TODO list for PostgreSQL

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

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

* Improve control over user privileges, including table creation and

lock use [privileges] (Karel, others)

* -Permission to DELETE table also allows UPDATE (Peter E)

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

number, not just messages (Peter E) [elog]

* -Allow international error message support and add error codes[elog](Peter E)

* -Remove unused sort files on postmaster startup (Bruce)

* Remove unreferenced table files and temp tables during database vacuum

* -Remove unreferenced sort files during postmaster startup (Bruce)

* -Better document pg_hba.conf host-based authentication (Bruce)

* -Encrpyt passwords in pg_shadow table using MD5 (Bruce, Vince)

* Incremental backups

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

flags unique

* Allow usernames to be specified directly in pg_hba.conf (Bruce)

* Add domain capability [domain]

* Add IPv6 capability to INET/CIDR types

interface (force out-of-line storage and no compression)

o Auto-delete large objects when referencing row is deleted

* Add NCHAR (as distinguished from ordinary varchar),

* Allow LOCALE on a per-column basis, default to ASCII

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

fails index can't store constant parameters

* Order duplicate index entries by tid for faster heap lookups

* -Re-enable partial indexes

* -Prevent pg_attribute from having duplicate oids for indexes (Tom)

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

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

[inheritance]

* Have UPDATE/DELETE clean out indexes

* Add btree index support for reltime, tinterval, regproc

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

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

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

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

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

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

* -Gather more accurate dispersion statistics using indexes (Tom)

* Add deleted bit to index tuples to reduce heap access

* Prevent index uniqueness checks when UPDATE does not modifying column

* Add bitmap indexes [performance]

* Improve handling of index scans for NULL

* Improve concurrency in GIST

SYSTEM TABLES

COMMANDS

* Add SIMILAR TO to allow character classes, 'pg_[a-c]%'

* -Allow LOCK TABLE tab1, tab2, tab3 so all tables locked in unison [lock]

* Allow RULE recompilation

* Remove LIMIT #,# and force use LIMIT and OFFSET clauses in 7.3 (Bruce)

* Allow LIMIT/OFFSET to use expressions

* -Allow CREATEUSER/CREATEDB ordering in CREATE/ALTER USER (Vince)

* Disallow TRUNCATE on tables that are involved in referential constraints

* Add OR REPLACE clauses to non-FUNCTION object creation

* ALTER

o ALTER TABLE ADD COLUMN does not honor DEFAULT and non-CHECK CONSTRAINT

o ALTER TABLE ADD COLUMN to inherited table put column in wrong place

[inheritance]

o Add ALTER FUNCTION

o Add ALTER TABLE DROP non-CHECK CONSTRAINT

o -Add ALTER TABLE DROP CHECK CONSTRAINT (Christopher Kings-Lynne)

o ALTER TABLE ADD PRIMARY KEY (Christopher Kings-Lynne)

o ALTER TABLE ADD UNIQUE (Christopher Kings-Lynne)

* CLUSTER

o cluster all tables at once

o Automatically keep clustering on a table

o -Keep statistics about clustering (Tom) [optimizer]

* COPY

o Allow INSERT INTO tab (col1, ..) VALUES (val1, ..), (val2, ..)

o Allow INSERT INTO my_table VALUES (a, b, c, DEFAULT, x, y, z, ...)

o Disallow missing columns in INSERT ... VALUES, per ANSI

RULE cases (Philip)

* SHOW/SET

o Add SHOW command to display locks

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

ANALYZE, and CLUSTER

o Add SHOW command to see locale

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

o Change PL/PgSQL to use palloc() instead of malloc()

o Add untrusted version of plpython

o Add plsh server-side shell language (Peter E)

CLIENTS

* Allow psql \d to show temporary table structure

* Add XML interface: psql, pg_dump, COPY, separate server (?)

* -Fix libpq to properly handle socket failures under native MS Win32

* -Add MD5 to ODBC (Bruce)

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

* JDBC

o Remove space_or_nl and line_end from pgc.l

o Fix nested C comments

o Add SQLSTATE

REFERENTIAL INTEGRITY

* Allow user to control trigger firing order

* Change foreign key constraint for array -> element to mean element

in array

DEPENDENCY CHECKING

* Allow plug-in modules to emulate features from other databases

* SQL*Net listener that makes PostgreSQL appear as an Oracle database

to clients

MISCELLANEOUS

* Cache most recent query plan(s) (Karel) [prepare]

* Shared catalog cache, reduce lseek()'s by caching table size in shared area

VACUUM

SOURCE CODE

-----------

* Add use of 'const' for variables in source tree

* -Convert remaining fprintf(stderr,...)/perror() to elog() (Peter E)

* Fix problems with libpq non-blocking/async code [async]

* -Merge global and template BKI files (Tom)

* Add version file format stamp to heap and other table types

* -Make elog(LOG) in WAL its own output type, distinct from DEBUG (Peter E)

* Rename some /contrib modules from pg* to pg_*

* Remove warnings created by -Wcast-align

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

* Allow ps status display to work on Solaris/SVr4-based systems