9.4 release notes

Hi,

On 2014-05-04 08:46:07 -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:

Feedback expected and welcomed. I expect to be modifying this until we
release 9.4 final. I have marked items where I need help with question
marks.

Thanks for doing that work. Some comments inline:

+    <listitem>
+     <para>
+      Remove system column pg_class.reltoastidxid (Michael Paquier)
+     </para>
+
+     <para>
+      Instead use normal index access methods.
+     </para>
+    </listitem>

The explanation doesn't seem helpful to me. I'd just remove it as the
full explanation seems to be to complex and not actually interesting.

+   <sect3>
+    <title>Server</title>
+
+     <itemizedlist>
+
+      <listitem>
+       <para>
+        Have VACUUM properly report dead but not removable rows to the statistics collector (Hari Babu)
+       </para>
+
+       <para>
+        Previously these were reported as live rows.
+       </para>
+      </listitem>
+
+      <listitem>
+       <para>
+        Improve SSL renegotiation handling (&Aacute;lvaro Herrera)
+       </para>
+      </listitem>
+
+      <listitem>
+       <para>
+        During immediate shutdown, send uncatchable termination signals to child processes that have not already shutdown (MauMau,
+        &Aacute;lvaro Herrera)
+       </para>
+
+       <para>
+        This reduces the likelihood of orphaned child processes after postmaster shutdown.
+       </para>
+      </listitem>
+
+      <listitem>
+       <para>
+        Improve randomness of the database system identifier (Tom Lane)
+       </para>
+      </listitem>
+
+      <listitem>
+       <para>
+        Allow background workers to be dynamically started and terminated (Robert Haas)
+       </para>

This is much more important than the previous features imo. Also, I'd
add the word "registered" in the above list.

+      <listitem>
+       <para>
+        Allow dynamic allocation of shared memory segments (Robert Haas, Amit Kapila)
+       </para>
+      </listitem>

Should also be earlier in the list.

+      <listitem>
+       <para>
+        Freeze tuples when tables are written with CLUSTER or VACUUM FULL (Robert Haas, Andres Freund)
+       </para>
+
+       <para>
+        This avoids later freezing overhead.
+       </para>
+      </listitem>

This sentence seems a bit awkward to me. Maybe "This avoids the need to
freeze tuples at some later point in time."

+      <listitem>
+       <para>
+        Improve speed of accessing many sequence values (David Rowley)
+       </para>
+      </listitem>

I think this description isn't accurate. Isn't it something like
"Improve speed of accesessing many different sequences in the same backend."

+      <listitem>
+       <para>
+        Use memory barriers to avoid some spinlock use (Heikki Linnakangas)
+       </para>
+      </listitem>

This is about 1a3d104475ce01326fc00601ed66ac4d658e37e5? If so I'd put it
as: "Reduce spinlock contention during WAL replay." or similar.

This imo deserves to be further up this list as this is one of the
biggest bottlenecks in HS node performance.

+      <listitem>
+       <para>
+        Add huge_pages configuration parameter to attempt to use huge translation look-aside buffer (TLB) pages on Linux (Christian Kruse,
+        Richard Poole, Abhijit Menon-Sen)
+       </para>

I think this is too detailed - how about: "... to use huge pages ..."?

+       <para>
+        This can improve performance on large memory systems.
+       </para>
+      </listitem>

Should this be in the performance section?

+      <listitem>
+       <para>
+        Add configuration variable data_checksums to report whether data page checksums are enabled (Bernd Helmle)
+       </para>
+      </listitem>

Since this has been backpatched since it should probably be removed.

+      <listitem>
+       <para>
+        Use the last specified recovery_target if multiple are specified (Heikki Linnakangas)
+       </para>
+      </listitem>

This might want an entry in the compatibility section.

+      <listitem>
+       <para>
+        Add replication slots to report the WAL activity on streaming standbys (Andres Freund, Robert Haas)
+       </para>
+
+       <para>
+        Description?  Logical only?
+       </para>
+      </listitem>

No, it's not logical only. How about:
'Replication slots allow to reserve resources like WAL on the primary
that are needed by standby servers."

+      <listitem>
+       <para>
+        Improve return codes from external recovery commands (Peter Eisentraut)
+       </para>
+      </listitem>

This doesn't seem to be very descriptive. s/improve/report/?

+      <listitem>
+       <para>
+        Write WAL records of running transactions every 15 seconds ? (Andres Freund)
+       </para>
+      </listitem>

"Write WAL records about running transactions more frequently."

"This allows standby servers to startup faster and to cleanup resources
more aggressively."

+     </itemizedlist>
+
+     <sect4>
+      <title>Logical Change-Set Encoding</title>

s/Encoding/Extraction/

This probably deserves one entry about the new feature instead of
separate entries about individually commited parts.

REPLICA IDENTITY should probably documented separately. Other solutions
can use it as well.

+      <listitem>
+       <para>
+        Allow security barrier views automatically updateable (Dean Rasheed)
+       </para>

*to be?

+      <listitem>
+       <para>
+        Add functions pg_filenode_relation() and pg_relation_filepath() to do relation/relfilenode conversions (Andres Freund)
+       </para>

pg_relation_filepath() isn't new. I think this should be something like:
"Add function pg_filenode_relation() to allow for more efficient
filenode to relation lookup."

+       <para>
+        These use a new pg_class index to speed lookups.
+       </para>
+      </listitem>

Don't think that's interesting for the release notes.

+       <listitem>
+        <para>
+         Have \d display disabled system triggers (Bruce Momjian)
+        </para>
+
+        <para>
+         Previously if you disabled all triggers, only user triggers would show as disabled.
+        </para>
+       </listitem>

Maybe mention that this could lead to broken foreign key checks after an
ALTER TABLE .. DISABLE TRIGGERS?.

+   <sect3>
+    <title>Source Code</title>
+
+     <itemizedlist>
+
+      <listitem>
+       <para>
+        Improve the way tuples are frozen, to preserve forensic information ((Robert Haas, Andres Freund)
+       </para>
+
+       <para>
+        Code that inspects tuple flag bits will need to be modified
+       </para>
+      </listitem>

Not sure if that's just a source code level change.

+      <listitem>
+       <para>
+        Remove SnapshotNow and HeapTupleSatisfiesNow (Robert Haas)
+       </para>
+
+       <para>
+        All existing uses have been switched to more appropriate snapshot types.
+       </para>
+      </listitem>
+
+      <listitem>
+       <para>
+        Use an MVCC snapshot (rather than SnapshotNow) for catalog scans (Robert Haas)
+       </para>
+      </listitem>

I wonder if those two shouldn't be one entry.

+      <listitem>
+       <para>
+        Use printf() modifier "z" to specify size_t values (Andres Freund)
+       </para>
+      </listitem>

s/Use/Add infrastructure to allow to use the %x printf modifier .../

+      <listitem>
+       <para>
+        Memory barrier changes?
+       </para>
+      </listitem>

Not sure what that refers to?

+      <listitem>
+       <para>
+        Remove spinlock support for unsupported platforms SINIX, Sun3, and NS32K (Robert Haas)
+       </para>
+      </listitem>

I'd put it as "Remove leftover code for the unsupported
... platforms.".

+      <listitem>
+       <para>
+        Rewrite duplicate_oids Unix hell script in Perl (Andrew Dunstan)
+       </para>
+      </listitem>

Heh. s/hell/shell/

+      <listitem>
+       <para>
+        Remove IRIX port (Robert Haas)
+       </para>
+      </listitem>

Should probably be next to the unsupported platforms list.

+      <listitem>
+       <para>
+        Have pg_stat_statements use a flat file for query text storage, allowing higher limits (Peter Geoghegan)
+       </para>
+
+       <para>
+        Also add the ability to retrieve all pg_stat_statements information except the query text.  This allows programs to reuse the query
+        text already retrieved by referencing queryid.
+       </para>
+      </listitem>

This isn't an optional thing, is it?

Greetings,

Andres Freund

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Bruce,

you forgot Alexander Korotkov, who contributed jsonb_hash_ops opclass
for GIN. Something like
"Alexander Korotkov introduced an elegant jsonb_hash ops for GIN,
which competes with MongoDB performance in contains operator".

Here is a link to discussion -
/messages/by-id/53304439.8000602@dunslane.net

Oleg

On Sun, May 4, 2014 at 4:46 PM, Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> wrote:

I have completed the initial version of the 9.4 release notes. You can
view them here:

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/devel/static/release-9-4.html

I will be adding additional markup in the next few days.

Feedback expected and welcomed. I expect to be modifying this until we
release 9.4 final. I have marked items where I need help with question
marks.

--
Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> http://momjian.us
EnterpriseDB http://enterprisedb.com

+ Everyone has their own god. +

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On 04/05/14 14:46, Bruce Momjian wrote:

I have completed the initial version of the 9.4 release notes. You can
view them here:

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/devel/static/release-9-4.html

I will be adding additional markup in the next few days.

Feedback expected and welcomed. I expect to be modifying this until we
release 9.4 final. I have marked items where I need help with question
marks.

Nice work,

one comment from me would be about jsonb:

+       <listitem>
+        <para>
+         Add structured (non-text) data type (jsonb) for storing JSON 
data (Oleg Bartunov,  Teodor Sigaev, Peter Geoghegan and Andrew Dunstan)
+        </para>
+
+        <para>
+         This data type allows faster indexing and access to json 
keys/value pairs.
+        </para>
+       </listitem>

I think the explanation should be expanded to say that this data type
also has generic indexing not just faster indexing.

--
Petr Jelinek http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/
PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Training & Services

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On 05/04/2014 10:12 AM, Petr Jelinek wrote:

On 04/05/14 14:46, Bruce Momjian wrote:

I have completed the initial version of the 9.4 release notes. You can
view them here:

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/devel/static/release-9-4.html

I will be adding additional markup in the next few days.

Feedback expected and welcomed. I expect to be modifying this until we
release 9.4 final. I have marked items where I need help with question
marks.

Nice work,

one comment from me would be about jsonb:

+       <listitem>
+        <para>
+         Add structured (non-text) data type (jsonb) for storing JSON 
data (Oleg Bartunov,  Teodor Sigaev, Peter Geoghegan and Andrew Dunstan)
+        </para>
+
+        <para>
+         This data type allows faster indexing and access to json 
keys/value pairs.
+        </para>
+       </listitem>

I think the explanation should be expanded to say that this data type
also has generic indexing not just faster indexing.

It's also slightly ambiguous - it's not immediately clear that the
"faster" also applies to the "access".

cheers

andrew

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On Sun, May 4, 2014 at 4:06 PM, Oleg Bartunov <obartunov@gmail.com> wrote:

Bruce,

you forgot Alexander Korotkov, who contributed jsonb_hash_ops opclass
for GIN. Something like
"Alexander Korotkov introduced an elegant jsonb_hash ops for GIN,
which competes with MongoDB performance in contains operator".

Here is a link to discussion -
/messages/by-id/53304439.8000602@dunslane.net

Aexanders work should definitely be credited in the release notes, but
please let's not mention MongoDB (or any other product for that matter) in
the release notes - they are about the technology, not the advocacy.
(That's for things like the press kit..)

--
Magnus Hagander
Me: http://www.hagander.net/
Work: http://www.redpill-linpro.com/

I agree, no mongo :)

On Sun, May 4, 2014 at 8:47 PM, Magnus Hagander <magnus@hagander.net> wrote:

On Sun, May 4, 2014 at 4:06 PM, Oleg Bartunov <obartunov@gmail.com> wrote:

Bruce,

you forgot Alexander Korotkov, who contributed jsonb_hash_ops opclass
for GIN. Something like
"Alexander Korotkov introduced an elegant jsonb_hash ops for GIN,
which competes with MongoDB performance in contains operator".

Here is a link to discussion -
/messages/by-id/53304439.8000602@dunslane.net

Aexanders work should definitely be credited in the release notes, but
please let's not mention MongoDB (or any other product for that matter) in
the release notes - they are about the technology, not the advocacy. (That's
for things like the press kit..)

--
Magnus Hagander
Me: http://www.hagander.net/
Work: http://www.redpill-linpro.com/

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On 05/04/2014 03:46 PM, Bruce Momjian wrote:

I have completed the initial version of the 9.4 release notes.

Thanks!

You can view them here:

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/devel/static/release-9-4.html

I will be adding additional markup in the next few days.

Feedback expected and welcomed. I expect to be modifying this until we
release 9.4 final. I have marked items where I need help with question
marks.

Two rather large changes to the B-tree algorithms are missing:

* Fix race condition in B-tree page deletion (commit efada2b8)

* Make the handling of interrupted B-tree page splits more robust
(commit 40dae7ec)

These changes are not visible to users, but they are good toknow for
beta testers.

- Heikki

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On 05/04/2014 03:46 PM, Bruce Momjian wrote:

Auto-resize the catalog cache (Heikki Linnakangas)

This reduces memory consumption for backends accessing only a few
tables, and improves performance for backend accessing many tables.

Move this to "General performance" section.

Improve spinlock speed on x86_64 CPUs (test on i386?) (Heikki Linnakangas)

I believe this refers to commit b03d196b. The "test on i386" note can
just be removed. Someone ought to test it on 32-bit i386 to see if the
same change would be beneficial there, but that's a TODO item more than
a release notes item. I doubt anyone's interested to spend time
performance testing spinlocks on 32-bit i386, though, so I think we're
going to just retain the current situation for the next decade.

- Heikki

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On Sun, May 4, 2014 at 03:49:27PM +0200, Andres Freund wrote:

Hi,

On 2014-05-04 08:46:07 -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:

Feedback expected and welcomed. I expect to be modifying this until we
release 9.4 final. I have marked items where I need help with question
marks.

Thanks for doing that work. Some comments inline:

Oh, I forgot to thank committers for making this job easier every year.
The commit titles are helpful, the descriptions good, and many items are
marked as backward incompatible where appropriate. Git hashes make
looking up commit details easy.

+    <listitem>
+     <para>
+      Remove system column pg_class.reltoastidxid (Michael Paquier)
+     </para>
+
+     <para>
+      Instead use normal index access methods.
+     </para>
+    </listitem>

The explanation doesn't seem helpful to me. I'd just remove it as the
full explanation seems to be to complex and not actually interesting.

OK, description removed. I know pg_upgrade has to be modified to handle
this. Hopefully others will understand how to adjust things. You are
right that the full description is complex.

+   <sect3>
+    <title>Server</title>
+
+     <itemizedlist>
+
+      <listitem>
+       <para>
+        Have VACUUM properly report dead but not removable rows to the statistics collector (Hari Babu)
+       </para>
+
+       <para>
+        Previously these were reported as live rows.
+       </para>
+      </listitem>
+
+      <listitem>
+       <para>
+        Improve SSL renegotiation handling (&Aacute;lvaro Herrera)
+       </para>
+      </listitem>
+
+      <listitem>
+       <para>
+        During immediate shutdown, send uncatchable termination signals to child processes that have not already shutdown (MauMau,
+        &Aacute;lvaro Herrera)
+       </para>
+
+       <para>
+        This reduces the likelihood of orphaned child processes after postmaster shutdown.
+       </para>
+      </listitem>
+
+      <listitem>
+       <para>
+        Improve randomness of the database system identifier (Tom Lane)
+       </para>
+      </listitem>
+
+      <listitem>
+       <para>
+        Allow background workers to be dynamically started and terminated (Robert Haas)
+       </para>

This is much more important than the previous features imo. Also, I'd
add the word "registered" in the above list.

+      <listitem>
+       <para>
+        Allow dynamic allocation of shared memory segments (Robert Haas, Amit Kapila)
+       </para>
+      </listitem>

Should also be earlier in the list.

OK, added "registered" and I moved this item and the one above to #2 and
#3. Let me know if that isn't good. I was thinking the dynamic stuff
wasn't useful until we had parallelism working, but I think I was wrong.

+      <listitem>
+       <para>
+        Freeze tuples when tables are written with CLUSTER or VACUUM FULL (Robert Haas, Andres Freund)
+       </para>
+
+       <para>
+        This avoids later freezing overhead.
+       </para>
+      </listitem>

This sentence seems a bit awkward to me. Maybe "This avoids the need to
freeze tuples at some later point in time."

OK, I wrote, "This avoids the need to freeze the tuples in the future."

+      <listitem>
+       <para>
+        Improve speed of accessing many sequence values (David Rowley)
+       </para>
+      </listitem>

I think this description isn't accurate. Isn't it something like
"Improve speed of accesessing many different sequences in the same backend."

Yes, better, thanks.

+      <listitem>
+       <para>
+        Use memory barriers to avoid some spinlock use (Heikki Linnakangas)
+       </para>
+      </listitem>

This is about 1a3d104475ce01326fc00601ed66ac4d658e37e5? If so I'd put it
as: "Reduce spinlock contention during WAL replay." or similar.

Uh, yes. I am not sure why I fixed on the memory barrier/spinlock part.
I used your text and moved it to the replication section.

This imo deserves to be further up this list as this is one of the
biggest bottlenecks in HS node performance.

I didn't move it too high up as it isn't a user-visible change, but I
put it at the top of the non-visible part. Let me know if it needs
further promotion.

+      <listitem>
+       <para>
+        Add huge_pages configuration parameter to attempt to use huge translation look-aside buffer (TLB) pages on Linux (Christian Kruse,
+        Richard Poole, Abhijit Menon-Sen)
+       </para>

I think this is too detailed - how about: "... to use huge pages ..."?

I am not sure on this as the default is "try", but I updated the wording
like your suggested:

Add huge_pages configuration parameter to enable huge
translation look-aside buffer (TLB) pages on Linux

+       <para>
+        This can improve performance on large memory systems.
+       </para>
+      </listitem>

Should this be in the performance section?

Well, performance is listed as "General Performance". We also have index
changes that help performance too but they are under "Index". I think
it is probably in the right place as "configuration" is more specific
than "general performance".

+      <listitem>
+       <para>
+        Add configuration variable data_checksums to report whether data page checksums are enabled (Bernd Helmle)
+       </para>
+      </listitem>

Since this has been backpatched since it should probably be removed.

Oh, I missed that. Removed. When commits are _later_ backpatched, I
sometimes miss that.

+      <listitem>
+       <para>
+        Use the last specified recovery_target if multiple are specified (Heikki Linnakangas)
+       </para>
+      </listitem>

This might want an entry in the compatibility section.

Hmmm, good question. I always assumed doing multiple recovery_targets
was just user error, but I can see people who relied on that. Moved.

+      <listitem>
+       <para>
+        Add replication slots to report the WAL activity on streaming standbys (Andres Freund, Robert Haas)
+       </para>
+
+       <para>
+        Description?  Logical only?
+       </para>
+      </listitem>

No, it's not logical only. How about:
'Replication slots allow to reserve resources like WAL on the primary
that are needed by standby servers."

OK, new wording:

Replication slots allow preservation of resources like WAL files on the
primary that are needed by standby servers.

+      <listitem>
+       <para>
+        Improve return codes from external recovery commands (Peter Eisentraut)
+       </para>
+      </listitem>

This doesn't seem to be very descriptive. s/improve/report/?

Oh, I missed that nuance. Updated.

+      <listitem>
+       <para>
+        Write WAL records of running transactions every 15 seconds ? (Andres Freund)
+       </para>
+      </listitem>

"Write WAL records about running transactions more frequently."

"This allows standby servers to startup faster and to cleanup resources
more aggressively."

Yes, that is exactly what I needed to know! I couldn't figure that out.
Added.

+     </itemizedlist>
+
+     <sect4>
+      <title>Logical Change-Set Encoding</title>

s/Encoding/Extraction/

This probably deserves one entry about the new feature instead of
separate entries about individually commited parts.

I added a paragraph at the top to explain the feature. We added a bunch
of new stuff as far as user-visible changes so I kept them listed,
particularly because it isn't clear right away that they are related to
this feature.

REPLICA IDENTITY should probably documented separately. Other solutions
can use it as well.

Well, as far as 9.4 it is for this feature, so putting it somewhere else
doesn't make sense to me. If someone else uses it in a future release
we can document that too.

+      <listitem>
+       <para>
+        Allow security barrier views automatically updateable (Dean Rasheed)
+       </para>

*to be?

Fixed.

+      <listitem>
+       <para>
+        Add functions pg_filenode_relation() and pg_relation_filepath() to do relation/relfilenode conversions (Andres Freund)
+       </para>

pg_relation_filepath() isn't new. I think this should be something like:
"Add function pg_filenode_relation() to allow for more efficient
filenode to relation lookup."

Done.

+       <para>
+        These use a new pg_class index to speed lookups.
+       </para>
+      </listitem>

Don't think that's interesting for the release notes.

OK, removed. Your text got the performance aspect.

+       <listitem>
+        <para>
+         Have \d display disabled system triggers (Bruce Momjian)
+        </para>
+
+        <para>
+         Previously if you disabled all triggers, only user triggers would show as disabled.
+        </para>
+       </listitem>

Maybe mention that this could lead to broken foreign key checks after an
ALTER TABLE .. DISABLE TRIGGERS?.

That seems too complex for the release notes. The new display was to
remind people that they had system-level triggers disabled. I don't think we
want to get into telling people _why_ they need to be reminded.

+   <sect3>
+    <title>Source Code</title>
+
+     <itemizedlist>
+
+      <listitem>
+       <para>
+        Improve the way tuples are frozen, to preserve forensic information ((Robert Haas, Andres Freund)
+       </para>
+
+       <para>
+        Code that inspects tuple flag bits will need to be modified
+       </para>
+      </listitem>

Not sure if that's just a source code level change.

I am unclear as well, but I assume people viewing rows via pgstattuple
would need to adjust things.

+      <listitem>
+       <para>
+        Remove SnapshotNow and HeapTupleSatisfiesNow (Robert Haas)
+       </para>
+
+       <para>
+        All existing uses have been switched to more appropriate snapshot types.
+       </para>
+      </listitem>
+
+      <listitem>
+       <para>
+        Use an MVCC snapshot (rather than SnapshotNow) for catalog scans (Robert Haas)
+       </para>
+      </listitem>

I wonder if those two shouldn't be one entry.

Agreed. Put the "catalog scans" item in the description of the previous
item.

+      <listitem>
+       <para>
+        Use printf() modifier "z" to specify size_t values (Andres Freund)
+       </para>
+      </listitem>

s/Use/Add infrastructure to allow to use the %x printf modifier .../

Done.

+      <listitem>
+       <para>
+        Memory barrier changes?
+       </para>
+      </listitem>

Not sure what that refers to?

I think it is this. I have no idea if it is important:

Fix a few problems in barrier.h.

On HPPA, implement pg_memory_barrier() as pg_compiler_barrier(), which
should be correct since this arch doesn't do memory access reordering,
and is anyway better than the completely-nonfunctional-on-this-arch
dummy_spinlock code. (But note this patch only fixes things for gcc,
not for builds with HP's compiler.)

Also, fix incorrect default definition of pg_memory_barrier as a macro
requiring an argument.

Also, fix incorrect spelling of "#elif" as "#else if" in icc code path
(spotted by pgindent).

This doesn't come close to fixing all of the functional and stylistic
deficiencies in barrier.h, but at least it un-breaks my personal build.
Now that we're actually using barriers in the code, this file is going
to need some serious attention.

(Tom Lane)
[89779bf2c] 2013-07-17 18:38:20 -0400

I have removed the release note item on it.

+      <listitem>
+       <para>
+        Remove spinlock support for unsupported platforms SINIX, Sun3, and NS32K (Robert Haas)
+       </para>
+      </listitem>

I'd put it as "Remove leftover code for the unsupported
... platforms.".

I think I worded it that way because we really _just_ remove the
spinlock stuff --- the rest of the support was gone long ago, I think.
In fact, I think they are CPU types, not actual platforms, at least for
NS32K.

+      <listitem>
+       <para>
+        Rewrite duplicate_oids Unix hell script in Perl (Andrew Dunstan)
+       </para>
+      </listitem>

Heh. s/hell/shell/

Yes, funny, and removed. ;-)

+      <listitem>
+       <para>
+        Remove IRIX port (Robert Haas)
+       </para>
+      </listitem>

Should probably be next to the unsupported platforms list.

Agreed. Removed.

+      <listitem>
+       <para>
+        Have pg_stat_statements use a flat file for query text storage, allowing higher limits (Peter Geoghegan)
+       </para>
+
+       <para>
+        Also add the ability to retrieve all pg_stat_statements information except the query text.  This allows programs to reuse the query
+        text already retrieved by referencing queryid.
+       </para>
+      </listitem>

This isn't an optional thing, is it?

Here is the commit:

Keep pg_stat_statements' query texts in a file, not in shared memory.

This change allows us to eliminate the previous limit on stored query
length, and it makes the shared-memory hash table very much smaller,
allowing more statements to be tracked. (The default value of
pg_stat_statements.max is therefore increased from 1000 to 5000.)
In typical scenarios, the hash table can be large enough to hold all the
statements commonly issued by an application, so that there is little
"churn" in the set of tracked statements, and thus little need to do I/O
to the file.

--> To further reduce the need for I/O to the query-texts file, add a way
--> to retrieve all the columns of the pg_stat_statements view except for
the query text column. This is probably not of much interest for human
use but it could be exploited by programs, which will prefer using the
queryid anyway.

Ordinarily, we'd need to bump the extension version number for the latter
change. But since we already advanced pg_stat_statements' version number
from 1.1 to 1.2 in the 9.4 development cycle, it seems all right to just
redefine what 1.2 means.

Peter Geoghegan, reviewed by Pavel Stehule

(Tom Lane)
[f0d6f2027] 2014-01-27 15:37:54 -0500

It says "add a way" and "probably not of much interest for human use",
so it seems optional.

Thanks for the great feedback.

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On Sun, May 4, 2014 at 06:06:52PM +0400, Oleg Bartunov wrote:

Bruce,

you forgot Alexander Korotkov, who contributed jsonb_hash_ops opclass
for GIN. Something like
"Alexander Korotkov introduced an elegant jsonb_hash ops for GIN,
which competes with MongoDB performance in contains operator".

Here is a link to discussion -
/messages/by-id/53304439.8000602@dunslane.net

OK, added. As I remember Alexander's name was not in the initial commit
but mentioned in a later one, and I somehow missed that.

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On Sun, May 4, 2014 at 10:24:54AM -0400, Andrew Dunstan wrote:

On 05/04/2014 10:12 AM, Petr Jelinek wrote:

On 04/05/14 14:46, Bruce Momjian wrote:

I have completed the initial version of the 9.4 release notes. You can
view them here:

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/devel/static/release-9-4.html

I will be adding additional markup in the next few days.

Feedback expected and welcomed. I expect to be modifying this until we
release 9.4 final. I have marked items where I need help with question
marks.

Nice work,

one comment from me would be about jsonb:

+       <listitem>
+        <para>
+         Add structured (non-text) data type (jsonb) for storing
JSON data (Oleg Bartunov,  Teodor Sigaev, Peter Geoghegan and
Andrew Dunstan)
+        </para>
+
+        <para>
+         This data type allows faster indexing and access to json
keys/value pairs.
+        </para>
+       </listitem>

I think the explanation should be expanded to say that this data
type also has generic indexing not just faster indexing.

It's also slightly ambiguous - it's not immediately clear that the
"faster" also applies to the "access".

OK, how is this:

This data type allows for faster indexing and access to json
key/value pairs, as well as efficient indexing of all key/value
pairs in a JSON document.

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On Mon, May 5, 2014 at 09:10:11AM +0300, Heikki Linnakangas wrote:

On 05/04/2014 03:46 PM, Bruce Momjian wrote:

I have completed the initial version of the 9.4 release notes.

Thanks!

You can view them here:

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/devel/static/release-9-4.html

I will be adding additional markup in the next few days.

Feedback expected and welcomed. I expect to be modifying this until we
release 9.4 final. I have marked items where I need help with question
marks.

Two rather large changes to the B-tree algorithms are missing:

* Fix race condition in B-tree page deletion (commit efada2b8)

* Make the handling of interrupted B-tree page splits more robust
(commit 40dae7ec)

These changes are not visible to users, but they are good toknow for
beta testers.

Thanks, added. I though these were fixes for 9.4-only bugs, not fixes
for earlier bugs. Thanks.

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On Mon, May 5, 2014 at 09:23:15AM +0300, Heikki Linnakangas wrote:

On 05/04/2014 03:46 PM, Bruce Momjian wrote:

Auto-resize the catalog cache (Heikki Linnakangas)

This reduces memory consumption for backends accessing only a few
tables, and improves performance for backend accessing many tables.

Move this to "General performance" section.

OK, moved.

Improve spinlock speed on x86_64 CPUs (test on i386?) (Heikki Linnakangas)

I believe this refers to commit b03d196b. The "test on i386" note
can just be removed. Someone ought to test it on 32-bit i386 to see
if the same change would be beneficial there, but that's a TODO item
more than a release notes item. I doubt anyone's interested to spend
time performance testing spinlocks on 32-bit i386, though, so I
think we're going to just retain the current situation for the next
decade.

Agreed. Text removed.

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On Sun, May 4, 2014 at 08:46:07AM -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:

I have completed the initial version of the 9.4 release notes. You can
view them here:

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/devel/static/release-9-4.html

I will be adding additional markup in the next few days.

Feedback expected and welcomed. I expect to be modifying this until we
release 9.4 final. I have marked items where I need help with question
marks.

I have updated output reflecting all hackers list feedback received so
far:

http://momjian.us/pgsql_docs/release-9-4.html

(The developer copy of the docs take a while to update.) Now on to the
markup additions.

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Bruce Momjian wrote:

On Sun, May 4, 2014 at 03:49:27PM +0200, Andres Freund wrote:

+      <listitem>
+       <para>
+        Add huge_pages configuration parameter to attempt to use huge translation look-aside buffer (TLB) pages on Linux (Christian Kruse,
+        Richard Poole, Abhijit Menon-Sen)
+       </para>

I think this is too detailed - how about: "... to use huge pages ..."?

I am not sure on this as the default is "try", but I updated the wording
like your suggested:

Add huge_pages configuration parameter to enable huge
translation look-aside buffer (TLB) pages on Linux

Please see
/messages/by-id/20140226161302.GD4759@eldon.alvh.no-ip.org
about the "TLB huge pages" terminology. Maybe "..enable huge MMU
pages..." as suggested by Peter G. in that sub-thread.

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On Mon, May 5, 2014 at 10:18:44AM -0400, Alvaro Herrera wrote:

Bruce Momjian wrote:

On Sun, May 4, 2014 at 03:49:27PM +0200, Andres Freund wrote:

+      <listitem>
+       <para>
+        Add huge_pages configuration parameter to attempt to use huge translation look-aside buffer (TLB) pages on Linux (Christian Kruse,
+        Richard Poole, Abhijit Menon-Sen)
+       </para>

I think this is too detailed - how about: "... to use huge pages ..."?

I am not sure on this as the default is "try", but I updated the wording
like your suggested:

Add huge_pages configuration parameter to enable huge
translation look-aside buffer (TLB) pages on Linux

Please see
/messages/by-id/20140226161302.GD4759@eldon.alvh.no-ip.org
about the "TLB huge pages" terminology. Maybe "..enable huge MMU
pages..." as suggested by Peter G. in that sub-thread.

You are totally correct. I was referencing tlb from the _old_ name for
the variable, but didn't update the description when the variable was
renamed.

New text is:

Add huge_pages configuration parameter to use huge memory pages on Linux (Christian Kruse,
Richard Poole, Abhijit Menon-Sen)

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On 05/05/2014 09:38 AM, Bruce Momjian wrote:

On Sun, May 4, 2014 at 10:24:54AM -0400, Andrew Dunstan wrote:

On 05/04/2014 10:12 AM, Petr Jelinek wrote:

On 04/05/14 14:46, Bruce Momjian wrote:

I have completed the initial version of the 9.4 release notes. You can
view them here:

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/devel/static/release-9-4.html

I will be adding additional markup in the next few days.

Feedback expected and welcomed. I expect to be modifying this until we
release 9.4 final. I have marked items where I need help with question
marks.

Nice work,

one comment from me would be about jsonb:

+       <listitem>
+        <para>
+         Add structured (non-text) data type (jsonb) for storing
JSON data (Oleg Bartunov,  Teodor Sigaev, Peter Geoghegan and
Andrew Dunstan)
+        </para>
+
+        <para>
+         This data type allows faster indexing and access to json
keys/value pairs.
+        </para>
+       </listitem>

I think the explanation should be expanded to say that this data
type also has generic indexing not just faster indexing.

It's also slightly ambiguous - it's not immediately clear that the
"faster" also applies to the "access".

OK, how is this:

This data type allows for faster indexing and access to json
key/value pairs, as well as efficient indexing of all key/value
pairs in a JSON document.

No, I think you're missing the point of what I'm saying, and I think the
addition is at best misleading. I would avoid talk of key value pairs,
anyway, that's not all that's in a json document (it might be an array,
for example).

How about:

This data type allows for faster access to values in the json document and faster and more useful indexing of json.

cheers

andrew

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On Mon, May 5, 2014 at 11:28:21AM -0400, Andrew Dunstan wrote:

No, I think you're missing the point of what I'm saying, and I think
the addition is at best misleading. I would avoid talk of key value
pairs, anyway, that's not all that's in a json document (it might be
an array, for example).

How about:

This data type allows for faster access to values in the json document and faster and more useful indexing of json.

OK, I used you wording. You are right I didn't understand it.

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On 05/04/2014 05:46 AM, Bruce Momjian wrote:

I have completed the initial version of the 9.4 release notes. You can
view them here:

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/devel/static/release-9-4.html

I will be adding additional markup in the next few days.

Feedback expected and welcomed. I expect to be modifying this until we
release 9.4 final. I have marked items where I need help with question
marks.

Major enhancement list:

Per discussion on the -advocacy list, the features we've picked out as
"major enhancements" for advocacy reasons this round are:

* Materialized Views (because with refresh concurrently, MatViews are
now useful, which they weren't, very, in 9.3)

* Logical Decoding/Changeset Extraction which we're calling "Data Change
Streaming API" in the advocacy stuff. Not sure if you want to use that
name in the technical realease notes.

* Dynamic Background Workers (this one is a major feature, but won't be
front-listed in advocacy doc because it's hard to explain and nobody's
built anything cool with it yet. But it should go under major
enhancements in the release notes)

* JSONB and related features (such as indexing)

* ALTER SYSTEM SET

Lemme know if you need description text for any of the above.

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