PostgreSQL 8.4.7 Documentation
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# E.15. Release 8.3.8

> Release date: 2009-09-09

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.3.7. For information about new features in the 8.3 major release, see Section E.23.

## E.15.1. Migration to Version 8.3.8

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.3.X. However, if you have any hash indexes on `interval` columns, you must `REINDEX` them after updating to 8.3.8. Also, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.3.5, see the release notes for 8.3.5.

## E.15.2. Changes

- Fix Windows shared-memory allocation code (Tsutomu Yamada, Magnus)

  This bug led to the often-reported "could not reattach to shared memory" error message.

- Force WAL segment switch during `pg_start_backup()` (Heikki)

  This avoids corner cases that could render a base backup unusable.

- Disallow `RESET ROLE` and `RESET SESSION AUTHORIZATION` inside security-definer functions (Tom, Heikki)

  This covers a case that was missed in the previous patch that disallowed `SET ROLE` and `SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION` inside security-definer functions. (See CVE-2007-6600)

- Make `LOAD` of an already-loaded loadable module into a no-op (Tom)

  Formerly, `LOAD` would attempt to unload and re-load the module, but this is unsafe and not all that useful.

- Disallow empty passwords during LDAP authentication (Magnus)

- Fix handling of sub-SELECTs appearing in the arguments of an outer-level aggregate function (Tom)

- Fix bugs associated with fetching a whole-row value from the output of a Sort or Materialize plan node (Tom)

- Prevent `synchronize_seqscans` from changing the results of scrollable and `WITH HOLD` cursors (Tom)

- Revert planner change that disabled partial-index and constraint exclusion optimizations when there were more than 100 clauses in an AND or OR list (Tom)

- Fix hash calculation for data type `interval` (Tom)

  This corrects wrong results for hash joins on interval values. It also changes the contents of hash indexes on interval columns. If you have any such indexes, you must `REINDEX` them after updating.

- Treat `to_char(..., 'TH')` as an uppercase ordinal suffix with `'HH'`/`'HH12'` (Heikki)

  It was previously handled as `'th'` (lowercase).

- Fix overflow for `INTERVAL '`x` ms'` when `x` is more than 2 million and integer datetimes are in use (Alex Hunsaker)

- Fix calculation of distance between a point and a line segment (Tom)

  This led to incorrect results from a number of geometric operators.

- Fix `money` data type to work in locales where currency amounts have no fractional digits, e.g. Japan (Itagaki Takahiro)

- Fix `LIKE` for case where pattern contains `%_` (Tom)

- Properly round datetime input like `00:12:57.9999999999999999999999999999` (Tom)

- Fix memory leaks in XML operations (Tom)

- Fix poor choice of page split point in GiST R-tree operator classes (Teodor)

- Ensure that a "fast shutdown" request will forcibly terminate open sessions, even if a "smart shutdown" was already in progress (Fujii Masao)

- Avoid performance degradation in bulk inserts into GIN indexes when the input values are (nearly) in sorted order (Tom)

- Correctly enforce NOT NULL domain constraints in some contexts in PL/pgSQL (Tom)

- Fix portability issues in plperl initialization (Andrew Dunstan)

- Fix pg_ctl to not go into an infinite loop if `postgresql.conf` is empty (Jeff Davis)

- Improve pg_dump's efficiency when there are many large objects (Tamas Vincze)

- Use `SIGUSR1`, not `SIGQUIT`, as the failover signal for pg_standby (Heikki)

- Make pg_standby's `maxretries` option behave as documented (Fujii Masao)

- Make `contrib/hstore` throw an error when a key or value is too long to fit in its data structure, rather than silently truncating it (Andrew Gierth)

- Fix `contrib/xml2`'s `xslt_process()` to properly handle the maximum number of parameters (twenty) (Tom)

- Improve robustness of libpq's code to recover from errors during `COPY FROM STDIN` (Tom)

- Avoid including conflicting readline and editline header files when both libraries are installed (Zdenek Kotala)

- Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2009l for DST law changes in Bangladesh, Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, Argentina/San_Luis, Cuba, Jordan (historical correction only), Mauritius, Morocco, Palestine, Syria, Tunisia.

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