to call PL functions correctly

  • Fix permission checking in ALTER DATABASE RENAME

  • Fix ALTER LANGUAGE RENAME

  • Make RemoveFromWaitQueue clean up after itself

    This fixes a lock management error that would only be visible if a transaction was kicked out of a wait for a lock (typically by query cancel) and then the holder of the lock released it within a very narrow window.

  • Fix problem with untyped parameter appearing in INSERT ... SELECT

  • Fix CLUSTER failure after ALTER TABLE SET WITHOUT OIDS

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Release 7.4.7

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E.190. Release 7.4.7

Release Date: 2005-01-31

This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.4.6, including several security-related issues. For information about new features in the 7.4 major release, see Section E.197.

E.190.1. Migration to Version 7.4.7

A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.4.X.

E.190.2. Changes

  • Disallow LOAD to non-superusers

    On platforms that will automatically execute initialization functions of a shared library (this includes at least Windows and ELF-based Unixen), LOAD can be used to make the server execute arbitrary code. Thanks to NGS Software for reporting this.

  • Check that creator of an aggregate function has the right to execute the specified transition functions

    This oversight made it possible to bypass denial of EXECUTE permission on a function.

  • Fix security and 64-bit issues in contrib/intagg

  • Add needed STRICT marking to some contrib functions (Kris Jurka)

  • Avoid buffer overrun when plpgsql cursor declaration has too many parameters (Neil)

  • Fix planning error for FULL and RIGHT outer joins

    The result of the join was mistakenly supposed to be sorted the same as the left input. This could not only deliver mis-sorted output to the user, but in case of nested merge joins could give outright wrong answers.

  • Fix plperl for quote marks in tuple fields

  • Fix display of negative intervals in SQL and GERMAN datestyles

  • Make age(timestamptz) do calculation in local timezone not GMT

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Release 7.4.6

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E.191. Release 7.4.6

Release Date: 2004-10-22

This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.4.5. For information about new features in the 7.4 major release, see Section E.197.

E.191.1. Migration to Version 7.4.6

A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.4.X.

E.191.2. Changes

  • Repair possible failure to update hint bits on disk

    Under rare circumstances this oversight could lead to "could not access transaction status" failures, which qualifies it as a potential-data-loss bug.

  • Ensure that hashed outer join does not miss tuples

    Very large left joins using a hash join plan could fail to output unmatched left-side rows given just the right data distribution.

  • Disallow running pg_ctl as root

    This is to guard against any possible security issues.

  • Avoid using temp files in /tmp in make_oidjoins_check

    This has been reported as a security issue, though it's hardly worthy of concern since there is no reason for non-developers to use this script anyway.

  • Prevent forced backend shutdown from re-emitting prior command result

    In rare cases, a client might think that its last command had succeeded when it really had been aborted by forced database shutdown.

  • Repair bug in pg_stat_get_backend_idset

    This could lead to misbehavior in some of the system-statistics views.

  • Fix small memory leak in postmaster

  • Fix "expected both swapped tables to have TOAST tables" bug

    This could arise in cases such as CLUSTER after ALTER TABLE DROP COLUMN.

  • Prevent pg_ctl restart from adding -D multiple times

  • Fix problem with NULL values in GiST indexes

  • :: is no longer interpreted as a variable in an ECPG prepare statement

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Release 7.4.5

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E.192. Release 7.4.5

Release Date: 2004-08-18

This release contains one serious bug fix over 7.4.4. For information about new features in the 7.4 major release, see Section E.197.

E.192.1. Migration to Version 7.4.5

A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.4.X.

E.192.2. Changes

  • Repair possible crash during concurrent B-tree index insertions

    This patch fixes a rare case in which concurrent insertions into a B-tree index could result in a server panic. No permanent damage would result, but it's still worth a re-release. The bug does not exist in pre-7.4 releases.

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Release 7.4.4

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E.193. Release 7.4.4

Release Date: 2004-08-16

This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.4.3. For information about new features in the 7.4 major release, see Section E.197.

E.193.1. Migration to Version 7.4.4

A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.4.X.

E.193.2. Changes

  • Prevent possible loss of committed transactions during crash

    Due to insufficient interlocking between transaction commit and checkpointing, it was possible for transactions committed just before the most recent checkpoint to be lost, in whole or in part, following a database crash and restart. This is a serious bug that has existed since PostgreSQL 7.1.

  • Check HAVING restriction before evaluating result list of an aggregate plan

  • Avoid crash when session's current user ID is deleted

  • Fix hashed crosstab for zero-rows case (Joe)

  • Force cache update after renaming a column in a foreign key

  • Pretty-print UNION queries correctly

  • Make psql handle \r\n newlines properly in COPY IN

  • pg_dump handled ACLs with grant options incorrectly

  • Fix thread support for OS X and Solaris

  • Updated JDBC driver (build 215) with various fixes

  • ECPG fixes

  • Translation updates (various contributors)

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Release 7.4.3

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E.194. Release 7.4.3

Release Date: 2004-06-14

This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.4.2. For information about new features in the 7.4 major release, see Section E.197.

E.194.1. Migration to Version 7.4.3

A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.4.X.

E.194.2. Changes

  • Fix temporary memory leak when using non-hashed aggregates (Tom)

  • ECPG fixes, including some for Informix compatibility (Michael)

  • Fixes for compiling with thread-safety, particularly Solaris (Bruce)

  • Fix error in COPY IN termination when using the old network protocol (ljb)

  • Several important fixes in pg_autovacuum, including fixes for large tables, unsigned oids, stability, temp tables, and debug mode (Matthew T. O'Connor)

  • Fix problem with reading tar-format dumps on NetBSD and BSD/OS (Bruce)

  • Several JDBC fixes

  • Fix ALTER SEQUENCE RESTART where last_value equals the restart value (Tom)

  • Repair failure to recalculate nested sub-selects (Tom)

  • Fix problems with non-constant expressions in LIMIT/OFFSET

  • Support FULL JOIN with no join clause, such as X FULL JOIN Y ON TRUE (Tom)

  • Fix another zero-column table bug (Tom)

  • Improve handling of non-qualified identifiers in GROUP BY clauses in sub-selects (Tom)

    Select-list aliases within the sub-select will now take precedence over names from outer query levels.

  • Do not generate "NATURAL CROSS JOIN" when decompiling rules (Tom)

  • Add checks for invalid field length in binary COPY (Tom)

    This fixes a difficult-to-exploit security hole.

  • Avoid locking conflict between ANALYZE and LISTEN/NOTIFY

  • Numerous translation updates (various contributors)

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Release 7.4.2

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E.195. Release 7.4.2

Release Date: 2004-03-08

This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.4.1. For information about new features in the 7.4 major release, see Section E.197.

E.195.1. Migration to Version 7.4.2

A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.4.X. However, it might be advisable as the easiest method of incorporating fixes for two errors that have been found in the initial contents of 7.4.X system catalogs. A dump/initdb/reload sequence using 7.4.2's initdb will automatically correct these problems.

The more severe of the two errors is that data type anyarray has the wrong alignment label; this is a problem because the pg_statistic system catalog uses anyarray columns. The mislabeling can cause planner misestimations and even crashes when planning queries that involve WHERE clauses on double-aligned columns (such as float8 and timestamp). It is strongly recommended that all installations repair this error, either by initdb or by following the manual repair procedure given below.

The lesser error is that the system view pg_settings ought to be marked as having public update access, to allow UPDATE pg_settings to be used as a substitute for SET. This can also be fixed either by initdb or manually, but it is not necessary to fix unless you want to use UPDATE pg_settings.

If you wish not to do an initdb, the following procedure will work for fixing pg_statistic. As the database superuser, do:

-- clear out old data in pg_statistic:
DELETE FROM pg_statistic;
VACUUM pg_statistic;
-- this should update 1 row:
UPDATE pg_type SET typalign = 'd' WHERE oid = 2277;
-- this should update 6 rows:
UPDATE pg_attribute SET attalign = 'd' WHERE atttypid = 2277;
--
-- At this point you MUST start a fresh backend to avoid a crash!
--
-- repopulate pg_statistic:
ANALYZE;

This can be done in a live database, but beware that all backends running in the altered database must be restarted before it is safe to repopulate pg_statistic.

To repair the pg_settings error, simply do:

GRANT SELECT, UPDATE ON pg_settings TO PUBLIC;

The above procedures must be carried out in each database of an installation, including template1, and ideally including template0 as well. If you do not fix the template databases then any subsequently created databases will contain the same errors. template1 can be fixed in the same way as any other database, but fixing template0 requires additional steps. First, from any database issue:

UPDATE pg_database SET datallowconn = true WHERE datname = 'template0';

Next connect to template0 and perform the above repair procedures. Finally, do:

-- re-freeze template0:
VACUUM FREEZE;
-- and protect it against future alterations:
UPDATE pg_database SET datallowconn = false WHERE datname = 'template0';

E.195.2. Changes

Release 7.4.2 incorporates all the fixes included in release 7.3.6, plus the following fixes:

  • Fix pg_statistics alignment bug that could crash optimizer

    See above for details about this problem.

  • Allow non-super users to update pg_settings

  • Fix several optimizer bugs, most of which led to "variable not found in subplan target lists" errors

  • Avoid out-of-memory failure during startup of large multiple index scan

  • Fix multibyte problem that could lead to "out of memory" error during COPY IN

  • Fix problems with SELECT INTO / CREATE TABLE AS from tables without OIDs

  • Fix problems with alter_table regression test during parallel testing

  • Fix problems with hitting open file limit, especially on OS X (Tom)

  • Partial fix for Turkish-locale issues

    initdb will succeed now in Turkish locale, but there are still some inconveniences associated with the i/I problem.

  • Make pg_dump set client encoding on restore

  • Other minor pg_dump fixes

  • Allow ecpg to again use C keywords as column names (Michael)

  • Added ecpg WHENEVER NOT_FOUND to SELECT/INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE (Michael)

  • Fix ecpg crash for queries calling set-returning functions (Michael)

  • Various other ecpg fixes (Michael)

  • Fixes for Borland compiler

  • Thread build improvements (Bruce)

  • Various other build fixes

  • Various JDBC fixes

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Release 7.4.3 | Up | Release 7.4.1


Release 7.4.1

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E.196. Release 7.4.1

Release Date: 2003-12-22

This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.4. For information about new features in the 7.4 major release, see Section E.197.

E.196.1. Migration to Version 7.4.1

A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.4.

If you want to install the fixes in the information schema you need to reload it into the database. This is either accomplished by initializing a new cluster by running initdb, or by running the following sequence of SQL commands in each database (ideally including template1) as a superuser in psql, after installing the new release:

DROP SCHEMA information_schema CASCADE;
\i /usr/local/pgsql/share/information_schema.sql

Substitute your installation path in the second command.

E.196.2. Changes

  • Fixed bug in CREATE SCHEMA parsing in ECPG (Michael)

  • Fix compile error when --enable-thread-safety and --with-perl are used together (Peter)

  • Fix for subqueries that used hash joins (Tom)

    Certain subqueries that used hash joins would crash because of improperly shared structures.

  • Fix free space map compaction bug (Tom)

    This fixes a bug where compaction of the free space map could lead to a database server shutdown.

  • Fix for Borland compiler build of libpq (Bruce)

  • Fix netmask() and hostmask() to return the maximum-length masklen (Tom)

    Fix these functions to return values consistent with pre-7.4 releases.

  • Several contrib/pg_autovacuum fixes

    Fixes include improper variable initialization, missing vacuum after TRUNCATE, and duration computation overflow for long vacuums.

  • Allow compile of contrib/cube under Cygwin (Jason Tishler)

  • Fix Solaris use of password file when no passwords are defined (Tom)

    Fix crash on Solaris caused by use of any type of password authentication when no passwords were defined.

  • JDBC fix for thread problems, other fixes

  • Fix for bytea index lookups (Joe)

  • Fix information schema for bit data types (Peter)

  • Force zero_damaged_pages to be on during recovery from WAL

  • Prevent some obscure cases of "variable not in subplan target lists"

  • Make PQescapeBytea and byteaout consistent with each other (Joe)

  • Escape bytea output for bytes > 0x7e(Joe)

    If different client encodings are used for bytea output and input, it is possible for bytea values to be corrupted by the differing encodings. This fix escapes all bytes that might be affected.

  • Added missing SPI_finish() calls to dblink's get_tuple_of_interest() (Joe)

  • New Czech FAQ

  • Fix information schema view constraint_column_usage for foreign keys (Peter)

  • ECPG fixes (Michael)

  • Fix bug with multiple IN subqueries and joins in the subqueries (Tom)

  • Allow COUNT('x') to work (Tom)

  • Install ECPG include files for Informix compatibility into separate directory (Peter)

    Some names of ECPG include files for Informix compatibility conflicted with operating system include files. By installing them in their own directory, name conflicts have been reduced.

  • Fix SSL memory leak (Neil)

    This release fixes a bug in 7.4 where SSL didn't free all memory it allocated.

  • Prevent pg_service.conf from using service name as default dbname (Bruce)

  • Fix local ident authentication on FreeBSD (Tom)

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Release 7.4

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E.197. Release 7.4

Release Date: 2003-11-17

E.197.1. Overview

Major changes in this release:

IN / NOT IN subqueries are now much more efficient

In previous releases, IN/NOT IN subqueries were joined to the upper query by sequentially scanning the subquery looking for a match. The 7.4 code uses the same sophisticated techniques used by ordinary joins and so is much faster. An IN will now usually be as fast as or faster than an equivalent EXISTS subquery; this reverses the conventional wisdom that applied to previous releases.

Improved GROUP BY processing by using hash buckets

In previous releases, rows to be grouped had to be sorted first. The 7.4 code can do GROUP BY without sorting, by accumulating results into a hash table with one entry per group. It will still use the sort technique, however, if the hash table is estimated to be too large to fit in sort_mem.

New multikey hash join capability

In previous releases, hash joins could only occur on single keys. This release allows multicolumn hash joins.

Queries using the explicit JOIN syntax are now better optimized

Prior releases evaluated queries using the explicit JOIN syntax only in the order implied by the syntax. 7.4 allows full optimization of these queries, meaning the optimizer considers all possible join orderings and chooses the most efficient. Outer joins, however, must still follow the declared ordering.

Faster and more powerful regular expression code

The entire regular expression module has been replaced with a new version by Henry Spencer, originally written for Tcl. The code greatly improves performance and supports several flavors of regular expressions.

Function-inlining for simple SQL functions

Simple SQL functions can now be inlined by including their SQL in the main query. This improves performance by eliminating per-call overhead. That means simple SQL functions now behave like macros.

Full support for IPv6 connections and IPv6 address data types

Previous releases allowed only IPv4 connections, and the IP data types only supported IPv4 addresses. This release adds full IPv6 support in both of these areas.

Major improvements in SSL performance and reliability

Several people very familiar with the SSL API have overhauled our SSL code to improve SSL key negotiation and error recovery.

Make free space map efficiently reuse empty index pages, and other free space management improvements

In previous releases, B-tree index pages that were left empty because of deleted rows could only be reused by rows with index values similar to the rows originally indexed on that page. In 7.4, VACUUM records empty index pages and allows them to be reused for any future index rows.

SQL-standard information schema

The information schema provides a standardized and stable way to access information about the schema objects defined in a database.

Cursors conform more closely to the SQL standard

The commands FETCH and MOVE have been overhauled to conform more closely to the SQL standard.

Cursors can exist outside transactions

These cursors are also called holdable cursors.

New client-to-server protocol

The new protocol adds error codes, more status information, faster startup, better support for binary data transmission, parameter values separated from SQL commands, prepared statements available at the protocol level, and cleaner recovery from COPY failures. The older protocol is still supported by both server and clients.

libpq and ECPG applications are now fully thread-safe

While previous libpq releases already supported threads, this release improves thread safety by fixing some non-thread-safe code that was used during database connection startup. The configure option --enable-thread-safety must be used to enable this feature.

New version of full-text indexing

A new full-text indexing suite is available in contrib/tsearch2.

New autovacuum tool

The new autovacuum tool in contrib/autovacuum monitors the database statistics tables for INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE activity and automatically vacuums tables when needed.

Array handling has been improved and moved into the server core

Many array limitations have been removed, and arrays behave more like fully-supported data types.

E.197.2. Migration to Version 7.4

A dump/restore using pg_dump is required for those wishing to migrate data from any previous release.

Observe the following incompatibilities:

  • The server-side autocommit setting was removed and reimplemented in client applications and languages. Server-side autocommit was causing too many problems with languages and applications that wanted to control their own autocommit behavior, so autocommit was removed from the server and added to individual client APIs as appropriate.

  • Error message wording has changed substantially in this release. Significant effort was invested to make the messages more consistent and user-oriented. If your applications try to detect different error conditions by parsing the error message, you are strongly encouraged to use the new error code facility instead.

  • Inner joins using the explicit JOIN syntax might behave differently because they are now better optimized.

  • A number of server configuration parameters have been renamed for clarity, primarily those related to logging.

  • FETCH 0 or MOVE 0 now does nothing. In prior releases, FETCH 0 would fetch all remaining rows, and MOVE 0 would move to the end of the cursor.

  • FETCH and MOVE now return the actual number of rows fetched/moved, or zero if at the beginning/end of the cursor. Prior releases would return the row count passed to the command, not the number of rows actually fetched or moved.

  • COPY now can process files that use carriage-return or carriage-return/line-feed end-of-line sequences. Literal carriage-returns and line-feeds are no longer accepted in data values; use \r and \n instead.

  • Trailing spaces are now trimmed when converting from type char(n) to varchar(n) or text. This is what most people always expected to happen anyway.

  • The data type float(p) now measures p in binary digits, not decimal digits. The new behavior follows the SQL standard.

  • Ambiguous date values now must match the ordering specified by the datestyle setting. In prior releases, a date specification of 10/20/03 was interpreted as a date in October even if datestyle specified that the day should be first. 7.4 will throw an error if a date specification is invalid for the current setting of datestyle.

  • The functions oidrand, oidsrand, and userfntest have been removed. These functions were determined to be no longer useful.

  • String literals specifying time-varying date/time values, such as 'now' or 'today' will no longer work as expected in column default expressions; they now cause the time of the table creation to be the default, not the time of the insertion. Functions such as now(), current_timestamp, or current_date should be used instead.

    In previous releases, there was special code so that strings such as 'now' were interpreted at INSERT time and not at table creation time, but this work around didn't cover all cases. Release 7.4 now requires that defaults be defined properly using functions such as now() or current_timestamp. These will work in all situations.

  • The dollar sign ($) is no longer allowed in operator names. It can instead be a non-first character in identifiers. This was done to improve compatibility with other database systems, and to avoid syntax problems when parameter placeholders ($n) are written adjacent to operators.

E.197.3. Changes

Below you will find a detailed account of the changes between release 7.4 and the previous major release.

E.197.3.1. Server Operation Changes

  • Allow IPv6 server connections (Nigel Kukard, Johan Jordaan, Bruce, Tom, Kurt Roeckx, Andrew Dunstan)

  • Fix SSL to handle errors cleanly (Nathan Mueller)

    In prior releases, certain SSL API error reports were not handled correctly. This release fixes those problems.

  • SSL protocol security and performance improvements (Sean Chittenden)

    SSL key renegotiation was happening too frequently, causing poor SSL performance. Also, initial key handling was improved.

  • Print lock information when a deadlock is detected (Tom)

    This allows easier debugging of deadlock situations.

  • Update /tmp socket modification times regularly to avoid their removal (Tom)

    This should help prevent /tmp directory cleaner administration scripts from removing server socket files.

  • Enable PAM for Mac OS X (Aaron Hillegass)

  • Make B-tree indexes fully WAL-safe (Tom)

    In prior releases, under certain rare cases, a server crash could cause B-tree indexes to become corrupt. This release removes those last few rare cases.

  • Allow B-tree index compaction and empty page reuse (Tom)

  • Fix inconsistent index lookups during split of first root page (Tom)

    In prior releases, when a single-page index split into two pages, there was a brief period when another database session could miss seeing an index entry. This release fixes that rare failure case.

  • Improve free space map allocation logic (Tom)

  • Preserve free space information between server restarts (Tom)

    In prior releases, the free space map was not saved when the postmaster was stopped, so newly started servers had no free space information. This release saves the free space map, and reloads it when the server is restarted.

  • Add start time to pg_stat_activity (Neil)

  • New code to detect corrupt disk pages; erase with zero_damaged_pages (Tom)

  • New client/server protocol: faster, no username length limit, allow clean exit from COPY (Tom)

  • Add transaction status, table ID, column ID to client/server protocol (Tom)

  • Add binary I/O to client/server protocol (Tom)

  • Remove autocommit server setting; move to client applications (Tom)

  • New error message wording, error codes, and three levels of error detail (Tom, Joe, Peter)

E.197.3.2. Performance Improvements

  • Add hashing for GROUP BY aggregates (Tom)

  • Make nested-loop joins be smarter about multicolumn indexes (Tom)

  • Allow multikey hash joins (Tom)

  • Improve constant folding (Tom)

  • Add ability to inline simple SQL functions (Tom)

  • Reduce memory usage for queries using complex functions (Tom)

    In prior releases, functions returning allocated memory would not free it until the query completed. This release allows the freeing of function-allocated memory when the function call completes, reducing the total memory used by functions.

  • Improve GEQO optimizer performance (Tom)

    This release fixes several inefficiencies in the way the GEQO optimizer manages potential query paths.

  • Allow IN/NOT IN to be handled via hash tables (Tom)

  • Improve NOT IN (subquery) performance (Tom)

  • Allow most IN subqueries to be processed as joins (Tom)

  • Pattern matching operations can use indexes regardless of locale (Peter)

    There is no way for non-ASCII locales to use the standard indexes for LIKE comparisons. This release adds a way to create a special index for LIKE.

  • Allow the postmaster to preload libraries using preload_libraries (Joe)

    For shared libraries that require a long time to load, this option is available so the library can be preloaded in the postmaster and inherited by all database sessions.

  • Improve optimizer cost computations, particularly for subqueries (Tom)

  • Avoid sort when subquery ORDER BY matches upper query (Tom)

  • Deduce that WHERE a.x = b.y AND b.y = 42 also means a.x = 42 (Tom)

  • Allow hash/merge joins on complex joins (Tom)

  • Allow hash joins for more data types (Tom)

  • Allow join optimization of explicit inner joins, disable with join_collapse_limit (Tom)

  • Add parameter from_collapse_limit to control conversion of subqueries to joins (Tom)

  • Use faster and more powerful regular expression code from Tcl (Henry Spencer, Tom)

  • Use bit-mapped relation sets in the optimizer (Tom)

  • Improve connection startup time (Tom)

    The new client/server protocol requires fewer network packets to start a database session.

  • Improve trigger/constraint performance (Stephan)

  • Improve speed of col IN (const, const, const, ...) (Tom)

  • Fix hash indexes which were broken in rare cases (Tom)

  • Improve hash index concurrency and speed (Tom)

    Prior releases suffered from poor hash index performance, particularly for high concurrency situations. This release fixes that, and the development group is interested in reports comparing B-tree and hash index performance.

  • Align shared buffers on 32-byte boundary for copy speed improvement (Manfred Spraul)

    Certain CPU's perform faster data copies when addresses are 32-byte aligned.

  • Data type numeric reimplemented for better performance (Tom)

    numeric used to be stored in base 100. The new code uses base 10000, for significantly better performance.

E.197.3.3. Server Configuration Changes

  • Rename server parameter server_min_messages to log_min_messages (Bruce)

    This was done so most parameters that control the server logs begin with log_.

  • Rename show_*_stats to log_*_stats (Bruce)

  • Rename show_source_port to log_source_port (Bruce)

  • Rename hostname_lookup to log_hostname (Bruce)

  • Add checkpoint_warning to warn of excessive checkpointing (Bruce)

    In prior releases, it was difficult to determine if checkpoint was happening too frequently. This feature adds a warning to the server logs when excessive checkpointing happens.

  • New read-only server parameters for localization (Tom)

  • Change debug server log messages to output as DEBUG rather than LOG (Bruce)

  • Prevent server log variables from being turned off by non-superusers (Bruce)

    This is a security feature so non-superusers cannot disable logging that was enabled by the administrator.

  • log_min_messages/client_min_messages now controls debug_* output (Bruce)

    This centralizes client debug information so all debug output can be sent to either the client or server logs.

  • Add Mac OS X Rendezvous server support (Chris Campbell)

    This allows Mac OS X hosts to query the network for available PostgreSQL servers.

  • Add ability to print only slow statements using log_min_duration_statement (Christopher)

    This is an often requested debugging feature that allows administrators to see only slow queries in their server logs.

  • Allow pg_hba.conf to accept netmasks in CIDR format (Andrew Dunstan)

    This allows administrators to merge the host IP address and netmask fields into a single CIDR field in pg_hba.conf.

  • New read-only parameter is_superuser (Tom)

  • New parameter log_error_verbosity to control error detail (Tom)

    This works with the new error reporting feature to supply additional error information like hints, file names and line numbers.

  • postgres --describe-config now dumps server config variables (Aizaz Ahmed, Peter)

    This option is useful for administration tools that need to know the configuration variable names and their minimums, maximums, defaults, and descriptions.

  • Add new columns in pg_settings: context, type, source, min_val, max_val (Joe)

  • Make default shared_buffers 1000 and max_connections 100, if possible (Tom)

    Prior versions defaulted to 64 shared buffers so PostgreSQL would start on even very old systems. This release tests the amount of shared memory allowed by the platform and selects more reasonable default values if possible. Of course, users are still encouraged to evaluate their resource load and size shared_buffers accordingly.

  • New pg_hba.conf record type hostnossl to prevent SSL connections (Jon Jensen)

    In prior releases, there was no way to prevent SSL connections if both the client and server supported SSL. This option allows that capability.

  • Remove parameter geqo_random_seed (Tom)

  • Add server parameter regex_flavor to control regular expression processing (Tom)

  • Make pg_ctl better handle nonstandard ports (Greg)

E.197.3.4. Query Changes

  • New SQL-standard information schema (Peter)

  • Add read-only transactions (Peter)

  • Print key name and value in foreign-key violation messages (Dmitry Tkach)

  • Allow users to see their own queries in pg_stat_activity (Kevin Brown)

    In prior releases, only the superuser could see query strings using pg_stat_activity. Now ordinary users can see their own query strings.

  • Fix aggregates in subqueries to match SQL standard (Tom)

    The SQL standard says that an aggregate function appearing within a nested subquery belongs to the outer query if its argument contains only outer-query variables. Prior PostgreSQL releases did not handle this fine point correctly.

  • Add option to prevent auto-addition of tables referenced in query (Nigel J. Andrews)

    By default, tables mentioned in the query are automatically added to the FROM clause if they are not already there. This is compatible with historic POSTGRES behavior but is contrary to the SQL standard. This option allows selecting standard-compatible behavior.

  • Allow UPDATE ... SET col = DEFAULT (Rod)

    This allows UPDATE to set a column to its declared default value.

  • Allow expressions to be used in LIMIT/OFFSET (Tom)

    In prior releases, LIMIT/OFFSET could only use constants, not expressions.

  • Implement CREATE TABLE AS EXECUTE (Neil, Peter)

E.197.3.5. Object Manipulation Changes

  • Make CREATE SEQUENCE grammar more conforming to SQL:2003 (Neil)

  • Add statement-level triggers (Neil)

    While this allows a trigger to fire at the end of a statement, it does not allow the trigger to access all rows modified by the statement. This capability is planned for a future release.

  • Add check constraints for domains (Rod)

    This greatly increases the usefulness of domains by allowing them to use check constraints.

  • Add ALTER DOMAIN (Rod)

    This allows manipulation of existing domains.

  • Fix several zero-column table bugs (Tom)

    PostgreSQL supports zero-column tables. This fixes various bugs that occur when using such tables.

  • Have ALTER TABLE ... ADD PRIMARY KEY add not-null constraint (Rod)

    In prior releases, ALTER TABLE ... ADD PRIMARY would add a unique index, but not a not-null constraint. That is fixed in this release.

  • Add ALTER TABLE ... WITHOUT OIDS (Rod)

    This allows control over whether new and updated rows will have an OID column. This is most useful for saving storage space.

  • Add ALTER SEQUENCE to modify minimum, maximum, increment, cache, cycle values (Rod)

  • Add ALTER TABLE ... CLUSTER ON (Alvaro Herrera)

    This command is used by pg_dump to record the cluster column for each table previously clustered. This information is used by database-wide cluster to cluster all previously clustered tables.

  • Improve automatic type casting for domains (Rod, Tom)

  • Allow dollar signs in identifiers, except as first character (Tom)

  • Disallow dollar signs in operator names, so x=$1 works (Tom)

  • Allow copying table schema using LIKE subtable, also SQL:2003 feature INCLUDING DEFAULTS (Rod)

  • Add WITH GRANT OPTION clause to GRANT (Peter)

    This enabled GRANT to give other users the ability to grant privileges on an object.

E.197.3.6. Utility Command Changes

  • Add ON COMMIT clause to CREATE TABLE for temporary tables (Gavin)

    This adds the ability for a table to be dropped or all rows deleted on transaction commit.

  • Allow cursors outside transactions using WITH HOLD (Neil)

    In previous releases, cursors were removed at the end of the transaction that created them. Cursors can now be created with the WITH HOLD option, which allows them to continue to be accessed after the creating transaction has committed.

  • FETCH 0 and MOVE 0 now do nothing (Bruce)

    In previous releases, FETCH 0 fetched all remaining rows, and MOVE 0 moved to the end of the cursor.

  • Cause FETCH and MOVE to return the number of rows fetched/moved, or zero if at the beginning/end of cursor, per SQL standard (Bruce)

    In prior releases, the row count returned by FETCH and MOVE did not accurately reflect the number of rows processed.

  • Properly handle SCROLL with cursors, or report an error (Neil)

    Allowing random access (both forward and backward scrolling) to some kinds of queries cannot be done without some additional work. If SCROLL is specified when the cursor is created, this additional work will be performed. Furthermore, if the cursor has been created with NO SCROLL, no random access is allowed.

  • Implement SQL-compatible options FIRST, LAST, ABSOLUTE n, RELATIVE n for FETCH and MOVE (Tom)

  • Allow EXPLAIN on DECLARE CURSOR (Tom)

  • Allow CLUSTER to use index marked as pre-clustered by default (Alvaro Herrera)

  • Allow CLUSTER to cluster all tables (Alvaro Herrera)

    This allows all previously clustered tables in a database to be reclustered with a single command.

  • Prevent CLUSTER on partial indexes (Tom)

  • Allow DOS and Mac line-endings in COPY files (Bruce)

  • Disallow literal carriage return as a data value, backslash-carriage-return and \r are still allowed (Bruce)

  • COPY changes (binary, \.) (Tom)

  • Recover from COPY failure cleanly (Tom)

  • Prevent possible memory leaks in COPY (Tom)

  • Make TRUNCATE transaction-safe (Rod)

    TRUNCATE can now be used inside a transaction. If the transaction aborts, the changes made by the TRUNCATE are automatically rolled back.

  • Allow prepare/bind of utility commands like FETCH and EXPLAIN (Tom)

  • Add EXPLAIN EXECUTE (Neil)

  • Improve VACUUM performance on indexes by reducing WAL traffic (Tom)

  • Functional indexes have been generalized into indexes on expressions (Tom)

    In prior releases, functional indexes only supported a simple function applied to one or more column names. This release allows any type of scalar expression.

  • Have SHOW TRANSACTION ISOLATION match input to SET TRANSACTION ISOLATION (Tom)

  • Have COMMENT ON DATABASE on nonlocal database generate a warning, rather than an error (Rod)

    Database comments are stored in database-local tables so comments on a database have to be stored in each database.

  • Improve reliability of LISTEN/NOTIFY (Tom)

  • Allow REINDEX to reliably reindex nonshared system catalog indexes (Tom)

    This allows system tables to be reindexed without the requirement of a standalone session, which was necessary in previous releases. The only tables that now require a standalone session for reindexing are the global system tables pg_database, pg_shadow, and pg_group.

E.197.3.7. Data Type and Function Changes

  • New server parameter extra_float_digits to control precision display of floating-point numbers (Pedro Ferreira, Tom)

    This controls output precision which was causing regression testing problems.

  • Allow +1300 as a numeric time-zone specifier, for FJST (Tom)

  • Remove rarely used functions oidrand, oidsrand, and userfntest functions (Neil)

  • Add md5() function to main server, already in contrib/pgcrypto (Joe)

    An MD5 function was frequently requested. For more complex encryption capabilities, use contrib/pgcrypto.

  • Increase date range of timestamp (John Cochran)

  • Change EXTRACT(EPOCH FROM timestamp) so timestamp without time zone is assumed to be in local time, not GMT (Tom)

  • Trap division by zero in case the operating system doesn't prevent it (Tom)

  • Change the numeric data type internally to base 10000 (Tom)

  • New hostmask() function (Greg Wickham)

  • Fixes for to_char() and to_timestamp() (Karel)

  • Allow functions that can take any argument data type and return any data type, using anyelement and anyarray (Joe)

    This allows the creation of functions that can work with any data type.

  • Arrays can now be specified as ARRAY[1,2,3], ARRAY[['a','b'],['c','d']], or ARRAY[ARRAY[ARRAY[2]]] (Joe)

  • Allow proper comparisons for arrays, including ORDER BY and DISTINCT support (Joe)

  • Allow indexes on array columns (Joe)

  • Allow array concatenation with || (Joe)

  • Allow WHERE qualification expr op ANY/SOME/ALL (array_expr) (Joe)

    This allows arrays to behave like a list of values, for purposes like SELECT * FROM tab WHERE col IN (array_val).

  • New array functions array_append, array_cat, array_lower, array_prepend, array_to_string, array_upper, string_to_array (Joe)

  • Allow user defined aggregates to use polymorphic functions (Joe)

  • Allow assignments to empty arrays (Joe)

  • Allow 60 in seconds fields of time, timestamp, and interval input values (Tom)

    Sixty-second values are needed for leap seconds.

  • Allow cidr data type to be cast to text (Tom)

  • Disallow invalid time zone names in SET TIMEZONE

  • Trim trailing spaces when char is cast to varchar or text (Tom)

  • Make float(p) measure the precision p in binary digits, not decimal digits (Tom)

  • Add IPv6 support to the inet and cidr data types (Michael Graff)

  • Add family() function to report whether address is IPv4 or IPv6 (Michael Graff)

  • Have SHOW datestyle generate output similar to that used by SET datestyle (Tom)

  • Make EXTRACT(TIMEZONE) and SET/SHOW TIME ZONE follow the SQL convention for the sign of time zone offsets, i.e., positive is east from UTC (Tom)

  • Fix date_trunc('quarter', ...) (Böjthe Zoltán)

    Prior releases returned an incorrect value for this function call.

  • Make initcap() more compatible with Oracle (Mike Nolan)

    initcap() now uppercases a letter appearing after any non-alphanumeric character, rather than only after whitespace.

  • Allow only datestyle field order for date values not in ISO-8601 format (Greg)

  • Add new datestyle values MDY, DMY, and YMD to set input field order; honor US and European for backward compatibility (Tom)

  • String literals like 'now' or 'today' will no longer work as a column default. Use functions such as now(), current_timestamp instead. (change required for prepared statements) (Tom)

  • Treat NaN as larger than any other value in min()/max() (Tom)

    NaN was already sorted after ordinary numeric values for most purposes, but min() and max() didn't get this right.

  • Prevent interval from suppressing :00 seconds display

  • New functions pg_get_triggerdef(prettyprint) and pg_conversion_is_visible() (Christopher)

  • Allow time to be specified as 040506 or 0405 (Tom)

  • Input date order must now be YYYY-MM-DD (with 4-digit year) or match datestyle

  • Make pg_get_constraintdef support unique, primary-key, and check constraints (Christopher)

E.197.3.8. Server-Side Language Changes

  • Prevent PL/pgSQL crash when RETURN NEXT is used on a zero-row record variable (Tom)

  • Make PL/Python's spi_execute interface handle null values properly (Andrew Bosma)

  • Allow PL/pgSQL to declare variables of composite types without %ROWTYPE (Tom)

  • Fix PL/Python's _quote() function to handle big integers

  • Make PL/Python an untrusted language, now called plpythonu (Kevin Jacobs, Tom)

    The Python language no longer supports a restricted execution environment, so the trusted version of PL/Python was removed. If this situation changes, a version of PL/Python that can be used by non-superusers will be readded.

  • Allow polymorphic PL/pgSQL functions (Joe, Tom)

  • Allow polymorphic SQL functions (Joe)

  • Improved compiled function caching mechanism in PL/pgSQL with full support for polymorphism (Joe)

  • Add new parameter $0 in PL/pgSQL representing the function's actual return type (Joe)

  • Allow PL/Tcl and PL/Python to use the same trigger on multiple tables (Tom)

  • Fixed PL/Tcl's spi_prepare to accept fully qualified type names in the parameter type list (Jan)

E.197.3.9. psql Changes

  • Add \pset pager always to always use pager (Greg)

    This forces the pager to be used even if the number of rows is less than the screen height. This is valuable for rows that wrap across several screen rows.

  • Improve tab completion (Rod, Ross Reedstrom, Ian Barwick)

  • Reorder \? help into groupings (Harald Armin Massa, Bruce)

  • Add backslash commands for listing schemas, casts, and conversions (Christopher)

  • \encoding now changes based on the server parameter client_encoding (Tom)

    In previous versions, \encoding was not aware of encoding changes made using SET client_encoding.

  • Save editor buffer into readline history (Ross)

    When \e is used to edit a query, the result is saved in the readline history for retrieval using the up arrow.

  • Improve \d display (Christopher)

  • Enhance HTML mode to be more standards-conforming (Greg)

  • New \set AUTOCOMMIT off capability (Tom)

    This takes the place of the removed server parameter autocommit.

  • New \set VERBOSITY to control error detail (Tom)

    This controls the new error reporting details.

  • New prompt escape sequence %x to show transaction status (Tom)

  • Long options for psql are now available on all platforms

E.197.3.10. pg_dump Changes

  • Multiple pg_dump fixes, including tar format and large objects

  • Allow pg_dump to dump specific schemas (Neil)

  • Make pg_dump preserve column storage characteristics (Christopher)

    This preserves ALTER TABLE ... SET STORAGE information.

  • Make pg_dump preserve CLUSTER characteristics (Christopher)

  • Have pg_dumpall use GRANT/REVOKE to dump database-level privileges (Tom)

  • Allow pg_dumpall to support the options -a, -s, -x of pg_dump (Tom)

  • Prevent pg_dump from lowercasing identifiers specified on the command line (Tom)

  • pg_dump options --use-set-session-authorization and --no-reconnect now do nothing, all dumps use SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION

    pg_dump no longer reconnects to switch users, but instead always uses SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION. This will reduce password prompting during restores.

  • Long options for pg_dump are now available on all platforms

    PostgreSQL now includes its own long-option processing routines.

E.197.3.11. libpq Changes

  • Add function PQfreemem for freeing memory on Windows, suggested for NOTIFY (Bruce)

    Windows requires that memory allocated in a library be freed by a function in the same library, hence free() doesn't work for freeing memory allocated by libpq. PQfreemem is the proper way to free libpq memory, especially on Windows, and is recommended for other platforms as well.

  • Document service capability, and add sample file (Bruce)

    This allows clients to look up connection information in a central file on the client machine.

  • Make PQsetdbLogin have the same defaults as PQconnectdb (Tom)

  • Allow libpq to cleanly fail when result sets are too large (Tom)

  • Improve performance of function PQunescapeBytea (Ben Lamb)

  • Allow thread-safe libpq with configure option --enable-thread-safety (Lee Kindness, Philip Yarra)

  • Allow function pqInternalNotice to accept a format string and arguments instead of just a preformatted message (Tom, Sean Chittenden)

  • Control SSL negotiation with sslmode values disable, allow, prefer, and require (Jon Jensen)

  • Allow new error codes and levels of text (Tom)

  • Allow access to the underlying table and column of a query result (Tom)

    This is helpful for query-builder applications that want to know the underlying table and column names associated with a specific result set.

  • Allow access to the current transaction status (Tom)

  • Add ability to pass binary data directly to the server (Tom)

  • Add function PQexecPrepared and PQsendQueryPrepared functions which perform bind/execute of previously prepared statements (Tom)

E.197.3.12. JDBC Changes

  • Allow setNull on updateable result sets

  • Allow executeBatch on a prepared statement (Barry)

  • Support SSL connections (Barry)

  • Handle schema names in result sets (Paul Sorenson)

  • Add refcursor support (Nic Ferrier)

E.197.3.13. Miscellaneous Interface Changes

  • Prevent possible memory leak or core dump during libpgtcl shutdown (Tom)

  • Add Informix compatibility to ECPG (Michael)

    This allows ECPG to process embedded C programs that were written using certain Informix extensions.

  • Add type decimal to ECPG that is fixed length, for Informix (Michael)

  • Allow thread-safe embedded SQL programs with configure option --enable-thread-safety (Lee Kindness, Bruce)

    This allows multiple threads to access the database at the same time.

  • Moved Python client PyGreSQL to http://www.pygresql.org (Marc)

E.197.3.14. Source Code Changes

  • Prevent need for separate platform geometry regression result files (Tom)

  • Improved PPC locking primitive (Reinhard Max)

  • New function palloc0 to allocate and clear memory (Bruce)

  • Fix locking code for s390x CPU (64-bit) (Tom)

  • Allow OpenBSD to use local ident credentials (William Ahern)

  • Make query plan trees read-only to executor (Tom)

  • Add Darwin startup scripts (David Wheeler)

  • Allow libpq to compile with Borland C++ compiler (Lester Godwin, Karl Waclawek)

  • Use our own version of getopt_long() if needed (Peter)

  • Convert administration scripts to C (Peter)

  • Bison >= 1.85 is now required to build the PostgreSQL grammar, if building from CVS

  • Merge documentation into one book (Peter)

  • Add Windows compatibility functions (Bruce)

  • Allow client interfaces to compile under MinGW (Bruce)

  • New ereport() function for error reporting (Tom)

  • Support Intel compiler on Linux (Peter)

  • Improve Linux startup scripts (Slawomir Sudnik, Darko Prenosil)

  • Add support for AMD Opteron and Itanium (Jeffrey W. Baker, Bruce)

  • Remove --enable-recode option from configure

    This was no longer needed now that we have CREATE CONVERSION.

  • Generate a compile error if spinlock code is not found (Bruce)

    Platforms without spinlock code will now fail to compile, rather than silently using semaphores. This failure can be disabled with a new configure option.

E.197.3.15. Contrib Changes

  • Change dbmirror license to BSD

  • Improve earthdistance (Bruno Wolff III)

  • Portability improvements to pgcrypto (Marko Kreen)

  • Prevent crash in xml (John Gray, Michael Richards)

  • Update oracle

  • Update mysql

  • Update cube (Bruno Wolff III)

  • Update earthdistance to use cube (Bruno Wolff III)

  • Update btree_gist (Oleg)

  • New tsearch2 full-text search module (Oleg, Teodor)

  • Add hash-based crosstab function to tablefuncs (Joe)

  • Add serial column to order connectby() siblings in tablefuncs (Nabil Sayegh,Joe)

  • Add named persistent connections to dblink (Shridhar Daithanka)

  • New pg_autovacuum allows automatic VACUUM (Matthew T. O'Connor)

  • Make pgbench honor environment variables PGHOST, PGPORT, PGUSER (Tatsuo)

  • Improve intarray (Teodor Sigaev)

  • Improve pgstattuple (Rod)

  • Fix bug in metaphone() in fuzzystrmatch

  • Improve adddepend (Rod)

  • Update spi/timetravel (Böjthe Zoltán)

  • Fix dbase -s option and improve non-ASCII handling (Thomas Behr, Márcio Smiderle)

  • Remove array module because features now included by default (Joe)

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Release 7.3.21

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E.198. Release 7.3.21

Release Date: 2008-01-07

This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.3.20, including fixes for significant security issues.

This is expected to be the last PostgreSQL release in the 7.3.X series. Users are encouraged to update to a newer release branch soon.

E.198.1. Migration to Version 7.3.21

A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.3.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 7.3.13, see Section E.206.

E.198.2. Changes

  • Prevent functions in indexes from executing with the privileges of the user running VACUUM, ANALYZE, etc (Tom)

    Functions used in index expressions and partial-index predicates are evaluated whenever a new table entry is made. It has long been understood that this poses a risk of trojan-horse code execution if one modifies a table owned by an untrustworthy user. (Note that triggers, defaults, check constraints, etc. pose the same type of risk.) But functions in indexes pose extra danger because they will be executed by routine maintenance operations such as VACUUM FULL, which are commonly performed automatically under a superuser account. For example, a nefarious user can execute code with superuser privileges by setting up a trojan-horse index definition and waiting for the next routine vacuum. The fix arranges for standard maintenance operations (including VACUUM, ANALYZE, REINDEX, and CLUSTER) to execute as the table owner rather than the calling user, using the same privilege-switching mechanism already used for SECURITY DEFINER functions. To prevent bypassing this security measure, execution of SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION and SET ROLE is now forbidden within a SECURITY DEFINER context. (CVE-2007-6600)

  • Require non-superusers who use /contrib/dblink to use only password authentication, as a security measure (Joe)

    The fix that appeared for this in 7.3.20 was incomplete, as it plugged the hole for only some dblink functions. (CVE-2007-6601, CVE-2007-3278)

  • Fix potential crash in translate() when using a multibyte database encoding (Tom)

  • Make contrib/tablefunc's crosstab() handle NULL rowid as a category in its own right, rather than crashing (Joe)

  • Require a specific version of Autoconf to be used when re-generating the configure script (Peter)

    This affects developers and packagers only. The change was made to prevent accidental use of untested combinations of Autoconf and PostgreSQL versions. You can remove the version check if you really want to use a different Autoconf version, but it's your responsibility whether the result works or not.

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Release 7.3.20

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E.199. Release 7.3.20

Release Date: 2007-09-17

This release contains fixes from 7.3.19.

E.199.1. Migration to Version 7.3.20

A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.3.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 7.3.13, see Section E.206.

E.199.2. Changes

  • Prevent index corruption when a transaction inserts rows and then aborts close to the end of a concurrent VACUUM on the same table (Tom)

  • Make CREATE DOMAIN ... DEFAULT NULL work properly (Tom)

  • Fix crash when log_min_error_statement logging runs out of memory (Tom)

  • Require non-superusers who use /contrib/dblink to use only password authentication, as a security measure (Joe)

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Release 7.3.19

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E.200. Release 7.3.19

Release Date: 2007-04-23

This release contains fixes from 7.3.18, including a security fix.

E.200.1. Migration to Version 7.3.19

A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.3.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 7.3.13, see Section E.206.

E.200.2. Changes

  • Support explicit placement of the temporary-table schema within search_path, and disable searching it for functions and operators (Tom)

    This is needed to allow a security-definer function to set a truly secure value of search_path. Without it, an unprivileged SQL user can use temporary objects to execute code with the privileges of the security-definer function (CVE-2007-2138). See CREATE FUNCTION for more information.

  • Fix potential-data-corruption bug in how VACUUM FULL handles UPDATE chains (Tom, Pavan Deolasee)

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Release 7.3.18

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E.201. Release 7.3.18

Release Date: 2007-02-05

This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.3.17, including a security fix.

E.201.1. Migration to Version 7.3.18

A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.3.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 7.3.13, see Section E.206.

E.201.2. Changes

  • Remove security vulnerability that allowed connected users to read backend memory (Tom)

    The vulnerability involves changing the data type of a table column used in a SQL function (CVE-2007-0555). This error can easily be exploited to cause a backend crash, and in principle might be used to read database content that the user should not be able to access.

  • Fix rare bug wherein btree index page splits could fail due to choosing an infeasible split point (Heikki Linnakangas)

  • Tighten security of multi-byte character processing for UTF8 sequences over three bytes long (Tom)

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Release 7.3.17

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E.202. Release 7.3.17

Release Date: 2007-01-08

This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.3.16.

E.202.1. Migration to Version 7.3.17

A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.3.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 7.3.13, see Section E.206.

E.202.2. Changes

  • to_number() and to_char(numeric) are now STABLE, not IMMUTABLE, for new initdb installs (Tom)

    This is because lc_numeric can potentially change the output of these functions.

  • Improve index usage of regular expressions that use parentheses (Tom)

    This improves psql \d performance also.

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Release 7.3.16

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E.203. Release 7.3.16

Release Date: 2006-10-16

This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.3.15.

E.203.1. Migration to Version 7.3.16

A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.3.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 7.3.13, see Section E.206.

E.203.2. Changes

  • Fix corner cases in pattern matching for psql's \d commands

  • Fix index-corrupting bugs in /contrib/ltree (Teodor)

  • Back-port 7.4 spinlock code to improve performance and support 64-bit architectures better

  • Fix SSL-related memory leak in libpq

  • Fix backslash escaping in /contrib/dbmirror

  • Adjust regression tests for recent changes in US DST laws

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Release 7.3.15

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E.204. Release 7.3.15

Release Date: 2006-05-23

This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.3.14, including patches for extremely serious security issues.

E.204.1. Migration to Version 7.3.15

A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.3.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 7.3.13, see Section E.206.

Full security against the SQL-injection attacks described in CVE-2006-2313 and CVE-2006-2314 might require changes in application code. If you have applications that embed untrustworthy strings into SQL commands, you should examine them as soon as possible to ensure that they are using recommended escaping techniques. In most cases, applications should be using subroutines provided by libraries or drivers (such as libpq's PQescapeStringConn()) to perform string escaping, rather than relying on ad hoc code to do it.

E.204.2. Changes

  • Change the server to reject invalidly-encoded multibyte characters in all cases (Tatsuo, Tom)

    While PostgreSQL has been moving in this direction for some time, the checks are now applied uniformly to all encodings and all textual input, and are now always errors not merely warnings. This change defends against SQL-injection attacks of the type described in CVE-2006-2313.

  • Reject unsafe uses of \' in string literals

    As a server-side defense against SQL-injection attacks of the type described in CVE-2006-2314, the server now only accepts '' and not \' as a representation of ASCII single quote in SQL string literals. By default, \' is rejected only when client_encoding is set to a client-only encoding (SJIS, BIG5, GBK, GB18030, or UHC), which is the scenario in which SQL injection is possible. A new configuration parameter backslash_quote is available to adjust this behavior when needed. Note that full security against CVE-2006-2314 might require client-side changes; the purpose of backslash_quote is in part to make it obvious that insecure clients are insecure.

  • Modify libpq's string-escaping routines to be aware of encoding considerations

    This fixes libpq-using applications for the security issues described in CVE-2006-2313 and CVE-2006-2314. Applications that use multiple PostgreSQL connections concurrently should migrate to PQescapeStringConn() and PQescapeByteaConn() to ensure that escaping is done correctly for the settings in use in each database connection. Applications that do string escaping "by hand" should be modified to rely on library routines instead.

  • Fix some incorrect encoding conversion functions

    win1251_to_iso, alt_to_iso, euc_tw_to_big5, euc_tw_to_mic, mic_to_euc_tw were all broken to varying extents.

  • Clean up stray remaining uses of \' in strings (Bruce, Jan)

  • Fix server to use custom DH SSL parameters correctly (Michael Fuhr)

  • Fix various minor memory leaks

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Release 7.3.14

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E.205. Release 7.3.14

Release Date: 2006-02-14

This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.3.13.

E.205.1. Migration to Version 7.3.14

A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.3.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 7.3.13, see Section E.206.

E.205.2. Changes

  • Fix potential crash in SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION (CVE-2006-0553)

    An unprivileged user could crash the server process, resulting in momentary denial of service to other users, if the server has been compiled with Asserts enabled (which is not the default). Thanks to Akio Ishida for reporting this problem.

  • Fix bug with row visibility logic in self-inserted rows (Tom)

    Under rare circumstances a row inserted by the current command could be seen as already valid, when it should not be. Repairs bug created in 7.3.11 release.

  • Fix race condition that could lead to "file already exists" errors during pg_clog file creation (Tom)

  • Fix to allow restoring dumps that have cross-schema references to custom operators (Tom)

  • Portability fix for testing presence of finite and isinf during configure (Tom)

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Release 7.3.13

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E.206. Release 7.3.13

Release Date: 2006-01-09

This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.3.12.

E.206.1. Migration to Version 7.3.13

A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.3.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 7.3.10, see Section E.209. Also, you might need to REINDEX indexes on textual columns after updating, if you are affected by the locale or plperl issues described below.

E.206.2. Changes

  • Fix character string comparison for locales that consider different character combinations as equal, such as Hungarian (Tom)

    This might require REINDEX to fix existing indexes on textual columns.

  • Set locale environment variables during postmaster startup to ensure that plperl won't change the locale later

    This fixes a problem that occurred if the postmaster was started with environment variables specifying a different locale than what initdb had been told. Under these conditions, any use of plperl was likely to lead to corrupt indexes. You might need REINDEX to fix existing indexes on textual columns if this has happened to you.

  • Fix longstanding bug in strpos() and regular expression handling in certain rarely used Asian multi-byte character sets (Tatsuo)

  • Fix bug in /contrib/pgcrypto gen_salt, which caused it not to use all available salt space for MD5 and XDES algorithms (Marko Kreen, Solar Designer)

    Salts for Blowfish and standard DES are unaffected.

  • Fix /contrib/dblink to throw an error, rather than crashing, when the number of columns specified is different from what's actually returned by the query (Joe)

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Release 7.3.12

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E.207. Release 7.3.12

Release Date: 2005-12-12

This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.3.11.

E.207.1. Migration to Version 7.3.12

A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.3.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 7.3.10, see Section E.209.

E.207.2. Changes

  • Fix race condition in transaction log management

    There was a narrow window in which an I/O operation could be initiated for the wrong page, leading to an Assert failure or data corruption.

  • /contrib/ltree fixes (Teodor)

  • Fix longstanding planning error for outer joins

    This bug sometimes caused a bogus error "RIGHT JOIN is only supported with merge-joinable join conditions".

  • Prevent core dump in pg_autovacuum when a table has been dropped

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Release 7.3.11

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E.208. Release 7.3.11

Release Date: 2005-10-04

This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.3.10.

E.208.1. Migration to Version 7.3.11

A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.3.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 7.3.10, see Section E.209.

E.208.2. Changes

  • Fix error that allowed VACUUM to remove ctid chains too soon, and add more checking in code that follows ctid links

    This fixes a long-standing problem that could cause crashes in very rare circumstances.

  • Fix CHAR() to properly pad spaces to the specified length when using a multiple-byte character set (Yoshiyuki Asaba)

    In prior releases, the padding of CHAR() was incorrect because it only padded to the specified number of bytes without considering how many characters were stored.

  • Fix missing rows in queries like UPDATE a=... WHERE a... with GiST index on column a

  • Improve checking for partially-written WAL pages

  • Improve robustness of signal handling when SSL is enabled

  • Various memory leakage fixes

  • Various portability improvements

  • Fix PL/pgSQL to handle var := var correctly when the variable is of pass-by-reference type

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Release 7.3.10

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E.209. Release 7.3.10

Release Date: 2005-05-09

This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.3.9, including several security-related issues.

E.209.1. Migration to Version 7.3.10

A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.3.X. However, it is one possible way of handling a significant security problem that has been found in the initial contents of 7.3.X system catalogs. A dump/initdb/reload sequence using 7.3.10's initdb will automatically correct this problem.

The security problem is that the built-in character set encoding conversion functions can be invoked from SQL commands by unprivileged users, but the functions were not designed for such use and are not secure against malicious choices of arguments. The fix involves changing the declared parameter list of these functions so that they can no longer be invoked from SQL commands. (This does not affect their normal use by the encoding conversion machinery.) It is strongly recommended that all installations repair this error, either by initdb or by following the manual repair procedure given below. The error at least allows unprivileged database users to crash their server process, and might allow unprivileged users to gain the privileges of a database superuser.

If you wish not to do an initdb, perform the following procedure instead. As the database superuser, do:

BEGIN;
UPDATE pg_proc SET proargtypes[3] = 'internal'::regtype
WHERE pronamespace = 11 AND pronargs = 5
     AND proargtypes[2] = 'cstring'::regtype;
-- The command should report having updated 90 rows;
-- if not, rollback and investigate instead of committing!
COMMIT;

The above procedure must be carried out in each database of an installation, including template1, and ideally including template0 as well. If you do not fix the template databases then any subsequently created databases will contain the same error. template1 can be fixed in the same way as any other database, but fixing template0 requires additional steps. First, from any database issue:

UPDATE pg_database SET datallowconn = true WHERE datname = 'template0';

Next connect to template0 and perform the above repair procedure. Finally, do:

-- re-freeze template0:
VACUUM FREEZE;
-- and protect it against future alterations:
UPDATE pg_database SET datallowconn = false WHERE datname = 'template0';

E.209.2. Changes

  • Change encoding function signature to prevent misuse

  • Repair ancient race condition that allowed a transaction to be seen as committed for some purposes (eg SELECT FOR UPDATE) slightly sooner than for other purposes

    This is an extremely serious bug since it could lead to apparent data inconsistencies being briefly visible to applications.

  • Repair race condition between relation extension and VACUUM

    This could theoretically have caused loss of a page's worth of freshly-inserted data, although the scenario seems of very low probability. There are no known cases of it having caused more than an Assert failure.

  • Fix comparisons of TIME WITH TIME ZONE values

    The comparison code was wrong in the case where the --enable-integer-datetimes configuration switch had been used. NOTE: if you have an index on a TIME WITH TIME ZONE column, it will need to be REINDEXed after installing this update, because the fix corrects the sort order of column values.

  • Fix EXTRACT(EPOCH) for TIME WITH TIME ZONE values

  • Fix mis-display of negative fractional seconds in INTERVAL values

    This error only occurred when the --enable-integer-datetimes configuration switch had been used.

  • Additional buffer overrun checks in plpgsql (Neil)

  • Fix pg_dump to dump trigger names containing % correctly (Neil)

  • Prevent to_char(interval) from dumping core for month-related formats

  • Fix contrib/pgcrypto for newer OpenSSL builds (Marko Kreen)

  • Still more 64-bit fixes for contrib/intagg

  • Prevent incorrect optimization of functions returning RECORD

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Release 7.3.9

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E.210. Release 7.3.9

Release Date: 2005-01-31

This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.3.8, including several security-related issues.

E.210.1. Migration to Version 7.3.9

A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.3.X.

E.210.2. Changes

  • Disallow LOAD to non-superusers

    On platforms that will automatically execute initialization functions of a shared library (this includes at least Windows and ELF-based Unixen), LOAD can be used to make the server execute arbitrary code. Thanks to NGS Software for reporting this.

  • Check that creator of an aggregate function has the right to execute the specified transition functions

    This oversight made it possible to bypass denial of EXECUTE permission on a function.

  • Fix security and 64-bit issues in contrib/intagg

  • Add needed STRICT marking to some contrib functions (Kris Jurka)

  • Avoid buffer overrun when plpgsql cursor declaration has too many parameters (Neil)

  • Fix planning error for FULL and RIGHT outer joins

    The result of the join was mistakenly supposed to be sorted the same as the left input. This could not only deliver mis-sorted output to the user, but in case of nested merge joins could give outright wrong answers.

  • Fix plperl for quote marks in tuple fields

  • Fix display of negative intervals in SQL and GERMAN datestyles

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Release 7.3.8

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E.211. Release 7.3.8

Release Date: 2004-10-22

This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.3.7.

E.211.1. Migration to Version 7.3.8

A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.3.X.

E.211.2. Changes

  • Repair possible failure to update hint bits on disk

    Under rare circumstances this oversight could lead to "could not access transaction status" failures, which qualifies it as a potential-data-loss bug.

  • Ensure that hashed outer join does not miss tuples

    Very large left joins using a hash join plan could fail to output unmatched left-side rows given just the right data distribution.

  • Disallow running pg_ctl as root

    This is to guard against any possible security issues.

  • Avoid using temp files in /tmp in make_oidjoins_check

    This has been reported as a security issue, though it's hardly worthy of concern since there is no reason for non-developers to use this script anyway.

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Release 7.3.7

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E.212. Release 7.3.7

Release Date: 2004-08-16

This release contains one critical fix over 7.3.6, and some minor items.

E.212.1. Migration to Version 7.3.7

A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.3.X.

E.212.2. Changes

  • Prevent possible loss of committed transactions during crash

    Due to insufficient interlocking between transaction commit and checkpointing, it was possible for transactions committed just before the most recent checkpoint to be lost, in whole or in part, following a database crash and restart. This is a serious bug that has existed since PostgreSQL 7.1.

  • Remove asymmetrical word processing in tsearch (Teodor)

  • Properly schema-qualify function names when pg_dump'ing a CAST

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Release 7.3.6

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E.213. Release 7.3.6

Release Date: 2004-03-02

This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.3.5.

E.213.1. Migration to Version 7.3.6

A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.3.*.

E.213.2. Changes

  • Revert erroneous changes in rule permissions checking

    A patch applied in 7.3.3 to fix a corner case in rule permissions checks turns out to have disabled rule-related permissions checks in many not-so-corner cases. This would for example allow users to insert into views they weren't supposed to have permission to insert into. We have therefore reverted the 7.3.3 patch. The original bug will be fixed in 8.0.

  • Repair incorrect order of operations in GetNewTransactionId()

    This bug could result in failure under out-of-disk-space conditions, including inability to restart even after disk space is freed.

  • Ensure configure selects -fno-strict-aliasing even when an external value for CFLAGS is supplied

    On some platforms, building with -fstrict-aliasing causes bugs.

  • Make pg_restore handle 64-bit off_t correctly

    This bug prevented proper restoration from archive files exceeding 4 GB.

  • Make contrib/dblink not assume that local and remote type OIDs match (Joe)

  • Quote connectby()'s start_with argument properly (Joe)

  • Don't crash when a rowtype argument to a plpgsql function is NULL

  • Avoid generating invalid character encoding sequences in corner cases when planning LIKE operations

  • Ensure text_position() cannot scan past end of source string in multibyte cases (Korea PostgreSQL Users' Group)

  • Fix index optimization and selectivity estimates for LIKE operations on bytea columns (Joe)

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Release 7.3.5

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E.214. Release 7.3.5

Release Date: 2003-12-03

This has a variety of fixes from 7.3.4.

E.214.1. Migration to Version 7.3.5

A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.3.*.

E.214.2. Changes

  • Force zero_damaged_pages to be on during recovery from WAL

  • Prevent some obscure cases of "variable not in subplan target lists"

  • Force stats processes to detach from shared memory, ensuring cleaner shutdown

  • Make PQescapeBytea and byteaout consistent with each other (Joe)

  • Added missing SPI_finish() calls to dblink's get_tuple_of_interest() (Joe)

  • Fix for possible foreign key violation when rule rewrites INSERT (Jan)

  • Support qualified type names in PL/Tcl's spi_prepare command (Jan)

  • Make pg_dump handle a procedural language handler located in pg_catalog

  • Make pg_dump handle cases where a custom opclass is in another schema

  • Make pg_dump dump binary-compatible casts correctly (Jan)

  • Fix insertion of expressions containing subqueries into rule bodies

  • Fix incorrect argument processing in clusterdb script (Anand Ranganathan)

  • Fix problems with dropped columns in plpython triggers

  • Repair problems with to_char() reading past end of its input string (Karel)

  • Fix GB18030 mapping errors (Tatsuo)

  • Fix several problems with SSL error handling and asynchronous SSL I/O

  • Remove ability to bind a list of values to a single parameter in JDBC (prevents possible SQL-injection attacks)

  • Fix some errors in HAVE_INT64_TIMESTAMP code paths

  • Fix corner case for btree search in parallel with first root page split

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Release 7.3.4

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E.215. Release 7.3.4

Release Date: 2003-07-24

This has a variety of fixes from 7.3.3.

E.215.1. Migration to Version 7.3.4

A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.3.*.

E.215.2. Changes

  • Repair breakage in timestamp-to-date conversion for dates before 2000

  • Prevent rare possibility of server startup failure (Tom)

  • Fix bugs in interval-to-time conversion (Tom)

  • Add constraint names in a few places in pg_dump (Rod)

  • Improve performance of functions with many parameters (Tom)

  • Fix to_ascii() buffer overruns (Tom)

  • Prevent restore of database comments from throwing an error (Tom)

  • Work around buggy strxfrm() present in some Solaris releases (Tom)

  • Properly escape jdbc setObject() strings to improve security (Barry)

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Release 7.3.3

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E.216. Release 7.3.3

Release Date: 2003-05-22

This release contains a variety of fixes for version 7.3.2.

E.216.1. Migration to Version 7.3.3

A dump/restore is not required for those running version 7.3.*.

E.216.2. Changes

  • Repair sometimes-incorrect computation of StartUpID after a crash

  • Avoid slowness with lots of deferred triggers in one transaction (Stephan)

  • Don't lock referenced row when UPDATE doesn't change foreign key's value (Jan)

  • Use -fPIC not -fpic on Sparc (Tom Callaway)

  • Repair lack of schema-awareness in contrib/reindexdb

  • Fix contrib/intarray error for zero-element result array (Teodor)

  • Ensure createuser script will exit on control-C (Oliver)

  • Fix errors when the type of a dropped column has itself been dropped

  • CHECKPOINT does not cause database panic on failure in noncritical steps

  • Accept 60 in seconds fields of timestamp, time, interval input values

  • Issue notice, not error, if TIMESTAMP, TIME, or INTERVAL precision too large

  • Fix abstime-to-time cast function (fix is not applied unless you initdb)

  • Fix pg_proc entry for timestampt_izone (fix is not applied unless you initdb)

  • Make EXTRACT(EPOCH FROM timestamp without time zone) treat input as local time

  • 'now'::timestamptz gave wrong answer if timezone changed earlier in transaction

  • HAVE_INT64_TIMESTAMP code for time with timezone overwrote its input

  • Accept GLOBAL TEMP/TEMPORARY as a synonym for TEMPORARY

  • Avoid improper schema-privilege-check failure in foreign-key triggers

  • Fix bugs in foreign-key triggers for SET DEFAULT action

  • Fix incorrect time-qual check in row fetch for UPDATE and DELETE triggers

  • Foreign-key clauses were parsed but ignored in ALTER TABLE ADD COLUMN

  • Fix createlang script breakage for case where handler function already exists

  • Fix misbehavior on zero-column tables in pg_dump, COPY, ANALYZE, other places

  • Fix misbehavior of func_error() on type names containing '%'

  • Fix misbehavior of replace() on strings containing '%'

  • Regular-expression patterns containing certain multibyte characters failed

  • Account correctly for NULLs in more cases in join size estimation

  • Avoid conflict with system definition of isblank() function or macro

  • Fix failure to convert large code point values in EUC_TW conversions (Tatsuo)

  • Fix error recovery for SSL_read/SSL_write calls

  • Don't do early constant-folding of type coercion expressions

  • Validate page header fields immediately after reading in any page

  • Repair incorrect check for ungrouped variables in unnamed joins

  • Fix buffer overrun in to_ascii (Guido Notari)

  • contrib/ltree fixes (Teodor)

  • Fix core dump in deadlock detection on machines where char is unsigned

  • Avoid running out of buffers in many-way indexscan (bug introduced in 7.3)

  • Fix planner's selectivity estimation functions to handle domains properly

  • Fix dbmirror memory-allocation bug (Steven Singer)

  • Prevent infinite loop in ln(numeric) due to roundoff error

  • GROUP BY got confused if there were multiple equal GROUP BY items

  • Fix bad plan when inherited UPDATE/DELETE references another inherited table

  • Prevent clustering on incomplete (partial or non-NULL-storing) indexes

  • Service shutdown request at proper time if it arrives while still starting up

  • Fix left-links in temporary indexes (could make backwards scans miss entries)

  • Fix incorrect handling of client_encoding setting in postgresql.conf (Tatsuo)

  • Fix failure to respond to pg_ctl stop -m fast after Async_NotifyHandler runs

  • Fix SPI for case where rule contains multiple statements of the same type

  • Fix problem with checking for wrong type of access privilege in rule query

  • Fix problem with EXCEPT in CREATE RULE

  • Prevent problem with dropping temp tables having serial columns

  • Fix replace_vars_with_subplan_refs failure in complex views

  • Fix regexp slowness in single-byte encodings (Tatsuo)

  • Allow qualified type names in CREATE CAST and DROP CAST

  • Accept SETOF type[], which formerly had to be written SETOF _type

  • Fix pg_dump core dump in some cases with procedural languages

  • Force ISO datestyle in pg_dump output, for portability (Oliver)

  • pg_dump failed to handle error return from lo_read (Oleg Drokin)

  • pg_dumpall failed with groups having no members (Nick Eskelinen)

  • pg_dumpall failed to recognize --globals-only switch

  • pg_restore failed to restore blobs if -X disable-triggers is specified

  • Repair intrafunction memory leak in plpgsql

  • pltcl's elog command dumped core if given wrong parameters (Ian Harding)

  • plpython used wrong value of atttypmod (Brad McLean)

  • Fix improper quoting of boolean values in Python interface (D'Arcy)

  • Added addDataType() method to PGConnection interface for JDBC

  • Fixed various problems with updateable ResultSets for JDBC (Shawn Green)

  • Fixed various problems with DatabaseMetaData for JDBC (Kris Jurka, Peter Royal)

  • Fixed problem with parsing table ACLs in JDBC

  • Better error message for character set conversion problems in JDBC

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Release 7.3.2

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E.217. Release 7.3.2

Release Date: 2003-02-04

This release contains a variety of fixes for version 7.3.1.

E.217.1. Migration to Version 7.3.2

A dump/restore is not required for those running version 7.3.*.

E.217.2. Changes

  • Restore creation of OID column in CREATE TABLE AS / SELECT INTO

  • Fix pg_dump core dump when dumping views having comments

  • Dump DEFERRABLE/INITIALLY DEFERRED constraints properly

  • Fix UPDATE when child table's column numbering differs from parent

  • Increase default value of max_fsm_relations

  • Fix problem when fetching backwards in a cursor for a single-row query

  • Make backward fetch work properly with cursor on SELECT DISTINCT query

  • Fix problems with loading pg_dump files containing contrib/lo usage

  • Fix problem with all-numeric user names

  • Fix possible memory leak and core dump during disconnect in libpgtcl

  • Make plpython's spi_execute command handle nulls properly (Andrew Bosma)

  • Adjust plpython error reporting so that its regression test passes again

  • Work with bison 1.875

  • Handle mixed-case names properly in plpgsql's %type (Neil)

  • Fix core dump in pltcl when executing a query rewritten by a rule

  • Repair array subscript overruns (per report from Yichen Xie)

  • Reduce MAX_TIME_PRECISION from 13 to 10 in floating-point case

  • Correctly case-fold variable names in per-database and per-user settings

  • Fix coredump in plpgsql's RETURN NEXT when SELECT into record returns no rows

  • Fix outdated use of pg_type.typprtlen in python client interface

  • Correctly handle fractional seconds in timestamps in JDBC driver

  • Improve performance of getImportedKeys() in JDBC

  • Make shared-library symlinks work standardly on HPUX (Giles)

  • Repair inconsistent rounding behavior for timestamp, time, interval

  • SSL negotiation fixes (Nathan Mueller)

  • Make libpq's ~/.pgpass feature work when connecting with PQconnectDB

  • Update my2pg, ora2pg

  • Translation updates

  • Add casts between types lo and oid in contrib/lo

  • fastpath code now checks for privilege to call function

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Release 7.3.1

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E.218. Release 7.3.1

Release Date: 2002-12-18

This release contains a variety of fixes for version 7.3.

E.218.1. Migration to Version 7.3.1

A dump/restore is not required for those running version 7.3. However, it should be noted that the main PostgreSQL interface library, libpq, has a new major version number for this release, which might require recompilation of client code in certain cases.

E.218.2. Changes

  • Fix a core dump of COPY TO when client/server encodings don't match (Tom)

  • Allow pg_dump to work with pre-7.2 servers (Philip)

  • contrib/adddepend fixes (Tom)

  • Fix problem with deletion of per-user/per-database config settings (Tom)

  • contrib/vacuumlo fix (Tom)

  • Allow 'password' encryption even when pg_shadow contains MD5 passwords (Bruce)

  • contrib/dbmirror fix (Steven Singer)

  • Optimizer fixes (Tom)

  • contrib/tsearch fixes (Teodor Sigaev, Magnus)

  • Allow locale names to be mixed case (Nicolai Tufar)

  • Increment libpq library's major version number (Bruce)

  • pg_hba.conf error reporting fixes (Bruce, Neil)

  • Add SCO Openserver 5.0.4 as a supported platform (Bruce)

  • Prevent EXPLAIN from crashing server (Tom)

  • SSL fixes (Nathan Mueller)

  • Prevent composite column creation via ALTER TABLE (Tom)

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Release 7.3

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E.219. Release 7.3

Release Date: 2002-11-27

E.219.1. Overview

Major changes in this release:

Schemas

Schemas allow users to create objects in separate namespaces, so two people or applications can have tables with the same name. There is also a public schema for shared tables. Table/index creation can be restricted by removing privileges on the public schema.

Drop Column

PostgreSQL now supports the ALTER TABLE ... DROP COLUMN functionality.

Table Functions

Functions returning multiple rows and/or multiple columns are now much easier to use than before. You can call such a "table function" in the SELECT FROM clause, treating its output like a table. Also, PL/pgSQL functions can now return sets.

Prepared Queries

PostgreSQL now supports prepared queries, for improved performance.

Dependency Tracking

PostgreSQL now records object dependencies, which allows improvements in many areas. DROP statements now take either CASCADE or RESTRICT to control whether dependent objects are also dropped.

Privileges

Functions and procedural languages now have privileges, and functions can be defined to run with the privileges of their creator.

Internationalization

Both multibyte and locale support are now always enabled.

Logging

A variety of logging options have been enhanced.

Interfaces

A large number of interfaces have been moved to http://gborg.postgresql.org where they can be developed and released independently.

Functions/Identifiers

By default, functions can now take up to 32 parameters, and identifiers can be up to 63 bytes long. Also, OPAQUE is now deprecated: there are specific "pseudo-datatypes" to represent each of the former meanings of OPAQUE in function argument and result types.

E.219.2. Migration to Version 7.3

A dump/restore using pg_dump is required for those wishing to migrate data from any previous release. If your application examines the system catalogs, additional changes will be required due to the introduction of schemas in 7.3; for more information, see: http://developer.postgresql.org/~momjian/upgrade_tips_7.3.

Observe the following incompatibilities:

  • Pre-6.3 clients are no longer supported.

  • pg_hba.conf now has a column for the user name and additional features. Existing files need to be adjusted.

  • Several postgresql.conf logging parameters have been renamed.

  • LIMIT #,# has been disabled; use LIMIT # OFFSET #.

  • INSERT statements with column lists must specify a value for each specified column. For example, INSERT INTO tab (col1, col2) VALUES ('val1') is now invalid. It's still allowed to supply fewer columns than expected if the INSERT does not have a column list.

  • serial columns are no longer automatically UNIQUE; thus, an index will not automatically be created.

  • A SET command inside an aborted transaction is now rolled back.

  • COPY no longer considers missing trailing columns to be null. All columns need to be specified. (However, one can achieve a similar effect by specifying a column list in the COPY command.)

  • The data type timestamp is now equivalent to timestamp without time zone, instead of timestamp with time zone.

  • Pre-7.3 databases loaded into 7.3 will not have the new object dependencies for serial columns, unique constraints, and foreign keys. See the directory contrib/adddepend/ for a detailed description and a script that will add such dependencies.

  • An empty string ('') is no longer allowed as the input into an integer field. Formerly, it was silently interpreted as 0.

E.219.3. Changes

E.219.3.1. Server Operation

  • Add pg_locks view to show locks (Neil)

  • Security fixes for password negotiation memory allocation (Neil)

  • Remove support for version 0 FE/BE protocol (PostgreSQL 6.2 and earlier) (Tom)

  • Reserve the last few backend slots for superusers, add parameter superuser_reserved_connections to control this (Nigel J. Andrews)

E.219.3.2. Performance

  • Improve startup by calling localtime() only once (Tom)

  • Cache system catalog information in flat files for faster startup (Tom)

  • Improve caching of index information (Tom)

  • Optimizer improvements (Tom, Fernando Nasser)

  • Catalog caches now store failed lookups (Tom)

  • Hash function improvements (Neil)

  • Improve performance of query tokenization and network handling (Peter)

  • Speed improvement for large object restore (Mario Weilguni)

  • Mark expired index entries on first lookup, saving later heap fetches (Tom)

  • Avoid excessive NULL bitmap padding (Manfred Koizar)

  • Add BSD-licensed qsort() for Solaris, for performance (Bruce)

  • Reduce per-row overhead by four bytes (Manfred Koizar)

  • Fix GEQO optimizer bug (Neil Conway)

  • Make WITHOUT OID actually save four bytes per row (Manfred Koizar)

  • Add default_statistics_target variable to specify ANALYZE buckets (Neil)

  • Use local buffer cache for temporary tables so no WAL overhead (Tom)

  • Improve free space map performance on large tables (Stephen Marshall, Tom)

  • Improved WAL write concurrency (Tom)

E.219.3.3. Privileges

  • Add privileges on functions and procedural languages (Peter)

  • Add OWNER to CREATE DATABASE so superusers can create databases on behalf of unprivileged users (Gavin Sherry, Tom)

  • Add new object privilege bits EXECUTE and USAGE (Tom)

  • Add SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION DEFAULT and RESET SESSION AUTHORIZATION (Tom)

  • Allow functions to be executed with the privilege of the function owner (Peter)

E.219.3.4. Server Configuration

  • Server log messages now tagged with LOG, not DEBUG (Bruce)

  • Add user column to pg_hba.conf (Bruce)

  • Have log_connections output two lines in log file (Tom)

  • Remove debug_level from postgresql.conf, now server_min_messages (Bruce)

  • New ALTER DATABASE/USER ... SET command for per-user/database initialization (Peter)

  • New parameters server_min_messages and client_min_messages to control which messages are sent to the server logs or client applications (Bruce)

  • Allow pg_hba.conf to specify lists of users/databases separated by commas, group names prepended with +, and file names prepended with @ (Bruce)

  • Remove secondary password file capability and pg_password utility (Bruce)

  • Add variable db_user_namespace for database-local user names (Bruce)

  • SSL improvements (Bear Giles)

  • Make encryption of stored passwords the default (Bruce)

  • Allow pg_statistics to be reset by calling pg_stat_reset() (Christopher)

  • Add log_duration parameter (Bruce)

  • Rename debug_print_query to log_statement (Bruce)

  • Rename show_query_stats to show_statement_stats (Bruce)

  • Add param log_min_error_statement to print commands to logs on error (Gavin)

E.219.3.5. Queries

  • Make cursors insensitive, meaning their contents do not change (Tom)

  • Disable LIMIT #,# syntax; now only LIMIT # OFFSET # supported (Bruce)

  • Increase identifier length to 63 (Neil, Bruce)

  • UNION fixes for merging >= 3 columns of different lengths (Tom)

  • Add DEFAULT key word to INSERT, e.g., INSERT ... (..., DEFAULT, ...) (Rod)

  • Allow views to have default values using ALTER COLUMN ... SET DEFAULT (Neil)

  • Fail on INSERTs with column lists that don't supply all column values, e.g., INSERT INTO tab (col1, col2) VALUES ('val1'); (Rod)

  • Fix for join aliases (Tom)

  • Fix for FULL OUTER JOINs (Tom)

  • Improve reporting of invalid identifier and location (Tom, Gavin)

  • Fix OPEN cursor(args) (Tom)

  • Allow 'ctid' to be used in a view and currtid(viewname) (Hiroshi)

  • Fix for CREATE TABLE AS with UNION (Tom)

  • SQL99 syntax improvements (Thomas)

  • Add statement_timeout variable to cancel queries (Bruce)

  • Allow prepared queries with PREPARE/EXECUTE (Neil)

  • Allow FOR UPDATE to appear after LIMIT/OFFSET (Bruce)

  • Add variable autocommit (Tom, David Van Wie)

E.219.3.6. Object Manipulation

  • Make equals signs optional in CREATE DATABASE (Gavin Sherry)

  • Make ALTER TABLE OWNER change index ownership too (Neil)

  • New ALTER TABLE tabname ALTER COLUMN colname SET STORAGE controls TOAST storage, compression (John Gray)

  • Add schema support, CREATE/DROP SCHEMA (Tom)

  • Create schema for temporary tables (Tom)

  • Add variable search_path for schema search (Tom)

  • Add ALTER TABLE SET/DROP NOT NULL (Christopher)

  • New CREATE FUNCTION volatility levels (Tom)

  • Make rule names unique only per table (Tom)

  • Add 'ON tablename' clause to DROP RULE and COMMENT ON RULE (Tom)

  • Add ALTER TRIGGER RENAME (Joe)

  • New current_schema() and current_schemas() inquiry functions (Tom)

  • Allow functions to return multiple rows (table functions) (Joe)

  • Make WITH optional in CREATE DATABASE, for consistency (Bruce)

  • Add object dependency tracking (Rod, Tom)

  • Add RESTRICT/CASCADE to DROP commands (Rod)

  • Add ALTER TABLE DROP for non-CHECK CONSTRAINT (Rod)

  • Autodestroy sequence on DROP of table with SERIAL (Rod)

  • Prevent column dropping if column is used by foreign key (Rod)

  • Automatically drop constraints/functions when object is dropped (Rod)

  • Add CREATE/DROP OPERATOR CLASS (Bill Studenmund, Tom)

  • Add ALTER TABLE DROP COLUMN (Christopher, Tom, Hiroshi)

  • Prevent inherited columns from being removed or renamed (Alvaro Herrera)

  • Fix foreign key constraints to not error on intermediate database states (Stephan)

  • Propagate column or table renaming to foreign key constraints

  • Add CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW (Gavin, Neil, Tom)

  • Add CREATE OR REPLACE RULE (Gavin, Neil, Tom)

  • Have rules execute alphabetically, returning more predictable values (Tom)

  • Triggers are now fired in alphabetical order (Tom)

  • Add /contrib/adddepend to handle pre-7.3 object dependencies (Rod)

  • Allow better casting when inserting/updating values (Tom)

E.219.3.7. Utility Commands

  • Have COPY TO output embedded carriage returns and newlines as \r and \n (Tom)

  • Allow DELIMITER in COPY FROM to be 8-bit clean (Tatsuo)

  • Make pg_dump use ALTER TABLE ADD PRIMARY KEY, for performance (Neil)

  • Disable brackets in multistatement rules (Bruce)

  • Disable VACUUM from being called inside a function (Bruce)

  • Allow dropdb and other scripts to use identifiers with spaces (Bruce)

  • Restrict database comment changes to the current database

  • Allow comments on operators, independent of the underlying function (Rod)

  • Rollback SET commands in aborted transactions (Tom)

  • EXPLAIN now outputs as a query (Tom)

  • Display condition expressions and sort keys in EXPLAIN (Tom)

  • Add 'SET LOCAL var = value' to set configuration variables for a single transaction (Tom)

  • Allow ANALYZE to run in a transaction (Bruce)

  • Improve COPY syntax using new WITH clauses, keep backward compatibility (Bruce)

  • Fix pg_dump to consistently output tags in non-ASCII dumps (Bruce)

  • Make foreign key constraints clearer in dump file (Rod)

  • Add COMMENT ON CONSTRAINT (Rod)

  • Allow COPY TO/FROM to specify column names (Brent Verner)

  • Dump UNIQUE and PRIMARY KEY constraints as ALTER TABLE (Rod)

  • Have SHOW output a query result (Joe)

  • Generate failure on short COPY lines rather than pad NULLs (Neil)

  • Fix CLUSTER to preserve all table attributes (Alvaro Herrera)

  • New pg_settings table to view/modify GUC settings (Joe)

  • Add smart quoting, portability improvements to pg_dump output (Peter)

  • Dump serial columns out as SERIAL (Tom)

  • Enable large file support, >2G for pg_dump (Peter, Philip Warner, Bruce)

  • Disallow TRUNCATE on tables that are involved in referential constraints (Rod)

  • Have TRUNCATE also auto-truncate the toast table of the relation (Tom)

  • Add clusterdb utility that will auto-cluster an entire database based on previous CLUSTER operations (Alvaro Herrera)

  • Overhaul pg_dumpall (Peter)

  • Allow REINDEX of TOAST tables (Tom)

  • Implemented START TRANSACTION, per SQL99 (Neil)

  • Fix rare index corruption when a page split affects bulk delete (Tom)

  • Fix ALTER TABLE ... ADD COLUMN for inheritance (Alvaro Herrera)

E.219.3.8. Data Types and Functions

  • Fix factorial(0) to return 1 (Bruce)

  • Date/time/timezone improvements (Thomas)

  • Fix for array slice extraction (Tom)

  • Fix extract/date_part to report proper microseconds for timestamp (Tatsuo)

  • Allow text_substr() and bytea_substr() to read TOAST values more efficiently (John Gray)

  • Add domain support (Rod)

  • Make WITHOUT TIME ZONE the default for TIMESTAMP and TIME data types (Thomas)

  • Allow alternate storage scheme of 64-bit integers for date/time types using --enable-integer-datetimes in configure (Thomas)

  • Make timezone(timestamptz) return timestamp rather than a string (Thomas)

  • Allow fractional seconds in date/time types for dates prior to 1BC (Thomas)

  • Limit timestamp data types to 6 decimal places of precision (Thomas)

  • Change timezone conversion functions from timetz() to timezone() (Thomas)

  • Add configuration variables datestyle and timezone (Tom)

  • Add OVERLAY(), which allows substitution of a substring in a string (Thomas)

  • Add SIMILAR TO (Thomas, Tom)

  • Add regular expression SUBSTRING(string FROM pat FOR escape) (Thomas)

  • Add LOCALTIME and LOCALTIMESTAMP functions (Thomas)

  • Add named composite types using CREATE TYPE typename AS (column) (Joe)

  • Allow composite type definition in the table alias clause (Joe)

  • Add new API to simplify creation of C language table functions (Joe)

  • Remove ODBC-compatible empty parentheses from calls to SQL99 functions for which these parentheses do not match the standard (Thomas)

  • Allow macaddr data type to accept 12 hex digits with no separators (Mike Wyer)

  • Add CREATE/DROP CAST (Peter)

  • Add IS DISTINCT FROM operator (Thomas)

  • Add SQL99 TREAT() function, synonym for CAST() (Thomas)

  • Add pg_backend_pid() to output backend pid (Bruce)

  • Add IS OF / IS NOT OF type predicate (Thomas)

  • Allow bit string constants without fully-specified length (Thomas)

  • Allow conversion between 8-byte integers and bit strings (Thomas)

  • Implement hex literal conversion to bit string literal (Thomas)

  • Allow table functions to appear in the FROM clause (Joe)

  • Increase maximum number of function parameters to 32 (Bruce)

  • No longer automatically create index for SERIAL column (Tom)

  • Add current_database() (Rod)

  • Fix cash_words() to not overflow buffer (Tom)

  • Add functions replace(), split_part(), to_hex() (Joe)

  • Fix LIKE for bytea as a right-hand argument (Joe)

  • Prevent crashes caused by SELECT cash_out(2) (Tom)

  • Fix to_char(1,'FM999.99') to return a period (Karel)

  • Fix trigger/type/language functions returning OPAQUE to return proper type (Tom)

E.219.3.9. Internationalization

  • Add additional encodings: Korean (JOHAB), Thai (WIN874), Vietnamese (TCVN), Arabic (WIN1256), Simplified Chinese (GBK), Korean (UHC) (Eiji Tokuya)

  • Enable locale support by default (Peter)

  • Add locale variables (Peter)

  • Escape byes >= 0x7f for multibyte in PQescapeBytea/PQunescapeBytea (Tatsuo)

  • Add locale awareness to regular expression character classes

  • Enable multibyte support by default (Tatsuo)

  • Add GB18030 multibyte support (Bill Huang)

  • Add CREATE/DROP CONVERSION, allowing loadable encodings (Tatsuo, Kaori)

  • Add pg_conversion table (Tatsuo)

  • Add SQL99 CONVERT() function (Tatsuo)

  • pg_dumpall, pg_controldata, and pg_resetxlog now national-language aware (Peter)

  • New and updated translations

E.219.3.10. Server-side Languages

  • Allow recursive SQL function (Peter)

  • Change PL/Tcl build to use configured compiler and Makefile.shlib (Peter)

  • Overhaul the PL/pgSQL FOUND variable to be more Oracle-compatible (Neil, Tom)

  • Allow PL/pgSQL to handle quoted identifiers (Tom)

  • Allow set-returning PL/pgSQL functions (Neil)

  • Make PL/pgSQL schema-aware (Joe)

  • Remove some memory leaks (Nigel J. Andrews, Tom)

E.219.3.11. psql

  • Don't lowercase psql \connect database name for 7.2.0 compatibility (Tom)

  • Add psql \timing to time user queries (Greg Sabino Mullane)

  • Have psql \d show index information (Greg Sabino Mullane)

  • New psql \dD shows domains (Jonathan Eisler)

  • Allow psql to show rules on views (Paul ?)

  • Fix for psql variable substitution (Tom)

  • Allow psql \d to show temporary table structure (Tom)

  • Allow psql \d to show foreign keys (Rod)

  • Fix \? to honor \pset pager (Bruce)

  • Have psql reports its version number on startup (Tom)

  • Allow \copy to specify column names (Tom)

E.219.3.12. libpq

  • Add ~/.pgpass to store host/user password combinations (Alvaro Herrera)

  • Add PQunescapeBytea() function to libpq (Patrick Welche)

  • Fix for sending large queries over non-blocking connections (Bernhard Herzog)

  • Fix for libpq using timers on Win9X (David Ford)

  • Allow libpq notify to handle servers with different-length identifiers (Tom)

  • Add libpq PQescapeString() and PQescapeBytea() to Windows (Bruce)

  • Fix for SSL with non-blocking connections (Jack Bates)

  • Add libpq connection timeout parameter (Denis A Ustimenko)

E.219.3.13. JDBC

  • Allow JDBC to compile with JDK 1.4 (Dave)

  • Add JDBC 3 support (Barry)

  • Allows JDBC to set loglevel by adding ?loglevel=X to the connection URL (Barry)

  • Add Driver.info() message that prints out the version number (Barry)

  • Add updateable result sets (Raghu Nidagal, Dave)

  • Add support for callable statements (Paul Bethe)

  • Add query cancel capability

  • Add refresh row (Dave)

  • Fix MD5 encryption handling for multibyte servers (Jun Kawai)

  • Add support for prepared statements (Barry)

E.219.3.14. Miscellaneous Interfaces

  • Fixed ECPG bug concerning octal numbers in single quotes (Michael)

  • Move src/interfaces/libpgeasy to http://gborg.postgresql.org (Marc, Bruce)

  • Improve Python interface (Elliot Lee, Andrew Johnson, Greg Copeland)

  • Add libpgtcl connection close event (Gerhard Hintermayer)

  • Move src/interfaces/libpq++ to http://gborg.postgresql.org (Marc, Bruce)

  • Move src/interfaces/odbc to http://gborg.postgresql.org (Marc)

  • Move src/interfaces/libpgeasy to http://gborg.postgresql.org (Marc, Bruce)

  • Move src/interfaces/perl5 to http://gborg.postgresql.org (Marc, Bruce)

  • Remove src/bin/pgaccess from main tree, now at http://www.pgaccess.org (Bruce)

  • Add pg_on_connection_loss command to libpgtcl (Gerhard Hintermayer, Tom)

E.219.3.15. Source Code

  • Fix for parallel make (Peter)

  • AIX fixes for linking Tcl (Andreas Zeugswetter)

  • Allow PL/Perl to build under Cygwin (Jason Tishler)

  • Improve MIPS compiles (Peter, Oliver Elphick)

  • Require Autoconf version 2.53 (Peter)

  • Require readline and zlib by default in configure (Peter)

  • Allow Solaris to use Intimate Shared Memory (ISM), for performance (Scott Brunza, P.J. Josh Rovero)

  • Always enable syslog in compile, remove --enable-syslog option (Tatsuo)

  • Always enable multibyte in compile, remove --enable-multibyte option (Tatsuo)

  • Always enable locale in compile, remove --enable-locale option (Peter)

  • Fix for Win9x DLL creation (Magnus Naeslund)

  • Fix for link() usage by WAL code on Windows, BeOS (Jason Tishler)

  • Add sys/types.h to c.h, remove from main files (Peter, Bruce)

  • Fix AIX hang on SMP machines (Tomoyuki Niijima)

  • AIX SMP hang fix (Tomoyuki Niijima)

  • Fix pre-1970 date handling on newer glibc libraries (Tom)

  • Fix PowerPC SMP locking (Tom)

  • Prevent gcc -ffast-math from being used (Peter, Tom)

  • Bison >= 1.50 now required for developer builds

  • Kerberos 5 support now builds with Heimdal (Peter)

  • Add appendix in the User's Guide which lists SQL features (Thomas)

  • Improve loadable module linking to use RTLD_NOW (Tom)

  • New error levels WARNING, INFO, LOG, DEBUG[1-5] (Bruce)

  • New src/port directory holds replaced libc functions (Peter, Bruce)

  • New pg_namespace system catalog for schemas (Tom)

  • Add pg_class.relnamespace for schemas (Tom)

  • Add pg_type.typnamespace for schemas (Tom)

  • Add pg_proc.pronamespace for schemas (Tom)

  • Restructure aggregates to have pg_proc entries (Tom)

  • System relations now have their own namespace, pg_* test not required (Fernando Nasser)

  • Rename TOAST index names to be *_index rather than *_idx (Neil)

  • Add namespaces for operators, opclasses (Tom)

  • Add additional checks to server control file (Thomas)

  • New Polish FAQ (Marcin Mazurek)

  • Add Posix semaphore support (Tom)

  • Document need for reindex (Bruce)

  • Rename some internal identifiers to simplify Windows compile (Jan, Katherine Ward)

  • Add documentation on computing disk space (Bruce)

  • Remove KSQO from GUC (Bruce)

  • Fix memory leak in rtree (Kenneth Been)

  • Modify a few error messages for consistency (Bruce)

  • Remove unused system table columns (Peter)

  • Make system columns NOT NULL where appropriate (Tom)

  • Clean up use of sprintf in favor of snprintf() (Neil, Jukka Holappa)

  • Remove OPAQUE and create specific subtypes (Tom)

  • Cleanups in array internal handling (Joe, Tom)

  • Disallow pg_atoi('') (Bruce)

  • Remove parameter wal_files because WAL files are now recycled (Bruce)

  • Add version numbers to heap pages (Tom)

E.219.3.16. Contrib

  • Allow inet arrays in /contrib/array (Neil)

  • GiST fixes (Teodor Sigaev, Neil)

  • Upgrade /contrib/mysql

  • Add /contrib/dbsize which shows table sizes without vacuum (Peter)

  • Add /contrib/intagg, integer aggregator routines (mlw)

  • Improve /contrib/oid2name (Neil, Bruce)

  • Improve /contrib/tsearch (Oleg, Teodor Sigaev)

  • Cleanups of /contrib/rserver (Alexey V. Borzov)

  • Update /contrib/oracle conversion utility (Gilles Darold)

  • Update /contrib/dblink (Joe)

  • Improve options supported by /contrib/vacuumlo (Mario Weilguni)

  • Improvements to /contrib/intarray (Oleg, Teodor Sigaev, Andrey Oktyabrski)

  • Add /contrib/reindexdb utility (Shaun Thomas)

  • Add indexing to /contrib/isbn_issn (Dan Weston)

  • Add /contrib/dbmirror (Steven Singer)

  • Improve /contrib/pgbench (Neil)

  • Add /contrib/tablefunc table function examples (Joe)

  • Add /contrib/ltree data type for tree structures (Teodor Sigaev, Oleg Bartunov)

  • Move /contrib/pg_controldata, pg_resetxlog into main tree (Bruce)

  • Fixes to /contrib/cube (Bruno Wolff)

  • Improve /contrib/fulltextindex (Christopher)

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Release 7.2.8

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E.220. Release 7.2.8

Release Date: 2005-05-09

This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.2.7, including one security-related issue.

E.220.1. Migration to Version 7.2.8

A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.2.X.

E.220.2. Changes

  • Repair ancient race condition that allowed a transaction to be seen as committed for some purposes (eg SELECT FOR UPDATE) slightly sooner than for other purposes

    This is an extremely serious bug since it could lead to apparent data inconsistencies being briefly visible to applications.

  • Repair race condition between relation extension and VACUUM

    This could theoretically have caused loss of a page's worth of freshly-inserted data, although the scenario seems of very low probability. There are no known cases of it having caused more than an Assert failure.

  • Fix EXTRACT(EPOCH) for TIME WITH TIME ZONE values

  • Additional buffer overrun checks in plpgsql (Neil)

  • Fix pg_dump to dump index names and trigger names containing % correctly (Neil)

  • Prevent to_char(interval) from dumping core for month-related formats

  • Fix contrib/pgcrypto for newer OpenSSL builds (Marko Kreen)

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Release 7.2.7

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E.221. Release 7.2.7

Release Date: 2005-01-31

This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.2.6, including several security-related issues.

E.221.1. Migration to Version 7.2.7

A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.2.X.

E.221.2. Changes

  • Disallow LOAD to non-superusers

    On platforms that will automatically execute initialization functions of a shared library (this includes at least Windows and ELF-based Unixen), LOAD can be used to make the server execute arbitrary code. Thanks to NGS Software for reporting this.

  • Add needed STRICT marking to some contrib functions (Kris Jurka)

  • Avoid buffer overrun when plpgsql cursor declaration has too many parameters (Neil)

  • Fix planning error for FULL and RIGHT outer joins

    The result of the join was mistakenly supposed to be sorted the same as the left input. This could not only deliver mis-sorted output to the user, but in case of nested merge joins could give outright wrong answers.

  • Fix display of negative intervals in SQL and GERMAN datestyles

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Release 7.2.6

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E.222. Release 7.2.6

Release Date: 2004-10-22

This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.2.5.

E.222.1. Migration to Version 7.2.6

A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.2.X.

E.222.2. Changes

  • Repair possible failure to update hint bits on disk

    Under rare circumstances this oversight could lead to "could not access transaction status" failures, which qualifies it as a potential-data-loss bug.

  • Ensure that hashed outer join does not miss tuples

    Very large left joins using a hash join plan could fail to output unmatched left-side rows given just the right data distribution.

  • Disallow running pg_ctl as root

    This is to guard against any possible security issues.

  • Avoid using temp files in /tmp in make_oidjoins_check

    This has been reported as a security issue, though it's hardly worthy of concern since there is no reason for non-developers to use this script anyway.

  • Update to newer versions of Bison

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Release 7.2.5

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E.223. Release 7.2.5

Release Date: 2004-08-16

This release contains a variety of fixes from 7.2.4.

E.223.1. Migration to Version 7.2.5

A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.2.X.

E.223.2. Changes

  • Prevent possible loss of committed transactions during crash

    Due to insufficient interlocking between transaction commit and checkpointing, it was possible for transactions committed just before the most recent checkpoint to be lost, in whole or in part, following a database crash and restart. This is a serious bug that has existed since PostgreSQL 7.1.

  • Fix corner case for btree search in parallel with first root page split

  • Fix buffer overrun in to_ascii (Guido Notari)

  • Fix core dump in deadlock detection on machines where char is unsigned

  • Fix failure to respond to pg_ctl stop -m fast after Async_NotifyHandler runs

  • Repair memory leaks in pg_dump

  • Avoid conflict with system definition of isblank() function or macro

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Release 7.2.4

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E.224. Release 7.2.4

Release Date: 2003-01-30

This release contains a variety of fixes for version 7.2.3, including fixes to prevent possible data loss.

E.224.1. Migration to Version 7.2.4

A dump/restore is not required for those running version 7.2.*.

E.224.2. Changes

  • Fix some additional cases of VACUUM "No one parent tuple was found" error

  • Prevent VACUUM from being called inside a function (Bruce)

  • Ensure pg_clog updates are sync'd to disk before marking checkpoint complete

  • Avoid integer overflow during large hash joins

  • Make GROUP commands work when pg_group.grolist is large enough to be toasted

  • Fix errors in datetime tables; some timezone names weren't being recognized

  • Fix integer overflows in circle_poly(), path_encode(), path_add() (Neil)

  • Repair long-standing logic errors in lseg_eq(), lseg_ne(), lseg_center()

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Release 7.2.5 | Up | Release 7.2.3


Release 7.2.3

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E.225. Release 7.2.3

Release Date: 2002-10-01

This release contains a variety of fixes for version 7.2.2, including fixes to prevent possible data loss.

E.225.1. Migration to Version 7.2.3

A dump/restore is not required for those running version 7.2.*.

E.225.2. Changes

  • Prevent possible compressed transaction log loss (Tom)

  • Prevent non-superuser from increasing most recent vacuum info (Tom)

  • Handle pre-1970 date values in newer versions of glibc (Tom)

  • Fix possible hang during server shutdown

  • Prevent spinlock hangs on SMP PPC machines (Tomoyuki Niijima)

  • Fix pg_dump to properly dump FULL JOIN USING (Tom)

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Release 7.2.2

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E.226. Release 7.2.2

Release Date: 2002-08-23

This release contains a variety of fixes for version 7.2.1.

E.226.1. Migration to Version 7.2.2

A dump/restore is not required for those running version 7.2.*.

E.226.2. Changes

  • Allow EXECUTE of "CREATE TABLE AS ... SELECT" in PL/pgSQL (Tom)

  • Fix for compressed transaction log id wraparound (Tom)

  • Fix PQescapeBytea/PQunescapeBytea so that they handle bytes > 0x7f (Tatsuo)

  • Fix for psql and pg_dump crashing when invoked with non-existent long options (Tatsuo)

  • Fix crash when invoking geometric operators (Tom)

  • Allow OPEN cursor(args) (Tom)

  • Fix for rtree_gist index build (Teodor)

  • Fix for dumping user-defined aggregates (Tom)

  • contrib/intarray fixes (Oleg)

  • Fix for complex UNION/EXCEPT/INTERSECT queries using parens (Tom)

  • Fix to pg_convert (Tatsuo)

  • Fix for crash with long DATA strings (Thomas, Neil)

  • Fix for repeat(), lpad(), rpad() and long strings (Neil)

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Release 7.2.1

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E.227. Release 7.2.1

Release Date: 2002-03-21

This release contains a variety of fixes for version 7.2.

E.227.1. Migration to Version 7.2.1

A dump/restore is not required for those running version 7.2.

E.227.2. Changes

  • Ensure that sequence counters do not go backwards after a crash (Tom)

  • Fix pgaccess kanji-conversion key binding (Tatsuo)

  • Optimizer improvements (Tom)

  • Cash I/O improvements (Tom)

  • New Russian FAQ

  • Compile fix for missing AuthBlockSig (Heiko)

  • Additional time zones and time zone fixes (Thomas)

  • Allow psql \connect to handle mixed case database and user names (Tom)

  • Return proper OID on command completion even with ON INSERT rules (Tom)

  • Allow COPY FROM to use 8-bit DELIMITERS (Tatsuo)

  • Fix bug in extract/date_part for milliseconds/microseconds (Tatsuo)

  • Improve handling of multiple UNIONs with different lengths (Tom)

  • contrib/btree_gist improvements (Teodor Sigaev)

  • contrib/tsearch dictionary improvements, see README.tsearch for an additional installation step (Thomas T. Thai, Teodor Sigaev)

  • Fix for array subscripts handling (Tom)

  • Allow EXECUTE of "CREATE TABLE AS ... SELECT" in PL/pgSQL (Tom)

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Release 7.2

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E.228. Release 7.2

Release Date: 2002-02-04

E.228.1. Overview

This release improves PostgreSQL for use in high-volume applications.

Major changes in this release:

VACUUM

Vacuuming no longer locks tables, thus allowing normal user access during the vacuum. A new VACUUM FULL command does old-style vacuum by locking the table and shrinking the on-disk copy of the table.

Transactions

There is no longer a problem with installations that exceed four billion transactions.

OIDs

OIDs are now optional. Users can now create tables without OIDs for cases where OID usage is excessive.

Optimizer

The system now computes histogram column statistics during ANALYZE, allowing much better optimizer choices.

Security

A new MD5 encryption option allows more secure storage and transfer of passwords. A new Unix-domain socket authentication option is available on Linux and BSD systems.

Statistics

Administrators can use the new table access statistics module to get fine-grained information about table and index usage.

Internationalization

Program and library messages can now be displayed in several languages.

E.228.2. Migration to Version 7.2

A dump/restore using pg_dump is required for those wishing to migrate data from any previous release.

Observe the following incompatibilities:

  • The semantics of the VACUUM command have changed in this release. You might wish to update your maintenance procedures accordingly.

  • In this release, comparisons using = NULL will always return false (or NULL, more precisely). Previous releases automatically transformed this syntax to IS NULL. The old behavior can be re-enabled using a postgresql.conf parameter.

  • The pg_hba.conf and pg_ident.conf configuration is now only reloaded after receiving a SIGHUP signal, not with each connection.

  • The function octet_length() now returns the uncompressed data length.

  • The date/time value 'current' is no longer available. You will need to rewrite your applications.

  • The timestamp(), time(),
and interval() functions are no longer
available.  Instead of timestamp(), use
timestamp 'string' or CAST.

The SELECT ... LIMIT #,# syntax will be removed in the next release. You should change your queries to use separate LIMIT and OFFSET clauses, e.g. LIMIT 10 OFFSET 20.

E.228.3. Changes

E.228.3.1. Server Operation

  • Create temporary files in a separate directory (Bruce)

  • Delete orphaned temporary files on postmaster startup (Bruce)

  • Added unique indexes to some system tables (Tom)

  • System table operator reorganization (Oleg Bartunov, Teodor Sigaev, Tom)

  • Renamed pg_log to pg_clog (Tom)

  • Enable SIGTERM, SIGQUIT to kill backends (Jan)

  • Removed compile-time limit on number of backends (Tom)

  • Better cleanup for semaphore resource failure (Tatsuo, Tom)

  • Allow safe transaction ID wraparound (Tom)

  • Removed OIDs from some system tables (Tom)

  • Removed "triggered data change violation" error check (Tom)

  • SPI portal creation of prepared/saved plans (Jan)

  • Allow SPI column functions to work for system columns (Tom)

  • Long value compression improvement (Tom)

  • Statistics collector for table, index access (Jan)

  • Truncate extra-long sequence names to a reasonable value (Tom)

  • Measure transaction times in milliseconds (Thomas)

  • Fix TID sequential scans (Hiroshi)

  • Superuser ID now fixed at 1 (Peter E)

  • New pg_ctl "reload" option (Tom)

E.228.3.2. Performance

  • Optimizer improvements (Tom)

  • New histogram column statistics for optimizer (Tom)

  • Reuse write-ahead log files rather than discarding them (Tom)

  • Cache improvements (Tom)

  • IS NULL, IS NOT NULL optimizer improvement (Tom)

  • Improve lock manager to reduce lock contention (Tom)

  • Keep relcache entries for index access support functions (Tom)

  • Allow better selectivity with NaN and infinities in NUMERIC (Tom)

  • R-tree performance improvements (Kenneth Been)

  • B-tree splits more efficient (Tom)

E.228.3.3. Privileges

  • Change UPDATE, DELETE privileges to be distinct (Peter E)

  • New REFERENCES, TRIGGER privileges (Peter E)

  • Allow GRANT/REVOKE to/from more than one user at a time (Peter E)

  • New has_table_privilege() function (Joe Conway)

  • Allow non-superuser to vacuum database (Tom)

  • New SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION command (Peter E)

  • Fix bug in privilege modifications on newly created tables (Tom)

  • Disallow access to pg_statistic for non-superuser, add user-accessible views (Tom)

E.228.3.4. Client Authentication

  • Fork postmaster before doing authentication to prevent hangs (Peter E)

  • Add ident authentication over Unix domain sockets on Linux, *BSD (Helge Bahmann, Oliver Elphick, Teodor Sigaev, Bruce)

  • Add a password authentication method that uses MD5 encryption (Bruce)

  • Allow encryption of stored passwords using MD5 (Bruce)

  • PAM authentication (Dominic J. Eidson)

  • Load pg_hba.conf and pg_ident.conf only on startup and SIGHUP (Bruce)

E.228.3.5. Server Configuration

  • Interpretation of some time zone abbreviations as Australian rather than North American now settable at run time (Bruce)

  • New parameter to set default transaction isolation level (Peter E)

  • New parameter to enable conversion of "expr = NULL" into "expr IS NULL", off by default (Peter E)

  • New parameter to control memory usage by VACUUM (Tom)

  • New parameter to set client authentication timeout (Tom)

  • New parameter to set maximum number of open files (Tom)

E.228.3.6. Queries

  • Statements added by INSERT rules now execute after the INSERT (Jan)

  • Prevent unadorned relation names in target list (Bruce)

  • NULLs now sort after all normal values in ORDER BY (Tom)

  • New IS UNKNOWN, IS NOT UNKNOWN Boolean tests (Tom)

  • New SHARE UPDATE EXCLUSIVE lock mode (Tom)

  • New EXPLAIN ANALYZE command that shows run times and row counts (Martijn van Oosterhout)

  • Fix problem with LIMIT and subqueries (Tom)

  • Fix for LIMIT, DISTINCT ON pushed into subqueries (Tom)

  • Fix nested EXCEPT/INTERSECT (Tom)

E.228.3.7. Schema Manipulation

  • Fix SERIAL in temporary tables (Bruce)

  • Allow temporary sequences (Bruce)

  • Sequences now use int8 internally (Tom)

  • New SERIAL8 creates int8 columns with sequences, default still SERIAL4 (Tom)

  • Make OIDs optional using WITHOUT OIDS (Tom)

  • Add %TYPE syntax to CREATE TYPE (Ian Lance Taylor)

  • Add ALTER TABLE / DROP CONSTRAINT for CHECK constraints (Christopher Kings-Lynne)

  • New CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION to alter existing function (preserving the function OID) (Gavin Sherry)

  • Add ALTER TABLE / ADD [ UNIQUE | PRIMARY ] (Christopher Kings-Lynne)

  • Allow column renaming in views

  • Make ALTER TABLE / RENAME COLUMN update column names of indexes (Brent Verner)

  • Fix for ALTER TABLE / ADD CONSTRAINT ... CHECK with inherited tables (Stephan Szabo)

  • ALTER TABLE RENAME update foreign-key trigger arguments correctly (Brent Verner)

  • DROP AGGREGATE and COMMENT ON AGGREGATE now accept an aggtype (Tom)

  • Add automatic return type data casting for SQL functions (Tom)

  • Allow GiST indexes to handle NULLs and multikey indexes (Oleg Bartunov, Teodor Sigaev, Tom)

  • Enable partial indexes (Martijn van Oosterhout)

E.228.3.8. Utility Commands

  • Add RESET ALL, SHOW ALL (Marko Kreen)

  • CREATE/ALTER USER/GROUP now allow options in any order (Vince)

  • Add LOCK A, B, C functionality (Neil Padgett)

  • New ENCRYPTED/UNENCRYPTED option to CREATE/ALTER USER (Bruce)

  • New light-weight VACUUM does not lock table; old semantics are available as VACUUM FULL (Tom)

  • Disable COPY TO/FROM on views (Bruce)

  • COPY DELIMITERS string must be exactly one character (Tom)

  • VACUUM warning about index tuples fewer than heap now only appears when appropriate (Martijn van Oosterhout)

  • Fix privilege checks for CREATE INDEX (Tom)

  • Disallow inappropriate use of CREATE/DROP INDEX/TRIGGER/VIEW (Tom)

E.228.3.9. Data Types and Functions

  • SUM(), AVG(), COUNT() now uses int8 internally for speed (Tom)

  • Add convert(), convert2() (Tatsuo)

  • New function bit_length() (Peter E)

  • Make the "n" in CHAR(n)/VARCHAR(n) represents letters, not bytes (Tatsuo)

  • CHAR(), VARCHAR() now reject strings that are too long (Peter E)

  • BIT VARYING now rejects bit strings that are too long (Peter E)

  • BIT now rejects bit strings that do not match declared size (Peter E)

  • INET, CIDR text conversion functions (Alex Pilosov)

  • INET, CIDR operators << and <<= indexable (Alex Pilosov)

  • Bytea \### now requires valid three digit octal number

  • Bytea comparison improvements, now supports =, <>, >, >=, <, and <=

  • Bytea now supports B-tree indexes

  • Bytea now supports LIKE, LIKE...ESCAPE, NOT LIKE, NOT LIKE...ESCAPE

  • Bytea now supports concatenation

  • New bytea functions: position, substring, trim, btrim, and length

  • New encode() function mode, "escaped", converts minimally escaped bytea to/from text

  • Add pg_database_encoding_max_length() (Tatsuo)

  • Add pg_client_encoding() function (Tatsuo)

  • now() returns time with millisecond precision (Thomas)

  • New TIMESTAMP WITHOUT TIMEZONE data type (Thomas)

  • Add ISO date/time specification with "T", yyyy-mm-ddThh:mm:ss (Thomas)

  • New xid/int comparison functions (Hiroshi)

  • Add precision to TIME, TIMESTAMP, and INTERVAL data types (Thomas)

  • Modify type coercion logic to attempt binary-compatible functions first (Tom)

  • New encode() function installed by default (Marko Kreen)

  • Improved to_*() conversion functions (Karel Zak)

  • Optimize LIKE/ILIKE when using single-byte encodings (Tatsuo)

  • New functions in contrib/pgcrypto: crypt(), hmac(), encrypt(), gen_salt() (Marko Kreen)

  • Correct description of translate() function (Bruce)

  • Add INTERVAL argument for SET TIME ZONE (Thomas)

  • Add INTERVAL YEAR TO MONTH (etc.) syntax (Thomas)

  • Optimize length functions when using single-byte encodings (Tatsuo)

  • Fix path_inter, path_distance, path_length, dist_ppath to handle closed paths (Curtis Barrett, Tom)

  • octet_length(text) now returns non-compressed length (Tatsuo, Bruce)

  • Handle "July" full name in date/time literals (Greg Sabino Mullane)

  • Some datatype() function calls now evaluated differently

  • Add support for Julian and ISO time specifications (Thomas)

E.228.3.10. Internationalization

  • National language support in psql, pg_dump, libpq, and server (Peter E)

  • Message translations in Chinese (simplified, traditional), Czech, French, German, Hungarian, Russian, Swedish (Peter E, Serguei A. Mokhov, Karel Zak, Weiping He, Zhenbang Wei, Kovacs Zoltan)

  • Make trim, ltrim, rtrim, btrim, lpad, rpad, translate multibyte aware (Tatsuo)

  • Add LATIN5,6,7,8,9,10 support (Tatsuo)

  • Add ISO 8859-5,6,7,8 support (Tatsuo)

  • Correct LATIN5 to mean ISO-8859-9, not ISO-8859-5 (Tatsuo)

  • Make mic2ascii() non-ASCII aware (Tatsuo)

  • Reject invalid multibyte character sequences (Tatsuo)

E.228.3.11. PL/pgSQL

  • Now uses portals for SELECT loops, allowing huge result sets (Jan)

  • CURSOR and REFCURSOR support (Jan)

  • Can now return open cursors (Jan)

  • Add ELSEIF (Klaus Reger)

  • Improve PL/pgSQL error reporting, including location of error (Tom)

  • Allow IS or FOR key words in cursor declaration, for compatibility (Bruce)

  • Fix for SELECT ... FOR UPDATE (Tom)

  • Fix for PERFORM returning multiple rows (Tom)

  • Make PL/pgSQL use the server's type coercion code (Tom)

  • Memory leak fix (Jan, Tom)

  • Make trailing semicolon optional (Tom)

E.228.3.12. PL/Perl

  • New untrusted PL/Perl (Alex Pilosov)

  • PL/Perl is now built on some platforms even if libperl is not shared (Peter E)

E.228.3.13. PL/Tcl

  • Now reports errorInfo (Vsevolod Lobko)

  • Add spi_lastoid function (bob@redivi.com)

E.228.3.14. PL/Python

  • ...is new (Andrew Bosma)

E.228.3.15. psql

  • \d displays indexes in unique, primary groupings (Christopher Kings-Lynne)

  • Allow trailing semicolons in backslash commands (Greg Sabino Mullane)

  • Read password from /dev/tty if possible

  • Force new password prompt when changing user and database (Tatsuo, Tom)

  • Format the correct number of columns for Unicode (Patrice)

E.228.3.16. libpq

  • New function PQescapeString() to escape quotes in command strings (Florian Weimer)

  • New function PQescapeBytea() escapes binary strings for use as SQL string literals

E.228.3.17. JDBC

  • Return OID of INSERT (Ken K)

  • Handle more data types (Ken K)

  • Handle single quotes and newlines in strings (Ken K)

  • Handle NULL variables (Ken K)

  • Fix for time zone handling (Barry Lind)

  • Improved Druid support

  • Allow eight-bit characters with non-multibyte server (Barry Lind)

  • Support BIT, BINARY types (Ned Wolpert)

  • Reduce memory usage (Michael Stephens, Dave Cramer)

  • Update DatabaseMetaData (Peter E)

  • Add DatabaseMetaData.getCatalogs() (Peter E)

  • Encoding fixes (Anders Bengtsson)

  • Get/setCatalog methods (Jason Davies)

  • DatabaseMetaData.getColumns() now returns column defaults (Jason Davies)

  • DatabaseMetaData.getColumns() performance improvement (Jeroen van Vianen)

  • Some JDBC1 and JDBC2 merging (Anders Bengtsson)

  • Transaction performance improvements (Barry Lind)

  • Array fixes (Greg Zoller)

  • Serialize addition

  • Fix batch processing (Rene Pijlman)

  • ExecSQL method reorganization (Anders Bengtsson)

  • GetColumn() fixes (Jeroen van Vianen)

  • Fix isWriteable() function (Rene Pijlman)

  • Improved passage of JDBC2 conformance tests (Rene Pijlman)

  • Add bytea type capability (Barry Lind)

  • Add isNullable() (Rene Pijlman)

  • JDBC date/time test suite fixes (Liam Stewart)

  • Fix for SELECT 'id' AS xxx FROM table (Dave Cramer)

  • Fix DatabaseMetaData to show precision properly (Mark Lillywhite)

  • New getImported/getExported keys (Jason Davies)

  • MD5 password encryption support (Jeremy Wohl)

  • Fix to actually use type cache (Ned Wolpert)

E.228.3.18. ODBC

  • Remove query size limit (Hiroshi)

  • Remove text field size limit (Hiroshi)

  • Fix for SQLPrimaryKeys in multibyte mode (Hiroshi)

  • Allow ODBC procedure calls (Hiroshi)

  • Improve boolean handing (Aidan Mountford)

  • Most configuration options now settable via DSN (Hiroshi)

  • Multibyte, performance fixes (Hiroshi)

  • Allow driver to be used with iODBC or unixODBC (Peter E)

  • MD5 password encryption support (Bruce)

  • Add more compatibility functions to odbc.sql (Peter E)

E.228.3.19. ECPG

  • EXECUTE ... INTO implemented (Christof Petig)

  • Multiple row descriptor support (e.g. CARDINALITY) (Christof Petig)

  • Fix for GRANT parameters (Lee Kindness)

  • Fix INITIALLY DEFERRED bug

  • Various bug fixes (Michael, Christof Petig)

  • Auto allocation for indicator variable arrays (int *ind_p=NULL)

  • Auto allocation for string arrays (char **foo_pp=NULL)

  • ECPGfree_auto_mem fixed

  • All function names with external linkage are now prefixed by ECPG

  • Fixes for arrays of structures (Michael)

E.228.3.20. Misc. Interfaces

  • Python fix fetchone() (Gerhard Haring)

  • Use UTF, Unicode in Tcl where appropriate (Vsevolod Lobko, Reinhard Max)

  • Add Tcl COPY TO/FROM (ljb)

  • Prevent output of default index op class in pg_dump (Tom)

  • Fix libpgeasy memory leak (Bruce)

E.228.3.21. Build and Install

  • Configure, dynamic loader, and shared library fixes (Peter E)

  • Fixes in QNX 4 port (Bernd Tegge)

  • Fixes in Cygwin and Windows ports (Jason Tishler, Gerhard Haring, Dmitry Yurtaev, Darko Prenosil, Mikhail Terekhov)

  • Fix for Windows socket communication failures (Magnus, Mikhail Terekhov)

  • Hurd compile fix (Oliver Elphick)

  • BeOS fixes (Cyril Velter)

  • Remove configure --enable-unicode-conversion, now enabled by multibyte (Tatsuo)

  • AIX fixes (Tatsuo, Andreas)

  • Fix parallel make (Peter E)

  • Install SQL language manual pages into OS-specific directories (Peter E)

  • Rename config.h to pg_config.h (Peter E)

  • Reorganize installation layout of header files (Peter E)

E.228.3.22. Source Code

  • Remove SEP_CHAR (Bruce)

  • New GUC hooks (Tom)

  • Merge GUC and command line handling (Marko Kreen)

  • Remove EXTEND INDEX (Martijn van Oosterhout, Tom)

  • New pgjindent utility to indent java code (Bruce)

  • Remove define of true/false when compiling under C++ (Leandro Fanzone, Tom)

  • pgindent fixes (Bruce, Tom)

  • Replace strcasecmp() with strcmp() where appropriate (Peter E)

  • Dynahash portability improvements (Tom)

  • Add 'volatile' usage in spinlock structures

  • Improve signal handling logic (Tom)

E.228.3.23. Contrib

  • New contrib/rtree_gist (Oleg Bartunov, Teodor Sigaev)

  • New contrib/tsearch full-text indexing (Oleg, Teodor Sigaev)

  • Add contrib/dblink for remote database access (Joe Conway)

  • contrib/ora2pg Oracle conversion utility (Gilles Darold)

  • contrib/xml XML conversion utility (John Gray)

  • contrib/fulltextindex fixes (Christopher Kings-Lynne)

  • New contrib/fuzzystrmatch with levenshtein and metaphone, soundex merged (Joe Conway)

  • Add contrib/intarray boolean queries, binary search, fixes (Oleg Bartunov)

  • New pg_upgrade utility (Bruce)

  • Add new pg_resetxlog options (Bruce, Tom)

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Release 7.1.3

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E.229. Release 7.1.3

Release Date: 2001-08-15

E.229.1. Migration to Version 7.1.3

A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.1.X.

E.229.2. Changes

Remove unused WAL segments of large transactions (Tom)
Multiaction rule fix (Tom)
PL/pgSQL memory allocation fix (Jan)
VACUUM buffer fix (Tom)
Regression test fixes (Tom)
pg_dump fixes for GRANT/REVOKE/comments on views, user-defined types (Tom)
Fix subselects with DISTINCT ON or LIMIT (Tom)
BeOS fix
Disable COPY TO/FROM a view (Tom)
Cygwin build (Jason Tishler)

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Release 7.1.2

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E.230. Release 7.1.2

Release Date: 2001-05-11

This has one fix from 7.1.1.

E.230.1. Migration to Version 7.1.2

A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.1.X.

E.230.2. Changes

Fix PL/pgSQL SELECTs when returning no rows
Fix for psql backslash core dump
Referential integrity privilege fix
Optimizer fixes
pg_dump cleanups

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Release 7.1.3 | Up | Release 7.1.1


Release 7.1.1

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E.231. Release 7.1.1

Release Date: 2001-05-05

This has a variety of fixes from 7.1.

E.231.1. Migration to Version 7.1.1

A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.1.

E.231.2. Changes

Fix for numeric MODULO operator (Tom)
pg_dump fixes (Philip)
pg_dump can dump 7.0 databases (Philip)
readline 4.2 fixes (Peter E)
JOIN fixes (Tom)
AIX, MSWIN, VAX, N32K fixes (Tom)
Multibytes fixes (Tom)
Unicode fixes (Tatsuo)
Optimizer improvements (Tom)
Fix for whole rows in functions (Tom)
Fix for pg_ctl and option strings with spaces (Peter E)
ODBC fixes (Hiroshi)
EXTRACT can now take string argument (Thomas)
Python fixes (Darcy)

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Release 7.1.2 | Up | Release 7.1


Release 7.1

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E.232. Release 7.1

Release Date: 2001-04-13

This release focuses on removing limitations that have existed in the PostgreSQL code for many years.

Major changes in this release:

Write-ahead Log (WAL)

To maintain database consistency in case of an operating system crash, previous releases of PostgreSQL have forced all data modifications to disk before each transaction commit. With WAL, only one log file must be flushed to disk, greatly improving performance. If you have been using -F in previous releases to disable disk flushes, you might want to consider discontinuing its use.

TOAST

TOAST - Previous releases had a compiled-in row length limit, typically 8k - 32k. This limit made storage of long text fields difficult. With TOAST, long rows of any length can be stored with good performance.

Outer Joins

We now support outer joins. The UNION/NOT IN workaround for outer joins is no longer required. We use the SQL92 outer join syntax.

Function Manager

The previous C function manager did not handle null values properly, nor did it support 64-bit CPU's (Alpha). The new function manager does. You can continue using your old custom functions, but you might want to rewrite them in the future to use the new function manager call interface.

Complex Queries

A large number of complex queries that were unsupported in previous releases now work. Many combinations of views, aggregates, UNION, LIMIT, cursors, subqueries, and inherited tables now work properly. Inherited tables are now accessed by default. Subqueries in FROM are now supported.

E.232.1. Migration to Version 7.1

A dump/restore using pg_dump is required for those wishing to migrate data from any previous release.

E.232.2. Changes

Bug Fixes
---------
Many multibyte/Unicode/locale fixes (Tatsuo and others)
More reliable ALTER TABLE RENAME (Tom)
Kerberos V fixes (David Wragg)
Fix for INSERT INTO...SELECT where targetlist has subqueries (Tom)
Prompt username/password on standard error (Bruce)
Large objects inv_read/inv_write fixes (Tom)
Fixes for to_char(), to_date(), to_ascii(), and to_timestamp() (Karel,
   Daniel Baldoni)
Prevent query expressions from leaking memory (Tom)
Allow UPDATE of arrays elements (Tom)
Wake up lock waiters during cancel (Hiroshi)
Fix rare cursor crash when using hash join (Tom)
Fix for DROP TABLE/INDEX in rolled-back transaction (Hiroshi)
Fix psql crash from \l+ if MULTIBYTE enabled (Peter E)
Fix truncation of rule names during CREATE VIEW (Ross Reedstrom)
Fix PL/perl (Alex Kapranoff)
Disallow LOCK on views (Mark Hollomon)
Disallow INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE on views (Mark Hollomon)
Disallow DROP RULE, CREATE INDEX, TRUNCATE on views (Mark Hollomon)
Allow PL/pgSQL accept non-ASCII identifiers (Tatsuo)
Allow views to proper handle GROUP BY, aggregates, DISTINCT (Tom)
Fix rare failure with TRUNCATE command (Tom)
Allow UNION/INTERSECT/EXCEPT to be used with ALL, subqueries, views,
   DISTINCT, ORDER BY, SELECT...INTO (Tom)
Fix parser failures during aborted transactions (Tom)
Allow temporary relations to properly clean up indexes (Bruce)
Fix VACUUM problem with moving rows in same page (Tom)
Modify pg_dump to better handle user-defined items in template1 (Philip)
Allow LIMIT in VIEW (Tom)
Require cursor FETCH to honor LIMIT (Tom)
Allow PRIMARY/FOREIGN Key definitions on inherited columns (Stephan)
Allow ORDER BY, LIMIT in subqueries (Tom)
Allow UNION in CREATE RULE (Tom)
Make ALTER/DROP TABLE rollback-able (Vadim, Tom)
Store initdb collation in pg_control so collation cannot be changed (Tom)
Fix INSERT...SELECT with rules (Tom)
Fix FOR UPDATE inside views and subselects (Tom)
Fix OVERLAPS operators conform to SQL92 spec regarding NULLs (Tom)
Fix lpad() and rpad() to handle length less than input string (Tom)
Fix use of NOTIFY in some rules (Tom)
Overhaul btree code (Tom)
Fix NOT NULL use in Pl/pgSQL variables (Tom)
Overhaul GIST code (Oleg)
Fix CLUSTER to preserve constraints and column default (Tom)
Improved deadlock detection handling (Tom)
Allow multiple SERIAL columns in a table (Tom)
Prevent occasional index corruption (Vadim)

Enhancements
------------
Add OUTER JOINs (Tom)
Function manager overhaul (Tom)
Allow ALTER TABLE RENAME on indexes (Tom)
Improve CLUSTER (Tom)
Improve ps status display for more platforms (Peter E, Marc)
Improve CREATE FUNCTION failure message (Ross)
JDBC improvements (Peter, Travis Bauer, Christopher Cain, William Webber,
   Gunnar)
Grand Unified Configuration scheme/GUC.  Many options can now be set in
   data/postgresql.conf, postmaster/postgres flags, or SET commands (Peter E)
Improved handling of file descriptor cache (Tom)
New warning code about auto-created table alias entries (Bruce)
Overhaul initdb process (Tom, Peter E)
Overhaul of inherited tables; inherited tables now accessed by default;
  new ONLY key word prevents it (Chris Bitmead, Tom)
ODBC cleanups/improvements (Nick Gorham, Stephan Szabo, Zoltan Kovacs,
   Michael Fork)
Allow renaming of temp tables (Tom)
Overhaul memory manager contexts (Tom)
pg_dumpall uses CREATE USER or CREATE GROUP rather using COPY (Peter E)
Overhaul pg_dump (Philip Warner)
Allow pg_hba.conf secondary password file to specify only username (Peter E)
Allow TEMPORARY or TEMP key word when creating temporary tables (Bruce)
New memory leak checker (Karel)
New SET SESSION CHARACTERISTICS (Thomas)
Allow nested block comments (Thomas)
Add WITHOUT TIME ZONE type qualifier (Thomas)
New ALTER TABLE ADD CONSTRAINT (Stephan)
Use NUMERIC accumulators for INTEGER aggregates (Tom)
Overhaul aggregate code (Tom)
New VARIANCE and STDDEV() aggregates
Improve dependency ordering of pg_dump (Philip)
New pg_restore command (Philip)
New pg_dump tar output option (Philip)
New pg_dump of large objects  (Philip)
New ESCAPE option to LIKE (Thomas)
New case-insensitive LIKE - ILIKE (Thomas)
Allow functional indexes to use binary-compatible type (Tom)
Allow SQL functions to be used in more contexts (Tom)
New pg_config utility (Peter E)
New PL/pgSQL EXECUTE command which allows dynamic SQL and utility statements
   (Jan)
New PL/pgSQL GET DIAGNOSTICS statement for SPI value access (Jan)
New quote_identifiers() and quote_literal() functions (Jan)
New ALTER TABLE table OWNER TO user command (Mark Hollomon)
Allow subselects in FROM, i.e. FROM (SELECT ...) [AS] alias (Tom)
Update PyGreSQL to version 3.1 (D'Arcy)
Store tables as files named by OID (Vadim)
New SQL function setval(seq,val,bool) for use in pg_dump (Philip)
Require DROP VIEW to remove views, no DROP TABLE (Mark)
Allow DROP VIEW view1, view2 (Mark)
Allow multiple objects in DROP INDEX, DROP RULE, and DROP TYPE (Tom)
Allow automatic conversion to/from Unicode (Tatsuo, Eiji)
New /contrib/pgcrypto hashing functions (Marko Kreen)
New pg_dumpall --globals-only option (Peter E)
New CHECKPOINT command for WAL which creates new WAL log file (Vadim)
New AT TIME ZONE syntax (Thomas)
Allow location of Unix domain socket to be configurable (David J. MacKenzie)
Allow postmaster to listen on a specific IP address (David J. MacKenzie)
Allow socket path name to be specified in hostname by using leading slash
   (David J. MacKenzie)
Allow CREATE DATABASE to specify template database (Tom)
New utility to convert MySQL schema dumps to SQL92 and PostgreSQL (Thomas)
New /contrib/rserv replication toolkit (Vadim)
New file format for COPY BINARY (Tom)
New /contrib/oid2name to map numeric files to table names (B Palmer)
New "idle in transaction" ps status message (Marc)
Update to pgaccess 0.98.7 (Constantin Teodorescu)
pg_ctl now defaults to -w (wait) on shutdown, new -l (log) option
Add rudimentary dependency checking to pg_dump (Philip)

Types
-----
Fix INET/CIDR type ordering and add new functions (Tom)
Make OID behave as an unsigned type (Tom)
Allow BIGINT as synonym for INT8 (Peter E)
New int2 and int8 comparison operators (Tom)
New BIT and BIT VARYING types (Adriaan Joubert, Tom, Peter E)
CHAR() no longer faster than VARCHAR() because of TOAST (Tom)
New GIST seg/cube examples (Gene Selkov)
Improved round(numeric) handling (Tom)
Fix CIDR output formatting (Tom)
New CIDR abbrev() function (Tom)

Performance
-----------
Write-Ahead Log (WAL) to provide crash recovery with less performance
   overhead (Vadim)
ANALYZE stage of VACUUM no longer exclusively locks table (Bruce)
Reduced file seeks (Denis Perchine)
Improve BTREE code for duplicate keys (Tom)
Store all large objects in a single table (Denis Perchine, Tom)
Improve memory allocation performance (Karel, Tom)

Source Code
-----------
New function manager call conventions (Tom)
SGI portability fixes (David Kaelbling)
New configure --enable-syslog option (Peter E)
New BSDI README (Bruce)
configure script moved to top level, not /src (Peter E)
Makefile/configuration/compilation overhaul (Peter E)
New configure --with-python option (Peter E)
Solaris cleanups (Peter E)
Overhaul /contrib Makefiles (Karel)
New OpenSSL configuration option (Magnus, Peter E)
AIX fixes (Andreas)
QNX fixes (Maurizio)
New heap_open(), heap_openr() API (Tom)
Remove colon and semi-colon operators (Thomas)
New pg_class.relkind value for views (Mark Hollomon)
Rename ichar() to chr() (Karel)
New documentation for btrim(), ascii(), chr(), repeat() (Karel)
Fixes for NT/Cygwin (Pete Forman)
AIX port fixes (Andreas)
New BeOS port (David Reid, Cyril Velter)
Add proofreader's changes to docs (Addison-Wesley, Bruce)
New Alpha spinlock code (Adriaan Joubert, Compaq)
UnixWare port overhaul (Peter E)
New Darwin/Mac OS X port (Peter Bierman, Bruce Hartzler)
New FreeBSD Alpha port (Alfred)
Overhaul shared memory segments (Tom)
Add IBM S/390 support (Neale Ferguson)
Moved macmanuf to /contrib (Larry Rosenman)
Syslog improvements (Larry Rosenman)
New template0 database that contains no user additions (Tom)
New /contrib/cube and /contrib/seg GIST sample code (Gene Selkov)
Allow NetBSD's libedit instead of readline (Peter)
Improved assembly language source code format (Bruce)
New contrib/pg_logger
New --template option to createdb
New contrib/pg_control utility (Oliver)
New FreeBSD tools ipc_check, start-scripts/freebsd

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Release 7.0.3

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E.233. Release 7.0.3

Release Date: 2000-11-11

This has a variety of fixes from 7.0.2.

E.233.1. Migration to Version 7.0.3

A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.0.*.

E.233.2. Changes

Jdbc fixes (Peter)
Large object fix (Tom)
Fix lean in COPY WITH OIDS leak (Tom)
Fix backwards-index-scan (Tom)
Fix SELECT ... FOR UPDATE so it checks for duplicate keys (Hiroshi)
Add --enable-syslog to configure (Marc)
Fix abort transaction at backend exit in rare cases (Tom)
Fix for psql \l+ when multibyte enabled (Tatsuo)
Allow PL/pgSQL to accept non ascii identifiers (Tatsuo)
Make vacuum always flush buffers (Tom)
Fix to allow cancel while waiting for a lock (Hiroshi)
Fix for memory allocation problem in user authentication code (Tom)
Remove bogus use of int4out() (Tom)
Fixes for multiple subqueries in COALESCE or BETWEEN (Tom)
Fix for failure of triggers on heap open in certain cases (Jeroen van
   Vianen)
Fix for erroneous selectivity of not-equals (Tom)
Fix for erroneous use of strcmp() (Tom)
Fix for bug where storage manager accesses items beyond end of file
   (Tom)
Fix to include kernel errno message in all smgr elog messages (Tom)
Fix for '.' not in PATH at build time (SL Baur)
Fix for out-of-file-descriptors error (Tom)
Fix to make pg_dump dump 'iscachable' flag for functions (Tom)
Fix for subselect in targetlist of Append node (Tom)
Fix for mergejoin plans (Tom)
Fix TRUNCATE failure on relations with indexes (Tom)
Avoid database-wide restart on write error (Hiroshi)
Fix nodeMaterial to honor chgParam by recomputing its output (Tom)
Fix VACUUM problem with moving chain of update row versions when source
   and destination of a row version lie on the same page (Tom)
Fix user.c CommandCounterIncrement (Tom)
Fix for AM/PM boundary problem in to_char() (Karel Zak)
Fix TIME aggregate handling (Tom)
Fix to_char() to avoid coredump on NULL input (Tom)
Buffer fix (Tom)
Fix for inserting/copying longer multibyte strings into char() data
   types (Tatsuo)
Fix for crash of backend, on abort (Tom)

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Release 7.0.2

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E.234. Release 7.0.2

Release Date: 2000-06-05

This is a repackaging of 7.0.1 with added documentation.

E.234.1. Migration to Version 7.0.2

A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.*.

E.234.2. Changes

Added documentation to tarball.

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Release 7.0.1

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E.235. Release 7.0.1

Release Date: 2000-06-01

This is a cleanup release for 7.0.

E.235.1. Migration to Version 7.0.1

A dump/restore is not required for those running 7.0.

E.235.2. Changes

Fix many CLUSTER failures (Tom)
Allow ALTER TABLE RENAME works on indexes (Tom)
Fix plpgsql to handle datetime->timestamp and timespan->interval (Bruce)
New configure --with-setproctitle switch to use setproctitle() (Marc, Bruce)
Fix the off by one errors in ResultSet from 6.5.3, and more.
jdbc ResultSet fixes (Joseph Shraibman)
optimizer tunings (Tom)
Fix create user for pgaccess
Fix for UNLISTEN failure
IRIX fixes (David Kaelbling)
QNX fixes (Andreas Kardos)
Reduce COPY IN lock level (Tom)
Change libpqeasy to use PQconnectdb() style parameters (Bruce)
Fix pg_dump to handle OID indexes (Tom)
Fix small memory leak (Tom)
Solaris fix for createdb/dropdb (Tatsuo)
Fix for non-blocking connections (Alfred Perlstein)
Fix improper recovery after RENAME TABLE failures (Tom)
Copy pg_ident.conf.sample into /lib directory in install (Bruce)
Add SJIS UDC (NEC selection IBM kanji) support (Eiji Tokuya)
Fix too long syslog message (Tatsuo)
Fix problem with quoted indexes that are too long (Tom)
JDBC ResultSet.getTimestamp() fix (Gregory Krasnow & Floyd Marinescu)
ecpg changes (Michael)

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Release 7.0

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E.236. Release 7.0

Release Date: 2000-05-08

This release contains improvements in many areas, demonstrating the continued growth of PostgreSQL. There are more improvements and fixes in 7.0 than in any previous release. The developers have confidence that this is the best release yet; we do our best to put out only solid releases, and this one is no exception.

Major changes in this release:

Foreign Keys

Foreign keys are now implemented, with the exception of PARTIAL MATCH foreign keys. Many users have been asking for this feature, and we are pleased to offer it.

Optimizer Overhaul

Continuing on work started a year ago, the optimizer has been improved, allowing better query plan selection and faster performance with less memory usage.

Updated psql

psql, our interactive terminal monitor, has been updated with a variety of new features. See the psql manual page for details.

Join Syntax

SQL92 join syntax is now supported, though only as INNER JOIN for this release. JOIN, NATURAL JOIN, JOIN/USING, and JOIN/ON are available, as are column correlation names.

E.236.1. Migration to Version 7.0

A dump/restore using pg_dump is required for those wishing to migrate data from any previous release of PostgreSQL. For those upgrading from 6.5.*, you can instead use pg_upgrade to upgrade to this release; however, a full dump/reload installation is always the most robust method for upgrades.

Interface and compatibility issues to consider for the new release include:

  • The date/time types datetime and timespan have been superseded by the SQL92-defined types timestamp and interval. Although there has been some effort to ease the transition by allowing PostgreSQL to recognize the deprecated type names and translate them to the new type names, this mechanism cannot be completely transparent to your existing application.

  • The optimizer has been substantially improved in the area of query cost estimation. In some cases, this will result in decreased query times as the optimizer makes a better choice for the preferred plan. However, in a small number of cases, usually involving pathological distributions of data, your query times might go up. If you are dealing with large amounts of data, you might want to check your queries to verify performance.

  • The JDBC and ODBC interfaces have been upgraded and extended.

  • The string function CHAR_LENGTH is now a native function. Previous versions translated this into a call to LENGTH, which could result in ambiguity with other types implementing LENGTH such as the geometric types.

E.236.2. Changes

Bug Fixes
---------
Prevent function calls exceeding maximum number of arguments (Tom)
Improve CASE construct (Tom)
Fix SELECT coalesce(f1,0) FROM int4_tbl GROUP BY f1 (Tom)
Fix SELECT sentence.words[0] FROM sentence GROUP BY sentence.words[0] (Tom)
Fix GROUP BY scan bug (Tom)
Improvements in SQL grammar processing (Tom)
Fix for views involved in INSERT ... SELECT ... (Tom)
Fix for SELECT a/2, a/2 FROM test_missing_target GROUP BY a/2 (Tom)
Fix for subselects in INSERT ... SELECT (Tom)
Prevent INSERT ... SELECT ... ORDER BY (Tom)
Fixes for relations greater than 2GB, including vacuum
Improve propagating system table changes to other backends (Tom)
Improve propagating user table changes to other backends (Tom)
Fix handling of temp tables in complex situations (Bruce, Tom)
Allow table locking at table open, improving concurrent reliability (Tom)
Properly quote sequence names in pg_dump (Ross J. Reedstrom)
Prevent DROP DATABASE while others accessing
Prevent any rows from being returned by GROUP BY if no rows processed (Tom)
Fix SELECT COUNT(1) FROM table WHERE ...' if no rows matching WHERE (Tom)
Fix pg_upgrade so it works for MVCC (Tom)
Fix for SELECT ... WHERE x IN (SELECT ... HAVING SUM(x) > 1) (Tom)
Fix for "f1 datetime DEFAULT 'now'"  (Tom)
Fix problems with CURRENT_DATE used in DEFAULT (Tom)
Allow comment-only lines, and ;;; lines too. (Tom)
Improve recovery after failed disk writes, disk full (Hiroshi)
Fix cases where table is mentioned in FROM but not joined (Tom)
Allow HAVING clause without aggregate functions (Tom)
Fix for "--" comment and no trailing newline, as seen in perl interface
Improve pg_dump failure error reports (Bruce)
Allow sorts and hashes to exceed 2GB file sizes (Tom)
Fix for pg_dump dumping of inherited rules (Tom)
Fix for NULL handling comparisons (Tom)
Fix inconsistent state caused by failed CREATE/DROP commands (Hiroshi)
Fix for dbname with dash
Prevent DROP INDEX from interfering with other backends (Tom)
Fix file descriptor leak in verify_password()
Fix for "Unable to identify an operator =$" problem
Fix ODBC so no segfault if CommLog and Debug enabled (Dirk Niggemann)
Fix for recursive exit call (Massimo)
Fix for extra-long timezones (Jeroen van Vianen)
Make pg_dump preserve primary key information (Peter E)
Prevent databases with single quotes (Peter E)
Prevent DROP DATABASE inside  transaction (Peter E)
ecpg memory leak fixes (Stephen Birch)
Fix for SELECT null::text, SELECT int4fac(null) and SELECT 2 + (null) (Tom)
Y2K timestamp fix (Massimo)
Fix for VACUUM 'HEAP_MOVED_IN was not expected' errors (Tom)
Fix for views with tables/columns containing spaces  (Tom)
Prevent privileges on indexes (Peter E)
Fix for spinlock stuck problem when error is generated (Hiroshi)
Fix ipcclean on Linux
Fix handling of NULL constraint conditions (Tom)
Fix memory leak in odbc driver (Nick Gorham)
Fix for privilege check on UNION tables (Tom)
Fix to allow SELECT 'a' LIKE 'a' (Tom)
Fix for SELECT 1 + NULL (Tom)
Fixes to CHAR
Fix log() on numeric type (Tom)
Deprecate ':' and ';' operators
Allow vacuum of temporary tables
Disallow inherited columns with the same name as new columns
Recover or force failure when disk space is exhausted (Hiroshi)
Fix INSERT INTO ... SELECT with AS columns matching result columns
Fix INSERT ... SELECT ... GROUP BY groups by target columns not source columns (Tom)
Fix CREATE TABLE test (a char(5) DEFAULT text '', b int4) with INSERT (Tom)
Fix UNION with LIMIT
Fix CREATE TABLE x AS SELECT 1 UNION SELECT 2
Fix CREATE TABLE test(col char(2) DEFAULT user)
Fix mismatched types in CREATE TABLE ... DEFAULT
Fix SELECT * FROM pg_class where oid in (0,-1)
Fix SELECT COUNT('asdf') FROM pg_class WHERE oid=12
Prevent user who can create databases can modifying pg_database table (Peter E)
Fix btree to give a useful elog when key > 1/2 (page - overhead) (Tom)
Fix INSERT of 0.0 into DECIMAL(4,4) field (Tom)

Enhancements
------------
New CLI interface include file sqlcli.h, based on SQL3/SQL98
Remove all limits on query length, row length limit still exists (Tom)
Update jdbc protocol to 2.0 (Jens Glaser <jens@jens.de>)
Add TRUNCATE command to quickly truncate relation (Mike Mascari)
Fix to give super user and createdb user proper update catalog rights (Peter E)
Allow ecpg bool variables to have NULL values (Christof)
Issue ecpg error if NULL value for variable with no NULL indicator (Christof)
Allow ^C to cancel COPY command (Massimo)
Add SET FSYNC and SHOW PG_OPTIONS commands(Massimo)
Function name overloading for dynamically-loaded C functions (Frankpitt)
Add CmdTuples() to libpq++(Vince)
New CREATE CONSTRAINT TRIGGER and SET CONSTRAINTS commands(Jan)
Allow CREATE FUNCTION/WITH clause to be used for all language types
configure --enable-debug adds -g (Peter E)
configure --disable-debug removes -g (Peter E)
Allow more complex default expressions (Tom)
First real FOREIGN KEY constraint trigger functionality (Jan)
Add FOREIGN KEY ... MATCH FULL ... ON DELETE CASCADE (Jan)
Add FOREIGN KEY ... MATCH <unspecified> referential actions (Don Baccus)
Allow WHERE restriction on ctid (physical heap location) (Hiroshi)
Move pginterface from contrib to interface directory, rename to pgeasy (Bruce)
Change pgeasy connectdb() parameter ordering (Bruce)
Require SELECT DISTINCT target list to have all ORDER BY columns (Tom)
Add Oracle's COMMENT ON command (Mike Mascari <mascarim@yahoo.com>)
libpq's PQsetNoticeProcessor function now returns previous hook(Peter E)
Prevent PQsetNoticeProcessor from being set to NULL (Peter E)
Make USING in COPY optional (Bruce)
Allow subselects in the target list (Tom)
Allow subselects on the left side of comparison operators (Tom)
New parallel regression test (Jan)
Change backend-side COPY to write files with permissions 644 not 666 (Tom)
Force permissions on PGDATA directory to be secure, even if it exists (Tom)
Added psql LASTOID variable to return last inserted oid (Peter E)
Allow concurrent vacuum and remove pg_vlock vacuum lock file (Tom)
Add privilege check for vacuum (Peter E)
New libpq functions to allow asynchronous connections: PQconnectStart(),
  PQconnectPoll(), PQresetStart(), PQresetPoll(), PQsetenvStart(),
  PQsetenvPoll(), PQsetenvAbort (Ewan Mellor)
New libpq PQsetenv() function (Ewan Mellor)
create/alter user extension (Peter E)
New postmaster.pid and postmaster.opts under $PGDATA (Tatsuo)
New scripts for create/drop user/db (Peter E)
Major psql overhaul (Peter E)
Add const to libpq interface (Peter E)
New libpq function PQoidValue (Peter E)
Show specific non-aggregate causing problem with GROUP BY (Tom)
Make changes to pg_shadow recreate pg_pwd file (Peter E)
Add aggregate(DISTINCT ...) (Tom)
Allow flag to control COPY input/output of NULLs (Peter E)
Make postgres user have a password by default (Peter E)
Add CREATE/ALTER/DROP GROUP (Peter E)
All administration scripts now support --long options (Peter E, Karel)
Vacuumdb script now supports --all option (Peter E)
ecpg new portable FETCH syntax
Add ecpg EXEC SQL IFDEF, EXEC SQL IFNDEF, EXEC SQL ELSE, EXEC SQL ELIF
       and EXEC SQL ENDIF directives
Add pg_ctl script to control backend start-up (Tatsuo)
Add postmaster.opts.default file to store start-up flags (Tatsuo)
Allow --with-mb=SQL_ASCII
Increase maximum number of index keys to 16 (Bruce)
Increase maximum number of function arguments to 16 (Bruce)
Allow configuration of maximum number of index keys and arguments (Bruce)
Allow unprivileged users to change their passwords (Peter E)
Password authentication enabled; required for new users (Peter E)
Disallow dropping a user who owns a database (Peter E)
Change initdb option --with-mb to --enable-multibyte
Add option for initdb to prompts for superuser password (Peter E)
Allow complex type casts like col::numeric(9,2) and col::int2::float8 (Tom)
Updated user interfaces on initdb, initlocation, pg_dump, ipcclean (Peter E)
New pg_char_to_encoding() and pg_encoding_to_char() functions (Tatsuo)
libpq non-blocking mode (Alfred Perlstein)
Improve conversion of types in casts that don't specify a length
New plperl internal programming language (Mark Hollomon)
Allow COPY IN to read file that do not end with a newline (Tom)
Indicate when long identifiers are truncated (Tom)
Allow aggregates to use type equivalency (Peter E)
Add Oracle's to_char(), to_date(), to_datetime(), to_timestamp(), to_number()
       conversion functions (Karel Zak <zakkr@zf.jcu.cz>)
Add SELECT DISTINCT ON (expr [, expr ...]) targetlist ... (Tom)
Check to be sure ORDER BY is compatible with the DISTINCT operation (Tom)
Add NUMERIC and int8 types to ODBC
Improve EXPLAIN results for Append, Group, Agg, Unique (Tom)
Add ALTER TABLE ... ADD FOREIGN KEY (Stephan Szabo)
Allow SELECT .. FOR UPDATE in PL/pgSQL (Hiroshi)
Enable backward sequential scan even after reaching EOF (Hiroshi)
Add btree indexing of boolean values, >= and <= (Don Baccus)
Print current line number when COPY FROM fails (Massimo)
Recognize POSIX time zone e.g. "PST+8" and "GMT-8" (Thomas)
Add DEC as synonym for DECIMAL (Thomas)
Add SESSION_USER as SQL92 key word, same as CURRENT_USER (Thomas)
Implement SQL92 column aliases (aka correlation names) (Thomas)
Implement SQL92 join syntax (Thomas)
Make INTERVAL reserved word allowed as a column identifier (Thomas)
Implement REINDEX command (Hiroshi)
Accept ALL in aggregate function SUM(ALL col) (Tom)
Prevent GROUP BY from using column aliases (Tom)
New psql \encoding option (Tatsuo)
Allow PQrequestCancel() to terminate when in waiting-for-lock state (Hiroshi)
Allow negation of a negative number in all cases
Add ecpg descriptors (Christof, Michael)
Allow CREATE VIEW v AS SELECT f1::char(8) FROM tbl
Allow casts with length, like foo::char(8)
New libpq functions PQsetClientEncoding(), PQclientEncoding() (Tatsuo)
Add support for SJIS user defined characters (Tatsuo)
Larger views/rules supported
Make libpq's PQconndefaults() thread-safe (Tom)
Disable // as comment to be ANSI conforming, should use -- (Tom)
Allow column aliases on views CREATE VIEW name (collist)
Fixes for views with subqueries (Tom)
Allow UPDATE table SET fld = (SELECT ...) (Tom)
SET command options no longer require quotes
Update pgaccess to 0.98.6
New SET SEED command
New pg_options.sample file
New SET FSYNC command (Massimo)
Allow pg_descriptions when creating tables
Allow pg_descriptions when creating types, columns, and functions
Allow psql \copy to allow delimiters (Peter E)
Allow psql to print nulls as distinct from "" [null] (Peter E)

Types
-----
Many array fixes (Tom)
Allow bare column names to be subscripted as arrays (Tom)
Improve type casting of int and float constants (Tom)
Cleanups for int8 inputs, range checking, and type conversion (Tom)
Fix for SELECT timespan('21:11:26'::time) (Tom)
netmask('x.x.x.x/0') is 255.255.255.255 instead of 0.0.0.0 (Oleg Sharoiko)
Add btree index on NUMERIC (Jan)
Perl fix for large objects containing NUL characters (Douglas Thomson)
ODBC fix for large objects (free)
Fix indexing of cidr data type
Fix for Ethernet MAC addresses (macaddr type) comparisons
Fix for date/time types when overflows happened in computations (Tom)
Allow array on int8 (Peter E)
Fix for rounding/overflow of NUMERIC type, like NUMERIC(4,4) (Tom)
Allow NUMERIC arrays
Fix bugs in NUMERIC ceil() and floor() functions (Tom)
Make char_length()/octet_length including trailing blanks (Tom)
Made abstime/reltime use int4 instead of time_t (Peter E)
New lztext data type for compressed text fields
Revise code to handle coercion of int and float constants (Tom)
Start at new code to implement a BIT and BIT VARYING type (Adriaan Joubert)
NUMERIC now accepts scientific notation (Tom)
NUMERIC to int4 rounds (Tom)
Convert float4/8 to NUMERIC properly (Tom)
Allow type conversion with NUMERIC (Thomas)
Make ISO date style (2000-02-16 09:33) the default (Thomas)
Add NATIONAL CHAR [ VARYING ] (Thomas)
Allow NUMERIC round and trunc to accept negative scales (Tom)
New TIME WITH TIME ZONE type (Thomas)
Add MAX()/MIN() on time type (Thomas)
Add abs(), mod(), fac() for int8 (Thomas)
Rename functions to round(), sqrt(), cbrt(), pow() for float8 (Thomas)
Add transcendental math functions (e.g. sin(), acos()) for float8 (Thomas)
Add exp() and ln() for NUMERIC type
Rename NUMERIC power() to pow() (Thomas)
Improved TRANSLATE() function (Edwin Ramirez, Tom)
Allow X=-Y operators  (Tom)
Allow SELECT float8(COUNT(*))/(SELECT COUNT(*) FROM t) FROM t GROUP BY f1; (Tom)
Allow LOCALE to use indexes in regular expression searches (Tom)
Allow creation of functional indexes to use default types

Performance
-----------
Prevent exponential space consumption with many AND's and OR's (Tom)
Collect attribute selectivity values for system columns (Tom)
Reduce memory usage of aggregates (Tom)
Fix for LIKE optimization to use indexes with multibyte encodings (Tom)
Fix r-tree index optimizer selectivity (Thomas)
Improve optimizer selectivity computations and functions (Tom)
Optimize btree searching for cases where many equal keys exist (Tom)
Enable fast LIKE index processing only if index present (Tom)
Re-use free space on index pages with duplicates (Tom)
Improve hash join processing (Tom)
Prevent descending sort if result is already sorted(Hiroshi)
Allow commuting of index scan query qualifications (Tom)
Prefer index scans in cases where ORDER BY/GROUP BY is required (Tom)
Allocate large memory requests in fix-sized chunks for performance (Tom)
Fix vacuum's performance by reducing memory allocation requests (Tom)
Implement constant-expression simplification (Bernard Frankpitt, Tom)
Use secondary columns to be used to determine start of index scan (Hiroshi)
Prevent quadruple use of disk space when doing internal sorting (Tom)
Faster sorting by calling fewer functions (Tom)
Create system indexes to match all system caches (Bruce, Hiroshi)
Make system caches use system indexes (Bruce)
Make all system indexes unique (Bruce)
Improve pg_statistics management for VACUUM speed improvement (Tom)
Flush backend cache less frequently (Tom, Hiroshi)
COPY now reuses previous memory allocation, improving performance (Tom)
Improve optimization cost estimation (Tom)
Improve optimizer estimate of range queries x > lowbound AND x < highbound (Tom)
Use DNF instead of CNF where appropriate (Tom, Taral)
Further cleanup for OR-of-AND WHERE-clauses (Tom)
Make use of index in OR clauses (x = 1 AND y = 2) OR (x = 2 AND y = 4) (Tom)
Smarter optimizer computations for random index page access (Tom)
New SET variable to control optimizer costs (Tom)
Optimizer queries based on LIMIT, OFFSET, and EXISTS qualifications (Tom)
Reduce optimizer internal housekeeping of join paths for speedup (Tom)
Major subquery speedup (Tom)
Fewer fsync writes when fsync is not disabled (Tom)
Improved LIKE optimizer estimates (Tom)
Prevent fsync in SELECT-only queries (Vadim)
Make index creation use psort code, because it is now faster (Tom)
Allow creation of sort temp tables > 1 Gig

Source Tree Changes
-------------------
Fix for linux PPC compile
New generic expression-tree-walker subroutine (Tom)
Change form() to varargform() to prevent portability problems
Improved range checking for large integers on Alphas
Clean up #include in /include directory (Bruce)
Add scripts for checking includes (Bruce)
Remove un-needed #include's from *.c files (Bruce)
Change #include's to use <> and "" as appropriate (Bruce)
Enable Windows compilation of libpq
Alpha spinlock fix from Uncle George <gatgul@voicenet.com>
Overhaul of optimizer data structures (Tom)
Fix to cygipc library (Yutaka Tanida)
Allow pgsql to work on newer Cygwin snapshots (Dan)
New catalog version number (Tom)
Add Linux ARM
Rename heap_replace to heap_update
Update for QNX (Dr. Andreas Kardos)
New platform-specific regression handling (Tom)
Rename oid8 -> oidvector and int28 -> int2vector (Bruce)
Included all yacc and lex files into the distribution (Peter E.)
Remove lextest, no longer needed (Peter E)
Fix for libpq and psql on Windows (Magnus)
Internally change datetime and timespan into timestamp and interval (Thomas)
Fix for plpgsql on BSD/OS
Add SQL_ASCII test case to the regression test (Tatsuo)
configure --with-mb now deprecated (Tatsuo)
NT fixes
NetBSD fixes (Johnny C. Lam <lamj@stat.cmu.edu>)
Fixes for Alpha compiles
New multibyte encodings

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Release 6.5.3

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E.237. Release 6.5.3

Release Date: 1999-10-13

This is basically a cleanup release for 6.5.2. We have added a new PgAccess that was missing in 6.5.2, and installed an NT-specific fix.

E.237.1. Migration to Version 6.5.3

A dump/restore is not required for those running 6.5.*.

E.237.2. Changes

Updated version of pgaccess 0.98
NT-specific patch
Fix dumping rules on inherited tables

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Release 6.5.2

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E.238. Release 6.5.2

Release Date: 1999-09-15

This is basically a cleanup release for 6.5.1. We have fixed a variety of problems reported by 6.5.1 users.

E.238.1. Migration to Version 6.5.2

A dump/restore is not required for those running 6.5.*.

E.238.2. Changes

subselect+CASE fixes(Tom)
Add SHLIB_LINK setting for solaris_i386 and solaris_sparc ports(Daren Sefcik)
Fixes for CASE in WHERE join clauses(Tom)
Fix BTScan abort(Tom)
Repair the check for redundant UNIQUE and PRIMARY KEY indexes(Thomas)
Improve it so that it checks for multicolumn constraints(Thomas)
Fix for Windows making problem with MB enabled(Hiroki Kataoka)
Allow BSD yacc and bison to compile pl code(Bruce)
Fix SET NAMES working
int8 fixes(Thomas)
Fix vacuum's memory consumption(Hiroshi,Tatsuo)
Reduce the total memory consumption of vacuum(Tom)
Fix for timestamp(datetime)
Rule deparsing bugfixes(Tom)
Fix quoting problems in mkMakefile.tcldefs.sh.in and mkMakefile.tkdefs.sh.in(Tom)
This is to re-use space on index pages freed by vacuum(Vadim)
document -x for pg_dump(Bruce)
Fix for unary operators in rule deparser(Tom)
Comment out FileUnlink of excess segments during mdtruncate()(Tom)
IRIX linking fix from Yu Cao >yucao@falcon.kla-tencor.com<
Repair logic error in LIKE: should not return LIKE_ABORT
  when reach end of pattern before end of text(Tom)
Repair incorrect cleanup of heap memory allocation during transaction abort(Tom)
Updated version of pgaccess 0.98

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Release 6.5.1

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E.239. Release 6.5.1

Release Date: 1999-07-15

This is basically a cleanup release for 6.5. We have fixed a variety of problems reported by 6.5 users.

E.239.1. Migration to Version 6.5.1

A dump/restore is not required for those running 6.5.

E.239.2. Changes

Add NT README file
Portability fixes for linux_ppc, IRIX, linux_alpha, OpenBSD, alpha
Remove QUERY_LIMIT, use SELECT...LIMIT
Fix for EXPLAIN on inheritance(Tom)
Patch to allow vacuum on multisegment tables(Hiroshi)
R-Tree optimizer selectivity fix(Tom)
ACL file descriptor leak fix(Atsushi Ogawa)
New expression subtree code(Tom)
Avoid disk writes for read-only transactions(Vadim)
Fix for removal of temp tables if last transaction was aborted(Bruce)
Fix to prevent too large row from being created(Bruce)
plpgsql fixes
Allow port numbers 32k - 64k(Bruce)
Add ^ precedence(Bruce)
Rename sort files called pg_temp to pg_sorttemp(Bruce)
Fix for microseconds in time values(Tom)
Tutorial source cleanup
New linux_m68k port
Fix for sorting of NULL's in some cases(Tom)
Shared library dependencies fixed (Tom)
Fixed glitches affecting GROUP BY in subselects(Tom)
Fix some compiler warnings (Tomoaki Nishiyama)
Add Win1250 (Czech) support (Pavel Behal)

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Release 6.5

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E.240. Release 6.5

Release Date: 1999-06-09

This release marks a major step in the development team's mastery of the source code we inherited from Berkeley. You will see we are now easily adding major features, thanks to the increasing size and experience of our world-wide development team.

Here is a brief summary of the more notable changes:

Multiversion concurrency control(MVCC)

This removes our old table-level locking, and replaces it with a locking system that is superior to most commercial database systems. In a traditional system, each row that is modified is locked until committed, preventing reads by other users. MVCC uses the natural multiversion nature of PostgreSQL to allow readers to continue reading consistent data during writer activity. Writers continue to use the compact pg_log transaction system. This is all performed without having to allocate a lock for every row like traditional database systems. So, basically, we no longer are restricted by simple table-level locking; we have something better than row-level locking.

Hot backups from pg_dump

pg_dump takes advantage of the new MVCC features to give a consistent database dump/backup while the database stays online and available for queries.

Numeric data type

We now have a true numeric data type, with user-specified precision.

Temporary tables

Temporary tables are guaranteed to have unique names within a database session, and are destroyed on session exit.

New SQL features

We now have CASE, INTERSECT, and EXCEPT statement support. We have new LIMIT/OFFSET, SET TRANSACTION ISOLATION LEVEL, SELECT ... FOR UPDATE, and an improved LOCK TABLE command.

Speedups

We continue to speed up PostgreSQL, thanks to the variety of talents within our team. We have sped up memory allocation, optimization, table joins, and row transfer routines.

Ports

We continue to expand our port list, this time including Windows NT/ix86 and NetBSD/arm32.

Interfaces

Most interfaces have new versions, and existing functionality has been improved.

Documentation

New and updated material is present throughout the documentation. New FAQs have been contributed for SGI and AIX platforms. The Tutorial has introductory information on SQL from Stefan Simkovics. For the User's Guide, there are reference pages covering the postmaster and more utility programs, and a new appendix contains details on date/time behavior. The Administrator's Guide has a new chapter on troubleshooting from Tom Lane. And the Programmer's Guide has a description of query processing, also from Stefan, and details on obtaining the PostgreSQL source tree via anonymous CVS and CVSup.

E.240.1. Migration to Version 6.5

A dump/restore using pg_dump is required for those wishing to migrate data from any previous release of PostgreSQL. pg_upgrade can not be used to upgrade to this release because the on-disk structure of the tables has changed compared to previous releases.

The new Multiversion Concurrency Control (MVCC) features can give somewhat different behaviors in multiuser environments. Read and understand the following section to ensure that your existing applications will give you the behavior you need.

E.240.1.1. Multiversion Concurrency Control

Because readers in 6.5 don't lock data, regardless of transaction isolation level, data read by one transaction can be overwritten by another. In other words, if a row is returned by SELECT it doesn't mean that this row really exists at the time it is returned (i.e. sometime after the statement or transaction began) nor that the row is protected from being deleted or updated by concurrent transactions before the current transaction does a commit or rollback.

To ensure the actual existence of a row and protect it against concurrent updates one must use SELECT FOR UPDATE or an appropriate LOCK TABLE statement. This should be taken into account when porting applications from previous releases of PostgreSQL and other environments.

Keep the above in mind if you are using contrib/refint.* triggers for referential integrity. Additional techniques are required now. One way is to use LOCK parent_table IN SHARE ROW EXCLUSIVE MODE command if a transaction is going to update/delete a primary key and use LOCK parent_table IN SHARE MODE command if a transaction is going to update/insert a foreign key.

Note: Note that if you run a transaction in SERIALIZABLE mode then you must execute the LOCK commands above before execution of any DML statement (SELECT/INSERT/DELETE/UPDATE/FETCH/COPY_TO) in the transaction.

These inconveniences will disappear in the future when the ability to read dirty (uncommitted) data (regardless of isolation level) and true referential integrity will be implemented.

E.240.2. Changes

Bug Fixes
---------
Fix text<->float8 and text<->float4 conversion functions(Thomas)
Fix for creating tables with mixed-case constraints(Billy)
Change exp()/pow() behavior to generate error on underflow/overflow(Jan)
Fix bug in pg_dump -z
Memory overrun cleanups(Tatsuo)
Fix for lo_import crash(Tatsuo)
Adjust handling of data type names to suppress double quotes(Thomas)
Use type coercion for matching columns and DEFAULT(Thomas)
Fix deadlock so it only checks once after one second of sleep(Bruce)
Fixes for aggregates and PL/pgsql(Hiroshi)
Fix for subquery crash(Vadim)
Fix for libpq function PQfnumber and case-insensitive names(Bahman Rafatjoo)
Fix for large object write-in-middle, no extra block, memory consumption(Tatsuo)
Fix for pg_dump -d or -D and  quote special characters in INSERT
Repair serious problems with dynahash(Tom)
Fix INET/CIDR portability problems
Fix problem with selectivity error in ALTER TABLE ADD COLUMN(Bruce)
Fix executor so mergejoin of different column types works(Tom)
Fix for Alpha OR selectivity bug
Fix OR index selectivity problem(Bruce)
Fix so \d shows proper length for char()/varchar()(Ryan)
Fix tutorial code(Clark)
Improve destroyuser checking(Oliver)
Fix for Kerberos(Rodney McDuff)
Fix for dropping database while dirty buffers(Bruce)
Fix so sequence nextval() can be case-sensitive(Bruce)
Fix !!= operator
Drop buffers before destroying database files(Bruce)
Fix case where executor evaluates functions twice(Tatsuo)
Allow sequence nextval actions to be case-sensitive(Bruce)
Fix optimizer indexing not working for negative numbers(Bruce)
Fix for memory leak in executor with fjIsNull
Fix for aggregate memory leaks(Erik Riedel)
Allow user name containing a dash to grant privileges
Cleanup of NULL in inet types
Clean up system table bugs(Tom)
Fix problems of PAGER and \? command(Masaaki Sakaida)
Reduce default multisegment file size limit to 1GB(Peter)
Fix for dumping of CREATE OPERATOR(Tom)
Fix for backward scanning of cursors(Hiroshi Inoue)
Fix for COPY FROM STDIN when using \i(Tom)
Fix for subselect is compared inside an expression(Jan)
Fix handling of error reporting while returning rows(Tom)
Fix problems with reference to array types(Tom,Jan)
Prevent UPDATE SET oid(Jan)
Fix pg_dump so -t option can handle case-sensitive tablenames
Fixes for GROUP BY in special cases(Tom, Jan)
Fix for memory leak in failed queries(Tom)
DEFAULT now supports mixed-case identifiers(Tom)
Fix for multisegment uses of DROP/RENAME table, indexes(Ole Gjerde)
Disable use of pg_dump with both -o and -d options(Bruce)
Allow pg_dump to properly dump group privileges(Bruce)
Fix GROUP BY in INSERT INTO table SELECT * FROM table2(Jan)
Fix for computations in views(Jan)
Fix for aggregates on array indexes(Tom)
Fix for DEFAULT handles single quotes in value requiring too many quotes
Fix security problem with non-super users importing/exporting large objects(Tom)
Rollback of transaction that creates table cleaned up properly(Tom)
Fix to allow long table and column names to generate proper serial names(Tom)

Enhancements
------------
Add "vacuumdb" utility
Speed up libpq by allocating memory better(Tom)
EXPLAIN all indexes used(Tom)
Implement CASE, COALESCE, NULLIF  expression(Thomas)
New pg_dump table output format(Constantin)
Add string min()/max() functions(Thomas)
Extend new type coercion techniques to aggregates(Thomas)
New moddatetime contrib(Terry)
Update to pgaccess 0.96(Constantin)
Add routines for single-byte "char" type(Thomas)
Improved substr() function(Thomas)
Improved multibyte handling(Tatsuo)
Multiversion concurrency control/MVCC(Vadim)
New Serialized mode(Vadim)
Fix for tables over 2gigs(Peter)
New SET TRANSACTION ISOLATION LEVEL(Vadim)
New LOCK TABLE IN ... MODE(Vadim)
Update ODBC driver(Byron)
New NUMERIC data type(Jan)
New SELECT FOR UPDATE(Vadim)
Handle "NaN" and "Infinity" for input values(Jan)
Improved date/year handling(Thomas)
Improved handling of backend connections(Magnus)
New options ELOG_TIMESTAMPS and USE_SYSLOG options for log files(Massimo)
New TCL_ARRAYS option(Massimo)
New INTERSECT and EXCEPT(Stefan)
New pg_index.indisprimary for primary key tracking(D'Arcy)
New pg_dump option to allow dropping of tables before creation(Brook)
Speedup of row output routines(Tom)
New READ COMMITTED isolation level(Vadim)
New TEMP tables/indexes(Bruce)
Prevent sorting if result is already sorted(Jan)
New memory allocation optimization(Jan)
Allow psql to do \p\g(Bruce)
Allow multiple rule actions(Jan)
Added LIMIT/OFFSET functionality(Jan)
Improve optimizer when joining a large number of tables(Bruce)
New intro to SQL from S. Simkovics' Master's Thesis (Stefan, Thomas)
New intro to backend processing from S. Simkovics' Master's Thesis (Stefan)
Improved int8 support(Ryan Bradetich, Thomas, Tom)
New routines to convert between int8 and text/varchar types(Thomas)
New bushy plans, where meta-tables are joined(Bruce)
Enable right-hand queries by default(Bruce)
Allow reliable maximum number of backends to be set at configure time
     (--with-maxbackends and postmaster switch (-N backends))(Tom)
GEQO default now 10 tables because of optimizer speedups(Tom)
Allow NULL=Var for MS-SQL portability(Michael, Bruce)
Modify contrib check_primary_key() so either "automatic" or "dependent"(Anand)
Allow psql \d on a view show query(Ryan)
Speedup for LIKE(Bruce)
Ecpg fixes/features, see src/interfaces/ecpg/ChangeLog file(Michael)
JDBC fixes/features, see src/interfaces/jdbc/CHANGELOG(Peter)
Make % operator have precedence like /(Bruce)
Add new postgres -O option to allow system table structure changes(Bruce)
Update contrib/pginterface/findoidjoins script(Tom)
Major speedup in vacuum of deleted rows with indexes(Vadim)
Allow non-SQL functions to run different versions based on arguments(Tom)
Add -E option that shows actual queries sent by \dt and friends(Masaaki Sakaida)
Add version number in start-up banners for psql(Masaaki Sakaida)
New contrib/vacuumlo removes large objects not referenced(Peter)
New initialization for table sizes so non-vacuumed tables perform better(Tom)
Improve error messages when a connection is rejected(Tom)
Support for arrays of char() and varchar() fields(Massimo)
Overhaul of hash code to increase reliability and performance(Tom)
Update to PyGreSQL 2.4(D'Arcy)
Changed debug options so -d4 and -d5 produce different node displays(Jan)
New pg_options: pretty_plan, pretty_parse, pretty_rewritten(Jan)
Better optimization statistics for system table access(Tom)
Better handling of non-default block sizes(Massimo)
Improve GEQO optimizer memory consumption(Tom)
UNION now supports ORDER BY of columns not in target list(Jan)
Major libpq++ improvements(Vince Vielhaber)
pg_dump now uses -z(ACL's) as default(Bruce)
backend cache, memory speedups(Tom)
have pg_dump do everything in one snapshot transaction(Vadim)
fix for large object memory leakage, fix for pg_dumping(Tom)
INET type now respects netmask for comparisons
Make VACUUM ANALYZE only use a readlock(Vadim)
Allow VIEWs on UNIONS(Jan)
pg_dump now can generate consistent snapshots on active databases(Vadim)

Source Tree Changes
-------------------
Improve port matching(Tom)
Portability fixes for SunOS
Add Windows NT backend port and enable dynamic loading(Magnus and Daniel Horak)
New port to Cobalt Qube(Mips) running Linux(Tatsuo)
Port to NetBSD/m68k(Mr. Mutsuki Nakajima)
Port to NetBSD/sun3(Mr. Mutsuki Nakajima)
Port to NetBSD/macppc(Toshimi Aoki)
Fix for tcl/tk configuration(Vince)
Removed CURRENT key word for rule queries(Jan)
NT dynamic loading now works(Daniel Horak)
Add ARM32 support(Andrew McMurry)
Better support for HP-UX 11 and UnixWare
Improve file handling to be more uniform, prevent file descriptor leak(Tom)
New install commands for plpgsql(Jan)

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Release 6.4.2

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E.241. Release 6.4.2

Release Date: 1998-12-20

The 6.4.1 release was improperly packaged. This also has one additional bug fix.

E.241.1. Migration to Version 6.4.2

A dump/restore is not required for those running 6.4.*.

E.241.2. Changes

Fix for datetime constant problem on some platforms(Thomas)

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Release 6.4.1

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E.242. Release 6.4.1

Release Date: 1998-12-18

This is basically a cleanup release for 6.4. We have fixed a variety of problems reported by 6.4 users.

E.242.1. Migration to Version 6.4.1

A dump/restore is not required for those running 6.4.

E.242.2. Changes

Add pg_dump -N flag to force double quotes around identifiers.  This is
       the default(Thomas)
Fix for NOT in where clause causing crash(Bruce)
EXPLAIN VERBOSE coredump fix(Vadim)
Fix shared-library problems on Linux
Fix test for table existence to allow mixed-case and whitespace in
       the table name(Thomas)
Fix a couple of pg_dump bugs
Configure matches template/.similar entries better(Tom)
Change builtin function names from SPI_* to spi_*
OR WHERE clause fix(Vadim)
Fixes for mixed-case table names(Billy)
contrib/linux/postgres.init.csh/sh fix(Thomas)
libpq memory overrun fix
SunOS fixes(Tom)
Change exp() behavior to generate error on underflow(Thomas)
pg_dump fixes for memory leak, inheritance constraints, layout change
update pgaccess to 0.93
Fix prototype for 64-bit platforms
Multibyte fixes(Tatsuo)
New ecpg man page
Fix memory overruns(Tatsuo)
Fix for lo_import() crash(Bruce)
Better search for install program(Tom)
Timezone fixes(Tom)
HP-UX fixes(Tom)
Use implicit type coercion for matching DEFAULT values(Thomas)
Add routines to help with single-byte (internal) character type(Thomas)
Compilation of libpq for Windows fixes(Magnus)
Upgrade to PyGreSQL 2.2(D'Arcy)

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Release 6.4

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E.243. Release 6.4

Release Date: 1998-10-30

There are many new features and improvements in this release. Thanks to our developers and maintainers, nearly every aspect of the system has received some attention since the previous release. Here is a brief, incomplete summary:

  • Views and rules are now functional thanks to extensive new code in the rewrite rules system from Jan Wieck. He also wrote a chapter on it for the Programmer's Guide.

  • Jan also contributed a second procedural language, PL/pgSQL, to go with the original PL/pgTCL procedural language he contributed last release.

  • We have optional multiple-byte character set support from Tatsuo Ishii to complement our existing locale support.

  • Client/server communications has been cleaned up, with better support for asynchronous messages and interrupts thanks to Tom Lane.

  • The parser will now perform automatic type coercion to match arguments to available operators and functions, and to match columns and expressions with target columns. This uses a generic mechanism which supports the type extensibility features of PostgreSQL. There is a new chapter in the User's Guide which covers this topic.

  • Three new data types have been added. Two types, inet and cidr, support various forms of IP network, subnet, and machine addressing. There is now an 8-byte integer type available on some platforms. See the chapter on data types in the User's Guide for details. A fourth type, serial, is now supported by the parser as an amalgam of the int4 type, a sequence, and a unique index.

  • Several more SQL92-compatible syntax features have been added, including INSERT DEFAULT VALUES

  • The automatic configuration and installation system has received some attention, and should be more robust for more platforms than it has ever been.

E.243.1. Migration to Version 6.4

A dump/restore using pg_dump or pg_dumpall is required for those wishing to migrate data from any previous release of PostgreSQL.

E.243.2. Changes

Bug Fixes
---------
Fix for a tiny memory leak in PQsetdb/PQfinish(Bryan)
Remove char2-16 data types, use char/varchar(Darren)
Pqfn not handles a NOTICE message(Anders)
Reduced busywaiting overhead for spinlocks with many backends (dg)
Stuck spinlock detection (dg)
Fix up "ISO-style" timespan decoding and encoding(Thomas)
Fix problem with table drop after rollback of transaction(Vadim)
Change error message and remove non-functional update message(Vadim)
Fix for COPY array checking
Fix for SELECT 1 UNION SELECT NULL
Fix for buffer leaks in large object calls(Pascal)
Change owner from oid to int4 type(Bruce)
Fix a bug in the oracle compatibility functions btrim() ltrim() and rtrim()
Fix for shared invalidation cache overflow(Massimo)
Prevent file descriptor leaks in failed COPY's(Bruce)
Fix memory leak in libpgtcl's pg_select(Constantin)
Fix problems with username/passwords over 8 characters(Tom)
Fix problems with handling of asynchronous NOTIFY in backend(Tom)
Fix of many bad system table entries(Tom)

Enhancements
------------
Upgrade ecpg and ecpglib,see src/interfaces/ecpc/ChangeLog(Michael)
Show the index used in an EXPLAIN(Zeugswetter)
EXPLAIN  invokes  rule system and shows plan(s) for rewritten queries(Jan)
Multibyte awareness of many data types and functions, via configure(Tatsuo)
New configure --with-mb option(Tatsuo)
New initdb --pgencoding option(Tatsuo)
New createdb -E multibyte option(Tatsuo)
Select version(); now returns PostgreSQL version(Jeroen)
libpq now allows asynchronous clients(Tom)
Allow cancel from client of backend query(Tom)
psql now cancels query with Control-C(Tom)
libpq users need not issue dummy queries to get NOTIFY messages(Tom)
NOTIFY now sends sender's PID, so you can tell whether it was your own(Tom)
PGresult struct now includes associated error message, if any(Tom)
Define "tz_hour" and "tz_minute" arguments to date_part()(Thomas)
Add routines to convert between varchar and bpchar(Thomas)
Add routines to allow sizing of varchar and bpchar into target columns(Thomas)
Add bit flags to support timezonehour and minute in data retrieval(Thomas)
Allow more variations on valid floating point numbers (e.g. ".1", "1e6")(Thomas)
Fixes for unary minus parsing with leading spaces(Thomas)
Implement TIMEZONE_HOUR, TIMEZONE_MINUTE per SQL92 specs(Thomas)
Check for and properly ignore FOREIGN KEY column constraints(Thomas)
Define USER as synonym for CURRENT_USER per SQL92 specs(Thomas)
Enable HAVING clause but no fixes elsewhere yet.
Make "char" type a synonym for "char(1)" (actually implemented as bpchar)(Thomas)
Save string type if specified for DEFAULT clause handling(Thomas)
Coerce operations involving different data types(Thomas)
Allow some index use for columns of different types(Thomas)
Add capabilities for automatic type conversion(Thomas)
Cleanups for large objects, so file is truncated on open(Peter)
Readline cleanups(Tom)
Allow psql  \f \ to make spaces as delimiter(Bruce)
Pass pg_attribute.atttypmod to the frontend for column field lengths(Tom,Bruce)
Msql compatibility library in /contrib(Aldrin)
Remove the requirement that ORDER/GROUP BY clause identifiers be
included in the target list(David)
Convert columns to match columns in UNION clauses(Thomas)
Remove fork()/exec() and only do fork()(Bruce)
Jdbc cleanups(Peter)
Show backend status on ps command line(only works on some platforms)(Bruce)
Pg_hba.conf now has a sameuser option in the database field
Make lo_unlink take oid param, not int4
New DISABLE_COMPLEX_MACRO for compilers that cannot handle our macros(Bruce)
Libpgtcl now handles NOTIFY as a Tcl event, need not send dummy queries(Tom)
libpgtcl cleanups(Tom)
Add -error option to libpgtcl's pg_result command(Tom)
New locale patch, see docs/README/locale(Oleg)
Fix for pg_dump so CONSTRAINT and CHECK syntax is correct(ccb)
New contrib/lo code for large object orphan removal(Peter)
New psql command "SET CLIENT_ENCODING TO 'encoding'" for multibytes
feature, see /doc/README.mb(Tatsuo)
contrib/noupdate code to revoke update permission on a column
libpq can now be compiled on Windows(Magnus)
Add PQsetdbLogin() in libpq
New 8-byte integer type, checked by configure for OS support(Thomas)
Better support for quoted table/column names(Thomas)
Surround table and column names with double-quotes in pg_dump(Thomas)
PQreset() now works with passwords(Tom)
Handle case of GROUP BY target list column number out of range(David)
Allow UNION in subselects
Add auto-size to screen to \d? commands(Bruce)
Use UNION to show all \d? results in one query(Bruce)
Add \d? field search feature(Bruce)
Pg_dump issues fewer \connect requests(Tom)
Make pg_dump -z flag work better, document it in manual page(Tom)
Add HAVING clause with full support for subselects and unions(Stephan)
Full text indexing routines in contrib/fulltextindex(Maarten)
Transaction ids now stored in shared memory(Vadim)
New PGCLIENTENCODING when issuing COPY command(Tatsuo)
Support for SQL92 syntax "SET NAMES"(Tatsuo)
Support for LATIN2-5(Tatsuo)
Add UNICODE regression test case(Tatsuo)
Lock manager cleanup, new locking modes for LLL(Vadim)
Allow index use with OR clauses(Bruce)
Allows "SELECT NULL ORDER BY 1;"
Explain VERBOSE prints the plan, and now pretty-prints the plan to
the postmaster log file(Bruce)
Add indexes display to \d command(Bruce)
Allow GROUP BY on functions(David)
New pg_class.relkind for large objects(Bruce)
New way to send libpq NOTICE messages to a different location(Tom)
New \w write command to psql(Bruce)
New /contrib/findoidjoins scans oid columns to find join relationships(Bruce)
Allow binary-compatible indexes to be considered when checking for valid
Indexes for restriction clauses containing a constant(Thomas)
New ISBN/ISSN code in /contrib/isbn_issn
Allow NOT LIKE, IN, NOT IN, BETWEEN, and NOT BETWEEN constraint(Thomas)
New rewrite system fixes many problems with rules and views(Jan)
       * Rules on relations work
       * Event qualifications on insert/update/delete work
       * New OLD variable to reference CURRENT, CURRENT will be remove in future
       * Update rules can reference NEW and OLD in rule qualifications/actions
       * Insert/update/delete rules on views work
       * Multiple rule actions are now supported, surrounded by parentheses
       * Regular users can create views/rules on tables they have RULE permits
       * Rules and views inherit the privileges of the creator
       * No rules at the column level
       * No UPDATE NEW/OLD rules
       * New pg_tables, pg_indexes, pg_rules and pg_views system views
       * Only a single action on SELECT rules
       * Total rewrite overhaul, perhaps for 6.5
       * handle subselects
       * handle aggregates on views
       * handle insert into select from view works
System indexes are now multikey(Bruce)
Oidint2, oidint4, and oidname types are removed(Bruce)
Use system cache for more system table lookups(Bruce)
New backend programming language PL/pgSQL in backend/pl(Jan)
New SERIAL data type, auto-creates sequence/index(Thomas)
Enable assert checking without a recompile(Massimo)
User lock enhancements(Massimo)
New setval() command to set sequence value(Massimo)
Auto-remove unix socket file on start-up if no postmaster running(Massimo)
Conditional trace package(Massimo)
New UNLISTEN command(Massimo)
psql and libpq now compile under Windows using win32.mak(Magnus)
Lo_read no longer stores trailing NULL(Bruce)
Identifiers are now truncated to 31 characters internally(Bruce)
Createuser options now available on the command line
Code for 64-bit integer supported added, configure tested, int8 type(Thomas)
Prevent file descriptor leaf from failed COPY(Bruce)
New pg_upgrade command(Bruce)
Updated /contrib directories(Massimo)
New CREATE TABLE DEFAULT VALUES statement available(Thomas)
New INSERT INTO TABLE DEFAULT VALUES statement available(Thomas)
New DECLARE and FETCH feature(Thomas)
libpq's internal structures now not exported(Tom)
Allow up to 8 key indexes(Bruce)
Remove ARCHIVE key word, that is no longer used(Thomas)
pg_dump -n flag to suppress quotes around identifiers
disable system columns for views(Jan)
new INET and CIDR types for network addresses(TomH, Paul)
no more double quotes in psql output
pg_dump now dumps views(Terry)
new SET QUERY_LIMIT(Tatsuo,Jan)

Source Tree Changes
-------------------
/contrib cleanup(Jun)
Inline some small functions called for every row(Bruce)
Alpha/linux fixes
HP-UX cleanups(Tom)
Multibyte regression tests(Soonmyung.)
Remove --disabled options from configure
Define PGDOC to use POSTGRESDIR by default
Make regression optional
Remove extra braces code to pgindent(Bruce)
Add bsdi shared library support(Bruce)
New --without-CXX support configure option(Brook)
New FAQ_CVS
Update backend flowchart in tools/backend(Bruce)
Change atttypmod from int16 to int32(Bruce, Tom)
Getrusage() fix for platforms that do not have it(Tom)
Add PQconnectdb, PGUSER, PGPASSWORD to libpq man page
NS32K platform fixes(Phil Nelson, John Buller)
SCO 7/UnixWare 2.x fixes(Billy,others)
Sparc/Solaris 2.5 fixes(Ryan)
Pgbuiltin.3 is obsolete, move to doc files(Thomas)
Even more documentation(Thomas)
Nextstep support(Jacek)
Aix support(David)
pginterface manual page(Bruce)
shared libraries all have version numbers
merged all OS-specific shared library defines into one file
smarter TCL/TK configuration checking(Billy)
smarter perl configuration(Brook)
configure uses supplied install-sh if no install script found(Tom)
new Makefile.shlib for shared library configuration(Tom)

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Release 6.3.2

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E.244. Release 6.3.2

Release Date: 1998-04-07

This is a bug-fix release for 6.3.x. Refer to the release notes for version 6.3 for a more complete summary of new features.

Summary:

  • Repairs automatic configuration support for some platforms, including Linux, from breakage inadvertently introduced in version 6.3.1.

  • Correctly handles function calls on the left side of BETWEEN and LIKE clauses.

A dump/restore is NOT required for those running 6.3 or 6.3.1. A make distclean, make, and make install is all that is required. This last step should be performed while the postmaster is not running. You should re-link any custom applications that use PostgreSQL libraries.

For upgrades from pre-6.3 installations, refer to the installation and migration instructions for version 6.3.

E.244.1. Changes

Configure detection improvements for tcl/tk(Brook Milligan, Alvin)
Manual page improvements(Bruce)
BETWEEN and LIKE fix(Thomas)
fix for psql \connect used by pg_dump(Oliver Elphick)
New odbc driver
pgaccess, version 0.86
qsort removed, now uses libc version, cleanups(Jeroen)
fix for buffer over-runs detected(Maurice Gittens)
fix for buffer overrun in libpgtcl(Randy Kunkee)
fix for UNION with DISTINCT or ORDER BY(Bruce)
gettimeofday configure check(Doug Winterburn)
Fix "indexes not used" bug(Vadim)
docs additions(Thomas)
Fix for backend memory leak(Bruce)
libreadline cleanup(Erwan MAS)
Remove DISTDIR(Bruce)
Makefile dependency cleanup(Jeroen van Vianen)
ASSERT fixes(Bruce)

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Release 6.3.1

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E.245. Release 6.3.1

Release Date: 1998-03-23

Summary:

  • Additional support for multibyte character sets.

  • Repair byte ordering for mixed-endian clients and servers.

  • Minor updates to allowed SQL syntax.

  • Improvements to the configuration autodetection for installation.

A dump/restore is NOT required for those running 6.3. A make distclean, make, and make install is all that is required. This last step should be performed while the postmaster is not running. You should re-link any custom applications that use PostgreSQL libraries.

For upgrades from pre-6.3 installations, refer to the installation and migration instructions for version 6.3.

E.245.1. Changes

ecpg cleanup/fixes, now version 1.1(Michael Meskes)
pg_user cleanup(Bruce)
large object fix for pg_dump and tclsh (alvin)
LIKE fix for multiple adjacent underscores
fix for redefining builtin functions(Thomas)
ultrix4 cleanup
upgrade to pg_access 0.83
updated CLUSTER manual page
multibyte character set support, see doc/README.mb(Tatsuo)
configure --with-pgport fix
pg_ident fix
big-endian fix for backend communications(Kataoka)
SUBSTR() and substring() fix(Jan)
several jdbc fixes(Peter)
libpgtcl improvements, see libptcl/README(Randy Kunkee)
Fix for "Datasize = 0" error(Vadim)
Prevent \do from wrapping(Bruce)
Remove duplicate Russian character set entries
Sunos4 cleanup
Allow optional TABLE key word in LOCK and SELECT INTO(Thomas)
CREATE SEQUENCE options to allow a negative integer(Thomas)
Add "PASSWORD" as an allowed column identifier(Thomas)
Add checks for UNION target fields(Bruce)
Fix Alpha port(Dwayne Bailey)
Fix for text arrays containing quotes(Doug Gibson)
Solaris compile fix(Albert Chin-A-Young)
Better identify tcl and tk libs and includes(Bruce)

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Release 6.3

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E.246. Release 6.3

Release Date: 1998-03-01

There are many new features and improvements in this release. Here is a brief, incomplete summary:

  • Many new SQL features, including full SQL92 subselect capability (everything is here but target-list subselects).

  • Support for client-side environment variables to specify time zone and date style.

  • Socket interface for client/server connection. This is the default now so you might need to start postmaster with the -i flag.

  • Better password authorization mechanisms. Default table privileges have changed.

  • Old-style time travel has been removed. Performance has been improved.

Note: Bruce Momjian wrote the following notes to introduce the new release.

There are some general 6.3 issues that I want to mention. These are only the big items that cannot be described in one sentence. A review of the detailed changes list is still needed.

First, we now have subselects. Now that we have them, I would like to mention that without subselects, SQL is a very limited language. Subselects are a major feature, and you should review your code for places where subselects provide a better solution for your queries. I think you will find that there are more uses for subselects than you might think. Vadim has put us on the big SQL map with subselects, and fully functional ones too. The only thing you cannot do with subselects is to use them in the target list.

Second, 6.3 uses Unix domain sockets rather than TCP/IP by default. To enable connections from other machines, you have to use the new postmaster -i option, and of course edit pg_hba.conf. Also, for this reason, the format of pg_hba.conf has changed.

Third, char() fields will now allow faster access than varchar() or text. Specifically, the text and varchar() have a penalty for access to any columns after the first column of this type. char() used to also have this access penalty, but it no longer does. This might suggest that you redesign some of your tables, especially if you have short character columns that you have defined as varchar() or text. This and other changes make 6.3 even faster than earlier releases.

We now have passwords definable independent of any Unix file. There are new SQL USER commands. See the Administrator's Guide for more information. There is a new table, pg_shadow, which is used to store user information and user passwords, and it by default only SELECT-able by the postgres super-user. pg_user is now a view of pg_shadow, and is SELECT-able by PUBLIC. You should keep using pg_user in your application without changes.

User-created tables now no longer have SELECT privilege to PUBLIC by default. This was done because the ANSI standard requires it. You can of course GRANT any privileges you want after the table is created. System tables continue to be SELECT-able by PUBLIC.

We also have real deadlock detection code. No more sixty-second timeouts. And the new locking code implements a FIFO better, so there should be less resource starvation during heavy use.

Many complaints have been made about inadequate documentation in previous releases. Thomas has put much effort into many new manuals for this release. Check out the doc/ directory.

For performance reasons, time travel is gone, but can be implemented using triggers (see pgsql/contrib/spi/README). Please check out the new \d command for types, operators, etc. Also, views have their own privileges now, not based on the underlying tables, so privileges on them have to be set separately. Check /pgsql/interfaces for some new ways to talk to PostgreSQL.

This is the first release that really required an explanation for existing users. In many ways, this was necessary because the new release removes many limitations, and the work-arounds people were using are no longer needed.

E.246.1. Migration to Version 6.3

A dump/restore using pg_dump or pg_dumpall is required for those wishing to migrate data from any previous release of PostgreSQL.

E.246.2. Changes

Bug Fixes
---------
Fix binary cursors broken by MOVE implementation(Vadim)
Fix for tcl library crash(Jan)
Fix for array handling, from Gerhard Hintermayer
Fix acl error, and remove duplicate pqtrace(Bruce)
Fix psql \e for empty file(Bruce)
Fix for textcat on varchar() fields(Bruce)
Fix for DBT Sendproc (Zeugswetter Andres)
Fix vacuum analyze syntax problem(Bruce)
Fix for international identifiers(Tatsuo)
Fix aggregates on inherited tables(Bruce)
Fix substr() for out-of-bounds data
Fix for select 1=1 or 2=2, select 1=1 and 2=2, and select sum(2+2)(Bruce)
Fix notty output to show status result.  -q option still turns it off(Bruce)
Fix for count(*), aggs with views and multiple tables and sum(3)(Bruce)
Fix cluster(Bruce)
Fix for PQtrace start/stop several times(Bruce)
Fix a variety of locking problems like newer lock waiters getting
       lock before older waiters, and having readlock people not share
       locks if a writer is waiting for a lock, and waiting writers not
       getting priority over waiting readers(Bruce)
Fix crashes in psql when executing queries from external files(James)
Fix problem with multiple order by columns, with the first one having
       NULL values(Jeroen)
Use correct hash table support functions for float8 and int4(Thomas)
Re-enable JOIN= option in CREATE OPERATOR statement (Thomas)
Change precedence for boolean operators to match expected behavior(Thomas)
Generate elog(ERROR) on over-large integer(Bruce)
Allow multiple-argument functions in constraint clauses(Thomas)
Check boolean input literals for 'true','false','yes','no','1','0'
       and throw elog(ERROR) if unrecognized(Thomas)
Major large objects fix
Fix for GROUP BY showing duplicates(Vadim)
Fix for index scans in MergeJoin(Vadim)

Enhancements
------------
Subselects with EXISTS, IN, ALL, ANY key words (Vadim, Bruce, Thomas)
New User Manual(Thomas, others)
Speedup by inlining some frequently-called functions
Real deadlock detection, no more timeouts(Bruce)
Add SQL92 "constants" CURRENT_DATE, CURRENT_TIME, CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,
       CURRENT_USER(Thomas)
Modify constraint syntax to be SQL92-compliant(Thomas)
Implement SQL92 PRIMARY KEY and UNIQUE clauses using indexes(Thomas)
Recognize SQL92 syntax for FOREIGN KEY. Throw elog notice(Thomas)
Allow NOT NULL UNIQUE constraint clause (each allowed separately before)(Thomas)
Allow PostgreSQL-style casting ("::") of non-constants(Thomas)
Add support for SQL3 TRUE and FALSE boolean constants(Thomas)
Support SQL92 syntax for IS TRUE/IS FALSE/IS NOT TRUE/IS NOT FALSE(Thomas)
Allow shorter strings for boolean literals (e.g. "t", "tr", "tru")(Thomas)
Allow SQL92 delimited identifiers(Thomas)
Implement SQL92 binary and hexadecimal string decoding (b'10' and x'1F')(Thomas)
Support SQL92 syntax for type coercion of literal strings
       (e.g. "DATETIME 'now'")(Thomas)
Add conversions for int2, int4, and OID types to and from text(Thomas)
Use shared lock when building indexes(Vadim)
Free memory allocated for a user query inside transaction block after
       this query is done, was turned off in <= 6.2.1(Vadim)
New SQL statement CREATE PROCEDURAL LANGUAGE(Jan)
New PostgreSQL Procedural Language (PL) backend interface(Jan)
Rename pg_dump -H option to -h(Bruce)
Add Java support for passwords, European dates(Peter)
Use indexes for LIKE and ~, !~ operations(Bruce)
Add hash functions for datetime and timespan(Thomas)
Time Travel removed(Vadim, Bruce)
Add paging for \d and \z, and fix \i(Bruce)
Add Unix domain socket support to backend and to frontend library(Goran)
Implement CREATE DATABASE/WITH LOCATION and initlocation utility(Thomas)
Allow more SQL92 and/or PostgreSQL reserved words as column identifiers(Thomas)
Augment support for SQL92 SET TIME ZONE...(Thomas)
SET/SHOW/RESET TIME ZONE uses TZ backend environment variable(Thomas)
Implement SET keyword = DEFAULT and SET TIME ZONE DEFAULT(Thomas)
Enable SET TIME ZONE using TZ environment variable(Thomas)
Add PGDATESTYLE environment variable to frontend and backend initialization(Thomas)
Add PGTZ, PGCOSTHEAP, PGCOSTINDEX, PGRPLANS, PGGEQO
       frontend library initialization environment variables(Thomas)
Regression tests time zone automatically set with "setenv PGTZ PST8PDT"(Thomas)
Add pg_description table for info on tables, columns, operators, types, and
       aggregates(Bruce)
Increase 16 char limit on system table/index names to 32 characters(Bruce)
Rename system indexes(Bruce)
Add 'GERMAN' option to SET DATESTYLE(Thomas)
Define an "ISO-style" timespan output format with "hh:mm:ss" fields(Thomas)
Allow fractional values for delta times (e.g. '2.5 days')(Thomas)
Validate numeric input more carefully for delta times(Thomas)
Implement day of year as possible input to date_part()(Thomas)
Define timespan_finite() and text_timespan() functions(Thomas)
Remove archive stuff(Bruce)
Allow for a pg_password authentication database that is separate from
       the system password file(Todd)
Dump ACLs, GRANT, REVOKE privileges(Matt)
Define text, varchar, and bpchar string length functions(Thomas)
Fix Query handling for inheritance, and cost computations(Bruce)
Implement CREATE TABLE/AS SELECT (alternative to SELECT/INTO)(Thomas)
Allow NOT, IS NULL, IS NOT NULL in constraints(Thomas)
Implement UNIONs for SELECT(Bruce)
Add UNION, GROUP, DISTINCT to INSERT(Bruce)
varchar() stores only necessary bytes on disk(Bruce)
Fix for BLOBs(Peter)
Mega-Patch for JDBC...see README_6.3 for list of changes(Peter)
Remove unused "option" from PQconnectdb()
New LOCK command and lock manual page describing deadlocks(Bruce)
Add new psql \da, \dd, \df, \do, \dS, and \dT commands(Bruce)
Enhance psql \z to show sequences(Bruce)
Show NOT NULL and DEFAULT in psql \d table(Bruce)
New psql .psqlrc file start-up(Andrew)
Modify sample start-up script in contrib/linux to show syslog(Thomas)
New types for IP and MAC addresses in contrib/ip_and_mac(TomH)
Unix system time conversions with date/time types in contrib/unixdate(Thomas)
Update of contrib stuff(Massimo)
Add Unix socket support to DBD::Pg(Goran)
New python interface (PyGreSQL 2.0)(D'Arcy)
New frontend/backend protocol has a version number, network byte order(Phil)
Security features in pg_hba.conf enhanced and documented, many cleanups(Phil)
CHAR() now faster access than VARCHAR() or TEXT
ecpg embedded SQL preprocessor
Reduce system column overhead(Vadmin)
Remove pg_time table(Vadim)
Add pg_type attribute to identify types that need length (bpchar, varchar)
Add report of offending line when COPY command fails
Allow VIEW privileges to be set separately from the underlying tables.
       For security, use GRANT/REVOKE on views as appropriate(Jan)
Tables now have no default GRANT SELECT TO PUBLIC.  You must
       explicitly grant such privileges.
Clean up tutorial examples(Darren)

Source Tree Changes
-------------------
Add new html development tools, and flow chart in /tools/backend
Fix for SCO compiles
Stratus computer port Robert Gillies
Added support for shlib for BSD44_derived & i386_solaris
Make configure more automated(Brook)
Add script to check regression test results
Break parser functions into smaller files, group together(Bruce)
Rename heap_create to heap_create_and_catalog, rename heap_creatr
       to heap_create()(Bruce)
Sparc/Linux patch for locking(TomS)
Remove PORTNAME and reorganize port-specific stuff(Marc)
Add optimizer README file(Bruce)
Remove some recursion in optimizer and clean up some code there(Bruce)
Fix for NetBSD locking(Henry)
Fix for libptcl make(Tatsuo)
AIX patch(Darren)
Change IS TRUE, IS FALSE, ... to expressions using "=" rather than
       function calls to istrue() or isfalse() to allow optimization(Thomas)
Various fixes NetBSD/Sparc related(TomH)
Alpha linux locking(Travis,Ryan)
Change elog(WARN) to elog(ERROR)(Bruce)
FAQ for FreeBSD(Marc)
Bring in the PostODBC source tree as part of our standard distribution(Marc)
A minor patch for HP/UX 10 vs 9(Stan)
New pg_attribute.atttypmod for type-specific info like varchar length(Bruce)
UnixWare patches(Billy)
New i386 'lock' for spinlock asm(Billy)
Support for multiplexed backends is removed
Start an OpenBSD port
Start an AUX port
Start a Cygnus port
Add string functions to regression suite(Thomas)
Expand a few function names formerly truncated to 16 characters(Thomas)
Remove un-needed malloc() calls and replace with palloc()(Bruce)

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Release 6.3.1 | Up | Release 6.2.1


Release 6.2.1

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E.247. Release 6.2.1

Release Date: 1997-10-17

6.2.1 is a bug-fix and usability release on 6.2.

Summary:

  • Allow strings to span lines, per SQL92.

  • Include example trigger function for inserting user names on table updates.

This is a minor bug-fix release on 6.2. For upgrades from pre-6.2 systems, a full dump/reload is required. Refer to the 6.2 release notes for instructions.

E.247.1. Migration from version 6.2 to version 6.2.1

This is a minor bug-fix release. A dump/reload is not required from version 6.2, but is required from any release prior to 6.2.

In upgrading from version 6.2, if you choose to dump/reload you will find that avg(money) is now calculated correctly. All other bug fixes take effect upon updating the executables.

Another way to avoid dump/reload is to use the following SQL command from psql to update the existing system table:

update pg_aggregate set aggfinalfn = 'cash_div_flt8'
 where aggname = 'avg' and aggbasetype = 790;

This will need to be done to every existing database, including template1.

E.247.2. Changes

Allow TIME and TYPE column names(Thomas)
Allow larger range of true/false as boolean values(Thomas)
Support output of "now" and "current"(Thomas)
Handle DEFAULT with INSERT of NULL properly(Vadim)
Fix for relation reference counts problem in buffer manager(Vadim)
Allow strings to span lines, like ANSI(Thomas)
Fix for backward cursor with ORDER BY(Vadim)
Fix avg(cash) computation(Thomas)
Fix for specifying a column twice in ORDER/GROUP BY(Vadim)
Documented new libpq function to return affected rows, PQcmdTuples(Bruce)
Trigger function for inserting user names for INSERT/UPDATE(Brook Milligan)

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Release 6.3 | Up | Release 6.2


Release 6.2

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E.248. Release 6.2

Release Date: 1997-10-02

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

E.248.1. Migration from version 6.1 to version 6.2

This migration requires a complete dump of the 6.1 database and a restore of the database in 6.2.

Note that the pg_dump and pg_dumpall utility from 6.2 should be used to dump the 6.1 database.

E.248.2. Migration from version 1.x to version 6.2

Those migrating from earlier 1.* releases should first upgrade to 1.09 because the COPY output format was improved from the 1.02 release.

E.248.3. Changes

Bug Fixes
---------
Fix problems with pg_dump for inheritance, sequences, archive tables(Bruce)
Fix compile errors on overflow due to shifts, unsigned, and bad prototypes
        from Solaris(Diab Jerius)
Fix bugs in geometric line arithmetic (bad intersection calculations)(Thomas)
Check for geometric intersections at endpoints to avoid rounding ugliness(Thomas)
Catch non-functional delete attempts(Vadim)
Change time function names to be more consistent(Michael Reifenberg)
Check for zero divides(Michael Reifenberg)
Fix very old bug which made rows changed/inserted by a command
       visible to the command itself (so we had multiple update of
       updated rows, etc.)(Vadim)
Fix for SELECT null, 'fail' FROM pg_am (Patrick)
SELECT NULL as EMPTY_FIELD now allowed(Patrick)
Remove un-needed signal stuff from contrib/pginterface
Fix OR (where x != 1 or x isnull didn't return rows with x NULL) (Vadim)
Fix time_cmp function (Vadim)
Fix handling of functions with non-attribute first argument in
       WHERE clauses (Vadim)
Fix GROUP BY when order of entries is different from order
       in target list (Vadim)
Fix pg_dump for aggregates without sfunc1 (Vadim)

Enhancements
------------
Default genetic optimizer GEQO parameter is now 8(Bruce)
Allow use parameters in target list having aggregates in functions(Vadim)
Added JDBC driver as an interface(Adrian & Peter)
pg_password utility
Return number of rows inserted/affected by INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE etc.(Vadim)
Triggers implemented with CREATE TRIGGER (SQL3)(Vadim)
SPI (Server Programming Interface) allows execution of queries inside
       C-functions (Vadim)
NOT NULL implemented (SQL92)(Robson Paniago de Miranda)
Include reserved words for string handling, outer joins, and unions(Thomas)
Implement extended comments ("/* ... */") using exclusive states(Thomas)
Add "//" single-line comments(Bruce)
Remove some restrictions on characters in operator names(Thomas)
DEFAULT and CONSTRAINT for tables implemented (SQL92)(Vadim & Thomas)
Add text concatenation operator and function (SQL92)(Thomas)
Support WITH TIME ZONE syntax (SQL92)(Thomas)
Support INTERVAL unit TO unit syntax (SQL92)(Thomas)
Define types DOUBLE PRECISION, INTERVAL, CHARACTER,
       and CHARACTER VARYING (SQL92)(Thomas)
Define type FLOAT(p) and rudimentary DECIMAL(p,s), NUMERIC(p,s) (SQL92)(Thomas)
Define EXTRACT(), POSITION(), SUBSTRING(), and TRIM() (SQL92)(Thomas)
Define CURRENT_DATE, CURRENT_TIME, CURRENT_TIMESTAMP (SQL92)(Thomas)
Add syntax and warnings for UNION, HAVING, INNER and OUTER JOIN (SQL92)(Thomas)
Add more reserved words, mostly for SQL92 compliance(Thomas)
Allow hh:mm:ss time entry for timespan/reltime types(Thomas)
Add center() routines for lseg, path, polygon(Thomas)
Add distance() routines for circle-polygon, polygon-polygon(Thomas)
Check explicitly for points and polygons contained within polygons
       using an axis-crossing algorithm(Thomas)
Add routine to convert circle-box(Thomas)
Merge conflicting operators for different geometric data types(Thomas)
Replace distance operator "<===>" with "<->"(Thomas)
Replace "above" operator "!^" with ">^" and "below" operator "!|" with "<^"(Thomas)
Add routines for text trimming on both ends, substring, and string position(Thomas)
Added conversion routines circle(box) and poly(circle)(Thomas)
Allow internal sorts to be stored in memory rather than in files(Bruce & Vadim)
Allow functions and operators on internally-identical types to succeed(Bruce)
Speed up backend start-up after profiling analysis(Bruce)
Inline frequently called functions for performance(Bruce)
Reduce open() calls(Bruce)
psql:  Add PAGER for \h and \?,\C fix
Fix for psql pager when no tty(Bruce)
New entab utility(Bruce)
General trigger functions for referential integrity (Vadim)
General trigger functions for time travel (Vadim)
General trigger functions for AUTOINCREMENT/IDENTITY feature (Vadim)
MOVE implementation (Vadim)

Source Tree Changes
-------------------
HP-UX 10 patches (Vladimir Turin)
Added SCO support, (Daniel Harris)
MkLinux patches (Tatsuo Ishii)
Change geometric box terminology from "length" to "width"(Thomas)
Deprecate temporary unstored slope fields in geometric code(Thomas)
Remove restart instructions from INSTALL(Bruce)
Look in /usr/ucb first for install(Bruce)
Fix c++ copy example code(Thomas)
Add -o to psql manual page(Bruce)
Prevent relname unallocated string length from being copied into database(Bruce)
Cleanup for NAMEDATALEN use(Bruce)
Fix pg_proc names over 15 chars in output(Bruce)
Add strNcpy() function(Bruce)
remove some (void) casts that are unnecessary(Bruce)
new interfaces directory(Marc)
Replace fopen() calls with calls to fd.c functions(Bruce)
Make functions static where possible(Bruce)
enclose unused functions in #ifdef NOT_USED(Bruce)
Remove call to difftime() in timestamp support to fix SunOS(Bruce & Thomas)
Changes for Digital Unix
Portability fix for pg_dumpall(Bruce)
Rename pg_attribute.attnvals to attdispersion(Bruce)
"intro/unix" manual page now "pgintro"(Bruce)
"built-in" manual page now "pgbuiltin"(Bruce)
"drop" manual page now "drop_table"(Bruce)
Add "create_trigger", "drop_trigger" manual pages(Thomas)
Add constraints regression test(Vadim & Thomas)
Add comments syntax regression test(Thomas)
Add PGINDENT and support program(Bruce)
Massive commit to run PGINDENT on all *.c and *.h files(Bruce)
Files moved to /src/tools directory(Bruce)
SPI and Trigger programming guides (Vadim & D'Arcy)

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Release 6.2.1 | Up | Release 6.1.1


Release 6.1.1

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.249. Release 6.1.1

Release Date: 1997-07-22

E.249.1. Migration from version 6.1 to version 6.1.1

This is a minor bug-fix release. A dump/reload is not required from version 6.1, but is required from any release prior to 6.1. Refer to the release notes for 6.1 for more details.

E.249.2. Changes

fix for SET with options (Thomas)
allow pg_dump/pg_dumpall to preserve ownership of all tables/objects(Bruce)
new psql \connect option allows changing usernames without changing databases
fix for initdb --debug option(Yoshihiko Ichikawa))
lextest cleanup(Bruce)
hash fixes(Vadim)
fix date/time month boundary arithmetic(Thomas)
fix timezone daylight handling for some ports(Thomas, Bruce, Tatsuo)
timestamp overhauled to use standard functions(Thomas)
other code cleanup in date/time routines(Thomas)
psql's \d now case-insensitive(Bruce)
psql's backslash commands can now have trailing semicolon(Bruce)
fix memory leak in psql when using \g(Bruce)
major fix for endian handling of communication to server(Thomas, Tatsuo)
Fix for Solaris assembler and include files(Yoshihiko Ichikawa)
allow underscores in usernames(Bruce)
pg_dumpall now returns proper status, portability fix(Bruce)

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Release 6.2 | Up | Release 6.1


Release 6.1

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E.250. Release 6.1

Release Date: 1997-06-08

The regression tests have been adapted and extensively modified for the 6.1 release of PostgreSQL.

Three new data types (datetime, timespan, and circle) have been added to the native set of PostgreSQL types. Points, boxes, paths, and polygons have had their output formats made consistent across the data types. The polygon output in misc.out has only been spot-checked for correctness relative to the original regression output.

PostgreSQL 6.1 introduces a new, alternate optimizer which uses genetic algorithms. These algorithms introduce a random behavior in the ordering of query results when the query contains multiple qualifiers or multiple tables (giving the optimizer a choice on order of evaluation). Several regression tests have been modified to explicitly order the results, and hence are insensitive to optimizer choices. A few regression tests are for data types which are inherently unordered (e.g. points and time intervals) and tests involving those types are explicitly bracketed with set geqo to 'off' and reset geqo.

The interpretation of array specifiers (the curly braces around atomic values) appears to have changed sometime after the original regression tests were generated. The current ./expected/*.out files reflect this new interpretation, which might not be correct!

The float8 regression test fails on at least some platforms. This is due to differences in implementations of pow() and exp() and the signaling mechanisms used for overflow and underflow conditions.

The "random" results in the random test should cause the "random" test to be "failed", since the regression tests are evaluated using a simple diff. However, "random" does not seem to produce random results on my test machine (Linux/gcc/i686).

E.250.1. Migration to Version 6.1

This migration requires a complete dump of the 6.0 database and a restore of the database in 6.1.

Those migrating from earlier 1.* releases should first upgrade to 1.09 because the COPY output format was improved from the 1.02 release.

E.250.2. Changes

Bug Fixes
---------
packet length checking in library routines
lock manager priority patch
check for under/over flow of float8(Bruce)
multitable join fix(Vadim)
SIGPIPE crash fix(Darren)
large object fixes(Sven)
allow btree indexes to handle NULLs(Vadim)
timezone fixes(D'Arcy)
select SUM(x) can return NULL on no rows(Thomas)
internal optimizer, executor bug fixes(Vadim)
fix problem where inner loop in < or <= has no rows(Vadim)
prevent re-commuting join index clauses(Vadim)
fix join clauses for multiple tables(Vadim)
fix hash, hashjoin for arrays(Vadim)
fix btree for abstime type(Vadim)
large object fixes(Raymond)
fix buffer leak in hash indexes (Vadim)
fix rtree for use in inner scan (Vadim)
fix gist for use in inner scan, cleanups (Vadim, Andrea)
avoid unnecessary local buffers allocation (Vadim, Massimo)
fix local buffers leak in transaction aborts (Vadim)
fix file manager memmory leaks, cleanups (Vadim, Massimo)
fix storage manager memmory leaks (Vadim)
fix btree duplicates handling (Vadim)
fix deleted rows reincarnation caused by vacuum (Vadim)
fix SELECT varchar()/char() INTO TABLE made zero-length fields(Bruce)
many psql, pg_dump, and libpq memory leaks fixed using Purify (Igor)

Enhancements
------------
attribute optimization statistics(Bruce)
much faster new btree bulk load code(Paul)
BTREE UNIQUE added to bulk load code(Vadim)
new lock debug code(Massimo)
massive changes to libpg++(Leo)
new GEQO optimizer speeds table multitable optimization(Martin)
new WARN message for non-unique insert into unique key(Marc)
update x=-3, no spaces, now valid(Bruce)
remove case-sensitive identifier handling(Bruce,Thomas,Dan)
debug backend now pretty-prints tree(Darren)
new Oracle character functions(Edmund)
new plaintext password functions(Dan)
no such class or insufficient privilege changed to distinct messages(Dan)
new ANSI timestamp function(Dan)
new ANSI Time and Date types (Thomas)
move large chunks of data in backend(Martin)
multicolumn btree indexes(Vadim)
new SET var TO value command(Martin)
update transaction status on reads(Dan)
new locale settings for character types(Oleg)
new SEQUENCE serial number generator(Vadim)
GROUP BY function now possible(Vadim)
re-organize regression test(Thomas,Marc)
new optimizer operation weights(Vadim)
new psql \z grant/permit option(Marc)
new MONEY data type(D'Arcy,Thomas)
tcp socket communication speed improved(Vadim)
new VACUUM option for attribute statistics, and for certain columns (Vadim)
many geometric type improvements(Thomas,Keith)
additional regression tests(Thomas)
new datestyle variable(Thomas,Vadim,Martin)
more comparison operators for sorting types(Thomas)
new conversion functions(Thomas)
new more compact btree format(Vadim)
allow pg_dumpall to preserve database ownership(Bruce)
new SET GEQO=# and R_PLANS variable(Vadim)
old (!GEQO) optimizer can use right-sided plans (Vadim)
typechecking improvement in SQL parser(Bruce)
new SET, SHOW, RESET commands(Thomas,Vadim)
new \connect database USER option
new destroydb -i option (Igor)
new \dt and \di psql commands (Darren)
SELECT "\n" now escapes newline (A. Duursma)
new geometry conversion functions from old format (Thomas)

Source tree changes
-------------------
new configuration script(Marc)
readline configuration option added(Marc)
OS-specific configuration options removed(Marc)
new OS-specific template files(Marc)
no more need to edit Makefile.global(Marc)
re-arrange include files(Marc)
nextstep patches (Gregor Hoffleit)
removed Windows-specific code(Bruce)
removed postmaster -e option, now only postgres -e option (Bruce)
merge duplicate library code in front/backends(Martin)
now works with eBones, international Kerberos(Jun)
more shared library support
c++ include file cleanup(Bruce)
warn about buggy flex(Bruce)
DG/UX, Ultrix, IRIX, AIX portability fixes

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Release 6.0

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E.251. Release 6.0

Release Date: 1997-01-29

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

E.251.1. Migration from version 1.09 to version 6.0

This migration requires a complete dump of the 1.09 database and a restore of the database in 6.0.

E.251.2. Migration from pre-1.09 to version 6.0

Those migrating from earlier 1.* releases should first upgrade to 1.09 because the COPY output format was improved from the 1.02 release.

E.251.3. Changes

Bug Fixes
---------
ALTER TABLE bug - running postgres process needs to re-read table definition
Allow vacuum to be run on one table or entire database(Bruce)
Array fixes
Fix array over-runs of memory writes(Kurt)
Fix elusive btree range/non-range bug(Dan)
Fix for hash indexes on some types like time and date
Fix for pg_log size explosion
Fix permissions on lo_export()(Bruce)
Fix uninitialized reads of memory(Kurt)
Fixed ALTER TABLE ... char(3) bug(Bruce)
Fixed a few small memory leaks
Fixed EXPLAIN handling of options and changed full_path option name
Fixed output of group acl privileges
Memory leaks (hunt and destroy with tools like Purify(Kurt)
Minor improvements to rules system
NOTIFY fixes
New asserts for run-checking
Overhauled parser/analyze code to properly report errors and increase speed
Pg_dump -d now handles NULL's properly(Bruce)
Prevent SELECT NULL from crashing server (Bruce)
Properly report errors when INSERT ... SELECT columns did not match
Properly report errors when insert column names were not correct
psql \g filename now works(Bruce)
psql fixed problem with multiple statements on one line with multiple outputs
Removed duplicate system OIDs
SELECT * INTO TABLE . GROUP/ORDER BY gives unlink error if table exists(Bruce)
Several fixes for queries that crashed the backend
Starting quote in insert string errors(Bruce)
Submitting an empty query now returns empty status, not just " " query(Bruce)

Enhancements
------------
Add EXPLAIN manual page(Bruce)
Add UNIQUE index capability(Dan)
Add hostname/user level access control rather than just hostname and user
Add synonym of != for <>(Bruce)
Allow "select oid,* from table"
Allow BY,ORDER BY to specify columns by number, or by non-alias table.column(Bruce)
Allow COPY from the frontend(Bryan)
Allow GROUP BY to use alias column name(Bruce)
Allow actual compression, not just reuse on the same page(Vadim)
Allow installation-configuration option to auto-add all local users(Bryan)
Allow libpq to distinguish between text value '' and null(Bruce)
Allow non-postgres users with createdb privs to destroydb's
Allow restriction on who can create C functions(Bryan)
Allow restriction on who can do backend COPY(Bryan)
Can shrink tables, pg_time and pg_log(Vadim & Erich)
Change debug level 2 to print queries only, changed debug heading layout(Bruce)
Change default decimal constant representation from float4 to float8(Bruce)
European date format now set when postmaster is started
Execute lowercase function names if not found with exact case
Fixes for aggregate/GROUP processing, allow 'select sum(func(x),sum(x+y) from z'
Gist now included in the distribution(Marc)
Idend authentication of local users(Bryan)
Implement BETWEEN qualifier(Bruce)
Implement IN qualifier(Bruce)
libpq has PQgetisnull()(Bruce)
libpq++ improvements
New options to initdb(Bryan)
Pg_dump allow dump of OIDs(Bruce)
Pg_dump create indexes after tables are loaded for speed(Bruce)
Pg_dumpall dumps all databases, and the user table
Pginterface additions for NULL values(Bruce)
Prevent postmaster from being run as root
psql \h and \? is now readable(Bruce)
psql allow backslashed, semicolons anywhere on the line(Bruce)
psql changed command prompt for lines in query or in quotes(Bruce)
psql char(3) now displays as (bp)char in \d output(Bruce)
psql return code now more accurate(Bryan?)
psql updated help syntax(Bruce)
Re-visit and fix vacuum(Vadim)
Reduce size of regression diffs, remove timezone name difference(Bruce)
Remove compile-time parameters to enable binary distributions(Bryan)
Reverse meaning of HBA masks(Bryan)
Secure Authentication of local users(Bryan)
Speed up vacuum(Vadim)
Vacuum now had VERBOSE option(Bruce)

Source tree changes
-------------------
All functions now have prototypes that are compared against the calls
Allow asserts to be disabled easily from Makefile.global(Bruce)
Change oid constants used in code to #define names
Decoupled sparc and solaris defines(Kurt)
Gcc -Wall compiles cleanly with warnings only from unfixable constructs
Major include file reorganization/reduction(Marc)
Make now stops on compile failure(Bryan)
Makefile restructuring(Bryan, Marc)
Merge bsdi_2_1 to bsdi(Bruce)
Monitor program removed
Name change from Postgres95 to PostgreSQL
New config.h file(Marc, Bryan)
PG_VERSION now set to 6.0 and used by postmaster
Portability additions, including Ultrix, DG/UX, AIX, and Solaris
Reduced the number of #define's, centralized #define's
Remove duplicate OIDS in system tables(Dan)
Remove duplicate system catalog info or report mismatches(Dan)
Removed many os-specific #define's
Restructured object file generation/location(Bryan, Marc)
Restructured port-specific file locations(Bryan, Marc)
Unused/uninitialized variables corrected

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Release 6.1 | Up | Release 1.09


Release 1.09

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E.252. Release 1.09

Release Date: 1996-11-04

Sorry, we didn't keep track of changes from 1.02 to 1.09. Some of the changes listed in 6.0 were actually included in the 1.02.1 to 1.09 releases.

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Release 6.0 | Up | Release 1.02


Release 1.02

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E.253. Release 1.02

Release Date: 1996-08-01

E.253.1. Migration from version 1.02 to version 1.02.1

Here is a new migration file for 1.02.1. It includes the 'copy' change and a script to convert old ASCII files.

Note: The following notes are for the benefit of users who want to migrate databases from Postgres95 1.01 and 1.02 to Postgres95 1.02.1.

If you are starting afresh with Postgres95 1.02.1 and do not need to migrate old databases, you do not need to read any further.

In order to upgrade older Postgres95 version 1.01 or 1.02 databases to version 1.02.1, the following steps are required:

  1. Start up a new 1.02.1 postmaster

  2. Add the new built-in functions and operators of 1.02.1 to 1.01 or 1.02 databases. This is done by running the new 1.02.1 server against your own 1.01 or 1.02 database and applying the queries attached at the end of the file. This can be done easily through psql. If your 1.01 or 1.02 database is named testdb and you have cut the commands from the end of this file and saved them in addfunc.sql:

    % psql testdb -f addfunc.sql

    Those upgrading 1.02 databases will get a warning when executing the last two statements in the file because they are already present in 1.02. This is not a cause for concern.

E.253.2. Dump/Reload Procedure

If you are trying to reload a pg_dump or text-mode, copy tablename to stdout generated with a previous version, you will need to run the attached sed script on the ASCII file before loading it into the database. The old format used '.' as end-of-data, while '\.' is now the end-of-data marker. Also, empty strings are now loaded in as '' rather than NULL. See the copy manual page for full details.

sed 's/^\.$/\\./g' <in_file >out_file

If you are loading an older binary copy or non-stdout copy, there is no end-of-data character, and hence no conversion necessary.

-- following lines added by agc to reflect the case-insensitive
-- regexp searching for varchar (in 1.02), and bpchar (in 1.02.1)
create operator ~* (leftarg = bpchar, rightarg = text, procedure = texticregexeq);
create operator !~* (leftarg = bpchar, rightarg = text, procedure = texticregexne);
create operator ~* (leftarg = varchar, rightarg = text, procedure = texticregexeq);
create operator !~* (leftarg = varchar, rightarg = text, procedure = texticregexne);

E.253.3. Changes

Source code maintenance and development
 * worldwide team of volunteers
 * the source tree now in CVS at ftp.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 deprecated 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 BSD/OS 2.1 port
 * added DG/UX port

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Release 1.09 | Up | Release 1.01


Release 1.01

Prev Up Appendix E. Release Notes Next

E.254. Release 1.01

Release Date: 1996-02-23

E.254.1. Migration from version 1.0 to version 1.01

The following notes are for the benefit of users who want to migrate databases from Postgres95 1.0 to Postgres95 1.01.

If you are starting afresh with Postgres95 1.01 and do not need to migrate old databases, you do not need to read any further.

In order to Postgres95 version 1.01 with databases created with Postgres95 version 1.0, the following steps are required:

  1. Set the definition of NAMEDATALEN in src/Makefile.global to 16 and OIDNAMELEN to 20.

  2. Decide whether you want to use Host based authentication.

    1. If you do, you must create a file name pg_hba in your top-level data directory (typically the value of your $PGDATA). src/libpq/pg_hba shows an example syntax.

    2. If you do not want host-based authentication, you can comment out the line:

      HBA = 1

      in src/Makefile.global

      Note that host-based authentication is turned on by default, and if you do not take steps A or B above, the out-of-the-box 1.01 will not allow you to connect to 1.0 databases.

  3. Compile and install 1.01, but DO NOT do the initdb step.

  4. Before doing anything else, terminate your 1.0 postmaster, and backup your existing $PGDATA directory.

  5. Set your PGDATA environment variable to your 1.0 databases, but set up path up so that 1.01 binaries are being used.

  6. Modify the file $PGDATA/PG_VERSION from 5.0 to 5.1

  7. Start up a new 1.01 postmaster

  8. Add the new built-in functions and operators of 1.01 to 1.0 databases. This is done by running the new 1.01 server against your own 1.0 database and applying the queries attached and saving in the file 1.0_to_1.01.sql. This can be done easily through psql. If your 1.0 database is name testdb:

    % psql testdb -f 1.0_to_1.01.sql

    and then execute the following commands (cut and paste from here):

    -- add builtin functions that are new to 1.01

create function int4eqoid (int4, oid) returns bool as 'foo'
language 'internal';
create function oideqint4 (oid, int4) returns bool as 'foo'
language 'internal';
create function char2icregexeq (char2, text) returns bool as 'foo'
language 'internal';
create function char2icregexne (char2, text) returns bool as 'foo'
language 'internal';
create function char4icregexeq (char4, text) returns bool as 'foo'
language 'internal';
create function char4icregexne (char4, text) returns bool as 'foo'
language 'internal';
create function char8icregexeq (char8, text) returns bool as 'foo'
language 'internal';
create function char8icregexne (char8, text) returns bool as 'foo'
language 'internal';
create function char16icregexeq (char16, text) returns bool as 'foo'
language 'internal';
create function char16icregexne (char16, text) returns bool as 'foo'
language 'internal';
create function texticregexeq (text, text) returns bool as 'foo'
language 'internal';
create function texticregexne (text, text) returns bool as 'foo'
language 'internal';

-- add builtin functions that are new to 1.01

create operator = (leftarg = int4, rightarg = oid, procedure = int4eqoid);
create operator = (leftarg = oid, rightarg = int4, procedure = oideqint4);
create operator ~* (leftarg = char2, rightarg = text, procedure = char2icregexeq);
create operator !~* (leftarg = char2, rightarg = text, procedure = char2icregexne);
create operator ~* (leftarg = char4, rightarg = text, procedure = char4icregexeq);
create operator !~* (leftarg = char4, rightarg = text, procedure = char4icregexne);
create operator ~* (leftarg = char8, rightarg = text, procedure = char8icregexeq);
create operator !~* (leftarg = char8, rightarg = text, procedure = char8icregexne);
create operator ~* (leftarg = char16, rightarg = text, procedure = char16icregexeq);
create operator !~* (leftarg = char16, rightarg = text, procedure = char16icregexne);
create operator ~* (leftarg = text, rightarg = text, procedure = texticregexeq);
create operator !~* (leftarg = text, rightarg = text, procedure = texticregexne);

E.254.2. Changes

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 key words
 * 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

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Release 1.0

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E.255. Release 1.0

Release Date: 1995-09-05

E.255.1. Changes

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 key word

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 and others.
 *  updated pg_dump to work with new libpq
 *  \d has been added psql
   Thanks to Keith Parks
 *  regexp performance for architectures that use POSIX regex has been
   improved due to caching of precompiled patterns.
   Thanks to Alistair Crooks
 *  a new version of libpq++
   Thanks to William Wanders

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
   privileges
 *  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

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Postgres95 Release 0.03

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E.256. Postgres95 Release 0.03

Release Date: 1995-07-21

E.256.1. Changes

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 might 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" key word.
        For example:
                GRANT SELECT ON foobar TO GROUP my_group;
        The key word '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 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 row 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 indexes work, and access methods in general should perform better.
   creation of large btree indexes 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 row 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.

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E.257. Postgres95 Release 0.02

Release Date: 1995-05-25

E.257.1. Changes

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 an 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

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Postgres95 Release 0.01

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E.258. Postgres95 Release 0.01

Release Date: 1995-05-01

Initial release.

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Additional Supplied Modules

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Appendix F. Additional Supplied Modules

Table of Contents
F.1. adminpack
F.2. auth_delay
F.3. auto_explain
F.4. btree_gin
F.5. btree_gist
F.6. chkpass
F.7. citext
F.8. cube
F.9. dblink
F.10. dict_int
F.11. dict_xsyn
F.12. dummy_seclabel
F.13. earthdistance
F.14. file_fdw
F.15. fuzzystrmatch
F.16. hstore
F.17. intagg
F.18. intarray
F.19. isn
F.20. lo
F.21. ltree
F.22. oid2name
F.23. pageinspect
F.24. passwordcheck
F.25. pg_archivecleanup
F.26. pgbench
F.27. pg_buffercache
F.28. pgcrypto
F.29. pg_freespacemap
F.30. pgrowlocks
F.31. pg_standby
F.32. pg_stat_statements
F.33. pgstattuple
F.34. pg_test_fsync
F.35. pg_trgm
F.36. pg_upgrade
F.37. seg
F.38. sepgsql
F.39. spi
F.40. sslinfo
F.41. tablefunc
F.42. test_parser
F.43. tsearch2
F.44. unaccent
F.45. uuid-ossp
F.46. vacuumlo
F.47. xml2

This appendix contains information regarding the modules that can be found in the contrib directory of the PostgreSQL distribution. These include porting tools, analysis utilities, and plug-in features that are not part of the core PostgreSQL system, mainly because they address a limited audience or are too experimental to be part of the main source tree. This does not preclude their usefulness.

When building from the source distribution, these modules are not built automatically, unless you build the "world" target (see step 2). You can build and install all of them by running:

gmake
gmake install

in the contrib directory of a configured source tree; or to build and install just one selected module, do the same in that module's subdirectory. Many of the modules have regression tests, which can be executed by running:

gmake installcheck

once you have a PostgreSQL server running. (Note that gmake check is not supported; you must have an operational database server to perform these tests, and you must have built and installed the module(s) to be tested.)

If you are using a pre-packaged version of PostgreSQL, these modules are typically made available as a separate subpackage, such as postgresql-contrib.

Many modules supply new user-defined functions, operators, or types. To make use of one of these modules, after you have installed the code you need to register the new SQL objects in the database system. In PostgreSQL 9.1 and later, this is done by executing a CREATE EXTENSION command. In a fresh database, you can simply do

CREATE EXTENSION module_name;

This command must be run by a database superuser. This registers the new SQL objects in the current database only, so you need to run this command in each database that you want the module's facilities to be available in. Alternatively, run it in database template1 so that the extension will be copied into subsequently-created databases by default.

Many modules allow you to install their objects in a schema of your choice. To do that, add SCHEMA schema_name to the CREATE EXTENSION command. By default, the objects will be placed in your current creation target schema, typically public.

If your database was brought forward by dump and reload from a pre-9.1 version of PostgreSQL, and you had been using the pre-9.1 version of the module in it, you should instead do

CREATE EXTENSION module_name FROM unpackaged;

This will update the pre-9.1 objects of the module into a proper extension object. Future updates to the module will be managed by ALTER EXTENSION. For more information about extension updates, see Section 35.15.

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adminpack

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F.1. adminpack

adminpack provides a number of support functions which pgAdmin and other administration and management tools can use to provide additional functionality, such as remote management of server log files.

F.1.1. Functions Implemented

The functions implemented by adminpack can only be run by a superuser. Here's a list of these functions:

int8 pg_catalog.pg_file_write(fname text, data text, append bool)
bool pg_catalog.pg_file_rename(oldname text, newname text, archivename text)
bool pg_catalog.pg_file_rename(oldname text, newname text)
bool pg_catalog.pg_file_unlink(fname text)
setof record pg_catalog.pg_logdir_ls()

/* Renaming of existing backend functions for pgAdmin compatibility */
int8 pg_catalog.pg_file_read(fname text, data text, append bool)
bigint pg_catalog.pg_file_length(text)
int4 pg_catalog.pg_logfile_rotate()

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auth_delay

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F.2. auth_delay

auth_delay causes the server to pause briefly before reporting authentication failure, to make brute-force attacks on database passwords more difficult. Note that it does nothing to prevent denial-of-service attacks, and may even exacerbate them, since processes that are waiting before reporting authentication failure will still consume connection slots.

In order to function, this module must be loaded via shared_preload_libraries in postgresql.conf.

F.2.1. Configuration Parameters

auth_delay.milliseconds (int)

The number of milliseconds to wait before reporting an authentication failure. The default is 0.

In order to set these parameters in your postgresql.conf file, you will need to add auth_delay to custom_variable_classes. Typical usage might be:

# postgresql.conf
shared_preload_libraries = 'auth_delay'

custom_variable_classes = 'auth_delay'
auth_delay.milliseconds = '500'

F.2.2. Author

KaiGai Kohei <kaigai@ak.jp.nec.com>

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auto_explain

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F.3. auto_explain

The auto_explain module provides a means for logging execution plans of slow statements automatically, without having to run EXPLAIN by hand. This is especially helpful for tracking down un-optimized queries in large applications.

The module provides no SQL-accessible functions. To use it, simply load it into the server. You can load it into an individual session:

LOAD 'auto_explain';

(You must be superuser to do that.) More typical usage is to preload it into all sessions by including auto_explain in shared_preload_libraries in postgresql.conf. Then you can track unexpectedly slow queries no matter when they happen. Of course there is a price in overhead for that.

F.3.1. Configuration Parameters

There are several configuration parameters that control the behavior of auto_explain. Note that the default behavior is to do nothing, so you must set at least auto_explain.log_min_duration if you want any results.

auto_explain.log_min_duration (integer)

auto_explain.log_min_duration is the minimum statement execution time, in milliseconds, that will cause the statement's plan to be logged. Setting this to zero logs all plans. Minus-one (the default) disables logging of plans. For example, if you set it to 250ms then all statements that run 250ms or longer will be logged. Only superusers can change this setting.

auto_explain.log_analyze (boolean)

auto_explain.log_analyze causes EXPLAIN ANALYZE output, rather than just EXPLAIN output, to be printed when an execution plan is logged. This parameter is off by default. Only superusers can change this setting.

Note: When this parameter is on, per-plan-node timing occurs for all statements executed, whether or not they run long enough to actually get logged. This can have an extremely negative impact on performance.

auto_explain.log_verbose (boolean)

auto_explain.log_verbose causes EXPLAIN VERBOSE output, rather than just EXPLAIN output, to be printed when an execution plan is logged. This parameter is off by default. Only superusers can change this setting.

auto_explain.log_buffers (boolean)

auto_explain.log_buffers causes EXPLAIN (ANALYZE, BUFFERS) output, rather than just EXPLAIN output, to be printed when an execution plan is logged. This parameter is off by default. Only superusers can change this setting. This parameter has no effect unless auto_explain.log_analyze parameter is set.

auto_explain.log_format (enum)

auto_explain.log_format selects the EXPLAIN output format to be used. The allowed values are text, xml, json, and yaml. The default is text. Only superusers can change this setting.

auto_explain.log_nested_statements (boolean)

auto_explain.log_nested_statements causes nested statements (statements executed inside a function) to be considered for logging. When it is off, only top-level query plans are logged. This parameter is off by default. Only superusers can change this setting.

In order to set these parameters in your postgresql.conf file, you will need to add auto_explain to custom_variable_classes. Typical usage might be:

# postgresql.conf
shared_preload_libraries = 'auto_explain'

custom_variable_classes = 'auto_explain'
auto_explain.log_min_duration = '3s'

F.3.2. Example

postgres=# LOAD 'auto_explain';
postgres=# SET auto_explain.log_min_duration = 0;
postgres=# SELECT count(*)
           FROM pg_class, pg_index
           WHERE oid = indrelid AND indisunique;

This might produce log output such as:

LOG:  duration: 3.651 ms  plan:
  Query Text: SELECT count(*)
              FROM pg_class, pg_index
              WHERE oid = indrelid AND indisunique;
  Aggregate  (cost=16.79..16.80 rows=1 width=0) (actual time=3.626..3.627 rows=1 loops=1)
    ->  Hash Join  (cost=4.17..16.55 rows=92 width=0) (actual time=3.349..3.594 rows=92 loops=1)
          Hash Cond: (pg_class.oid = pg_index.indrelid)
          ->  Seq Scan on pg_class  (cost=0.00..9.55 rows=255 width=4) (actual time=0.016..0.140 rows=255 loops=1)
          ->  Hash  (cost=3.02..3.02 rows=92 width=4) (actual time=3.238..3.238 rows=92 loops=1)
                Buckets: 1024  Batches: 1  Memory Usage: 4kB
                ->  Seq Scan on pg_index  (cost=0.00..3.02 rows=92 width=4) (actual time=0.008..3.187 rows=92 loops=1)
                      Filter: indisunique

F.3.3. Author

Takahiro Itagaki <itagaki.takahiro@oss.ntt.co.jp>

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btree_gin

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F.4. btree_gin

btree_gin provides sample GIN operator classes that implement B-tree equivalent behavior for the data types int2, int4, int8, float4, float8, timestamp with time zone, timestamp without time zone, time with time zone, time without time zone, date, interval, oid, money, "char", varchar, text, bytea, bit, varbit, macaddr, inet, and cidr.

In general, these operator classes will not outperform the equivalent standard B-tree index methods, and they lack one major feature of the standard B-tree code: the ability to enforce uniqueness. However, they are useful for GIN testing and as a base for developing other GIN operator classes. Also, for queries that test both a GIN-indexable column and a B-tree-indexable column, it might be more efficient to create a multicolumn GIN index that uses one of these operator classes than to create two separate indexes that would have to be combined via bitmap ANDing.

F.4.1. Example Usage

CREATE TABLE test (a int4);
-- create index
CREATE INDEX testidx ON test USING gin (a);
-- query
SELECT * FROM test WHERE a < 10;

F.4.2. Authors

Teodor Sigaev (<teodor@stack.net>) and Oleg Bartunov (<oleg@sai.msu.su>). See http://www.sai.msu.su/~megera/oddmuse/index.cgi/Gin for additional information.

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btree_gist

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F.5. btree_gist

btree_gist provides GiST index operator classes that implement B-tree equivalent behavior for the data types int2, int4, int8, float4, float8, numeric, timestamp with time zone, timestamp without time zone, time with time zone, time without time zone, date, interval, oid, money, char, varchar, text, bytea, bit, varbit, macaddr, inet, and cidr.

In general, these operator classes will not outperform the equivalent standard B-tree index methods, and they lack one major feature of the standard B-tree code: the ability to enforce uniqueness. However, they provide some other features that are not available with a B-tree index, as described below. Also, these operator classes are useful when a multicolumn GiST index is needed, wherein some of the columns are of data types that are only indexable with GiST but other columns are just simple data types. Lastly, these operator classes are useful for GiST testing and as a base for developing other GiST operator classes.

In addition to the typical B-tree search operators, btree_gist also provides index support for <> ("not equals"). This may be useful in combination with an exclusion constraint, as described below.

Also, for data types for which there is a natural distance metric, btree_gist defines a distance operator <->, and provides GiST index support for nearest-neighbor searches using this operator. Distance operators are provided for int2, int4, int8, float4, float8, timestamp with time zone, timestamp without time zone, time without time zone, date, interval, oid, and money.

F.5.1. Example Usage

Simple example using btree_gist instead of btree:

CREATE TABLE test (a int4);
-- create index
CREATE INDEX testidx ON test USING gist (a);
-- query
SELECT * FROM test WHERE a < 10;
-- nearest-neighbor search: find the ten entries closest to "42"
SELECT *, a <-> 42 AS dist FROM test ORDER BY a <-> 42 LIMIT 10;

Use an exclusion constraint to enforce the rule that a cage at a zoo can contain only one kind of animal:

=> CREATE TABLE zoo (
  cage   INTEGER,
  animal TEXT,
  EXCLUDE USING gist (cage WITH =, animal WITH <>)
);

=> INSERT INTO zoo VALUES(123, 'zebra');
INSERT 0 1
=> INSERT INTO zoo VALUES(123, 'zebra');
INSERT 0 1
=> INSERT INTO zoo VALUES(123, 'lion');
ERROR:  conflicting key value violates exclusion constraint "zoo_cage_animal_excl"
DETAIL:  Key (cage, animal)=(123, lion) conflicts with existing key (cage, animal)=(123, zebra).
=> INSERT INTO zoo VALUES(124, 'lion');
INSERT 0 1

F.5.2. Authors

Teodor Sigaev (<teodor@stack.net>) , Oleg Bartunov (<oleg@sai.msu.su>), and Janko Richter (<jankorichter@yahoo.de>). See http://www.sai.msu.su/~megera/postgres/gist/ for additional information.

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chkpass

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F.6. chkpass

This module implements a data type chkpass that is designed for storing encrypted passwords. Each password is automatically converted to encrypted form upon entry, and is always stored encrypted. To compare, simply compare against a clear text password and the comparison function will encrypt it before comparing.

There are provisions in the code to report an error if the password is determined to be easily crackable. However, this is currently just a stub that does nothing.

If you precede an input string with a colon, it is assumed to be an already-encrypted password, and is stored without further encryption. This allows entry of previously-encrypted passwords.

On output, a colon is prepended. This makes it possible to dump and reload passwords without re-encrypting them. If you want the encrypted password without the colon then use the raw() function. This allows you to use the type with things like Apache's Auth_PostgreSQL module.

The encryption uses the standard Unix function crypt(), and so it suffers from all the usual limitations of that function; notably that only the first eight characters of a password are considered.

Note that the chkpass data type is not indexable.

Sample usage:

test=# create table test (p chkpass);
CREATE TABLE
test=# insert into test values ('hello');
INSERT 0 1
test=# select * from test;
       p
----------------
 :dVGkpXdOrE3ko
(1 row)

test=# select raw(p) from test;
      raw
---------------
 dVGkpXdOrE3ko
(1 row)

test=# select p = 'hello' from test;
 ?column?
----------
 t
(1 row)

test=# select p = 'goodbye' from test;
 ?column?
----------
 f
(1 row)

F.6.1. Author

D'Arcy J.M. Cain (<darcy@druid.net>)

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citext

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F.7. citext

The citext module provides a case-insensitive character string type, citext. Essentially, it internally calls lower when comparing values. Otherwise, it behaves almost exactly like text.

F.7.1. Rationale

The standard approach to doing case-insensitive matches in PostgreSQL has been to use the lower function when comparing values, for example

SELECT * FROM tab WHERE lower(col) = LOWER(?);

This works reasonably well, but has a number of drawbacks:

  • It makes your SQL statements verbose, and you always have to remember to use lower on both the column and the query value.

  • It won't use an index, unless you create a functional index using lower.

  • If you declare a column as UNIQUE or PRIMARY KEY, the implicitly generated index is case-sensitive. So it's useless for case-insensitive searches, and it won't enforce uniqueness case-insensitively.

The citext data type allows you to eliminate calls to lower in SQL queries, and allows a primary key to be case-insensitive. citext is locale-aware, just like text, which means that the matching of upper case and lower case characters is dependent on the rules of the database's LC_CTYPE setting. Again, this behavior is identical to the use of lower in queries. But because it's done transparently by the data type, you don't have to remember to do anything special in your queries.

F.7.2. How to Use It

Here's a simple example of usage:

CREATE TABLE users (
    nick CITEXT PRIMARY KEY,
    pass TEXT   NOT NULL
);

INSERT INTO users VALUES ( 'larry',  md5(random()::text) );
INSERT INTO users VALUES ( 'Tom',    md5(random()::text) );
INSERT INTO users VALUES ( 'Damian', md5(random()::text) );
INSERT INTO users VALUES ( 'NEAL',   md5(random()::text) );
INSERT INTO users VALUES ( 'Bjørn',  md5(random()::text) );

SELECT * FROM users WHERE nick = 'Larry';

The SELECT statement will return one tuple, even though the nick column was set to larry and the query was for Larry.

F.7.3. String Comparison Behavior

citext performs comparisons by converting each string to lower case (as though lower were called) and then comparing the results normally. Thus, for example, two strings are considered equal if lower would produce identical results for them.

In order to emulate a case-insensitive collation as closely as possible, there are citext-specific versions of a number of string-processing operators and functions. So, for example, the regular expression operators ~ and ~* exhibit the same behavior when applied to citext: they both match case-insensitively. The same is true for !~ and !~*, as well as for the LIKE operators ~~ and ~~*, and !~~ and !~~*. If you'd like to match case-sensitively, you can cast the operator's arguments to text.

Similarly, all of the following functions perform matching case-insensitively if their arguments are citext:

  • regexp_matches()

  • regexp_replace()

  • regexp_split_to_array()

  • regexp_split_to_table()

  • replace()

  • split_part()

  • strpos()

  • translate()

For the regexp functions, if you want to match case-sensitively, you can specify the "c" flag to force a case-sensitive match. Otherwise, you must cast to text before using one of these functions if you want case-sensitive behavior.

F.7.4. Limitations

  • citext's case-folding behavior depends on the LC_CTYPE setting of your database. How it compares values is therefore determined when the database is created. It is not truly case-insensitive in the terms defined by the Unicode standard. Effectively, what this means is that, as long as you're happy with your collation, you should be happy with citext's comparisons. But if you have data in different languages stored in your database, users of one language may find their query results are not as expected if the collation is for another language.

  • As of PostgreSQL 9.1, you can attach a COLLATE specification to citext columns or data values. Currently, citext operators will honor a non-default COLLATE specification while comparing case-folded strings, but the initial folding to lower case is always done according to the database's LC_CTYPE setting (that is, as though COLLATE "default" were given). This may be changed in a future release so that both steps follow the input COLLATE specification.

  • citext is not as efficient as text because the operator functions and the B-tree comparison functions must make copies of the data and convert it to lower case for comparisons. It is, however, slightly more efficient than using lower to get case-insensitive matching.

  • citext doesn't help much if you need data to compare case-sensitively in some contexts and case-insensitively in other contexts. The standard answer is to use the text type and manually use the lower function when you need to compare case-insensitively; this works all right if case-insensitive comparison is needed only infrequently. If you need case-insensitive behavior most of the time and case-sensitive infrequently, consider storing the data as citext and explicitly casting the column to text when you want case-sensitive comparison. In either situation, you will need two indexes if you want both types of searches to be fast.

  • The schema containing the citext operators must be in the current search_path (typically public); if it is not, the normal case-sensitive text operators will be invoked instead.

F.7.5. Author

David E. Wheeler <david@kineticode.com>

Inspired by the original citext module by Donald Fraser.

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cube

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F.8. cube

This module implements a data type cube for representing multidimensional cubes.

F.8.1. Syntax

Table F-1 shows the valid external representations for the cube type. x, y, etc. denote floating-point numbers.

Table F-1. Cube External Representations

x | A one-dimensional point (or, zero-length one-dimensional interval)
(x) | Same as above
x1,x2,...,xn | A point in n-dimensional space, represented internally as a zero-volume cube
(x1,x2,...,xn) | Same as above
(x),(y) | A one-dimensional interval starting at x and ending at y or vice versa; the order does not matter
[(x),(y)] | Same as above
(x1,...,xn),(y1,...,yn) | An n-dimensional cube represented by a pair of its diagonally opposite corners
[(x1,...,xn),(y1,...,yn)] | Same as above

It does not matter which order the opposite corners of a cube are entered in. The cube functions automatically swap values if needed to create a uniform "lower left — upper right" internal representation.

White space is ignored, so [(x),(y)] is the same as [ ( x ), ( y ) ].

F.8.2. Precision

Values are stored internally as 64-bit floating point numbers. This means that numbers with more than about 16 significant digits will be truncated.

F.8.3. Usage

The cube module includes a GiST index operator class for cube values. The operators supported by the GiST operator class are shown in Table F-2.

Table F-2. Cube GiST Operators

Operator | Description
a = b | The cubes a and b are identical.
a && b | The cubes a and b overlap.
a @> b | The cube a contains the cube b.
a <@ b | The cube a is contained in the cube b.

(Before PostgreSQL 8.2, the containment operators @> and <@ were respectively called @ and ~. These names are still available, but are deprecated and will eventually be retired. Notice that the old names are reversed from the convention formerly followed by the core geometric data types!)

The standard B-tree operators are also provided, for example

Operator | Description
[a, b] < [c, d] | Less than
[a, b] > [c, d] | Greater than

These operators do not make a lot of sense for any practical purpose but sorting. These operators first compare (a) to (c), and if these are equal, compare (b) to (d). That results in reasonably good sorting in most cases, which is useful if you want to use ORDER BY with this type.

Table F-3 shows the available functions.

Table F-3. Cube Functions

cube(float8) returns cube | Makes a one dimensional cube with both coordinates the same. cube(1) == '(1)'
cube(float8, float8) returns cube | Makes a one dimensional cube. cube(1,2) == '(1),(2)'
cube(float8[]) returns cube | Makes a zero-volume cube using the coordinates defined by the array. cube(ARRAY[1,2]) == '(1,2)'
cube(float8[], float8[]) returns cube | Makes a cube with upper right and lower left coordinates as defined by the two arrays, which must be of the same length. cube('{1,2}'::float[], '{3,4}'::float[]) == '(1,2),(3,4)'
cube(cube, float8) returns cube | Makes a new cube by adding a dimension on to an existing cube with the same values for both parts of the new coordinate. This is useful for building cubes piece by piece from calculated values. cube('(1)',2) == '(1,2),(1,2)'
cube(cube, float8, float8) returns cube | Makes a new cube by adding a dimension on to an existing cube. This is useful for building cubes piece by piece from calculated values. cube('(1,2)',3,4) == '(1,3),(2,4)'
cube_dim(cube) returns int | Returns the number of dimensions of the cube
cube_ll_coord(cube, int) returns double | Returns the n'th coordinate value for the lower left corner of a cube
cube_ur_coord(cube, int) returns double | Returns the n'th coordinate value for the upper right corner of a cube
cube_is_point(cube) returns bool | Returns true if a cube is a point, that is, the two defining corners are the same.
cube_distance(cube, cube) returns double | Returns the distance between two cubes. If both cubes are points, this is the normal distance function.
cube_subset(cube, int[]) returns cube | Makes a new cube from an existing cube, using a list of dimension indexes from an array. Can be used to find both the LL and UR coordinates of a single dimension, e.g. cube_subset(cube('(1,3,5),(6,7,8)'), ARRAY[2]) = '(3),(7)'. Or can be used to drop dimensions, or reorder them as desired, e.g. cube_subset(cube('(1,3,5),(6,7,8)'), ARRAY[3,2,1,1]) = '(5, 3, 1, 1),(8, 7, 6, 6)'.
cube_union(cube, cube) returns cube | Produces the union of two cubes
cube_inter(cube, cube) returns cube | Produces the intersection of two cubes
cube_enlarge(cube c, double r, int n) returns cube | Increases the size of a cube by a specified radius in at least n dimensions. If the radius is negative the cube is shrunk instead. This is useful for creating bounding boxes around a point for searching for nearby points. All defined dimensions are changed by the radius r. LL coordinates are decreased by r and UR coordinates are increased by r. If a LL coordinate is increased to larger than the corresponding UR coordinate (this can only happen when r < 0) than both coordinates are set to their average. If n is greater than the number of defined dimensions and the cube is being increased (r >= 0) then 0 is used as the base for the extra coordinates.

F.8.4. Defaults

I believe this union:

select cube_union('(0,5,2),(2,3,1)', '0');
cube_union
-------------------
(0, 0, 0),(2, 5, 2)
(1 row)

does not contradict common sense, neither does the intersection

select cube_inter('(0,-1),(1,1)', '(-2),(2)');
cube_inter
-------------
(0, 0),(1, 0)
(1 row)

In all binary operations on differently-dimensioned cubes, I assume the lower-dimensional one to be a Cartesian projection, i. e., having zeroes in place of coordinates omitted in the string representation. The above examples are equivalent to:

cube_union('(0,5,2),(2,3,1)','(0,0,0),(0,0,0)');
cube_inter('(0,-1),(1,1)','(-2,0),(2,0)');

The following containment predicate uses the point syntax, while in fact the second argument is internally represented by a box. This syntax makes it unnecessary to define a separate point type and functions for (box,point) predicates.

select cube_contains('(0,0),(1,1)', '0.5,0.5');
cube_contains
--------------
t
(1 row)

F.8.5. Notes

For examples of usage, see the regression test sql/cube.sql.

To make it harder for people to break things, there is a limit of 100 on the number of dimensions of cubes. This is set in cubedata.h if you need something bigger.

F.8.6. Credits

Original author: Gene Selkov, Jr. <selkovjr@mcs.anl.gov>, Mathematics and Computer Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory.

My thanks are primarily to Prof. Joe Hellerstein (http://db.cs.berkeley.edu/jmh/) for elucidating the gist of the GiST (http://gist.cs.berkeley.edu/), and to his former student, Andy Dong (http://best.me.berkeley.edu/~adong/), for his example written for Illustra, http://best.berkeley.edu/~adong/rtree/index.html. I am also grateful to all Postgres developers, present and past, for enabling myself to create my own world and live undisturbed in it. And I would like to acknowledge my gratitude to Argonne Lab and to the U.S. Department of Energy for the years of faithful support of my database research.

Minor updates to this package were made by Bruno Wolff III <bruno@wolff.to> in August/September of 2002. These include changing the precision from single precision to double precision and adding some new functions.

Additional updates were made by Joshua Reich <josh@root.net> in July 2006. These include cube(float8[], float8[]) and cleaning up the code to use the V1 call protocol instead of the deprecated V0 protocol.

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dblink

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F.9. dblink

Table of Contents
dblink_connect -- opens a persistent connection to a remote database
dblink_connect_u -- opens a persistent connection to a remote database, insecurely
dblink_disconnect -- closes a persistent connection to a remote database
dblink -- executes a query in a remote database
dblink_exec -- executes a command in a remote database
dblink_open -- opens a cursor in a remote database
dblink_fetch -- returns rows from an open cursor in a remote database
dblink_close -- closes a cursor in a remote database
dblink_get_connections -- returns the names of all open named dblink connections
dblink_error_message -- gets last error message on the named connection
dblink_send_query -- sends an async query to a remote database
dblink_is_busy -- checks if connection is busy with an async query
dblink_get_notify -- retrieve async notifications on a connection
dblink_get_result -- gets an async query result
dblink_cancel_query -- cancels any active query on the named connection
dblink_get_pkey -- returns the positions and field names of a relation's primary key fields
dblink_build_sql_insert -- builds an INSERT statement using a local tuple, replacing the primary key field values with alternative supplied values
dblink_build_sql_delete -- builds a DELETE statement using supplied values for primary key field values
dblink_build_sql_update -- builds an UPDATE statement using a local tuple, replacing the primary key field values with alternative supplied values

dblink is a module which supports connections to other PostgreSQL databases from within a database session.

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dblink_connect

Name

dblink_connect -- opens a persistent connection to a remote database

Synopsis

dblink_connect(text connstr) returns text
dblink_connect(text connname, text connstr) returns text

Description

dblink_connect() establishes a connection to a remote PostgreSQL database. The server and database to be contacted are identified through a standard libpq connection string. Optionally, a name can be assigned to the connection. Multiple named connections can be open at once, but only one unnamed connection is permitted at a time. The connection will persist until closed or until the database session is ended.

The connection string may also be the name of an existing foreign server. It is recommended to use the postgresql_fdw_validator when defining the corresponding foreign-data wrapper. See the example below, as well as the following: CREATE FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER, CREATE SERVER, CREATE USER MAPPING

Arguments

connname

The name to use for this connection; if omitted, an unnamed connection is opened, replacing any existing unnamed connection.

connstr

libpq-style connection info string, for example hostaddr=127.0.0.1 port=5432 dbname=mydb user=postgres password=mypasswd. For details see PQconnectdb in Section 31.1.

Return Value

Returns status, which is always OK (since any error causes the function to throw an error instead of returning).

Notes

Only superusers may use dblink_connect to create non-password-authenticated connections. If non-superusers need this capability, use dblink_connect_u instead.

It is unwise to choose connection names that contain equal signs, as this opens a risk of confusion with connection info strings in other dblink functions.

Examples

SELECT dblink_connect('dbname=postgres');
 dblink_connect
----------------
 OK
(1 row)

SELECT dblink_connect('myconn', 'dbname=postgres');
 dblink_connect
----------------
 OK
(1 row)

-- FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER functionality
-- Note: local connection must require password authentication for this to work properly
--       Otherwise, you will receive the following error from dblink_connect():
--       ----------------------------------------------------------------------
--       ERROR:  password is required
--       DETAIL:  Non-superuser cannot connect if the server does not request a password.
--       HINT:  Target server's authentication method must be changed.
CREATE USER dblink_regression_test WITH PASSWORD 'secret';
CREATE FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER postgresql VALIDATOR postgresql_fdw_validator;
CREATE SERVER fdtest FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER postgresql OPTIONS (hostaddr '127.0.0.1', dbname 'contrib_regression');

CREATE USER MAPPING FOR dblink_regression_test SERVER fdtest OPTIONS (user 'dblink_regression_test', password 'secret');
GRANT USAGE ON FOREIGN SERVER fdtest TO dblink_regression_test;
GRANT SELECT ON TABLE foo TO dblink_regression_test;

\set ORIGINAL_USER :USER
\c - dblink_regression_test
SELECT dblink_connect('myconn', 'fdtest');
 dblink_connect
----------------
 OK
(1 row)

SELECT * FROM dblink('myconn','SELECT * FROM foo') AS t(a int, b text, c text[]);
 a  | b |       c
----+---+---------------
  0 | a | {a0,b0,c0}
  1 | b | {a1,b1,c1}
  2 | c | {a2,b2,c2}
  3 | d | {a3,b3,c3}
  4 | e | {a4,b4,c4}
  5 | f | {a5,b5,c5}
  6 | g | {a6,b6,c6}
  7 | h | {a7,b7,c7}
  8 | i | {a8,b8,c8}
  9 | j | {a9,b9,c9}
 10 | k | {a10,b10,c10}
(11 rows)

\c - :ORIGINAL_USER
REVOKE USAGE ON FOREIGN SERVER fdtest FROM dblink_regression_test;
REVOKE SELECT ON TABLE foo FROM  dblink_regression_test;
DROP USER MAPPING FOR dblink_regression_test SERVER fdtest;
DROP USER dblink_regression_test;
DROP SERVER fdtest;
DROP FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER postgresql;
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dblink_connect_u

Name

dblink_connect_u -- opens a persistent connection to a remote database, insecurely

Synopsis

dblink_connect_u(text connstr) returns text
dblink_connect_u(text connname, text connstr) returns text

Description

dblink_connect_u() is identical to dblink_connect(), except that it will allow non-superusers to connect using any authentication method.

If the remote server selects an authentication method that does not involve a password, then impersonation and subsequent escalation of privileges can occur, because the session will appear to have originated from the user as which the local PostgreSQL server runs. Also, even if the remote server does demand a password, it is possible for the password to be supplied from the server environment, such as a ~/.pgpass file belonging to the server's user. This opens not only a risk of impersonation, but the possibility of exposing a password to an untrustworthy remote server. Therefore, dblink_connect_u() is initially installed with all privileges revoked from PUBLIC, making it un-callable except by superusers. In some situations it may be appropriate to grant EXECUTE permission for dblink_connect_u() to specific users who are considered trustworthy, but this should be done with care. It is also recommended that any ~/.pgpass file belonging to the server's user not contain any records specifying a wildcard host name.

For further details see dblink_connect().

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dblink_disconnect

Name

dblink_disconnect -- closes a persistent connection to a remote database

Synopsis

dblink_disconnect() returns text
dblink_disconnect(text connname) returns text

Description

dblink_disconnect() closes a connection previously opened by dblink_connect(). The form with no arguments closes an unnamed connection.

Arguments

connname

The name of a named connection to be closed.

Return Value

Returns status, which is always OK (since any error causes the function to throw an error instead of returning).

Examples

SELECT dblink_disconnect();
 dblink_disconnect
-------------------
 OK
(1 row)

SELECT dblink_disconnect('myconn');
 dblink_disconnect
-------------------
 OK
(1 row)
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dblink

Name

dblink -- executes a query in a remote database

Synopsis

dblink(text connname, text sql [, bool fail_on_error]) returns setof record
dblink(text connstr, text sql [, bool fail_on_error]) returns setof record
dblink(text sql [, bool fail_on_error]) returns setof record

Description

dblink executes a query (usually a SELECT, but it can be any SQL statement that returns rows) in a remote database.

When two text arguments are given, the first one is first looked up as a persistent connection's name; if found, the command is executed on that connection. If not found, the first argument is treated as a connection info string as for dblink_connect, and the indicated connection is made just for the duration of this command.

Arguments

connname

Name of the connection to use; omit this parameter to use the unnamed connection.

connstr

A connection info string, as previously described for dblink_connect.

sql

The SQL query that you wish to execute in the remote database, for example select * from foo.

fail_on_error

If true (the default when omitted) then an error thrown on the remote side of the connection causes an error to also be thrown locally. If false, the remote error is locally reported as a NOTICE, and the function returns no rows.

Return Value

The function returns the row(s) produced by the query. Since dblink can be used with any query, it is declared to return record, rather than specifying any particular set of columns. This means that you must specify the expected set of columns in the calling query — otherwise PostgreSQL would not know what to expect. Here is an example:

SELECT *
    FROM dblink('dbname=mydb', 'select proname, prosrc from pg_proc')
      AS t1(proname name, prosrc text)
    WHERE proname LIKE 'bytea%';

The "alias" part of the FROM clause must specify the column names and types that the function will return. (Specifying column names in an alias is actually standard SQL syntax, but specifying column types is a PostgreSQL extension.) This allows the system to understand what * should expand to, and what proname in the WHERE clause refers to, in advance of trying to execute the function. At run time, an error will be thrown if the actual query result from the remote database does not have the same number of columns shown in the FROM clause. The column names need not match, however, and dblink does not insist on exact type matches either. It will succeed so long as the returned data strings are valid input for the column type declared in the FROM clause.

Notes

dblink fetches the entire remote query result before returning any of it to the local system. If the query is expected to return a large number of rows, it's better to open it as a cursor with dblink_open and then fetch a manageable number of rows at a time.

A convenient way to use dblink with predetermined queries is to create a view. This allows the column type information to be buried in the view, instead of having to spell it out in every query. For example,

CREATE VIEW myremote_pg_proc AS
  SELECT *
    FROM dblink('dbname=postgres', 'select proname, prosrc from pg_proc')
    AS t1(proname name, prosrc text);

SELECT * FROM myremote_pg_proc WHERE proname LIKE 'bytea%';

Examples

SELECT * FROM dblink('dbname=postgres', 'select proname, prosrc from pg_proc')
  AS t1(proname name, prosrc text) WHERE proname LIKE 'bytea%';
  proname   |   prosrc
------------+------------
 byteacat   | byteacat
 byteaeq    | byteaeq
 bytealt    | bytealt
 byteale    | byteale
 byteagt    | byteagt
 byteage    | byteage
 byteane    | byteane
 byteacmp   | byteacmp
 bytealike  | bytealike
 byteanlike | byteanlike
 byteain    | byteain
 byteaout   | byteaout
(12 rows)

SELECT dblink_connect('dbname=postgres');
 dblink_connect
----------------
 OK
(1 row)

SELECT * FROM dblink('select proname, prosrc from pg_proc')
  AS t1(proname name, prosrc text) WHERE proname LIKE 'bytea%';
  proname   |   prosrc
------------+------------
 byteacat   | byteacat
 byteaeq    | byteaeq
 bytealt    | bytealt
 byteale    | byteale
 byteagt    | byteagt
 byteage    | byteage
 byteane    | byteane
 byteacmp   | byteacmp
 bytealike  | bytealike
 byteanlike | byteanlike
 byteain    | byteain
 byteaout   | byteaout
(12 rows)

SELECT dblink_connect('myconn', 'dbname=regression');
 dblink_connect
----------------
 OK
(1 row)

SELECT * FROM dblink('myconn', 'select proname, prosrc from pg_proc')
  AS t1(proname name, prosrc text) WHERE proname LIKE 'bytea%';
  proname   |   prosrc
------------+------------
 bytearecv  | bytearecv
 byteasend  | byteasend
 byteale    | byteale
 byteagt    | byteagt
 byteage    | byteage
 byteane    | byteane
 byteacmp   | byteacmp
 bytealike  | bytealike
 byteanlike | byteanlike
 byteacat   | byteacat
 byteaeq    | byteaeq
 bytealt    | bytealt
 byteain    | byteain
 byteaout   | byteaout
(14 rows)
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dblink_exec

Name

dblink_exec -- executes a command in a remote database

Synopsis

dblink_exec(text connname, text sql [, bool fail_on_error]) returns text
dblink_exec(text connstr, text sql [, bool fail_on_error]) returns text
dblink_exec(text sql [, bool fail_on_error]) returns text

Description

dblink_exec executes a command (that is, any SQL statement that doesn't return rows) in a remote database.

When two text arguments are given, the first one is first looked up as a persistent connection's name; if found, the command is executed on that connection. If not found, the first argument is treated as a connection info string as for dblink_connect, and the indicated connection is made just for the duration of this command.

Arguments

connname

Name of the connection to use; omit this parameter to use the unnamed connection.

connstr

A connection info string, as previously described for dblink_connect.

sql

The SQL command that you wish to execute in the remote database, for example insert into foo values(0,'a','{"a0","b0","c0"}').

fail_on_error

If true (the default when omitted) then an error thrown on the remote side of the connection causes an error to also be thrown locally. If false, the remote error is locally reported as a NOTICE, and the function's return value is set to ERROR.

Return Value

Returns status, either the command's status string or ERROR.

Examples

SELECT dblink_connect('dbname=dblink_test_standby');
 dblink_connect
----------------
 OK
(1 row)

SELECT dblink_exec('insert into foo values(21,''z'',''{"a0","b0","c0"}'');');
   dblink_exec
-----------------
 INSERT 943366 1
(1 row)

SELECT dblink_connect('myconn', 'dbname=regression');
 dblink_connect
----------------
 OK
(1 row)

SELECT dblink_exec('myconn', 'insert into foo values(21,''z'',''{"a0","b0","c0"}'');');
   dblink_exec
------------------
 INSERT 6432584 1
(1 row)

SELECT dblink_exec('myconn', 'insert into pg_class values (''foo'')',false);
NOTICE:  sql error
DETAIL:  ERROR:  null value in column "relnamespace" violates not-null constraint

 dblink_exec
-------------
 ERROR
(1 row)
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dblink_open

Name

dblink_open -- opens a cursor in a remote database

Synopsis

dblink_open(text cursorname, text sql [, bool fail_on_error]) returns text
dblink_open(text connname, text cursorname, text sql [, bool fail_on_error]) returns text

Description

dblink_open() opens a cursor in a remote database. The cursor can subsequently be manipulated with dblink_fetch() and dblink_close().

Arguments

connname

Name of the connection to use; omit this parameter to use the unnamed connection.

cursorname

The name to assign to this cursor.

sql

The SELECT statement that you wish to execute in the remote database, for example select * from pg_class.

fail_on_error

If true (the default when omitted) then an error thrown on the remote side of the connection causes an error to also be thrown locally. If false, the remote error is locally reported as a NOTICE, and the function's return value is set to ERROR.

Return Value

Returns status, either OK or ERROR.

Notes

Since a cursor can only persist within a transaction, dblink_open starts an explicit transaction block (BEGIN) on the remote side, if the remote side was not already within a transaction. This transaction will be closed again when the matching dblink_close is executed. Note that if you use dblink_exec to change data between dblink_open and dblink_close, and then an error occurs or you use dblink_disconnect before dblink_close, your change will be lost because the transaction will be aborted.

Examples

SELECT dblink_connect('dbname=postgres');
 dblink_connect
----------------
 OK
(1 row)

SELECT dblink_open('foo', 'select proname, prosrc from pg_proc');
 dblink_open
-------------
 OK
(1 row)
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dblink_exec | Up | dblink_fetch


dblink_fetch

Name

dblink_fetch -- returns rows from an open cursor in a remote database

Synopsis

dblink_fetch(text cursorname, int howmany [, bool fail_on_error]) returns setof record
dblink_fetch(text connname, text cursorname, int howmany [, bool fail_on_error]) returns setof record

Description

dblink_fetch fetches rows from a cursor previously established by dblink_open.

Arguments

connname

Name of the connection to use; omit this parameter to use the unnamed connection.

cursorname

The name of the cursor to fetch from.

howmany

The maximum number of rows to retrieve. The next howmany rows are fetched, starting at the current cursor position, moving forward. Once the cursor has reached its end, no more rows are produced.

fail_on_error

If true (the default when omitted) then an error thrown on the remote side of the connection causes an error to also be thrown locally. If false, the remote error is locally reported as a NOTICE, and the function returns no rows.

Return Value

The function returns the row(s) fetched from the cursor. To use this function, you will need to specify the expected set of columns, as previously discussed for dblink.

Notes

On a mismatch between the number of return columns specified in the FROM clause, and the actual number of columns returned by the remote cursor, an error will be thrown. In this event, the remote cursor is still advanced by as many rows as it would have been if the error had not occurred. The same is true for any other error occurring in the local query after the remote FETCH has been done.

Examples

SELECT dblink_connect('dbname=postgres');
 dblink_connect
----------------
 OK
(1 row)

SELECT dblink_open('foo', 'select proname, prosrc from pg_proc where proname like ''bytea%''');
 dblink_open
-------------
 OK
(1 row)

SELECT * FROM dblink_fetch('foo', 5) AS (funcname name, source text);
 funcname |  source
----------+----------
 byteacat | byteacat
 byteacmp | byteacmp
 byteaeq  | byteaeq
 byteage  | byteage
 byteagt  | byteagt
(5 rows)

SELECT * FROM dblink_fetch('foo', 5) AS (funcname name, source text);
 funcname  |  source
-----------+-----------
 byteain   | byteain
 byteale   | byteale
 bytealike | bytealike
 bytealt   | bytealt
 byteane   | byteane
(5 rows)

SELECT * FROM dblink_fetch('foo', 5) AS (funcname name, source text);
  funcname  |   source
------------+------------
 byteanlike | byteanlike
 byteaout   | byteaout
(2 rows)

SELECT * FROM dblink_fetch('foo', 5) AS (funcname name, source text);
 funcname | source
----------+--------
(0 rows)
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dblink_open | Up | dblink_close


dblink_close

Name

dblink_close -- closes a cursor in a remote database

Synopsis

dblink_close(text cursorname [, bool fail_on_error]) returns text
dblink_close(text connname, text cursorname [, bool fail_on_error]) returns text

Description

dblink_close closes a cursor previously opened with dblink_open.

Arguments

connname

Name of the connection to use; omit this parameter to use the unnamed connection.

cursorname

The name of the cursor to close.

fail_on_error

If true (the default when omitted) then an error thrown on the remote side of the connection causes an error to also be thrown locally. If false, the remote error is locally reported as a NOTICE, and the function's return value is set to ERROR.

Return Value

Returns status, either OK or ERROR.

Notes

If dblink_open started an explicit transaction block, and this is the last remaining open cursor in this connection, dblink_close will issue the matching COMMIT.

Examples

SELECT dblink_connect('dbname=postgres');
 dblink_connect
----------------
 OK
(1 row)

SELECT dblink_open('foo', 'select proname, prosrc from pg_proc');
 dblink_open
-------------
 OK
(1 row)

SELECT dblink_close('foo');
 dblink_close
--------------
 OK
(1 row)
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dblink_fetch | Up | dblink_get_connections


dblink_get_connections

Name

dblink_get_connections -- returns the names of all open named dblink connections

Synopsis

dblink_get_connections() returns text[]

Description

dblink_get_connections returns an array of the names of all open named dblink connections.

Return Value

Returns a text array of connection names, or NULL if none.

Examples

SELECT dblink_get_connections();
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dblink_close | Up | dblink_error_message


dblink_error_message

Name

dblink_error_message -- gets last error message on the named connection

Synopsis

dblink_error_message(text connname) returns text

Description

dblink_error_message fetches the most recent remote error message for a given connection.

Arguments

connname

Name of the connection to use.

Return Value

Returns last error message, or an empty string if there has been no error in this connection.

Examples

SELECT dblink_error_message('dtest1');
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dblink_get_connections | Up | dblink_send_query


dblink_send_query

Name

dblink_send_query -- sends an async query to a remote database

Synopsis

dblink_send_query(text connname, text sql) returns int

Description

dblink_send_query sends a query to be executed asynchronously, that is, without immediately waiting for the result. There must not be an async query already in progress on the connection.

After successfully dispatching an async query, completion status can be checked with dblink_is_busy, and the results are ultimately collected with dblink_get_result. It is also possible to attempt to cancel an active async query using dblink_cancel_query.

Arguments

connname

Name of the connection to use.

sql

The SQL statement that you wish to execute in the remote database, for example select * from pg_class.

Return Value

Returns 1 if the query was successfully dispatched, 0 otherwise.

Examples

SELECT dblink_send_query('dtest1', 'SELECT * FROM foo WHERE f1 < 3');
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dblink_error_message | Up | dblink_is_busy


dblink_is_busy

Name

dblink_is_busy -- checks if connection is busy with an async query

Synopsis

dblink_is_busy(text connname) returns int

Description

dblink_is_busy tests whether an async query is in progress.

Arguments

connname

Name of the connection to check.

Return Value

Returns 1 if connection is busy, 0 if it is not busy. If this function returns 0, it is guaranteed that dblink_get_result will not block.

Examples

SELECT dblink_is_busy('dtest1');
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dblink_send_query | Up | dblink_get_notify


dblink_get_notify

Name

dblink_get_notify -- retrieve async notifications on a connection

Synopsis

dblink_get_notify() returns setof (notify_name text, be_pid int, extra text)
dblink_get_notify(text connname) returns setof (notify_name text, be_pid int, extra text)

Description

dblink_get_notify retrieves notifications on either the unnamed connection, or on a named connection if specified. To receive notifications via dblink, LISTEN must first be issued, using dblink_exec. For details see LISTEN and NOTIFY.

Arguments

connname

The name of a named connection to get notifications on.

Return Value

Returns setof (notify_name text, be_pid int, extra text), or an empty set if none.

Examples

SELECT dblink_exec('LISTEN virtual');
 dblink_exec
-------------
 LISTEN
(1 row)

SELECT * FROM dblink_get_notify();
 notify_name | be_pid | extra
-------------+--------+-------
(0 rows)

NOTIFY virtual;
NOTIFY

SELECT * FROM dblink_get_notify();
 notify_name | be_pid | extra
-------------+--------+-------
 virtual     |   1229 |
(1 row)
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dblink_is_busy | Up | dblink_get_result


dblink_get_result

Name

dblink_get_result -- gets an async query result

Synopsis

dblink_get_result(text connname [, bool fail_on_error]) returns setof record

Description

dblink_get_result collects the results of an asynchronous query previously sent with dblink_send_query. If the query is not already completed, dblink_get_result will wait until it is.

Arguments

connname

Name of the connection to use.

fail_on_error

If true (the default when omitted) then an error thrown on the remote side of the connection causes an error to also be thrown locally. If false, the remote error is locally reported as a NOTICE, and the function returns no rows.

Return Value

For an async query (that is, a SQL statement returning rows), the function returns the row(s) produced by the query. To use this function, you will need to specify the expected set of columns, as previously discussed for dblink.

For an async command (that is, a SQL statement not returning rows), the function returns a single row with a single text column containing the command's status string. It is still necessary to specify that the result will have a single text column in the calling FROM clause.

Notes

This function must be called if dblink_send_query returned 1. It must be called once for each query sent, and one additional time to obtain an empty set result, before the connection can be used again.

Examples

contrib_regression=# SELECT dblink_connect('dtest1', 'dbname=contrib_regression');
 dblink_connect
----------------
 OK
(1 row)

contrib_regression=# SELECT * FROM
contrib_regression-# dblink_send_query('dtest1', 'select * from foo where f1 < 3') AS t1;
 t1
----
  1
(1 row)

contrib_regression=# SELECT * FROM dblink_get_result('dtest1') AS t1(f1 int, f2 text, f3 text[]);
 f1 | f2 |     f3
----+----+------------
  0 | a  | {a0,b0,c0}
  1 | b  | {a1,b1,c1}
  2 | c  | {a2,b2,c2}
(3 rows)

contrib_regression=# SELECT * FROM dblink_get_result('dtest1') AS t1(f1 int, f2 text, f3 text[]);
 f1 | f2 | f3
----+----+----
(0 rows)

contrib_regression=# SELECT * FROM
contrib_regression-# dblink_send_query('dtest1', 'select * from foo where f1 < 3; select * from foo where f1 > 6') AS t1;
 t1
----
  1
(1 row)

contrib_regression=# SELECT * FROM dblink_get_result('dtest1') AS t1(f1 int, f2 text, f3 text[]);
 f1 | f2 |     f3
----+----+------------
  0 | a  | {a0,b0,c0}
  1 | b  | {a1,b1,c1}
  2 | c  | {a2,b2,c2}
(3 rows)

contrib_regression=# SELECT * FROM dblink_get_result('dtest1') AS t1(f1 int, f2 text, f3 text[]);
 f1 | f2 |      f3
----+----+---------------
  7 | h  | {a7,b7,c7}
  8 | i  | {a8,b8,c8}
  9 | j  | {a9,b9,c9}
 10 | k  | {a10,b10,c10}
(4 rows)

contrib_regression=# SELECT * FROM dblink_get_result('dtest1') AS t1(f1 int, f2 text, f3 text[]);
 f1 | f2 | f3
----+----+----
(0 rows)
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dblink_get_notify | Up | dblink_cancel_query


dblink_cancel_query

Name

dblink_cancel_query -- cancels any active query on the named connection

Synopsis

dblink_cancel_query(text connname) returns text

Description

dblink_cancel_query attempts to cancel any query that is in progress on the named connection. Note that this is not certain to succeed (since, for example, the remote query might already have finished). A cancel request simply improves the odds that the query will fail soon. You must still complete the normal query protocol, for example by calling dblink_get_result.

Arguments

connname

Name of the connection to use.

Return Value

Returns OK if the cancel request has been sent, or the text of an error message on failure.

Examples

SELECT dblink_cancel_query('dtest1');
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dblink_get_result | Up | dblink_get_pkey


dblink_get_pkey

Name

dblink_get_pkey -- returns the positions and field names of a relation's primary key fields

Synopsis

dblink_get_pkey(text relname) returns setof dblink_pkey_results

Description

dblink_get_pkey provides information about the primary key of a relation in the local database. This is sometimes useful in generating queries to be sent to remote databases.

Arguments

relname

Name of a local relation, for example foo or myschema.mytab. Include double quotes if the name is mixed-case or contains special characters, for example "FooBar"; without quotes, the string will be folded to lower case.

Return Value

Returns one row for each primary key field, or no rows if the relation has no primary key. The result row type is defined as

CREATE TYPE dblink_pkey_results AS (position int, colname text);

The position column simply runs from 1 to N; it is the number of the field within the primary key, not the number within the table's columns.

Examples

CREATE TABLE foobar (
    f1 int,
    f2 int,
    f3 int,
    PRIMARY KEY (f1, f2, f3)
);
CREATE TABLE

SELECT * FROM dblink_get_pkey('foobar');
 position | colname
----------+---------
        1 | f1
        2 | f2
        3 | f3
(3 rows)
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dblink_cancel_query | Up | dblink_build_sql_insert


dblink_build_sql_insert

Name

dblink_build_sql_insert -- builds an INSERT statement using a local tuple, replacing the primary key field values with alternative supplied values

Synopsis

dblink_build_sql_insert(text relname,
                        int2vector primary_key_attnums,
                        integer num_primary_key_atts,
                        text[] src_pk_att_vals_array,
                        text[] tgt_pk_att_vals_array) returns text

Description

dblink_build_sql_insert can be useful in doing selective replication of a local table to a remote database. It selects a row from the local table based on primary key, and then builds a SQL INSERT command that will duplicate that row, but with the primary key values replaced by the values in the last argument. (To make an exact copy of the row, just specify the same values for the last two arguments.)

Arguments

relname

Name of a local relation, for example foo or myschema.mytab. Include double quotes if the name is mixed-case or contains special characters, for example "FooBar"; without quotes, the string will be folded to lower case.

primary_key_attnums

Attribute numbers (1-based) of the primary key fields, for example 1 2.

num_primary_key_atts

The number of primary key fields.

src_pk_att_vals_array

Values of the primary key fields to be used to look up the local tuple. Each field is represented in text form. An error is thrown if there is no local row with these primary key values.

tgt_pk_att_vals_array

Values of the primary key fields to be placed in the resulting INSERT command. Each field is represented in text form.

Return Value

Returns the requested SQL statement as text.

Notes

As of PostgreSQL 9.0, the attribute numbers in primary_key_attnums are interpreted as logical column numbers, corresponding to the column's position in SELECT * FROM relname. Previous versions interpreted the numbers as physical column positions. There is a difference if any column(s) to the left of the indicated column have been dropped during the lifetime of the table.

Examples

SELECT dblink_build_sql_insert('foo', '1 2', 2, '{"1", "a"}', '{"1", "b''a"}');
             dblink_build_sql_insert
--------------------------------------------------
 INSERT INTO foo(f1,f2,f3) VALUES('1','b''a','1')
(1 row)
Prev | Home | Next
dblink_get_pkey | Up | dblink_build_sql_delete


dblink_build_sql_delete

Name

dblink_build_sql_delete -- builds a DELETE statement using supplied values for primary key field values

Synopsis

dblink_build_sql_delete(text relname,
                        int2vector primary_key_attnums,
                        integer num_primary_key_atts,
                        text[] tgt_pk_att_vals_array) returns text

Description

dblink_build_sql_delete can be useful in doing selective replication of a local table to a remote database. It builds a SQL DELETE command that will delete the row with the given primary key values.

Arguments

relname

Name of a local relation, for example foo or myschema.mytab. Include double quotes if the name is mixed-case or contains special characters, for example "FooBar"; without quotes, the string will be folded to lower case.

primary_key_attnums

Attribute numbers (1-based) of the primary key fields, for example 1 2.

num_primary_key_atts

The number of primary key fields.

tgt_pk_att_vals_array

Values of the primary key fields to be used in the resulting DELETE command. Each field is represented in text form.

Return Value

Returns the requested SQL statement as text.

Notes

As of PostgreSQL 9.0, the attribute numbers in primary_key_attnums are interpreted as logical column numbers, corresponding to the column's position in SELECT * FROM relname. Previous versions interpreted the numbers as physical column positions. There is a difference if any column(s) to the left of the indicated column have been dropped during the lifetime of the table.

Examples

SELECT dblink_build_sql_delete('"MyFoo"', '1 2', 2, '{"1", "b"}');
           dblink_build_sql_delete
---------------------------------------------
 DELETE FROM "MyFoo" WHERE f1='1' AND f2='b'
(1 row)
Prev | Home | Next
dblink_build_sql_insert | Up | dblink_build_sql_update


dblink_build_sql_update

Name

dblink_build_sql_update -- builds an UPDATE statement using a local tuple, replacing the primary key field values with alternative supplied values

Synopsis

dblink_build_sql_update(text relname,
                        int2vector primary_key_attnums,
                        integer num_primary_key_atts,
                        text[] src_pk_att_vals_array,
                        text[] tgt_pk_att_vals_array) returns text

Description

dblink_build_sql_update can be useful in doing selective replication of a local table to a remote database. It selects a row from the local table based on primary key, and then builds a SQL UPDATE command that will duplicate that row, but with the primary key values replaced by the values in the last argument. (To make an exact copy of the row, just specify the same values for the last two arguments.) The UPDATE command always assigns all fields of the row — the main difference between this and dblink_build_sql_insert is that it's assumed that the target row already exists in the remote table.

Arguments

relname

Name of a local relation, for example foo or myschema.mytab. Include double quotes if the name is mixed-case or contains special characters, for example "FooBar"; without quotes, the string will be folded to lower case.

primary_key_attnums

Attribute numbers (1-based) of the primary key fields, for example 1 2.

num_primary_key_atts

The number of primary key fields.

src_pk_att_vals_array

Values of the primary key fields to be used to look up the local tuple. Each field is represented in text form. An error is thrown if there is no local row with these primary key values.

tgt_pk_att_vals_array

Values of the primary key fields to be placed in the resulting UPDATE command. Each field is represented in text form.

Return Value

Returns the requested SQL statement as text.

Notes

As of PostgreSQL 9.0, the attribute numbers in primary_key_attnums are interpreted as logical column numbers, corresponding to the column's position in SELECT * FROM relname. Previous versions interpreted the numbers as physical column positions. There is a difference if any column(s) to the left of the indicated column have been dropped during the lifetime of the table.

Examples

SELECT dblink_build_sql_update('foo', '1 2', 2, '{"1", "a"}', '{"1", "b"}');
                   dblink_build_sql_update
-------------------------------------------------------------
 UPDATE foo SET f1='1',f2='b',f3='1' WHERE f1='1' AND f2='b'
(1 row)
Prev | Home | Next
dblink_build_sql_delete | Up | dict_int


dict_int

Prev Up Appendix F. Additional Supplied Modules Next

F.10. dict_int

dict_int is an example of an add-on dictionary template for full-text search. The motivation for this example dictionary is to control the indexing of integers (signed and unsigned), allowing such numbers to be indexed while preventing excessive growth in the number of unique words, which greatly affects the performance of searching.

F.10.1. Configuration

The dictionary accepts two options:

  • The maxlen parameter specifies the maximum number of digits allowed in an integer word. The default value is 6.

  • The rejectlong parameter specifies whether an overlength integer should be truncated or ignored. If rejectlong is false (the default), the dictionary returns the first maxlen digits of the integer. If rejectlong is true, the dictionary treats an overlength integer as a stop word, so that it will not be indexed. Note that this also means that such an integer cannot be searched for.

F.10.2. Usage

Installing the dict_int extension creates a text search template intdict_template and a dictionary intdict based on it, with the default parameters. You can alter the parameters, for example

mydb# ALTER TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY intdict (MAXLEN = 4, REJECTLONG = true);
ALTER TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY

or create new dictionaries based on the template.

To test the dictionary, you can try

mydb# select ts_lexize('intdict', '12345678');
 ts_lexize
-----------
 {123456}

but real-world usage will involve including it in a text search configuration as described in Chapter 12. That might look like this:

ALTER TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION english
    ALTER MAPPING FOR int, uint WITH intdict;

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dblink_build_sql_update | Up | dict_xsyn


dict_xsyn

Prev Up Appendix F. Additional Supplied Modules Next

F.11. dict_xsyn

dict_xsyn (Extended Synonym Dictionary) is an example of an add-on dictionary template for full-text search. This dictionary type replaces words with groups of their synonyms, and so makes it possible to search for a word using any of its synonyms.

F.11.1. Configuration

A dict_xsyn dictionary accepts the following options:

  • matchorig controls whether the original word is accepted by the dictionary. Default is true.

  • matchsynonyms controls whether the synonyms are accepted by the dictionary. Default is false.

  • keeporig controls whether the original word is included in the dictionary's output. Default is true.

  • keepsynonyms controls whether the synonyms are included in the dictionary's output. Default is true.

  • rules is the base name of the file containing the list of synonyms. This file must be stored in $SHAREDIR/tsearch_data/ (where $SHAREDIR means the PostgreSQL installation's shared-data directory). Its name must end in .rules (which is not to be included in the rules parameter).

The rules file has the following format:

  • Each line represents a group of synonyms for a single word, which is given first on the line. Synonyms are separated by whitespace, thus:

    word syn1 syn2 syn3

  • The sharp (#) sign is a comment delimiter. It may appear at any position in a line. The rest of the line will be skipped.

Look at xsyn_sample.rules, which is installed in $SHAREDIR/tsearch_data/, for an example.

F.11.2. Usage

Installing the dict_xsyn extension creates a text search template xsyn_template and a dictionary xsyn based on it, with default parameters. You can alter the parameters, for example

mydb# ALTER TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY xsyn (RULES='my_rules', KEEPORIG=false);
ALTER TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY

or create new dictionaries based on the template.

To test the dictionary, you can try

mydb=# SELECT ts_lexize('xsyn', 'word');
      ts_lexize
-----------------------
 {syn1,syn2,syn3}

mydb# ALTER TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY xsyn (RULES='my_rules', KEEPORIG=true);
ALTER TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY

mydb=# SELECT ts_lexize('xsyn', 'word');
      ts_lexize
-----------------------
 {word,syn1,syn2,syn3}

mydb# ALTER TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY xsyn (RULES='my_rules', KEEPORIG=false, MATCHSYNONYMS=true);
ALTER TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY

mydb=# SELECT ts_lexize('xsyn', 'syn1');
      ts_lexize
-----------------------
 {syn1,syn2,syn3}

mydb# ALTER TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY xsyn (RULES='my_rules', KEEPORIG=true, MATCHORIG=false, KEEPSYNONYMS=false);
ALTER TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY

mydb=# SELECT ts_lexize('xsyn', 'syn1');
      ts_lexize
-----------------------
 {word}

Real-world usage will involve including it in a text search configuration as described in Chapter 12. That might look like this:

ALTER TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION english
    ALTER MAPPING FOR word, asciiword WITH xsyn, english_stem;

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dict_int | Up | dummy_seclabel


dummy_seclabel

Prev Up Appendix F. Additional Supplied Modules Next

F.12. dummy_seclabel

The dummy_seclabel module exists only to support regression testing of the SECURITY LABEL statement. It is not intended to be used in production.

F.12.1. Rationale

The SECURITY LABEL statement allows the user to assign security labels to database objects; however, security labels can only be assigned when specifically allowed by a loadable module, so this module is provided to allow proper regression testing.

Security label providers intended to be used in production will typically be dependent on a platform-specific feature such as SE-Linux. This module is platform-independent, and therefore better-suited to regression testing.

F.12.2. Usage

Here's a simple example of usage:

# postgresql.conf
shared_preload_libraries = 'dummy_seclabel'
postgres=# CREATE TABLE t (a int, b text);
CREATE TABLE
postgres=# SECURITY LABEL ON TABLE t IS 'classified';
SECURITY LABEL

The dummy_seclabel module provides only four hardcoded labels: unclassified, classified, secret, and top secret. It does not allow any other strings as security labels.

These labels are not used to enforce access controls. They are only used to check whether the SECURITY LABEL statement works as expected, or not.

F.12.3. Author

KaiGai Kohei <kaigai@ak.jp.nec.com>

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dict_xsyn | Up | earthdistance


earthdistance

Prev Up Appendix F. Additional Supplied Modules Next

F.13. earthdistance

The earthdistance module provides two different approaches to calculating great circle distances on the surface of the Earth. The one described first depends on the cube module (which must be installed before earthdistance can be installed). The second one is based on the built-in point data type, using longitude and latitude for the coordinates.

In this module, the Earth is assumed to be perfectly spherical. (If that's too inaccurate for you, you might want to look at the PostGIS project.)

F.13.1. Cube-based Earth Distances

Data is stored in cubes that are points (both corners are the same) using 3 coordinates representing the x, y, and z distance from the center of the Earth. A domain earth over cube is provided, which includes constraint checks that the value meets these restrictions and is reasonably close to the actual surface of the Earth.

The radius of the Earth is obtained from the earth() function. It is given in meters. But by changing this one function you can change the module to use some other units, or to use a different value of the radius that you feel is more appropriate.

This package has applications to astronomical databases as well. Astronomers will probably want to change earth() to return a radius of 180/pi() so that distances are in degrees.

Functions are provided to support input in latitude and longitude (in degrees), to support output of latitude and longitude, to calculate the great circle distance between two points and to easily specify a bounding box usable for index searches.

The provided functions are shown in Table F-4.

Table F-4. Cube-based Earthdistance Functions

Function | Returns | Description
earth() | float8 | Returns the assumed radius of the Earth.
sec_to_gc(float8) | float8 | Converts the normal straight line (secant) distance between between two points on the surface of the Earth to the great circle distance between them.
gc_to_sec(float8) | float8 | Converts the great circle distance between two points on the surface of the Earth to the normal straight line (secant) distance between them.
ll_to_earth(float8, float8) | earth | Returns the location of a point on the surface of the Earth given its latitude (argument 1) and longitude (argument 2) in degrees.
latitude(earth) | float8 | Returns the latitude in degrees of a point on the surface of the Earth.
longitude(earth) | float8 | Returns the longitude in degrees of a point on the surface of the Earth.
earth_distance(earth, earth) | float8 | Returns the great circle distance between two points on the surface of the Earth.
earth_box(earth, float8) | cube | Returns a box suitable for an indexed search using the cube @> operator for points within a given great circle distance of a location. Some points in this box are further than the specified great circle distance from the location, so a second check using earth_distance should be included in the query.

F.13.2. Point-based Earth Distances

The second part of the module relies on representing Earth locations as values of type point, in which the first component is taken to represent longitude in degrees, and the second component is taken to represent latitude in degrees. Points are taken as (longitude, latitude) and not vice versa because longitude is closer to the intuitive idea of x-axis and latitude to y-axis.

A single operator is provided, shown in Table F-5.

Table F-5. Point-based Earthdistance Operators

Operator | Returns | Description
point <@> point | float8 | Gives the distance in statute miles between two points on the Earth's surface.

Note that unlike the cube-based part of the module, units are hardwired here: changing the earth() function will not affect the results of this operator.

One disadvantage of the longitude/latitude representation is that you need to be careful about the edge conditions near the poles and near +/- 180 degrees of longitude. The cube-based representation avoids these discontinuities.

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file_fdw

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F.14. file_fdw

The file_fdw module provides the foreign-data wrapper file_fdw, which can be used to access data files in the server's file system. Data files must be in a format that can be read by COPY FROM; see COPY for details.

A foreign table created using this wrapper can have the following options:

filename

Specifies the file to be read. Required. Must be an absolute path name.

format

Specifies the file's format, the same as COPY's FORMAT option.

header

Specifies whether the file has a header line, the same as COPY's HEADER option.

delimiter

Specifies the file's delimiter character, the same as COPY's DELIMITER option.

quote

Specifies the file's quote character, the same as COPY's QUOTE option.

escape

Specifies the file's escape character, the same as COPY's ESCAPE option.

null

Specifies the file's null string, the same as COPY's NULL option.

encoding

Specifies the file's encoding. the same as COPY's ENCODING option.

COPY's OIDS, FORCE_QUOTE, and FORCE_NOT_NULL options are currently not supported by file_fdw.

These options can only be specified for a foreign table, not in the options of the file_fdw foreign-data wrapper, nor in the options of a server or user mapping using the wrapper.

Changing table-level options requires superuser privileges, for security reasons: only a superuser should be able to determine which file is read. In principle non-superusers could be allowed to change the other options, but that's not supported at present.

For a foreign table using file_fdw, EXPLAIN shows the name of the file to be read. Unless COSTS OFF is specified, the file size (in bytes) is shown as well.

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fuzzystrmatch

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F.15. fuzzystrmatch

The fuzzystrmatch module provides several functions to determine similarities and distance between strings.

Caution

At present, the soundex, metaphone, dmetaphone, and dmetaphone_alt functions do not work well with multibyte encodings (such as UTF-8).

F.15.1. Soundex

The Soundex system is a method of matching similar-sounding names by converting them to the same code. It was initially used by the United States Census in 1880, 1900, and 1910. Note that Soundex is not very useful for non-English names.

The fuzzystrmatch module provides two functions for working with Soundex codes:

soundex(text) returns text
difference(text, text) returns int

The soundex function converts a string to its Soundex code. The difference function converts two strings to their Soundex codes and then reports the number of matching code positions. Since Soundex codes have four characters, the result ranges from zero to four, with zero being no match and four being an exact match. (Thus, the function is misnamed — similarity would have been a better name.)

Here are some usage examples:

SELECT soundex('hello world!');

SELECT soundex('Anne'), soundex('Ann'), difference('Anne', 'Ann');
SELECT soundex('Anne'), soundex('Andrew'), difference('Anne', 'Andrew');
SELECT soundex('Anne'), soundex('Margaret'), difference('Anne', 'Margaret');

CREATE TABLE s (nm text);

INSERT INTO s VALUES ('john');
INSERT INTO s VALUES ('joan');
INSERT INTO s VALUES ('wobbly');
INSERT INTO s VALUES ('jack');

SELECT * FROM s WHERE soundex(nm) = soundex('john');

SELECT * FROM s WHERE difference(s.nm, 'john') > 2;

F.15.2. Levenshtein

This function calculates the Levenshtein distance between two strings:

levenshtein(text source, text target, int ins_cost, int del_cost, int sub_cost) returns int
levenshtein(text source, text target) returns int
levenshtein_less_equal(text source, text target, int ins_cost, int del_cost, int sub_cost, int max_d) returns int
levenshtein_less_equal(text source, text target, int max_d) returns int

Both source and target can be any non-null string, with a maximum of 255 bytes. The cost parameters specify how much to charge for a character insertion, deletion, or substitution, respectively. You can omit the cost parameters, as in the second version of the function; in that case they all default to 1. levenshtein_less_equal is accelerated version of levenshtein function for low values of distance. If actual distance is less or equal then max_d, then levenshtein_less_equal returns accurate value of it. Otherwise this function returns value which is greater than max_d.

Examples:

test=# SELECT levenshtein('GUMBO', 'GAMBOL');
 levenshtein
-------------
           2
(1 row)

test=# SELECT levenshtein('GUMBO', 'GAMBOL', 2,1,1);
 levenshtein
-------------
           3
(1 row)

test=# SELECT levenshtein_less_equal('extensive', 'exhaustive',2);
 levenshtein_less_equal
------------------------
                      3
(1 row)

test=# SELECT levenshtein_less_equal('extensive', 'exhaustive',4);
 levenshtein_less_equal
------------------------
                      4
(1 row)

F.15.3. Metaphone

Metaphone, like Soundex, is based on the idea of constructing a representative code for an input string. Two strings are then deemed similar if they have the same codes.

This function calculates the metaphone code of an input string:

metaphone(text source, int max_output_length) returns text

source has to be a non-null string with a maximum of 255 characters. max_output_length sets the maximum length of the output metaphone code; if longer, the output is truncated to this length.

Example:

test=# SELECT metaphone('GUMBO', 4);
 metaphone
-----------
 KM
(1 row)

F.15.4. Double Metaphone

The Double Metaphone system computes two "sounds like" strings for a given input string — a "primary" and an "alternate". In most cases they are the same, but for non-English names especially they can be a bit different, depending on pronunciation. These functions compute the primary and alternate codes:

dmetaphone(text source) returns text
dmetaphone_alt(text source) returns text

There is no length limit on the input strings.

Example:

test=# select dmetaphone('gumbo');
 dmetaphone
------------
 KMP
(1 row)
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hstore

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F.16. hstore

This module implements the hstore data type for storing sets of key/value pairs within a single PostgreSQL value. This can be useful in various scenarios, such as rows with many attributes that are rarely examined, or semi-structured data. Keys and values are simply text strings.

F.16.1. hstore External Representation

The text representation of an hstore, used for input and output, includes zero or more key => value pairs separated by commas. Some examples:

k => v
foo => bar, baz => whatever
"1-a" => "anything at all"

The order of the pairs is not significant (and may not be reproduced on output). Whitespace between pairs or around the => sign is ignored. Double-quote keys and values that include whitespace, commas, =s or >s. To include a double quote or a backslash in a key or value, escape it with a backslash.

Each key in an hstore is unique. If you declare an hstore with duplicate keys, only one will be stored in the hstore and there is no guarantee as to which will be kept:

SELECT 'a=>1,a=>2'::hstore;
  hstore
----------
 "a"=>"1"

A value (but not a key) can be an SQL NULL. For example:

key => NULL

The NULL keyword is case-insensitive. Double-quote the NULL to treat it as the ordinary string "NULL".

Note: Keep in mind that the hstore text format, when used for input, applies before any required quoting or escaping. If you are passing an hstore literal via a parameter, then no additional processing is needed. But if you're passing it as a quoted literal constant, then any single-quote characters and (depending on the setting of the standard_conforming_strings configuration parameter) backslash characters need to be escaped correctly. See Section 4.1.2.1 for more on the handling of string constants.

On output, double quotes always surround keys and values, even when it's not strictly necessary.

F.16.2. hstore Operators and Functions

The operators provided by the hstore module are shown in Table F-6, the functions in Table F-7.

Table F-6. hstore Operators

Operator | Description | Example | Result
hstore -> text | get value for key (NULL if not present) | 'a=>x, b=>y'::hstore -> 'a' | x
hstore -> text[] | get values for keys (NULL if not present) | 'a=>x, b=>y, c=>z'::hstore -> ARRAY['c','a'] | {"z","x"}
text => text | make single-pair hstore | 'a' => 'b' | "a"=>"b"
hstore || hstore | concatenate hstores | 'a=>b, c=>d'::hstore || 'c=>x, d=>q'::hstore | "a"=>"b", "c"=>"x", "d"=>"q"
hstore ? text | does hstore contain key? | 'a=>1'::hstore ? 'a' | t
hstore ?& text[] | does hstore contain all specified keys? | 'a=>1,b=>2'::hstore ?& ARRAY['a','b'] | t
hstore ?| text[] | does hstore contain any of the specified keys? | 'a=>1,b=>2'::hstore ?| ARRAY['b','c'] | t
hstore @> hstore | does left operand contain right? | 'a=>b, b=>1, c=>NULL'::hstore @> 'b=>1' | t
hstore <@ hstore | is left operand contained in right? | 'a=>c'::hstore <@ 'a=>b, b=>1, c=>NULL' | f
hstore - text | delete key from left operand | 'a=>1, b=>2, c=>3'::hstore - 'b'::text | "a"=>"1", "c"=>"3"
hstore - text[] | delete keys from left operand | 'a=>1, b=>2, c=>3'::hstore - ARRAY['a','b'] | "c"=>"3"
hstore - hstore | delete matching pairs from left operand | 'a=>1, b=>2, c=>3'::hstore - 'a=>4, b=>2'::hstore | "a"=>"1", "c"=>"3"
record #= hstore | replace fields in record with matching values from hstore | see Examples section |
%% hstore | convert hstore to array of alternating keys and values | %% 'a=>foo, b=>bar'::hstore | {a,foo,b,bar}
%# hstore | convert hstore to two-dimensional key/value array | %# 'a=>foo, b=>bar'::hstore | {{a,foo},{b,bar}}

Note: Prior to PostgreSQL 8.2, the containment operators @> and <@ were called @ and ~, respectively. These names are still available, but are deprecated and will eventually be removed. Notice that the old names are reversed from the convention formerly followed by the core geometric data types!

Note: The => operator is deprecated and may be removed in a future release. Use the hstore(text, text) function instead.

Table F-7. hstore Functions

Function | Return Type | Description | Example | Result
hstore(record) | hstore | construct an hstore from a record or row | hstore(ROW(1,2)) | f1=>1,f2=>2
hstore(text[]) | hstore | construct an hstore from an array, which may be either a key/value array, or a two-dimensional array | hstore(ARRAY['a','1','b','2']) || hstore(ARRAY[['c','3'],['d','4']]) | a=>1, b=>2, c=>3, d=>4
hstore(text[], text[]) | hstore | construct an hstore from separate key and value arrays | hstore(ARRAY['a','b'], ARRAY['1','2']) | "a"=>"1","b"=>"2"
hstore(text, text) | hstore | make single-item hstore | hstore('a', 'b') | "a"=>"b"
akeys(hstore) | text[] | get hstore's keys as an array | akeys('a=>1,b=>2') | {a,b}
skeys(hstore) setof text get hstore's keys as a set skeys('a=>1,b=>2')
a
b
avals(hstore) | text[] | get hstore's values as an array | avals('a=>1,b=>2') | {1,2}
svals(hstore) setof text get hstore's values as a set svals('a=>1,b=>2')
1
2
hstore_to_array(hstore) | text[] | get hstore's keys and values as an array of alternating keys and values | hstore_to_array('a=>1,b=>2') | {a,1,b,2}
hstore_to_matrix(hstore) | text[] | get hstore's keys and values as a two-dimensional array | hstore_to_matrix('a=>1,b=>2') | {{a,1},{b,2}}
slice(hstore, text[]) | hstore | extract a subset of an hstore | slice('a=>1,b=>2,c=>3'::hstore, ARRAY['b','c','x']) | "b"=>"2", "c"=>"3"
each(hstore) setof(key text, value text) get hstore's keys and values as a set select * from each('a=>1,b=>2')
 key | value
-----+-------
 a   | 1
 b   | 2
exist(hstore,text) | boolean | does hstore contain key? | exist('a=>1','a') | t
defined(hstore,text) | boolean | does hstore contain non-NULL value for key? | defined('a=>NULL','a') | f
delete(hstore,text) | hstore | delete pair with matching key | delete('a=>1,b=>2','b') | "a"=>"1"
delete(hstore,text[]) | hstore | delete pairs with matching keys | delete('a=>1,b=>2,c=>3',ARRAY['a','b']) | "c"=>"3"
delete(hstore,hstore) | hstore | delete pairs matching those in the second argument | delete('a=>1,b=>2','a=>4,b=>2'::hstore) | "a"=>"1"
populate_record(record,hstore) | record | replace fields in record with matching values from hstore | see Examples section

Note: The function populate_record is actually declared with anyelement, not record, as its first argument, but it will reject non-record types with a run-time error.

F.16.3. Indexes

hstore has GiST and GIN index support for the @>, ?, ?& and ?| operators. For example:

CREATE INDEX hidx ON testhstore USING GIST (h);

CREATE INDEX hidx ON testhstore USING GIN (h);

hstore also supports btree or hash indexes for the = operator. This allows hstore columns to be declared UNIQUE, or to be used in GROUP BY, ORDER BY or DISTINCT expressions. The sort ordering for hstore values is not particularly useful, but these indexes may be useful for equivalence lookups. Create indexes for = comparisons as follows:

CREATE INDEX hidx ON testhstore USING BTREE (h);

CREATE INDEX hidx ON testhstore USING HASH (h);

F.16.4. Examples

Add a key, or update an existing key with a new value:

UPDATE tab SET h = h || ('c' => '3');

Delete a key:

UPDATE tab SET h = delete(h, 'k1');

Convert a record to an hstore:

CREATE TABLE test (col1 integer, col2 text, col3 text);
INSERT INTO test VALUES (123, 'foo', 'bar');

SELECT hstore(t) FROM test AS t;
                   hstore
---------------------------------------------
 "col1"=>"123", "col2"=>"foo", "col3"=>"bar"
(1 row)

Convert an hstore to a predefined record type:

CREATE TABLE test (col1 integer, col2 text, col3 text);

SELECT * FROM populate_record(null::test,
                              '"col1"=>"456", "col2"=>"zzz"');
 col1 | col2 | col3
------+------+------
  456 | zzz  |
(1 row)

Modify an existing record using the values from an hstore:

CREATE TABLE test (col1 integer, col2 text, col3 text);
INSERT INTO test VALUES (123, 'foo', 'bar');

SELECT (r).* FROM (SELECT t #= '"col3"=>"baz"' AS r FROM test t) s;
 col1 | col2 | col3
------+------+------
  123 | foo  | baz
(1 row)

F.16.5. Statistics

The hstore type, because of its intrinsic liberality, could contain a lot of different keys. Checking for valid keys is the task of the application. The following examples demonstrate several techniques for checking keys and obtaining statistics.

Simple example:

SELECT * FROM each('aaa=>bq, b=>NULL, ""=>1');

Using a table:

SELECT (each(h)).key, (each(h)).value INTO stat FROM testhstore;

Online statistics:

SELECT key, count(*) FROM
  (SELECT (each(h)).key FROM testhstore) AS stat
  GROUP BY key
  ORDER BY count DESC, key;
    key    | count
-----------+-------
 line      |   883
 query     |   207
 pos       |   203
 node      |   202
 space     |   197
 status    |   195
 public    |   194
 title     |   190
 org       |   189
...................

F.16.6. Compatibility

As of PostgreSQL 9.0, hstore uses a different internal representation than previous versions. This presents no obstacle for dump/restore upgrades since the text representation (used in the dump) is unchanged.

In the event of a binary upgrade, upward compatibility is maintained by having the new code recognize old-format data. This will entail a slight performance penalty when processing data that has not yet been modified by the new code. It is possible to force an upgrade of all values in a table column by doing an UPDATE statement as follows:

UPDATE tablename SET hstorecol = hstorecol || '';

Another way to do it is:

ALTER TABLE tablename ALTER hstorecol TYPE hstore USING hstorecol || '';

The ALTER TABLE method requires an exclusive lock on the table, but does not result in bloating the table with old row versions.

F.16.7. Authors

Oleg Bartunov <oleg@sai.msu.su>, Moscow, Moscow University, Russia

Teodor Sigaev <teodor@sigaev.ru>, Moscow, Delta-Soft Ltd., Russia

Additional enhancements by Andrew Gierth <andrew@tao11.riddles.org.uk>, United Kingdom

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intagg

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F.17. intagg

The intagg module provides an integer aggregator and an enumerator. intagg is now obsolete, because there are built-in functions that provide a superset of its capabilities. However, the module is still provided as a compatibility wrapper around the built-in functions.

F.17.1. Functions

The aggregator is an aggregate function int_array_aggregate(integer) that produces an integer array containing exactly the integers it is fed. This is a wrapper around array_agg, which does the same thing for any array type.

The enumerator is a function int_array_enum(integer[]) that returns setof integer. It is essentially the reverse operation of the aggregator: given an array of integers, expand it into a set of rows. This is a wrapper around unnest, which does the same thing for any array type.

F.17.2. Sample Uses

Many database systems have the notion of a one to many table. Such a table usually sits between two indexed tables, for example:

CREATE TABLE left (id INT PRIMARY KEY, ...);
CREATE TABLE right (id INT PRIMARY KEY, ...);
CREATE TABLE one_to_many(left INT REFERENCES left, right INT REFERENCES right);

It is typically used like this:

SELECT right.* from right JOIN one_to_many ON (right.id = one_to_many.right)
  WHERE one_to_many.left = item;

This will return all the items in the right hand table for an entry in the left hand table. This is a very common construct in SQL.

Now, this methodology can be cumbersome with a very large number of entries in the one_to_many table. Often, a join like this would result in an index scan and a fetch for each right hand entry in the table for a particular left hand entry. If you have a very dynamic system, there is not much you can do. However, if you have some data which is fairly static, you can create a summary table with the aggregator.

CREATE TABLE summary AS
  SELECT left, int_array_aggregate(right) AS right
  FROM one_to_many
  GROUP BY left;

This will create a table with one row per left item, and an array of right items. Now this is pretty useless without some way of using the array; that's why there is an array enumerator. You can do

SELECT left, int_array_enum(right) FROM summary WHERE left = item;

The above query using int_array_enum produces the same results as

SELECT left, right FROM one_to_many WHERE left = item;

The difference is that the query against the summary table has to get only one row from the table, whereas the direct query against one_to_many must index scan and fetch a row for each entry.

On one system, an EXPLAIN showed a query with a cost of 8488 was reduced to a cost of 329. The original query was a join involving the one_to_many table, which was replaced by:

SELECT right, count(right) FROM
  ( SELECT left, int_array_enum(right) AS right
    FROM summary JOIN (SELECT left FROM left_table WHERE left = item) AS lefts
         ON (summary.left = lefts.left)
  ) AS list
  GROUP BY right
  ORDER BY count DESC;

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intarray

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F.18. intarray

The intarray module provides a number of useful functions and operators for manipulating null-free arrays of integers. There is also support for indexed searches using some of the operators.

All of these operations will throw an error if a supplied array contains any NULL elements.

Many of these operations are only sensible for one-dimensional arrays. Although they will accept input arrays of more dimensions, the data is treated as though it were a linear array in storage order.

F.18.1. intarray Functions and Operators

The functions provided by the intarray module are shown in Table F-8, the operators in Table F-9.

Table F-8. intarray Functions

Function | Return Type | Description | Example | Result
icount(int[]) | int | number of elements in array | icount('{1,2,3}'::int[]) | 3
sort(int[], text dir) | int[] | sort array — dir must be asc or desc | sort('{1,2,3}'::int[], 'desc') | {3,2,1}
sort(int[]) | int[] | sort in ascending order | sort(array[11,77,44]) | {11,44,77}
sort_asc(int[]) | int[] | sort in ascending order |  |
sort_desc(int[]) | int[] | sort in descending order |  |
uniq(int[]) | int[] | remove adjacent duplicates | uniq(sort('{1,2,3,2,1}'::int[])) | {1,2,3}
idx(int[], int item) | int | index of first element matching item (0 if none) | idx(array[11,22,33,22,11], 22) | 2
subarray(int[], int start, int len) | int[] | portion of array starting at position start, len elements | subarray('{1,2,3,2,1}'::int[], 2, 3) | {2,3,2}
subarray(int[], int start) | int[] | portion of array starting at position start | subarray('{1,2,3,2,1}'::int[], 2) | {2,3,2,1}
intset(int) | int[] | make single-element array | intset(42) | {42}

Table F-9. intarray Operators

Operator | Returns | Description
int[] && int[] | boolean | overlap — true if arrays have at least one common element
int[] @> int[] | boolean | contains — true if left array contains right array
int[] <@ int[] | boolean | contained — true if left array is contained in right array
# int[] | int | number of elements in array
int[] # int | int | index (same as idx function)
int[] + int | int[] | push element onto array (add it to end of array)
int[] + int[] | int[] | array concatenation (right array added to the end of left one)
int[] - int | int[] | remove entries matching right argument from array
int[] - int[] | int[] | remove elements of right array from left
int[] | int | int[] | union of arguments
int[] | int[] | int[] | union of arrays
int[] & int[] | int[] | intersection of arrays
int[] @@ query_int | boolean | true if array satisfies query (see below)
query_int ~~ int[] | boolean | true if array satisfies query (commutator of @@)

(Before PostgreSQL 8.2, the containment operators @> and <@ were respectively called @ and ~. These names are still available, but are deprecated and will eventually be retired. Notice that the old names are reversed from the convention formerly followed by the core geometric data types!)

The operators &&, @> and <@ are equivalent to PostgreSQL's built-in operators of the same names, except that they work only on integer arrays that do not contain nulls, while the built-in operators work for any array type. This restriction makes them faster than the built-in operators in many cases.

The @@ and ~~ operators test whether an array satisfies a query, which is expressed as a value of a specialized data type query_int. A query consists of integer values that are checked against the elements of the array, possibly combined using the operators & (AND), | (OR), and ! (NOT). Parentheses can be used as needed. For example, the query 1&(2|3) matches arrays that contain 1 and also contain either 2 or 3.

F.18.2. Index Support

intarray provides index support for the &&, @>, <@, and @@ operators, as well as regular array equality.

Two GiST index operator classes are provided: gist__int_ops (used by default) is suitable for small- to medium-size data sets, while gist__intbig_ops uses a larger signature and is more suitable for indexing large data sets (i.e., columns containing a large number of distinct array values). The implementation uses an RD-tree data structure with built-in lossy compression.

There is also a non-default GIN operator class gin__int_ops supporting the same operators.

The choice between GiST and GIN indexing depends on the relative performance characteristics of GiST and GIN, which are discussed elsewhere. As a rule of thumb, a GIN index is faster to search than a GiST index, but slower to build or update; so GIN is better suited for static data and GiST for often-updated data.

F.18.3. Example

-- a message can be in one or more "sections"
CREATE TABLE message (mid INT PRIMARY KEY, sections INT[], ...);

-- create specialized index
CREATE INDEX message_rdtree_idx ON message USING GIST (sections gist__int_ops);

-- select messages in section 1 OR 2 - OVERLAP operator
SELECT message.mid FROM message WHERE message.sections && '{1,2}';

-- select messages in sections 1 AND 2 - CONTAINS operator
SELECT message.mid FROM message WHERE message.sections @> '{1,2}';

-- the same, using QUERY operator
SELECT message.mid FROM message WHERE message.sections @@ '1&2'::query_int;

F.18.4. Benchmark

The source directory contrib/intarray/bench contains a benchmark test suite. To run:

cd .../bench
createdb TEST
psql TEST < ../_int.sql
./create_test.pl | psql TEST
./bench.pl

The bench.pl script has numerous options, which are displayed when it is run without any arguments.

F.18.5. Authors

All work was done by Teodor Sigaev (<teodor@sigaev.ru>) and Oleg Bartunov (<oleg@sai.msu.su>). See http://www.sai.msu.su/~megera/postgres/gist/ for additional information. Andrey Oktyabrski did a great work on adding new functions and operations.

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isn

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F.19. isn

The isn module provides data types for the following international product numbering standards: EAN13, UPC, ISBN (books), ISMN (music), and ISSN (serials). Numbers are validated on input according to a hard-coded list of prefixes; this list of prefixes is also used to hyphenate numbers on output. Since new prefixes are assigned from time to time, the list of prefixes may be out of date. It is hoped that a future version of this module will obtained the prefix list from one or more tables that can be easily updated by users as needed; however, at present, the list can only be updated by modifying the source code and recompiling. Alternatively, prefix validation and hyphenation support may be dropped from a future version of this module.

F.19.1. Data Types

Table F-10 shows the data types provided by the isn module.

Table F-10. isn Data Types

Data Type | Description
EAN13 | European Article Numbers, always displayed in the EAN13 display format
ISBN13 | International Standard Book Numbers to be displayed in the new EAN13 display format
ISMN13 | International Standard Music Numbers to be displayed in the new EAN13 display format
ISSN13 | International Standard Serial Numbers to be displayed in the new EAN13 display format
ISBN | International Standard Book Numbers to be displayed in the old short display format
ISMN | International Standard Music Numbers to be displayed in the old short display format
ISSN | International Standard Serial Numbers to be displayed in the old short display format
UPC | Universal Product Codes

Some notes:

  1. ISBN13, ISMN13, ISSN13 numbers are all EAN13 numbers.

  2. EAN13 numbers aren't always ISBN13, ISMN13 or ISSN13 (some are).

  3. Some ISBN13 numbers can be displayed as ISBN.

  4. Some ISMN13 numbers can be displayed as ISMN.

  5. Some ISSN13 numbers can be displayed as ISSN.

  6. UPC numbers are a subset of the EAN13 numbers (they are basically EAN13 without the first 0 digit).

  7. All UPC, ISBN, ISMN and ISSN numbers can be represented as EAN13 numbers.

Internally, all these types use the same representation (a 64-bit integer), and all are interchangeable. Multiple types are provided to control display formatting and to permit tighter validity checking of input that is supposed to denote one particular type of number.

The ISBN, ISMN, and ISSN types will display the short version of the number (ISxN 10) whenever it's possible, and will show ISxN 13 format for numbers that do not fit in the short version. The EAN13, ISBN13, ISMN13 and ISSN13 types will always display the long version of the ISxN (EAN13).

F.19.2. Casts

The isn module provides the following pairs of type casts:

  • ISBN13 <=> EAN13

  • ISMN13 <=> EAN13

  • ISSN13 <=> EAN13

  • ISBN <=> EAN13

  • ISMN <=> EAN13

  • ISSN <=> EAN13

  • UPC <=> EAN13

  • ISBN <=> ISBN13

  • ISMN <=> ISMN13

  • ISSN <=> ISSN13

When casting from EAN13 to another type, there is a run-time check that the value is within the domain of the other type, and an error is thrown if not. The other casts are simply relabelings that will always succeed.

F.19.3. Functions and Operators

The isn module provides the standard comparison operators, plus B-tree and hash indexing support for all these data types. In addition there are several specialized functions; shown in Table F-11. In this table, isn means any one of the module's data types.

Table F-11. isn Functions

Function | Returns | Description
isn_weak(boolean) | boolean | Sets the weak input mode (returns new setting)
isn_weak() | boolean | Gets the current status of the weak mode
make_valid(isn) | isn | Validates an invalid number (clears the invalid flag)
is_valid(isn) | boolean | Checks for the presence of the invalid flag

Weak mode is used to be able to insert invalid data into a table. Invalid means the check digit is wrong, not that there are missing numbers.

Why would you want to use the weak mode? Well, it could be that you have a huge collection of ISBN numbers, and that there are so many of them that for weird reasons some have the wrong check digit (perhaps the numbers were scanned from a printed list and the OCR got the numbers wrong, perhaps the numbers were manually captured... who knows). Anyway, the point is you might want to clean the mess up, but you still want to be able to have all the numbers in your database and maybe use an external tool to locate the invalid numbers in the database so you can verify the information and validate it more easily; so for example you'd want to select all the invalid numbers in the table.

When you insert invalid numbers in a table using the weak mode, the number will be inserted with the corrected check digit, but it will be displayed with an exclamation mark (!) at the end, for example 0-11-000322-5!. This invalid marker can be checked with the is_valid function and cleared with the make_valid function.

You can also force the insertion of invalid numbers even when not in the weak mode, by appending the ! character at the end of the number.

Another special feature is that during input, you can write ? in place of the check digit, and the correct check digit will be inserted automatically.

F.19.4. Examples

--Using the types directly:
SELECT isbn('978-0-393-04002-9');
SELECT isbn13('0901690546');
SELECT issn('1436-4522');

--Casting types:
-- note that you can only cast from ean13 to another type when the
-- number would be valid in the realm of the target type;
-- thus, the following will NOT work: select isbn(ean13('0220356483481'));
-- but these will:
SELECT upc(ean13('0220356483481'));
SELECT ean13(upc('220356483481'));

--Create a table with a single column to hold ISBN numbers:
CREATE TABLE test (id isbn);
INSERT INTO test VALUES('9780393040029');

--Automatically calculate check digits (observe the '?'):
INSERT INTO test VALUES('220500896?');
INSERT INTO test VALUES('978055215372?');

SELECT issn('3251231?');
SELECT ismn('979047213542?');

--Using the weak mode:
SELECT isn_weak(true);
INSERT INTO test VALUES('978-0-11-000533-4');
INSERT INTO test VALUES('9780141219307');
INSERT INTO test VALUES('2-205-00876-X');
SELECT isn_weak(false);

SELECT id FROM test WHERE NOT is_valid(id);
UPDATE test SET id = make_valid(id) WHERE id = '2-205-00876-X!';

SELECT * FROM test;

SELECT isbn13(id) FROM test;

F.19.5. Bibliography

The information to implement this module was collected from several sites, including:

  • http://www.isbn-international.org/

  • http://www.issn.org/

  • http://www.ismn-international.org/

  • http://www.wikipedia.org/

The prefixes used for hyphenation were also compiled from:

  • http://www.gs1.org/productssolutions/idkeys/support/prefix_list.html

  • http://www.isbn-international.org/en/identifiers.html

  • http://www.ismn-international.org/ranges.html

Care was taken during the creation of the algorithms and they were meticulously verified against the suggested algorithms in the official ISBN, ISMN, ISSN User Manuals.

F.19.6. Author

Germán Méndez Bravo (Kronuz), 2004 - 2006

This module was inspired by Garrett A. Wollman's isbn_issn code.

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lo

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F.20. lo

The lo module provides support for managing Large Objects (also called LOs or BLOBs). This includes a data type lo and a trigger lo_manage.

F.20.1. Rationale

One of the problems with the JDBC driver (and this affects the ODBC driver also), is that the specification assumes that references to BLOBs (Binary Large OBjects) are stored within a table, and if that entry is changed, the associated BLOB is deleted from the database.

As PostgreSQL stands, this doesn't occur. Large objects are treated as objects in their own right; a table entry can reference a large object by OID, but there can be multiple table entries referencing the same large object OID, so the system doesn't delete the large object just because you change or remove one such entry.

Now this is fine for PostgreSQL-specific applications, but standard code using JDBC or ODBC won't delete the objects, resulting in orphan objects — objects that are not referenced by anything, and simply occupy disk space.

The lo module allows fixing this by attaching a trigger to tables that contain LO reference columns. The trigger essentially just does a lo_unlink whenever you delete or modify a value referencing a large object. When you use this trigger, you are assuming that there is only one database reference to any large object that is referenced in a trigger-controlled column!

The module also provides a data type lo, which is really just a domain of the oid type. This is useful for differentiating database columns that hold large object references from those that are OIDs of other things. You don't have to use the lo type to use the trigger, but it may be convenient to use it to keep track of which columns in your database represent large objects that you are managing with the trigger. It is also rumored that the ODBC driver gets confused if you don't use lo for BLOB columns.

F.20.2. How to Use It

Here's a simple example of usage:

CREATE TABLE image (title TEXT, raster lo);

CREATE TRIGGER t_raster BEFORE UPDATE OR DELETE ON image
    FOR EACH ROW EXECUTE PROCEDURE lo_manage(raster);

For each column that will contain unique references to large objects, create a BEFORE UPDATE OR DELETE trigger, and give the column name as the sole trigger argument. If you need multiple lo columns in the same table, create a separate trigger for each one, remembering to give a different name to each trigger on the same table.

F.20.3. Limitations

  • Dropping a table will still orphan any objects it contains, as the trigger is not executed. You can avoid this by preceding the DROP TABLE with DELETE FROM table.

    TRUNCATE has the same hazard.

    If you already have, or suspect you have, orphaned large objects, see the vacuumlo module to help you clean them up. It's a good idea to run vacuumlo occasionally as a back-stop to the lo_manage trigger.

  • Some frontends may create their own tables, and will not create the associated trigger(s). Also, users may not remember (or know) to create the triggers.

F.20.4. Author

Peter Mount <peter@retep.org.uk>

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ltree

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F.21. ltree

This module implements a data type ltree for representing labels of data stored in a hierarchical tree-like structure. Extensive facilities for searching through label trees are provided.

F.21.1. Definitions

A label is a sequence of alphanumeric characters and underscores (for example, in C locale the characters A-Za-z0-9_ are allowed). Labels must be less than 256 bytes long.

Examples: 42, Personal_Services

A label path is a sequence of zero or more labels separated by dots, for example L1.L2.L3, representing a path from the root of a hierarchical tree to a particular node. The length of a label path must be less than 65Kb, but keeping it under 2Kb is preferable. In practice this is not a major limitation; for example, the longest label path in the DMOZ catalogue (http://www.dmoz.org) is about 240 bytes.

Example: Top.Countries.Europe.Russia

The ltree module provides several data types:

  • ltree stores a label path.

  • lquery represents a regular-expression-like pattern for matching ltree values. A simple word matches that label within a path. A star symbol (*) matches zero or more labels. For example:

    foo         Match the exact label path foo
*.foo.*     Match any label path containing the label foo
*.foo       Match any label path whose last label is foo

    Star symbols can also be quantified to restrict how many labels they can match:

    *{n}        Match exactly n labels
*{n,}       Match at least n labels
*{n,m}      Match at least n but not more than m labels
*{,m}       Match at most m labels — same as  *{0,m}

    There are several modifiers that can be put at the end of a non-star label in lquery to make it match more than just the exact match:

    @           Match case-insensitively, for example a@ matches A
*           Match any label with this prefix, for example foo* matches foobar
%           Match initial underscore-separated words

    The behavior of % is a bit complicated. It tries to match words rather than the entire label. For example foo_bar% matches foo_bar_baz but not foo_barbaz. If combined with *, prefix matching applies to each word separately, for example foo_bar%* matches foo1_bar2_baz but not foo1_br2_baz.

    Also, you can write several possibly-modified labels separated with | (OR) to match any of those labels, and you can put ! (NOT) at the start to match any label that doesn't match any of the alternatives.

    Here's an annotated example of lquery:

    Top.*{0,2}.sport*@.!football|tennis.Russ*|Spain
a.  b.     c.      d.               e.

    This query will match any label path that:

    1. begins with the label Top

    2. and next has zero to two labels before

    3. a label beginning with the case-insensitive prefix sport

    4. then a label not matching football nor tennis

    5. and then ends with a label beginning with Russ or exactly matching Spain.

  • ltxtquery represents a full-text-search-like pattern for matching ltree values. An ltxtquery value contains words, possibly with the modifiers @, *, % at the end; the modifiers have the same meanings as in lquery. Words can be combined with & (AND), | (OR), ! (NOT), and parentheses. The key difference from lquery is that ltxtquery matches words without regard to their position in the label path.

    Here's an example ltxtquery:

    Europe & Russia*@ & !Transportation

    This will match paths that contain the label Europe and any label beginning with Russia (case-insensitive), but not paths containing the label Transportation. The location of these words within the path is not important. Also, when % is used, the word can be matched to any underscore-separated word within a label, regardless of position.

Note: ltxtquery allows whitespace between symbols, but ltree and lquery do not.

F.21.2. Operators and Functions

Type ltree has the usual comparison operators =, <>, <, >, <=, >=. Comparison sorts in the order of a tree traversal, with the children of a node sorted by label text. In addition, the specialized operators shown in Table F-12 are available.

Table F-12. ltree Operators

Operator | Returns | Description
ltree @> ltree | boolean | is left argument an ancestor of right (or equal)?
ltree <@ ltree | boolean | is left argument a descendant of right (or equal)?
ltree ~ lquery | boolean | does ltree match lquery?
lquery ~ ltree | boolean | does ltree match lquery?
ltree ? lquery[] | boolean | does ltree match any lquery in array?
lquery[] ? ltree | boolean | does ltree match any lquery in array?
ltree @ ltxtquery | boolean | does ltree match ltxtquery?
ltxtquery @ ltree | boolean | does ltree match ltxtquery?
ltree || ltree | ltree | concatenate ltree paths
ltree || text | ltree | convert text to ltree and concatenate
text || ltree | ltree | convert text to ltree and concatenate
ltree[] @> ltree | boolean | does array contain an ancestor of ltree?
ltree <@ ltree[] | boolean | does array contain an ancestor of ltree?
ltree[] <@ ltree | boolean | does array contain a descendant of ltree?
ltree @> ltree[] | boolean | does array contain a descendant of ltree?
ltree[] ~ lquery | boolean | does array contain any path matching lquery?
lquery ~ ltree[] | boolean | does array contain any path matching lquery?
ltree[] ? lquery[] | boolean | does ltree array contain any path matching any lquery?
lquery[] ? ltree[] | boolean | does ltree array contain any path matching any lquery?
ltree[] @ ltxtquery | boolean | does array contain any path matching ltxtquery?
ltxtquery @ ltree[] | boolean | does array contain any path matching ltxtquery?
ltree[] ?@> ltree | ltree | first array entry that is an ancestor of ltree; NULL if none
ltree[] ?<@ ltree | ltree | first array entry that is a descendant of ltree; NULL if none
ltree[] ?~ lquery | ltree | first array entry that matches lquery; NULL if none
ltree[] ?@ ltxtquery | ltree | first array entry that matches ltxtquery; NULL if none

The operators <@, @>, @ and ~ have analogues ^<@, ^@>, ^@, ^~, which are the same except they do not use indexes. These are useful only for testing purposes.

The available functions are shown in Table F-13.

Table F-13. ltree Functions

Function | Return Type | Description | Example | Result
subltree(ltree, int start, int end) | ltree | subpath of ltree from position start to position end-1 (counting from 0) | subltree('Top.Child1.Child2',1,2) | Child1
subpath(ltree, int offset, int len) | ltree | subpath of ltree starting at position offset, length len. If offset is negative, subpath starts that far from the end of the path. If len is negative, leaves that many labels off the end of the path. | subpath('Top.Child1.Child2',0,2) | Top.Child1
subpath(ltree, int offset) | ltree | subpath of ltree starting at position offset, extending to end of path. If offset is negative, subpath starts that far from the end of the path. | subpath('Top.Child1.Child2',1) | Child1.Child2
nlevel(ltree) | integer | number of labels in path | nlevel('Top.Child1.Child2') | 3
index(ltree a, ltree b) | integer | position of first occurrence of b in a; -1 if not found | index('0.1.2.3.5.4.5.6.8.5.6.8','5.6') | 6
index(ltree a, ltree b, int offset) | integer | position of first occurrence of b in a, searching starting at offset; negative offset means start -offset labels from the end of the path | index('0.1.2.3.5.4.5.6.8.5.6.8','5.6',-4) | 9
text2ltree(text) | ltree | cast text to ltree |  |
ltree2text(ltree) | text | cast ltree to text |  |
lca(ltree, ltree, ...) | ltree | lowest common ancestor, i.e., longest common prefix of paths (up to 8 arguments supported) | lca('1.2.2.3','1.2.3.4.5.6') | 1.2
lca(ltree[]) | ltree | lowest common ancestor, i.e., longest common prefix of paths | lca(array['1.2.2.3'::ltree,'1.2.3']) | 1.2

F.21.3. Indexes

ltree supports several types of indexes that can speed up the indicated operators:

  • B-tree index over ltree: <, <=, =, >=, >

  • GiST index over ltree: <, <=, =, >=, >, @>, <@, @, ~, ?

    Example of creating such an index:

    CREATE INDEX path_gist_idx ON test USING GIST (path);

  • GiST index over ltree[]: ltree[] <@ ltree, ltree @> ltree[], @, ~, ?

    Example of creating such an index:

    CREATE INDEX path_gist_idx ON test USING GIST (array_path);

    Note: This index type is lossy.

F.21.4. Example

This example uses the following data (also available in file contrib/ltree/ltreetest.sql in the source distribution):

CREATE TABLE test (path ltree);
INSERT INTO test VALUES ('Top');
INSERT INTO test VALUES ('Top.Science');
INSERT INTO test VALUES ('Top.Science.Astronomy');
INSERT INTO test VALUES ('Top.Science.Astronomy.Astrophysics');
INSERT INTO test VALUES ('Top.Science.Astronomy.Cosmology');
INSERT INTO test VALUES ('Top.Hobbies');
INSERT INTO test VALUES ('Top.Hobbies.Amateurs_Astronomy');
INSERT INTO test VALUES ('Top.Collections');
INSERT INTO test VALUES ('Top.Collections.Pictures');
INSERT INTO test VALUES ('Top.Collections.Pictures.Astronomy');
INSERT INTO test VALUES ('Top.Collections.Pictures.Astronomy.Stars');
INSERT INTO test VALUES ('Top.Collections.Pictures.Astronomy.Galaxies');
INSERT INTO test VALUES ('Top.Collections.Pictures.Astronomy.Astronauts');
CREATE INDEX path_gist_idx ON test USING gist(path);
CREATE INDEX path_idx ON test USING btree(path);

Now, we have a table test populated with data describing the hierarchy shown below:

                        Top
                     /   |  \
             Science Hobbies Collections
                 /       |              \
        Astronomy   Amateurs_Astronomy Pictures
           /  \                            |
Astrophysics  Cosmology                Astronomy
                                        /  |    \
                                 Galaxies Stars Astronauts

We can do inheritance:

ltreetest=> SELECT path FROM test WHERE path <@ 'Top.Science';
                path
------------------------------------
 Top.Science
 Top.Science.Astronomy
 Top.Science.Astronomy.Astrophysics
 Top.Science.Astronomy.Cosmology
(4 rows)

Here are some examples of path matching:

ltreetest=> SELECT path FROM test WHERE path ~ '*.Astronomy.*';
                     path
-----------------------------------------------
 Top.Science.Astronomy
 Top.Science.Astronomy.Astrophysics
 Top.Science.Astronomy.Cosmology
 Top.Collections.Pictures.Astronomy
 Top.Collections.Pictures.Astronomy.Stars
 Top.Collections.Pictures.Astronomy.Galaxies
 Top.Collections.Pictures.Astronomy.Astronauts
(7 rows)

ltreetest=> SELECT path FROM test WHERE path ~ '*.!pictures@.*.Astronomy.*';
                path
------------------------------------
 Top.Science.Astronomy
 Top.Science.Astronomy.Astrophysics
 Top.Science.Astronomy.Cosmology
(3 rows)

Here are some examples of full text search:

ltreetest=> SELECT path FROM test WHERE path @ 'Astro*% & !pictures@';
                path
------------------------------------
 Top.Science.Astronomy
 Top.Science.Astronomy.Astrophysics
 Top.Science.Astronomy.Cosmology
 Top.Hobbies.Amateurs_Astronomy
(4 rows)

ltreetest=> SELECT path FROM test WHERE path @ 'Astro* & !pictures@';
                path
------------------------------------
 Top.Science.Astronomy
 Top.Science.Astronomy.Astrophysics
 Top.Science.Astronomy.Cosmology
(3 rows)

Path construction using functions:

ltreetest=> SELECT subpath(path,0,2)||'Space'||subpath(path,2) FROM test WHERE path <@ 'Top.Science.Astronomy';
                 ?column?
------------------------------------------
 Top.Science.Space.Astronomy
 Top.Science.Space.Astronomy.Astrophysics
 Top.Science.Space.Astronomy.Cosmology
(3 rows)

We could simplify this by creating a SQL function that inserts a label at a specified position in a path:

CREATE FUNCTION ins_label(ltree, int, text) RETURNS ltree
    AS 'select subpath($1,0,$2) || $3 || subpath($1,$2);'
    LANGUAGE SQL IMMUTABLE;

ltreetest=> SELECT ins_label(path,2,'Space') FROM test WHERE path <@ 'Top.Science.Astronomy';
                ins_label
------------------------------------------
 Top.Science.Space.Astronomy
 Top.Science.Space.Astronomy.Astrophysics
 Top.Science.Space.Astronomy.Cosmology
(3 rows)

F.21.5. Authors

All work was done by Teodor Sigaev (<teodor@stack.net>) and Oleg Bartunov (<oleg@sai.msu.su>). See http://www.sai.msu.su/~megera/postgres/gist/ for additional information. Authors would like to thank Eugeny Rodichev for helpful discussions. Comments and bug reports are welcome.

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oid2name

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F.22. oid2name

oid2name is a utility program that helps administrators to examine the file structure used by PostgreSQL. To make use of it, you need to be familiar with the database file structure, which is described in Chapter 55.

Note: The name "oid2name" is historical, and is actually rather misleading, since most of the time when you use it, you will really be concerned with tables' filenode numbers (which are the file names visible in the database directories). Be sure you understand the difference between table OIDs and table filenodes!

F.22.1. Overview

oid2name connects to a target database and extracts OID, filenode, and/or table name information. You can also have it show database OIDs or tablespace OIDs.

F.22.2. oid2name Options

oid2name accepts the following command-line arguments:

-o oid

show info for table with OID oid

-f filenode

show info for table with filenode filenode

-t tablename_pattern

show info for table(s) matching tablename_pattern

-s

show tablespace OIDs

-S

include system objects (those in information_schema, pg_toast and pg_catalog schemas)

-i

include indexes and sequences in the listing

-x

display more information about each object shown: tablespace name, schema name, and OID

-q

omit headers (useful for scripting)

-d database

database to connect to

-H host

database server's host

-p port

database server's port

-U username

user name to connect as

-P password

password (deprecated — putting this on the command line is a security hazard)

To display specific tables, select which tables to show by using -o, -f and/or -t. -o takes an OID, -f takes a filenode, and -t takes a table name (actually, it's a LIKE pattern, so you can use things like foo%). You can use as many of these options as you like, and the listing will include all objects matched by any of the options. But note that these options can only show objects in the database given by -d.

If you don't give any of -o, -f or -t, but do give -d, it will list all tables in the database named by -d. In this mode, the -S and -i options control what gets listed.

If you don't give -d either, it will show a listing of database OIDs. Alternatively you can give -s to get a tablespace listing.

F.22.3. Examples

$ # what's in this database server, anyway?
$ oid2name
All databases:
    Oid  Database Name  Tablespace
----------------------------------
  17228       alvherre  pg_default
  17255     regression  pg_default
  17227      template0  pg_default
      1      template1  pg_default

$ oid2name -s
All tablespaces:
     Oid  Tablespace Name
-------------------------
    1663       pg_default
    1664        pg_global
  155151         fastdisk
  155152          bigdisk

$ # OK, let's look into database alvherre
$ cd $PGDATA/base/17228

$ # get top 10 db objects in the default tablespace, ordered by size
$ ls -lS * | head -10
-rw-------  1 alvherre alvherre 136536064 sep 14 09:51 155173
-rw-------  1 alvherre alvherre  17965056 sep 14 09:51 1155291
-rw-------  1 alvherre alvherre   1204224 sep 14 09:51 16717
-rw-------  1 alvherre alvherre    581632 sep  6 17:51 1255
-rw-------  1 alvherre alvherre    237568 sep 14 09:50 16674
-rw-------  1 alvherre alvherre    212992 sep 14 09:51 1249
-rw-------  1 alvherre alvherre    204800 sep 14 09:51 16684
-rw-------  1 alvherre alvherre    196608 sep 14 09:50 16700
-rw-------  1 alvherre alvherre    163840 sep 14 09:50 16699
-rw-------  1 alvherre alvherre    122880 sep  6 17:51 16751

$ # I wonder what file 155173 is ...
$ oid2name -d alvherre -f 155173
From database "alvherre":
  Filenode  Table Name
----------------------
    155173    accounts

$ # you can ask for more than one object
$ oid2name -d alvherre -f 155173 -f 1155291
From database "alvherre":
  Filenode     Table Name
-------------------------
    155173       accounts
   1155291  accounts_pkey

$ # you can mix the options, and get more details with -x
$ oid2name -d alvherre -t accounts -f 1155291 -x
From database "alvherre":
  Filenode     Table Name      Oid  Schema  Tablespace
------------------------------------------------------
    155173       accounts   155173  public  pg_default
   1155291  accounts_pkey  1155291  public  pg_default

$ # show disk space for every db object
$ du [0-9]* |
> while read SIZE FILENODE
> do
>   echo "$SIZE       `oid2name -q -d alvherre -i -f $FILENODE`"
> done
16            1155287  branches_pkey
16            1155289  tellers_pkey
17561            1155291  accounts_pkey
...

$ # same, but sort by size
$ du [0-9]* | sort -rn | while read SIZE FN
> do
>   echo "$SIZE   `oid2name -q -d alvherre -f $FN`"
> done
133466             155173    accounts
17561            1155291  accounts_pkey
1177              16717  pg_proc_proname_args_nsp_index
...

$ # If you want to see what's in tablespaces, use the pg_tblspc directory
$ cd $PGDATA/pg_tblspc
$ oid2name -s
All tablespaces:
     Oid  Tablespace Name
-------------------------
    1663       pg_default
    1664        pg_global
  155151         fastdisk
  155152          bigdisk

$ # what databases have objects in tablespace "fastdisk"?
$ ls -d 155151/*
155151/17228/  155151/PG_VERSION

$ # Oh, what was database 17228 again?
$ oid2name
All databases:
    Oid  Database Name  Tablespace
----------------------------------
  17228       alvherre  pg_default
  17255     regression  pg_default
  17227      template0  pg_default
      1      template1  pg_default

$ # Let's see what objects does this database have in the tablespace.
$ cd 155151/17228
$ ls -l
total 0
-rw-------  1 postgres postgres 0 sep 13 23:20 155156

$ # OK, this is a pretty small table ... but which one is it?
$ oid2name -d alvherre -f 155156
From database "alvherre":
  Filenode  Table Name
----------------------
    155156         foo

F.22.4. Limitations

oid2name requires a running database server with non-corrupt system catalogs. It is therefore of only limited use for recovering from catastrophic database corruption situations.

F.22.5. Author

B. Palmer <bpalmer@crimelabs.net>

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pageinspect

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F.23. pageinspect

The pageinspect module provides functions that allow you to inspect the contents of database pages at a low level, which is useful for debugging purposes. All of these functions may be used only by superusers.

F.23.1. Functions

get_raw_page(relname text, fork text, blkno int) returns bytea

get_raw_page reads the specified block of the named relation and returns a copy as a bytea value. This allows a single time-consistent copy of the block to be obtained. fork should be 'main' for the main data fork, 'fsm' for the free space map, 'vm' for the visibility map, or 'init' for the initialization fork.

get_raw_page(relname text, blkno int) returns bytea

A shorthand version of get_raw_page, for reading from the main fork. Equivalent to get_raw_page(relname, 'main', blkno)

page_header(page bytea) returns record

page_header shows fields that are common to all PostgreSQL heap and index pages.

A page image obtained with get_raw_page should be passed as argument. For example:

test=# SELECT * FROM page_header(get_raw_page('pg_class', 0));
    lsn    | tli | flags | lower | upper | special | pagesize | version | prune_xid
-----------+-----+-------+-------+-------+---------+----------+---------+-----------
 0/24A1B50 |   1 |     1 |   232 |   368 |    8192 |     8192 |       4 |         0

The returned columns correspond to the fields in the PageHeaderData struct. See src/include/storage/bufpage.h for details.

heap_page_items(page bytea) returns setof record

heap_page_items shows all line pointers on a heap page. For those line pointers that are in use, tuple headers are also shown. All tuples are shown, whether or not the tuples were visible to an MVCC snapshot at the time the raw page was copied.

A heap page image obtained with get_raw_page should be passed as argument. For example:

test=# SELECT * FROM heap_page_items(get_raw_page('pg_class', 0));

See src/include/storage/itemid.h and src/include/access/htup.h for explanations of the fields returned.

bt_metap(relname text) returns record

bt_metap returns information about a B-tree index's metapage. For example:

test=# SELECT * FROM bt_metap('pg_cast_oid_index');
-[ RECORD 1 ]-----
magic     | 340322
version   | 2
root      | 1
level     | 0
fastroot  | 1
fastlevel | 0

bt_page_stats(relname text, blkno int) returns record

bt_page_stats returns summary information about single pages of B-tree indexes. For example:

test=# SELECT * FROM bt_page_stats('pg_cast_oid_index', 1);
-[ RECORD 1 ]-+-----
blkno         | 1
type          | l
live_items    | 256
dead_items    | 0
avg_item_size | 12
page_size     | 8192
free_size     | 4056
btpo_prev     | 0
btpo_next     | 0
btpo          | 0
btpo_flags    | 3

bt_page_items(relname text, blkno int) returns setof record

bt_page_items returns detailed information about all of the items on a B-tree index page. For example:

test=# SELECT * FROM bt_page_items('pg_cast_oid_index', 1);
 itemoffset |  ctid   | itemlen | nulls | vars |    data
------------+---------+---------+-------+------+-------------
          1 | (0,1)   |      12 | f     | f    | 23 27 00 00
          2 | (0,2)   |      12 | f     | f    | 24 27 00 00
          3 | (0,3)   |      12 | f     | f    | 25 27 00 00
          4 | (0,4)   |      12 | f     | f    | 26 27 00 00
          5 | (0,5)   |      12 | f     | f    | 27 27 00 00
          6 | (0,6)   |      12 | f     | f    | 28 27 00 00
          7 | (0,7)   |      12 | f     | f    | 29 27 00 00
          8 | (0,8)   |      12 | f     | f    | 2a 27 00 00

fsm_page_contents(page bytea) returns text

fsm_page_contents shows the internal node structure of a FSM page. The output is a multiline string, with one line per node in the binary tree within the page. Only those nodes that are not zero are printed. The so-called "next" pointer, which points to the next slot to be returned from the page, is also printed.

See src/backend/storage/freespace/README for more information on the structure of an FSM page.

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passwordcheck

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F.24. passwordcheck

The passwordcheck module checks users' passwords whenever they are set with CREATE ROLE or ALTER ROLE. If a password is considered too weak, it will be rejected and the command will terminate with an error.

To enable this module, add '$libdir/passwordcheck' to shared_preload_libraries in postgresql.conf, then restart the server.

You can adapt this module to your needs by changing the source code. For example, you can use CrackLib to check passwords — this only requires uncommenting two lines in the Makefile and rebuilding the module. (We cannot include CrackLib by default for license reasons.) Without CrackLib, the module enforces a few simple rules for password strength, which you can modify or extend as you see fit.

Caution

To prevent unencrypted passwords from being sent across the network, written to the server log or otherwise stolen by a database administrator, PostgreSQL allows the user to supply pre-encrypted passwords. Many client programs make use of this functionality and encrypt the password before sending it to the server.

This limits the usefulness of the passwordcheck module, because in that case it can only try to guess the password. For this reason, passwordcheck is not recommendable if your security requirements are high. It is more secure to use an external authentication method such as Kerberos (see Chapter 19) than to rely on passwords within the database.

Alternatively, you could modify passwordcheck to reject pre-encrypted passwords, but forcing users to set their passwords in clear text carries its own security risks.

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pg_archivecleanup

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F.25. pg_archivecleanup

pg_archivecleanup is designed to be used as an archive_cleanup_command to clean up WAL file archives when running as a standby server (see Section 25.2). pg_archivecleanup can also be used as a standalone program to clean WAL file archives.

pg_archivecleanup features include:

  • Written in C, so very portable and easy to install

  • Easy-to-modify source code, with specifically designated sections to modify for your own needs

F.25.1. Usage

To configure a standby server to use pg_archivecleanup, put this into its recovery.conf configuration file:

archive_cleanup_command = 'pg_archivecleanup archivelocation %r'

where archivelocation is the directory from which WAL segment files should be removed.

When used within archive_cleanup_command, all WAL files logically preceding the value of the %r argument will be removed from archivelocation. This minimizes the number of files that need to be retained, while preserving crash-restart capability. Use of this parameter is appropriate if the archivelocation is a transient staging area for this particular standby server, but not when the archivelocation is intended as a long-term WAL archive area, or when multiple standby servers are recovering from the same archive location.

The full syntax of pg_archivecleanup's command line is

pg_archivecleanup [ option ... ] archivelocation restartwalfile

When used as a standalone program all WAL files logically preceding the restartwalfile will be removed archivelocation. In this mode, if you specify a .backup file name, then only the file prefix will be used as the restartwalfile. This allows you to remove all WAL files archived prior to a specific base backup without error. For example, the following example will remove all files older than WAL file name 000000010000003700000010:

pg_archivecleanup -d archive 000000010000003700000010.00000020.backup

pg_archivecleanup:  keep WAL file "archive/000000010000003700000010" and later
pg_archivecleanup:  removing file "archive/00000001000000370000000F"
pg_archivecleanup:  removing file "archive/00000001000000370000000E"

pg_archivecleanup assumes that archivelocation is a directory readable and writable by the server-owning user.

F.25.2. pg_archivecleanup Options

pg_archivecleanup accepts the following command-line arguments:

-d

Print lots of debug logging output on stderr.

F.25.3. Examples

On Linux or Unix systems, you might use:

archive_cleanup_command = 'pg_archivecleanup -d /mnt/standby/archive %r 2>>cleanup.log'

where the archive directory is physically located on the standby server, so that the archive_command is accessing it across NFS, but the files are local to the standby. This will:

  • produce debugging output in cleanup.log

  • remove no-longer-needed files from the archive directory

F.25.4. Supported Server Versions

pg_archivecleanup is designed to work with PostgreSQL 8.0 and later when used as a standalone utility, or with PostgreSQL 9.0 and later when used as an archive cleanup command.

F.25.5. Author

Simon Riggs <simon@2ndquadrant.com>

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pgbench

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F.26. pgbench

pgbench is a simple program for running benchmark tests on PostgreSQL. It runs the same sequence of SQL commands over and over, possibly in multiple concurrent database sessions, and then calculates the average transaction rate (transactions per second). By default, pgbench tests a scenario that is loosely based on TPC-B, involving five SELECT, UPDATE, and INSERT commands per transaction. However, it is easy to test other cases by writing your own transaction script files.

Typical output from pgbench looks like:

transaction type: TPC-B (sort of)
scaling factor: 10
query mode: simple
number of clients: 10
number of threads: 1
number of transactions per client: 1000
number of transactions actually processed: 10000/10000
tps = 85.184871 (including connections establishing)
tps = 85.296346 (excluding connections establishing)

The first six lines report some of the most important parameter settings. The next line reports the number of transactions completed and intended (the latter being just the product of number of clients and number of transactions per client); these will be equal unless the run failed before completion. (In -T mode, only the actual number of transactions is printed.) The last two lines report the number of transactions per second, figured with and without counting the time to start database sessions.

F.26.1. Overview

The default TPC-B-like transaction test requires specific tables to be set up beforehand. pgbench should be invoked with the -i (initialize) option to create and populate these tables. (When you are testing a custom script, you don't need this step, but will instead need to do whatever setup your test needs.) Initialization looks like:

pgbench -i [ other-options ] dbname

where dbname is the name of the already-created database to test in. (You may also need -h, -p, and/or -U options to specify how to connect to the database server.)

Caution

pgbench -i creates four tables pgbench_accounts, pgbench_branches, pgbench_history, and pgbench_tellers, destroying any existing tables of these names. Be very careful to use another database if you have tables having these names!

At the default "scale factor" of 1, the tables initially contain this many rows:

table                   # of rows
---------------------------------
pgbench_branches        1
pgbench_tellers         10
pgbench_accounts        100000
pgbench_history         0

You can (and, for most purposes, probably should) increase the number of rows by using the -s (scale factor) option. The -F (fillfactor) option might also be used at this point.

Once you have done the necessary setup, you can run your benchmark with a command that doesn't include -i, that is

pgbench [ options ] dbname

In nearly all cases, you'll need some options to make a useful test. The most important options are -c (number of clients), -t (number of transactions), -T (time limit), and -f (specify a custom script file). See below for a full list.

Section F.26.2 shows options that are used during database initialization, while Section F.26.3 shows options that are used while running benchmarks, and Section F.26.4 shows options that are useful in both cases.

F.26.2. pgbench Initialization Options

pgbench accepts the following command-line initialization arguments:

-i

Required to invoke initialization mode.

-F fillfactor

Create the pgbench_accounts, pgbench_tellers and pgbench_branches tables with the given fillfactor. Default is 100.

-s scale_factor

Multiply the number of rows generated by the scale factor. For example, -s 100 will create 10,000,000 rows in the pgbench_accounts table. Default is 1.

F.26.3. pgbench Benchmarking Options

pgbench accepts the following command-line benchmarking arguments:

-c clients

Number of clients simulated, that is, number of concurrent database sessions. Default is 1.

-C

Establish a new connection for each transaction, rather than doing it just once per client session. This is useful to measure the connection overhead.

-d

Print debugging output.

-D varname=value

Define a variable for use by a custom script (see below). Multiple -D options are allowed.

-f filename

Read transaction script from filename. See below for details. -N, -S, and -f are mutually exclusive.

-j threads

Number of worker threads within pgbench. Using more than one thread can be helpful on multi-CPU machines. The number of clients must be a multiple of the number of threads, since each thread is given the same number of client sessions to manage. Default is 1.

-l

Write the time taken by each transaction to a log file. See below for details.

-M querymode

Protocol to use for submitting queries to the server:

  • simple: use simple query protocol.

  • extended: use extended query protocol.

  • prepared: use extended query protocol with prepared statements.

The default is simple query protocol. (See Chapter 46 for more information.)

-n

Perform no vacuuming before running the test. This option is necessary if you are running a custom test scenario that does not include the standard tables pgbench_accounts, pgbench_branches, pgbench_history, and pgbench_tellers.

-N

Do not update pgbench_tellers and pgbench_branches. This will avoid update contention on these tables, but it makes the test case even less like TPC-B.

-r

Report the average per-statement latency (execution time from the perspective of the client) of each command after the benchmark finishes. See below for details.

-s scale_factor

Report the specified scale factor in pgbench's output. With the built-in tests, this is not necessary; the correct scale factor will be detected by counting the number of rows in the pgbench_branches table. However, when testing custom benchmarks (-f option), the scale factor will be reported as 1 unless this option is used.

-S

Perform select-only transactions instead of TPC-B-like test.

-t transactions

Number of transactions each client runs. Default is 10.

-T seconds

Run the test for this many seconds, rather than a fixed number of transactions per client. -t and -T are mutually exclusive.

-v

Vacuum all four standard tables before running the test. With neither -n nor -v, pgbench will vacuum the pgbench_tellers and pgbench_branches tables, and will truncate pgbench_history.

F.26.4. pgbench Common Options

pgbench accepts the following command-line common arguments:

-h hostname

The database server's host name

-p port

The database server's port number

-U login

The user name to connect as

F.26.5. What is the "Transaction" Actually Performed in pgbench?

The default transaction script issues seven commands per transaction:

  1. BEGIN;

  2. UPDATE pgbench_accounts SET abalance = abalance + :delta WHERE aid = :aid;

  3. SELECT abalance FROM pgbench_accounts WHERE aid = :aid;

  4. UPDATE pgbench_tellers SET tbalance = tbalance + :delta WHERE tid = :tid;

  5. UPDATE pgbench_branches SET bbalance = bbalance + :delta WHERE bid = :bid;

  6. INSERT INTO pgbench_history (tid, bid, aid, delta, mtime) VALUES (:tid, :bid, :aid, :delta, CURRENT_TIMESTAMP);

  7. END;

If you specify -N, steps 4 and 5 aren't included in the transaction. If you specify -S, only the SELECT is issued.

F.26.6. Custom Scripts

pgbench has support for running custom benchmark scenarios by replacing the default transaction script (described above) with a transaction script read from a file (-f option). In this case a "transaction" counts as one execution of a script file. You can even specify multiple scripts (multiple -f options), in which case a random one of the scripts is chosen each time a client session starts a new transaction.

The format of a script file is one SQL command per line; multiline SQL commands are not supported. Empty lines and lines beginning with -- are ignored. Script file lines can also be "meta commands", which are interpreted by pgbench itself, as described below.

There is a simple variable-substitution facility for script files. Variables can be set by the command-line -D option, explained above, or by the meta commands explained below. In addition to any variables preset by -D command-line options, the variable scale is preset to the current scale factor. Once set, a variable's value can be inserted into a SQL command by writing :variablename. When running more than one client session, each session has its own set of variables.

Script file meta commands begin with a backslash (\). Arguments to a meta command are separated by white space. These meta commands are supported:

\set varname operand1 [ operator operand2 ]

Sets variable varname to a calculated integer value. Each operand is either an integer constant or a :variablename reference to a variable having an integer value. The operator can be +, -, *, or /.

Example:

\set ntellers 10 * :scale

\setrandom varname min max

Sets variable varname to a random integer value between the limits min and max inclusive. Each limit can be either an integer constant or a :variablename reference to a variable having an integer value.

Example:

\setrandom aid 1 :naccounts

\sleep number [ us | ms | s ]

Causes script execution to sleep for the specified duration in microseconds (us), milliseconds (ms) or seconds (s). If the unit is omitted then seconds are the default. number can be either an integer constant or a :variablename reference to a variable having an integer value.

Example:

\sleep 10 ms

\setshell varname command [ argument ... ]

Sets variable varname to the result of the shell command command. The command must return an integer value through its standard output.

argument can be either a text constant or a :variablename reference to a variable of any types. If you want to use argument starting with colons, you need to add an additional colon at the beginning of argument.

Example:

\setshell variable_to_be_assigned command literal_argument :variable ::literal_starting_with_colon

\shell command [ argument ... ]

Same as \setshell, but the result is ignored.

Example:

\shell command literal_argument :variable ::literal_starting_with_colon

As an example, the full definition of the built-in TPC-B-like transaction is:

\set nbranches :scale
\set ntellers 10 * :scale
\set naccounts 100000 * :scale
\setrandom aid 1 :naccounts
\setrandom bid 1 :nbranches
\setrandom tid 1 :ntellers
\setrandom delta -5000 5000
BEGIN;
UPDATE pgbench_accounts SET abalance = abalance + :delta WHERE aid = :aid;
SELECT abalance FROM pgbench_accounts WHERE aid = :aid;
UPDATE pgbench_tellers SET tbalance = tbalance + :delta WHERE tid = :tid;
UPDATE pgbench_branches SET bbalance = bbalance + :delta WHERE bid = :bid;
INSERT INTO pgbench_history (tid, bid, aid, delta, mtime) VALUES (:tid, :bid, :aid, :delta, CURRENT_TIMESTAMP);
END;

This script allows each iteration of the transaction to reference different, randomly-chosen rows. (This example also shows why it's important for each client session to have its own variables — otherwise they'd not be independently touching different rows.)

F.26.7. Per-Transaction Logging

With the -l option, pgbench writes the time taken by each transaction to a log file. The log file will be named pgbench_log.nnn, where nnn is the PID of the pgbench process. If the -j option is 2 or higher, creating multiple worker threads, each will have its own log file. The first worker will use the same name for its log file as in the standard single worker case. The additional log files for the other workers will be named pgbench_log.nnn.mmm, where mmm is a sequential number for each worker starting with 1.

The format of the log is:

client_id transaction_no time file_no time_epoch time_us

where time is the total elapsed transaction time in microseconds, file_no identifies which script file was used (useful when multiple scripts were specified with -f), and time_epoch/time_us are a UNIX epoch format timestamp and an offset in microseconds (suitable for creating an ISO 8601 timestamp with fractional seconds) showing when the transaction completed.

Here are example outputs:

 0 199 2241 0 1175850568 995598
 0 200 2465 0 1175850568 998079
 0 201 2513 0 1175850569 608
 0 202 2038 0 1175850569 2663

F.26.8. Per-Statement Latencies

With the -r option, pgbench collects the elapsed transaction time of each statement executed by every client. It then reports an average of those values, referred to as the latency for each statement, after the benchmark has finished.

For the default script, the output will look similar to this:

starting vacuum...end.
transaction type: TPC-B (sort of)
scaling factor: 1
query mode: simple
number of clients: 10
number of threads: 1
number of transactions per client: 1000
number of transactions actually processed: 10000/10000
tps = 618.764555 (including connections establishing)
tps = 622.977698 (excluding connections establishing)
statement latencies in milliseconds:
        0.004386        \set nbranches 1 * :scale
        0.001343        \set ntellers 10 * :scale
        0.001212        \set naccounts 100000 * :scale
        0.001310        \setrandom aid 1 :naccounts
        0.001073        \setrandom bid 1 :nbranches
        0.001005        \setrandom tid 1 :ntellers
        0.001078        \setrandom delta -5000 5000
        0.326152        BEGIN;
        0.603376        UPDATE pgbench_accounts SET abalance = abalance + :delta WHERE aid = :aid;
        0.454643        SELECT abalance FROM pgbench_accounts WHERE aid = :aid;
        5.528491        UPDATE pgbench_tellers SET tbalance = tbalance + :delta WHERE tid = :tid;
        7.335435        UPDATE pgbench_branches SET bbalance = bbalance + :delta WHERE bid = :bid;
        0.371851        INSERT INTO pgbench_history (tid, bid, aid, delta, mtime) VALUES (:tid, :bid, :aid, :delta, CURRENT_TIMESTAMP);
        1.212976        END;

If multiple script files are specified, the averages are reported separately for each script file.

Note that collecting the additional timing information needed for per-statement latency computation adds some overhead. This will slow average execution speed and lower the computed TPS. The amount of slowdown varies significantly depending on platform and hardware. Comparing average TPS values with and without latency reporting enabled is a good way to measure if the timing overhead is significant.

F.26.9. Good Practices

It is very easy to use pgbench to produce completely meaningless numbers. Here are some guidelines to help you get useful results.

In the first place, never believe any test that runs for only a few seconds. Use the -t or -T option to make the run last at least a few minutes, so as to average out noise. In some cases you could need hours to get numbers that are reproducible. It's a good idea to try the test run a few times, to find out if your numbers are reproducible or not.

For the default TPC-B-like test scenario, the initialization scale factor (-s) should be at least as large as the largest number of clients you intend to test (-c); else you'll mostly be measuring update contention. There are only -s rows in the pgbench_branches table, and every transaction wants to update one of them, so -c values in excess of -s will undoubtedly result in lots of transactions blocked waiting for other transactions.

The default test scenario is also quite sensitive to how long it's been since the tables were initialized: accumulation of dead rows and dead space in the tables changes the results. To understand the results you must keep track of the total number of updates and when vacuuming happens. If autovacuum is enabled it can result in unpredictable changes in measured performance.

A limitation of pgbench is that it can itself become the bottleneck when trying to test a large number of client sessions. This can be alleviated by running pgbench on a different machine from the database server, although low network latency will be essential. It might even be useful to run several pgbench instances concurrently, on several client machines, against the same database server.

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pg_buffercache

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F.27. pg_buffercache

The pg_buffercache module provides a means for examining what's happening in the shared buffer cache in real time.

The module provides a C function pg_buffercache_pages that returns a set of records, plus a view pg_buffercache that wraps the function for convenient use.

By default public access is revoked from both of these, just in case there are security issues lurking.

F.27.1. The pg_buffercache View

The definitions of the columns exposed by the view are shown in Table F-14.

Table F-14. pg_buffercache Columns

Name | Type | References | Description
bufferid | integer |  | ID, in the range 1..shared_buffers
relfilenode | oid | pg_class.relfilenode | Filenode number of the relation
reltablespace | oid | pg_tablespace.oid | Tablespace OID of the relation
reldatabase | oid | pg_database.oid | Database OID of the relation
relblocknumber | bigint |  | Page number within the relation
relforknumber | smallint |  | Fork number within the relation
isdirty | boolean |  | Is the page dirty?
usagecount | smallint |  | Page LRU count

There is one row for each buffer in the shared cache. Unused buffers are shown with all fields null except bufferid. Shared system catalogs are shown as belonging to database zero.

Because the cache is shared by all the databases, there will normally be pages from relations not belonging to the current database. This means that there may not be matching join rows in pg_class for some rows, or that there could even be incorrect joins. If you are trying to join against pg_class, it's a good idea to restrict the join to rows having reldatabase equal to the current database's OID or zero.

When the pg_buffercache view is accessed, internal buffer manager locks are taken for long enough to copy all the buffer state data that the view will display. This ensures that the view produces a consistent set of results, while not blocking normal buffer activity longer than necessary. Nonetheless there could be some impact on database performance if this view is read often.

F.27.2. Sample Output

regression=# SELECT c.relname, count(*) AS buffers
             FROM pg_buffercache b INNER JOIN pg_class c
             ON b.relfilenode = pg_relation_filenode(c.oid) AND
                b.reldatabase IN (0, (SELECT oid FROM pg_database
                                      WHERE datname = current_database()))
             GROUP BY c.relname
             ORDER BY 2 DESC
             LIMIT 10;

             relname             | buffers
---------------------------------+---------
 tenk2                           |     345
 tenk1                           |     141
 pg_proc                         |      46
 pg_class                        |      45
 pg_attribute                    |      43
 pg_class_relname_nsp_index      |      30
 pg_proc_proname_args_nsp_index  |      28
 pg_attribute_relid_attnam_index |      26
 pg_depend                       |      22
 pg_depend_reference_index       |      20
(10 rows)

F.27.3. Authors

Mark Kirkwood <markir@paradise.net.nz>

Design suggestions: Neil Conway <neilc@samurai.com>

Debugging advice: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>

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pgcrypto

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F.28. pgcrypto

The pgcrypto module provides cryptographic functions for PostgreSQL.

F.28.1. General Hashing Functions

F.28.1.1. digest()

digest(data text, type text) returns bytea
digest(data bytea, type text) returns bytea

Computes a binary hash of the given data. type is the algorithm to use. Standard algorithms are md5, sha1, sha224, sha256, sha384 and sha512. If pgcrypto was built with OpenSSL, more algorithms are available, as detailed in Table F-18.

If you want the digest as a hexadecimal string, use encode() on the result. For example:

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION sha1(bytea) returns text AS $$
    SELECT encode(digest($1, 'sha1'), 'hex')
$$ LANGUAGE SQL STRICT IMMUTABLE;

F.28.1.2. hmac()

hmac(data text, key text, type text) returns bytea
hmac(data bytea, key text, type text) returns bytea

Calculates hashed MAC for data with key key. type is the same as in digest().

This is similar to digest() but the hash can only be recalculated knowing the key. This prevents the scenario of someone altering data and also changing the hash to match.

If the key is larger than the hash block size it will first be hashed and the result will be used as key.

F.28.2. Password Hashing Functions

The functions crypt() and gen_salt() are specifically designed for hashing passwords. crypt() does the hashing and gen_salt() prepares algorithm parameters for it.

The algorithms in crypt() differ from usual hashing algorithms like MD5 or SHA1 in the following respects:

  1. They are slow. As the amount of data is so small, this is the only way to make brute-forcing passwords hard.

  2. They use a random value, called the salt, so that users having the same password will have different encrypted passwords. This is also an additional defense against reversing the algorithm.

  3. They include the algorithm type in the result, so passwords hashed with different algorithms can co-exist.

  4. Some of them are adaptive — that means when computers get faster, you can tune the algorithm to be slower, without introducing incompatibility with existing passwords.

Table F-15 lists the algorithms supported by the crypt() function.

Table F-15. Supported Algorithms for crypt()

Algorithm | Max Password Length | Adaptive? | Salt Bits | Description
bf | 72 | yes | 128 | Blowfish-based, variant 2a
md5 | unlimited | no | 48 | MD5-based crypt
xdes | 8 | yes | 24 | Extended DES
des | 8 | no | 12 | Original UNIX crypt

F.28.2.1. crypt()

crypt(password text, salt text) returns text

Calculates a crypt(3)-style hash of password. When storing a new password, you need to use gen_salt() to generate a new salt value. To check a password, pass the stored hash value as salt, and test whether the result matches the stored value.

Example of setting a new password:

UPDATE ... SET pswhash = crypt('new password', gen_salt('md5'));

Example of authentication:

SELECT pswhash = crypt('entered password', pswhash) FROM ... ;

This returns true if the entered password is correct.

F.28.2.2. gen_salt()

gen_salt(type text [, iter_count integer ]) returns text

Generates a new random salt string for use in crypt(). The salt string also tells crypt() which algorithm to use.

The type parameter specifies the hashing algorithm. The accepted types are: des, xdes, md5 and bf.

The iter_count parameter lets the user specify the iteration count, for algorithms that have one. The higher the count, the more time it takes to hash the password and therefore the more time to break it. Although with too high a count the time to calculate a hash may be several years — which is somewhat impractical. If the iter_count parameter is omitted, the default iteration count is used. Allowed values for iter_count depend on the algorithm and are shown in Table F-16.

Table F-16. Iteration Counts for crypt()

Algorithm | Default | Min | Max
xdes | 725 | 1 | 16777215
bf | 6 | 4 | 31

For xdes there is an additional limitation that the iteration count must be an odd number.

To pick an appropriate iteration count, consider that the original DES crypt was designed to have the speed of 4 hashes per second on the hardware of that time. Slower than 4 hashes per second would probably dampen usability. Faster than 100 hashes per second is probably too fast.

Table F-17 gives an overview of the relative slowness of different hashing algorithms. The table shows how much time it would take to try all combinations of characters in an 8-character password, assuming that the password contains either only lower case letters, or upper- and lower-case letters and numbers. In the crypt-bf entries, the number after a slash is the iter_count parameter of gen_salt.

Table F-17. Hash Algorithm Speeds

Algorithm | Hashes/sec | For [a-z] | For [A-Za-z0-9]
crypt-bf/8 | 28 | 246 years | 251322 years
crypt-bf/7 | 57 | 121 years | 123457 years
crypt-bf/6 | 112 | 62 years | 62831 years
crypt-bf/5 | 211 | 33 years | 33351 years
crypt-md5 | 2681 | 2.6 years | 2625 years
crypt-des | 362837 | 7 days | 19 years
sha1 | 590223 | 4 days | 12 years
md5 | 2345086 | 1 day | 3 years

Notes:

  • The machine used is a 1.5GHz Pentium 4.

  • crypt-des and crypt-md5 algorithm numbers are taken from John the Ripper v1.6.38 -test output.

  • md5 numbers are from mdcrack 1.2.

  • sha1 numbers are from lcrack-20031130-beta.

  • crypt-bf numbers are taken using a simple program that loops over 1000 8-character passwords. That way I can show the speed with different numbers of iterations. For reference: john -test shows 213 loops/sec for crypt-bf/5. (The very small difference in results is in accordance with the fact that the crypt-bf implementation in pgcrypto is the same one used in John the Ripper.)

Note that "try all combinations" is not a realistic exercise. Usually password cracking is done with the help of dictionaries, which contain both regular words and various mutations of them. So, even somewhat word-like passwords could be cracked much faster than the above numbers suggest, while a 6-character non-word-like password may escape cracking. Or not.

F.28.3. PGP Encryption Functions

The functions here implement the encryption part of the OpenPGP (RFC 4880) standard. Supported are both symmetric-key and public-key encryption.

An encrypted PGP message consists of 2 parts, or packets:

  • Packet containing a session key — either symmetric-key or public-key encrypted.

  • Packet containing data encrypted with the session key.

When encrypting with a symmetric key (i.e., a password):

  1. The given password is hashed using a String2Key (S2K) algorithm. This is rather similar to crypt() algorithms — purposefully slow and with random salt — but it produces a full-length binary key.

  2. If a separate session key is requested, a new random key will be generated. Otherwise the S2K key will be used directly as the session key.

  3. If the S2K key is to be used directly, then only S2K settings will be put into the session key packet. Otherwise the session key will be encrypted with the S2K key and put into the session key packet.

When encrypting with a public key:

  1. A new random session key is generated.

  2. It is encrypted using the public key and put into the session key packet.

In either case the data to be encrypted is processed as follows:

  1. Optional data-manipulation: compression, conversion to UTF-8, and/or conversion of line-endings.

  2. The data is prefixed with a block of random bytes. This is equivalent to using a random IV.

  3. An SHA1 hash of the random prefix and data is appended.

  4. All this is encrypted with the session key and placed in the data packet.

F.28.3.1. pgp_sym_encrypt()

pgp_sym_encrypt(data text, psw text [, options text ]) returns bytea
pgp_sym_encrypt_bytea(data bytea, psw text [, options text ]) returns bytea

Encrypt data with a symmetric PGP key psw. The options parameter can contain option settings, as described below.

F.28.3.2. pgp_sym_decrypt()

pgp_sym_decrypt(msg bytea, psw text [, options text ]) returns text
pgp_sym_decrypt_bytea(msg bytea, psw text [, options text ]) returns bytea

Decrypt a symmetric-key-encrypted PGP message.

Decrypting bytea data with pgp_sym_decrypt is disallowed. This is to avoid outputting invalid character data. Decrypting originally textual data with pgp_sym_decrypt_bytea is fine.

The options parameter can contain option settings, as described below.

F.28.3.3. pgp_pub_encrypt()

pgp_pub_encrypt(data text, key bytea [, options text ]) returns bytea
pgp_pub_encrypt_bytea(data bytea, key bytea [, options text ]) returns bytea

Encrypt data with a public PGP key key. Giving this function a secret key will produce an error.

The options parameter can contain option settings, as described below.

F.28.3.4. pgp_pub_decrypt()

pgp_pub_decrypt(msg bytea, key bytea [, psw text [, options text ]]) returns text
pgp_pub_decrypt_bytea(msg bytea, key bytea [, psw text [, options text ]]) returns bytea

Decrypt a public-key-encrypted message. key must be the secret key corresponding to the public key that was used to encrypt. If the secret key is password-protected, you must give the password in psw. If there is no password, but you want to specify options, you need to give an empty password.

Decrypting bytea data with pgp_pub_decrypt is disallowed. This is to avoid outputting invalid character data. Decrypting originally textual data with pgp_pub_decrypt_bytea is fine.

The options parameter can contain option settings, as described below.

F.28.3.5. pgp_key_id()

pgp_key_id(bytea) returns text

pgp_key_id extracts the key ID of a PGP public or secret key. Or it gives the key ID that was used for encrypting the data, if given an encrypted message.

It can return 2 special key IDs:

  • SYMKEY

    The message is encrypted with a symmetric key.

  • ANYKEY

    The message is public-key encrypted, but the key ID has been removed. That means you will need to try all your secret keys on it to see which one decrypts it. pgcrypto itself does not produce such messages.

Note that different keys may have the same ID. This is rare but a normal event. The client application should then try to decrypt with each one, to see which fits — like handling ANYKEY.

F.28.3.6. armor(), dearmor()

armor(data bytea) returns text
dearmor(data text) returns bytea

These functions wrap/unwrap binary data into PGP ASCII-armor format, which is basically Base64 with CRC and additional formatting.

F.28.3.7. Options for PGP Functions

Options are named to be similar to GnuPG. An option's value should be given after an equal sign; separate options from each other with commas. For example:

pgp_sym_encrypt(data, psw, 'compress-algo=1, cipher-algo=aes256')

All of the options except convert-crlf apply only to encrypt functions. Decrypt functions get the parameters from the PGP data.

The most interesting options are probably compress-algo and unicode-mode. The rest should have reasonable defaults.

F.28.3.7.1. cipher-algo

Which cipher algorithm to use.

Values: bf, aes128, aes192, aes256 (OpenSSL-only: 3des, cast5)
Default: aes128
Applies to: pgp_sym_encrypt, pgp_pub_encrypt

F.28.3.7.2. compress-algo

Which compression algorithm to use. Only available if PostgreSQL was built with zlib.

Values:
0 - no compression
1 - ZIP compression
2 - ZLIB compression (= ZIP plus meta-data and block CRCs)
Default: 0
Applies to: pgp_sym_encrypt, pgp_pub_encrypt

F.28.3.7.3. compress-level

How much to compress. Higher levels compress smaller but are slower. 0 disables compression.

Values: 0, 1-9
Default: 6
Applies to: pgp_sym_encrypt, pgp_pub_encrypt

F.28.3.7.4. convert-crlf

Whether to convert \n into \r\n when encrypting and \r\n to \n when decrypting. RFC 4880 specifies that text data should be stored using \r\n line-feeds. Use this to get fully RFC-compliant behavior.

Values: 0, 1
Default: 0
Applies to: pgp_sym_encrypt, pgp_pub_encrypt, pgp_sym_decrypt, pgp_pub_decrypt

F.28.3.7.5. disable-mdc

Do not protect data with SHA-1. The only good reason to use this option is to achieve compatibility with ancient PGP products, predating the addition of SHA-1 protected packets to RFC 4880. Recent gnupg.org and pgp.com software supports it fine.

Values: 0, 1
Default: 0
Applies to: pgp_sym_encrypt, pgp_pub_encrypt

F.28.3.7.6. sess-key

Use separate session key. Public-key encryption always uses a separate session key; this option is for symmetric-key encryption, which by default uses the S2K key directly.

Values: 0, 1
Default: 0
Applies to: pgp_sym_encrypt

F.28.3.7.7. s2k-mode

Which S2K algorithm to use.

Values:
0 - Without salt. Dangerous!
1 - With salt but with fixed iteration count.
3 - Variable iteration count.
Default: 3
Applies to: pgp_sym_encrypt

F.28.3.7.8. s2k-digest-algo

Which digest algorithm to use in S2K calculation.

Values: md5, sha1
Default: sha1
Applies to: pgp_sym_encrypt

F.28.3.7.9. s2k-cipher-algo

Which cipher to use for encrypting separate session key.

Values: bf, aes, aes128, aes192, aes256
Default: use cipher-algo
Applies to: pgp_sym_encrypt

F.28.3.7.10. unicode-mode

Whether to convert textual data from database internal encoding to UTF-8 and back. If your database already is UTF-8, no conversion will be done, but the message will be tagged as UTF-8. Without this option it will not be.

Values: 0, 1
Default: 0
Applies to: pgp_sym_encrypt, pgp_pub_encrypt

F.28.3.8. Generating PGP Keys with GnuPG

To generate a new key:

gpg --gen-key

The preferred key type is "DSA and Elgamal".

For RSA encryption you must create either DSA or RSA sign-only key as master and then add an RSA encryption subkey with gpg --edit-key.

To list keys:

gpg --list-secret-keys

To export a public key in ASCII-armor format:

gpg -a --export KEYID > public.key

To export a secret key in ASCII-armor format:

gpg -a --export-secret-keys KEYID > secret.key

You need to use dearmor() on these keys before giving them to the PGP functions. Or if you can handle binary data, you can drop -a from the command.

For more details see man gpg, The GNU Privacy Handbook and other documentation on http://www.gnupg.org.

F.28.3.9. Limitations of PGP Code

  • No support for signing. That also means that it is not checked whether the encryption subkey belongs to the master key.

  • No support for encryption key as master key. As such practice is generally discouraged, this should not be a problem.

  • No support for several subkeys. This may seem like a problem, as this is common practice. On the other hand, you should not use your regular GPG/PGP keys with pgcrypto, but create new ones, as the usage scenario is rather different.

F.28.4. Raw Encryption Functions

These functions only run a cipher over data; they don't have any advanced features of PGP encryption. Therefore they have some major problems:

  1. They use user key directly as cipher key.

  2. They don't provide any integrity checking, to see if the encrypted data was modified.

  3. They expect that users manage all encryption parameters themselves, even IV.

  4. They don't handle text.

So, with the introduction of PGP encryption, usage of raw encryption functions is discouraged.

encrypt(data bytea, key bytea, type text) returns bytea
decrypt(data bytea, key bytea, type text) returns bytea

encrypt_iv(data bytea, key bytea, iv bytea, type text) returns bytea
decrypt_iv(data bytea, key bytea, iv bytea, type text) returns bytea

Encrypt/decrypt data using the cipher method specified by type. The syntax of the type string is:

algorithm [ - mode ] [ /pad: padding ]

where algorithm is one of:

  • bf — Blowfish

  • aes — AES (Rijndael-128)

and mode is one of:

  • cbc — next block depends on previous (default)

  • ecb — each block is encrypted separately (for testing only)

and padding is one of:

  • pkcs — data may be any length (default)

  • none — data must be multiple of cipher block size

So, for example, these are equivalent:

encrypt(data, 'fooz', 'bf')
encrypt(data, 'fooz', 'bf-cbc/pad:pkcs')

In encrypt_iv and decrypt_iv, the iv parameter is the initial value for the CBC mode; it is ignored for ECB. It is clipped or padded with zeroes if not exactly block size. It defaults to all zeroes in the functions without this parameter.

F.28.5. Random-Data Functions

gen_random_bytes(count integer) returns bytea

Returns count cryptographically strong random bytes. At most 1024 bytes can be extracted at a time. This is to avoid draining the randomness generator pool.

F.28.6. Notes

F.28.6.1. Configuration

pgcrypto configures itself according to the findings of the main PostgreSQL configure script. The options that affect it are --with-zlib and --with-openssl.

When compiled with zlib, PGP encryption functions are able to compress data before encrypting.

When compiled with OpenSSL, there will be more algorithms available. Also public-key encryption functions will be faster as OpenSSL has more optimized BIGNUM functions.

Table F-18. Summary of Functionality with and without OpenSSL

Functionality | Built-in | With OpenSSL
MD5 | yes | yes
SHA1 | yes | yes
SHA224/256/384/512 | yes | yes (Note 1)
Other digest algorithms | no | yes (Note 2)
Blowfish | yes | yes
AES | yes | yes (Note 3)
DES/3DES/CAST5 | no | yes
Raw encryption | yes | yes
PGP Symmetric encryption | yes | yes
PGP Public-Key encryption | yes | yes

Notes:

  1. SHA2 algorithms were added to OpenSSL in version 0.9.8. For older versions, pgcrypto will use built-in code.

  2. Any digest algorithm OpenSSL supports is automatically picked up. This is not possible with ciphers, which need to be supported explicitly.

  3. AES is included in OpenSSL since version 0.9.7. For older versions, pgcrypto will use built-in code.

F.28.6.2. NULL Handling

As is standard in SQL, all functions return NULL, if any of the arguments are NULL. This may create security risks on careless usage.

F.28.6.3. Security Limitations

All pgcrypto functions run inside the database server. That means that all the data and passwords move between pgcrypto and client applications in clear text. Thus you must:

  1. Connect locally or use SSL connections.

  2. Trust both system and database administrator.

If you cannot, then better do crypto inside client application.

The implementation does not resist side-channel attacks. For example, the time required for a pgcrypto decryption function to complete varies among ciphertexts of a given size.

F.28.6.4. Useful Reading

  • http://www.gnupg.org/gph/en/manual.html

    The GNU Privacy Handbook.

  • http://www.openwall.com/crypt/

    Describes the crypt-blowfish algorithm.

  • http://www.stack.nl/~galactus/remailers/passphrase-faq.html

    How to choose a good password.

  • http://world.std.com/~reinhold/diceware.html

    Interesting idea for picking passwords.

  • http://www.interhack.net/people/cmcurtin/snake-oil-faq.html

    Describes good and bad cryptography.

F.28.6.5. Technical References

  • http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4880.txt

    OpenPGP message format.

  • http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1321.txt

    The MD5 Message-Digest Algorithm.

  • http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2104.txt

    HMAC: Keyed-Hashing for Message Authentication.

  • http://www.usenix.org/events/usenix99/provos.html

    Comparison of crypt-des, crypt-md5 and bcrypt algorithms.

  • http://csrc.nist.gov/cryptval/des.htm

    Standards for DES, 3DES and AES.

  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortuna_(PRNG)

    Description of Fortuna CSPRNG.

  • http://jlcooke.ca/random/

    Jean-Luc Cooke Fortuna-based /dev/random driver for Linux.

  • http://research.cyber.ee/~lipmaa/crypto/

    Collection of cryptology pointers.

F.28.7. Author

Marko Kreen <markokr@gmail.com>

pgcrypto uses code from the following sources:

Algorithm | Author | Source origin
DES crypt | David Burren and others | FreeBSD libcrypt
MD5 crypt | Poul-Henning Kamp | FreeBSD libcrypt
Blowfish crypt | Solar Designer | www.openwall.com
Blowfish cipher | Simon Tatham | PuTTY
Rijndael cipher | Brian Gladman | OpenBSD sys/crypto
MD5 and SHA1 | WIDE Project | KAME kame/sys/crypto
SHA256/384/512 | Aaron D. Gifford | OpenBSD sys/crypto
BIGNUM math | Michael J. Fromberger | dartmouth.edu/~sting/sw/imath

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pg_freespacemap

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F.29. pg_freespacemap

The pg_freespacemap module provides a means for examining the free space map (FSM). It provides a function called pg_freespace, or two overloaded functions, to be precise. The functions show the value recorded in the free space map for a given page, or for all pages in the relation.

By default public access is revoked from the functions, just in case there are security issues lurking.

F.29.1. Functions

pg_freespace(rel regclass IN, blkno bigint IN) returns int2

Returns the amount of free space on the page of the relation, specified by blkno, according to the FSM.

pg_freespace(rel regclass IN, blkno OUT bigint, avail OUT int2)

Displays the amount of free space on each page of the relation, according to the FSM. A set of (blkno bigint, avail int2) tuples is returned, one tuple for each page in the relation.

The values stored in the free space map are not exact. They're rounded to precision of 1/256th of BLCKSZ (32 bytes with default BLCKSZ), and they're not kept fully up-to-date as tuples are inserted and updated.

For indexes, what is tracked is entirely-unused pages, rather than free space within pages. Therefore, the values are not meaningful, just whether a page is full or empty.

NOTE: The interface was changed in version 8.4, to reflect the new FSM implementation introduced in the same version.

F.29.2. Sample Output

postgres=# SELECT * FROM pg_freespace('foo');
 blkno | avail
-------+-------
     0 |     0
     1 |     0
     2 |     0
     3 |    32
     4 |   704
     5 |   704
     6 |   704
     7 |  1216
     8 |   704
     9 |   704
    10 |   704
    11 |   704
    12 |   704
    13 |   704
    14 |   704
    15 |   704
    16 |   704
    17 |   704
    18 |   704
    19 |  3648
(20 rows)

postgres=# SELECT * FROM pg_freespace('foo', 7);
 pg_freespace
--------------
         1216
(1 row)

F.29.3. Author

Original version by Mark Kirkwood <markir@paradise.net.nz>. Rewritten in version 8.4 to suit new FSM implementation by Heikki Linnakangas <heikki@enterprisedb.com>

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pgrowlocks

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F.30. pgrowlocks

The pgrowlocks module provides a function to show row locking information for a specified table.

F.30.1. Overview

pgrowlocks(text) returns setof record

The parameter is the name of a table. The result is a set of records, with one row for each locked row within the table. The output columns are shown in Table F-19.

Table F-19. pgrowlocks Output Columns

Name | Type | Description
locked_row | tid | Tuple ID (TID) of locked row
lock_type | text | Shared for shared lock, or Exclusive for exclusive lock
locker | xid | Transaction ID of locker, or multixact ID if multi-transaction
multi | boolean | True if locker is a multi-transaction
xids | xid[] | Transaction IDs of lockers (more than one if multi-transaction)
pids | integer[] | Process IDs of locking backends (more than one if multi-transaction)

pgrowlocks takes AccessShareLock for the target table and reads each row one by one to collect the row locking information. This is not very speedy for a large table. Note that:

  1. If the table as a whole is exclusive-locked by someone else, pgrowlocks will be blocked.

  2. pgrowlocks is not guaranteed to produce a self-consistent snapshot. It is possible that a new row lock is taken, or an old lock is freed, during its execution.

pgrowlocks does not show the contents of locked rows. If you want to take a look at the row contents at the same time, you could do something like this:

SELECT * FROM accounts AS a, pgrowlocks('accounts') AS p
  WHERE p.locked_row = a.ctid;

Be aware however that (as of PostgreSQL 8.3) such a query will be very inefficient.

F.30.2. Sample Output

test=# SELECT * FROM pgrowlocks('t1');
 locked_row | lock_type | locker | multi |   xids    |     pids
------------+-----------+--------+-------+-----------+---------------
      (0,1) | Shared    |     19 | t     | {804,805} | {29066,29068}
      (0,2) | Shared    |     19 | t     | {804,805} | {29066,29068}
      (0,3) | Exclusive |    804 | f     | {804}     | {29066}
      (0,4) | Exclusive |    804 | f     | {804}     | {29066}
(4 rows)

F.30.3. Author

Tatsuo Ishii

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pg_standby

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F.31. pg_standby

pg_standby supports creation of a "warm standby" database server. It is designed to be a production-ready program, as well as a customizable template should you require specific modifications.

pg_standby is designed to be a waiting restore_command, which is needed to turn a standard archive recovery into a warm standby operation. Other configuration is required as well, all of which is described in the main server manual (see Section 25.2).

pg_standby features include:

  • Written in C, so very portable and easy to install

  • Easy-to-modify source code, with specifically designated sections to modify for your own needs

  • Already tested on Linux and Windows

F.31.1. Usage

To configure a standby server to use pg_standby, put this into its recovery.conf configuration file:

restore_command = 'pg_standby archiveDir %f %p %r'

where archiveDir is the directory from which WAL segment files should be restored.

The full syntax of pg_standby's command line is

pg_standby [ option ... ] archivelocation nextwalfile xlogfilepath [ restartwalfile ]

When used within restore_command, the %f and %p macros should be specified for nextwalfile and xlogfilepath respectively, to provide the actual file and path required for the restore.

If restartwalfile is specified, normally by using the %r macro, then all WAL files logically preceding this file will be removed from archivelocation. This minimizes the number of files that need to be retained, while preserving crash-restart capability. Use of this parameter is appropriate if the archivelocation is a transient staging area for this particular standby server, but not when the archivelocation is intended as a long-term WAL archive area.

pg_standby assumes that archivelocation is a directory readable by the server-owning user. If restartwalfile (or -k) is specified, the archivelocation directory must be writable too.

There are two ways to fail over to a "warm standby" database server when the master server fails:

Smart Failover

In smart failover, the server is brought up after applying all WAL files available in the archive. This results in zero data loss, even if the standby server has fallen behind, but if there is a lot of unapplied WAL it can be a long time before the standby server becomes ready. To trigger a smart failover, create a trigger file containing the word smart, or just create it and leave it empty.

Fast Failover

In fast failover, the server is brought up immediately. Any WAL files in the archive that have not yet been applied will be ignored, and all transactions in those files are lost. To trigger a fast failover, create a trigger file and write the word fast into it. pg_standby can also be configured to execute a fast failover automatically if no new WAL file appears within a defined interval.

F.31.2. pg_standby Options

pg_standby accepts the following command-line arguments:

-c

Use cp or copy command to restore WAL files from archive. This is the only supported behavior so this option is useless.

-d

Print lots of debug logging output on stderr.

-k

Remove files from archivelocation so that no more than this many WAL files before the current one are kept in the archive. Zero (the default) means not to remove any files from archivelocation. This parameter will be silently ignored if restartwalfile is specified, since that specification method is more accurate in determining the correct archive cut-off point. Use of this parameter is deprecated as of PostgreSQL 8.3; it is safer and more efficient to specify a restartwalfile parameter. A too small setting could result in removal of files that are still needed for a restart of the standby server, while a too large setting wastes archive space.

-r maxretries

Set the maximum number of times to retry the copy command if it fails (default 3). After each failure, we wait for sleeptime * num_retries so that the wait time increases progressively. So by default, we will wait 5 secs, 10 secs, then 15 secs before reporting the failure back to the standby server. This will be interpreted as end of recovery and the standby will come up fully as a result.

-s sleeptime

Set the number of seconds (up to 60, default 5) to sleep between tests to see if the WAL file to be restored is available in the archive yet. The default setting is not necessarily recommended; consult Section 25.2 for discussion.

-t triggerfile

Specify a trigger file whose presence should cause failover. It is recommended that you use a structured file name to avoid confusion as to which server is being triggered when multiple servers exist on the same system; for example /tmp/pgsql.trigger.5432.

-w maxwaittime

Set the maximum number of seconds to wait for the next WAL file, after which a fast failover will be performed. A setting of zero (the default) means wait forever. The default setting is not necessarily recommended; consult Section 25.2 for discussion.

F.31.3. Examples

On Linux or Unix systems, you might use:

archive_command = 'cp %p .../archive/%f'

restore_command = 'pg_standby -d -s 2 -t /tmp/pgsql.trigger.5442 .../archive %f %p %r 2>>standby.log'

recovery_end_command = 'rm -f /tmp/pgsql.trigger.5442'

where the archive directory is physically located on the standby server, so that the archive_command is accessing it across NFS, but the files are local to the standby (enabling use of ln). This will:

  • produce debugging output in standby.log

  • sleep for 2 seconds between checks for next WAL file availability

  • stop waiting only when a trigger file called /tmp/pgsql.trigger.5442 appears, and perform failover according to its content

  • remove the trigger file when recovery ends

  • remove no-longer-needed files from the archive directory

On Windows, you might use:

archive_command = 'copy %p ...\\archive\\%f'

restore_command = 'pg_standby -d -s 5 -t C:\pgsql.trigger.5442 ...\archive %f %p %r 2>>standby.log'

recovery_end_command = 'del C:\pgsql.trigger.5442'

Note that backslashes need to be doubled in the archive_command, but not in the restore_command or recovery_end_command. This will:

  • use the copy command to restore WAL files from archive

  • produce debugging output in standby.log

  • sleep for 5 seconds between checks for next WAL file availability

  • stop waiting only when a trigger file called C:\pgsql.trigger.5442 appears, and perform failover according to its content

  • remove the trigger file when recovery ends

  • remove no-longer-needed files from the archive directory

The copy command on Windows sets the final file size before the file is completely copied, which would ordinarily confuse pg_standby. Therefore pg_standby waits sleeptime seconds once it sees the proper file size. GNUWin32's cp sets the file size only after the file copy is complete.

Since the Windows example uses copy at both ends, either or both servers might be accessing the archive directory across the network.

F.31.4. Supported Server Versions

pg_standby is designed to work with PostgreSQL 8.2 and later.

PostgreSQL 8.3 provides the %r macro, which is designed to let pg_standby know the last file it needs to keep. With PostgreSQL 8.2, the -k option must be used if archive cleanup is required. This option remains available in 8.3, but its use is deprecated.

PostgreSQL 8.4 provides the recovery_end_command option. Without this option a leftover trigger file can be hazardous.

F.31.5. Author

Simon Riggs <simon@2ndquadrant.com>

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pg_stat_statements

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F.32. pg_stat_statements

The pg_stat_statements module provides a means for tracking execution statistics of all SQL statements executed by a server.

The module must be loaded by adding pg_stat_statements to shared_preload_libraries in postgresql.conf, because it requires additional shared memory. This means that a server restart is needed to add or remove the module.

F.32.1. The pg_stat_statements View

The statistics gathered by the module are made available via a system view named pg_stat_statements. This view contains one row for each distinct query text, database ID, and user ID (up to the maximum number of distinct statements that the module can track). The columns of the view are shown in Table F-20.

Table F-20. pg_stat_statements Columns

Name | Type | References | Description
userid | oid | pg_authid.oid | OID of user who executed the statement
dbid | oid | pg_database.oid | OID of database in which the statement was executed
query | text |  | Text of the statement (up to track_activity_query_size bytes)
calls | bigint |  | Number of times executed
total_time | double precision |  | Total time spent in the statement, in seconds
rows | bigint |  | Total number of rows retrieved or affected by the statement
shared_blks_hit | bigint |  | Total number of shared blocks hits by the statement
shared_blks_read | bigint |  | Total number of shared blocks reads by the statement
shared_blks_written | bigint |  | Total number of shared blocks writes by the statement
local_blks_hit | bigint |  | Total number of local blocks hits by the statement
local_blks_read | bigint |  | Total number of local blocks reads by the statement
local_blks_written | bigint |  | Total number of local blocks writes by the statement
temp_blks_read | bigint |  | Total number of temp blocks reads by the statement
temp_blks_written | bigint |  | Total number of temp blocks writes by the statement

This view, and the function pg_stat_statements_reset, are available only in databases they have been specifically installed into by installing the pg_stat_statements extension. However, statistics are tracked across all databases of the server whenever the pg_stat_statements module is loaded into the server, regardless of presence of the view.

For security reasons, non-superusers are not allowed to see the text of queries executed by other users. They can see the statistics, however, if the view has been installed in their database.

Note that statements are considered the same if they have the same text, regardless of the values of any out-of-line parameters used in the statement. Using out-of-line parameters will help to group statements together and may make the statistics more useful.

F.32.2. Functions

pg_stat_statements_reset() returns void

pg_stat_statements_reset discards all statistics gathered so far by pg_stat_statements. By default, this function can only be executed by superusers.

F.32.3. Configuration Parameters

pg_stat_statements.max (integer)

pg_stat_statements.max is the maximum number of statements tracked by the module (i.e., the maximum number of rows in the pg_stat_statements view). If more distinct statements than that are observed, information about the least-executed statements is discarded. The default value is 1000. This parameter can only be set at server start.

pg_stat_statements.track (enum)

pg_stat_statements.track controls which statements are counted by the module. Specify top to track top-level statements (those issued directly by clients), all to also track nested statements (such as statements invoked within functions), or none to disable. The default value is top. Only superusers can change this setting.

pg_stat_statements.track_utility (boolean)

pg_stat_statements.track_utility controls whether utility commands are tracked by the module. Utility commands are all those other than SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE and DELETE. The default value is on. Only superusers can change this setting.

pg_stat_statements.save (boolean)

pg_stat_statements.save specifies whether to save statement statistics across server shutdowns. If it is off then statistics are not saved at shutdown nor reloaded at server start. The default value is on. This parameter can only be set in the postgresql.conf file or on the server command line.

The module requires additional shared memory amounting to about pg_stat_statements.max * track_activity_query_size bytes. Note that this memory is consumed whenever the module is loaded, even if pg_stat_statements.track is set to none.

In order to set any of these parameters in your postgresql.conf file, you will need to add pg_stat_statements to custom_variable_classes. Typical usage might be:

# postgresql.conf
shared_preload_libraries = 'pg_stat_statements'

custom_variable_classes = 'pg_stat_statements'
pg_stat_statements.max = 10000
pg_stat_statements.track = all

F.32.4. Sample Output

bench=# SELECT pg_stat_statements_reset();

$ pgbench -i bench
$ pgbench -c10 -t300 -M prepared bench

bench=# \x
bench=# SELECT query, calls, total_time, rows, 100.0 * shared_blks_hit /
               nullif(shared_blks_hit + shared_blks_read, 0) AS hit_percent
          FROM pg_stat_statements ORDER BY total_time DESC LIMIT 5;
-[ RECORD 1 ]---------------------------------------------------------------------
query       | UPDATE pgbench_branches SET bbalance = bbalance + $1 WHERE bid = $2;
calls       | 3000
total_time  | 9.60900100000002
rows        | 2836
hit_percent | 99.9778970000200936
-[ RECORD 2 ]---------------------------------------------------------------------
query       | UPDATE pgbench_tellers SET tbalance = tbalance + $1 WHERE tid = $2;
calls       | 3000
total_time  | 8.015156
rows        | 2990
hit_percent | 99.9731126579631345
-[ RECORD 3 ]---------------------------------------------------------------------
query       | copy pgbench_accounts from stdin
calls       | 1
total_time  | 0.310624
rows        | 100000
hit_percent | 0.30395136778115501520
-[ RECORD 4 ]---------------------------------------------------------------------
query       | UPDATE pgbench_accounts SET abalance = abalance + $1 WHERE aid = $2;
calls       | 3000
total_time  | 0.271741999999997
rows        | 3000
hit_percent | 93.7968855088209426
-[ RECORD 5 ]---------------------------------------------------------------------
query       | alter table pgbench_accounts add primary key (aid)
calls       | 1
total_time  | 0.08142
rows        | 0
hit_percent | 34.4947735191637631

F.32.5. Author

Takahiro Itagaki <itagaki.takahiro@oss.ntt.co.jp>

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pgstattuple

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F.33. pgstattuple

The pgstattuple module provides various functions to obtain tuple-level statistics.

F.33.1. Functions

pgstattuple(text) returns record

pgstattuple returns a relation's physical length, percentage of "dead" tuples, and other info. This may help users to determine whether vacuum is necessary or not. The argument is the target relation's name (optionally schema-qualified). For example:

test=> SELECT * FROM pgstattuple('pg_catalog.pg_proc');
-[ RECORD 1 ]------+-------
table_len          | 458752
tuple_count        | 1470
tuple_len          | 438896
tuple_percent      | 95.67
dead_tuple_count   | 11
dead_tuple_len     | 3157
dead_tuple_percent | 0.69
free_space         | 8932
free_percent       | 1.95

The output columns are described in Table F-21.

Table F-21. pgstattuple Output Columns

Column | Type | Description
table_len | bigint | Physical relation length in bytes
tuple_count | bigint | Number of live tuples
tuple_len | bigint | Total length of live tuples in bytes
tuple_percent | float8 | Percentage of live tuples
dead_tuple_count | bigint | Number of dead tuples
dead_tuple_len | bigint | Total length of dead tuples in bytes
dead_tuple_percent | float8 | Percentage of dead tuples
free_space | bigint | Total free space in bytes
free_percent | float8 | Percentage of free space

pgstattuple acquires only a read lock on the relation. So the results do not reflect an instantaneous snapshot; concurrent updates will affect them.

pgstattuple judges a tuple is "dead" if HeapTupleSatisfiesNow returns false.

pgstattuple(oid) returns record

This is the same as pgstattuple(text), except that the target relation is specified by OID.

pgstatindex(text) returns record

pgstatindex returns a record showing information about a B-tree index. For example:

test=> SELECT * FROM pgstatindex('pg_cast_oid_index');
-[ RECORD 1 ]------+------
version            | 2
tree_level         | 0
index_size         | 8192
root_block_no      | 1
internal_pages     | 0
leaf_pages         | 1
empty_pages        | 0
deleted_pages      | 0
avg_leaf_density   | 50.27
leaf_fragmentation | 0

The output columns are:

Column | Type | Description
version | integer | B-tree version number
tree_level | integer | Tree level of the root page
index_size | bigint | Total number of pages in index
root_block_no | bigint | Location of root block
internal_pages | bigint | Number of "internal" (upper-level) pages
leaf_pages | bigint | Number of leaf pages
empty_pages | bigint | Number of empty pages
deleted_pages | bigint | Number of deleted pages
avg_leaf_density | float8 | Average density of leaf pages
leaf_fragmentation | float8 | Leaf page fragmentation

As with pgstattuple, the results are accumulated page-by-page, and should not be expected to represent an instantaneous snapshot of the whole index.

pg_relpages(text) returns bigint

pg_relpages returns the number of pages in the relation.

F.33.2. Authors

Tatsuo Ishii and Satoshi Nagayasu

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pg_test_fsync

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F.34. pg_test_fsync

pg_test_fsync is intended to give you a reasonable idea of what the fastest wal_sync_method is on your specific system, as well as supplying diagnostic information in the event of an identified I/O problem. However, differences shown by pg_test_fsync might not make any difference in real database throughput, especially since many database servers are not speed-limited by their transaction logs.

F.34.1. Usage

pg_test_fsync [options]

pg_test_fsync accepts the following command-line options:

-f
--filename

Specifies the file name to write test data in. This file should be in the same file system that the pg_xlog directory is or will be placed in. (pg_xlog contains the WAL files.) The default is pg_test_fsync.out in the current directory.

-o
--ops-per-test

Specifies the number of operations per test. The more operations per test, the greater the test's accuracy, but the longer it takes to run. The default is 2000.

F.34.2. Author

Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us>

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pg_trgm

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F.35. pg_trgm

The pg_trgm module provides functions and operators for determining the similarity of ASCII alphanumeric text based on trigram matching, as well as index operator classes that support fast searching for similar strings.

F.35.1. Trigram (or Trigraph) Concepts

A trigram is a group of three consecutive characters taken from a string. We can measure the similarity of two strings by counting the number of trigrams they share. This simple idea turns out to be very effective for measuring the similarity of words in many natural languages.

Note: A string is considered to have two spaces prefixed and one space suffixed when determining the set of trigrams contained in the string. For example, the set of trigrams in the string "cat" is " c", " ca", "cat", and "at ".

F.35.2. Functions and Operators

The functions provided by the pg_trgm module are shown in Table F-22, the operators in Table F-23.

Table F-22. pg_trgm Functions

Function | Returns | Description
similarity(text, text) | real | Returns a number that indicates how similar the two arguments are. The range of the result is zero (indicating that the two strings are completely dissimilar) to one (indicating that the two strings are identical).
show_trgm(text) | text[] | Returns an array of all the trigrams in the given string. (In practice this is seldom useful except for debugging.)
show_limit() | real | Returns the current similarity threshold used by the % operator. This sets the minimum similarity between two words for them to be considered similar enough to be misspellings of each other, for example.
set_limit(real) | real | Sets the current similarity threshold that is used by the % operator. The threshold must be between 0 and 1 (default is 0.3). Returns the same value passed in.

Table F-23. pg_trgm Operators

Operator | Returns | Description
text % text | boolean | Returns true if its arguments have a similarity that is greater than the current similarity threshold set by set_limit.
text <-> text | real | Returns the "distance" between the arguments, that is one minus the similarity() value.

F.35.3. Index Support

The pg_trgm module provides GiST and GIN index operator classes that allow you to create an index over a text column for the purpose of very fast similarity searches. These index types support the above-described similarity operators, and additionally support trigram-based index searches for LIKE and ILIKE queries. (These indexes do not support equality nor simple comparison operators, so you may need a regular B-tree index too.)

Example:

CREATE TABLE test_trgm (t text);
CREATE INDEX trgm_idx ON test_trgm USING gist (t gist_trgm_ops);

or

CREATE INDEX trgm_idx ON test_trgm USING gin (t gin_trgm_ops);

At this point, you will have an index on the t column that you can use for similarity searching. A typical query is

SELECT t, similarity(t, 'word') AS sml
  FROM test_trgm
  WHERE t % 'word'
  ORDER BY sml DESC, t;

This will return all values in the text column that are sufficiently similar to word, sorted from best match to worst. The index will be used to make this a fast operation even over very large data sets.

A variant of the above query is

SELECT t, t <-> 'word' AS dist
  FROM test_trgm
  ORDER BY dist LIMIT 10;

This can be implemented quite efficiently by GiST indexes, but not by GIN indexes. It will usually beat the first formulation when only a small number of the closest matches is wanted.

Beginning in PostgreSQL 9.1, these index types also support index searches for LIKE and ILIKE, for example

SELECT * FROM test_trgm WHERE t LIKE '%foo%bar';

The index search works by extracting trigrams from the search string and then looking these up in the index. The more trigrams in the search string, the more effective the index search is. Unlike B-tree based searches, the search string need not be left-anchored.

The choice between GiST and GIN indexing depends on the relative performance characteristics of GiST and GIN, which are discussed elsewhere. As a rule of thumb, a GIN index is faster to search than a GiST index, but slower to build or update; so GIN is better suited for static data and GiST for often-updated data.

F.35.4. Text Search Integration

Trigram matching is a very useful tool when used in conjunction with a full text index. In particular it can help to recognize misspelled input words that will not be matched directly by the full text search mechanism.

The first step is to generate an auxiliary table containing all the unique words in the documents:

CREATE TABLE words AS SELECT word FROM
        ts_stat('SELECT to_tsvector(''simple'', bodytext) FROM documents');

where documents is a table that has a text field bodytext that we wish to search. The reason for using the simple configuration with the to_tsvector function, instead of using a language-specific configuration, is that we want a list of the original (unstemmed) words.

Next, create a trigram index on the word column:

CREATE INDEX words_idx ON words USING gin(word gin_trgm_ops);

Now, a SELECT query similar to the previous example can be used to suggest spellings for misspelled words in user search terms. A useful extra test is to require that the selected words are also of similar length to the misspelled word.

Note: Since the words table has been generated as a separate, static table, it will need to be periodically regenerated so that it remains reasonably up-to-date with the document collection. Keeping it exactly current is usually unnecessary.

F.35.5. References

GiST Development Site http://www.sai.msu.su/~megera/postgres/gist/

Tsearch2 Development Site http://www.sai.msu.su/~megera/postgres/gist/tsearch/V2/

F.35.6. Authors

Oleg Bartunov <oleg@sai.msu.su>, Moscow, Moscow University, Russia

Teodor Sigaev <teodor@sigaev.ru>, Moscow, Delta-Soft Ltd.,Russia

Documentation: Christopher Kings-Lynne

This module is sponsored by Delta-Soft Ltd., Moscow, Russia.

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pg_upgrade

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F.36. pg_upgrade

pg_upgrade (formerly called pg_migrator) allows data stored in PostgreSQL data files to be upgraded to a later PostgreSQL major version without the data dump/reload typically required for major version upgrades, e.g. from 8.4.7 to the current major release of PostgreSQL. It is not required for minor version upgrades, e.g. from 9.0.1 to 9.0.4.

Major PostgreSQL releases regularly add new features that often change the layout of the system tables, but the internal data storage format rarely changes. pg_upgrade uses this fact to perform rapid upgrades by creating new system tables and simply reusing the old user data files. If a future major release ever changes the data storage format in a way that makes the old data format unreadable, pg_upgrade will not be usable for such upgrades. (The community will attempt to avoid such situations.)

pg_upgrade does its best to make sure the old and new clusters are binary-compatible, e.g. by checking for compatible compile-time settings, including 32/64-bit binaries. It is important that any external modules are also binary compatible, though this cannot be checked by pg_upgrade.

F.36.1. Supported Versions

pg_upgrade supports upgrades from 8.3.X and later to the current major release of PostgreSQL, including snapshot and alpha releases.

F.36.2. pg_upgrade Options

pg_upgrade accepts the following command-line arguments:

-b old_bindir
--old-bindir=old_bindir

the old cluster executable directory; environment variable OLDBINDIR

-B new_bindir
--new-bindir=new_bindir

the new cluster executable directory; environment variable NEWBINDIR

-c
--check

check clusters only, don't change any data

-d old_datadir
--old-datadir=old_datadir

the old cluster data directory; environment variable OLDDATADIR

-D new_datadir
--new-datadir=new_datadir

the new cluster data directory; environment variable NEWDATADIR

-g
--debug

enable debugging

-G debug_filename
--debugfile=debug_filename

output debugging activity to file

-k
--link

use hard links instead of copying files to the new cluster

-l log_filename
--logfile=log_filename

log session activity to file

-p old_port_number
--old-port=old_portnum

the old cluster port number; environment variable PGPORT

-P new_port_number
--new-port=new_portnum

the new cluster port number; environment variable PGPORT

-u user_name
--user=user_name

cluster's super user name; environment variable PGUSER

-v
--verbose

enable verbose output

-V
--version

display version information, then exit

-?
-h
--help

show help, then exit

F.36.3. Upgrade Steps

  1. Optionally move the old cluster

    If you are using a version-specific installation directory, e.g. /opt/PostgreSQL/8.4, you do not need to move the old cluster. The one-click installers all use version-specific installation directories.

    If your installation directory is not version-specific, e.g. /usr/local/pgsql, it is necessary to move the current PostgreSQL install directory so it does not interfere with the new PostgreSQL installation. Once the current PostgreSQL server is shut down, it is safe to rename the PostgreSQL installation directory; assuming the old directory is /usr/local/pgsql, you can do:

    mv /usr/local/pgsql /usr/local/pgsql.old

    to rename the directory.

  2. For source installs, build the new version

    Build the new PostgreSQL source with configure flags that are compatible with the old cluster. pg_upgrade will check pg_controldata to make sure all settings are compatible before starting the upgrade.

  3. Install the new PostgreSQL binaries

    Install the new server's binaries and support files. You can use the same port numbers for both clusters, typically 5432, because the old and new clusters will not be running at the same time.

    For source installs, if you wish to install the new server in a custom location, use the prefix variable:

    gmake prefix=/usr/local/pgsql.new install

  4. Install pg_upgrade and pg_upgrade_support

    Install the pg_upgrade binary and pg_upgrade_support library in the new PostgreSQL cluster.

  5. Initialize the new PostgreSQL cluster

    Initialize the new cluster using initdb. Again, use compatible initdb flags that match the old cluster. Many prebuilt installers do this step automatically. There is no need to start the new cluster.

  6. Install custom shared object files

    Install any custom shared object files (or DLLs) used by the old cluster into the new cluster, e.g. pgcrypto.so, whether they are from contrib or some other source. Do not install the schema definitions, e.g. pgcrypto.sql, because these will be upgraded from the old cluster.

  7. Adjust authentication

    pg_upgrade will connect to the old and new servers several times, so you might want to set authentication to peer in pg_hba.conf or use a ~/.pgpass file (see Section 31.14).

  8. Stop both servers

    Make sure both database servers are stopped using, on Unix, e.g.:

    pg_ctl -D /opt/PostgreSQL/8.4 stop
pg_ctl -D /opt/PostgreSQL/9.0 stop

    or on Windows, using the proper service names:

    NET STOP postgresql-8.4
NET STOP postgresql-9.0

    or

    NET STOP pgsql-8.3  (PostgreSQL 8.3 and older used a different service name)

  9. Run pg_upgrade

    Always run the pg_upgrade binary of the new server, not the old one. pg_upgrade requires the specification of the old and new cluster's data and executable (bin) directories. You can also specify user and port values, and whether you want the data linked instead of copied (the default).

    If you use link mode, the upgrade will be much faster (no file copying), but you will not be able to access your old cluster once you start the new cluster after the upgrade. Link mode also requires that the old and new cluster data directories be in the same file system. See pg_upgrade --help for a full list of options.

    For Windows users, you must be logged into an administrative account, and then start a shell as the postgres user and set the proper path:

    RUNAS /USER:postgres "CMD.EXE"
SET PATH=%PATH%;C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\9.0\bin;

    and then run pg_upgrade with quoted directories, e.g.:

    pg_upgrade.exe
        --old-datadir "C:/Program Files/PostgreSQL/8.4/data"
        --new-datadir "C:/Program Files/PostgreSQL/9.0/data"
        --old-bindir "C:/Program Files/PostgreSQL/8.4/bin"
        --new-bindir "C:/Program Files/PostgreSQL/9.0/bin"

    Once started, pg_upgrade will verify the two clusters are compatible and then do the upgrade. You can use pg_upgrade --check to perform only the checks, even if the old server is still running. pg_upgrade --check will also outline any manual adjustments you will need to make after the upgrade. pg_upgrade requires write permission in the current directory.

    Obviously, no one should be accessing the clusters during the upgrade. Consider using a non-default port number, e.g. 50432, for old and new clusters to avoid unintended client connections during the upgrade.

    If an error occurs while restoring the database schema, pg_upgrade will exit and you will have to revert to the old cluster as outlined in step 14 below. To try pg_upgrade again, you will need to modify the old cluster so the pg_upgrade schema restore succeeds. If the problem is a contrib module, you might need to uninstall the contrib module from the old cluster and install it in the new cluster after the upgrade, assuming the module is not being used to store user data.

  10. Restore pg_hba.conf

    If you modified pg_hba.conf, restore its original settings.

  11. Post-Upgrade processing

    If any post-upgrade processing is required, pg_upgrade will issue warnings as it completes. It will also generate script files that must be run by the administrator. The script files will connect to each database that needs post-upgrade processing. Each script should be run using:

    psql --username postgres --file script.sql postgres

    The scripts can be run in any order and can be deleted once they have been run.

    Caution

    In general it is unsafe to access tables referenced in rebuild scripts until the rebuild scripts have run to completion; doing so could yield incorrect results or poor performance. Tables not referenced in rebuild scripts can be accessed immediately.

  12. Statistics

    Because optimizer statistics are not transferred by pg_upgrade, you will be instructed to run a command to regenerate that information at the end of the upgrade.

  13. Delete old cluster

    Once you are satisfied with the upgrade, you can delete the old cluster's data directories by running the script mentioned when pg_upgrade completes. You can also delete the old installation directories (e.g. bin, share).

  14. Reverting to old cluster

    If, after running pg_upgrade, you wish to revert to the old cluster, there are several options:

    • If you ran pg_upgrade with --check, no modifications were made to the old cluster and you can re-use it anytime.

    • If you ran pg_upgrade with --link, the data files are shared between the old and new cluster. If you started the new cluster, the new server has written to those shared files and it is unsafe to use the old cluster.

    • If you ran pg_upgrade without --link or did not start the new server, the old cluster was not modified except that an .old suffix was appended to $PGDATA/global/pg_control and perhaps tablespace directories. To reuse the old cluster, remove the .old suffix from $PGDATA/global/pg_control. and, if upgrading to 8.4 or earlier, remove the tablespace directories created by the upgrade and remove the .old suffix from the tablespace directory names; then you can restart the old cluster.

F.36.4. Limitations in Upgrading from PostgreSQL 8.3

Upgrading from PostgreSQL 8.3 has additional restrictions not present when upgrading from later PostgreSQL releases. For example, pg_upgrade will not work for upgrading from 8.3 if a user column is defined as:

  • a tsquery data type

  • data type name and is not the first column

You must drop any such columns and upgrade them manually.

pg_upgrade will not work if the ltree contrib module is installed in a database.

pg_upgrade will require a table rebuild if:

  • a user column is of data type tsvector

pg_upgrade will require a reindex if:

  • an index is of type hash or GIN

  • an index uses bpchar_pattern_ops

Also, the default datetime storage format changed to integer after PostgreSQL 8.3. pg_upgrade will check that the datetime storage format used by the old and new clusters match. Make sure your new cluster is built with the configure flag --disable-integer-datetimes.

For Windows users, note that due to different integer datetimes settings used by the one-click installer and the MSI installer, it is only possible to upgrade from version 8.3 of the one-click distribution to version 8.4 or later of the one-click distribution. It is not possible to upgrade from the MSI installer to the one-click installer.

F.36.5. Notes

pg_upgrade does not support upgrading of databases containing these reg* OID-referencing system data types: regproc, regprocedure, regoper, regoperator, regconfig, and regdictionary. (regtype can be upgraded.)

All failure, rebuild, and reindex cases will be reported by pg_upgrade if they affect your installation; post-upgrade scripts to rebuild tables and indexes will be generated automatically.

For deployment testing, create a schema-only copy of the old cluster, insert dummy data, and upgrade that.

If you want to use link mode and you don't want your old cluster to be modified when the new cluster is started, make a copy of the old cluster and upgrade that with link mode. To make a valid copy of the old cluster, use rsync to create a dirty copy of the old cluster while the server is running, then shut down the old server and run rsync again to update the copy with any changes to make it consistent.

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seg

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F.37. seg

This module implements a data type seg for representing line segments, or floating point intervals. seg can represent uncertainty in the interval endpoints, making it especially useful for representing laboratory measurements.

F.37.1. Rationale

The geometry of measurements is usually more complex than that of a point in a numeric continuum. A measurement is usually a segment of that continuum with somewhat fuzzy limits. The measurements come out as intervals because of uncertainty and randomness, as well as because the value being measured may naturally be an interval indicating some condition, such as the temperature range of stability of a protein.

Using just common sense, it appears more convenient to store such data as intervals, rather than pairs of numbers. In practice, it even turns out more efficient in most applications.

Further along the line of common sense, the fuzziness of the limits suggests that the use of traditional numeric data types leads to a certain loss of information. Consider this: your instrument reads 6.50, and you input this reading into the database. What do you get when you fetch it? Watch:

test=> select 6.50 :: float8 as "pH";
 pH
---
6.5
(1 row)

In the world of measurements, 6.50 is not the same as 6.5. It may sometimes be critically different. The experimenters usually write down (and publish) the digits they trust. 6.50 is actually a fuzzy interval contained within a bigger and even fuzzier interval, 6.5, with their center points being (probably) the only common feature they share. We definitely do not want such different data items to appear the same.

Conclusion? It is nice to have a special data type that can record the limits of an interval with arbitrarily variable precision. Variable in the sense that each data element records its own precision.

Check this out:

test=> select '6.25 .. 6.50'::seg as "pH";
          pH
------------
6.25 .. 6.50
(1 row)

F.37.2. Syntax

The external representation of an interval is formed using one or two floating-point numbers joined by the range operator (.. or ...). Alternatively, it can be specified as a center point plus or minus a deviation. Optional certainty indicators (<, > or ~) can be stored as well. (Certainty indicators are ignored by all the built-in operators, however.) Table F-24 gives an overview of allowed representations; Table F-25 shows some examples.

In Table F-24, x, y, and delta denote floating-point numbers. x and y, but not delta, can be preceded by a certainty indicator.

Table F-24. seg External Representations

x | Single value (zero-length interval)
x .. y | Interval from x to y
x (+-) delta | Interval from x - delta to x + delta
x .. | Open interval with lower bound x
.. x | Open interval with upper bound x

Table F-25. Examples of Valid seg Input

5.0 | Creates a zero-length segment (a point, if you will)
~5.0 | Creates a zero-length segment and records ~ in the data. ~ is ignored by seg operations, but is preserved as a comment.
<5.0 | Creates a point at 5.0. < is ignored but is preserved as a comment.
>5.0 | Creates a point at 5.0. > is ignored but is preserved as a comment.
5(+-)0.3 | Creates an interval 4.7 .. 5.3. Note that the (+-) notation isn't preserved.
50 .. | Everything that is greater than or equal to 50
.. 0 | Everything that is less than or equal to 0
1.5e-2 .. 2E-2 | Creates an interval 0.015 .. 0.02
1 ... 2 | The same as 1...2, or 1 .. 2, or 1..2 (spaces around the range operator are ignored)

Because ... is widely used in data sources, it is allowed as an alternative spelling of ... Unfortunately, this creates a parsing ambiguity: it is not clear whether the upper bound in 0...23 is meant to be 23 or 0.23. This is resolved by requiring at least one digit before the decimal point in all numbers in seg input.

As a sanity check, seg rejects intervals with the lower bound greater than the upper, for example 5 .. 2.

F.37.3. Precision

seg values are stored internally as pairs of 32-bit floating point numbers. This means that numbers with more than 7 significant digits will be truncated.

Numbers with 7 or fewer significant digits retain their original precision. That is, if your query returns 0.00, you will be sure that the trailing zeroes are not the artifacts of formatting: they reflect the precision of the original data. The number of leading zeroes does not affect precision: the value 0.0067 is considered to have just 2 significant digits.

F.37.4. Usage

The seg module includes a GiST index operator class for seg values. The operators supported by the GiST operator class are shown in Table F-26.

Table F-26. Seg GiST Operators

Operator | Description
[a, b] << [c, d] | [a, b] is entirely to the left of [c, d]. That is, [a, b] << [c, d] is true if b < c and false otherwise.
[a, b] >> [c, d] | [a, b] is entirely to the right of [c, d]. That is, [a, b] >> [c, d] is true if a > d and false otherwise.
[a, b] &< [c, d] | Overlaps or is left of — This might be better read as "does not extend to right of". It is true when b <= d.
[a, b] &> [c, d] | Overlaps or is right of — This might be better read as "does not extend to left of". It is true when a >= c.
[a, b] = [c, d] | Same as — The segments [a, b] and [c, d] are identical, that is, a = c and b = d.
[a, b] && [c, d] | The segments [a, b] and [c, d] overlap.
[a, b] @> [c, d] | The segment [a, b] contains the segment [c, d], that is, a <= c and b >= d.
[a, b] <@ [c, d] | The segment [a, b] is contained in [c, d], that is, a >= c and b <= d.

(Before PostgreSQL 8.2, the containment operators @> and <@ were respectively called @ and ~. These names are still available, but are deprecated and will eventually be retired. Notice that the old names are reversed from the convention formerly followed by the core geometric data types!)

The standard B-tree operators are also provided, for example

Operator | Description
[a, b] < [c, d] | Less than
[a, b] > [c, d] | Greater than

These operators do not make a lot of sense for any practical purpose but sorting. These operators first compare (a) to (c), and if these are equal, compare (b) to (d). That results in reasonably good sorting in most cases, which is useful if you want to use ORDER BY with this type.

F.37.5. Notes

For examples of usage, see the regression test sql/seg.sql.

The mechanism that converts (+-) to regular ranges isn't completely accurate in determining the number of significant digits for the boundaries. For example, it adds an extra digit to the lower boundary if the resulting interval includes a power of ten:

postgres=> select '10(+-)1'::seg as seg;
      seg
---------
9.0 .. 11             -- should be: 9 .. 11

The performance of an R-tree index can largely depend on the initial order of input values. It may be very helpful to sort the input table on the seg column; see the script sort-segments.pl for an example.

F.37.6. Credits

Original author: Gene Selkov, Jr. <selkovjr@mcs.anl.gov>, Mathematics and Computer Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory.

My thanks are primarily to Prof. Joe Hellerstein (http://db.cs.berkeley.edu/jmh/) for elucidating the gist of the GiST (http://gist.cs.berkeley.edu/). I am also grateful to all Postgres developers, present and past, for enabling myself to create my own world and live undisturbed in it. And I would like to acknowledge my gratitude to Argonne Lab and to the U.S. Department of Energy for the years of faithful support of my database research.

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sepgsql

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F.38. sepgsql

sepgsql is a loadable module that supports label-based mandatory access control (MAC) based on SELinux security policy.

Warning

The current implementation has significant limitations, and does not enforce mandatory access control for all actions. See Section F.38.6.

F.38.1. Overview

This module integrates with SELinux to provide an additional layer of security checking above and beyond what is normally provided by PostgreSQL. From the perspective of SELinux, this module allows PostgreSQL to function as a user-space object manager. Each table or function access initiated by a DML query will be checked against the system security policy. This check is in addition to the usual SQL permissions checking performed by PostgreSQL.

SELinux access control decisions are made using security labels, which are represented by strings such as system_u:object_r:sepgsql_table_t:s0. Each access control decision involves two labels: the label of the subject attempting to perform the action, and the label of the object on which the operation is to be performed. Since these labels can be applied to any sort of object, access control decisions for objects stored within the database can be (and, with this module, are) subjected to the same general criteria used for objects of any other type, such as files. This design is intended to allow a centralized security policy to protect information assets independent of the particulars of how those assets are stored.

The SECURITY LABEL statement allows assignment of a security label to a database object.

F.38.2. Installation

sepgsql can only be used on Linux 2.6.28 or higher with SELinux enabled. It is not available on any other platform. You will also need libselinux 2.0.93 or higher and selinux-policy 3.9.13 or higher (although some distributions may backport the necessary rules into older policy versions).

The sestatus command allows you to check the status of SELinux. A typical display is:

$ sestatus
SELinux status:                 enabled
SELinuxfs mount:                /selinux
Current mode:                   enforcing
Mode from config file:          enforcing
Policy version:                 24
Policy from config file:        targeted

If SELinux is disabled or not installed, you must set that product up first before installing this module.

To build this module, include the option --with-selinux in your PostgreSQL configure command. Be sure that the libselinux-devel RPM is installed at build time.

To use this module, you must include sepgsql in the shared_preload_libraries parameter in postgresql.conf. The module will not function correctly if loaded in any other manner. Once the module is loaded, you should execute sepgsql.sql in each database. This will install functions needed for security label management, and assign initial security labels.

Here is an example showing how to initialize a fresh database cluster with sepgsql functions and security labels installed. Adjust the paths shown as appropriate for your installation:

$ export PGDATA=/path/to/data/directory
$ initdb
$ vi $PGDATA/postgresql.conf
  change
    #shared_preload_libraries = ''                # (change requires restart)
  to
    shared_preload_libraries = 'sepgsql'          # (change requires restart)
$ for DBNAME in template0 template1 postgres; do
    postgres --single -F -c exit_on_error=true $DBNAME \
      </usr/local/pgsql/share/contrib/sepgsql.sql >/dev/null
  done

Please note that you may see some or all of the following notifications depending on the particular versions you have of libselinux and selinux-policy:

/etc/selinux/targeted/contexts/sepgsql_contexts:  line 33 has invalid object type db_blobs
/etc/selinux/targeted/contexts/sepgsql_contexts:  line 36 has invalid object type db_language
/etc/selinux/targeted/contexts/sepgsql_contexts:  line 37 has invalid object type db_language
/etc/selinux/targeted/contexts/sepgsql_contexts:  line 38 has invalid object type db_language
/etc/selinux/targeted/contexts/sepgsql_contexts:  line 39 has invalid object type db_language
/etc/selinux/targeted/contexts/sepgsql_contexts:  line 40 has invalid object type db_language

These messages are harmless and should be ignored.

If the installation process completes without error, you can now start the server normally.

F.38.3. Regression Tests

Due to the nature of SELinux, running the regression tests for sepgsql requires several extra configuration steps, some of which must be done as root. The regression tests will not be run by an ordinary make check or make installcheck command; you must set up the configuration and then invoke the test script manually. The tests must be run in the contrib/sepgsql directory of a configured PostgreSQL build tree. Although they require a build tree, the tests are designed to be executed against an installed server, that is they are comparable to make installcheck not make check.

First, set up sepgsql in a working database according to the instructions in Section F.38.2. Note that the current operating system user must be able to connect to the database as superuser without password authentication.

Second, build and install the policy package for the regression test. The sepgsql-regtest policy is a special purpose policy package which provides a set of rules to be allowed during the regression tests. It should be built from the policy source file sepgsql-regtest.te, which is done using make with a Makefile supplied by SELinux. You will need to locate the appropriate Makefile on your system; the path shown below is only an example. Once built, install this policy package using the semodule command, which loads supplied policy packages into the kernel. If the package is correctly installed, semodule -l should list sepgsql-regtest as an available policy package:

$ cd .../contrib/sepgsql
$ make -f /usr/share/selinux/devel/Makefile
$ sudo semodule -u sepgsql-regtest.pp
$ sudo semodule -l | grep sepgsql
sepgsql-regtest 1.03

Third, turn on sepgsql_regression_test_mode. We don't enable all the rules in sepgsql-regtest by default, for your system's safety. The sepgsql_regression_test_mode parameter enables the rules needed to launch the regression tests. It can be turned on using the setsebool command:

$ sudo setsebool sepgsql_regression_test_mode on
$ getsebool sepgsql_regression_test_mode
sepgsql_regression_test_mode --> on

Fourth, verify your shell is operating in the unconfined_t domain:

$ id -Z
unconfined_u:unconfined_r:unconfined_t:s0-s0:c0.c1023

See Section F.38.7 for details on adjusting your working domain, if necessary.

Finally, run the regression test script:

$ ./test_sepgsql

This script will attempt to verify that you have done all the configuration steps correctly, and then it will run the regression tests for the sepgsql module.

After completing the tests, it's recommended you disable the sepgsql_regression_test_mode parameter:

$ sudo setsebool sepgsql_regression_test_mode off

You might prefer to remove the sepgsql-regtest policy entirely:

$ sudo semodule -r sepgsql-regtest

F.38.4. GUC Parameters

sepgsql.permissive (boolean)

This parameter enables sepgsql to function in permissive mode, regardless of the system setting. The default is off. This parameter can only be set in the postgresql.conf file or on the server command line.

When this parameter is on, sepgsql functions in permissive mode, even if SELinux in general is working in enforcing mode. This parameter is primarily useful for testing purposes.

sepgsql.debug_audit (boolean)

This parameter enables the printing of audit messages regardless of the system policy settings. The default is off, which means that messages will be printed according to the system settings.

The security policy of SELinux also has rules to control whether or not particular accesses are logged. By default, access violations are logged, but allowed accesses are not.

This parameter forces all possible logging to be turned on, regardless of the system policy.

F.38.5. Features

F.38.5.1. Controlled Object Classes

The security model of SELinux describes all the access control rules as relationships between a subject entity (typically, a client of the database) and an object entity (such as a database object), each of which is identified by a security label. If access to an unlabelled object is attempted, the object is treated as if it were assigned the label unlabeled_t.

Currently, sepgsql allows security labels to be assigned to schemas, tables, columns, sequences, views, and functions. When sepgsql is in use, security labels are automatically assigned to supported database objects at creation time. This label is called a default security label, and is decided according to the system security policy, which takes as input the creator's label and the label assigned to the new object's parent object.

A new database object basically inherits the security label of the parent object, except when the security policy has special rules known as type-transition rules, in which case a different label may be applied. For schemas, the parent object is the current database; for tables, sequences, views, and functions, it is the containing schema; for columns, it is the containing table.

F.38.5.2. DML Permissions

For tables, db_table:select, db_table:insert, db_table:update or db_table:delete is checked for all the referenced target tables depending on the kind of statement; in addition, db_table:select is also checked for all the tables that contain the columns referenced in the WHERE or RETURNING clause, as a data source of UPDATE, and so on. For example, consider:

UPDATE t1 SET x = 2, y = md5sum(y) WHERE z = 100;

In this case we must have db_table:select in addition to db_table:update, because t1.a is referenced within the WHERE clause. Column-level permissions will also be checked for each referenced column.

For columns, db_column:select is checked on not only the columns being read using SELECT, but those being referenced in other DML statements. Of course, it also checks db_column:update or db_column:insert on columns being modified by UPDATE or INSERT.

UPDATE t1 SET x = 2, y = md5sum(y) WHERE z = 100;

In this case, it checks db_column:update on the column t1.x being updated, db_column:{select update} on the column t1.y being updated and referenced, and db_column:select on the column t1.z, since that is only referenced in the WHERE clause. db_table:{select update} will also be checked at the table level.

For sequences, db_sequence:get_value is checked when we reference a sequence object using SELECT; however, note that we do not currently check permissions on execution of corresponding functions such as lastval().

For views, db_view:expand will be checked, then any other required permissions will be checked on the objects being expanded from the view, individually.

For functions, db_procedure:{execute} is defined, but is not checked in this version.

The client must be allowed to access all referenced tables and columns, even if they originated from views which were then expanded, so that we apply consistent access control rules independent of the manner in which the table contents are referenced.

The default database privilege system allows database superusers to modify system catalogs using DML commands, and reference or modify toast tables. These operations are prohibited when sepgsql is enabled.

F.38.5.3. DDL Permissions

When SECURITY LABEL is executed, setattr and relabelfrom will be checked on the object being relabeled with its old security label, then relabelto with the supplied new security label.

In the case where multiple label providers are installed and the user tries to set a security label, but it is not managed by SELinux, only setattr should be checked here. This is currently not done due to implementation restrictions.

F.38.5.4. Trusted Procedures

Trusted procedures are similar to security definer functions or set-uid commands. SELinux provides a feature to allow trusted code to run using a security label different from that of the client, generally for the purpose of providing highly controlled access to sensitive data (e.g. rows might be omitted, or the precision of stored values might be reduced). Whether or not a function acts as a trusted procedure is controlled by its security label and the operating system security policy. For example:

postgres=# CREATE TABLE customer (
               cid     int primary key,
               cname   text,
               credit  text
           );
CREATE TABLE
postgres=# SECURITY LABEL ON COLUMN customer.credit
               IS 'system_u:object_r:sepgsql_secret_table_t:s0';
SECURITY LABEL
postgres=# CREATE FUNCTION show_credit(int) RETURNS text
             AS 'SELECT regexp_replace(credit, ''-[0-9]+$'', ''-xxxx'', ''g'')
                        FROM customer WHERE cid = $1'
           LANGUAGE sql;
CREATE FUNCTION
postgres=# SECURITY LABEL ON FUNCTION show_credit(int)
               IS 'system_u:object_r:sepgsql_trusted_proc_exec_t:s0';
SECURITY LABEL

The above operations should be performed by an administrative user.

postgres=# SELECT * FROM customer;
ERROR:  SELinux: security policy violation
postgres=# SELECT cid, cname, show_credit(cid) FROM customer;
 cid | cname  |     show_credit
-----+--------+---------------------
   1 | taro   | 1111-2222-3333-xxxx
   2 | hanako | 5555-6666-7777-xxxx
(2 rows)

In this case, a regular user cannot reference customer.credit directly, but a trusted procedure show_credit allows him to print the credit card numbers of customers with some of the digits masked out.

F.38.5.5. Miscellaneous

We reject the LOAD command across the board, because any module loaded could easily circumvent security policy enforcement.

F.38.6. Limitations

Data Definition Language (DDL) Permissions

Due to implementation restrictions, DDL permissions are not checked.

Data Control Language (DCL) Permissions

Due to implementation restrictions, DCL permissions are not checked.

Row-level access control

PostgreSQL does not support row-level access; therefore, sepgsql does not support it either.

Covert channels

sepgsql does not try to hide the existence of a certain object, even if the user is not allowed to reference it. For example, we can infer the existence of an invisible object as a result of primary key conflicts, foreign key violations, and so on, even if we cannot obtain the contents of the object. The existence of a top secret table cannot be hidden; we only hope to conceal its contents.

F.38.7. External Resources

SE-PostgreSQL Introduction

This wiki page provides a brief overview, security design, architecture, administration and upcoming features.

Fedora SELinux User Guide

This document provides a wide spectrum of knowledge to administer SELinux on your systems. It focuses primarily on Fedora, but is not limited to Fedora.

Fedora SELinux FAQ

This document answers frequently asked questions about SELinux. It focuses primarily on Fedora, but is not limited to Fedora.

F.38.8. Author

KaiGai Kohei <kaigai@ak.jp.nec.com>

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seg | Up | spi


spi

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F.39. spi

The spi module provides several workable examples of using SPI and triggers. While these functions are of some value in their own right, they are even more useful as examples to modify for your own purposes. The functions are general enough to be used with any table, but you have to specify table and field names (as described below) while creating a trigger.

Each of the groups of functions described below is provided as a separately-installable extension.

F.39.1. refint — Functions for Implementing Referential Integrity

check_primary_key() and check_foreign_key() are used to check foreign key constraints. (This functionality is long since superseded by the built-in foreign key mechanism, of course, but the module is still useful as an example.)

check_primary_key() checks the referencing table. To use, create a BEFORE INSERT OR UPDATE trigger using this function on a table referencing another table. Specify as the trigger arguments: the referencing table's column name(s) which form the foreign key, the referenced table name, and the column names in the referenced table which form the primary/unique key. To handle multiple foreign keys, create a trigger for each reference.

check_foreign_key() checks the referenced table. To use, create a BEFORE DELETE OR UPDATE trigger using this function on a table referenced by other table(s). Specify as the trigger arguments: the number of referencing tables for which the function has to perform checking, the action if a referencing key is found (cascade — to delete the referencing row, restrict — to abort transaction if referencing keys exist, setnull — to set referencing key fields to null), the triggered table's column names which form the primary/unique key, then the referencing table name and column names (repeated for as many referencing tables as were specified by first argument). Note that the primary/unique key columns should be marked NOT NULL and should have a unique index.

There are examples in refint.example.

F.39.2. timetravel — Functions for Implementing Time Travel

Long ago, PostgreSQL had a built-in time travel feature that kept the insert and delete times for each tuple. This can be emulated using these functions. To use these functions, you must add to a table two columns of abstime type to store the date when a tuple was inserted (start_date) and changed/deleted (stop_date):

CREATE TABLE mytab (
        ...             ...
        start_date      abstime,
        stop_date       abstime
        ...             ...
);

The columns can be named whatever you like, but in this discussion we'll call them start_date and stop_date.

When a new row is inserted, start_date should normally be set to current time, and stop_date to infinity. The trigger will automatically substitute these values if the inserted data contains nulls in these columns. Generally, inserting explicit non-null data in these columns should only be done when re-loading dumped data.

Tuples with stop_date equal to infinity are "valid now", and can be modified. Tuples with a finite stop_date cannot be modified anymore — the trigger will prevent it. (If you need to do that, you can turn off time travel as shown below.)

For a modifiable row, on update only the stop_date in the tuple being updated will be changed (to current time) and a new tuple with the modified data will be inserted. Start_date in this new tuple will be set to current time and stop_date to infinity.

A delete does not actually remove the tuple but only sets its stop_date to current time.

To query for tuples "valid now", include stop_date = 'infinity' in the query's WHERE condition. (You might wish to incorporate that in a view.) Similarly, you can query for tuples valid at any past time with suitable conditions on start_date and stop_date.

timetravel() is the general trigger function that supports this behavior. Create a BEFORE INSERT OR UPDATE OR DELETE trigger using this function on each time-traveled table. Specify two trigger arguments: the actual names of the start_date and stop_date columns. Optionally, you can specify one to three more arguments, which must refer to columns of type text. The trigger will store the name of the current user into the first of these columns during INSERT, the second column during UPDATE, and the third during DELETE.

set_timetravel() allows you to turn time-travel on or off for a table. set_timetravel('mytab', 1) will turn TT ON for table mytab. set_timetravel('mytab', 0) will turn TT OFF for table mytab. In both cases the old status is reported. While TT is off, you can modify the start_date and stop_date columns freely. Note that the on/off status is local to the current database session — fresh sessions will always start out with TT ON for all tables.

get_timetravel() returns the TT state for a table without changing it.

There is an example in timetravel.example.

F.39.3. autoinc — Functions for Autoincrementing Fields

autoinc() is a trigger that stores the next value of a sequence into an integer field. This has some overlap with the built-in "serial column" feature, but it is not the same: autoinc() will override attempts to substitute a different field value during inserts, and optionally it can be used to increment the field during updates, too.

To use, create a BEFORE INSERT (or optionally BEFORE INSERT OR UPDATE) trigger using this function. Specify two trigger arguments: the name of the integer column to be modified, and the name of the sequence object that will supply values. (Actually, you can specify any number of pairs of such names, if you'd like to update more than one autoincrementing column.)

There is an example in autoinc.example.

F.39.4. insert_username — Functions for Tracking Who Changed a Table

insert_username() is a trigger that stores the current user's name into a text field. This can be useful for tracking who last modified a particular row within a table.

To use, create a BEFORE INSERT and/or UPDATE trigger using this function. Specify a single trigger argument: the name of the text column to be modified.

There is an example in insert_username.example.

F.39.5. moddatetime — Functions for Tracking Last Modification Time

moddatetime() is a trigger that stores the current time into a timestamp field. This can be useful for tracking the last modification time of a particular row within a table.

To use, create a BEFORE UPDATE trigger using this function. Specify a single trigger argument: the name of the column to be modified. The column must be of type timestamp or timestamp with time zone.

There is an example in moddatetime.example.

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sslinfo

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F.40. sslinfo

The sslinfo module provides information about the SSL certificate that the current client provided when connecting to PostgreSQL. The module is useless (most functions will return NULL) if the current connection does not use SSL.

This extension won't build at all unless the installation was configured with --with-openssl.

F.40.1. Functions Provided

ssl_is_used() returns boolean

Returns TRUE if current connection to server uses SSL, and FALSE otherwise.

ssl_version() returns text

Returns the name of the protocol used for the SSL connection (e.g. SSLv2, SSLv3, or TLSv1).

ssl_cipher() returns text

Returns the name of the cipher used for the SSL connection (e.g. DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA).

ssl_client_cert_present() returns boolean

Returns TRUE if current client has presented a valid SSL client certificate to the server, and FALSE otherwise. (The server might or might not be configured to require a client certificate.)

ssl_client_serial() returns numeric

Returns serial number of current client certificate. The combination of certificate serial number and certificate issuer is guaranteed to uniquely identify a certificate (but not its owner — the owner ought to regularly change his keys, and get new certificates from the issuer).

So, if you run your own CA and allow only certificates from this CA to be accepted by the server, the serial number is the most reliable (albeit not very mnemonic) means to identify a user.

ssl_client_dn() returns text

Returns the full subject of the current client certificate, converting character data into the current database encoding. It is assumed that if you use non-ASCII characters in the certificate names, your database is able to represent these characters, too. If your database uses the SQL_ASCII encoding, non-ASCII characters in the name will be represented as UTF-8 sequences.

The result looks like /CN=Somebody /C=Some country/O=Some organization.

ssl_issuer_dn() returns text

Returns the full issuer name of the current client certificate, converting character data into the current database encoding. Encoding conversions are handled the same as for ssl_client_dn.

The combination of the return value of this function with the certificate serial number uniquely identifies the certificate.

This function is really useful only if you have more than one trusted CA certificate in your server's root.crt file, or if this CA has issued some intermediate certificate authority certificates.

ssl_client_dn_field(fieldname text) returns text

This function returns the value of the specified field in the certificate subject, or NULL if the field is not present. Field names are string constants that are converted into ASN1 object identifiers using the OpenSSL object database. The following values are acceptable:

commonName (alias CN)
surname (alias SN)
name
givenName (alias GN)
countryName (alias C)
localityName (alias L)
stateOrProvinceName (alias ST)
organizationName (alias O)
organizationUnitName (alias OU)
title
description
initials
postalCode
streetAddress
generationQualifier
description
dnQualifier
x500UniqueIdentifier
pseudonym
role
emailAddress

All of these fields are optional, except commonName. It depends entirely on your CA's policy which of them would be included and which wouldn't. The meaning of these fields, however, is strictly defined by the X.500 and X.509 standards, so you cannot just assign arbitrary meaning to them.

ssl_issuer_field(fieldname text) returns text

Same as ssl_client_dn_field, but for the certificate issuer rather than the certificate subject.

F.40.2. Author

Victor Wagner <vitus@cryptocom.ru>, Cryptocom LTD

E-Mail of Cryptocom OpenSSL development group: <openssl@cryptocom.ru>

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F.41. tablefunc

The tablefunc module includes various functions that return tables (that is, multiple rows). These functions are useful both in their own right and as examples of how to write C functions that return multiple rows.

F.41.1. Functions Provided

Table F-27 shows the functions provided by the tablefunc module.

Table F-27. tablefunc Functions

Function | Returns | Description
normal_rand(int numvals, float8 mean, float8 stddev) | setof float8 | Produces a set of normally distributed random values
crosstab(text sql) | setof record | Produces a "pivot table" containing row names plus N value columns, where N is determined by the row type specified in the calling query
crosstabN(text sql) | setof table_crosstab_N | Produces a "pivot table" containing row names plus N value columns. crosstab2, crosstab3, and crosstab4 are predefined, but you can create additional crosstabN functions as described below
crosstab(text source_sql, text category_sql) | setof record | Produces a "pivot table" with the value columns specified by a second query
crosstab(text sql, int N) | setof record | Obsolete version of crosstab(text). The parameter N is now ignored, since the number of value columns is always determined by the calling query
connectby(text relname, text keyid_fld, text parent_keyid_fld [, text orderby_fld ], text start_with, int max_depth [, text branch_delim ]) | setof record | Produces a representation of a hierarchical tree structure

F.41.1.1. normal_rand

normal_rand(int numvals, float8 mean, float8 stddev) returns setof float8

normal_rand produces a set of normally distributed random values (Gaussian distribution).

numvals is the number of values to be returned from the function. mean is the mean of the normal distribution of values and stddev is the standard deviation of the normal distribution of values.

For example, this call requests 1000 values with a mean of 5 and a standard deviation of 3:

test=# SELECT * FROM normal_rand(1000, 5, 3);
     normal_rand
----------------------
     1.56556322244898
     9.10040991424657
     5.36957140345079
   -0.369151492880995
    0.283600703686639
       .
       .
       .
     4.82992125404908
     9.71308014517282
     2.49639286969028
(1000 rows)

F.41.1.2. crosstab(text)

crosstab(text sql)
crosstab(text sql, int N)

The crosstab function is used to produce "pivot" displays, wherein data is listed across the page rather than down. For example, we might have data like

row1    val11
row1    val12
row1    val13
...
row2    val21
row2    val22
row2    val23
...

which we wish to display like

row1    val11   val12   val13   ...
row2    val21   val22   val23   ...
...

The crosstab function takes a text parameter that is a SQL query producing raw data formatted in the first way, and produces a table formatted in the second way.

The sql parameter is a SQL statement that produces the source set of data. This statement must return one row_name column, one category column, and one value column. N is an obsolete parameter, ignored if supplied (formerly this had to match the number of output value columns, but now that is determined by the calling query).

For example, the provided query might produce a set something like:

 row_name    cat    value
----------+-------+-------
  row1      cat1    val1
  row1      cat2    val2
  row1      cat3    val3
  row1      cat4    val4
  row2      cat1    val5
  row2      cat2    val6
  row2      cat3    val7
  row2      cat4    val8

The crosstab function is declared to return setof record, so the actual names and types of the output columns must be defined in the FROM clause of the calling SELECT statement, for example:

SELECT * FROM crosstab('...') AS ct(row_name text, category_1 text, category_2 text);

This example produces a set something like:

           <== value  columns  ==>
 row_name   category_1   category_2
----------+------------+------------
  row1        val1         val2
  row2        val5         val6

The FROM clause must define the output as one row_name column (of the same data type as the first result column of the SQL query) followed by N value columns (all of the same data type as the third result column of the SQL query). You can set up as many output value columns as you wish. The names of the output columns are up to you.

The crosstab function produces one output row for each consecutive group of input rows with the same row_name value. It fills the output value columns, left to right, with the value fields from these rows. If there are fewer rows in a group than there are output value columns, the extra output columns are filled with nulls; if there are more rows, the extra input rows are skipped.

In practice the SQL query should always specify ORDER BY 1,2 to ensure that the input rows are properly ordered, that is, values with the same row_name are brought together and correctly ordered within the row. Notice that crosstab itself does not pay any attention to the second column of the query result; it's just there to be ordered by, to control the order in which the third-column values appear across the page.

Here is a complete example:

CREATE TABLE ct(id SERIAL, rowid TEXT, attribute TEXT, value TEXT);
INSERT INTO ct(rowid, attribute, value) VALUES('test1','att1','val1');
INSERT INTO ct(rowid, attribute, value) VALUES('test1','att2','val2');
INSERT INTO ct(rowid, attribute, value) VALUES('test1','att3','val3');
INSERT INTO ct(rowid, attribute, value) VALUES('test1','att4','val4');
INSERT INTO ct(rowid, attribute, value) VALUES('test2','att1','val5');
INSERT INTO ct(rowid, attribute, value) VALUES('test2','att2','val6');
INSERT INTO ct(rowid, attribute, value) VALUES('test2','att3','val7');
INSERT INTO ct(rowid, attribute, value) VALUES('test2','att4','val8');

SELECT *
FROM crosstab(
  'select rowid, attribute, value
   from ct
   where attribute = ''att2'' or attribute = ''att3''
   order by 1,2')
AS ct(row_name text, category_1 text, category_2 text, category_3 text);

 row_name | category_1 | category_2 | category_3
----------+------------+------------+------------
 test1    | val2       | val3       |
 test2    | val6       | val7       |
(2 rows)

You can avoid always having to write out a FROM clause to define the output columns, by setting up a custom crosstab function that has the desired output row type wired into its definition. This is described in the next section. Another possibility is to embed the required FROM clause in a view definition.

F.41.1.3. crosstabN(text)

crosstabN(text sql)

The crosstabN functions are examples of how to set up custom wrappers for the general crosstab function, so that you need not write out column names and types in the calling SELECT query. The tablefunc module includes crosstab2, crosstab3, and crosstab4, whose output row types are defined as

CREATE TYPE tablefunc_crosstab_N AS (
    row_name TEXT,
    category_1 TEXT,
    category_2 TEXT,
        .
        .
        .
    category_N TEXT
);

Thus, these functions can be used directly when the input query produces row_name and value columns of type text, and you want 2, 3, or 4 output values columns. In all other ways they behave exactly as described above for the general crosstab function.

For instance, the example given in the previous section would also work as

SELECT *
FROM crosstab3(
  'select rowid, attribute, value
   from ct
   where attribute = ''att2'' or attribute = ''att3''
   order by 1,2');

These functions are provided mostly for illustration purposes. You can create your own return types and functions based on the underlying crosstab() function. There are two ways to do it:

  • Create a composite type describing the desired output columns, similar to the examples in contrib/tablefunc/tablefunc--1.0.sql. Then define a unique function name accepting one text parameter and returning setof your_type_name, but linking to the same underlying crosstab C function. For example, if your source data produces row names that are text, and values that are float8, and you want 5 value columns:

    CREATE TYPE my_crosstab_float8_5_cols AS (
    my_row_name text,
    my_category_1 float8,
    my_category_2 float8,
    my_category_3 float8,
    my_category_4 float8,
    my_category_5 float8
);

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION crosstab_float8_5_cols(text)
    RETURNS setof my_crosstab_float8_5_cols
    AS '$libdir/tablefunc','crosstab' LANGUAGE C STABLE STRICT;

  • Use OUT parameters to define the return type implicitly. The same example could also be done this way:

    CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION crosstab_float8_5_cols(
    IN text,
    OUT my_row_name text,
    OUT my_category_1 float8,
    OUT my_category_2 float8,
    OUT my_category_3 float8,
    OUT my_category_4 float8,
    OUT my_category_5 float8)
  RETURNS setof record
  AS '$libdir/tablefunc','crosstab' LANGUAGE C STABLE STRICT;

F.41.1.4. crosstab(text, text)

crosstab(text source_sql, text category_sql)

The main limitation of the single-parameter form of crosstab is that it treats all values in a group alike, inserting each value into the first available column. If you want the value columns to correspond to specific categories of data, and some groups might not have data for some of the categories, that doesn't work well. The two-parameter form of crosstab handles this case by providing an explicit list of the categories corresponding to the output columns.

source_sql is a SQL statement that produces the source set of data. This statement must return one row_name column, one category column, and one value column. It may also have one or more "extra" columns. The row_name column must be first. The category and value columns must be the last two columns, in that order. Any columns between row_name and category are treated as "extra". The "extra" columns are expected to be the same for all rows with the same row_name value.

For example, source_sql might produce a set something like:

SELECT row_name, extra_col, cat, value FROM foo ORDER BY 1;

 row_name    extra_col   cat    value
----------+------------+-----+---------
  row1         extra1    cat1    val1
  row1         extra1    cat2    val2
  row1         extra1    cat4    val4
  row2         extra2    cat1    val5
  row2         extra2    cat2    val6
  row2         extra2    cat3    val7
  row2         extra2    cat4    val8

category_sql is a SQL statement that produces the set of categories. This statement must return only one column. It must produce at least one row, or an error will be generated. Also, it must not produce duplicate values, or an error will be generated. category_sql might be something like:

SELECT DISTINCT cat FROM foo ORDER BY 1;
    cat
  -------
    cat1
    cat2
    cat3
    cat4

The crosstab function is declared to return setof record, so the actual names and types of the output columns must be defined in the FROM clause of the calling SELECT statement, for example:

SELECT * FROM crosstab('...', '...')
    AS ct(row_name text, extra text, cat1 text, cat2 text, cat3 text, cat4 text);

This will produce a result something like:

                  <==  value  columns   ==>
row_name   extra   cat1   cat2   cat3   cat4
---------+-------+------+------+------+------
  row1     extra1  val1   val2          val4
  row2     extra2  val5   val6   val7   val8

The FROM clause must define the proper number of output columns of the proper data types. If there are N columns in the source_sql query's result, the first N-2 of them must match up with the first N-2 output columns. The remaining output columns must have the type of the last column of the source_sql query's result, and there must be exactly as many of them as there are rows in the category_sql query's result.

The crosstab function produces one output row for each consecutive group of input rows with the same row_name value. The output row_name column, plus any "extra" columns, are copied from the first row of the group. The output value columns are filled with the value fields from rows having matching category values. If a row's category does not match any output of the category_sql query, its value is ignored. Output columns whose matching category is not present in any input row of the group are filled with nulls.

In practice the source_sql query should always specify ORDER BY 1 to ensure that values with the same row_name are brought together. However, ordering of the categories within a group is not important. Also, it is essential to be sure that the order of the category_sql query's output matches the specified output column order.

Here are two complete examples:

create table sales(year int, month int, qty int);
insert into sales values(2007, 1, 1000);
insert into sales values(2007, 2, 1500);
insert into sales values(2007, 7, 500);
insert into sales values(2007, 11, 1500);
insert into sales values(2007, 12, 2000);
insert into sales values(2008, 1, 1000);

select * from crosstab(
  'select year, month, qty from sales order by 1',
  'select m from generate_series(1,12) m'
) as (
  year int,
  "Jan" int,
  "Feb" int,
  "Mar" int,
  "Apr" int,
  "May" int,
  "Jun" int,
  "Jul" int,
  "Aug" int,
  "Sep" int,
  "Oct" int,
  "Nov" int,
  "Dec" int
);
 year | Jan  | Feb  | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov  | Dec
------+------+------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+------+------
 2007 | 1000 | 1500 |     |     |     |     | 500 |     |     |     | 1500 | 2000
 2008 | 1000 |      |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |      |
(2 rows)

CREATE TABLE cth(rowid text, rowdt timestamp, attribute text, val text);
INSERT INTO cth VALUES('test1','01 March 2003','temperature','42');
INSERT INTO cth VALUES('test1','01 March 2003','test_result','PASS');
INSERT INTO cth VALUES('test1','01 March 2003','volts','2.6987');
INSERT INTO cth VALUES('test2','02 March 2003','temperature','53');
INSERT INTO cth VALUES('test2','02 March 2003','test_result','FAIL');
INSERT INTO cth VALUES('test2','02 March 2003','test_startdate','01 March 2003');
INSERT INTO cth VALUES('test2','02 March 2003','volts','3.1234');

SELECT * FROM crosstab
(
  'SELECT rowid, rowdt, attribute, val FROM cth ORDER BY 1',
  'SELECT DISTINCT attribute FROM cth ORDER BY 1'
)
AS
(
       rowid text,
       rowdt timestamp,
       temperature int4,
       test_result text,
       test_startdate timestamp,
       volts float8
);
 rowid |          rowdt           | temperature | test_result |      test_startdate      | volts
-------+--------------------------+-------------+-------------+--------------------------+--------
 test1 | Sat Mar 01 00:00:00 2003 |          42 | PASS        |                          | 2.6987
 test2 | Sun Mar 02 00:00:00 2003 |          53 | FAIL        | Sat Mar 01 00:00:00 2003 | 3.1234
(2 rows)

You can create predefined functions to avoid having to write out the result column names and types in each query. See the examples in the previous section. The underlying C function for this form of crosstab is named crosstab_hash.

F.41.1.5. connectby

connectby(text relname, text keyid_fld, text parent_keyid_fld
          [, text orderby_fld ], text start_with, int max_depth
          [, text branch_delim ])

The connectby function produces a display of hierarchical data that is stored in a table. The table must have a key field that uniquely identifies rows, and a parent-key field that references the parent (if any) of each row. connectby can display the sub-tree descending from any row.

Table F-28 explains the parameters.

Table F-28. connectby Parameters

Parameter | Description
relname | Name of the source relation
keyid_fld | Name of the key field
parent_keyid_fld | Name of the parent-key field
orderby_fld | Name of the field to order siblings by (optional)
start_with | Key value of the row to start at
max_depth | Maximum depth to descend to, or zero for unlimited depth
branch_delim | String to separate keys with in branch output (optional)

The key and parent-key fields can be any data type, but they must be the same type. Note that the start_with value must be entered as a text string, regardless of the type of the key field.

The connectby function is declared to return setof record, so the actual names and types of the output columns must be defined in the FROM clause of the calling SELECT statement, for example:

SELECT * FROM connectby('connectby_tree', 'keyid', 'parent_keyid', 'pos', 'row2', 0, '~')
    AS t(keyid text, parent_keyid text, level int, branch text, pos int);

The first two output columns are used for the current row's key and its parent row's key; they must match the type of the table's key field. The third output column is the depth in the tree and must be of type integer. If a branch_delim parameter was given, the next output column is the branch display and must be of type text. Finally, if an orderby_fld parameter was given, the last output column is a serial number, and must be of type integer.

The "branch" output column shows the path of keys taken to reach the current row. The keys are separated by the specified branch_delim string. If no branch display is wanted, omit both the branch_delim parameter and the branch column in the output column list.

If the ordering of siblings of the same parent is important, include the orderby_fld parameter to specify which field to order siblings by. This field can be of any sortable data type. The output column list must include a final integer serial-number column, if and only if orderby_fld is specified.

The parameters representing table and field names are copied as-is into the SQL queries that connectby generates internally. Therefore, include double quotes if the names are mixed-case or contain special characters. You may also need to schema-qualify the table name.

In large tables, performance will be poor unless there is an index on the parent-key field.

It is important that the branch_delim string not appear in any key values, else connectby may incorrectly report an infinite-recursion error. Note that if branch_delim is not provided, a default value of ~ is used for recursion detection purposes.

Here is an example:

CREATE TABLE connectby_tree(keyid text, parent_keyid text, pos int);

INSERT INTO connectby_tree VALUES('row1',NULL, 0);
INSERT INTO connectby_tree VALUES('row2','row1', 0);
INSERT INTO connectby_tree VALUES('row3','row1', 0);
INSERT INTO connectby_tree VALUES('row4','row2', 1);
INSERT INTO connectby_tree VALUES('row5','row2', 0);
INSERT INTO connectby_tree VALUES('row6','row4', 0);
INSERT INTO connectby_tree VALUES('row7','row3', 0);
INSERT INTO connectby_tree VALUES('row8','row6', 0);
INSERT INTO connectby_tree VALUES('row9','row5', 0);

-- with branch, without orderby_fld (order of results is not guaranteed)
SELECT * FROM connectby('connectby_tree', 'keyid', 'parent_keyid', 'row2', 0, '~')
 AS t(keyid text, parent_keyid text, level int, branch text);
 keyid | parent_keyid | level |       branch
-------+--------------+-------+---------------------
 row2  |              |     0 | row2
 row4  | row2         |     1 | row2~row4
 row6  | row4         |     2 | row2~row4~row6
 row8  | row6         |     3 | row2~row4~row6~row8
 row5  | row2         |     1 | row2~row5
 row9  | row5         |     2 | row2~row5~row9
(6 rows)

-- without branch, without orderby_fld (order of results is not guaranteed)
SELECT * FROM connectby('connectby_tree', 'keyid', 'parent_keyid', 'row2', 0)
 AS t(keyid text, parent_keyid text, level int);
 keyid | parent_keyid | level
-------+--------------+-------
 row2  |              |     0
 row4  | row2         |     1
 row6  | row4         |     2
 row8  | row6         |     3
 row5  | row2         |     1
 row9  | row5         |     2
(6 rows)

-- with branch, with orderby_fld (notice that row5 comes before row4)
SELECT * FROM connectby('connectby_tree', 'keyid', 'parent_keyid', 'pos', 'row2', 0, '~')
 AS t(keyid text, parent_keyid text, level int, branch text, pos int);
 keyid | parent_keyid | level |       branch        | pos
-------+--------------+-------+---------------------+-----
 row2  |              |     0 | row2                |   1
 row5  | row2         |     1 | row2~row5           |   2
 row9  | row5         |     2 | row2~row5~row9      |   3
 row4  | row2         |     1 | row2~row4           |   4
 row6  | row4         |     2 | row2~row4~row6      |   5
 row8  | row6         |     3 | row2~row4~row6~row8 |   6
(6 rows)

-- without branch, with orderby_fld (notice that row5 comes before row4)
SELECT * FROM connectby('connectby_tree', 'keyid', 'parent_keyid', 'pos', 'row2', 0)
 AS t(keyid text, parent_keyid text, level int, pos int);
 keyid | parent_keyid | level | pos
-------+--------------+-------+-----
 row2  |              |     0 |   1
 row5  | row2         |     1 |   2
 row9  | row5         |     2 |   3
 row4  | row2         |     1 |   4
 row6  | row4         |     2 |   5
 row8  | row6         |     3 |   6
(6 rows)

F.41.2. Author

Joe Conway

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F.42. test_parser

test_parser is an example of a custom parser for full-text search. It doesn't do anything especially useful, but can serve as a starting point for developing your own parser.

test_parser recognizes words separated by white space, and returns just two token types:

mydb=# SELECT * FROM ts_token_type('testparser');
 tokid | alias |  description
-------+-------+---------------
     3 | word  | Word
    12 | blank | Space symbols
(2 rows)

These token numbers have been chosen to be compatible with the default parser's numbering. This allows us to use its headline() function, thus keeping the example simple.

F.42.1. Usage

Installing the test_parser extension creates a text search parser testparser. It has no user-configurable parameters.

You can test the parser with, for example,

mydb=# SELECT * FROM ts_parse('testparser', 'That''s my first own parser');
 tokid | token
-------+--------
     3 | That's
    12 |
     3 | my
    12 |
     3 | first
    12 |
     3 | own
    12 |
     3 | parser

Real-world use requires setting up a text search configuration that uses the parser. For example,

mydb=# CREATE TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION testcfg ( PARSER = testparser );
CREATE TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION

mydb=# ALTER TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION testcfg
mydb-#   ADD MAPPING FOR word WITH english_stem;
ALTER TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION

mydb=#  SELECT to_tsvector('testcfg', 'That''s my first own parser');
          to_tsvector
-------------------------------
 'that':1 'first':3 'parser':5
(1 row)

mydb=# SELECT ts_headline('testcfg', 'Supernovae stars are the brightest phenomena in galaxies',
mydb(#                    to_tsquery('testcfg', 'star'));
                           ts_headline
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 Supernovae <b>stars</b> are the brightest phenomena in galaxies
(1 row)

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F.43. tsearch2

The tsearch2 module provides backwards-compatible text search functionality for applications that used tsearch2 before text searching was integrated into core PostgreSQL in release 8.3.

F.43.1. Portability Issues

Although the built-in text search features were based on tsearch2 and are largely similar to it, there are numerous small differences that will create portability issues for existing applications:

  • Some functions' names were changed, for example rank to ts_rank. The replacement tsearch2 module provides aliases having the old names.

  • The built-in text search data types and functions all exist within the system schema pg_catalog. In an installation using tsearch2, these objects would usually have been in the public schema, though some users chose to place them in a separate schema of their own. Explicitly schema-qualified references to the objects will therefore fail in either case. The replacement tsearch2 module provides alias objects that are stored in public (or another schema if necessary) so that such references will still work.

  • There is no concept of a "current parser" or "current dictionary" in the built-in text search features, only of a current search configuration (set by the default_text_search_config parameter). While the current parser and current dictionary were used only by functions intended for debugging, this might still pose a porting obstacle in some cases. The replacement tsearch2 module emulates these additional state variables and provides backwards-compatible functions for setting and retrieving them.

There are some issues that are not addressed by the replacement tsearch2 module, and will therefore require application code changes in any case:

  • The old tsearch2 trigger function allowed items in its argument list to be names of functions to be invoked on the text data before it was converted to tsvector format. This was removed as being a security hole, since it was not possible to guarantee that the function invoked was the one intended. The recommended approach if the data must be massaged before being indexed is to write a custom trigger that does the work for itself.

  • Text search configuration information has been moved into core system catalogs that are noticeably different from the tables used by tsearch2. Any applications that examined or modified those tables will need adjustment.

  • If an application used any custom text search configurations, those will need to be set up in the core catalogs using the new text search configuration SQL commands. The replacement tsearch2 module offers a little bit of support for this by making it possible to load an old set of tsearch2 configuration tables into PostgreSQL 8.3. (Without the module, it is not possible to load the configuration data because values in the regprocedure columns cannot be resolved to functions.) While those configuration tables won't actually do anything, at least their contents will be available to be consulted while setting up an equivalent custom configuration in 8.3.

  • The old reset_tsearch() and get_covers() functions are not supported.

  • The replacement tsearch2 module does not define any alias operators, relying entirely on the built-in ones. This would only pose an issue if an application used explicitly schema-qualified operator names, which is very uncommon.

F.43.2. Converting a pre-8.3 Installation

The recommended way to update a pre-8.3 installation that uses tsearch2 is:

  1. Make a dump from the old installation in the usual way, but be sure not to use -c (--clean) option of pg_dump or pg_dumpall.

  2. In the new installation, create empty database(s) and install the replacement tsearch2 module into each database that will use text search. This must be done before loading the dump data! If your old installation had the tsearch2 objects in a schema other than public, be sure to adjust the CREATE EXTENSION command so that the replacement objects are created in that same schema.

  3. Load the dump data. There will be quite a few errors reported due to failure to recreate the original tsearch2 objects. These errors can be ignored, but this means you cannot restore the dump in a single transaction (eg, you cannot use pg_restore's -1 switch).

  4. Examine the contents of the restored tsearch2 configuration tables (pg_ts_cfg and so on), and create equivalent built-in text search configurations as needed. You may drop the old configuration tables once you've extracted all the useful information from them.

  5. Test your application.

At a later time you may wish to rename application references to the alias text search objects, so that you can eventually uninstall the replacement tsearch2 module.

F.43.3. References

Tsearch2 Development Site http://www.sai.msu.su/~megera/postgres/gist/tsearch/V2/

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F.44. unaccent

unaccent is a text search dictionary that removes accents (diacritic signs) from lexemes. It's a filtering dictionary, which means its output is always passed to the next dictionary (if any), unlike the normal behavior of dictionaries. This allows accent-insensitive processing for full text search.

The current implementation of unaccent cannot be used as a normalizing dictionary for the thesaurus dictionary.

F.44.1. Configuration

An unaccent dictionary accepts the following options:

  • RULES is the base name of the file containing the list of translation rules. This file must be stored in $SHAREDIR/tsearch_data/ (where $SHAREDIR means the PostgreSQL installation's shared-data directory). Its name must end in .rules (which is not to be included in the RULES parameter).

The rules file has the following format:

  • Each line represents a pair, consisting of a character with accent followed by a character without accent. The first is translated into the second. For example,

    À        A
Á        A
Â        A
Ã        A
Ä        A
Å        A
Æ        A

A more complete example, which is directly useful for most European languages, can be found in unaccent.rules, which is installed in $SHAREDIR/tsearch_data/ when the unaccent module is installed.

F.44.2. Usage

Installing the unaccent extension creates a text search template unaccent and a dictionary unaccent based on it. The unaccent dictionary has the default parameter setting RULES='unaccent', which makes it immediately usable with the standard unaccent.rules file. If you wish, you can alter the parameter, for example

mydb=# ALTER TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY unaccent (RULES='my_rules');

or create new dictionaries based on the template.

To test the dictionary, you can try:

mydb=# select ts_lexize('unaccent','Hôtel');
 ts_lexize
-----------
 {Hotel}
(1 row)

Here is an example showing how to insert the unaccent dictionary into a text search configuration:

mydb=# CREATE TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION fr ( COPY = french );
mydb=# ALTER TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION fr
        ALTER MAPPING FOR hword, hword_part, word
        WITH unaccent, french_stem;
mydb=# select to_tsvector('fr','Hôtels de la Mer');
    to_tsvector
-------------------
 'hotel':1 'mer':4
(1 row)

mydb=# select to_tsvector('fr','Hôtel de la Mer') @@ to_tsquery('fr','Hotels');
 ?column?
----------
 t
(1 row)

mydb=# select ts_headline('fr','Hôtel de la Mer',to_tsquery('fr','Hotels'));
      ts_headline
------------------------
 <b>Hôtel</b> de la Mer
(1 row)

F.44.3. Functions

The unaccent() function removes accents (diacritic signs) from a given string. Basically, it's a wrapper around the unaccent dictionary, but it can be used outside normal text search contexts.

unaccent([dictionary, ] string) returns text

For example:

SELECT unaccent('unaccent', 'Hôtel');
SELECT unaccent('Hôtel');

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uuid-ossp

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F.45. uuid-ossp

The uuid-ossp module provides functions to generate universally unique identifiers (UUIDs) using one of several standard algorithms. There are also functions to produce certain special UUID constants.

This module depends on the OSSP UUID library, which can be found at http://www.ossp.org/pkg/lib/uuid/.

F.45.1. uuid-ossp Functions

Table F-29 shows the functions available to generate UUIDs. The relevant standards ITU-T Rec. X.667, ISO/IEC 9834-8:2005, and RFC 4122 specify four algorithms for generating UUIDs, identified by the version numbers 1, 3, 4, and 5. (There is no version 2 algorithm.) Each of these algorithms could be suitable for a different set of applications.

Table F-29. Functions for UUID Generation

Function Description
uuid_generate_v1()

This function generates a version 1 UUID. This involves the MAC address of the computer and a time stamp. Note that UUIDs of this kind reveal the identity of the computer that created the identifier and the time at which it did so, which might make it unsuitable for certain security-sensitive applications.

uuid_generate_v1mc()

This function generates a version 1 UUID but uses a random multicast MAC address instead of the real MAC address of the computer.

uuid_generate_v3(namespace uuid, name text)

This function generates a version 3 UUID in the given namespace using the specified input name. The namespace should be one of the special constants produced by the uuid_ns_*() functions shown in Table F-30. (It could be any UUID in theory.) The name is an identifier in the selected namespace.

For example:

SELECT uuid_generate_v3(uuid_ns_url(), 'http://www.postgresql.org');

The name parameter will be MD5-hashed, so the cleartext cannot be derived from the generated UUID. The generation of UUIDs by this method has no random or environment-dependent element and is therefore reproducible.

uuid_generate_v4()

This function generates a version 4 UUID, which is derived entirely from random numbers.

uuid_generate_v5(namespace uuid, name text)

This function generates a version 5 UUID, which works like a version 3 UUID except that SHA-1 is used as a hashing method. Version 5 should be preferred over version 3 because SHA-1 is thought to be more secure than MD5.

Table F-30. Functions Returning UUID Constants

uuid_nil() | A "nil" UUID constant, which does not occur as a real UUID.
uuid_ns_dns() | Constant designating the DNS namespace for UUIDs.
uuid_ns_url() | Constant designating the URL namespace for UUIDs.
uuid_ns_oid() | Constant designating the ISO object identifier (OID) namespace for UUIDs. (This pertains to ASN.1 OIDs, which are unrelated to the OIDs used in PostgreSQL.)
uuid_ns_x500() | Constant designating the X.500 distinguished name (DN) namespace for UUIDs.

F.45.2. Author

Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net>

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vacuumlo

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F.46. vacuumlo

vacuumlo is a simple utility program that will remove any "orphaned" large objects from a PostgreSQL database. An orphaned large object (LO) is considered to be any LO whose OID does not appear in any oid or lo data column of the database.

If you use this, you may also be interested in the lo_manage trigger in the lo module. lo_manage is useful to try to avoid creating orphaned LOs in the first place.

F.46.1. Usage

vacuumlo [options] database [database2 ... databaseN]

All databases named on the command line are processed. Available options include:

-v

Write a lot of progress messages.

-n

Don't remove anything, just show what would be done.

-l limit

Remove no more than limit large objects per transaction (default 1000). Since the server acquires a lock per LO removed, removing too many LOs in one transaction risks exceeding max_locks_per_transaction. Set the limit to zero if you want all removals done in a single transaction.

-U username

User name to connect as.

-w
--no-password

Never issue a password prompt. If the server requires password authentication and a password is not available by other means such as a .pgpass file, the connection attempt will fail. This option can be useful in batch jobs and scripts where no user is present to enter a password.

-W

Force vacuumlo to prompt for a password before connecting to a database.

This option is never essential, since vacuumlo will automatically prompt for a password if the server demands password authentication. However, vacuumlo will waste a connection attempt finding out that the server wants a password. In some cases it is worth typing -W to avoid the extra connection attempt.

-h hostname

Database server's host.

-p port

Database server's port.

F.46.2. Method

First, vacuumlo builds a temporary table which contains all of the OIDs of the large objects in the selected database.

It then scans through all columns in the database that are of type oid or lo, and removes matching entries from the temporary table. (Note: only types with these names are considered; in particular, domains over them are not considered.)

The remaining entries in the temporary table identify orphaned LOs. These are removed.

F.46.3. Author

Peter Mount <peter@retep.org.uk>

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xml2

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F.47. xml2

The xml2 module provides XPath querying and XSLT functionality.

F.47.1. Deprecation Notice

From PostgreSQL 8.3 on, there is XML-related functionality based on the SQL/XML standard in the core server. That functionality covers XML syntax checking and XPath queries, which is what this module does, and more, but the API is not at all compatible. It is planned that this module will be removed in a future version of PostgreSQL in favor of the newer standard API, so you are encouraged to try converting your applications. If you find that some of the functionality of this module is not available in an adequate form with the newer API, please explain your issue to <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org> so that the deficiency can be addressed.

F.47.2. Description of Functions

Table F-31 shows the functions provided by this module. These functions provide straightforward XML parsing and XPath queries. All arguments are of type text, so for brevity that is not shown.

Table F-31. Functions

Function | Returns | Description
xml_is_well_formed(document) bool

This parses the document text in its parameter and returns true if the document is well-formed XML. (Note: before PostgreSQL 8.2, this function was called xml_valid(). That is the wrong name since validity and well-formedness have different meanings in XML. The old name is still available, but is deprecated.)

xpath_string(document, query) text

These functions evaluate the XPath query on the supplied document, and cast the result to the specified type.

xpath_number(document, query) | float4
xpath_bool(document, query) | bool
xpath_nodeset(document, query, toptag, itemtag) text

This evaluates query on document and wraps the result in XML tags. If the result is multivalued, the output will look like:

<toptag>
<itemtag>Value 1 which could be an XML fragment</itemtag>
<itemtag>Value 2....</itemtag>
</toptag>

If either toptag or itemtag is an empty string, the relevant tag is omitted.

xpath_nodeset(document, query) text

Like xpath_nodeset(document, query, toptag, itemtag) but result omits both tags.

xpath_nodeset(document, query, itemtag) text

Like xpath_nodeset(document, query, toptag, itemtag) but result omits toptag.

xpath_list(document, query, separator) text

This function returns multiple values separated by the specified separator, for example Value 1,Value 2,Value 3 if separator is ,.

xpath_list(document, query) | text | This is a wrapper for the above function that uses , as the separator.

F.47.3. xpath_table

xpath_table(text key, text document, text relation, text xpaths, text criteria) returns setof record

xpath_table is a table function that evaluates a set of XPath queries on each of a set of documents and returns the results as a table. The primary key field from the original document table is returned as the first column of the result so that the result set can readily be used in joins. The parameters are described in Table F-32.

Table F-32. xpath_table Parameters

Parameter | Description
key | the name of the "key" field — this is just a field to be used as the first column of the output table, i.e., it identifies the record from which each output row came (see note below about multiple values)
document | the name of the field containing the XML document
relation | the name of the table or view containing the documents
xpaths | one or more XPath expressions, separated by |
criteria | the contents of the WHERE clause. This cannot be omitted, so use true or 1=1 if you want to process all the rows in the relation

These parameters (except the XPath strings) are just substituted into a plain SQL SELECT statement, so you have some flexibility — the statement is

SELECT <key>, <document> FROM <relation> WHERE <criteria>

so those parameters can be anything valid in those particular locations. The result from this SELECT needs to return exactly two columns (which it will unless you try to list multiple fields for key or document). Beware that this simplistic approach requires that you validate any user-supplied values to avoid SQL injection attacks.

The function has to be used in a FROM expression, with an AS clause to specify the output columns; for example

SELECT * FROM
xpath_table('article_id',
            'article_xml',
            'articles',
            '/article/author|/article/pages|/article/title',
            'date_entered > ''2003-01-01'' ')
AS t(article_id integer, author text, page_count integer, title text);

The AS clause defines the names and types of the columns in the output table. The first is the "key" field and the rest correspond to the XPath queries. If there are more XPath queries than result columns, the extra queries will be ignored. If there are more result columns than XPath queries, the extra columns will be NULL.

Notice that this example defines the page_count result column as an integer. The function deals internally with string representations, so when you say you want an integer in the output, it will take the string representation of the XPath result and use PostgreSQL input functions to transform it into an integer (or whatever type the AS clause requests). An error will result if it can't do this — for example if the result is empty — so you may wish to just stick to text as the column type if you think your data has any problems.

The calling SELECT statement doesn't necessarily have be just SELECT * — it can reference the output columns by name or join them to other tables. The function produces a virtual table with which you can perform any operation you wish (e.g. aggregation, joining, sorting etc). So we could also have:

SELECT t.title, p.fullname, p.email
FROM xpath_table('article_id', 'article_xml', 'articles',
                 '/article/title|/article/author/@id',
                 'xpath_string(article_xml,''/article/@date'') > ''2003-03-20'' ')
       AS t(article_id integer, title text, author_id integer),
     tblPeopleInfo AS p
WHERE t.author_id = p.person_id;

as a more complicated example. Of course, you could wrap all of this in a view for convenience.

F.47.3.1. Multivalued Results

The xpath_table function assumes that the results of each XPath query might be multivalued, so the number of rows returned by the function may not be the same as the number of input documents. The first row returned contains the first result from each query, the second row the second result from each query. If one of the queries has fewer values than the others, null values will be returned instead.

In some cases, a user will know that a given XPath query will return only a single result (perhaps a unique document identifier) — if used alongside an XPath query returning multiple results, the single-valued result will appear only on the first row of the result. The solution to this is to use the key field as part of a join against a simpler XPath query. As an example:

CREATE TABLE test (
    id int PRIMARY KEY,
    xml text
);

INSERT INTO test VALUES (1, '<doc num="C1">
<line num="L1"><a>1</a><b>2</b><c>3</c></line>
<line num="L2"><a>11</a><b>22</b><c>33</c></line>
</doc>');

INSERT INTO test VALUES (2, '<doc num="C2">
<line num="L1"><a>111</a><b>222</b><c>333</c></line>
<line num="L2"><a>111</a><b>222</b><c>333</c></line>
</doc>');

SELECT * FROM
  xpath_table('id','xml','test',
              '/doc/@num|/doc/line/@num|/doc/line/a|/doc/line/b|/doc/line/c',
              'true')
  AS t(id int, doc_num varchar(10), line_num varchar(10), val1 int, val2 int, val3 int)
WHERE id = 1 ORDER BY doc_num, line_num

 id | doc_num | line_num | val1 | val2 | val3
----+---------+----------+------+------+------
  1 | C1      | L1       |    1 |    2 |    3
  1 |         | L2       |   11 |   22 |   33

To get doc_num on every line, the solution is to use two invocations of xpath_table and join the results:

SELECT t.*,i.doc_num FROM
  xpath_table('id', 'xml', 'test',
              '/doc/line/@num|/doc/line/a|/doc/line/b|/doc/line/c',
              'true')
    AS t(id int, line_num varchar(10), val1 int, val2 int, val3 int),
  xpath_table('id', 'xml', 'test', '/doc/@num', 'true')
    AS i(id int, doc_num varchar(10))
WHERE i.id=t.id AND i.id=1
ORDER BY doc_num, line_num;

 id | line_num | val1 | val2 | val3 | doc_num
----+----------+------+------+------+---------
  1 | L1       |    1 |    2 |    3 | C1
  1 | L2       |   11 |   22 |   33 | C1
(2 rows)

F.47.4. XSLT Functions

The following functions are available if libxslt is installed:

F.47.4.1. xslt_process

xslt_process(text document, text stylesheet, text paramlist) returns text

This function applies the XSL stylesheet to the document and returns the transformed result. The paramlist is a list of parameter assignments to be used in the transformation, specified in the form a=1,b=2. Note that the parameter parsing is very simple-minded: parameter values cannot contain commas!

There is also a two-parameter version of xslt_process which does not pass any parameters to the transformation.

F.47.5. Author

John Gray <jgray@azuli.co.uk>

Development of this module was sponsored by Torchbox Ltd. (www.torchbox.com). It has the same BSD licence as PostgreSQL.

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External Projects

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Appendix G. External Projects

Table of Contents
G.1. Client Interfaces
G.2. Administration Tools
G.3. Procedural Languages
G.4. Extensions

PostgreSQL is a complex software project, and managing the project is difficult. We have found that many enhancements to PostgreSQL can be more efficiently developed separately from the core project.

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Client Interfaces

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G.1. Client Interfaces

There are only two client interfaces included in the base PostgreSQL distribution:

  • libpq is included because it is the primary C language interface, and because many other client interfaces are built on top of it.

  • ECPG is included because it depends on the server-side SQL grammar, and is therefore sensitive to changes in PostgreSQL itself.

All other language interfaces are external projects and are distributed separately. Table G-1 includes a list of some of these projects. Note that some of these packages might not be released under the same license as PostgreSQL. For more information on each language interface, including licensing terms, refer to its website and documentation.

Table G-1. Externally Maintained Client Interfaces

Name | Language | Comments | Website
DBD::Pg | Perl | Perl DBI driver | http://search.cpan.org/dist/DBD-Pg/
JDBC | JDBC | Type 4 JDBC driver | http://jdbc.postgresql.org/
libpqxx | C++ | New-style C++ interface | http://pqxx.org/
Npgsql | .NET | .NET data provider | http://www.npgsql.org/
pgtclng | Tcl |  | http://sourceforge.net/projects/pgtclng/
psqlODBC | ODBC | ODBC driver | https://odbc.postgresql.org/
psycopg | Python | DB API 2.0-compliant | http://initd.org/psycopg/
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Administration Tools

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G.2. Administration Tools

There are several administration tools available for PostgreSQL. The most popular is pgAdmin III, and there are several commercially available ones as well.

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Procedural Languages

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G.3. Procedural Languages

PostgreSQL includes several procedural languages with the base distribution: PL/pgSQL, PL/Tcl, PL/Perl, and PL/Python.

In addition, there are a number of procedural languages that are developed and maintained outside the core PostgreSQL distribution. Table G-2 lists some of these packages. Note that some of these projects might not be released under the same license as PostgreSQL. For more information on each procedural language, including licensing information, refer to its website and documentation.

Table G-2. Externally Maintained Procedural Languages

Name | Language | Website
PL/Java | Java | https://github.com/tada/pljava
PL/PHP | PHP | http://www.commandprompt.com/community/plphp/
PL/Py | Python | http://python.projects.postgresql.org/
PL/R | R | http://www.joeconway.com/plr/
PL/Ruby | Ruby | http://raa.ruby-lang.org/project/pl-ruby/
PL/Scheme | Scheme | http://plscheme.projects.postgresql.org/
PL/sh | Unix shell | https://github.com/petere/plsh
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Extensions

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G.4. Extensions

PostgreSQL is designed to be easily extensible. For this reason, extensions loaded into the database can function just like features that are built in. The contrib/ directory shipped with the source code contains several extensions, which are described in Appendix F. Other extensions are developed independently, like PostGIS. Even PostgreSQL replication solutions can be developed externally. For example, Slony-I is a popular master/standby replication solution that is developed independently from the core project.

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The Source Code Repository

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Appendix H. The Source Code Repository

The PostgreSQL source code is stored and managed using the Git version control system. A public mirror of the master repository is available; it is updated within a minute of any change to the master repository.

Our wiki, http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Working_with_Git, has some discussion on working with Git.

Note that building PostgreSQL from the source repository requires reasonably up-to-date versions of bison, flex, and Perl. These tools are not needed to build from a distribution tarball since the files they are used to build are included in the tarball. Other tool requirements are the same as shown in Chapter 15.

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Documentation

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Appendix I. Documentation

Table of Contents
I.1. DocBook
I.2. Tool Sets
I.3. Building The Documentation
I.4. Documentation Authoring
I.5. Style Guide

PostgreSQL has four primary documentation formats:

  • Plain text, for pre-installation information

  • HTML, for on-line browsing and reference

  • PDF or PostScript, for printing

  • man pages, for quick reference.

Additionally, a number of plain-text README files can be found throughout the PostgreSQL source tree, documenting various implementation issues.

HTML documentation and man pages are part of a standard distribution and are installed by default. PDF and PostScript format documentation is available separately for download.

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DocBook

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I.1. DocBook

The documentation sources are written in DocBook, which is a markup language superficially similar to HTML. Both of these languages are applications of the Standard Generalized Markup Language, SGML, which is essentially a language for describing other languages. In what follows, the terms DocBook and SGML are both used, but technically they are not interchangeable.

DocBook allows an author to specify the structure and content of a technical document without worrying about presentation details. A document style defines how that content is rendered into one of several final forms. DocBook is maintained by the OASIS group. The official DocBook site has good introductory and reference documentation and a complete O'Reilly book for your online reading pleasure. The NewbieDoc Docbook Guide is very helpful for beginners. The FreeBSD Documentation Project also uses DocBook and has some good information, including a number of style guidelines that might be worth considering.

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Tool Sets

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I.2. Tool Sets

The following tools are used to process the documentation. Some might be optional, as noted.

DocBook DTD

This is the definition of DocBook itself. We currently use version 4.2; you cannot use later or earlier versions. You need the SGML variant of the DocBook DTD, but to build man pages you also need the XML variant of the same version.

ISO 8879 character entities

These are required by DocBook but are distributed separately because they are maintained by ISO.

DocBook DSSSL Stylesheets

These contain the processing instructions for converting the DocBook sources to other formats, such as HTML.

DocBook XSL Stylesheets

This is another stylesheet for converting DocBook to other formats. We currently use this to produce man pages and optionally HTMLHelp. You can also use this toolchain to produce HTML or PDF output, but official PostgreSQL releases use the DSSSL stylesheets for that.

OpenJade

This is the base package of SGML processing. It contains an SGML parser, a DSSSL processor (that is, a program to convert SGML to other formats using DSSSL stylesheets), as well as a number of related tools. Jade is now being maintained by the OpenJade group, no longer by James Clark.

Libxslt for xsltproc

This is the processing tool to use with the XSLT stylesheets (like jade is the processing tool for DSSSL stylesheets).

JadeTeX

If you want to, you can also install JadeTeX to use TeX as a formatting backend for Jade. JadeTeX can create PostScript or PDF files (the latter with bookmarks).

However, the output from JadeTeX is inferior to what you get from the RTF backend. Particular problem areas are tables and various artifacts of vertical and horizontal spacing. Also, there is no opportunity to manually polish the results.

We have documented experience with several installation methods for the various tools that are needed to process the documentation. These will be described below. There might be some other packaged distributions for these tools. Please report package status to the documentation mailing list, and we will include that information here.

I.2.1. Linux RPM Installation

Most vendors provide a complete RPM set for DocBook processing in their distribution. Look for an "SGML" option while installing, or the following packages: sgml-common, docbook, stylesheets, openjade (or jade). Possibly sgml-tools will be needed as well. If your distributor does not provide these then you should be able to make use of the packages from some other, reasonably compatible vendor.

I.2.2. FreeBSD Installation

The FreeBSD Documentation Project is itself a heavy user of DocBook, so it comes as no surprise that there is a full set of "ports" of the documentation tools available on FreeBSD. The following ports need to be installed to build the documentation on FreeBSD.

  • textproc/sp

  • textproc/openjade

  • textproc/iso8879

  • textproc/dsssl-docbook-modular

  • textproc/docbook-420

A number of things from /usr/ports/print (tex, jadetex) might also be of interest.

It's possible that the ports do not update the main catalog file in /usr/local/share/sgml/catalog.ports or that the order isn't proper. Be sure to have the following lines in the beginning of the file:

CATALOG "openjade/catalog"
CATALOG "iso8879/catalog"
CATALOG "docbook/dsssl/modular/catalog"
CATALOG "docbook/4.2/catalog"

If you do not want to edit the file you can also set the environment variable SGML_CATALOG_FILES to a colon-separated list of catalog files (such as the one above).

More information about the FreeBSD documentation tools can be found in the FreeBSD Documentation Project's instructions.

I.2.3. Debian Packages

There is a full set of packages of the documentation tools available for Debian GNU/Linux. To install, simply use:

apt-get install docbook docbook-dsssl docbook-xsl openjade1.3 xsltproc

I.2.4. Manual Installation from Source

The manual installation process of the DocBook tools is somewhat complex, so if you have pre-built packages available, use them. We describe here only a standard setup, with reasonably standard installation paths, and no "fancy" features. For details, you should study the documentation of the respective package, and read SGML introductory material.

I.2.4.1. Installing OpenJade

  1. The installation of OpenJade offers a GNU-style ./configure; make; make install build process. Details can be found in the OpenJade source distribution. In a nutshell:

    ./configure --enable-default-catalog=/usr/local/share/sgml/catalog
make
make install

    Be sure to remember where you put the "default catalog"; you will need it below. You can also leave it off, but then you will have to set the environment variable SGML_CATALOG_FILES to point to the file whenever you use jade later on. (This method is also an option if OpenJade is already installed and you want to install the rest of the toolchain locally.)

    Note: Some users have reported encountering a segmentation fault using openjade 1.4devel to build the PDFs, with a message like:

    openjade:./stylesheet.dsl:664:2:E: flow object not accepted by port; only display flow objects accepted
make: *** [postgres-A4.tex-pdf] Segmentation fault

    Downgrading to openjade 1.3 should get rid of this error.

  2. Additionally, you should install the files dsssl.dtd, fot.dtd, style-sheet.dtd, and catalog from the dsssl directory somewhere, perhaps into /usr/local/share/sgml/dsssl. It's probably easiest to copy the entire directory:

    cp -R dsssl /usr/local/share/sgml

  3. Finally, create the file /usr/local/share/sgml/catalog and add this line to it:

    CATALOG "dsssl/catalog"

    (This is a relative path reference to the file installed in step 2. Be sure to adjust it if you chose your installation layout differently.)

I.2.4.2. Installing the DocBook DTD Kit

  1. Obtain the DocBook V4.2 distribution.

  2. Create the directory /usr/local/share/sgml/docbook-4.2 and change to it. (The exact location is irrelevant, but this one is reasonable within the layout we are following here.)

    $ mkdir /usr/local/share/sgml/docbook-4.2
$ cd /usr/local/share/sgml/docbook-4.2

  3. Unpack the archive:

    $ unzip -a ...../docbook-4.2.zip

    (The archive will unpack its files into the current directory.)

  4. Edit the file /usr/local/share/sgml/catalog (or whatever you told jade during installation) and put a line like this into it:

    CATALOG "docbook-4.2/docbook.cat"

  5. Download the ISO 8879 character entities archive, unpack it, and put the files in the same directory you put the DocBook files in:

    $ cd /usr/local/share/sgml/docbook-4.2
$ unzip ...../ISOEnts.zip

  6. Run the following command in the directory with the DocBook and ISO files:

    perl -pi -e 's/iso-(.*).gml/ISO\1/g' docbook.cat

    (This fixes a mixup between the names used in the DocBook catalog file and the actual names of the ISO character entity files.)

I.2.4.3. Installing the DocBook DSSSL Style Sheets

To install the style sheets, unzip and untar the distribution and move it to a suitable place, for example /usr/local/share/sgml. (The archive will automatically create a subdirectory.)

$ gunzip docbook-dsssl-1.xx.tar.gz
$ tar -C /usr/local/share/sgml -xf docbook-dsssl-1.xx.tar

The usual catalog entry in /usr/local/share/sgml/catalog can also be made:

CATALOG "docbook-dsssl-1.xx/catalog"

Because stylesheets change rather often, and it's sometimes beneficial to try out alternative versions, PostgreSQL doesn't use this catalog entry. See Section I.2.5 for information about how to select the stylesheets instead.

I.2.4.4. Installing JadeTeX

To install and use JadeTeX, you will need a working installation of TeX and LaTeX2e, including the supported tools and graphics packages, Babel, AMS fonts and AMS-LaTeX, the PSNFSS extension and companion kit of "the 35 fonts", the dvips program for generating PostScript, the macro packages fancyhdr, hyperref, minitoc, url and ot2enc. All of these can be found on your friendly neighborhood CTAN site. The installation of the TeX base system is far beyond the scope of this introduction. Binary packages should be available for any system that can run TeX.

Before you can use JadeTeX with the PostgreSQL documentation sources, you will need to increase the size of TeX's internal data structures. Details on this can be found in the JadeTeX installation instructions.

Once that is finished you can install JadeTeX:

$ gunzip jadetex-xxx.tar.gz
$ tar xf jadetex-xxx.tar
$ cd jadetex
$ make install
$ mktexlsr

The last two need to be done as root.

I.2.5. Detection by configure

Before you can build the documentation you need to run the configure script as you would when building the PostgreSQL programs themselves. Check the output near the end of the run, it should look something like this:

checking for onsgmls... onsgmls
checking for openjade... openjade
checking for DocBook V4.2... yes
checking for DocBook stylesheets... /usr/share/sgml/docbook/stylesheet/dsssl/modular
checking for collateindex.pl... /usr/bin/collateindex.pl
checking for xsltproc... xsltproc
checking for osx... osx

If neither onsgmls nor nsgmls were found then some of the following tests will be skipped. nsgmls is part of the Jade package. You can pass the environment variables JADE and NSGMLS to configure to point to the programs if they are not found automatically. If "DocBook V4.2" was not found then you did not install the DocBook DTD kit in a place where Jade can find it, or you have not set up the catalog files correctly. See the installation hints above. The DocBook stylesheets are looked for in a number of relatively standard places, but if you have them some other place then you should set the environment variable DOCBOOKSTYLE to the location and rerun configure afterwards.

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DocBook | Up | Building The Documentation


Building The Documentation

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I.3. Building The Documentation

Once you have everything set up, change to the directory doc/src/sgml and run one of the commands described in the following subsections to build the documentation. (Remember to use GNU make.)

I.3.1. HTML

To build the HTML version of the documentation:

doc/src/sgml$ gmake html

This is also the default target. The output appears in the subdirectory html.

To create a proper index, the build might process several identical stages. If you do not care about the index, and just want to proof-read the output, use draft:

doc/src/sgml$ gmake draft

To build the documentation as a single HTML page, use:

doc/src/sgml$ gmake postgres.html

I.3.2. Manpages

We use the DocBook XSL stylesheets to convert DocBook refentry pages to *roff output suitable for man pages. The man pages are also distributed as a tar archive, similar to the HTML version. To create the man pages, use the commands:

cd doc/src/sgml
gmake man

I.3.3. Print Output via JadeTeX

If you want to use JadeTex to produce a printable rendition of the documentation, you can use one of the following commands:

  • To generate PostScript via DVI in A4 format:

    doc/src/sgml$ gmake postgres-A4.ps

    In U.S. letter format:

    doc/src/sgml$ gmake postgres-US.ps

  • To make a PDF:

    doc/src/sgml$ gmake postgres-A4.pdf

    or:

    doc/src/sgml$ gmake postgres-US.pdf

    (Of course you can also make a PDF version from the PostScript, but if you generate PDF directly, it will have hyperlinks and other enhanced features.)

When using JadeTeX to build the PostgreSQL documentation, you will probably need to increase some of TeX's internal parameters. These can be set in the file texmf.cnf. The following settings worked at the time of this writing:

hash_extra.jadetex  = 200000
hash_extra.pdfjadetex  = 200000
pool_size.jadetex = 2000000
pool_size.pdfjadetex = 2000000
string_vacancies.jadetex = 150000
string_vacancies.pdfjadetex = 150000
max_strings.jadetex = 300000
max_strings.pdfjadetex = 300000
save_size.jadetex = 15000
save_size.pdfjadetex = 15000

I.3.4. Overflow Text

Occasionally text is too wide for the printed margins, and in extreme cases, too wide for the printed page, e.g. non-wrapped text, wide tables. Overly wide text generates "Overfull hbox" messages in the TeX log output file, e.g. postgres-US.log or postgres-A4.log. There are 72 points in an inch so anything reported as over 72 points too wide will probably not fit on the printed page (assuming one inch margins). To find the SGML text causing the overflow, find the first page number mentioned above the overflow message, e.g. [50 ###] (page 50), and look at the page after that (e.g. page 51) in the PDF file to see the overflow text and adjust the SGML accordingly.

I.3.5. Print Output via RTF

You can also create a printable version of the PostgreSQL documentation by converting it to RTF and applying minor formatting corrections using an office suite. Depending on the capabilities of the particular office suite, you can then convert the documentation to PostScript of PDF. The procedure below illustrates this process using Applixware.

Note: It appears that current versions of the PostgreSQL documentation trigger some bug in or exceed the size limit of OpenJade. If the build process of the RTF version hangs for a long time and the output file still has size 0, then you might have hit that problem. (But keep in mind that a normal build takes 5 to 10 minutes, so don't abort too soon.)

Applixware RTF Cleanup

OpenJade omits specifying a default style for body text. In the past, this undiagnosed problem led to a long process of table of contents generation. However, with great help from the Applixware folks the symptom was diagnosed and a workaround is available.

  1. Generate the RTF version by typing:

    doc/src/sgml$ gmake postgres.rtf

  2. Repair the RTF file to correctly specify all styles, in particular the default style. If the document contains refentry sections, one must also replace formatting hints which tie a preceding paragraph to the current paragraph, and instead tie the current paragraph to the following one. A utility, fixrtf, is available in doc/src/sgml to accomplish these repairs:

    doc/src/sgml$ ./fixrtf --refentry postgres.rtf

    The script adds {\s0 Normal;} as the zeroth style in the document. According to Applixware, the RTF standard would prohibit adding an implicit zeroth style, though Microsoft Word happens to handle this case. For repairing refentry sections, the script replaces \keepn tags with \keep.

  3. Open a new document in Applixware Words and then import the RTF file.

  4. Generate a new table of contents (ToC) using Applixware.

    1. Select the existing ToC lines, from the beginning of the first character on the first line to the last character of the last line.

    2. Build a new ToC using Tools->Book Building->Create Table of Contents. Select the first three levels of headers for inclusion in the ToC. This will replace the existing lines imported in the RTF with a native Applixware ToC.

    3. Adjust the ToC formatting by using Format->Style, selecting each of the three ToC styles, and adjusting the indents for First and Left. Use the following values:

      Style | First Indent (inches) | Left Indent (inches)
      TOC-Heading 1 | 0.4 | 0.4
      TOC-Heading 2 | 0.8 | 0.8
      TOC-Heading 3 | 1.2 | 1.2

  5. Work through the document to:

    • Adjust page breaks.

    • Adjust table column widths.

  6. Replace the right-justified page numbers in the Examples and Figures portions of the ToC with correct values. This only takes a few minutes.

  7. Delete the index section from the document if it is empty.

  8. Regenerate and adjust the table of contents.

    1. Select the ToC field.

    2. Select Tools->Book Building->Create Table of Contents.

    3. Unbind the ToC by selecting Tools->Field Editing->Unprotect.

    4. Delete the first line in the ToC, which is an entry for the ToC itself.

  9. Save the document as native Applixware Words format to allow easier last minute editing later.

  10. "Print" the document to a file in PostScript format.

I.3.6. Plain Text Files

The installation instructions are also distributed as plain text, in case they are needed in a situation where better reading tools are not available. The INSTALL file corresponds to Chapter 15, with some minor changes to account for the different context. To recreate the file, change to the directory doc/src/sgml and enter gmake INSTALL.

In the past, the release notes and regression testing instructions were also distributed as plain text, but this practice has been discontinued.

I.3.7. Syntax Check

Building the documentation can take very long. But there is a method to just check the correct syntax of the documentation files, which only takes a few seconds:

doc/src/sgml$ gmake check

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Tool Sets | Up | Documentation Authoring


Documentation Authoring

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I.4. Documentation Authoring

SGML and DocBook do not suffer from an oversupply of open-source authoring tools. The most common tool set is the Emacs/XEmacs editor with appropriate editing mode. On some systems these tools are provided in a typical full installation.

I.4.1. Emacs/PSGML

PSGML is the most common and most powerful mode for editing SGML documents. When properly configured, it will allow you to use Emacs to insert tags and check markup consistency. You could use it for HTML as well. Check the PSGML web site for downloads, installation instructions, and detailed documentation.

There is one important thing to note with PSGML: its author assumed that your main SGML DTD directory would be /usr/local/lib/sgml. If, as in the examples in this chapter, you use /usr/local/share/sgml, you have to compensate for this, either by setting SGML_CATALOG_FILES environment variable, or you can customize your PSGML installation (its manual tells you how).

Put the following in your ~/.emacs environment file (adjusting the path names to be appropriate for your system):

; ********** for SGML mode (psgml)

(setq sgml-omittag t)
(setq sgml-shorttag t)
(setq sgml-minimize-attributes nil)
(setq sgml-always-quote-attributes t)
(setq sgml-indent-step 1)
(setq sgml-indent-data t)
(setq sgml-parent-document nil)
(setq sgml-exposed-tags nil)
(setq sgml-catalog-files '("/usr/local/share/sgml/catalog"))

(autoload 'sgml-mode "psgml" "Major mode to edit SGML files." t )

and in the same file add an entry for SGML into the (existing) definition for auto-mode-alist:

(setq
  auto-mode-alist
  '(("\\.sgml$" . sgml-mode)
   ))

You might find that when using PSGML, a comfortable way of working with these separate files of book parts is to insert a proper DOCTYPE declaration while you're editing them. If you are working on this source, for instance, it is an appendix chapter, so you would specify the document as an "appendix" instance of a DocBook document by making the first line look like this:

<!DOCTYPE appendix PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook V4.2//EN">

This means that anything and everything that reads SGML will get it right, and I can verify the document with nsgmls -s docguide.sgml. (But you need to take out that line before building the entire documentation set.)

I.4.2. Other Emacs Modes

GNU Emacs ships with a different SGML mode, which is not quite as powerful as PSGML, but it's less confusing and lighter weight. Also, it offers syntax highlighting (font lock), which can be very helpful. src/tools/editors/emacs.samples contains sample settings for this mode.

Norm Walsh offers a major mode specifically for DocBook which also has font-lock and a number of features to reduce typing.

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Building The Documentation | Up | Style Guide


Style Guide

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I.5. Style Guide

I.5.1. Reference Pages

Reference pages should follow a standard layout. This allows users to find the desired information more quickly, and it also encourages writers to document all relevant aspects of a command. Consistency is not only desired among PostgreSQL reference pages, but also with reference pages provided by the operating system and other packages. Hence the following guidelines have been developed. They are for the most part consistent with similar guidelines established by various operating systems.

Reference pages that describe executable commands should contain the following sections, in this order. Sections that do not apply can be omitted. Additional top-level sections should only be used in special circumstances; often that information belongs in the "Usage" section.

Name

This section is generated automatically. It contains the command name and a half-sentence summary of its functionality.

Synopsis

This section contains the syntax diagram of the command. The synopsis should normally not list each command-line option; that is done below. Instead, list the major components of the command line, such as where input and output files go.

Description

Several paragraphs explaining what the command does.

Options

A list describing each command-line option. If there are a lot of options, subsections can be used.

Exit Status

If the program uses 0 for success and non-zero for failure, then you do not need to document it. If there is a meaning behind the different non-zero exit codes, list them here.

Usage

Describe any sublanguage or run-time interface of the program. If the program is not interactive, this section can usually be omitted. Otherwise, this section is a catch-all for describing run-time features. Use subsections if appropriate.

Environment

List all environment variables that the program might use. Try to be complete; even seemingly trivial variables like SHELL might be of interest to the user.

Files

List any files that the program might access implicitly. That is, do not list input and output files that were specified on the command line, but list configuration files, etc.

Diagnostics

Explain any unusual output that the program might create. Refrain from listing every possible error message. This is a lot of work and has little use in practice. But if, say, the error messages have a standard format that the user can parse, this would be the place to explain it.

Notes

Anything that doesn't fit elsewhere, but in particular bugs, implementation flaws, security considerations, compatibility issues.

Examples

Examples

History

If there were some major milestones in the history of the program, they might be listed here. Usually, this section can be omitted.

See Also

Cross-references, listed in the following order: other PostgreSQL command reference pages, PostgreSQL SQL command reference pages, citation of PostgreSQL manuals, other reference pages (e.g., operating system, other packages), other documentation. Items in the same group are listed alphabetically.

Reference pages describing SQL commands should contain the following sections: Name, Synopsis, Description, Parameters, Outputs, Notes, Examples, Compatibility, History, See Also. The Parameters section is like the Options section, but there is more freedom about which clauses of the command can be listed. The Outputs section is only needed if the command returns something other than a default command-completion tag. The Compatibility section should explain to what extent this command conforms to the SQL standard(s), or to which other database system it is compatible. The See Also section of SQL commands should list SQL commands before cross-references to programs.

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Acronyms

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Appendix J. Acronyms

This is a list of acronyms commonly used in the PostgreSQL documentation and in discussions about PostgreSQL.

ANSI

American National Standards Institute

API

Application Programming Interface

ASCII

American Standard Code for Information Interchange

BKI

Backend Interface

CA

Certificate Authority

CIDR

Classless Inter-Domain Routing

CPAN

Comprehensive Perl Archive Network

CRL

Certificate Revocation List

CSV

Comma Separated Values

CTE

Common Table Expression

CVE

Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures

DBA

Database Administrator

DBI

Database Interface (Perl)

DBMS

Database Management System

DDL

Data Definition Language, SQL commands such as CREATE TABLE, ALTER USER

DML

Data Manipulation Language, SQL commands such as INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE

DST

Daylight Saving Time

ECPG

Embedded C for PostgreSQL

ESQL

Embedded SQL

FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

FSM

Free Space Map

GEQO

Genetic Query Optimizer

GIN

Generalized Inverted Index

GiST

Generalized Search Tree

Git

Git

GMT

Greenwich Mean Time

GSSAPI

Generic Security Services Application Programming Interface

GUC

Grand Unified Configuration, the PostgreSQL subsystem that handles server configuration

HBA

Host-Based Authentication

HOT

Heap-Only Tuples

IEC

International Electrotechnical Commission

IEEE

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

IPC

Inter-Process Communication

ISO

International Organization for Standardization

ISSN

International Standard Serial Number

JDBC

Java Database Connectivity

LDAP

Lightweight Directory Access Protocol

MSVC

Microsoft Visual C

MVCC

Multi-Version Concurrency Control

NLS

National Language Support

ODBC

Open Database Connectivity

OID

Object Identifier

OLAP

Online Analytical Processing

OLTP

Online Transaction Processing

ORDBMS

Object-Relational Database Management System

PAM

Pluggable Authentication Modules

PGSQL

PostgreSQL

PGXS

PostgreSQL Extension System

PID

Process Identifier

PITR

Point-In-Time Recovery (Continuous Archiving)

PL

Procedural Languages (server-side)

POSIX

Portable Operating System Interface

RDBMS

Relational Database Management System

RFC

Request For Comments

SGML

Standard Generalized Markup Language

SPI

Server Programming Interface

SQL

Structured Query Language

SRF

Set-Returning Function

SSH

Secure Shell

SSL

Secure Sockets Layer

SSPI

Security Support Provider Interface

SYSV

Unix System V

TCP/IP

Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) / Internet Protocol (IP)

TID

Tuple Identifier

TOAST

The Oversized-Attribute Storage Technique

TPC

Transaction Processing Performance Council

URL

Uniform Resource Locator

UTC

Coordinated Universal Time

UTF

Unicode Transformation Format

UTF8

Eight-Bit Unicode Transformation Format

UUID

Universally Unique Identifier

WAL

Write-Ahead Log

XID

Transaction Identifier

XML

Extensible Markup Language

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Style Guide | Up | Bibliography


Bibliography

Selected references and readings for SQL and PostgreSQL.

Some white papers and technical reports from the original POSTGRES development team are available at the University of California, Berkeley, Computer Science Department web site.

SQL Reference Books

Judith Bowman, Sandra Emerson, and Marcy Darnovsky, The Practical SQL Handbook: Using SQL Variants, Fourth Edition, Addison-Wesley Professional, ISBN 0-201-70309-2, 2001.

C. J. Date and Hugh Darwen, A Guide to the SQL Standard: A user's guide to the standard database language SQL, Fourth Edition, Addison-Wesley, ISBN 0-201-96426-0, 1997.

C. J. Date, An Introduction to Database Systems, Eighth Edition, Addison-Wesley, ISBN 0-321-19784-4, 2003.

Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant Navathe, Fundamentals of Database Systems, Fourth Edition, Addison-Wesley, ISBN 0-321-12226-7, 2003.

Jim Melton and Alan R. Simon, Understanding the New SQL: A complete guide, Morgan Kaufmann, ISBN 1-55860-245-3, 1993.

Jeffrey D. Ullman, Principles of Database and Knowledge: Base Systems, Volume 1, Computer Science Press, 1988.

PostgreSQL-specific Documentation

Stefan Simkovics, Enhancement of the ANSI SQL Implementation of PostgreSQL, Department of Information Systems, Vienna University of Technology, November 29, 1998.

Discusses SQL history and syntax, and describes the addition of INTERSECT and EXCEPT constructs into PostgreSQL. Prepared as a Master's Thesis with the support of O. Univ. Prof. Dr. Georg Gottlob and Univ. Ass. Mag. Katrin Seyr at Vienna University of Technology.

A. Yu and J. Chen, The POSTGRES Group, The Postgres95 User Manual, University of California, Sept. 5, 1995.

Zelaine Fong, The design and implementation of the POSTGRES query optimizer , University of California, Berkeley, Computer Science Department.

Proceedings and Articles

Nels Olson, Partial indexing in POSTGRES: research project, University of California, UCB Engin T7.49.1993 O676, 1993.

L. Ong and J. Goh, "A Unified Framework for Version Modeling Using Production Rules in a Database System", ERL Technical Memorandum M90/33, University of California, April, 1990.

L. Rowe and M. Stonebraker, " The POSTGRES data model ", Proc. VLDB Conference, Sept. 1987.

P. Seshadri and A. Swami, "Generalized Partial Indexes (cached version) ", Proc. Eleventh International Conference on Data Engineering, 6-10 March 1995, IEEE Computer Society Press, Cat. No.95CH35724, 1995, 420-7.

M. Stonebraker and L. Rowe, " The design of POSTGRES ", Proc. ACM-SIGMOD Conference on Management of Data, May 1986.

M. Stonebraker, E. Hanson, and C. H. Hong, "The design of the POSTGRES rules system", Proc. IEEE Conference on Data Engineering, Feb. 1987.

M. Stonebraker, " The design of the POSTGRES storage system ", Proc. VLDB Conference, Sept. 1987.

M. Stonebraker, M. Hearst, and S. Potamianos, " A commentary on the POSTGRES rules system ", SIGMOD Record 18(3), Sept. 1989.

M. Stonebraker, " The case for partial indexes ", SIGMOD Record 18(4), Dec. 1989, 4-11.

M. Stonebraker, L. A. Rowe, and M. Hirohama, " The implementation of POSTGRES ", Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering 2(1), IEEE, March 1990.

M. Stonebraker, A. Jhingran, J. Goh, and S. Potamianos, " On Rules, Procedures, Caching and Views in Database Systems ", Proc. ACM-SIGMOD Conference on Management of Data, June 1990.

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Acronyms |  | Index


Index

Symbols | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z

Symbols

$, Positional Parameters
$libdir, Dynamic Loading
$libdir/plugins, Other Defaults, Description
*, Select-List Items
.pgpass, The Password File
.pg_service.conf, The Connection Service File
::, Type Casts
_PG_fini, Dynamic Loading
_PG_init, Dynamic Loading

A

abbrev, Network Address Functions and Operators
ABORT, ABORT
abs, Mathematical Functions and Operators
acos, Mathematical Functions and Operators
administration tools
externally maintained, Administration Tools
adminpack, adminpack
advisory lock, Advisory Locks
age, Date/Time Functions and Operators
aggregate function, Aggregate Functions
built-in, Aggregate Functions
invocation, Aggregate Expressions
user-defined, User-defined Aggregates
AIX
installation on, AIX
IPC configuration, Shared Memory and Semaphores
alias
for table name in query, Joins Between Tables
in the FROM clause, Table and Column Aliases
in the select list, Column Labels
ALL, Subquery Expressions, Row and Array Comparisons
allow_system_table_mods configuration parameter, Developer Options
ALTER AGGREGATE, ALTER AGGREGATE
ALTER COLLATION, ALTER COLLATION
ALTER CONVERSION, ALTER CONVERSION
ALTER DATABASE, ALTER DATABASE
ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES, ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES
ALTER DOMAIN, ALTER DOMAIN
ALTER EXTENSION, ALTER EXTENSION
ALTER FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER, ALTER FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER
ALTER FOREIGN TABLE, ALTER FOREIGN TABLE
ALTER FUNCTION, ALTER FUNCTION
ALTER GROUP, ALTER GROUP
ALTER INDEX, ALTER INDEX
ALTER LANGUAGE, ALTER LANGUAGE
ALTER LARGE OBJECT, ALTER LARGE OBJECT
ALTER OPERATOR, ALTER OPERATOR
ALTER OPERATOR CLASS, ALTER OPERATOR CLASS
ALTER OPERATOR FAMILY, ALTER OPERATOR FAMILY
ALTER ROLE, Role Attributes, ALTER ROLE
ALTER SCHEMA, ALTER SCHEMA
ALTER SEQUENCE, ALTER SEQUENCE
ALTER SERVER, ALTER SERVER
ALTER TABLE, ALTER TABLE
ALTER TABLESPACE, ALTER TABLESPACE
ALTER TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION, ALTER TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION
ALTER TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY, ALTER TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY
ALTER TEXT SEARCH PARSER, ALTER TEXT SEARCH PARSER
ALTER TEXT SEARCH TEMPLATE, ALTER TEXT SEARCH TEMPLATE
ALTER TRIGGER, ALTER TRIGGER
ALTER TYPE, ALTER TYPE
ALTER USER, ALTER USER
ALTER USER MAPPING, ALTER USER MAPPING
ALTER VIEW, ALTER VIEW
ANALYZE, Updating Planner Statistics, ANALYZE
AND (operator), Logical Operators
anonymous code blocks, DO
any, Pseudo-Types, Aggregate Functions, Subquery Expressions, Row and Array Comparisons
anyarray, Pseudo-Types
anyelement, Pseudo-Types
anyenum, Pseudo-Types
anynonarray, Pseudo-Types
applicable role, applicable_roles
application_name configuration parameter, What To Log
arbitrary precision numbers, Arbitrary Precision Numbers
archive_cleanup_command recovery parameter, Archive Recovery Settings
archive_command configuration parameter, Archiving
archive_mode configuration parameter, Archiving
archive_timeout configuration parameter, Archiving
area, Geometric Functions and Operators
ARRAY, Array Constructors, Arrays
accessing, Accessing Arrays
constant, Array Value Input
constructor, Array Constructors
declaration, Declaration of Array Types
determination of result type, UNION, CASE, and Related Constructs
I/O, Array Input and Output Syntax
modifying, Modifying Arrays
of user-defined type, User-defined Types
searching, Searching in Arrays
array_agg, Aggregate Functions
array_append, Array Functions and Operators
array_cat, Array Functions and Operators
array_dims, Array Functions and Operators
array_fill, Array Functions and Operators
array_length, Array Functions and Operators
array_lower, Array Functions and Operators
array_ndims, Array Functions and Operators
array_nulls configuration parameter, Previous PostgreSQL Versions
array_prepend, Array Functions and Operators
array_to_string, Array Functions and Operators
array_upper, Array Functions and Operators
ascii, String Functions and Operators
asin, Mathematical Functions and Operators
asynchronous commit, Asynchronous Commit
AT TIME ZONE, AT TIME ZONE
atan, Mathematical Functions and Operators
atan2, Mathematical Functions and Operators
authentication_timeout configuration parameter, Security and Authentication
auth_delay, auth_delay
auth_delay.milliseconds configuration parameter, Configuration Parameters
auto-increment
see serial
autocommit
bulk-loading data, Disable Autocommit
psql, Variables
autovacuum
configuration parameters, Automatic Vacuuming
general information, The Autovacuum Daemon
autovacuum configuration parameter, Automatic Vacuuming
autovacuum_analyze_scale_factor configuration parameter, Automatic Vacuuming
autovacuum_analyze_threshold configuration parameter, Automatic Vacuuming
autovacuum_freeze_max_age configuration parameter, Automatic Vacuuming
autovacuum_max_workers configuration parameter, Automatic Vacuuming
autovacuum_naptime configuration parameter, Automatic Vacuuming
autovacuum_vacuum_cost_delay configuration parameter, Automatic Vacuuming
autovacuum_vacuum_cost_limit configuration parameter, Automatic Vacuuming
autovacuum_vacuum_scale_factor configuration parameter, Automatic Vacuuming
autovacuum_vacuum_threshold configuration parameter, Automatic Vacuuming
auto_explain, auto_explain
auto_explain.log_analyze configuration parameter, Configuration Parameters
auto_explain.log_buffers configuration parameter, Configuration Parameters
auto_explain.log_format configuration parameter, Configuration Parameters
auto_explain.log_min_duration configuration parameter, Configuration Parameters
auto_explain.log_nested_statements configuration parameter, Configuration Parameters
auto_explain.log_verbose configuration parameter, Configuration Parameters
average, Aggregate Functions
avg, Aggregate Functions

B

B-tree
see index
backslash escapes, String Constants with C-style Escapes
backslash_quote configuration parameter, Previous PostgreSQL Versions
backup, System Administration Functions, Backup and Restore
base type, The PostgreSQL Type System
BEGIN, BEGIN
BETWEEN, Comparison Operators
BETWEEN SYMMETRIC, Comparison Operators
bgwriter_delay configuration parameter, Background Writer
bgwriter_lru_maxpages configuration parameter, Background Writer
bgwriter_lru_multiplier configuration parameter, Background Writer
bigint, Numeric Constants, Integer Types
bigserial, Serial Types
binary data, Binary Data Types
functions, Binary String Functions and Operators
binary string
concatenation, Binary String Functions and Operators
length, Binary String Functions and Operators
bison, Requirements
bit string
constant, Bit-string Constants
data type, Bit String Types
bit strings
functions, Bit String Functions and Operators
bitmap scan, Combining Multiple Indexes, Planner Method Configuration
bit_and, Aggregate Functions
bit_length, String Functions and Operators
bit_or, Aggregate Functions
BLOB
see large object
block_size configuration parameter, Preset Options
bonjour configuration parameter, Connection Settings
bonjour_name configuration parameter, Connection Settings
Boolean
data type, Boolean Type
operators
see operators, logical
bool_and, Aggregate Functions
bool_or, Aggregate Functions
booting
starting the server during, Starting the Database Server
box, Geometric Functions and Operators
box (data type), Boxes
broadcast, Network Address Functions and Operators
BSD/OS
IPC configuration, Shared Memory and Semaphores
shared library, Compiling and Linking Dynamically-loaded Functions
btree_gin, btree_gin
btree_gist, btree_gist
btrim, String Functions and Operators, Binary String Functions and Operators
bytea, Binary Data Types
bytea_output configuration parameter, Statement Behavior

C

C, libpq - C Library, ECPG - Embedded SQL in C
C++, Using C++ for Extensibility
canceling
SQL command, Canceling Queries in Progress
CASCADE
with DROP, Dependency Tracking
foreign key action, Foreign Keys
CASE, Conditional Expressions
determination of result type, UNION, CASE, and Related Constructs
case sensitivity
of SQL commands, Identifiers and Key Words
cast
I/O conversion, CREATE CAST
cbrt, Mathematical Functions and Operators
ceil, Mathematical Functions and Operators
ceiling, Mathematical Functions and Operators
center, Geometric Functions and Operators
Certificate, Certificate Authentication
char, Character Types
character, Character Types
character set, Locale and Formatting, Preset Options, Character Set Support
character string
concatenation, String Functions and Operators
constant, String Constants
data types, Character Types
length, String Functions and Operators
character varying, Character Types
char_length, String Functions and Operators
check constraint, Check Constraints
checkpoint, WAL Configuration, CHECKPOINT
checkpoint_completion_target configuration parameter, Checkpoints
checkpoint_segments configuration parameter, Checkpoints
checkpoint_timeout configuration parameter, Checkpoints
checkpoint_warning configuration parameter, Checkpoints
check_function_bodies configuration parameter, Statement Behavior
chkpass, chkpass
chr, String Functions and Operators
cid, Object Identifier Types
cidr, cidr
circle, Circles, Geometric Functions and Operators
citext, citext
client authentication, Client Authentication
timeout during, Security and Authentication
client_encoding configuration parameter, Locale and Formatting
client_min_messages configuration parameter, When To Log
clock_timestamp, Date/Time Functions and Operators
CLOSE, CLOSE
CLUSTER, CLUSTER
of databases
see database cluster
clusterdb, clusterdb
clustering, High Availability, Load Balancing, and Replication
cmax, System Columns
cmin, System Columns
COALESCE, COALESCE
COLLATE, Collation Expressions
collation, Collation Support
in PL/pgSQL, Collation of PL/pgSQL Variables
in SQL functions, SQL Functions with Collations
column, Concepts, Table Basics
adding, Adding a Column
removing, Removing a Column
renaming, Renaming a Column
system column, System Columns
column data type
changing, Changing a Column's Data Type
column reference, Column References
col_description, System Information Functions
COMMENT, COMMENT
about database objects, System Information Functions
in SQL, Comments
COMMIT, COMMIT
COMMIT PREPARED, COMMIT PREPARED
commit_delay configuration parameter, Settings
commit_siblings configuration parameter, Settings
common table expression
see WITH
comparison
operators, Comparison Operators
row-wise, Row and Array Comparisons
subquery result row, Subquery Expressions
compiling
libpq applications, Building libpq Programs
composite type, Composite Types, The PostgreSQL Type System
constant, Composite Value Input
constructor, Row Constructors
computed field, SQL Functions on Composite Types
concat, String Functions and Operators
concat_ws, String Functions and Operators
concurrency, Concurrency Control
conditional expression, Conditional Expressions
configuration
of recovery
of a standby server, Recovery Configuration
of the server, Server Configuration
of the server
functions, System Administration Functions
configure, Installation Procedure
config_file configuration parameter, File Locations
conjunction, Logical Operators
connection service file, The Connection Service File
constant, Constants
constraint, Constraints
adding, Adding a Constraint
check, Check Constraints
exclusion, Exclusion Constraints
foreign key, Foreign Keys
name, Check Constraints
NOT NULL, Not-Null Constraints
primary key, Primary Keys
removing, Removing a Constraint
unique, Unique Constraints
constraint exclusion, Partitioning and Constraint Exclusion, Other Planner Options
constraint_exclusion configuration parameter, Other Planner Options
CONTINUE
in PL/pgSQL, CONTINUE
continuous archiving, Backup and Restore
control file, Extension Files
convert, String Functions and Operators
convert_from, String Functions and Operators
convert_to, String Functions and Operators
COPY, Populating a Table With Rows, COPY
with libpq, Functions Associated with the COPY Command
corr, Aggregate Functions
correlation, Aggregate Functions
cos, Mathematical Functions and Operators
cot, Mathematical Functions and Operators
count, Aggregate Functions
covariance
population, Aggregate Functions
sample, Aggregate Functions
covar_pop, Aggregate Functions
covar_samp, Aggregate Functions
cpu_index_tuple_cost configuration parameter, Planner Cost Constants
cpu_operator_cost configuration parameter, Planner Cost Constants
cpu_tuple_cost configuration parameter, Planner Cost Constants
CREATE AGGREGATE, CREATE AGGREGATE
CREATE CAST, CREATE CAST
CREATE COLLATION, CREATE COLLATION
CREATE CONVERSION, CREATE CONVERSION
CREATE DATABASE, Creating a Database, CREATE DATABASE
CREATE DOMAIN, CREATE DOMAIN
CREATE EXTENSION, CREATE EXTENSION
CREATE FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER, CREATE FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER
CREATE FOREIGN TABLE, CREATE FOREIGN TABLE
CREATE FUNCTION, CREATE FUNCTION
CREATE GROUP, CREATE GROUP
CREATE INDEX, CREATE INDEX
CREATE LANGUAGE, CREATE LANGUAGE
CREATE OPERATOR, CREATE OPERATOR
CREATE OPERATOR CLASS, CREATE OPERATOR CLASS
CREATE OPERATOR FAMILY, CREATE OPERATOR FAMILY
CREATE ROLE, Database Roles, CREATE ROLE
CREATE RULE, CREATE RULE
CREATE SCHEMA, CREATE SCHEMA
CREATE SEQUENCE, CREATE SEQUENCE
CREATE SERVER, CREATE SERVER
CREATE TABLE, Creating a New Table, CREATE TABLE
CREATE TABLE AS, CREATE TABLE AS
CREATE TABLESPACE, Tablespaces, CREATE TABLESPACE
CREATE TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION, CREATE TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION
CREATE TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY, CREATE TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY
CREATE TEXT SEARCH PARSER, CREATE TEXT SEARCH PARSER
CREATE TEXT SEARCH TEMPLATE, CREATE TEXT SEARCH TEMPLATE
CREATE TRIGGER, CREATE TRIGGER
CREATE TYPE, CREATE TYPE
CREATE USER, CREATE USER
CREATE USER MAPPING, CREATE USER MAPPING
CREATE VIEW, CREATE VIEW
createdb, Creating a Database, Creating a Database, createdb
createlang, createlang
createuser, Database Roles, createuser
cross compilation, Installation Procedure
cross join, Joined Tables
cstring, Pseudo-Types
ctid, System Columns, View Rules in Non-SELECT Statements
cube, cube
cume_dist, Window Functions
current_catalog, System Information Functions
current_database, System Information Functions
current_date, Date/Time Functions and Operators
current_query, System Information Functions
current_schema, System Information Functions
current_schemas, System Information Functions
current_setting, System Administration Functions
current_time, Date/Time Functions and Operators
current_timestamp, Date/Time Functions and Operators
current_user, System Information Functions
currval, Sequence Manipulation Functions
cursor
CLOSE, CLOSE
DECLARE, DECLARE
FETCH, FETCH
in PL/pgSQL, Cursors
MOVE, MOVE
showing the query plan, EXPLAIN
cursor_tuple_fraction configuration parameter, Other Planner Options
custom_variable_classes configuration parameter, Customized Options
Cygwin
installation on, Cygwin

D

data area
see database cluster
data partitioning, High Availability, Load Balancing, and Replication
data type, Data Types
base, The PostgreSQL Type System
category, Overview
composite, The PostgreSQL Type System
constant, Constants of Other Types
conversion, Type Conversion
enumerated (enum), Enumerated Types
internal organization, Base Types in C-Language Functions
numeric, Numeric Types
type cast, Type Casts
user-defined, User-defined Types
database, Managing Databases
creating, Creating a Database
privilege to create, Role Attributes
database activity
monitoring, Monitoring Database Activity
database cluster, Concepts, Creating a Database Cluster
data_directory configuration parameter, File Locations
date, Date/Time Types, Dates
constants, Special Values
current, Current Date/Time
output format, Date/Time Output
see also formatting
DateStyle configuration parameter, Locale and Formatting
date_part, Date/Time Functions and Operators, EXTRACT, date_part
date_trunc, Date/Time Functions and Operators, date_trunc
dblink, dblink
db_user_namespace configuration parameter, Security and Authentication
deadlock, Deadlocks
timeout during, Lock Management
deadlock_timeout configuration parameter, Lock Management
DEALLOCATE, DEALLOCATE
debug_assertions configuration parameter, Developer Options
debug_deadlocks configuration parameter, Developer Options
debug_pretty_print configuration parameter, What To Log
debug_print_parse configuration parameter, What To Log
debug_print_plan configuration parameter, What To Log
debug_print_rewritten configuration parameter, What To Log
decimal
see numeric
DECLARE, DECLARE
decode, String Functions and Operators, Binary String Functions and Operators
decode_bytea
in PL/Perl, Utility Functions in PL/Perl
default value, Default Values
changing, Changing a Column's Default Value
default_statistics_target configuration parameter, Other Planner Options
default_tablespace configuration parameter, Statement Behavior
default_text_search_config configuration parameter, Locale and Formatting
default_transaction_deferrable configuration parameter, Statement Behavior
default_transaction_isolation configuration parameter, Statement Behavior
default_transaction_read_only configuration parameter, Statement Behavior
default_with_oids configuration parameter, Previous PostgreSQL Versions
deferrable transaction
setting, SET TRANSACTION
setting default, Statement Behavior
degrees, Mathematical Functions and Operators
delay, Delaying Execution
DELETE, Deletions, Deleting Data, DELETE
deleting, Deleting Data
dense_rank, Window Functions
diameter, Geometric Functions and Operators
dict_int, dict_int
dict_xsyn, dict_xsyn
Digital UNIX
see Tru64 UNIX
dirty read, Transaction Isolation
DISCARD, DISCARD
disjunction, Logical Operators
disk drive, WAL Internals
disk space, Recovering Disk Space
disk usage, Determining Disk Usage
DISTINCT, Querying a Table, DISTINCT
div, Mathematical Functions and Operators
DO, DO
document
text search, What Is a Document?
dollar quoting, Dollar-quoted String Constants
double precision, Floating-Point Types
DROP AGGREGATE, DROP AGGREGATE
DROP CAST, DROP CAST
DROP COLLATION, DROP COLLATION
DROP CONVERSION, DROP CONVERSION
DROP DATABASE, Destroying a Database, DROP DATABASE
DROP DOMAIN, DROP DOMAIN
DROP EXTENSION, DROP EXTENSION
DROP FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER, DROP FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER
DROP FOREIGN TABLE, DROP FOREIGN TABLE
DROP FUNCTION, DROP FUNCTION
DROP GROUP, DROP GROUP
DROP INDEX, DROP INDEX
DROP LANGUAGE, DROP LANGUAGE
DROP OPERATOR, DROP OPERATOR
DROP OPERATOR CLASS, DROP OPERATOR CLASS
DROP OPERATOR FAMILY, DROP OPERATOR FAMILY
DROP OWNED, DROP OWNED
DROP ROLE, Database Roles, DROP ROLE
DROP RULE, DROP RULE
DROP SCHEMA, DROP SCHEMA
DROP SEQUENCE, DROP SEQUENCE
DROP SERVER, DROP SERVER
DROP TABLE, Creating a New Table, DROP TABLE
DROP TABLESPACE, DROP TABLESPACE
DROP TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION, DROP TEXT SEARCH CONFIGURATION
DROP TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY, DROP TEXT SEARCH DICTIONARY
DROP TEXT SEARCH PARSER, DROP TEXT SEARCH PARSER
DROP TEXT SEARCH TEMPLATE, DROP TEXT SEARCH TEMPLATE
DROP TRIGGER, DROP TRIGGER
DROP TYPE, DROP TYPE
DROP USER, DROP USER
DROP USER MAPPING, DROP USER MAPPING
DROP VIEW, DROP VIEW
dropdb, Destroying a Database, dropdb
droplang, droplang
dropuser, Database Roles, dropuser
DTD, Creating XML Values
DTrace, Installation Procedure, Dynamic Tracing
dummy_seclabel, dummy_seclabel
duplicate, Querying a Table
duplicates, DISTINCT
dynamic loading, Other Defaults, Dynamic Loading
dynamic_library_path, Dynamic Loading
dynamic_library_path configuration parameter, Other Defaults

E

earthdistance, earthdistance
ECPG, ECPG - Embedded SQL in C, ecpg
effective_cache_size configuration parameter, Planner Cost Constants
effective_io_concurrency configuration parameter, Asynchronous Behavior
elog, Reporting Errors Within the Server
in PL/Perl, Utility Functions in PL/Perl
in PL/Python, Utility Functions
in PL/Tcl, Database Access from PL/Tcl
embedded SQL
in C, ECPG - Embedded SQL in C
enabled role, enabled_roles
enable_bitmapscan configuration parameter, Planner Method Configuration
enable_hashagg configuration parameter, Planner Method Configuration
enable_hashjoin configuration parameter, Planner Method Configuration
enable_indexscan configuration parameter, Planner Method Configuration
enable_material configuration parameter, Planner Method Configuration
enable_mergejoin configuration parameter, Planner Method Configuration
enable_nestloop configuration parameter, Planner Method Configuration
enable_seqscan configuration parameter, Planner Method Configuration
enable_sort configuration parameter, Planner Method Configuration
enable_tidscan configuration parameter, Planner Method Configuration
encode, String Functions and Operators, Binary String Functions and Operators
encode_array_constructor
in PL/Perl, Utility Functions in PL/Perl
encode_array_literal
in PL/Perl, Utility Functions in PL/Perl
encode_bytea
in PL/Perl, Utility Functions in PL/Perl
encode_typed_literal
in PL/Perl, Utility Functions in PL/Perl
encryption, Encryption Options
for specific columns, pgcrypto
END, END
enumerated types, Enumerated Types
enum_first, Enum Support Functions
enum_last, Enum Support Functions
enum_range, Enum Support Functions
environment variable, Environment Variables
ereport, Reporting Errors Within the Server
error codes
libpq, Main Functions
list of, PostgreSQL Error Codes
error message, Connection Status Functions
escape string syntax, String Constants with C-style Escapes
escape_string_warning configuration parameter, Previous PostgreSQL Versions
escaping strings
in libpq, Escaping Strings for Inclusion in SQL Commands
every, Aggregate Functions
EXCEPT, Combining Queries
exceptions
in PL/pgSQL, Trapping Errors
exclusion constraint, Exclusion Constraints
EXECUTE, EXECUTE
EXISTS, Subquery Expressions
EXIT
in PL/pgSQL, EXIT
exit_on_error configuration parameter, Error Handling
exp, Mathematical Functions and Operators
EXPLAIN, Using EXPLAIN, EXPLAIN
expression
order of evaluation, Expression Evaluation Rules
syntax, Value Expressions
extending SQL, Extending SQL
extension, Packaging Related Objects into an Extension
externally maintained, Extensions
external_pid_file configuration parameter, File Locations
extract, Date/Time Functions and Operators, EXTRACT, date_part
extra_float_digits configuration parameter, Locale and Formatting

F

failover, High Availability, Load Balancing, and Replication
false, Boolean Type
family, Network Address Functions and Operators
fast path, The Fast-Path Interface
fdw_handler, Pseudo-Types
FETCH, FETCH
field
computed, SQL Functions on Composite Types
field selection, Field Selection
file system mount points, Use of Secondary File Systems
file_fdw, file_fdw
first_value, Window Functions
flex, Requirements
float4
see real
float8
see double precision
floating point, Floating-Point Types
floating-point
display, Locale and Formatting
floor, Mathematical Functions and Operators
foreign data, Foreign Data
foreign data wrapper
handler for, Writing A Foreign Data Wrapper
foreign key, Foreign Keys, Foreign Keys
foreign table, Foreign Data
format, String Functions and Operators
use in PL/pgSQL, Executing Dynamic Commands
formatting, Data Type Formatting Functions
format_type, System Information Functions
Free Space Map, Free Space Map
FreeBSD
IPC configuration, Shared Memory and Semaphores
shared library, Compiling and Linking Dynamically-loaded Functions
start script, Starting the Database Server
from_collapse_limit configuration parameter, Other Planner Options
FSM
see Free Space Map
fsync configuration parameter, Settings
full text search, Full Text Search
data types, Text Search Types
functions and operators, Text Search Types
full_page_writes configuration parameter, Settings
function, Functions and Operators
default values for arguments, SQL Functions with Default Values for Arguments
in the FROM clause, Table Functions
internal, Internal Functions
invocation, Function Calls
mixed notation, Using Mixed Notation
named notation, Using Named Notation
named parameter, SQL Functions with Parameter Names
output parameter, SQL Functions with Output Parameters
polymorphic, Polymorphic Types
positional notation, Using Positional Notation
RETURNS TABLE, SQL Functions Returning TABLE
type resolution in an invocation, Functions
user-defined, User-defined Functions
in C, C-Language Functions
in SQL, Query Language (SQL) Functions
variadic, SQL Functions with Variable Numbers of Arguments
with SETOF, SQL Functions Returning Sets
functional dependency, The GROUP BY and HAVING Clauses
fuzzystrmatch, fuzzystrmatch

G

generate_series, Set Returning Functions
generate_subscripts, Set Returning Functions
genetic query optimization, Genetic Query Optimizer
GEQO
see genetic query optimization
geqo configuration parameter, Genetic Query Optimizer
geqo_effort configuration parameter, Genetic Query Optimizer
geqo_generations configuration parameter, Genetic Query Optimizer
geqo_pool_size configuration parameter, Genetic Query Optimizer
geqo_seed configuration parameter, Genetic Query Optimizer
geqo_selection_bias configuration parameter, Genetic Query Optimizer
geqo_threshold configuration parameter, Genetic Query Optimizer
get_bit, Binary String Functions and Operators
get_byte, Binary String Functions and Operators
get_current_ts_config, Text Search Functions and Operators
GIN
see index
gin_fuzzy_search_limit configuration parameter, Other Defaults
GiST
see index
global data
in PL/Python, Sharing Data
in PL/Tcl, Global Data in PL/Tcl
GRANT, Privileges, GRANT
GREATEST, GREATEST and LEAST
determination of result type, UNION, CASE, and Related Constructs
GROUP BY, Aggregate Functions, The GROUP BY and HAVING Clauses
grouping, The GROUP BY and HAVING Clauses
GSSAPI, GSSAPI Authentication
GUID, UUID Type

H

hash
see index
has_any_column_privilege, System Information Functions
has_column_privilege, System Information Functions
has_database_privilege, System Information Functions
has_foreign_data_wrapper_privilege, System Information Functions
has_function_privilege, System Information Functions
has_language_privilege, System Information Functions
has_schema_privilege, System Information Functions
has_sequence_privilege, System Information Functions
has_server_privilege, System Information Functions
has_tablespace_privilege, System Information Functions
has_table_privilege, System Information Functions
HAVING, Aggregate Functions, The GROUP BY and HAVING Clauses
hba_file configuration parameter, File Locations
height, Geometric Functions and Operators
hierarchical database, Concepts
high availability, High Availability, Load Balancing, and Replication
history
of PostgreSQL, A Brief History of PostgreSQL
host, Network Address Functions and Operators
host name, Database Connection Control Functions
hostmask, Network Address Functions and Operators
Hot Standby, High Availability, Load Balancing, and Replication
hot_standby configuration parameter, Standby Servers
hot_standby_feedback configuration parameter, Standby Servers
HP-UX
installation on, HP-UX
IPC configuration, Shared Memory and Semaphores
shared library, Compiling and Linking Dynamically-loaded Functions
hstore, hstore

I

ident, Ident Authentication
identifier
length, Identifiers and Key Words
syntax of, Identifiers and Key Words
ident_file configuration parameter, File Locations
IFNULL, COALESCE
ignore_system_indexes configuration parameter, Developer Options
IMMUTABLE, Function Volatility Categories
IN, Subquery Expressions, Row and Array Comparisons
include
in configuration file, Setting Parameters
index, Indexes
and ORDER BY, Indexes and ORDER BY
B-tree, Index Types
building concurrently, Building Indexes Concurrently
combining multiple indexes, Combining Multiple Indexes
examining usage, Examining Index Usage
on expressions, Indexes on Expressions
for user-defined data type, Interfacing Extensions To Indexes
GIN, Index Types, GIN Indexes
text search, GiST and GIN Index Types
GiST, Index Types, GiST Indexes
text search, GiST and GIN Index Types
hash, Index Types
locks, Locking and Indexes
multicolumn, Multicolumn Indexes
partial, Partial Indexes
unique, Unique Indexes
index scan, Planner Method Configuration
inet (data type), inet
inet_client_addr, System Information Functions
inet_client_port, System Information Functions
inet_server_addr, System Information Functions
inet_server_port, System Information Functions
information schema, The Information Schema
inheritance, Inheritance, Inheritance, Previous PostgreSQL Versions
initcap, String Functions and Operators
initdb, Creating a Database Cluster, initdb
Initialization Fork, The Initialization Fork
input function, User-defined Types
INSERT, Populating a Table With Rows, Inserting Data, INSERT
inserting, Inserting Data
installation, Installation from Source Code
on Windows, Installation from Source Code on Windows
instr, Porting Examples
int2
see smallint
int4
see integer
int8
see bigint
intagg, intagg
intarray, intarray
integer, Numeric Constants, Integer Types
integer_datetimes configuration parameter, Preset Options
interfaces
externally maintained, Client Interfaces
internal, Pseudo-Types
INTERSECT, Combining Queries
interval, Date/Time Types, Interval Input
output format, Interval Output
see also formatting
IntervalStyle configuration parameter, Locale and Formatting
IRIX
installation on, IRIX
shared library, Compiling and Linking Dynamically-loaded Functions
IS DISTINCT FROM, Comparison Operators, Row and Array Comparisons
IS DOCUMENT, IS DOCUMENT
IS FALSE, Comparison Operators
IS NOT DISTINCT FROM, Comparison Operators, Row and Array Comparisons
IS NOT FALSE, Comparison Operators
IS NOT NULL, Comparison Operators
IS NOT TRUE, Comparison Operators
IS NOT UNKNOWN, Comparison Operators
IS NULL, Comparison Operators, Platform and Client Compatibility
IS TRUE, Comparison Operators
IS UNKNOWN, Comparison Operators
isclosed, Geometric Functions and Operators
isfinite, Date/Time Functions and Operators
isn, isn
ISNULL, Comparison Operators
isopen, Geometric Functions and Operators
is_array_ref
in PL/Perl, Utility Functions in PL/Perl

J

join, Joins Between Tables, Joined Tables
controlling the order, Controlling the Planner with Explicit JOIN Clauses
cross, Joined Tables
left, Joined Tables
natural, Joined Tables
outer, Joins Between Tables, Joined Tables
right, Joined Tables
self, Joins Between Tables
join_collapse_limit configuration parameter, Other Planner Options
justify_days, Date/Time Functions and Operators
justify_hours, Date/Time Functions and Operators
justify_interval, Date/Time Functions and Operators

K

Kerberos, Kerberos Authentication
key word
list of, SQL Key Words
syntax of, Identifiers and Key Words
krb_caseins_users configuration parameter, Security and Authentication
krb_server_keyfile configuration parameter, Security and Authentication
krb_srvname configuration parameter, Security and Authentication

L

label
see alias
lag, Window Functions
language_handler, Pseudo-Types
large object, Large Objects
lastval, Sequence Manipulation Functions
last_value, Window Functions
lc_collate configuration parameter, Preset Options
lc_ctype configuration parameter, Preset Options
lc_messages configuration parameter, Locale and Formatting
lc_monetary configuration parameter, Locale and Formatting
lc_numeric configuration parameter, Locale and Formatting
lc_time configuration parameter, Locale and Formatting
LDAP, Installation Procedure, LDAP Authentication
LDAP connection parameter lookup, LDAP Lookup of Connection Parameters
ldconfig, Shared Libraries
lead, Window Functions
LEAST, GREATEST and LEAST
determination of result type, UNION, CASE, and Related Constructs
left, String Functions and Operators
left join, Joined Tables
length, String Functions and Operators, Binary String Functions and Operators, Geometric Functions and Operators, Text Search Functions and Operators
of a binary string
see binary strings, length
of a character string
see character string, length
length(tsvector), Manipulating Documents
lex, Requirements
libedit, Requirements
libperl, Requirements
libpq, libpq - C Library
libpq-fe.h, libpq - C Library, Connection Status Functions
libpq-int.h, Connection Status Functions
libpython, Requirements
library finalization function, Dynamic Loading
library initialization function, Dynamic Loading
LIKE, LIKE
and locales, Behavior
LIMIT, LIMIT and OFFSET
line segment, Line Segments
linear regression, Aggregate Functions
Linux
IPC configuration, Shared Memory and Semaphores
shared library, Compiling and Linking Dynamically-loaded Functions
start script, Starting the Database Server
LISTEN, LISTEN
listen_addresses configuration parameter, Connection Settings
ln, Mathematical Functions and Operators
lo, lo
LOAD, LOAD
load balancing, High Availability, Load Balancing, and Replication
locale, Creating a Database Cluster, Locale Support
localtime, Date/Time Functions and Operators
localtimestamp, Date/Time Functions and Operators
local_preload_libraries configuration parameter, Other Defaults
lock, Explicit Locking, Table-level Locks, LOCK
advisory, Advisory Locks
monitoring, Viewing Locks
log, Mathematical Functions and Operators
log shipping, High Availability, Load Balancing, and Replication
logging_collector configuration parameter, Where To Log
login privilege, Role Attributes
log_autovacuum_min_duration configuration parameter, Automatic Vacuuming
log_btree_build_stats configuration parameter, Developer Options
log_checkpoints configuration parameter, What To Log
log_connections configuration parameter, What To Log
log_destination configuration parameter, Where To Log
log_directory configuration parameter, Where To Log
log_disconnections configuration parameter, What To Log
log_duration configuration parameter, What To Log
log_error_verbosity configuration parameter, What To Log
log_executor_stats configuration parameter, Statistics Monitoring
log_filename configuration parameter, Where To Log
log_file_mode configuration parameter, Where To Log
log_hostname configuration parameter, What To Log
log_line_prefix configuration parameter, What To Log
log_lock_waits configuration parameter, What To Log
log_min_duration_statement configuration parameter, When To Log
log_min_error_statement configuration parameter, When To Log
log_min_messages configuration parameter, When To Log
log_parser_stats configuration parameter, Statistics Monitoring
log_planner_stats configuration parameter, Statistics Monitoring
log_rotation_age configuration parameter, Where To Log
log_rotation_size configuration parameter, Where To Log
log_statement configuration parameter, What To Log
log_statement_stats configuration parameter, Statistics Monitoring
log_temp_files configuration parameter, What To Log
log_timezone configuration parameter, What To Log
log_truncate_on_rotation configuration parameter, Where To Log
looks_like_number
in PL/Perl, Utility Functions in PL/Perl
loop
in PL/pgSQL, Simple Loops
lower, String Functions and Operators
and locales, Behavior
lo_close, Closing a Large Object Descriptor
lo_compat_privileges configuration parameter, Previous PostgreSQL Versions
lo_creat, Creating a Large Object, Server-side Functions
lo_create, Creating a Large Object, Server-side Functions
lo_export, Exporting a Large Object, Server-side Functions
lo_import, Importing a Large Object, Server-side Functions
lo_import_with_oid, Importing a Large Object
lo_lseek, Seeking in a Large Object
lo_open, Opening an Existing Large Object
lo_read, Reading Data from a Large Object
lo_tell, Obtaining the Seek Position of a Large Object
lo_truncate, Truncating a Large Object
lo_unlink, Removing a Large Object, Server-side Functions
lo_write, Writing Data to a Large Object
lpad, String Functions and Operators
lseg, Line Segments, Geometric Functions and Operators
ltree, ltree
ltrim, String Functions and Operators

M

MAC address
see macaddr
Mac OS X
IPC configuration, Shared Memory and Semaphores
shared library, Compiling and Linking Dynamically-loaded Functions
macaddr (data type), macaddr
magic block, Dynamic Loading
maintenance, Routine Database Maintenance Tasks
maintenance_work_mem configuration parameter, Memory
make, Requirements
MANPATH, Environment Variables
masklen, Network Address Functions and Operators
max, Aggregate Functions
max_connections configuration parameter, Connection Settings
max_files_per_process configuration parameter, Kernel Resource Usage
max_function_args configuration parameter, Preset Options
max_identifier_length configuration parameter, Preset Options
max_index_keys configuration parameter, Preset Options
max_locks_per_transaction configuration parameter, Lock Management
max_pred_locks_per_transaction configuration parameter, Lock Management
max_prepared_transactions configuration parameter, Memory
max_stack_depth configuration parameter, Memory
max_standby_archive_delay configuration parameter, Standby Servers
max_standby_streaming_delay configuration parameter, Standby Servers
max_wal_senders configuration parameter, Master Server
md5, String Functions and Operators, Binary String Functions and Operators, Password Authentication
memory context
in SPI, Memory Management
min, Aggregate Functions
MinGW
installation on, MinGW/Native Windows
mod, Mathematical Functions and Operators
monitoring
database activity, Monitoring Database Activity
MOVE, MOVE
Multiversion Concurrency Control, Introduction
MVCC, Introduction

N

name
qualified, Creating a Schema
syntax of, Identifiers and Key Words
unqualified, The Schema Search Path
NaN
see not a number
natural join, Joined Tables
negation, Logical Operators
NetBSD
IPC configuration, Shared Memory and Semaphores
shared library, Compiling and Linking Dynamically-loaded Functions
start script, Starting the Database Server
netmask, Network Address Functions and Operators
network, Network Address Functions and Operators
data types, Network Address Types
Network Attached Storage (NAS)
see Network File Systems
Network File Systems, Use of Network File Systems
nextval, Sequence Manipulation Functions
NFS
see Network File Systems
non-durable, Non-Durable Settings
nonblocking connection, Database Connection Control Functions, Asynchronous Command Processing
nonrepeatable read, Transaction Isolation
NOT (operator), Logical Operators
not a number
double precision, Floating-Point Types
numeric (data type), Arbitrary Precision Numbers
NOT IN, Subquery Expressions, Row and Array Comparisons
not-null constraint, Not-Null Constraints
notation
functions, Calling Functions
notice processing
in libpq, Notice Processing
notice processor, Notice Processing
notice receiver, Notice Processing
NOTIFY, NOTIFY
in libpq, Asynchronous Notification
NOTNULL, Comparison Operators
now, Date/Time Functions and Operators
npoints, Geometric Functions and Operators
nth_value, Window Functions
ntile, Window Functions
null value
with check constraints, Check Constraints
comparing, Comparison Operators
default value, Default Values
in DISTINCT, DISTINCT
in libpq, Retrieving Query Result Information
in PL/Perl, PL/Perl Functions and Arguments
in PL/Python, Null, None
with unique constraints, Unique Constraints
NULLIF, NULLIF
number
constant, Numeric Constants
numeric, Numeric Constants
numeric (data type), Arbitrary Precision Numbers
numnode, Text Search Functions and Operators, Manipulating Queries
NVL, COALESCE

O

object identifier
data type, Object Identifier Types
object-oriented database, Concepts
obj_description, System Information Functions
octet_length, String Functions and Operators, Binary String Functions and Operators
OFFSET, LIMIT and OFFSET
oid, Object Identifier Types
column, System Columns
in libpq, Retrieving Other Result Information
oid2name, oid2name
ONLY, The FROM Clause
opaque, Pseudo-Types
OpenBSD
IPC configuration, Shared Memory and Semaphores
shared library, Compiling and Linking Dynamically-loaded Functions
start script, Starting the Database Server
OpenSSL, Installation Procedure
see also SSL
operator, Functions and Operators
invocation, Operator Invocations
logical, Logical Operators
precedence, Operator Precedence
syntax, Operators
type resolution in an invocation, Operators
user-defined, User-defined Operators
operator class, Operator Classes and Operator Families, Index Methods and Operator Classes
operator family, Operator Classes and Operator Families, Operator Classes and Operator Families
OR (operator), Logical Operators
Oracle
porting from PL/SQL to PL/pgSQL, Porting from Oracle PL/SQL
ORDER BY, Querying a Table, Sorting Rows
and locales, Behavior
ordering operator, System Dependencies on Operator Classes
outer join, Joined Tables
output function, User-defined Types
OVER clause, Window Function Calls
overlay, String Functions and Operators, Binary String Functions and Operators
overloading
functions, Function Overloading
operators, User-defined Operators
owner, Privileges

P

pageinspect, pageinspect
palloc, Writing Code
PAM, Installation Procedure, PAM Authentication
parameter
syntax, Positional Parameters
parenthesis, Value Expressions
partitioning, Partitioning
password, Role Attributes
authentication, Password Authentication
of the superuser, Creating a Database Cluster
password file, The Password File
passwordcheck, passwordcheck
password_encryption configuration parameter, Security and Authentication
path, Geometric Functions and Operators, Environment Variables
for schemas, Statement Behavior
path (data type), Paths
pattern matching, Pattern Matching
patterns
in psql and pg_dump, Patterns
pause_at_recovery_target recovery parameter, Recovery Target Settings
pclose, Geometric Functions and Operators
peer, Peer Authentication
percent_rank, Window Functions
performance, Performance Tips
perl, Requirements, PL/Perl - Perl Procedural Language
permission
see privilege
pfree, Writing Code
PGAPPNAME, Environment Variables
pgbench, pgbench
PGcancel, Canceling Queries in Progress
PGCLIENTENCODING, Environment Variables
PGconn, Database Connection Control Functions
PGCONNECT_TIMEOUT, Environment Variables
pgcrypto, pgcrypto
PGDATA, Creating a Database Cluster
PGDATABASE, Environment Variables
PGDATESTYLE, Environment Variables
PGEventProc, Event Callback Procedure
PGGEQO, Environment Variables
PGGSSLIB, Environment Variables
PGHOST, Environment Variables
PGHOSTADDR, Environment Variables
PGKRBSRVNAME, Environment Variables
PGLOCALEDIR, Environment Variables
PGOPTIONS, Environment Variables
PGPASSFILE, Environment Variables
PGPASSWORD, Environment Variables
PGPORT, Environment Variables
PGREALM, Environment Variables
PGREQUIREPEER, Environment Variables
PGREQUIRESSL, Environment Variables
PGresult, Main Functions
pgrowlocks, pgrowlocks
PGSERVICE, Environment Variables
PGSERVICEFILE, Environment Variables
PGSSLCERT, Environment Variables
PGSSLCRL, Environment Variables
PGSSLKEY, Environment Variables
PGSSLMODE, Environment Variables
PGSSLROOTCERT, Environment Variables
pgstattuple, pgstattuple
PGSYSCONFDIR, Environment Variables
PGTZ, Environment Variables
PGUSER, Environment Variables
pgxs, Extension Building Infrastructure
pg_advisory_lock, System Administration Functions
pg_advisory_lock_shared, System Administration Functions
pg_advisory_unlock, System Administration Functions
pg_advisory_unlock_all, System Administration Functions
pg_advisory_unlock_shared, System Administration Functions
pg_advisory_xact_lock, System Administration Functions
pg_advisory_xact_lock_shared, System Administration Functions
pg_aggregate, pg_aggregate
pg_am, pg_am
pg_amop, pg_amop
pg_amproc, pg_amproc
pg_archivecleanup, pg_archivecleanup
pg_attrdef, pg_attrdef
pg_attribute, pg_attribute
pg_authid, pg_authid
pg_auth_members, pg_auth_members
pg_available_extensions, pg_available_extensions
pg_available_extension_versions, pg_available_extension_versions
pg_backend_pid, System Information Functions
pg_basebackup, pg_basebackup
pg_buffercache, pg_buffercache
pg_cancel_backend, System Administration Functions
pg_cast, pg_cast
pg_class, pg_class
pg_client_encoding, String Functions and Operators
pg_collation, pg_collation
pg_collation_is_visible, System Information Functions
pg_column_size, System Administration Functions
pg_config, pg_config
with libpq, Building libpq Programs
with user-defined C functions, Writing Code
pg_conf_load_time, System Information Functions
pg_constraint, pg_constraint
pg_controldata, pg_controldata
pg_conversion, pg_conversion
pg_conversion_is_visible, System Information Functions
pg_create_restore_point, System Administration Functions
pg_ctl, Creating a Database Cluster, Starting the Database Server, pg_ctl
pg_current_xlog_insert_location, System Administration Functions
pg_current_xlog_location, System Administration Functions
pg_cursors, pg_cursors
pg_database, Template Databases, pg_database
pg_database_size, System Administration Functions
pg_db_role_setting, pg_db_role_setting
pg_default_acl, pg_default_acl
pg_depend, pg_depend
pg_describe_object, System Information Functions
pg_description, pg_description
pg_dump, pg_dump
pg_dumpall, pg_dumpall
use during upgrade, Upgrading Data via pg_dump
pg_enum, pg_enum
pg_extension, pg_extension
pg_extension_config_dump, Extension Configuration Tables
pg_foreign_data_wrapper, pg_foreign_data_wrapper
pg_foreign_server, pg_foreign_server
pg_foreign_table, pg_foreign_table
pg_freespacemap, pg_freespacemap
pg_function_is_visible, System Information Functions
pg_get_constraintdef, System Information Functions
pg_get_expr, System Information Functions
pg_get_functiondef, System Information Functions
pg_get_function_arguments, System Information Functions
pg_get_function_identity_arguments, System Information Functions
pg_get_function_result, System Information Functions
pg_get_indexdef, System Information Functions
pg_get_keywords, System Information Functions
pg_get_ruledef, System Information Functions
pg_get_serial_sequence, System Information Functions
pg_get_triggerdef, System Information Functions
pg_get_userbyid, System Information Functions
pg_get_viewdef, System Information Functions
pg_group, pg_group
pg_has_role, System Information Functions
pg_hba.conf, The pg_hba.conf File
pg_ident.conf, User Name Maps
pg_index, pg_index
pg_indexes, pg_indexes
pg_indexes_size, System Administration Functions
pg_inherits, pg_inherits
pg_is_in_recovery, System Administration Functions
pg_is_other_temp_schema, System Information Functions
pg_is_xlog_replay_paused, System Administration Functions
pg_language, pg_language
pg_largeobject, pg_largeobject
pg_largeobject_metadata, pg_largeobject_metadata
pg_last_xact_replay_timestamp, System Administration Functions
pg_last_xlog_receive_location, System Administration Functions
pg_last_xlog_replay_location, System Administration Functions
pg_listening_channels, System Information Functions
pg_locks, pg_locks
pg_ls_dir, System Administration Functions
pg_my_temp_schema, System Information Functions
pg_namespace, pg_namespace
pg_notify, pg_notify
pg_opclass, pg_opclass
pg_opclass_is_visible, System Information Functions
pg_operator, pg_operator
pg_operator_is_visible, System Information Functions
pg_opfamily, pg_opfamily
pg_options_to_table, System Information Functions
pg_pltemplate, pg_pltemplate
pg_postmaster_start_time, System Information Functions
pg_prepared_statements, pg_prepared_statements
pg_prepared_xacts, pg_prepared_xacts
pg_proc, pg_proc
pg_read_binary_file, System Administration Functions
pg_read_file, System Administration Functions
pg_relation_filenode, System Administration Functions
pg_relation_filepath, System Administration Functions
pg_relation_size, System Administration Functions
pg_reload_conf, System Administration Functions
pg_restore, pg_restore
pg_rewrite, pg_rewrite
pg_roles, pg_roles
pg_rotate_logfile, System Administration Functions
pg_rules, pg_rules
pg_seclabel, pg_seclabel
pg_seclabels, pg_seclabels
pg_service.conf, The Connection Service File
pg_settings, pg_settings
pg_shadow, pg_shadow
pg_shdepend, pg_shdepend
pg_shdescription, pg_shdescription
pg_size_pretty, System Administration Functions
pg_sleep, Delaying Execution
pg_standby, pg_standby
pg_start_backup, System Administration Functions
pg_statio_all_indexes, Viewing Collected Statistics
pg_statio_all_sequences, Viewing Collected Statistics
pg_statio_all_tables, Viewing Collected Statistics
pg_statio_sys_indexes, Viewing Collected Statistics
pg_statio_sys_sequences, Viewing Collected Statistics
pg_statio_sys_tables, Viewing Collected Statistics
pg_statio_user_indexes, Viewing Collected Statistics
pg_statio_user_sequences, Viewing Collected Statistics
pg_statio_user_tables, Viewing Collected Statistics
pg_statistic, Statistics Used by the Planner, pg_statistic
pg_stats, Statistics Used by the Planner, pg_stats
pg_stat_activity, Viewing Collected Statistics
pg_stat_all_indexes, Viewing Collected Statistics
pg_stat_all_tables, Viewing Collected Statistics
pg_stat_bgwriter, Viewing Collected Statistics
pg_stat_database, Viewing Collected Statistics
pg_stat_database_conflicts, Viewing Collected Statistics
pg_stat_file, System Administration Functions
pg_stat_replication, Viewing Collected Statistics
pg_stat_statements, pg_stat_statements
pg_stat_sys_indexes, Viewing Collected Statistics
pg_stat_sys_tables, Viewing Collected Statistics
pg_stat_user_functions, Viewing Collected Statistics
pg_stat_user_indexes, Viewing Collected Statistics
pg_stat_user_tables, Viewing Collected Statistics
pg_stat_xact_all_tables, Viewing Collected Statistics
pg_stat_xact_sys_tables, Viewing Collected Statistics
pg_stat_xact_user_functions, Viewing Collected Statistics
pg_stat_xact_user_tables, Viewing Collected Statistics
pg_stop_backup, System Administration Functions
pg_switch_xlog, System Administration Functions
pg_tables, pg_tables
pg_tablespace, pg_tablespace
pg_tablespace_databases, System Information Functions
pg_tablespace_size, System Administration Functions
pg_table_is_visible, System Information Functions
pg_table_size, System Administration Functions
pg_terminate_backend, System Administration Functions
pg_test_fsync, pg_test_fsync
pg_timezone_abbrevs, pg_timezone_abbrevs
pg_timezone_names, pg_timezone_names
pg_total_relation_size, System Administration Functions
pg_trgm, pg_trgm
pg_trigger, pg_trigger
pg_try_advisory_lock, System Administration Functions
pg_try_advisory_lock_shared, System Administration Functions
pg_try_advisory_xact_lock, System Administration Functions
pg_try_advisory_xact_lock_shared, System Administration Functions
pg_ts_config, pg_ts_config
pg_ts_config_is_visible, System Information Functions
pg_ts_config_map, pg_ts_config_map
pg_ts_dict, pg_ts_dict
pg_ts_dict_is_visible, System Information Functions
pg_ts_parser, pg_ts_parser
pg_ts_parser_is_visible, System Information Functions
pg_ts_template, pg_ts_template
pg_ts_template_is_visible, System Information Functions
pg_type, pg_type
pg_typeof, System Information Functions
pg_type_is_visible, System Information Functions
pg_upgrade, pg_upgrade
pg_user, pg_user
pg_user_mapping, pg_user_mapping
pg_user_mappings, pg_user_mappings
pg_views, pg_views
pg_xlogfile_name, System Administration Functions
pg_xlogfile_name_offset, System Administration Functions
pg_xlog_replay_pause, System Administration Functions
pg_xlog_replay_resume, System Administration Functions
phantom read, Transaction Isolation
pi, Mathematical Functions and Operators
PIC, Compiling and Linking Dynamically-loaded Functions
PID
determining PID of server process
in libpq, Connection Status Functions
PITR, Backup and Restore
PITR standby, High Availability, Load Balancing, and Replication
PL/Perl, PL/Perl - Perl Procedural Language
PL/PerlU, Trusted and Untrusted PL/Perl
PL/pgSQL, PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language
PL/Python, PL/Python - Python Procedural Language
PL/SQL (Oracle)
porting to PL/pgSQL, Porting from Oracle PL/SQL
PL/Tcl, PL/Tcl - Tcl Procedural Language
plainto_tsquery, Text Search Functions and Operators, Parsing Queries
plperl.on_init configuration parameter, Configuration
plperl.on_plperlu_init configuration parameter, Configuration
plperl.on_plperl_init configuration parameter, Configuration
plperl.use_strict configuration parameter, Configuration
plpgsql.variable_conflict configuration parameter, Variable Substitution
point, Points, Geometric Functions and Operators
point-in-time recovery, Backup and Restore
polygon, Polygons, Geometric Functions and Operators
polymorphic function, Polymorphic Types
polymorphic type, Polymorphic Types
popen, Geometric Functions and Operators
port, Database Connection Control Functions
port configuration parameter, Connection Settings
position, String Functions and Operators, Binary String Functions and Operators
POSTGRES, The Berkeley POSTGRES Project, Architectural Fundamentals, Starting the Database Server, Creating a Database, postgres
postgres user, The PostgreSQL User Account
Postgres95, Postgres95
postgresql.conf, Setting Parameters
postmaster, postmaster
post_auth_delay configuration parameter, Developer Options
power, Mathematical Functions and Operators
PQbackendPID, Connection Status Functions
PQbinaryTuples, Retrieving Query Result Information
with COPY, Functions Associated with the COPY Command
PQcancel, Canceling Queries in Progress
PQclear, Main Functions
PQclientEncoding, Control Functions
PQcmdStatus, Retrieving Other Result Information
PQcmdTuples, Retrieving Other Result Information
PQconndefaults, Database Connection Control Functions
PQconnectdb, Database Connection Control Functions
PQconnectdbParams, Database Connection Control Functions
PQconnectionNeedsPassword, Connection Status Functions
PQconnectionUsedPassword, Connection Status Functions
PQconnectPoll, Database Connection Control Functions
PQconnectStart, Database Connection Control Functions
PQconnectStartParams, Database Connection Control Functions
PQconninfoFree, Miscellaneous Functions
PQconninfoParse, Database Connection Control Functions
PQconsumeInput, Asynchronous Command Processing
PQcopyResult, Miscellaneous Functions
PQdb, Connection Status Functions
PQdescribePortal, Main Functions
PQdescribePrepared, Main Functions
PQencryptPassword, Miscellaneous Functions
PQendcopy, Obsolete Functions for COPY
PQerrorMessage, Connection Status Functions
PQescapeBytea, Escaping Strings for Inclusion in SQL Commands
PQescapeByteaConn, Escaping Strings for Inclusion in SQL Commands
PQescapeIdentifier, Escaping Strings for Inclusion in SQL Commands
PQescapeLiteral, Escaping Strings for Inclusion in SQL Commands
PQescapeString, Escaping Strings for Inclusion in SQL Commands
PQescapeStringConn, Escaping Strings for Inclusion in SQL Commands
PQexec, Main Functions
PQexecParams, Main Functions
PQexecPrepared, Main Functions
PQfformat, Retrieving Query Result Information
with COPY, Functions Associated with the COPY Command
PQfinish, Database Connection Control Functions
PQfireResultCreateEvents, Miscellaneous Functions
PQflush, Asynchronous Command Processing
PQfmod, Retrieving Query Result Information
PQfn, The Fast-Path Interface
PQfname, Retrieving Query Result Information
PQfnumber, Retrieving Query Result Information
PQfreeCancel, Canceling Queries in Progress
PQfreemem, Miscellaneous Functions
PQfsize, Retrieving Query Result Information
PQftable, Retrieving Query Result Information
PQftablecol, Retrieving Query Result Information
PQftype, Retrieving Query Result Information
PQgetCancel, Canceling Queries in Progress
PQgetCopyData, Functions for Receiving COPY Data
PQgetisnull, Retrieving Query Result Information
PQgetlength, Retrieving Query Result Information
PQgetline, Obsolete Functions for COPY
PQgetlineAsync, Obsolete Functions for COPY
PQgetResult, Asynchronous Command Processing
PQgetssl, Connection Status Functions
PQgetvalue, Retrieving Query Result Information
PQhost, Connection Status Functions
PQinitOpenSSL, SSL Library Initialization
PQinitSSL, SSL Library Initialization
PQinstanceData, Event Support Functions
PQisBusy, Asynchronous Command Processing
PQisnonblocking, Asynchronous Command Processing
PQisthreadsafe, Behavior in Threaded Programs
PQlibVersion, Miscellaneous Functions
see also PQserverVersion
PQmakeEmptyPGresult, Miscellaneous Functions
PQnfields, Retrieving Query Result Information
with COPY, Functions Associated with the COPY Command
PQnotifies, Asynchronous Notification
PQnparams, Retrieving Query Result Information
PQntuples, Retrieving Query Result Information
PQoidStatus, Retrieving Other Result Information
PQoidValue, Retrieving Other Result Information
PQoptions, Connection Status Functions
PQparameterStatus, Connection Status Functions
PQparamtype, Retrieving Query Result Information
PQpass, Connection Status Functions
PQping, Database Connection Control Functions
PQpingParams, Database Connection Control Functions
PQport, Connection Status Functions
PQprepare, Main Functions
PQprint, Retrieving Query Result Information
PQprotocolVersion, Connection Status Functions
PQputCopyData, Functions for Sending COPY Data
PQputCopyEnd, Functions for Sending COPY Data
PQputline, Obsolete Functions for COPY
PQputnbytes, Obsolete Functions for COPY
PQregisterEventProc, Event Support Functions
PQrequestCancel, Canceling Queries in Progress
PQreset, Database Connection Control Functions
PQresetPoll, Database Connection Control Functions
PQresetStart, Database Connection Control Functions
PQresStatus, Main Functions
PQresultAlloc, Miscellaneous Functions
PQresultErrorField, Main Functions
PQresultErrorMessage, Main Functions
PQresultInstanceData, Event Support Functions
PQresultSetInstanceData, Event Support Functions
PQresultStatus, Main Functions
PQsendDescribePortal, Asynchronous Command Processing
PQsendDescribePrepared, Asynchronous Command Processing
PQsendPrepare, Asynchronous Command Processing
PQsendQuery, Asynchronous Command Processing
PQsendQueryParams, Asynchronous Command Processing
PQsendQueryPrepared, Asynchronous Command Processing
PQserverVersion, Connection Status Functions
PQsetClientEncoding, Control Functions
PQsetdb, Database Connection Control Functions
PQsetdbLogin, Database Connection Control Functions
PQsetErrorVerbosity, Control Functions
PQsetInstanceData, Event Support Functions
PQsetnonblocking, Asynchronous Command Processing
PQsetNoticeProcessor, Notice Processing
PQsetNoticeReceiver, Notice Processing
PQsetResultAttrs, Miscellaneous Functions
PQsetvalue, Miscellaneous Functions
PQsocket, Connection Status Functions
PQstatus, Connection Status Functions
PQtrace, Control Functions
PQtransactionStatus, Connection Status Functions
PQtty, Connection Status Functions
PQunescapeBytea, Escaping Strings for Inclusion in SQL Commands
PQuntrace, Control Functions
PQuser, Connection Status Functions
predicate locking, Serializable Isolation Level
PREPARE, PREPARE
PREPARE TRANSACTION, PREPARE TRANSACTION
prepared statements
creating, PREPARE
executing, EXECUTE
removing, DEALLOCATE
showing the query plan, EXPLAIN
preparing a query
in PL/pgSQL, Plan Caching
in PL/Python, Database Access Functions
in PL/Tcl, Database Access from PL/Tcl
pre_auth_delay configuration parameter, Developer Options
primary key, Primary Keys
primary_conninfo recovery parameter, Standby Server Settings
privilege, Privileges
querying, System Information Functions
with rules, Rules and Privileges
for schemas, Schemas and Privileges
with views, Rules and Privileges
procedural language, Procedural Languages
externally maintained, Procedural Languages
handler for, Writing A Procedural Language Handler
protocol
frontend-backend, Frontend/Backend Protocol
ps
to monitor activity, Standard Unix Tools
psql, Accessing a Database, psql
Python, PL/Python - Python Procedural Language

Q

qualified name, Creating a Schema
query, Querying a Table, Queries
query plan, Using EXPLAIN
query tree, The Query Tree
querytree, Text Search Functions and Operators, Manipulating Queries
quotation marks
and identifiers, Identifiers and Key Words
escaping, String Constants
quote_all_identifiers configuration parameter, Previous PostgreSQL Versions
quote_ident, String Functions and Operators
in PL/Perl, Utility Functions in PL/Perl
use in PL/pgSQL, Executing Dynamic Commands
quote_literal, String Functions and Operators
in PL/Perl, Utility Functions in PL/Perl
use in PL/pgSQL, Executing Dynamic Commands
quote_nullable, String Functions and Operators
in PL/Perl, Utility Functions in PL/Perl
use in PL/pgSQL, Executing Dynamic Commands

R

radians, Mathematical Functions and Operators
radius, Geometric Functions and Operators, RADIUS Authentication
RAISE, Errors and Messages
random, Mathematical Functions and Operators
random_page_cost configuration parameter, Planner Cost Constants
range table, The Query Tree
rank, Window Functions
read committed, Read Committed Isolation Level
read-only transaction
setting, SET TRANSACTION
setting default, Statement Behavior
readline, Requirements
real, Floating-Point Types
REASSIGN OWNED, REASSIGN OWNED
record, Pseudo-Types
recovery.conf, Recovery Configuration
recovery_end_command recovery parameter, Archive Recovery Settings
recovery_target_inclusive recovery parameter, Recovery Target Settings
recovery_target_name recovery parameter, Recovery Target Settings
recovery_target_time recovery parameter, Recovery Target Settings
recovery_target_timeline recovery parameter, Recovery Target Settings
recovery_target_xid recovery parameter, Recovery Target Settings
rectangle, Boxes
referential integrity, Foreign Keys, Foreign Keys
regclass, Object Identifier Types
regconfig, Object Identifier Types
regdictionary, Object Identifier Types
regexp_matches, String Functions and Operators, POSIX Regular Expressions
regexp_replace, String Functions and Operators, POSIX Regular Expressions
regexp_split_to_array, String Functions and Operators, POSIX Regular Expressions
regexp_split_to_table, String Functions and Operators, POSIX Regular Expressions
regoper, Object Identifier Types
regoperator, Object Identifier Types
regproc, Object Identifier Types
regprocedure, Object Identifier Types
regression intercept, Aggregate Functions
regression slope, Aggregate Functions
regression test, Installation Procedure
regression tests, Regression Tests
regr_avgx, Aggregate Functions
regr_avgy, Aggregate Functions
regr_count, Aggregate Functions
regr_intercept, Aggregate Functions
regr_r2, Aggregate Functions
regr_slope, Aggregate Functions
regr_sxx, Aggregate Functions
regr_sxy, Aggregate Functions
regr_syy, Aggregate Functions
regtype, Object Identifier Types
regular expression, SIMILAR TO Regular Expressions, POSIX Regular Expressions
see also pattern matching
regular expressions
and locales, Behavior
reindex, Routine Reindexing, REINDEX
reindexdb, reindexdb
relation, Concepts
relational database, Concepts
RELEASE SAVEPOINT, RELEASE SAVEPOINT
repeat, String Functions and Operators
repeatable read, Repeatable Read Isolation Level
replace, String Functions and Operators
replication, High Availability, Load Balancing, and Replication
replication_timeout configuration parameter, Master Server
reporting errors
in PL/pgSQL, Errors and Messages
RESET, RESET
restartpoint, WAL Configuration
restart_after_crash configuration parameter, Error Handling
restore_command recovery parameter, Archive Recovery Settings
RESTRICT
with DROP, Dependency Tracking
foreign key action, Foreign Keys
RETURN NEXT
in PL/pgSQL, RETURN NEXT and RETURN QUERY
RETURN QUERY
in PL/pgSQL, RETURN NEXT and RETURN QUERY
RETURNING INTO
in PL/pgSQL, Executing a Query with a Single-row Result
reverse, String Functions and Operators
REVOKE, Privileges, REVOKE
right, String Functions and Operators
right join, Joined Tables
role, Database Roles
applicable, applicable_roles
enabled, enabled_roles
membership in, Role Membership
privilege to create, Role Attributes
privilege to initiate replication, Role Attributes
ROLLBACK, ROLLBACK
psql, Variables
ROLLBACK PREPARED, ROLLBACK PREPARED
ROLLBACK TO SAVEPOINT, ROLLBACK TO SAVEPOINT
round, Mathematical Functions and Operators
routine maintenance, Routine Database Maintenance Tasks
row, Concepts, Row Constructors, Table Basics
row estimation
planner, Row Estimation Examples
row type, Composite Types
constructor, Row Constructors
row-wise comparison, Row and Array Comparisons
row_number, Window Functions
rpad, String Functions and Operators
rtrim, String Functions and Operators
rule, The Rule System
and views, Views and the Rule System
for DELETE, Rules on INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE
for INSERT, Rules on INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE
for SELECT, How SELECT Rules Work
compared with triggers, Rules Versus Triggers
for UPDATE, Rules on INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE

S

SAVEPOINT, SAVEPOINT
savepoints
defining, SAVEPOINT
releasing, RELEASE SAVEPOINT
rolling back, ROLLBACK TO SAVEPOINT
scalar
see expression
schema, Schemas, Overview
creating, Creating a Schema
current, The Schema Search Path, System Information Functions
public, The Public Schema
removing, Creating a Schema
SCO
installation on, SCO OpenServer and SCO UnixWare
SCO OpenServer
IPC configuration, Shared Memory and Semaphores
search path, The Schema Search Path
current, System Information Functions
search_path, The Schema Search Path
search_path configuration parameter, Statement Behavior
SECURITY LABEL, SECURITY LABEL
seg, seg
segment_size configuration parameter, Preset Options
SELECT, Querying a Table, Queries, SELECT
select list, Select Lists
SELECT INTO, SELECT INTO
in PL/pgSQL, Executing a Query with a Single-row Result
semaphores, Shared Memory and Semaphores
sepgsql, sepgsql
sepgsql.debug_audit configuration parameter, GUC Parameters
sepgsql.permissive configuration parameter, GUC Parameters
sequence, Sequence Manipulation Functions
and serial type, Serial Types
sequential scan, Planner Method Configuration
seq_page_cost configuration parameter, Planner Cost Constants
serial, Serial Types
serial4, Serial Types
serial8, Serial Types
serializable, Serializable Isolation Level
Serializable Snapshot Isolation, Introduction
serialization anomaly, Serializable Isolation Level
server log, Error Reporting and Logging
log file maintenance, Log File Maintenance
server spoofing, Preventing Server Spoofing
server_encoding configuration parameter, Preset Options
server_version configuration parameter, Preset Options
server_version_num configuration parameter, Preset Options
session_replication_role configuration parameter, Statement Behavior
session_user, System Information Functions
SET, System Administration Functions, SET
SET CONSTRAINTS, SET CONSTRAINTS
set difference, Combining Queries
set intersection, Combining Queries
set operation, Combining Queries
set returning functions
functions, Set Returning Functions
SET ROLE, SET ROLE
SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION, SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION
SET TRANSACTION, SET TRANSACTION
set union, Combining Queries
SET XML OPTION, Statement Behavior
setseed, Mathematical Functions and Operators
setval, Sequence Manipulation Functions
setweight, Text Search Functions and Operators, Manipulating Documents
set_bit, Binary String Functions and Operators
set_byte, Binary String Functions and Operators
set_config, System Administration Functions
set_masklen, Network Address Functions and Operators
shared library, Shared Libraries, Compiling and Linking Dynamically-loaded Functions
shared memory, Shared Memory and Semaphores
shared_buffers configuration parameter, Memory
shared_preload_libraries, Shared Memory and LWLocks
shared_preload_libraries configuration parameter, Kernel Resource Usage
SHMMAX, Shared Memory and Semaphores
shobj_description, System Information Functions
SHOW, System Administration Functions, SHOW
shutdown, Shutting Down the Server
SIGHUP, Setting Parameters, The pg_hba.conf File, User Name Maps
SIGINT, Shutting Down the Server
sign, Mathematical Functions and Operators
signal
backend processes, System Administration Functions
significant digits, Locale and Formatting
SIGQUIT, Shutting Down the Server
SIGTERM, Shutting Down the Server
silent_mode configuration parameter, Where To Log
SIMILAR TO, SIMILAR TO Regular Expressions
sin, Mathematical Functions and Operators
sleep, Delaying Execution
sliced bread
see TOAST
smallint, Integer Types
Solaris
installation on, Solaris
IPC configuration, Shared Memory and Semaphores
shared library, Compiling and Linking Dynamically-loaded Functions
start script, Starting the Database Server
SOME, Aggregate Functions, Subquery Expressions, Row and Array Comparisons
sorting, Sorting Rows
SPI, Server Programming Interface
examples, spi
SPI_connect, SPI_connect
SPI_copytuple, SPI_copytuple
SPI_cursor_close, SPI_cursor_close
in PL/Perl, Database Access from PL/Perl
SPI_cursor_fetch, SPI_cursor_fetch
SPI_cursor_find, SPI_cursor_find
SPI_cursor_move, SPI_cursor_move
SPI_cursor_open, SPI_cursor_open
SPI_cursor_open_with_args, SPI_cursor_open_with_args
SPI_cursor_open_with_paramlist, SPI_cursor_open_with_paramlist
SPI_exec, SPI_exec
SPI_execp, SPI_execp
SPI_execute, SPI_execute
SPI_execute_plan, SPI_execute_plan
SPI_execute_plan_with_paramlist, SPI_execute_plan_with_paramlist
SPI_execute_with_args, SPI_execute_with_args
spi_exec_prepared
in PL/Perl, Database Access from PL/Perl
spi_exec_query
in PL/Perl, Database Access from PL/Perl
spi_fetchrow
in PL/Perl, Database Access from PL/Perl
SPI_finish, SPI_finish
SPI_fname, SPI_fname
SPI_fnumber, SPI_fnumber
SPI_freeplan, SPI_freeplan
in PL/Perl, Database Access from PL/Perl
SPI_freetuple, SPI_freetuple
SPI_freetuptable, SPI_freetuptable
SPI_getargcount, SPI_getargcount
SPI_getargtypeid, SPI_getargtypeid
SPI_getbinval, SPI_getbinval
SPI_getnspname, SPI_getnspname
SPI_getrelname, SPI_getrelname
SPI_gettype, SPI_gettype
SPI_gettypeid, SPI_gettypeid
SPI_getvalue, SPI_getvalue
SPI_is_cursor_plan, SPI_is_cursor_plan
spi_lastoid, Database Access from PL/Tcl
SPI_modifytuple, SPI_modifytuple
SPI_palloc, SPI_palloc
SPI_pfree, SPI_pfree
SPI_pop, SPI_pop
SPI_prepare, SPI_prepare
in PL/Perl, Database Access from PL/Perl
SPI_prepare_cursor, SPI_prepare_cursor
SPI_prepare_params, SPI_prepare_params
SPI_push, SPI_push
spi_query
in PL/Perl, Database Access from PL/Perl
spi_query_prepared
in PL/Perl, Database Access from PL/Perl
SPI_repalloc, SPI_repalloc
SPI_returntuple, SPI_returntuple
SPI_saveplan, SPI_saveplan
SPI_scroll_cursor_fetch, SPI_scroll_cursor_fetch
SPI_scroll_cursor_move, SPI_scroll_cursor_move
split_part, String Functions and Operators
SQL/CLI, SQL Conformance
SQL/Foundation, SQL Conformance
SQL/Framework, SQL Conformance
SQL/JRT, SQL Conformance
SQL/MED, SQL Conformance
SQL/OLB, SQL Conformance
SQL/PSM, SQL Conformance
SQL/Schemata, SQL Conformance
SQL/XML, SQL Conformance
sql_inheritance configuration parameter, Previous PostgreSQL Versions
sqrt, Mathematical Functions and Operators
ssh, Secure TCP/IP Connections with SSH Tunnels
SSI, Introduction
SSL, Secure TCP/IP Connections with SSL, SSL Support
with libpq, Database Connection Control Functions, Connection Status Functions
ssl configuration parameter, Security and Authentication
sslinfo, sslinfo
ssl_ciphers configuration parameter, Security and Authentication
ssl_renegotiation_limit configuration parameter, Security and Authentication
SSPI, SSPI Authentication
STABLE, Function Volatility Categories
standard deviation, Aggregate Functions
population, Aggregate Functions
sample, Aggregate Functions
standard_conforming_strings configuration parameter, Previous PostgreSQL Versions
standby server, High Availability, Load Balancing, and Replication
standby_mode recovery parameter, Standby Server Settings
START TRANSACTION, START TRANSACTION
statement_timeout configuration parameter, Statement Behavior
statement_timestamp, Date/Time Functions and Operators
statistics, Aggregate Functions, The Statistics Collector
of the planner, Statistics Used by the Planner, Updating Planner Statistics
stats_temp_directory configuration parameter, Query and Index Statistics Collector
stddev, Aggregate Functions
stddev_pop, Aggregate Functions
stddev_samp, Aggregate Functions
STONITH, High Availability, Load Balancing, and Replication
storage parameters, Storage Parameters
Streaming Replication, High Availability, Load Balancing, and Replication
string
see character string
strings
backslash quotes, Previous PostgreSQL Versions
escape warning, Previous PostgreSQL Versions
standard conforming, Previous PostgreSQL Versions
string_agg, Aggregate Functions
string_to_array, Array Functions and Operators
strip, Text Search Functions and Operators, Manipulating Documents
strpos, String Functions and Operators
subquery, Aggregate Functions, Scalar Subqueries, Subqueries, Subquery Expressions
subscript, Subscripts
substr, String Functions and Operators
substring, String Functions and Operators, Binary String Functions and Operators, SIMILAR TO Regular Expressions, POSIX Regular Expressions
sum, Aggregate Functions
superuser, Accessing a Database, Role Attributes
superuser_reserved_connections configuration parameter, Connection Settings
suppress_redundant_updates_trigger, Trigger Functions
synchronize_seqscans configuration parameter, Previous PostgreSQL Versions
synchronous commit, Asynchronous Commit
Synchronous Replication, High Availability, Load Balancing, and Replication
synchronous_commit configuration parameter, Settings
synchronous_standby_names configuration parameter, Master Server
syntax
SQL, SQL Syntax
syslog_facility configuration parameter, Where To Log
syslog_ident configuration parameter, Where To Log
system catalog
schema, The System Catalog Schema

T

table, Concepts, Table Basics
creating, Table Basics
inheritance, Inheritance
modifying, Modifying Tables
partitioning, Partitioning
removing, Table Basics
renaming, Renaming a Table
TABLE command, SELECT
table expression, Table Expressions
table function, Table Functions
tablefunc, tablefunc
tableoid, System Columns
tablespace, Tablespaces
default, Statement Behavior
temporary, Statement Behavior
tan, Mathematical Functions and Operators
target list, The Query Tree
Tcl, PL/Tcl - Tcl Procedural Language
tcp_keepalives_count configuration parameter, Connection Settings
tcp_keepalives_idle configuration parameter, Connection Settings
tcp_keepalives_interval configuration parameter, Connection Settings
template0, Template Databases
template1, Creating a Database, Template Databases
temp_buffers configuration parameter, Memory
temp_tablespaces configuration parameter, Statement Behavior
test, Regression Tests
test_parser, test_parser
text, Character Types, Network Address Functions and Operators
text search, Full Text Search
data types, Text Search Types
functions and operators, Text Search Types
indexes, GiST and GIN Index Types
threads
with libpq, Behavior in Threaded Programs
tid, Object Identifier Types
time, Date/Time Types, Times
constants, Special Values
current, Current Date/Time
output format, Date/Time Output
see also formatting
time span, Date/Time Types
time with time zone, Date/Time Types, Times
time without time zone, Date/Time Types, Times
time zone, Time Zones, Locale and Formatting
conversion, AT TIME ZONE
input abbreviations, Date/Time Configuration Files
time zone data, Installation Procedure
time zone names, Locale and Formatting
timelines, Backup and Restore
timeofday, Date/Time Functions and Operators
timeout
client authentication, Security and Authentication
deadlock, Lock Management
timestamp, Date/Time Types, Time Stamps
timestamp with time zone, Date/Time Types, Time Stamps
timestamp without time zone, Date/Time Types, Time Stamps
timestamptz, Date/Time Types
timezone configuration parameter, Locale and Formatting
timezone_abbreviations configuration parameter, Locale and Formatting
TOAST, TOAST
and user-defined types, User-defined Types
per-column storage settings, Description
versus large objects, Introduction
token, Lexical Structure
to_ascii, String Functions and Operators
to_char, Data Type Formatting Functions
and locales, Behavior
to_date, Data Type Formatting Functions
to_hex, String Functions and Operators
to_number, Data Type Formatting Functions
to_timestamp, Data Type Formatting Functions
to_tsquery, Text Search Functions and Operators, Parsing Queries
to_tsvector, Text Search Functions and Operators, Parsing Documents
trace_locks configuration parameter, Developer Options
trace_lock_oidmin configuration parameter, Developer Options
trace_lock_table configuration parameter, Developer Options
trace_lwlocks configuration parameter, Developer Options
trace_notify configuration parameter, Developer Options
trace_recovery_messages configuration parameter, Developer Options
trace_sort configuration parameter, Developer Options
trace_userlocks configuration parameter, Developer Options
track_activities configuration parameter, Query and Index Statistics Collector
track_activity_query_size configuration parameter, Query and Index Statistics Collector
track_counts configuration parameter, Query and Index Statistics Collector
track_functions configuration parameter, Query and Index Statistics Collector
transaction, Transactions
transaction ID
wraparound, Preventing Transaction ID Wraparound Failures
transaction isolation, Transaction Isolation
transaction isolation level, Transaction Isolation
read committed, Read Committed Isolation Level
repeatable read, Repeatable Read Isolation Level
serializable, Serializable Isolation Level
setting, SET TRANSACTION
setting default, Statement Behavior
transaction log
see WAL
transaction_timestamp, Date/Time Functions and Operators
transform_null_equals configuration parameter, Platform and Client Compatibility
translate, String Functions and Operators
trigger, Pseudo-Types, Triggers
arguments for trigger functions, Overview of Trigger Behavior
for updating a derived tsvector column, Triggers for Automatic Updates
in C, Writing Trigger Functions in C
in PL/pgSQL, Trigger Procedures
in PL/Python, Trigger Functions
in PL/Tcl, Trigger Procedures in PL/Tcl
compared with rules, Rules Versus Triggers
trigger_file recovery parameter, Standby Server Settings
trim, String Functions and Operators, Binary String Functions and Operators
Tru64 UNIX
shared library, Compiling and Linking Dynamically-loaded Functions
true, Boolean Type
trunc, Mathematical Functions and Operators, Network Address Functions and Operators
TRUNCATE, TRUNCATE
trusted
PL/Perl, Trusted and Untrusted PL/Perl
tsearch2, tsearch2
tsquery (data type), tsquery
tsvector (data type), tsvector
tsvector concatenation, Manipulating Documents
tsvector_update_trigger, Text Search Functions and Operators
tsvector_update_trigger_column, Text Search Functions and Operators
ts_debug, Text Search Functions and Operators, Configuration Testing
ts_headline, Text Search Functions and Operators, Highlighting Results
ts_lexize, Text Search Functions and Operators, Dictionary Testing
ts_parse, Text Search Functions and Operators, Parser Testing
ts_rank, Text Search Functions and Operators, Ranking Search Results
ts_rank_cd, Text Search Functions and Operators, Ranking Search Results
ts_rewrite, Text Search Functions and Operators, Query Rewriting
ts_stat, Text Search Functions and Operators, Gathering Document Statistics
ts_token_type, Text Search Functions and Operators, Parser Testing
txid_current, System Information Functions
txid_current_snapshot, System Information Functions
txid_snapshot_xip, System Information Functions
txid_snapshot_xmax, System Information Functions
txid_snapshot_xmin, System Information Functions
txid_visible_in_snapshot, System Information Functions
type
see data type
polymorphic, Polymorphic Types
type cast, Numeric Constants, Type Casts

U

UESCAPE, Identifiers and Key Words, String Constants with Unicode Escapes
unaccent, unaccent, Functions
Unicode escape
in identifiers, Identifiers and Key Words
in string constants, String Constants with Unicode Escapes
UNION, Combining Queries
determination of result type, UNION, CASE, and Related Constructs
unique constraint, Unique Constraints
Unix domain socket, Database Connection Control Functions
UnixWare
installation on, SCO OpenServer and SCO UnixWare
IPC configuration, Shared Memory and Semaphores
shared library, Compiling and Linking Dynamically-loaded Functions
unix_socket_directory configuration parameter, Connection Settings
unix_socket_group configuration parameter, Connection Settings
unix_socket_permissions configuration parameter, Connection Settings
UNLISTEN, UNLISTEN
unnest, Array Functions and Operators
unqualified name, The Schema Search Path
UPDATE, Updates, Updating Data, UPDATE
update_process_title configuration parameter, Query and Index Statistics Collector
updating, Updating Data
upgrading, Upgrading a PostgreSQL Cluster
upper, String Functions and Operators
and locales, Behavior
user, System Information Functions, Database Roles
current, System Information Functions
user mapping, Foreign Data
User name maps, User Name Maps
UUID, UUID Type, Installation Procedure
uuid-ossp, uuid-ossp

V

vacuum, Routine Vacuuming, VACUUM
vacuumdb, vacuumdb
vacuumlo, vacuumlo
vacuum_cost_delay configuration parameter, Cost-based Vacuum Delay
vacuum_cost_limit configuration parameter, Cost-based Vacuum Delay
vacuum_cost_page_dirty configuration parameter, Cost-based Vacuum Delay
vacuum_cost_page_hit configuration parameter, Cost-based Vacuum Delay
vacuum_cost_page_miss configuration parameter, Cost-based Vacuum Delay
vacuum_defer_cleanup_age configuration parameter, Master Server
vacuum_freeze_min_age configuration parameter, Statement Behavior
vacuum_freeze_table_age configuration parameter, Statement Behavior
value expression, Value Expressions
VALUES, VALUES Lists, VALUES
determination of result type, UNION, CASE, and Related Constructs
varchar, Character Types
variadic function, SQL Functions with Variable Numbers of Arguments
variance, Aggregate Functions
population, Aggregate Functions
sample, Aggregate Functions
var_pop, Aggregate Functions
var_samp, Aggregate Functions
version, Accessing a Database, System Information Functions
compatibility, Upgrading a PostgreSQL Cluster
view, Views
implementation through rules, Views and the Rule System
updating, Cooperation with Views
Visibility Map, Visibility Map
VM
see Visibility Map
void, Pseudo-Types
VOLATILE, Function Volatility Categories
volatility
functions, Function Volatility Categories
VPATH, Installation Procedure

W

WAL, Reliability and the Write-Ahead Log
wal_block_size configuration parameter, Preset Options
wal_buffers configuration parameter, Settings
wal_debug configuration parameter, Developer Options
wal_keep_segments configuration parameter, Master Server
wal_level configuration parameter, Settings
wal_receiver_status_interval configuration parameter, Standby Servers
wal_segment_size configuration parameter, Preset Options
wal_sender_delay configuration parameter, Master Server
wal_sync_method configuration parameter, Settings
wal_writer_delay configuration parameter, Settings
warm standby, High Availability, Load Balancing, and Replication
WHERE, The WHERE Clause
where to log, Where To Log
WHILE
in PL/pgSQL, WHILE
width, Geometric Functions and Operators
width_bucket, Mathematical Functions and Operators
window function, Window Functions
built-in, Window Functions
invocation, Window Function Calls
order of execution, Window Function Processing
WITH
in SELECT, WITH Queries (Common Table Expressions), SELECT
witness server, High Availability, Load Balancing, and Replication
work_mem configuration parameter, Memory

X

xid, Object Identifier Types
xmax, System Columns
xmin, System Columns
XML, XML Type
XML export, Mapping Tables to XML
XML option, Creating XML Values, Statement Behavior
xml2, xml2
xmlagg, xmlagg, Aggregate Functions
xmlbinary configuration parameter, Statement Behavior
xmlcomment, xmlcomment
xmlconcat, xmlconcat
xmlelement, xmlelement
XMLEXISTS, XMLEXISTS
xmlforest, xmlforest
xmloption configuration parameter, Statement Behavior
xmlparse, Creating XML Values
xmlpi, xmlpi
xmlroot, xmlroot
xmlserialize, Creating XML Values
xml_is_well_formed, xml_is_well_formed
xml_is_well_formed_content, xml_is_well_formed
xml_is_well_formed_document, xml_is_well_formed
XPath, Processing XML
xpath_exists, Processing XML

Y

yacc, Requirements

Z

zero_damaged_pages configuration parameter, Developer Options
zlib, Requirements, Installation Procedure
Prev | Home
Bibliography |


Getting The Source via Git

Prev Up Appendix H. The Source Code Repository Next

H.1. Getting The Source via Git

With Git you will make a copy of the entire code repository on your local machine, so you will have access to all history and branches offline. This is the fastest and most flexible way to develop or test patches.

Git

  1. You will need an installed version of Git, which you can get from http://git-scm.com. Many systems already have a recent version of Git installed by default, or available in their package distribution system.

  2. To begin using the Git repository, make a clone of the official mirror:

    git clone git://git.postgresql.org/git/postgresql.git

    This will copy the full repository to your local machine, so it may take a while to complete, especially if you have a slow Internet connection. The files will be placed in a new subdirectory postgresql of your current directory.

    The Git mirror can also be reached via the HTTP protocol, if for example a firewall is blocking access to the Git protocol. Just change the URL prefix to http, as in:

    git clone http://git.postgresql.org/git/postgresql.git

    The HTTP protocol is less efficient than the Git protocol, so it will be slower to use.

  3. Whenever you want to get the latest updates in the system, cd into the repository, and run:

    git fetch

Git can do a lot more things than just fetch the source. For more information, consult the Git man pages, or see the website at http://git-scm.com.

Prev | Home | Next
The Source Code Repository | Up | Documentation


The PostgreSQL Global Development Group

Copyright © 1996-2015 The PostgreSQL Global Development Group

Table of Contents
Preface
What is PostgreSQL?
A Brief History of PostgreSQL
Conventions
Further Information
Bug Reporting Guidelines
I. Tutorial
1. Getting Started
2. The SQL Language
3. Advanced Features
II. The SQL Language
4. SQL Syntax
5. Data Definition
6. Data Manipulation
7. Queries
8. Data Types
9. Functions and Operators
10. Type Conversion
11. Indexes
12. Full Text Search
13. Concurrency Control
14. Performance Tips
III. Server Administration
15. Installation from Source Code
16. Installation from Source Code on Windows
17. Server Setup and Operation
18. Server Configuration
19. Client Authentication
20. Database Roles
21. Managing Databases
22. Localization
23. Routine Database Maintenance Tasks
24. Backup and Restore
25. High Availability, Load Balancing, and Replication
26. Recovery Configuration
27. Monitoring Database Activity
28. Monitoring Disk Usage
29. Reliability and the Write-Ahead Log
30. Regression Tests
IV. Client Interfaces
31. libpq - C Library
32. Large Objects
33. ECPG - Embedded SQL in C
34. The Information Schema
V. Server Programming
35. Extending SQL
36. Triggers
37. The Rule System
38. Procedural Languages
39. PL/pgSQL - SQL Procedural Language
40. PL/Tcl - Tcl Procedural Language
41. PL/Perl - Perl Procedural Language
42. PL/Python - Python Procedural Language
43. Server Programming Interface
VI. Reference
I. SQL Commands
II. PostgreSQL Client Applications
III. PostgreSQL Server Applications
VII. Internals
44. Overview of PostgreSQL Internals
45. System Catalogs
46. Frontend/Backend Protocol
47. PostgreSQL Coding Conventions
48. Native Language Support
49. Writing A Procedural Language Handler
50. Writing A Foreign Data Wrapper
51. Genetic Query Optimizer
52. Index Access Method Interface Definition
53. GiST Indexes
54. GIN Indexes
55. Database Physical Storage
56. BKI Backend Interface
57. How the Planner Uses Statistics
VIII. Appendixes
A. PostgreSQL Error Codes
B. Date/Time Support
C. SQL Key Words
D. SQL Conformance
E. Release Notes
F. Additional Supplied Modules
G. External Projects
H. The Source Code Repository
I. Documentation
J. Acronyms
Bibliography
Index
Next
Preface


Legal Notice

PostgreSQL is Copyright © 1996-2015 by the PostgreSQL Global Development Group and is distributed under the terms of the license of the University of California below.

Postgres95 is Copyright © 1994-5 by the Regents of the University of California.

Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its documentation for any purpose, without fee, and without a written agreement is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph and the following two paragraphs appear in all copies.

IN NO EVENT SHALL THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BE LIABLE TO ANY PARTY FOR DIRECT, INDIRECT, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES, INCLUDING LOST PROFITS, ARISING OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE AND ITS DOCUMENTATION, EVEN IF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIMS ANY WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE SOFTWARE PROVIDED HEREUNDER IS ON AN "AS-IS" BASIS, AND THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA HAS NO OBLIGATIONS TO PROVIDE MAINTENANCE, SUPPORT, UPDATES, ENHANCEMENTS, OR MODIFICATIONS.

Home


Row Estimation Examples

Prev Up Chapter 57. How the Planner Uses Statistics Next

57.1. Row Estimation Examples

The examples shown below use tables in the PostgreSQL regression test database. The outputs shown are taken from version 8.3. The behavior of earlier (or later) versions might vary. Note also that since ANALYZE uses random sampling while producing statistics, the results will change slightly after any new ANALYZE.

Let's start with a very simple query:

EXPLAIN SELECT * FROM tenk1;

                         QUERY PLAN
-------------------------------------------------------------
 Seq Scan on tenk1  (cost=0.00..458.00 rows=10000 width=244)

How the planner determines the cardinality of tenk1 is covered in Section 14.2, but is repeated here for completeness. The number of pages and rows is looked up in pg_class:

SELECT relpages, reltuples FROM pg_class WHERE relname = 'tenk1';

 relpages | reltuples
----------+-----------
      358 |     10000

These numbers are current as of the last VACUUM or ANALYZE on the table. The planner then fetches the actual current number of pages in the table (this is a cheap operation, not requiring a table scan). If that is different from relpages then reltuples is scaled accordingly to arrive at a current number-of-rows estimate. In this case the values are correct so the rows estimate is the same as reltuples.

Let's move on to an example with a range condition in its WHERE clause:

EXPLAIN SELECT * FROM tenk1 WHERE unique1 < 1000;

                                   QUERY PLAN
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Bitmap Heap Scan on tenk1  (cost=24.06..394.64 rows=1007 width=244)
   Recheck Cond: (unique1 < 1000)
   ->  Bitmap Index Scan on tenk1_unique1  (cost=0.00..23.80 rows=1007 width=0)
         Index Cond: (unique1 < 1000)

The planner examines the WHERE clause condition and looks up the selectivity function for the operator < in pg_operator. This is held in the column oprrest, and the entry in this case is scalarltsel. The scalarltsel function retrieves the histogram for unique1 from pg_statistics. For manual queries it is more convenient to look in the simpler pg_stats view:

SELECT histogram_bounds FROM pg_stats
WHERE tablename='tenk1' AND attname='unique1';

                   histogram_bounds
------------------------------------------------------
 {0,993,1997,3050,4040,5036,5957,7057,8029,9016,9995}

Next the fraction of the histogram occupied by "< 1000" is worked out. This is the selectivity. The histogram divides the range into equal frequency buckets, so all we have to do is locate the bucket that our value is in and count part of it and all of the ones before. The value 1000 is clearly in the second bucket (993-1997). Assuming a linear distribution of values inside each bucket, we can calculate the selectivity as:

selectivity = (1 + (1000 - bucket[2].min)/(bucket[2].max - bucket[2].min))/num_buckets
            = (1 + (1000 - 993)/(1997 - 993))/10
            = 0.100697

that is, one whole bucket plus a linear fraction of the second, divided by the number of buckets. The estimated number of rows can now be calculated as the product of the selectivity and the cardinality of tenk1:

rows = rel_cardinality * selectivity
     = 10000 * 0.100697
     = 1007  (rounding off)

Next let's consider an example with an equality condition in its WHERE clause:

EXPLAIN SELECT * FROM tenk1 WHERE stringu1 = 'CRAAAA';

                        QUERY PLAN
----------------------------------------------------------
 Seq Scan on tenk1  (cost=0.00..483.00 rows=30 width=244)
   Filter: (stringu1 = 'CRAAAA'::name)

Again the planner examines the WHERE clause condition and looks up the selectivity function for =, which is eqsel. For equality estimation the histogram is not useful; instead the list of most common values (MCVs) is used to determine the selectivity. Let's have a look at the MCVs, with some additional columns that will be useful later:

SELECT null_frac, n_distinct, most_common_vals, most_common_freqs FROM pg_stats
WHERE tablename='tenk1' AND attname='stringu1';

null_frac         | 0
n_distinct        | 676
most_common_vals  | {EJAAAA,BBAAAA,CRAAAA,FCAAAA,FEAAAA,GSAAAA,JOAAAA,MCAAAA,NAAAAA,WGAAAA}
most_common_freqs | {0.00333333,0.003,0.003,0.003,0.003,0.003,0.003,0.003,0.003,0.003}

Since CRAAAA appears in the list of MCVs, the selectivity is merely the corresponding entry in the list of most common frequencies (MCFs):

selectivity = mcf[3]
            = 0.003

As before, the estimated number of rows is just the product of this with the cardinality of tenk1:

rows = 10000 * 0.003
     = 30

Now consider the same query, but with a constant that is not in the MCV list:

EXPLAIN SELECT * FROM tenk1 WHERE stringu1 = 'xxx';

                        QUERY PLAN
----------------------------------------------------------
 Seq Scan on tenk1  (cost=0.00..483.00 rows=15 width=244)
   Filter: (stringu1 = 'xxx'::name)

This is quite a different problem: how to estimate the selectivity when the value is not in the MCV list. The approach is to use the fact that the value is not in the list, combined with the knowledge of the frequencies for all of the MCVs:

selectivity = (1 - sum(mvf))/(num_distinct - num_mcv)
            = (1 - (0.00333333 + 0.003 + 0.003 + 0.003 + 0.003 + 0.003 +
                    0.003 + 0.003 + 0.003 + 0.003))/(676 - 10)
            = 0.0014559

That is, add up all the frequencies for the MCVs and subtract them from one, then divide by the number of other distinct values. This amounts to assuming that the fraction of the column that is not any of the MCVs is evenly distributed among all the other distinct values. Notice that there are no null values so we don't have to worry about those (otherwise we'd subtract the null fraction from the numerator as well). The estimated number of rows is then calculated as usual:

rows = 10000 * 0.0014559
     = 15  (rounding off)

The previous example with unique1 < 1000 was an oversimplification of what scalarltsel really does; now that we have seen an example of the use of MCVs, we can fill in some more detail. The example was correct as far as it went, because since unique1 is a unique column it has no MCVs (obviously, no value is any more common than any other value). For a non-unique column, there will normally be both a histogram and an MCV list, and the histogram does not include the portion of the column population represented by the MCVs. We do things this way because it allows more precise estimation. In this situation scalarltsel directly applies the condition (e.g., "< 1000") to each value of the MCV list, and adds up the frequencies of the MCVs for which the condition is true. This gives an exact estimate of the selectivity within the portion of the table that is MCVs. The histogram is then used in the same way as above to estimate the selectivity in the portion of the table that is not MCVs, and then the two numbers are combined to estimate the overall selectivity. For example, consider

EXPLAIN SELECT * FROM tenk1 WHERE stringu1 < 'IAAAAA';

                         QUERY PLAN
------------------------------------------------------------
 Seq Scan on tenk1  (cost=0.00..483.00 rows=3077 width=244)
   Filter: (stringu1 < 'IAAAAA'::name)

We already saw the MCV information for stringu1, and here is its histogram:

SELECT histogram_bounds FROM pg_stats
WHERE tablename='tenk1' AND attname='stringu1';

                                histogram_bounds
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 {AAAAAA,CQAAAA,FRAAAA,IBAAAA,KRAAAA,NFAAAA,PSAAAA,SGAAAA,VAAAAA,XLAAAA,ZZAAAA}

Checking the MCV list, we find that the condition stringu1 < 'IAAAAA' is satisfied by the first six entries and not the last four, so the selectivity within the MCV part of the population is

selectivity = sum(relevant mvfs)
            = 0.00333333 + 0.003 + 0.003 + 0.003 + 0.003 + 0.003
            = 0.01833333

Summing all the MCFs also tells us that the total fraction of the population represented by MCVs is 0.03033333, and therefore the fraction represented by the histogram is 0.96966667 (again, there are no nulls, else we'd have to exclude them here). We can see that the value IAAAAA falls nearly at the end of the third histogram bucket. Using some rather cheesy assumptions about the frequency of different characters, the planner arrives at the estimate 0.298387 for the portion of the histogram population that is less than IAAAAA. We then combine the estimates for the MCV and non-MCV populations:

selectivity = mcv_selectivity + histogram_selectivity * histogram_fraction
            = 0.01833333 + 0.298387 * 0.96966667
            = 0.307669

rows        = 10000 * 0.307669
            = 3077  (rounding off)

In this particular example, the correction from the MCV list is fairly small, because the column distribution is actually quite flat (the statistics showing these particular values as being more common than others are mostly due to sampling error). In a more typical case where some values are significantly more common than others, this complicated process gives a useful improvement in accuracy because the selectivity for the most common values is found exactly.

Now let's consider a case with more than one condition in the WHERE clause:

EXPLAIN SELECT * FROM tenk1 WHERE unique1 < 1000 AND stringu1 = 'xxx';

                                   QUERY PLAN
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Bitmap Heap Scan on tenk1  (cost=23.80..396.91 rows=1 width=244)
   Recheck Cond: (unique1 < 1000)
   Filter: (stringu1 = 'xxx'::name)
   ->  Bitmap Index Scan on tenk1_unique1  (cost=0.00..23.80 rows=1007 width=0)
         Index Cond: (unique1 < 1000)

The planner assumes that the two conditions are independent, so that the individual selectivities of the clauses can be multiplied together:

selectivity = selectivity(unique1 < 1000) * selectivity(stringu1 = 'xxx')
            = 0.100697 * 0.0014559
            = 0.0001466

rows        = 10000 * 0.0001466
            = 1  (rounding off)

Notice that the number of rows estimated to be returned from the bitmap index scan reflects only the condition used with the index; this is important since it affects the cost estimate for the subsequent heap fetches.

Finally we will examine a query that involves a join:

EXPLAIN SELECT * FROM tenk1 t1, tenk2 t2
WHERE t1.unique1 < 50 AND t1.unique2 = t2.unique2;

                                      QUERY PLAN
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Nested Loop  (cost=4.64..456.23 rows=50 width=488)
   ->  Bitmap Heap Scan on tenk1 t1  (cost=4.64..142.17 rows=50 width=244)
         Recheck Cond: (unique1 < 50)
         ->  Bitmap Index Scan on tenk1_unique1  (cost=0.00..4.63 rows=50 width=0)
               Index Cond: (unique1 < 50)
   ->  Index Scan using tenk2_unique2 on tenk2 t2  (cost=0.00..6.27 rows=1 width=244)
         Index Cond: (unique2 = t1.unique2)

The restriction on tenk1, unique1 < 50, is evaluated before the nested-loop join. This is handled analogously to the previous range example. This time the value 50 falls into the first bucket of the unique1 histogram:

selectivity = (0 + (50 - bucket[1].min)/(bucket[1].max - bucket[1].min))/num_buckets
            = (0 + (50 - 0)/(993 - 0))/10
            = 0.005035

rows        = 10000 * 0.005035
            = 50  (rounding off)

The restriction for the join is t2.unique2 = t1.unique2. The operator is just our familiar =, however the selectivity function is obtained from the oprjoin column of pg_operator, and is eqjoinsel. eqjoinsel looks up the statistical information for both tenk2 and tenk1:

SELECT tablename, null_frac,n_distinct, most_common_vals FROM pg_stats
WHERE tablename IN ('tenk1', 'tenk2') AND attname='unique2';

tablename  | null_frac | n_distinct | most_common_vals
-----------+-----------+------------+------------------
 tenk1     |         0 |         -1 |
 tenk2     |         0 |         -1 |

In this case there is no MCV information for unique2 because all the values appear to be unique, so we use an algorithm that relies only on the number of distinct values for both relations together with their null fractions:

selectivity = (1 - null_frac1) * (1 - null_frac2) * min(1/num_distinct1, 1/num_distinct2)
            = (1 - 0) * (1 - 0) / max(10000, 10000)
            = 0.0001

This is, subtract the null fraction from one for each of the relations, and divide by the maximum of the numbers of distinct values. The number of rows that the join is likely to emit is calculated as the cardinality of the Cartesian product of the two inputs, multiplied by the selectivity:

rows = (outer_cardinality * inner_cardinality) * selectivity
     = (50 * 10000) * 0.0001
     = 50

Had there been MCV lists for the two columns, eqjoinsel would have used direct comparison of the MCV lists to determine the join selectivity within the part of the column populations represented by the MCVs. The estimate for the remainder of the populations follows the same approach shown here.

Notice that we showed inner_cardinality as 10000, that is, the unmodified size of tenk2. It might appear from inspection of the EXPLAIN output that the estimate of join rows comes from 50 * 1, that is, the number of outer rows times the estimated number of rows obtained by each inner index scan on tenk2. But this is not the case: the join relation size is estimated before any particular join plan has been considered. If everything is working well then the two ways of estimating the join size will produce about the same answer, but due to roundoff error and other factors they sometimes diverge significantly.

For those interested in further details, estimation of the size of a table (before any WHERE clauses) is done in src/backend/optimizer/util/plancat.c. The generic logic for clause selectivities is in src/backend/optimizer/path/clausesel.c. The operator-specific selectivity functions are mostly found in src/backend/utils/adt/selfuncs.c.

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Installing Procedural Languages

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38.1. Installing Procedural Languages

A procedural language must be "installed" into each database where it is to be used. But procedural languages installed in the database template1 are automatically available in all subsequently created databases, since their entries in template1 will be copied by CREATE DATABASE. So the database administrator can decide which languages are available in which databases and can make some languages available by default if he chooses.

For the languages supplied with the standard distribution, it is only necessary to execute CREATE EXTENSION language_name to install the language into the current database. Alternatively, the program createlang can be used to do this from the shell command line. For example, to install the language PL/Perl into the database template1, use:

createlang plperl template1

The manual procedure described below is only recommended for installing languages that have not been packaged as extensions.

Manual Procedural Language Installation

A procedural language is installed in a database in five steps, which must be carried out by a database superuser. In most cases the required SQL commands should be packaged as the installation script of an "extension", so that CREATE EXTENSION can be used to execute them.

  1. The shared object for the language handler must be compiled and installed into an appropriate library directory. This works in the same way as building and installing modules with regular user-defined C functions does; see Section 35.9.6. Often, the language handler will depend on an external library that provides the actual programming language engine; if so, that must be installed as well.

  2. The handler must be declared with the command

    CREATE FUNCTION handler_function_name()
    RETURNS language_handler
    AS 'path-to-shared-object'
    LANGUAGE C;

    The special return type of language_handler tells the database system that this function does not return one of the defined SQL data types and is not directly usable in SQL statements.

  3. Optionally, the language handler can provide an "inline" handler function that executes anonymous code blocks (DO commands) written in this language. If an inline handler function is provided by the language, declare it with a command like

    CREATE FUNCTION inline_function_name(internal)
    RETURNS void
    AS 'path-to-shared-object'
    LANGUAGE C;

  4. Optionally, the language handler can provide a "validator" function that checks a function definition for correctness without actually executing it. The validator function is called by CREATE FUNCTION if it exists. If a validator function is provided by the language, declare it with a command like

    CREATE FUNCTION validator_function_name(oid)
    RETURNS void
    AS 'path-to-shared-object'
    LANGUAGE C STRICT;

  5. Finally, the PL must be declared with the command

    CREATE [TRUSTED] [PROCEDURAL] LANGUAGE language-name
    HANDLER handler_function_name
    [INLINE inline_function_name]
    [VALIDATOR validator_function_name] ;

    The optional key word TRUSTED specifies that the language does not grant access to data that the user would not otherwise have. Trusted languages are designed for ordinary database users (those without superuser privilege) and allows them to safely create functions and trigger procedures. Since PL functions are executed inside the database server, the TRUSTED flag should only be given for languages that do not allow access to database server internals or the file system. The languages PL/pgSQL, PL/Tcl, and PL/Perl are considered trusted; the languages PL/TclU, PL/PerlU, and PL/PythonU are designed to provide unlimited functionality and should not be marked trusted.

Example 38-1 shows how the manual installation procedure would work with the language PL/Perl.

Example 38-1. Manual Installation of PL/Perl

The following command tells the database server where to find the shared object for the PL/Perl language's call handler function:

CREATE FUNCTION plperl_call_handler() RETURNS language_handler AS
    '$libdir/plperl' LANGUAGE C;

PL/Perl has an inline handler function and a validator function, so we declare those too:

CREATE FUNCTION plperl_inline_handler(internal) RETURNS void AS
    '$libdir/plperl' LANGUAGE C;

CREATE FUNCTION plperl_validator(oid) RETURNS void AS
    '$libdir/plperl' LANGUAGE C STRICT;

The command:

CREATE TRUSTED PROCEDURAL LANGUAGE plperl
    HANDLER plperl_call_handler
    INLINE plperl_inline_handler
    VALIDATOR plperl_validator;

then defines that the previously declared functions should be invoked for functions and trigger procedures where the language attribute is plperl.

In a default PostgreSQL installation, the handler for the PL/pgSQL language is built and installed into the "library" directory; furthermore, the PL/pgSQL language itself is installed in all databases. If Tcl support is configured in, the handlers for PL/Tcl and PL/TclU are built and installed in the library directory, but the language itself is not installed in any database by default. Likewise, the PL/Perl and PL/PerlU handlers are built and installed if Perl support is configured, and the PL/PythonU handler is installed if Python support is configured, but these languages are not installed by default.

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