postgres/doc/TODO

====================================================
TODO list (FAQ) for PostgreSQL
====================================================
last updated:		Thu Jan  2 11:19:41 EST 1997

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

The most recent version of this document can be viewed at
the postgreSQL WWW site, http://www.postgreSQL.org.

Changes included in the 6.0 release are listed at the end of this page.

Dashed items(-) are being worked on for the post-6.0 release.

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

RELIABILITY
-----------
-Overhaul mdmgr/smgr to fix double unlinking and double opens, cleanup(Erich)
-Overhaul bufmgr/lockmgr/transaction manager(Vadim)
remove -S (stable memory) option or fix memory manager
Fix CLUSTER
Fix all NULL features
	allow psql to print nulls meaningfully
Fix compile and security of Kerberos V code
Dropping a table twice causes corruption, drop/create not rollback-able
-SUM aggregate on no rows or null value should return NULL, not zero(Thomas)
SELECT on two tables where zero or one table in WHERE and target
	clause returns no rows
fix system to use oid index using constant without cast to oid
COUNT on VIEW always returns zero (maybe because there is no oid for views?)
CREATE VIEW requires super-user priviledge

ENHANCEMENTS
------------
Add full ANSI SQL capabilities
	add subselects, possibility using temporary SQL functions
	Implement HAVING clause
	Implement EXISTS qualifier
	column constraints (using rules), esp. primary keys
	add DEFAULT, RESTRAINT, and CHECK capabilities
	report "Not implemented" if valid syntax is supplied
	add OUTER joins, left and right
	make VIEWs updateable where possible
	add UNIONS, INTERSECTS, SUBTRACTS
	add temporary tables
	add assertions
	add domains
	add sql3 recursive unions
	add the concept of dataspaces
	allow conversion type casts on select target fields
Allow compression of large fields or a compressed field type
Fix the rules system(Jan?)
	robust
	making INSTEAD rules work
	add CONSTRAINT
Full set of text operations and functions
	word searches, concat, upper/lower(), max() on text, char
Replace table-level locking with row or page-level locking(Vadim)
Large objects
	overwriting blocks has problems
	there are other problems, too.
	Fix large object mapping scheme
	not to stuff everything as files in a single directory
Better interface for adding to pg_group
Make multi-field indexes easier to create
	allow optimizer to effectively use parameters without accessing table
Add int8 type
Add MONEY/DECIMAL type with defined precision
Add table comments
Add support for tables >2G, or test current version
Incorporate the PERL PG95 interface library into source tree(Edmund)
Threaded version of the server or libpq
Allow libpq to cancel query requests
Add REGEX internationalization
Add other language types for built-in functions
	expand to allow tcl, perl, java,
	generalize the function manager switch to pass 
		function sources to interpreter engines.
	remove time-travel feature(Vadim)
	reduce system column overhead(Vadmin)
	remove pg_time table(Vadim)
	allow row re-use without vacuum, maybe?(Vadim)
	split apart row removal function from statistics function
	can't vacuum large objects
Remove restriction that ORDER BY field must be in SELECT list(?)
Allow queries about owner of datbases, tables like:
        SELECT u.usesysid FROM postgres.pg_user u;
DROP AGGREGATE should take in basetype as an arg(Darren)
Add word index for text fields, maybe with trigrams, i.e.:
    ' (cat | dog) & ! fox ' meaning text has cat or dog, but not fox
Add common-sense constant type promotions
Allow readline-type or editor command editing of multi-line SQL commands
Allow pg_dump to dump all databases at a site in one command
Allow function result to be used in GROUP BY
Populate backend status area and write program to dump status data
Add ALTER TABLE DROP COLUMN feature
Remove stale files upon startup(Vivek)
Add command to show privileges
Allow INSERT INTO ... SELECT to convert column types
Add syslog functionality
Allow aggregate for All types, like count(Darren)
Improve optimizer plan choice(Darren)
Add STDDEV/VARIANCE() function for standard deviation computation/variance
Add upper/lower functions
-Add table/column/function discription table indexed by oid
-make all identifiers case-insensitive(Bruce)
add pg_type attribute to identify types that need length (bpchar, varchar)

PERFORMANCE
-----------
Optimizing disjunctive queries
-Add Genetic Query Optimzation for many tables (Martin)
-Fix bushy-plans (Martin)
Other optimizer bugs
Is fsync use optimized?
Multi-representational types, a la Illustra. For example, have a
       text type that is stored in-tuple when less than 8K and in large
       objects, when greater than 8K.
Use indexes in ORDER BY
Profile engine in INSERT's and other operations
Speed up hash creation by using btree's fast sort/insert routines
Cache most recent query plan(s?)
Allow compression of log and meta data
Allow LIKE/wildcard matches to use indexes if the wildcard character is not first
Add FILLFACTOR to index creation
Allow indexes to be used with OR clauses
-Add column optimization statistics to vacuum(Bruce)
-Change pg_attribute.attnvals name to attdispursion and change type float4
	update pg_statistic table to remove operator column

DOCUMENTATION
-------------
Update usermanual source
remove time-travel in documentation(Bruce)
added features used in grammer but not in docs, like :: and CAST
add DECLARE manual pages

PORTABILITY
-----------
Windows NT port
	Mariposa project at Berkeley has a person who's working on this
Win95 port, use GNU port or remove it?
Merge i386_solaris and sparc_solaris into solaris
Switch from PORTNAME to individual feature defines (use configure/autoconf?)
Change c.h "Index" and "bool" so they do not conflict with c++


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

			CHANGES IN 6.0 RELEASE
Bug Fixes
---------
ALTER TABLE bug - running postgress 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 unitialized 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 permissions
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 oid's
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)
Submiting 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)
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 distrubution(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 oid's(Bruce)
Pg_dump create indexes after tables are loaded for speed(Bruce)
Pg_dump(Bruce)
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)

Source tree changes
-------------------
All functions now have prototypes that are compared against the calls
Allow asserts to be disabled easly 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, centeralized #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/uninialized variables corrected