[Pgpool-general] pgpool-II 3.1.0 alpha3 released

[Toshihiro Kitagawa]

Pgpool Global Development Group is pleased to announce the
availability of pgpool-II 3.1.0 alpha3.

Users are encouraged to take part in our alpha test program.
pgpool-II 3.1.0 alpha3 can be down loaded here:

http://pgfoundry.org/frs/download.php/3094/pgpool-II-3.1.0-alpha3.tar.gz

Please help us in testing and making pgpool-II 3.1 better!
Major changes from alpha2 to alpha3 are:

Incompatible changes
====================

- Change the lock method of insert_lock. The previous insert_lock uses
  row locking against the sequence relation, but The current one uses
  row locking against pgpool_catalog.insert_lock table. The reason is
  that PostgreSQL core developers decided to disallow row locking
  against the sequence relation to avoid an internal error which it
  leads. So creating insert_lock table in all databases which are
  accessed via pgpool-II beforehand is required. If does not exist
  insert_lock table, pgpool-II locks the insert target table. This
  behavior is same as pgpool-II 2.2 and 2.3 series. If you want to use
  insert_lock which is compatible with older releases, you can specify
  lock method by configure options: --enable-sequence-lock,
  --enable-table-lock(Kitagawa)

- In streaming replication, if delay_threshold is 0 or health
  checking is disabled, the delay checking is not performed.
  This is the behaviour according to a description of the
  pgpool-II manual. But, so far the delay checking was performed
  even if health checking was disabled(Guillaume Lelarge)

New features
============

- Add new per backend directive "backend_flag". This controls per
  backend behavior. Currently "ALLOW_TO_FAILOVER" or
  "DISALLOW_TO_FAILOVER" are allowed(Tatsuo)

- Add health_check_password directive because the directives of
  helthcheck are used to check replication delay in streaming
  replication mode(Nicolas Thauvin)

- Add --username(or -u) option to pg_md5 command. This allows to manage
  users which do not have UNIX accounts. Japanese document change by
  Tatsuo Ishii(Nicolas Thauvin)

- Add pgpool_adm functions to pgpool_adm/. These are user-defined
  functions written in C language which work like pcp commands
  (Jehan-Guillaume (ioguix) de Rorthais)

- Add SQL files to uninstall functions to sql/(Nicolas Thauvin)

Bug fixes
=========

- Fix bug which does not update the node status when reattaching the
  node in raw mode(Guillaume Lelarge)

- Fix incorrect calculation of the replication delay in streaming
  replication mode(Tatsuo)

- Replace wrong function name "notice_backend_error" with correct one
  "degenerate_backend_set" in the failover log message(Tatsuo)

- Remove unnecessary logging at the end of pgpool.conf parsing(Tatsuo)

- Fix hangup when using md5 authentication method and running as
  daemon. Patch contributed by Nicolas Thauvin(Tatsuo)

- Fix log_per_node_statement so that it prints statements in the
  extended query protocol. This used to work but was broken in 3.0
  (Kitagawa)

- Fix incorrect error message which is sent to the frontend when
  client idle time reached client_idle_limit(Tatsuo)

- Fix "backend status" variable name correctly in pool_status.
  Replace the space with a '_'(Guillaume Lelarge)

Enhancements
============

- Change the function to check the replication delay in streaming
  replication mode. Currently, pgpool uses pg_last_xlog_replay_location()
  instead of pg_last_xlog_receive_location(). Fix suggested by Anton
  Yuzhaninov(Tatsuo)

- Allow time stamp rewriting to work with arbitrary expression in
  default value of a column. Before we detected anything including
  now() then simply replaced it to now(). This will lead to wrong
  rewriting of default value. for example, timezone('utc'::text, now()).
  Note that, however, this only adopts to simple queries. Extended
  protocols(for example Java, PHP PDO) or SQL "PREPARE" still remain
  same(Tatsuo)

- Enhance the error message which is emitted when failed to check
  replication delay(Nicolas Thauvin)

- Change error message "do_md5: read_password_packet failed" into debug
  level(Kitagawa)

- Add currval() and lastval() to black_function_list of sample
  configuration files. If they are load balanced, currval() or
  lastval() may be called before the result of nextval() or setval()
  is propagated to slaves(Tatsuo)