There is what may actually be a mistake in our markup.  The problem is
in a situation like

<para>
 <command>FOO</command> is ...

there is strictly speaking a line break before "FOO".  In the HTML
output, this does not appear to be a problem, but in the man page
output, this shows up, so you get double blank lines at odd places.

So far, we have attempted to work around this with an XSL hack, but
that causes other problems, such as creating run-ins in places like

<acronym>SQL</acronym> <command>COPY</command>

So fix the problem properly by removing the extra whitespace.  I only
fixed the problems that affect the man page output, not all the
places.

Until now, our Serializable mode has in fact been what's called Snapshot
Isolation, which allows some anomalies that could not occur in any
serialized ordering of the transactions. This patch fixes that using a
method called Serializable Snapshot Isolation, based on research papers by
Michael J. Cahill (see README-SSI for full references). In Serializable
Snapshot Isolation, transactions run like they do in Snapshot Isolation,
but a predicate lock manager observes the reads and writes performed and
aborts transactions if it detects that an anomaly might occur. This method
produces some false positives, ie. it sometimes aborts transactions even
though there is no anomaly.

To track reads we implement predicate locking, see storage/lmgr/predicate.c.
Whenever a tuple is read, a predicate lock is acquired on the tuple. Shared
memory is finite, so when a transaction takes many tuple-level locks on a
page, the locks are promoted to a single page-level lock, and further to a
single relation level lock if necessary. To lock key values with no matching
tuple, a sequential scan always takes a relation-level lock, and an index
scan acquires a page-level lock that covers the search key, whether or not
there are any matching keys at the moment.

A predicate lock doesn't conflict with any regular locks or with another
predicate locks in the normal sense. They're only used by the predicate lock
manager to detect the danger of anomalies. Only serializable transactions
participate in predicate locking, so there should be no extra overhead for
for other transactions.

Predicate locks can't be released at commit, but must be remembered until
all the transactions that overlapped with it have completed. That means that
we need to remember an unbounded amount of predicate locks, so we apply a
lossy but conservative method of tracking locks for committed transactions.
If we run short of shared memory, we overflow to a new "pg_serial" SLRU
pool.

We don't currently allow Serializable transactions in Hot Standby mode.
That would be hard, because even read-only transactions can cause anomalies
that wouldn't otherwise occur.

Serializable isolation mode now means the new fully serializable level.
Repeatable Read gives you the old Snapshot Isolation level that we have
always had.

Kevin Grittner and Dan Ports, reviewed by Jeff Davis, Heikki Linnakangas and
Anssi Kääriäinen

The endterm attribute is mainly useful when the toolchain does not support
automatic link target text generation for a particular situation.  In  the
past, this was required by the man page tools for all reference page links,
but that is no longer the case, and it now actually gets in the way of
proper automatic link text generation.  The only remaining use cases are
currently xrefs to refsects.

Instead of requiring translators to translate the entire SQL command
synopses, change create_help.pl to only require them to translate the
placeholders, and paste those into the synopsis using a printf mechanism.
Make some small updates to the markup to make it easier to parse.

Note: This causes msgmerge of gettext 0.17 to segfault.  You will need
the patch from https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?27474 to make it work.
msgmerge usually only runs on babel.postgresql.org, however.

another section if required by the platform (instead of the old way of
building them in section "l" and always transforming them to the
platform-specific section).

This speeds up the installation on common platforms, and it avoids some
funny business with the man page tools and build process.

information" is un-good English.

Standard English uses "may", "can", and "might" in different ways:

        may - permission, "You may borrow my rake."

        can - ability, "I can lift that log."

        might - possibility, "It might rain today."

Unfortunately, in conversational English, their use is often mixed, as
in, "You may use this variable to do X", when in fact, "can" is a better
choice.  Similarly, "It may crash" is better stated, "It might crash".

by the SQL standard.  For backwards compatibility, however, continue to
accept the syntax without.  Minor editorialization in the reference pages
for these commands, too.

Giving examples in the SQL command reference is hard because we don't
have conditionals at the SQL level.

Gavin Sherry

number of active subtransaction XIDs in each backend's PGPROC entry,
and use this to avoid expensive probes into pg_subtrans during
TransactionIdIsInProgress.  Extend EOXactCallback API to allow add-on
modules to get control at subxact start/end.  (This is deliberately
not compatible with the former API, since any uses of that API probably
need manual review anyway.)  Add basic reference documentation for
SAVEPOINT and related commands.  Minor other cleanups to check off some
of the open issues for subtransactions.
Alvaro Herrera and Tom Lane.

TRANSACTION.

$Header: -> $PostgreSQL Changes ...

discussion.  (Still have some work to do editing the remainder.)

only remnant of this failed experiment is that the server will take
SET AUTOCOMMIT TO ON.  Still TODO: provide some client-side autocommit
logic in libpq.

vague cross-references with real links.

including:

- replacing all the appropriate usages of <citetitle>PostgreSQL
...</citetitle> with &cite-user;, &cite-admin;, and so on

- fix an omission in the EXECUTE documentation

- add some more text to the EXPLAIN documentation

- improve the PL/PgSQL RETURN NEXT documentation (more work to do here)

- minor markup fixes


Neil Conway

functionality of the command is basically identical to that of
BEGIN; it just accepts a few extra options (only one of which
PostgreSQL currently implements), and is standards-compliant.
The patch includes a simple regression test and documentation.

[ Regression tests removed, per Peter.]

Neil Conway

 capabilities of specifying time zones as intervals per SQL9x.
Put refentrytitle contents on the same line as the tag.
 Otherwise, leading whitespace is propagated into the product, which
 (at least) messes up the ToC layout.
Remove (some) docinfo tags containing dates. Best to omit if the dates
 are not accurate; maybe use CVS dates instead or leave them out.

 between Postgres and PostgreSQL.

Use "generic functions" for math and other routines.
Use SQL92 "type 'literal'" syntax rather than Postgres "'literal'::type".

Initdb help correction
Changed end/abort to commit/rollback and changed related notices
Commented out way old printing functions in libpq
Fixed a typo in alter table / alter column

ecpg reference page still needs formatting.

No big deal; fixed lots of other markup at the same time.
Bigest change: make sure there is no whitespace
 in front of <term> contents.
This will probably help the other output types too.

Split reference pages for CREATE TABLE AS and SELECT INTO to allow psgml
 (the emacs parser) to handle parsing.

 of Norm's Modular Style Sheets and jade/docbook.
From Vince Vielhaber <vev@michvhf.com>.