PostgreSQL Data Base Management System (formally known as Postgres95) This directory contains the 6.0 release of PostgreSQL. See INSTALL for the installation notes and HISTORY for the changes. We also have a WWW home page located at: http://www.postgreSQL.org PostgreSQL is not public domain software. It is copyrighted by the University of California but may be used according to the licensing terms of the the copyright below: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ POSTGRES95 Data Base Management System Copyright (c) 1994-6 Regents of the University of California Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its documentation for any purpose, without fee, and without a written agreement is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph and the following two paragraphs appear in all copies. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BE LIABLE TO ANY PARTY FOR DIRECT, INDIRECT, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES, INCLUDING LOST PROFITS, ARISING OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE AND ITS DOCUMENTATION, EVEN IF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIMS ANY WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE SOFTWARE PROVIDED HEREUNDER IS ON AN "AS IS" BASIS, AND THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA HAS NO OBLIGATIONS TO PROVIDE MAINTENANCE, SUPPORT, UPDATES, ENHANCEMENTS, OR MODIFICATIONS.
Marc G. Fournier
authored
OK, here are a passel of patches for the geometric data types. These add a "circle" data type, new operators and functions for the existing data types, and change the default formats for some of the existing types to make them consistant with each other. Current formatting conventions (e.g. compatible with v6.0 to allow dump/reload) are supported, but the new conventions should be an improvement and we can eventually drop the old conventions entirely. For example, there are two kinds of paths (connected line segments), open and closed, and the old format was '(1,2,1,2,3,4)' for a closed path with two points (1,2) and (3,4) '(0,2,1,2,3,4)' for an open path with two points (1,2) and (3,4) Pretty arcane, huh? The new format for paths is '((1,2),(3,4))' for a closed path with two points (1,2) and (3,4) '[(1,2),(3,4)]' for an open path with two points (1,2) and (3,4) For polygons, the old convention is '(0,4,2,0,4,3)' for a triangle with points at (0,0),(4,4), and (2,3) and the new convention is '((0,0),(4,4),(2,3))' for a triangle with points at (0,0),(4,4), and (2,3) Other data types which are also represented as lists of points (e.g. boxes, line segments, and polygons) have similar representations (they surround each point with parens). For v6.1, any format which can be interpreted as the old style format is decoded as such; we can remove that backwards compatibility but ugly convention for v7.0. This will allow dump/reloads from v6.0. These include some updates to the regression test files to change the test for creating a data type from "circle" to "widget" to keep the test from trashing the new builtin circle type.