PostgreSQL 7.4

• Release notes
• Released: 2003-11-17 (announcement)
• Final minor version: 7.4.30
• EOL: 2010-10
• Documentation: PostgreSQL 7.4

Major features

• version 3 of the Frontend/Backend Protocol
• information schema (initial commit 1b42ad7e)
• performance improvements (IN/NOT IN subqueries, GROUP BY, queries using explicit JOIN syntax etc.)
• cursor handling improvements

SQL changes

Added:

• ALTER AGGREGATE (commit b256f242)
• ALTER CONVERSION (commit b256f242)
• ALTER DOMAIN (initial commit 17194f41)
• ALTER FUNCTION (commit b256f242)
• ALTER LANGUAGE (commit b256f242)
• ALTER OPERATOR CLASS (commit b256f242)
• ALTER SCHEMA (commit b256f242)
• ALTER SEQUENCE (commit 5f65225f)

Modified:

• ALTER DATABASE
  • ALTER DATABASE ... RENAME TO ... syntax added (commit b256f242)
• ALTER GROUP
  • ALTER GROUP ... RENAME TO ... syntax added (commit b256f242)
• ALTER TABLE
  • ALTER TABLE ... CLUSTER ON ... syntax added (commit 432b9b0f)
• ALTER USER
  • ALTER USER ... RENAME TO ... syntax added (commit b256f242)
• CLUSTER
  • parameter-less invocation to cluster all previously clustered tables (commit 8bc717cb)
  • tables which were previously clustered can now be clustered with "CLUSTER TABLE table_name" (commit 8bc717cb)
• CREATE DOMAIN
  • CHECK clause added (commit 6b603e67)
• CREATE SEQUENCE
  •  NO MAXVALUE and NO MINVALUE options added (commit f249daf9)
• CREATE TABLE AS
  • GLOBAL clause added (commit ac5fdea6)
• DECLARE
  • NO SCROLL syntax added (commit 54f7338f)
• GRANT
  • WITH GRANT OPTION syntax added (commit ef742251)
• SHOW
  • IS SUPERUSER option added (commit ea886339)
  • SERVER VERSION, SERVER_ENCODING, LC_COLLATE and LC_TYPE options added (commit 9cbaf721)

Backend changes

Cursors

• support for holdable cursors added (commit 54f7338f)

System catalogue

Tables

Modified:

• pg_am
  • column amvacuumcleanup added (commit 799bc58d)
• pg_index
  • column indproc removed (commit fc8d970c)
  • column indreference removed (commit fc8d970c)
  • column indnatts added (commit fc8d970c)
  • column indexprs added (commit fc8d970c)

Views

Modified:

• pg_stat_activity
  • column query_start added (commit a1833100)

System functions

Added:

• array_append() (commit 730840c9)
• array_cat() (commit 730840c9)
• array_lower() (commit fef731d1)
• array_prepend() (commit 730840c9)
• array_to_string() (commit b3c0551e)
• array_upper() (commit fef731d1)
• md5() (commit e87e82d2)
• pg_get_triggerdef() (commit 3be6367b)
• pg_stat_get_backend_activity_start() (commit a1833100)
• string_to_array() (commit b3c0551e)

Modified:

• initcap()
  • uppercases a letter appearing after any non-alphanumeric character, rather than only after whitespace(commit e7fe89d5)
• pg_get_constraintdef()
  • pretty option added (commit 52347b66)
• pg_get_indexdef()
  • pretty option added (commit 52347b66)
• pg_get_ruledef()
  • pretty option added (commit 52347b66)
• pg_get_viewdef()
  • pretty option added (commit 52347b66)

Transactions

• read-only transactions added (commit b65cd562)

Data types

• domains
  • support for CHECK expressions added (commit 6b603e67)
• arrays
  • ARRAY[] constructor added (commit 730840c9)

Configuration changes

General:

• support for read-only GUCs added (commit 9cbaf721)

Added:

• check_function_bodies (commit 15c194c1)
• checkpoint_warning (commit 2986aa6a)
• default_transaction_read_only (commit b65cd562)
• enable_hashagg (commit 6c1d4662)
• exit_on_error (commit 4df52b28)
• extra_float_digits (commit d2c744aa)
• from_collapse_limit (commit 9f5f2124)
• join_collapse_limit (commit 9f5f2124)
• log_min_duration_statement (commit b952d61c)
• log_min_messages (renamed from server_min_messages; commit 001d5a7a)
• preload_libraries (commit 15ce2d2e)
• server_encoding (commit 9cbaf721)
• server_version (commit 9cbaf721)

Removed:

• autocommit (commit f85f43df)
• geqo_random_seed (commit 48beecda)
• server_min_messages (renamed to log_min_messages; commit 001d5a7a)

libpq changes

Connection parameters

• tty option deprecated (commit cb7fb3ca)

psql changes

• prompt option %x added to show transaction status (initial commit f9ebf369 as %T, later changed to %x in commit 9951474c)

Core utilities

Modified:

• clusterdb
  • converted to C (commit f374a9da)
• createdb
  • converted to C (commit f374a9da)
• dropdb
  • converted to C (commit f374a9da)
• pg_dumpall
  • support  -a/--data-only, -s/--schema-only and -x/--no-privileges options (commit 9e1e72b6)
  • use GRANT/REVOKE for exported database-level permissions (commit df1df6bb)
• vacuumdb
  • converted from a shell script into a C program (commit f374a9da)

Contrib modules

Added:

• pg_autovacuum (commit bd18c50b)
• tsearch2 (commit b8860533)

Modified:

• dblink
  • named persistent connections added (commit 8f337e86)
• lo
  • casts between the lo and oid data types added (commit 9ab7ab51)
• start-scripts
  • osx start script added (commit b842726f)
• tablefunc
  • hash-based crosstab function added (commit 64d0b8b0)
  • serial column added to order connectby() siblings (commit a265b7f7)