Dienstag, 12. Januar 2016

New version for Informix FDW

With the release of PostgreSQL 9.5 i've also updated the foreign data wrapper (FDW) module for Informix. The module now supports the IMPORT FOREIGN SCHEMA command, which allows you to automatically import remote table definitions from an Informix database into PostgreSQL.

The latest release also contains various important fixes, so even if you don't want to use PostgreSQL 9.5 yet , you're advised to update.

Freitag, 7. Oktober 2011

Schedule for PGConf.DE released

The session schedule for PGConf.DE, the German-speaking PostgreSQL Conference, was published. The conference will be hold November 11th in Oberhausen, Germany, in front of the OpenRheinRhur, a conference focused on free software.

If you haven't heard about PGConf.DE, it is the German-speaking continuation of the very successful PostgreSQL Conference Europe held in Stuttgart last year. There are many great talks about various topics (replication, performance and optimization, development and much more). The conference let you get in touch with developers and users, exchanging experiences about PostgreSQL and creating contacts to various members of the community.

Registration is open already and the entrance fee also includes access to the OpenRheinRhur conference for the whole weekend. See you there!

Donnerstag, 21. April 2011

Yes, there is one (at least)...

Yesterday it occured to me again, that i was asked for german literature about PostgreSQL 9.0 and the lack thereof. Okay, there is one...look for ISBN-13 978-3897216617 ;)

PostgreSQL Administration 2nd Edition is available since the very early days of 2011 and covers various topics about PostgreSQL 9.0 Administration, in addition to the first edition which covers up to 8.3 only. Seems people got confused about this.

A quick check also gives some other german book about this topic, look for ISBN-13 978-3942151061. If you have additional tips, feel free to leave a comment here.

Donnerstag, 3. Februar 2011

FOSDEM, the same procedure as every year

I'm going to FOSDEM, the Free and Open Source Software Developers' European Meeting

So FOSDEM starts this weekend again...and again i will attend, especially on sunday. Meet the PostgreSQL guys, hear the talks in the PostgreSQL devroom and maybe get some other interesting news from the community.
See you there!

Freitag, 21. Januar 2011

PostgreSQL vs. libreadline on OSX

Today Thom Brown posted a bug report to pgsql-bugs, where he asked for a potential issue with the interactive terminal psql. As the following reply from Tom Lane explained, this is a long standing issue with the libedit package Apple ships with OSX. Yes, libedit, since libreadline under OSX is just a symlink to libedit:


% ls -la /usr/lib/libreadline.dylib
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 15 15 Sep 2009 /usr/lib/libreadline.dylib@ -> libedit.2.dylib


If you just configure your PostgreSQL build without any special options, the PostgreSQL binaries will be linked against libedit.
There were several discussions about this in the past and this was even reported to Apple. However, since now (i'm on OSX 10.6.6 for example), nothing happened and the shipped libedit is still unusable with psql.

If you really need to build your own PostgreSQL binaries on OSX (for example you want do a review for a patch in the current CommitFest ;)), i always recommend to use MacPorts and their packaging. I use it for nearly two years and it works quite well (well, at least all libraries required by my installation are working). There's a fairly good instruction on how to setup MacPorts on your MacBook. If you have done your package installation, simply point the configure script to the correct location of the libraries and header files:


./configure --with-libraries=/opt/local/lib --with-includes=/opt/local/include ...


/opt/local is the default location for libraries installed from MacPorts. You also might want to specify additional options. At least, --with-includes and --with-libraries are necessary to point your PostgreSQL builds to the correct libraries.

Samstag, 13. November 2010

10 years of computer science in Aalen

On Saturday i was invited to my old university where i formerly studied computer science. I was asked to give a lightning talk about my work and experiences after my studies. I did my diploma thesis back in 2006 about PostgreSQL and still have the opportunity to work with and on PostgreSQL during my employment at credativ. In my talk i've summarized what it means to work with open source and my fields of activity.

We've also heard about others what they have experienced in the last years after leaving the university. It's really interesting what fellow students are doing after studies and of very wide variety.

Afterwards during a snack we've discussed various topics about open source (and, of course, PostgreSQL), applied sciences and much more with my former professors. I really enjoyed my visit and have to say a big *thanks*.

Freitag, 5. November 2010

Building Slony-I on OSX

Just stumpled across this today while trying to build a fresh git clone of Slony-I on my MacBook; To build Slony-I on a OSX box (in my case 10.6.4), you might do the following on your box:


% ./configure --prefix=$PGSQL_HOME --with-pgconfigdir=$PGSQL_HOME/bin
...
configure: error: Headers for libpqserver are not found in the includeserverdir.
This is the path to postgres.h. Please specify the includeserverdir with
--with-pgincludeserverdir=<dir>


Now, of course you are following this gentle hint and try again with a proper include path:


% ./configure --prefix=$PGSQL_HOME --with-pgconfigdir=$PGSQL_HOME/bin --with-pgincludeserverdir=$PGSQL_HOME/include/server
...
configure: error: Headers for libpqserver are not found in the includeserverdir.
This is the path to postgres.h. Please specify the includeserverdir with
--with-pgincludeserverdir=<dir>


Uhm, doesn't work either. A good way to find out what's really going on now is to have a look into the config.log (located in the Slony-I source directory) and check what exactly is causing this error. Open the file and simply search for postgres.h. You'll find the following line there (ignore my path names here, they surely differ from yours):


In file included from /Users/bernd/pgsql-dev/install/REL9_0_STABLE/include/server/postgres.h:47,
from conftest.c:80:
/Users/bernd/pgsql-dev/install/REL9_0_STABLE/include/server/c.h:99:21: error: libintl.h: No such file or directory


Ah okay, it is indeed failing compiling the conftest.c file while including the PostgreSQL headers. Now that i saw this i remembered that i had my local development PostgreSQL-builds configured with --enable-nls, which need to include gettext/libintl. Since OSX doesn't ship with the latter, they were installed from MacPorts, which is located in /opt/local/include. So the solution is to just include those header path as well. PostgreSQL has an extra configure switch --with-includes, unfortunately the configure script in Slony-I is missing this, so i decided to go with this:


% CFLAGS='-I /opt/local/include' ./configure --prefix=$PGSQL_HOME --with-pgconfigdir=$PGSQL_HOME/bin


That worked and i was finally able to sucessfully build Slony-I on my MacBook. Hope this helps anybody facing the same issue.