PostgreSQL 7.4beta4 Documentation
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# Appendix D. Release Notes

# D.1. 7.4 Development Branch

Below is a subset of the changes that have gone into the development branch of PostgreSQL since version 7.3. For a complete list of changes, consult the CVS logs.

EXTRACT(TIMEZONE) and SET/SHOW TIMEZONE now follow SQL sign convention
(positive = east of UTC)
DATESTYLE can now be set to DMY, YMD, or MDY to specify input field order
Input date order must now be YYYY-MM-DD (with 4-digit year) or match DATESTYLE
Output of SHOW DATESTYLE is now in the same format accepted by SET DATESTYLE
PL/Python is now an untrusted language, and is renamed to 'plpythonu'
Dollar sign ($) is no longer allowed in operator names
Dollar sign ($) can be a non-first character in identifiers
Precision in FLOAT(p) is now interpreted as bits, not decimal digits
Functional indexes have been generalized into expressional indexes
CHAR(n) to TEXT conversion automatically strips trailing blanks
Pattern matching operations can use indexes regardless of locale
New frontend/backend protocol supports many long-requested features
SET AUTOCOMMIT TO OFF is no longer supported; psql has an AUTOCOMMIT variable
Reimplementation of NUMERIC datatype for more speed
New regular expression package, many more regexp features (most of Perl5)
Can now do EXPLAIN ... EXECUTE to see plan used for a prepared query
Explicit JOINs no longer constrain query plan, unless JOIN_COLLAPSE_LIMIT = 1
Performance of "foo IN (SELECT ...)" queries has been considerably improved
FETCH 0 now re-fetches cursor's current row, per SQL spec
Revised executor state representation; plan trees are read-only to executor now
Information schema
Domains now support CHECK constraints
psql backslash commands for listing conversions, casts, and schemas
TRUNCATE TABLE is transaction-safe
CLUSTER can re-cluster a previously clustered table, or all such tables
Statement-level triggers
System can use either hash- or sort-based strategy for grouped aggregation
ON COMMIT options for temp tables
extra_float_digits option allows pg_dump to dump float data accurately
Long options for psql and pg_dump are now available on all platforms
Read-only transactions
Object owners can allow grantees to grant the privilege to others (grant option)

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